ARTICLE XI. Some Modern Phases of Social Economy. THERE is a class of persons who have a recognized place among the leaders and teachers of social and political economy, who broadly hold and urge with emphasis doctrines somewhat as follows: 1. The state is under no obligation to educate the children of its citizens. The injury that comes from so doing is greater than the blessing conferred. 2. No man has a right to marry and become the head of a family until he has sufficient means, not only to support, but to educate his possible children. 3. Institutions of charity which have their ground in the Christian sentiment of tenderness and pity for the weaker members of society are harmful, since they tend to preserve and perpetuate the imperfect and abortive specimens of the human stock. 4. The common notion of the relation between parent and child is wholly erroneous. The parent, since he is the cause of the child's existence, owes everything to the child. child owes nothing to the parent, not even affection. The These doctrines, when presented in their nakedness, cannot but be shocking to the average intelligence of the nineteenth century. But when clothed in the garb which their advocates know so well how to weave for them, they not only have about them a certain air of plausibility, but seem to carry with them for some minds, at least, the force of verity. Evidently they spring out of scientific theories which, have assumed a wide prominence in our time. But examination will show that they are grounded in a misconception and misapplication of those theories. The law of evolution, and to some extent beyond question the law of evolution by natural selection, holds in human society and human life. But to-day the most intelligent of those theorists who are inclined to put this law into the foreground of their philosophy, and make it the key with which to unlock the deepest mysteries of the universe, are careful to assert that this law does not work blindly and automatically among men as in the lower orders of being, but that like the other laws which pertain to man's existence, it is subject to intelligent and moral control. Every one must see that there are certain fundamental postulates by which all scientific study must be govcrned. For example, no law can be examined apart from the facts which underlie and attend its movements. Neither can any law so operate as to be at variance with the nature of things in that province of fact where its dominion is recognized. In other words, every principle which is presented for the guidance of either nature or life, must be applied with due regard to all the phenomena of the domain in which it bears sway. In view of these things we are prepared to consider the reciprocal relations of parent and child, of the state and the subject, of institutions and humanity. The saying that the parent owes everything to the child, has in it a measure of truth. The parent is bound to do for the welfare of his offspring all that lies in his power. He must exercise prudence in his behalf, and he must take up denials for his sake. All good men throughout the civilized world recognize the obligation, and neither rational religion nor sonnd philosophy teach anything to the contrary. The fact that marriages among enlightened nations vary with the price of corn, shows that even the most ignorant and least thoughtful members of society exhibit no tendency to assume the responsibilities of paternity without some regard to the principles of prudence. But this is not the whole truth. Indeed, this entire teaching in regard to parent and child, state and citizen, etc., is only half of a great truth; and hence becomes the foundation of maxims which are subversive alike of the teachings of social ethics and political economy. Let us begin by looking at the subject.on its ethical side. No principle is better established than that every duty has its correlative right. If the parent owes the child sustenance, care, training, he has a right to something from the child; for instance, to obedience, honor, affection. The Mosaic law said: Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. Filial obedience, filial trust, filial affection was the corner-stone, upon which the Hebrew state was to find its permanence. Nor does it require any very profound penetration to perceive that it is the strength of the family tie among the children of Israel which enabled them to survive the shock of national dissolution and kept them apart from all other races and stamped upon them from generation to generation and from age to age their original characteristics as a peculiar people. But this is not a specific rule, devised for a particular race. It is a universal law grounded in the very nature of our humanity. All permanent society is built upon the sacredness of the family tie. Contrast the stability of western society with those frequent upheavals in oriental life which so often proceed through parricide. Moreover, let it be remembered that the family is the fundamental social unit. Here is the point at which the law of evolution begins to work. Before the family we have nothing but brutality. Ethical conceptions do not emerge until men have assumed social relations. But the first social bond is the bond of family. In the primeval family, moreover, the father is the head. We have an accu rate and graphic picture of such a family in the history of the Patriarchs in the book of