Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/188

 174 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

will decrease, until finally, when the final goal of human progress is reached, the need for political control will have entirely disappeared. If we answer yes to this, we in effect affirm that, though the anarchistic state be not now desirable, it yet stands as an ideal continually to be striven for and possibly ultimately to be realized.

This proposition has been and still is widely held. Spencer in his Social Statics says :

It is a mistake to assume that government must necessarily last forever. The institution marks a certain stage of civilization is natural to a peculiar phase of human development. It is not essential, but incidental. As amongst Bushmen we find a state antecedent to government, so there may be one in which it shall become extinct. 1

And again he says :

Does it [government] not exist because crime exists? .... Is there not more liberty, that is, less government, as crime diminishes ? And must not government cease when crime ceases, for the very lack of objects on which to perform its function ? Not only does magisterial power exist because of evil, but it exists by evil. 3

Janet takes the same view in his Histoire de la Science politique :

Imaginez [he says] en effet une politique parfaite, un gouvernement parfait, des lois parfaites, vous supposez par la mgme des hommes parfaits. Mais alors la politique ne serait plus autre chose que le gouvernement Hbre de chaque homme par soi-meme : en d'autres termes, elle cesserait d'etre. Et cependant, c'est la sa fin et son ide"al. L'objet du gouvernement est de pre*- parer insensiblement les hommes a. cet e"tat parfait de societe", ou les lois et le gouvernement lui-meme deviendraient inutiles.

Hume, too, in his essay Of the Original Contract, says :

Were all men possessed of so inflexible a regard to justice that of them- selves they would totally abstain from the properties of others, they had for- ever remained in a state of absolute liberty, without subjection to any magistrate or political society.

The assertion of Jules Simon, that "the state ought to ren- der itself useless and prepare for its own decease," indicates the same view. So also we find the late Professor Freeman asserting: "As for discussions about any one ideal form of gov- ernment, they are simply idle. The ideal form of government

1 Edition 1873, p. 24. *Jbid., p. 230.