Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/270

 256 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

Nature" he remarks : "In order to have a perfect knowledge of these laws, we must consider man before the establishment of society; the laws received in such a state would be those of nature. "^^ The distinctions drawn by the school of Rousseau between natural and civil rights, and the doctrine of the inalien- able nature of natural rights, follow by strict logical inference. Even such unflinching applications of the theory of individual rights as are made by the Indian Sociologist in its defense of political assassination, or by its disciple, the Punjabi student who recently murdered Sir Curzon Wyllie as an act of private war against the English government, cannot be regarded as logically fallacious.

The political hypothesis rests upon a radically different assumption. Denying that man existed before society it starts with the existence of the state. Man is born man because he is bom a political animal. Hence man's rights are not natural rights but are political rights. They are created, established, and protected by the state (which must not be confused with govern- ment regulative structure formed within the state). As an indi- vidual animal, man has no more rights than any other animal; that is to say, he has as such no rights at all in the proper sense of the word, but simply powers and capacities. Right implies correspondence to some norm or standard apprehended by the individual ; this norm or standard inheres in the political matrix that molds the individual nature. The sense of individual free- dom! is that which accompanies proper functional opportunity and provision of that can only be supplied through the mode in which the life of the state settles itself. Human liberty implies harmonious adjustments of public order, in which the individual occupies the position of an atom vibrating freely in a fixed orbit.

V Only one point now remains for consideration, namely, the claim on which both Professors Small and Ellwood lay such em- phasis, that sociology is the only system that has the merit of attacking problems of social order "by the new methods of positive science." The claim is not sustained by the evidence.

" spirit of the Laws, Book I, chap, ii.