civil society; and consequently of the Divine origin of Power_.
1. The State is deemed by Aristotle (_Politics_, III., ix., 14): "the
union of septs and villages in a complete and self-sufficient life."
The first and most elementary community is the _family_, [Greek:
oikia]. A knot of families associating together, claiming
blood-relationship and descent, real or fictitious, from a common
ancestor, whose name they bear, constitute a [Greek: genos], called in
Ireland a _sept_, in Scotland a _clan_, nameless in England. When the
sept come to cluster their habitations, or encampments, in one or more
spots, and to admit strangers in blood to dwell among them, these
hamlets, or camps, gradually reach the magnitude of a _village_. When
a number of these _villages_, belonging to different _septs_, come to
be contiguous to one another, this mere juxtaposition does not make of
them a State. Nor does interchange of commodities, nor intermarriage,
nor an offensive and defensive alliance: these are the mutual
relations of a _confederacy_, [Greek: xymmaxia], but all these and
more are needed for a State, [Greek: polis]. To be a State, it is
requisite that these septs and villages should agree to regulate the
conduct of their individual members by a _common standard of social
virtue_, sufficient for their well-being as one community. This common
standard is fixed by common consent, or by the decision of some power
competent to act for all and to punish delinquents. The name of this
common standard is _law_. (_Ethics_, c. vii., n. 1, p. 126.) The
community thus formed leads a life _complete and self-sufficient_, not
being a member of another, but a body by itself,--not part of any
ulterior community, but complete in the fulness of social good and
social authority.
2. Among the ancient Greeks and Italians, and to some extent also in
mediæval Italy and Germany, the city or municipality, with the small
country district attached, was the State. With us the nation is the
State; and accordingly we say _my country_ where the Greek said _my
city_. Bearing this difference in mind, as also the fact that the
_sept_ is not known amongst us except to antiquarians, and likewise
that the _village_ with us coincides with the _parish_, and that there
are town as well as country parishes,--upon these modern data we may
amend Aristotle's definition thus: _The State is the union of parishes
and municipalities in a perfect and self-sufficient community_.
3. The City State is well illustrated in the following narrative of
Thucydides (ii., 15):
"In the time of Cecrops and the early kings as far as Theseus, Attica
was always divided among several independent cities, with their own
town-halls and magistrates; and when there was no alarm of an enemy,
the inhabitants did not resort for common deliberation to the King,
but severally managed their own affairs and took their own counsel,
and some of them even went to war. But when Theseus came to the
throne, he abolished the council-chambers and magistracies of the
other cities, and centralised all the people in what is now the city
[of Athens], where he appointed their one council-chamber and
town-hall; and while they continued to occupy their own properties as
before, he forced them to recognise this as their one city and State."
Attica before Theseus was a _confederacy_, [Greek: xymmaxia], not a
State, [Greek: polis].
4. A _citizen_ is defined: "one who has access to a share in
deliberative and judicial functions." (Ar., _Pol_. III., i., 12.) It
is not necessary that he actually should share these functions, but
the way to them should lie open to him: he should be a person
qualified to share in them. There are various degrees of citizenship.
Under a parliamentary government, we distinguish the member of
parliament, the elector, and him who will be an elector as soon as he
gets a house of his own; and again, the judge, and him who is liable
to serve on juries. In an absolute monarchy there are no _citizens_,
only _subjects_.
5. "The distribution of power in the State, and especially of the
sovereign power, is called the _polity_" ([Greek: politeia], Ar.,
_Pol_., III., vi., 1),--a word immortalised by the judicious Hooker,
and happily recovered recently to the English language. The _polity_
then is the distribution of the sovereignty. The person, singular or
collective, in whose hands the full sovereignty rests, is called the
_ruler_. Be it observed that what we call _the ruler_ is never one
man, except in absolute monarchy. By the theory of the British
Constitution, the _ruler_ is King, Lords, and Commons, together.
