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The State is in no way a lifeless instrument, a dead machine: it is a living and therefore organized being. . .

The State indeed, is not a product of nature, and therefore it is not a natural organism; it is indirectly the work of man.

In calling the State an organism we are not thinking of the activities by which plants and animals seek, consume and assimilate nourishment, and reproduce their species. We are thinking rather of the following characteristics of natural organisms:

(a) Every organism is a union of soul and body, i.e. of material elements and vital forces.

(b) Although an organism is and remains a whole, yet in its parts it has members, which are animated by special motives and capacities, in order to satisfy in various ways the varying needs of the whole itself.

(c) The organism develops itself from within outwards, and has an external growth.

...

In all three respects the organic nature of the State is evident. . . Whilst history explains the organic nature of the State, we learn from it at the same time that the State does not stand on the same grade with the lower organisms of plants and animals, but is of a higher kind; we learned that it is a moral and spiritual organism, a great body which is capable of taking up into itself the feelings and thoughts of the nation, of uttering them in laws, and realizing them in acts; we are informed of moral qualities and of the character of each State. History ascribes to the State a personality which, having spirit and body, possesses and manifests a will of its own.

VII. PRESENT POLITICAL THEORY

85. English and continental political theory. Some of the leading differences in the attitude of mind of English and continental publicists are thus stated by Pollock : 1

The Continental schools, or the two branches of the Continental school, may be described as ethical and historical. By the ethical school I mean... those authors who throw their main strength on investigating the universal moral and social conditions of government and laws, or at any rate civilized government and laws, and expounding what such government and laws are or ought to be, so far as determined by conformity to those conditions.

...

Still there is no doubt that there is a certain mutual repulsion between the English and the Continental mode of treating these inquiries.

1 By permission of The Macmillan Company.

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What is the explanation of this? The German or Germanizing philosopher is ready with an easy one. "It just means," he would say, "that you English have not taken the pains to understand modern philosophy. . . .” There are Englishmen on the other hand who would be no less ready with their answer. "We confess," they would say, "that we know very little of your transcendental philosophies, and care less. . . .' The English student, in turn, is naturally repelled by this misunderstanding, and is prone to assume that no solid good is to be expected of philosophers who have not yet clearly separated in their minds the notion of things as they are from that of things as they ought to be. The German school seems to him to mix up the analytical with the practical aspect of politics, and politics in general with ethics, in a bewildering

manner.

The historical method in politics, as understood on the Continent, is not opposed to what I have called the deductive, but apart from it. Publicists of the historical school seek an explanation of what institutions are, and are tending to be, more in the knowledge of what they have been and how they came to be what they are, than in the analysis of them as they stand. . . The general idea of the historical method may be summed up in the aphorism, now familiar enough, that institutions are not made, but grow.

86. Changes in political theory in the United States. Merriam outlines some of the significant changes that have taken place in the political thought of the United States as follows: 1

Looking back over the development of the United States, a great growth in national spirit and sentiment is at once observed. In 1787, the general attitude toward the central government was that of suspicion and distrust, if not of open hostility. Liberty was regarded as local in character, and the states as the great champions of the individual. The greater the power of the central government, the greater the danger to the freedom of the citizen. "Consolidated" government was considered as equivalent to tyranny and oppression. A century of national development has reversed this attitude. The states are now looked upon with more suspicion than is the national government, and it is frequently considered a matter of congratulation when a given subject falls under federal administration. It is no longer generally feared that human liberty is menaced by the federal government, and protected only by the states. Denunciation of the United States as a "consolidated fabric " of "aristocratical tyranny" is seldom heard, but certain states are sometimes 1 Copyright, 1903, by The Macmillan Company.

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denominated as rotten boroughs." The state has in fact in many cases become a less important unit, economically, politically, and socially, than the city, and, on the whole, the tendency of this time is overwhelmingly national, both in fact and in theory. . . .

