Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/185

 A SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW OF SOVEREIGNTY 171

This evolution of society and coercion has grown out of unreflective, imitative, customary, and traditional ways of think- ing and living on the part of the entire mass of people. There has been no literature (except as it may have been handed down from a former civilization), no philosophy, no science. Industry has been mainly agriculture, and trade has been barter. Religion has been natural or ethnic, as distinguished from ethical, and government has never been troubled with problems of abstract justice or the rights of man. It is the period of naive, empiric, imitative, unreflective self-consciousness, corresponding to the childhood and youth of the individual. The psychic distinction between this and the succeeding or reflective stage is of such prime importance for the theory of sovereignty as to require at this point a careful examination.

John R. Commons.

Syracuse University.

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