Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/557

 SOCIAL GENESIS 543

useful things ; making contracts, not indeed legal, but moral, conditioned ultimately on each one's individual power to enforce them ; building cities and entering into mercantile and other kinds of business ; adopting a mutually accepted medium of exchange, or carrying on a banking system based on the much- praised principle of credit and trust ; establishing manufactures of all kinds and disposing of the products ; building railroads and operating them without any other restrictions than those imposed by the laws of business and the conditions favorable to the maximum profits ; conducting educational institutions wholly on "business principles ;" each one worshiping as now in the manner he prefers ; and in all other respects acting individually and without collective restraint if we could conceive, I say, of such a state of things, we might gain a clear idea of society dis- tinct from government. The two things are not essential to each other, at least in thought, and it would be a great gain to the sociologist to be able to separate them. Even if it be admitted that government is a necessary part of human associa- tion, it would be an advantage temporarily to abstract it just as we can abstract any other one element of association. Some, of course, will say that the things specified could not be done in such a state ; that government is a condition to conducting the normal operations of society, and that the hypothesis involves the assumption of higher moral attributes than humanity possesses. Such an assumption would render the hypothesis worthless. This, therefore, is precisely the question to be asked and answered. If it is held that without government society would defeat itself and succumb and the race disappear or lapse into a purely animal or non-social condition, then the inquiry is ended. But given the mental powers possessed by man, few will go so far. The real question therefore is : What would have been the condition of society had no government ever been framed ? How many and which ones of the existing institu- tions and operations of society would exist, and what other ones would have been developed ? These arc difficult questions, but they are legitimate ones for the sociologist to raise and, as far