Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/597

 ORGANIC THEORY OF SOCIETY 583

that are inseparable, and even mutually inclusive. Like the more general life and consciousness of which, in fact, they are but special expressions, they are at once conditions and results of each other.

To reword a little what has been said, the consciousness of law, or as the same thing the possession of reason, which Locke attributes to man even in the "state of nature," is simply inseparable from the fact of government, since it implies, not only respect for authority, but also embodiment of authority. The consciousness of law can be no mere subjective conceit ; its own reality rests on that of objective necessity, even of so-called physical compulsion. Locke, then, was right enough in his attacks on Sir Robert Filmer's Patriarcha, in so far as Filmer referred all embodied political authority to Adam and the direct line of succession from Adam ; but he failed properly to realize that, according to his own philosophy, the general principle, which Filmer saw only in a special and somewhat artificial case, and which, accordingly, was perverted even to the point of absurdity, is perfectly sound the principle, namely, that embodiment of authority, of an objective impartial law or rea- son, is natural, being, like reason itself, no mere ensuing result of human experience, but quite as truly an antecedent condition of human experience.

But I pass to Rousseau. Rousseau is with Locke in distin- guishing between the government and society or the state, but for the great Genevan the state, not the government, is pro- duced by the real, the original social contract; and yet again in the light of a more modern emphasis with the following very significant result : To all intents and purposes the contract is only a formal thing in Rousseau's theory, as if only a useful standpoint or fiction. Similarly monarchy, notably in demo- cratic England, and divine creation as a doctrine of rational theology, and in science the relation of cause and effect, have become only standpoints or fictions, or say using a somewhat technical term in philosophy "categories," that is, validating principles, instead of accepted or actually experienced facts. Modern thought has teemed with fictions or validating principles ;