Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/98

 84 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

also in accordance with what may be called those principles of natural or divine right existing in the very make-up of society and the universe, then that society will survive in competition with other societies, as being the best fitted to the plan of the world. The persuasive faculties of its members will evoke from one another such a lively exercise of all the passions and abilities of human nature that in the resulting devotion to family, church, industry, and country, the people will effect the greatest con- quest of nature and production of wealth, will promote the purest family life, will plant morality and religion deepest in the individual heart, will inspire the intensest patriotism, and so will construct the equipment for national survival.

The part played by the state in the exercise of coercion must be rightly understood. State coercion is necessary as against private coercion, not because the state can elevate the people to a higher level than that attained by the free exercise of their own persuasive powers, but in order to prevent the lower and selfish elements of society from dragging the several institutions down. The state sets the minimum level below which the struggle for existence shall not be permitted to force an institution. If wife- capture and wife-purchase were customary and recognized, only the strong and wealthy could get wives, and others would be compelled to compete with them on their own ground or else fail to secure the privilege of family and home. The moral level of the community having risen above wife-capture and wife- purchase, those who desire to base their own family life on per- suasion are able to do so safely only because through the state they have relegated these earlier approved practices to the cate- gory of the crimes of rape and prostitution, to be punished by the state. The moral level of the people, or at least of the dominant social classes, first inaugurates in its own institution the reign of persuasion and then secures the adoption of a mini- mum somewhat below its own actual attainment, to be imposed upon those who have not yet reached this higher level. These become now the sub-social or anti-social classes, in so far as the state is actually compelled to proceed against them. For the mass of people actual state interference is not needed, because