Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/594

 580 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

contract consisting in such surrender or adjustment of rights as may be required for harmonious living, or the peace which ensues being that of armed neutrality rather than anything more posi- tive or more genuine. And, thirdly, under the contract theory, if to be taken literally, the social life resulting is bound to be something imposed from without upon the life that is natural, it is supernatural or extranatural, the social self and the individual self being so absolutely apart ; and, in consequence, its enabling compact has a peculiar sanctity, being an end in itself, not a means, and so properly subject neither to breach nor to amend- ment. In short, then, the contract creates society ; the individ- uals entering into society are obliged to get out of themselves, actually surrendering inalienable rights ; and the social life ensu- ing is formal or artificial or external.

So runs the contract theory of Thomas Hobbes. Its great worth is in its distinction between the legal man, the man under the law, and the natural man ; its great defect, in that no law in the relations of men is recognized save such as the enacted contract establishes, the natural man being lawless. To distin- guish, however, between the legal and the natural man was to imply also a distinction between the visible sovereign and the sovereignty, only the sovereignty being legally supreme ; and, again, between the government and the state ; but these all-impor- tant distinctions get their proper recognition and transfigura- tion only with the final emergence, which is to be indicated here, of the organic theory from its contract chrysalis. To this final outcome both Locke and Rousseau made valuable contri- butions.

Thus Locke, recognizing a contradiction in Hobbes' theory, in the original individualism and warfare, and in the subsequent social unity and peace, secured only through surrender of inalienable rights, refused to think of the contract as actually creating society. For him, indeed, society is original or natural, its component individuals being rational, and so subject to an organizing law that is superior to any enacted contract. The con- tract, then, creates only the government, not society ; being for the latter, not creative, but only mediative, or not constitutive,