TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE. 5 CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS FORCES. THE I. THE SOCIAL IMPULSE. The HERE is that in man which impels him towards civil society. The development and perfection of his faculties depend on human association. Grotius, in his "De Jure Belli et Pacis," says: "Among the properties peculiar to man is the appetite for society; and there is a tendency in him toward the conservation of society. social impulse, therefore, is the basis of all civil forms." Aristotle says: "Man is naturally a political animal." In his contention that the State originated in the family, it is with the postulate that back of the family is the individual impulse. The social instinct is at first domestic. It produces the family. This, in its turn, becomes the basis of all concerted action among human beings. Corporate responsibility, as a feeling, arises directly out of the reaction of families; and the whole of it is an expression of the social impact in each nature. This is the view of Warburton and Hoadley and Locke. Rousseau, in his "Du Contrat Social," was the first of modern writers to take these old and fundamental conceptions and give them such philosophic significance as to carry general conviction of their soundness and truth; and yet, unfortunately, he drew out of them the unwarranted conclusions that became largely the instruments of the social disturbances of the French Revolution. The spirit of association is spontaneous and powerful, as tested by the fact of the almost universal existence of some outward form of human control. Organized society appears to be in the nature and destination of man. It is the necessary response to universal qualities of human nature. The languages of the races have now many terms expressive of what history has been from its social side; but in the beginnings of history no such terms were known, because the abstract idea of human society was not formulated. It existed without a name. It was so natural that it was unconscious of itself. There were no sub-reflections about it. It had rude and simple forms and relationships. The first political aggregate above the family was perhaps the clan, or the tribe formed by the union of clans. From low and simple forms, at any rate, as exigencies prompted, or needs required, social institutions have grown by gradual enlargement into the complex conditions of to-day. When all the facts are put together, it appears that the upward curves of the social scale have but few catastrophes. There has been strife, war, revolution; but the changes |