Genesis. Here everything, the wives, the children, the servants, and even the cattle seemed to stand in the same subordinate relation to the head. Jacob said: "With my staff I passed over this Jordan, and now I am become two bands." History has but one testimony to give on this head. Among every civilized people will be found institutions, laws, customs, social habits and modes of thinking which point unmistakably to the time when the family was the unit, and had its life in and through the paternal head. For instance, Patria Potestas among the Romans, according to which the father had absolute power over the possessions, the services, and even the life, of the son, can only be ex The plained by the fact that there was a time when the very existence of the family was wrapped up in this relation. father was the head. But his headship was representative. On him rested the responsibilities of the family; in him the family lived. He could only discharge his obligations and preserve the family existence through the faithful submission and loyal service of every member of the corporate unit. But it is not only in this primitive social unit that we find the warrant of filial duty. Its ground may be there; but its growth has kept pace with all the manifold developments of humanity. The obligation, therefore, holds even more widely and sacredly than ever; and for the reason that the family is the point of departure in every progressive movement which man has made, whether of a social or an individual sort. To be more specific we would affirm that the more complicated forms of the social organism have their root and germ in the family. Even the state itself is but an aggregation under varied and manifold conditions, to be sure, of families. The order observed in ancient Rome serves, perhaps, as well as anything to illustrate a broadly analogous process which has taken place among every people that has passed from barbarism to civilization. We have first the family, then the gens, after that the tribe. Finally the aggregation of tribes constitutes the commonwealth. So that in certain important respects, the state has come into the place of the father. You may as well say, therefore, that the child owes nothing to the state within whose jurisdiction he is born, as that he owes nothing to his parents, and vice versa. In like manner, all the movements towards individual independence and freedom, proceed from the same source. Every 1 I would not be understood as taking issue with Dr. Multord in his assertion that "the nation is not the continuance of the family, nor is it the result simply of its extension, nor is it in its form necessarily correspondent to it." In many of its aspects, certainly, it is none of these. But I think, nevertheless, that we have far more of historic warrant than he makes allowance for, not only in the patriarchal condition which was the precursor of the Hebrew state, but in those peculiar aggregations of the Homeric period which were more than tribes, though they were less than states or provinces, as well as in the minute oligarchies of early historic Greece, for the belief that the state had its origin in the family, and grew out of it by some mysterious proces which we are unable to trace accurately in the present stage of human development such movement instead of being a retrograde tendency towards a more primitive and archaic condition of brute lawlessness, is a movement that takes place under the law of organic life by the relaxing of some ancient custom that has lost its meaning and force under the changed conditions of human intercourse, or through the modified application of an old rule to circumstances widely different from those originally contemplated by it, or, finally, by the intervention of new principles imperatively demanded by phases of life which a wide and complicated series of human experiences has produced. For instance, owing to the custom of reckoning descent by agnation, and of making the oldest male ascendant the head of the family, the wife became by the act of marriage, in theory of law, the daughter of her husband. This doctrine lies at the foundation, not only of the common law of England as it pertains to the position of married women, but of the civil law of every European state. For a period, we cannot tell how long, that undoubtedly was woman's protection. But there came a time when, under some circumstances, that view of her relation' was oppressive. In the event of the death of her husband, cut off from the power of return to her father's house, she was liable to be left to the mercy of those who not only had no interest in her, but whose every interest was antagonistic to hers. The ecclesiastics of the Middle Ages seeing this, resolved to protect her in the very article of marriage. The important clause in the marriage-service of the Church of England, "With this ring I thee wed, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow," was the solemn formula by which the husband, in God's house, before God's altar, with the priest of God for a witness, and by means of a ring as a pledge recognized his wife's right to dower in his goods. Other forms of individual liberty, such as the gradual emancipation of sons from Patria Potestas, by processes not less striking, might be cited. The point of this teaching is that the recognition of all the obligations involved in the family bond, and by every member NEW SERIES. VOL. XXIV 11 |