Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 14.djvu/99

 SOCIETY

77

SOCIETY

way of opportunity for developing his entire nature, physical, mental, and moral.

Thirdly, the accomplishment of this calls for an authority which the Lawgiver of Nature, because he has ordained this society, has put within the compe- tency of the State, and which, because of its reach, ex- tending as it does to life and death, to reluctant sub- jects and to the posterity of its citizenship, surpasses the capacity of its citizenship to create out of any mere conventional surrender of natural rights. The question of the origin of civil power and its concen- tration in this or that subject is like the origin of society itself, a topic of debate. Catholic philosophy is agreed that it is conferred by Nature's Lawgiver directly upon the social depositary thereof, as par- ental supremacy is upon the father of a family. But the determination of the depositarj' is another matter. The doctrine of Suarez makes the community itself the depositary, immediately and naturally consequent upon its establishment of civil society, to be dispo.sed of then by their consent, overt or tacit, at once or by degrees, according as they determine for themselves a form of government. This is the only true philo- sophical sense of the dictum that "governments de- rive their just powers from the consent of the gov- erned". The Taparelli school makes the primitive determinant out of an existing prior right of another character, which passes naturally into this power. Primitively this is parental supremacy grown to pa- triarchal fUmensions and resulting at the last in su- preme civil power. Secondarily, it may arise from other rights, showing natural aptitude preferentially in one subject or another, as that of feudal ownership of the territory of the.community, capacity to extricate order out of chaos in moments of civic confusion, mili- tary abihty and success in case of just conquest, and, finally, in remote instances by the consent of the governed.

Finally, the means by which the commonwealth will work toward its ideal condition of the largest measure of peace and prosperity attainable are embraced in the just exercise, under direction of civil authority, of the physical, mental, and moral activities of the mem- bers of the community : and here the field of human endeavour is wide and expansive. However, the calls upon the individual by the governmental power are necessarily limited by the scope of the natural purpose of the State and by the inahenable prior rights and inseparable duties conferred or imposed upon the in- dividual by the Natural Law.

Religious Society de facto a Supernatural So- ciety. — If we analyze the moral development of man, we find looming large his obligation to worship his Creator, not only privately, but publicly, not only as an individual, but in social union. This opens up an- other kind of society ordered by the natural law, to wit, religious society. An examination of this in the natural order and by force of reason alone would seem to show that man, thf)ugh morally obliged to social worship, was morally free tf) establish a parallel organ- ization for such wor.ship or to merge its functions with those of the State, giving a double character to the enlarged society, namely, civil and religious. Historically, among those who knew not Divine revelation, men would seem to have been inclined more to the latter; but not alwaj's so. Of course, the purpose and means of this reUgious social duty are so related to those of a merely civil society that consider- able care would have to be exercised in adjusting the balance of intersecting rights and duties, to define the relative domains of religious and civil authority, and, finally, to adjudicate supremacy in case of direct ap- parent conflict. The development of all this has been given an entirely different ttirn through the in- ter\'ention of the Creator in His creation by positive law revealed to man, changing the natural status into a higher one, eUminating natural religious society, and

at the last establishing through the mission of our Lord Jesus Christ an universal and unfailing religious society in the Church. This is a supernatural re- ligious society. (See Church.)

Non-Catholic Theories. — Thomas Hobbes, start- ing from the assumption which Calvin had propagated that human nature is itself perverse and man essen- tially inept for consorting with his fellows, made the natural state of man to be one of universal and continuous warfare. This, of course, excludes the Maker of man from having destined him originally to society, since he would in Hobbes's view have given him a nature exactly the reverse of a proportioned means. Hobbes thought that he found in man such selfish rivalry, weak cowardice, and greed of self- glorification as to make him naturally prey upon his fellows and subdue them, if he could, to his wants, making might to be the only source of right. How- ever, finding life intolerable (if not impossible) under such conditions, he resorted to a social pact with other men for the establishment of peace, and, as that was a prudent thing to do, man, adds Hobbes, was thus fol- lowing the dictates of reason and in that sense the law of nature. On this basis Hobbes could and did make civil authority consist in nothing more than the sum of the physical might of the people msissed in a chosen centre of force. This theory was developed in the "Leviathan" of Hobbes to account for the ex- istence of civil authority and civil society, but its author left his reader to apply the same perversity of nature and exercise of physical force for the taking of a wife or wives and estabUshing domestic society.

Jean- Jacques Rousseau, though borrowing largely from Hobbes and fearlessly carrying some of his prin- ciples to their most extreme issue, had a view in part his own. As for the family, he was content to leave it as a natural institution, with a stability, however, commensurate only with the need of putting the off- spring within reach of self-preservation. Not so for the State. Man naturally, he contended, was sylvan and sohtary, a fine type of indolent animal, mating with his like and living in the pleasant ease of shady retreats by running waters. He was virtuous, sufli- cient to himself for his own needs, essentially free, lea\'ing others alone in their freedom, and desirous of being left alone in his. His life was not to be dis- turbed by the fever of ambitious desires, the burden of ideas, or the restriction of moral laws. Unfortu- nately, he had a capacity and an itch for self-improve- ment, and his inventive genius, creating new conveni- ences, started new deeds, and, to meet these more readily, he entered into transitory agreements with other men. Then came differences, fraud, and quar- rels, and so ended the tranquil ease and innocence of his native condition. Through sheer necessity of self-defence, as in the theory of Hobbes, he took to the establishment of civil society. To do so without loss of personal freedom, there was but one way, namely, that all the members should agree to merge all their rights, wills, and personalities in a unit moral person and will, leaving the subject member the satisfaction that he was obeying but his own will thus merged, and so in posse8,sion still of full liberty in e\ery act. Thus civil authority was but the merger of all rights and wills in the one supreme right and will of the com- munity. The merging agreement was Rousseau's "Social Contract". Unfortunately for its author, as he himself confessed, the condition of perfect, self- sufficient, lawless man was never seen on land or sea; and his social contract had no precedent in all the centuries of the history of man. His dream ignored man's inalienable rights, took no account of coercing wills that would not agree, nor of the unauthorized merging of the wills of posterity, and drained all the vitality as well ovit of authority a.s out of obedience. He left authority a power shorn of the requisites es- sential for the purpose of civil security.