Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/603

 REVIEWS 585

1901-2 at the cole des hautes Etudes societies, and consider the idea of solidarity from the point of view of the publicist, the economist, the educator, the moralist, the sociologist, the historian of philosophy, and the socialist. The addresses were as follows: Bourgeois, "The Idea of Solidarity and its Social Consequences;" Darlu, "Solidarity and Moral Personality;" Rauh, "Individual Property and Property in Solidarity;" Buisson, "Solidarity in the School;" Gide, " Economic Solidarity;" Le"on, "The Rational Basis of Solidarity According to Fichte;" Fontaine, "Socialism and Solidarity;" Bontroux, "Role of the Idea of Solidarity."

The contribution of M. Bourgeois, who gave three addresses, is the most extended, and presents very forcibly the conception of a "social debt" which each man owes to society. The point of special interest is the effort to give this debt a quasi-legal status without extending the power of the state. It has been common and easy to speak of a man's debt to the past or to his fellows, but this does not interfere with the most complete ignoring of any such obligation by many whose debt is the largest. To pay this debt may properly be regarded as a matter of justice, not as a charity. This is to extend the notion of legal right and duty. The practical difficulty is to estimate the proper amount of social debt, and this evidently cannot be done unless by a device similar to that of insurance societies, /. e., by "mutualizing risk and advantage." The man who would seek for himself the advantages of society and leave for others the risks would be doing an unsocial act and put himself outside society. The law might then regard all who desire to continue in society as accepting voluntarily a quasi-contract to pay their social debts, and might enforce this as it enforces any other contract. The mutualization of burdens and advantages would mean (i) support of common charges due to organized society; this is already generally accepted ; (2) sharing in the knowledge which society has acquired; this would mean not merely free instruction in all grades, but also that the mature man should have sufficient leisure to continue education to the degree necessary to the development of his powers ; (3) limitation of the hours of labor sufficiently to enable a man to live a moral life in the proper sense to enjoy liberty of mind and of heart; (4) not an equal distribution of pay, but a guarantee of a minimum of existence for those who by reason of age or infirmity cannot maintain themselves.

Admitting the justice of the above requirements and I do not see how a society claiming to regard itself as moral can set any lower