Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/694

 68o THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

years earlier, and Gumplowicz's Rassenkampf appeared the same year as my own book. Of course I knew nothing of his pamph- let, Rage und Stoat, 1875, which contains a clear statement of the principle. My guess was perhaps as good as the average, but was wide of the mark, and in the light of the great Austrian theory and of the ethnological proofs I do not hesitate to repudi- ate it and remand it to the same limbo as all the rest.

I would not have mentioned this had not this new interpreter of the state singled it out (instead of quoting Pure Sociology, chap. X, published twenty years later) and held it up as my theory of the state. This procedure may be compared with that of the Spanish court-martial in condemning Ferrer at fifty for what he said at twenty. It would of course be useless to argue with one who resorts to such methods, and I wished only to show that of all the worthless theories of the state that have been set afloat the theory proposed by him is the most absurd. To it Tully's famous saying perfectly applies : Nescio qiiomodo, nihil tarn ahsurde dici potest, quod non dicatur ah aliquo philoso- phorum.