A Handbook of Ethical Theory

by George Stuart Fullerton

155. ITS ORIGIN AND AUTHORITY.—In Parts III to VI we have seen how and upon what basis the State has grown up. It is an organism, something that lives and grows. It is not a machine, deliberately put together at a definite time by some man or some group of men. The "social contract" fanatic may have read history, but he has not understood it. Of psychology he has no comprehension at all.

Herodotus, at some of whose stories we smile, was a wiser man. He writes: "It appears certain to me, by a great variety of proofs, that Cambyses was raving mad; he would not else have set himself to make a mock of holy rites and long-established usages. For, if one were to offer men to choose out of all the customs in the world such as seemed to them the best, they would examine the whole number, and end by preferring their own; so convinced are they that their own usages far surpass those of all others." [Footnote: The History of Herodotus, Book III, chapter xxxviii, translated by GEORGE RAWLINSON, London, 1910.]

This may be something of an over-statement, for men in one state have shown themselves to be, within limits, capable of learning from men in another. But only within limits. Those things which give a state stability—and without stability we are tossed upon the waves of mere anarchy—have their roots in the remote past. Strip a man of his past, and he is little better than an idiot; strip men within the State of their corporate institutions and ideals, of their loyalties and emotional leanings, and we have on our hands a mob of savages, something much below the tribe proper, knit into unity of purpose by custom and tribal law.

The State has its origin in man as a creature desiring and willing, and at the same time endowed with reason. Its authority is the authority of reason. Not reason in the abstract, with no ground to stand upon, and no material for its exercise; but reason as incorporate in institutions and social usages; reason which takes cognizance of the nature of man, and recognizes what man has already succeeded in doing.

Where shall we look for a limit to the authority of the State? Surely, only in the Reason which makes it possible for the State to be. The State must not defeat its own object.

156. FORMS OF ORGANIZATION.—The special science of politics enters in detail into the forms of organization of the State. The ethical philosopher must content himself with certain general reflections. Everyone knows that States have been organized in divers ways; and that their citizens, under much the same form of political organization, have been here happy and contented, and there in a state of ferment. The form of government counts for something; but its suitability to the population governed, and the degree of enlightenment and discipline characteristic of the population, count for much more. It is not every shoe that fits every foot, and there are feet that are little at home in shoes of any description.

Monarchies of many sorts, aristocracies, oligarchies, democracies, even communisms, have been tried; and all, save the last, have managed to hold their own with some degree of success.

It is easy to bring objections against each form of government, just as it is easy to say something specious in its favor.

Are the eldest sons of a few families peculiarly fitted by nature to be governors of the State? Look at history, and wake up to common sense. Of the divine right of kings I shall not speak, for the adherents of the doctrine are in our day relegated to museums of antiquities. And have the members of aristocracies been carefully bred with a view to their intellectual and moral superiority, as we breed fine varieties of horses and dogs? Have those who have had their share in oligarchies been peculiarly wise and peculiarly devoted to the common good? The communist makes two fatal mistakes. He shuts his eyes to history, and he overlooks the fact that there is such a thing as human nature.

There remains democracy. Of this, Herodotus, already quoted as a man of sense, has his opinion. He makes a shrewd Persian, in a political crisis, thus address his fellow-conspirators: