Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/372

 358 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

wealth is one person." Says Schopenhauer: "The state is 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 .... [it is] the substitute for individualistic egoism of a collection or corporate egoism of all." The terms "social consciousness," "social mind," "social organism," are the pres- ent-day phrases which supplant the "universal reason," the personification, and the metaphysics of the past. Austin, no doubt, avoided entirely this personifying tendency when he divided society into masters and subjects. But Green, in devel- oping the concept of the "general will," has given to it in the minds of his followers a strong support, and publicists of today, even with historical training, while clearly appreciating the analysis of Austin, are yet so fascinated by their theories of the unity of the sovereign that they are speaking of the state prac- tically in metaphores. Says Willloughby : ' " Sovereignty belongs to the state as a person, and represents the supremacy of its will. Sovereignty is thus independent of its particular powers in the same way that the self-conscious power of volition and determination of the individual human person is distinguished from his various faculties or the aggregate of them. It is the very possession of this sovereign will that gives personality to a politically organized community. Sovereignty .... is neces- sarily a unit and indivisible — unity being a necessary predicate of a supreme will."

Our criterion and analysis of these conceptions will appear in examining the arguments for and against Aristotle's classifi- cation of the forms of government. Aristotle described mon- archy as the rule of one, aristocracy as the rule of the minority, and democracy as the rule of the majority. This classification has been criticised as being purely arithmetical, and containing no organic principle. " Number, without a principle of meas- urement or rule of distribution, is about as vague defining prin- ciple as may be imagined."^ On the other hand, Schleiermacher's

' The Nature of the State, p. 195.

'John Dewey, "Austin's Theory of Sovereignty," Political Science Quarterly, Vol. IX, p. 31.