Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/699

 A SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW OF SOVEREIGNTY. CHAPTER X. THE FAMILY.

We have seen that coercion, when it has been transferred from private to public control, takes on the attributes of order and right, thus becoming sovereignty. The institution which is thus differentiated out from the primitive blending of all insti- tutions is the state. It becomes the supreme institution, because it is looked upon as the proper custodian of the decisive social relation, coercion. In thus emerging from the social mass the state has set off other institutions, based each upon its own peculiar persuasive sanction. The family, originally a coercive institution, becomes the custodian of sexual and filial affection. The church becomes the voluntary association of believers in common worship, based on the sanctions of belief in moral per- fection and consciousness of guilt. Industrial property is trans- formed from slavery and serfdom into free contract and mutual interest. These are the three original institutions from which the state has been differentiated. There are also certain derived and secondary institutions which have sprung up with the free conditions that followed the differentiation of the four original institutions. Those to be especially noted in these papers are political parties and business corporations.

We have found the starting-point of the human family in the patronymic and resulting patriarchate order of society. We are now to analyze more closely the threefold character of the insti- tution — its persuasive beliefs and desires, its material basis, and its coercive organization.

In modern society the family has been differentiated as the custodian of sexual and parental affection. Its persuasive prin- ciple is family love. But in its primitive origin we cannot expect to find affection so clearly isolated. It was inextricably blended with ancestor-worship, with the desire to secure a son who should perform the sacrifices on which the happiness of his deceased

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