Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/15



A SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW OF SOVEREIGNTY.

standpoint from which sovereignty is examined is usually that of philosophy, law, or political science. The philosopher seeks the fundamental and general principle in the nature of man and the universal on which sovereignty is based. This principle always includes the ultimate purpose, the reason, the logical and rational end, to be met by the state. The view is moral, and may be called the moral-philosophical view of sovereignty. Schopenhauer, for example, defines the state as "the work of reason that mounts from the one-sided and personal to the collective point of view, whence it discerns the fundamental unity of man, and recognizes that in the total of humanity the pleasure of inflicting wrong is always defeated and swallowed up by the suffering which is necessarily correlative thereof. . . . The substitution forindividualistic egoism of a collective or corporate egoism of all."

The lawyer, on the other hand, has a practical problem before him, namely, to decide between two claimants for control over a definite thing or person. He looks, therefore, for an ultimate human authority which has final power over both the litigants, and then for any expression of will, opinion, or preference, which has been laid down by this authority, applicable to the