In conclusion, it appears that recent political theory in the United States shows a decided tendency away from many doctrines that were held by the men of 1776. The same forces that have led to the general abandonment of the individualistic philosophy of the eighteenth century by political scientists elsewhere have been at work here and with the same result. The Revolutionary doctrines of an original state of nature, natural rights, the social contract, the idea that the function of the government is limited to the protection of person and property, none of these finds wide acceptance among the leaders in the development of political science. The great service rendered by these doctrines, under other and earlier conditions, is fully recognized, and the presence of a certain element of truth in them is freely admitted, but they are no longer generally received as the best explanation for political phenomena. Nevertheless, it must be said that thus far the rejection of these doctrines is a scientific tendency rather than a popular movement. Probably these ideas continue to be articles of the popular creed, although just how far they are seriously adhered to it is difficult to ascertain. As far as the theory of the function of government is concerned, it would seem that the public has gone beyond the political scientists, and is ready for assumption of extensive powers by the political authorities. The public, or at least a large portion of it, is ready for the extension of the functions of government in almost any direction where the general welfare may be advanced, regardless of whether individuals as such are benefited thereby or not. But in regard to the conception of natural right and the socialcontract theory, the precise condition of public opinion is, at the present time, not easy to estimate.

CHAPTER VIII

SOVEREIGNTY

I. NATURE OF SOVEREIGNTY

87. Meaning of the term sovereignty. The different meanings that have been given to the term sovereignty are thus stated by Merriam :

We may summarize as follows the different senses in which the term sovereignty has been and is employed :

I. Sovereignty may designate the position of privilege held by the monarch in a State. In the modern constitutional State, the sovereignty of the king either is merely titular, or at the most denotes a preeminent position in the hierarchy of the constitutional organs of the State. "Monarchical Sovereignty" is in its best estate a position of constitutional superiority, not of complete supremacy.

II. Sovereignty may have reference to the relation of the State to the individuals or associations on its territory. The State, as the organization for the purpose of social control, determines what ends it will follow out and what means it will devote to these purposes, and forcibly compels the execution of its plans. This power is the vital principle of a political society; it is universal, absolute, indivisible, continuous. This is sovereignty conceived as the supremacy of the State over the individuals or associations of individuals on the given territory.

Under this head are to be distinguished again several significations of the term: (a) Sovereignty may refer to that power which in a given government or constitutional order has no governmental or constitutional superior. Thus the English Parliament possesses a governmental sovereignty. (b) Sovereignty may refer to the power of the State in an ultimate organization, back of the ordinary government even. This is not the supreme power under any given constitutional organization, but the power that determines what this constitutional order shall be. Such a body is a Constitutional Convention in the United States. (c) Sovereignty may signify that power in the given State or society the will of which is ultimately obeyed, that body which if not adequately organized in the ordinary government or in the extraordinary government will, when

occasion demands, create for itself means through which its supreme will may find expression. If the pressure of public opinion cannot accomplish this, then a way will be made by fire and sword.

III. Sovereignty has been regarded as the relation of a State to other States. In this sense, the term signifies the independence or selfsufficiency of a political society as against all other political societies. From this point of view, sovereignty might be termed international autonomy or independence.

88. Sovereignty as unlimited power. Burgess emphasizes the absolute nature of sovereign power and considers the national consciousness of modern states the highest expression of truth.

Power cannot be sovereign if it be limited; that which imposes the limitation is sovereign; and not until we reach the power which is unlimited, or only self-limited, have we attained the sovereignty. Those who hold to the idea of a limited sovereignty (which, I contend, is a contradictio in adjecto) do not, indeed, assert a real legal limitation, but a limitation by the laws of God, the laws of Nature, the laws of reason, the laws between nations. But who is to interpret, in last instance, these principles, . . . when they are invoked by anybody in justification of disobedience to a command of the state, or of the powers which the state authorizes? Is it not evident that this must be the state itself? It is conceivable, no doubt, that an individual may, upon some point or other, or at some time or other, interpret these principles more truly than does the state, but it is not at all probable, and not at all admissible in principle. It is conceivable, also, that a state may outgrow its form of organization, so that the old organization no longer contains the real sovereignty; and that an individual, or a number of individuals, may rouse the real sovereign to resist triumphantly the commands of the apparent sovereign as misinterpretations of the truths of God, nature, and reason. That would only prove that we have mistaken the point of sovereignty, and would teach the lesson that the state must always hold its form to accord with its substance. . . . The common consciousness is the purest light given to men by which to interpret truth in any direction; it is the safest adviser as to when principle shall take on the form of command; and the common consciousness is the state consciousness. In the modern national state we call it the national consciousness. The so-called laws of God, of nature, of reason, and between states are legally, and for the subject, what the state declares them to be; and these declarations and commands of the state are to be presumed to contain the most truthful interpretations of these

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