Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/600

 586 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

expedient for their peace and common defense," we see might or "strength" set against itself, for primarily the defense desired by the people is against their own lawlessness ; and, in general, under the contract theory might, the very source and support of absolutism, is used to counteract itself. So is the theory an accurate report of its time. Politically, however, as well as physically, action and reaction, might and its resistance in kind, are equal ; and through their equation law succeeds force in authority, naturalism supplanting absolutism. Law, not might, makes right. And Rousseau's contract, accordingly, whatever his timely way of referring to it, was in reality no magic instrument, but, as said above, his " fictitious way of declaring with Locke that even in a state of nature man is rational and sanctions law and society." x

Of course, Rousseau's position, and in greater or less degree also that of Hobbes or Locke, was equivocal even to the point of paradox, but this only adds to its meaning. Thus they advo- cated naturalism supernaturalistically ; they based law on brute force ; they thought of the people as making a law that could not be broken ; they derived an indivisible sovereignty from an unsocial, individualistic humanity. But a fiction is always a paradox also. Simply fiction and paradox are marks of transi- tion and conflict. They show that thought and the life which thought reports are outgrowing accustomed forms, the accus- tomed forms to use again the trite metaphor being only old bottles for new wine. Fictions, in the sense of validating prin- ciples, are always "old bottles." The equivocation, moreover, or the duplicity of the contract theory must be the historian's

1 The foregoing discussion seems to me to show the proper way proper because it is historically as well as logically accurate in which to meet the principle that " might makes right." Thus, with some repetition, might when asserted does and must induce resistance in kind ; whence, action and reaction being equal, law instead of might makes right, for the equation means conservation and law witness its import to physics in whatever sphere it applies to. Or, again, in terms more directly political, might cannot be asserted without some delegation of power ; but delega- tion is always limitation, and delegation and limitation, like action and reaction, are equal, so that absolute monarchy, founded on might, turns as if from its own weight into democracy, founded on a constitution that is, on law natural to the life of society. The social-contract theory, then, marks the change, the turning.