6. _Nature requires that men generally live in society, domestic and
civil, so that the individual be of the family, and families form
associations, which again conspire to form one perfect community,
which is the State_. The requirement of nature may be gathered from
the universal practice of mankind. "If it (the word _savage_) means
people without a settled form of government, without laws and without
a religion, then, go where you like, you will not find such a race."
(Max Müller, in _Nineteenth Century_, Jan. 1885, p. 114.) The same may
be gathered from a consideration of what the State is, and of the ends
which it serves. The State, as we have seen (n. 2), is a union of
septs and villages, or of parishes and municipalities. The individual
is born and nurtured in the family, and ordinarily becomes in time the
parent of a new family. Families must combine to form septs by blood,
or villages (or parishes) by locality. Municipalities we may leave
aside, for a municipality is a potential State. But we must consider
the sept, village, or parish, which is the community intermediate
between family and State. Among the cogent reasons which require
families to enter into this association, we may mention friendship,
intermarriage, the interchange of services and commodities, the
cultivation of the arts, the preservation of traditions and
inventions.
7. But it is further necessary that these septs, villages, or
parishes, should band together and combine to form a higher community,
self-sufficient and perfect,--for the determining of rights which
Natural Law leaves undetermined,--for the punishing of disturbers of
the peace, if need be, even with death,--for defence against a common
enemy,--for a union of counsels and resources to the execution of
magnificent works. This self-sufficient and perfect community, which
is not part of any higher community, is the State.
8. We may observe that the whole reason for the being of the State is
not mutual need, nor the repression of violence. Main reasons these
are, no doubt, but not the whole main reason. Even if men had no need
of one another for the supply of their animal wants, they would still
desire to converse for the satisfaction of their intellectual
curiosity and their social affections. And even if we had all remained
as void of guile, and as full of light and love, as our first parents
were at their creation, we should still have needed the erection of
States. In a State there are not only criminal but civil courts, where
it is not wicked men alone who come to be litigants. From sundry
passages of Scripture it would appear that even angels may disagree as
to what is best and proper: angelic men certainly may and do. It is a
mistake to look upon civil government, with its apparatus of laws and
judgments, simply as a necessary evil, and remedy of the perverseness
of mankind. On the contrary, were all men virtuous, States would still
be formed, towering in magnificence above the States known to history,
as the cedars of Lebanon above the scanty growths of a fell-side in
our north country.
9. _There can be no State without a power to guide and govern it_. It
has indeed become the fashion to repeat, as the latest discovery in
politics, that what a State needs is not government but
administration. This saying comes of a theory, to be examined
presently, that sovereign power abides permanently with the people at
large, and that the sole function of princes, cabinets, and
parliaments, is to provide means of giving effect to the popular will.
This however is not quite a repudiation of government, but a peculiar
view as to the seat and centre of government. Those who hold it,
vigorously maintain the right of the Many to govern, control, and
command the Few. The need of some governing authority in a State can
be denied by none but an Anarchist, a gentleman who lives two doors
beyond Rousseau on the side of unreason.
10. _Every State is autonomous, self-governing, independent_. Either
the whole people taken collectively must rule the same whole taken
distributively, or a part must rule the rest. The ruler is either the
whole commonwealth, or more frequently a part of the commonwealth. An
autocrat is part of the State which he governs. Sovereignty whole and
entire is intrinsic to the State. A community that is to any extent
governed from without, like British India or London, is not a State,
but part of a State, for it is not a _perfect community_.
11. We have it therefore that _man is a social animal_. Naturally he
is a member of a family. Nature requires that families should coalesce
into higher communities, which again naturally converge and culminate
in the State. Nature further requires that in every State there should
be an authority to govern. But authority to govern and duty to obey
are correlatives. Nature therefore requires submission to the
governing authority in the State. In other words, Nature abhors
anarchy as being the destruction of civil society, and as cutting the
ground from under the feet of civilised man. The genuine _state of
nature_, that state and condition, which nature allows and approves as
proper for the evolution of the human faculties, is the state of man
in civil society. That is lost where there is no judge in the land.
