Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/596

 582 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

that respect for law, however clouded, is not without impartiality; 1 so that by Locke's own evidence the formation of government is only the better and fuller expression of something already in the natural or wholly primitive life of society. In like manner primitive people pass from such natural implements as stones to tools which are carefully devised, the new devices being inspired only by the nature-implements. What tool is not used in its own making? Government, then and this even according to Locke, albeit to the Locke of our more modern emphasis is original or natural, and is involved in its own making. Remem- ber, too, that, in addition to his recognition of law and society in nature, Locke declared that the "state of nature" is not left behind with political organization, but remains with society always, being often exemplified both in domestic affairs and, conspicuously, in international relations ; and that, sometimes in small matters, sometimes in large, complete reversion to it takes place ; and finally, in so many words, that the organizing contract is always amendable. Similarly, the usefulness or effectiveness of devised tools depends on the same force, the same natural power, that has been previously applied through cruder or wholly natural objects. So, again, for Locke the social contract, as was said, is really mediative, not creative ; and even to assert, as above I did allow myself to assert, yielding to the viewpoint of the earlier emphasis, that the contract creates, not society, but only the government, is misleading. Government itself is original, belonging to the " state of nature," because the con- sciousness of law is original. Indeed, government and society are to be distinguished only as the devised and the natural tool, except that society, as under the natural or original government of the law of reason, is commonly called the state. The state, then, to keep up the comparison, is the natural tool ; and the distinction between government and state is in a sense a fickle and elusive one, for it depends, not on two separate things, but on the moving or evolving relation of things that interact or

Compare ADAM SMITH'S doctrine of sympathy, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), that no man ever does or ever can judge another without sympathy, without regard to an " impartial spectator."