Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/607

 ORGANIC THEORY OF SOCIETY 593

relied upon man's success in identifying himself with nature, animate and inanimate, that is to say, in identifying his activity with her processes and forces ; and these lines of development are inseparable, and mark the threefold mediation of the social contract. Above the fact that the state is natural and original, not external and artificial, was referred to as the center of the organic theory, so that these incidents of modern political evo- lution, namely individualism, organism, and industrialism, may be regarded as three determining points in the theory's circum- ference, and with the consideration of them it is my purpose to conclude the present analysis of the conception of an organic state.

So, to begin with, no idea has been more central or more fundamental in the constitutions of modern Christendom than that of the equality of men, of a common human nature, of a human nature that is prior to and independent of any special political machinery, the equal man being always the natural man, man in a "state of nature;" and also, as a matter of course, no idea has been more central or more fundamental in the contract theory. Recall the doctrine of natural rights, Burke's tirade against the "paltry blurred shreds of paper about the rights of man," the Declaration of Independence, and the preamble to the constitution of the United States. Moreover, equality has been no vain sentiment, no mere idea, for it has liberated individual persons and whole peoples ; it has limited monarchs and founded democracies ; it has made international law, and was, indeed, long ago recognized, notably by Hugo de Groot in 1625, as the basis of such law; and it has turned mili- tarism and feudalism into the independence of modern labor. Indeed, in it alone we can see the threefold mediation, the individualism, the organism, and the industrialism, of the social contract. Additional analysis, however, and illustration will not be impertinent.

Equality, like the theory in which we find it, is thoroughly ambiguous ; it has all the character of a fiction. One might very easily argue that if all men were literally equal monarchy would be the most natural form of political authority, since any