Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/863

 NOTES AND ABSTRACTS 847

one party to the relation of governor and governed but must be two or more parties working reciprocally, if we are to have any real authority or any real freedom.

2. With regard to natural an inalienable rights, there is but one such right — the right of a man to be treated as he really is, a functioning member in a community-of- members. With every change in the relation in which he stands to his fellows there IS a change in his rights ; and these rights are vested, not in the abstract individual, but in the social status of the community.

3. The old theory that punishment is a vindication of the majesty of the law was communistic, while the current popular opinion that punishment is meiely for the reformation of the offender is individualistic. These two views take the respective forms, in practice, of harshness on the one hand and sentimentality on the other. Both are one-sided. Punishment is rather the assertion of the organic and social nature of the individual in society against an action that is in principle the denial of this organic nature, and the punishment must be so recognized by the punished, i. e., as just what he himself in his saner mood would do to his insurrectionary unsocial self.

In the light of this, capital punishment may be truly and seriously stated as the necessity of killing some men to make them good in this life before they die. It is to make martyrs of some men, on account of their own misdeeds, for the sake of humanity.

Lynch law is barbarous because it defeats this purpose. — E. B. McGilvary, "Society and the Individual," in Philosophical Review, March, 1900.

Introductory Principles in Sociology. — The social unity of men can be understood only psychologically. The social body must always be viewed as a whole whose parts are made up of human individuals considered especially as sentient beings. Two marked aspects of all social organizations present themselves. All forms of society in which the sense of unity is prominent, and is given precedence over that of the parts, we may call communities (Geineitischa/t), and those in which the whole is habitually viewed as subordinate to the parts we may call societies (Gesellschaft). The germinal forms of the "community" spring up through mother love, sexual love, and love between brothers and sisters ; the elementary " societary " fact lies in those acts of exchange and intercourse in which the individuals are viewed as mere individuals, having nothing in common, and stand opposed in relations of hostility, e. g., not only as in war, but as in many commercial situations. Each of these two views of social relations has two forms of statement: the first either (A) that the race is one through its common ancestor, Adam, the form of the religious dogma, or (B) that common bonds and common conditions of life are insured as universal and necessary by the very nature of man ; the second view takes the forms (a) that, if each can be the enemy of each, each can exchange with and exploit each, or (6) that, upon this principle, an association which maintains hostility must finally bind in servitude every man and make him a subject. Forms A and b are consistent with each other, while B and a are inconsistent.

Society, as the general term, has been defined, according to various preconcep- tions, from the times of the Roman lawyers down, as a person, a biological organism, etc., whereas the empirical method of dealing with the subject is today gaining ground and strength. From this standpoint, for a working hypothesis, we may say that society is a crowd of individuals scattered over a particular territory, who do business peace- ably with each other, and enforce the observation of certain rules of conduct. — Pro- fessor Ferdinand Tonnies, "Zur Einleitung in die Sociologie," in Zeitschrift fiir Philosophic u. philosophische Kritik, January, 1900.

The Castration of Certain Classes of the Degenerate as an Effective Social Protective Measure. — In a former paper' it was shown that a lessened procreative power is one of the characteristics of the degenerate. But while the procrc- ative power is lessened, it is not wholly destroyed, and this fact is of great social sig- nificance, for that which in the degenerate parent is noticeable only as a general psycho-physical weakening and lack of ability will pass over in his offspring into all sorts of mental and nervous diseases of such a character as to render the person con- cerned a direct menace and burden to society, unless regenerative factors should appear through the mixture of new blood into the strain. It is thus seen that the point

» See American Journal of Sociology, July, 1899, p. 128.