Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/54

 40 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

Each of these kinds of authority exists for the benefit of the whole people. The ecclesiastical hierarchy is the guardian and promoter of the spiritual life and moral principle which are the internal bond of society. The intellectual hierarchy insures right thought, which is an essential prerequisite of right volition and right action, in any and every domain. The political hierarchy preserves the public tranquillity, protects the rights, and enforces the obligations of all the individuals and organic groups that make up the body politic, and represents the interests of the community at large in its relations with the rest of mankind. Similarly, the aesthetic hierarchy beautifies all the works of man, and the social hierarchy beautifies and sweetens all human rela- tionships. Finally, the economic hierarchy preserves man's existence, and ministers to him all the material aids needed in the attainment of all his higher ends, near and remote. In this conception it is easy to recognize the outlines of a transcendental anatomy, as it were, of society.

Every group of individuals possesses the same rights and has the same duties that a single individual would have under precisely the same circumstances. The Catholic sociologists insist upon the right of free association, for legitimate ends, and lay special stress upon the family and the professional body, as organic elements of society. The family is older than the state, and has a constitution and a body of sacred rights upon which even the state cannot infringe without crime. Upon the unity, order, and indissolubility of the family, and its conscious con- tinuity from generation to generation, the welfare and progress of the whole commonwealth are largely dependent. The head of the family has, by the law of nature and of God, jurisdiction over his whole household, and' is responsible for the spiritual and temporal welfare of all its members. Outsiders temporarily forming part of the household are subject to this authority, and servants, in particular, while bound to show due respect to the members of the family, have a right to be the objects of an almost paternal affection and solicitude.

All those who are engaged in any given trade, profession, or industry constitute, by the law of nature, an economic family.