12. There are men full of a sentimental deference to authority and
professions of obedience, who yet will not obey any of the authorities
that actually are over them. These are disobedient men. He is an
anarchist in practice, who meditates treason and rebellion against the
"powers that be" actually over him in the State wherein he lives. To
obey no actual power is to obey no power, as to wear no actual clothes
is to go naked. To keep up the comparison,--as a man may change his
clothes upon occasion, and thus go through a brief interval of
unclothedness without injury to health or violation of decency,
notwithstanding the requirement of nature to wear clothes: so it may
be or it may not be consonant with the exigency of our nature at times
to subvert by insurrection the existing government in order to the
substitution of a new authority; that does not concern us here. We are
stating the general rule under ordinary circumstances. The submission
to civil authority, which nature requires of us, must be paid in the
coin of obedience to the actual established "powers that be."
13. Any one who understands how morality comes from God (_Ethics_, c.
vi., s. ii. nn. 6-9, 13, pp. 119-125), can have no difficulty in
seeing how civil power is of God also. The one point covers the other.
We need no mention of God to show that disobedience, lying, and the
seven deadly sins, are bad things for human nature, things to be
avoided even if they were not forbidden. All the things that God
forbids are against the good of man. Their being evil is
distinguishable from their being prohibited, and antecedent to it. Now
as drunkenness and unchastity are evil for man, so too is anarchy. The
one remedy for anarchy is civil government. Even if there were no God,
it would be still imperatively necessary, as we have seen, for mankind
to erect political institutions, and to abide by the laws and
ordinances of constitutional power. But there would be no _formal
obligation_ of submission to these laws and ordinances; and resistance
to this power would be no more than _philosophic sin_. (_Ethics_, c.
vi., s. ii., n. 6, p. 119.) What makes anarchy truly sinful and wrong
is the prohibition of it contained in the Eternal Law, that law
whereby God commands every creature, and particularly every man, to
act in accordance with his own proper being and nature taken as a
whole, and to avoid what is repugnant to the same. (_Ethics_, c. vi.,
s. ii., n. 9, p. 120.)
Therefore, as man is naturally social, and anarchy is the dissolution
of society, God forbids anarchy, and enjoins obedience to the civil
power, under pain of sin and damnation. "They that resist, purchase to
themselves damnation" (Rom. xiii. 2): where the theological student,
having the Greek text before him, will observe that the same phrase is
used as in 1 Cor. xi. 29 of the unworthy communicant, as though it
were the like sin to rend our Lord's mystical Body by civil discord as
to profane His natural Body by sacrilege. But to enjoin obedience and
to bestow authority are the obverse and reverse of one and the same
act. God therefore gives the civil ruler power and authority to
command. This is the meaning of St. Paul's teaching that there is no
power but from God, and that the powers that be are ordained of God.
(Rom. xiii. 1.)
14. The argument is summed up in these seven consequent propositions:
(a) Civil society is necessary to human nature.
(b) Civil power is necessary to civil society.
(c) Civil power is naught without civil obedience.
(d) Civil obedience is necessary to human nature.
(e) God commands whatever is necessary to human nature.
(f) God commands obedience to the civil power.
(g) God commissions the civil power to rule.
15. If any one asks how the State and the civil power is of God any
otherwise than the railway company with its power, or even the fever
with its virulence, a moment's reflection will reveal the answer in
the facts, that railway communication, however convenient, is not an
essential feature of human life, as the State is: while diseases are
not requirements in order to good, but incidental defects and evils of
nature, permitted by God. Why God leaves man to cope with such evils,
is not the question here.
_Readings_.--Ar., _Pol_., I., ii.; III., i.; III., ix.: nn. 5-15.