II THE STATE AS A HUMAN IDEAL If society were a purely human invention, and if the conditions of existence could be determined entirely by human laws, life on this planet would be somewhat different from what it is. The more we reflect upon the subject, however, the more evident it appears that the nature of man as an individual, the essential relations of men in their community life, and especially the material conditions upon which the continuance of life depends, are, for the most part, beyond the power of the human will to control, or even appreciably to change. Nature has so completely fashioned her human product, and so bound him by her own ties of instinct and habit, that he remains, in spite of all the efforts of culture, from generation to generation, in a certain sense, the “natural man.' This statement is intended to convey the truth that the larger part of human activity is the product of unconscious causes. It is not without interest to recall how complicated and how complete the structure of the human body must be before individual consciousness is possible, and how long a time must elapse after consciousness begins before we are aware of even the most elementary conditions of our own existence. Manhood itself is only a prolonged childhood. How long, then, must men have waited, how completely must community life have been developed, before reflective social consciousness ever came into existence? When it did, the body politic was already there. The State, in a rudimentary form at least, had spontaneously come into being But this social consciousness, when developed, was not equally possessed by all individuals; and, in fact, the communities of men are rare, if they anywhere exist, even in the present stage of human culture, where interest in the community is equally distributed. The immediate personal needs of . the individual, for the most part, absorb his attention and preoccupy his mind. Only the few reflect upon the general condition of society; and to those who have known no better fortunes, so long as customary conditions are not disturbed, these appear to be tolerable, and even satisfactory. Instinct and habit dominate; the cycle of individual life is soon completed; with each generation tradition binds the community more firmly to the past; and the familiar thus comes to be regarded as the normal, the reasonable, and the authoritative order of existence. |