Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/565

 A SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW OF SOVEREIGNTY 549

convictions of moral and social perfection lying deep in the subconscious minds of all.'

I have said above that moral right exists only in the mind. It is subjective. But so dependent is the mind on its social con- dition that the belief in moral right can arise only as the indi- vidual feels himself to be free. Freedom is ability to choose and act as one wishes. There is neither right nor wrong where necessity rules — only success or failure. Free will is illusory if it does not end in free action, and free action is impossible where society has not yet overcome the high physical facts of necessity. There are three kinds of necessity. First, climatic, that which is above and beyond the control of man. The sea- sons, the winds, the zones, the ocean currents, the isothermal areas, establish conditions of necessity which man has but meagerly overcome, and in contest with which his freedom is only an illusory and empty option between life and death. Sec- ond, material necessity ; that which man gradually overcomes through science, invention, and art. The material products which men consume and use and enjoy are but the raw material of nature worked over by human thought and labor. They are simply the products and services of others. Material freedom is the control over a wide range of these products. The savage is not free, because he has but few social products to choose from. The civilized man is free because he can choose all the way from Bibles, paintings, schools, homes, to whisky, roulette, and prostitutes. In doing so, as we have seen, he simply com- mands and controls the services of others. This the economists call wealth. It is material freedom. The savage is first a slave to nature, and is freed from nature by enslaving his fellow-men. Slavery is originally neither right nor wrong — it is necessary. Third, competitive necessity ; that which marks the struggle for life and is overcome by organization, monopoly, and govern- ment. When the British soldiers were imprisoned in the Black Hole with only a six-inch window for air, their susceptibilities to love, justice, mutual help, which stimulated their marches and

'See also Figgis, The Theory of the Divine Right of AVwg-j (Cambridge Univer- sity Press, 1896).