Society And its Purpose
Book 3 - Determining the End of Civil Societies
CHAPTER 9
The power of individual speculative reason in leading civil societies to their legitimate end — Individuals who prepare the way for the foundation of civil governments
406. Domestic society is prior to civil society; individuals are prior to domestic society. Individuals and domestic society each contribute an element of their own to civil society. It is extremely helpful therefore if, in clarifying our knowledge of the entire nature of a given civil society, we know the condition of the families and the individuals who preceded the society. What has been said in preceding chapters shows very clearly the extent to which the condition of family society, and of the individuals who from the beginning compose civil society, plays its part in providing society with its own nature and mould.
407. Families are made up of parents and children. There is no doubt that the children receive from nature some part of their physical, intellectual and moral constitution. What they receive is in the hands of Providence; here, human beings can do nothing and foresee nothing. This part of the innate constitution is partly preserved in further generations, and partly changed. The immutable part of the original constitution becomes the distinct characteristic of races; the mutable part forms the individual character. As I was saying, human foresight does not reach out to either part and cannot make reliable calculations about either; Providence has retained them as its tool in the government of human affairs. All this comes about according to deep, hidden laws which we cannot deal with here.
408. The hereditary element furnishes the family character; the new element furnishes the character of different individuals in the same family. These two portions of each person’s innate constitution are not found in equal proportions. One or other is predominant. It is abundantly clear that individuals will not leave the family if the original, fixed portion proper to the race prevails; the family is united, fortified, by this element. It is equally clear that individuals will scarcely recognise themselves as belonging to that family if the new, individual portion prevails over the initial clan-element. In this case, the family itself will not bestow on individuals the same strict bond of membership; these individuals appear destined either to remain isolated(158) or to found a new family or to undertake some more universal work. They may, for example, take on the role and office of wise men or adventurers. Generally speaking, we can believe that the founders of societies belong to this kind of human being.(159)
Obviously, it is Providence alone which brings them to birth, tempering the two elements in them to achieve this effect. It is impossible to escape from the necessary truth that it was `the Lord who scattered the nations abroad over the face of the earth.’(160) There is no doubt that only the Creator predestines the nature of different nations; he alone predestines and mixes in an ever-varying but wise way the two elements in the innate constitution of individuals.
409. Everyone, parent or child, is bound by these two elements of the innate constitution to which education, which modifies the children’s constitution through their parents’ action upon them, is added as another factor. Here I take `education’ in its most general meaning. This new cause, which has considerable influence in the formation of human individuals, must also be divided into two parts, one traditional and fixed in the families, the other new and added by the teacher on his own account, that is, by the father of the family, who draws it from his individual reflections.
410. It is easy to see that these two parts of human education, each of which adds its own contribution to the individuals it forms, correspond in a certain way to the two parts already distinguished in generation — each of these furnishes its own element to the innate constitution of human beings. It is also easy to see that the proportions in which the two inborn elements are mixed in the teacher, that is, in the father of the family, will correspond to the degree in which they are mixed in the teaching and education given to the children by the father. If the clan-element dominates in the innate constitution of the father, the traditional element proper to the family will dominate in the teaching or education of his children. If the new, individual element dominates, the father will communicate to his children his own individual reflections and discoveries rather than the treasure of teaching and belief received from ancestral tradition.
411. What is said about fathers relative to their children must be repeated about children relative to their descendants. Every new generation has 1. a clan-element given by nature and a corresponding traditional element provided by education; 2. an individual element also given by nature, and a corresponding individual element communicated to the new generation by the education received from the father. These elements multiply from father to son; they are mixed in various ways and modified in total dependence upon the deep, hidden dispensation of Providence, which secretly but infallibly directs humanity to its own ends.(161) It is obvious that the clan-element tends to conserve; the individual element to innovate.
412. Both elements, each destined for a necessary duty, are precious. The first has to maintain the physical, intellectual and moral riches of mankind and prevent their dispersal; the second is designed to develop human faculties and stimulate progress along the threefold path of physical, intellectual and moral good. It could be said that the first of these two elements is the principle of the system of resistance, the second the principle of the system of movement. When we abandon our modern, antagonistic parties, they will see that if movement were all, everything would, by the same title, perish; if resistance were all, everything in the human race would stagnate. At this point, those who love resistance will respect those who lovie movement. Neither of the two classes would want the other to be eliminated; each would recognise how necessary for itself is the other’s existence. Together they would work for common happiness, the final object of both; they would work without friction and bitterness, according to the laws and impulses of their opposite natures. These two factions are found in the most ancient ancestors of human generations. In Sem, as we can easily see, the clan-element prevailed, in Japhet the individual element. Thus, Sem became the ancestor of the static nations and Japhet the ancestor of the progressive nations.
413. However, we must not take things too far. Everything good of itself in human affairs is subject to corruption. This is true of the two elements we have mentioned. They are both liable to abuse, and thus become sources of evil. The original clan-element, which is valuable as long as good traditions and useful customs are maintained, becomes extremely harmful when errors and harmful customs form part of family life. This element blindly preserves good and bad things — and perhaps bad things more tenaciously than good. At this point divine Providence, making use of the individual element which it sets against the clan-element, stirs up wars and revolutions to enable decadent, corrupt and divided families to renew and purge themselves.
414. We must not believe, however, that error, superstition and vice are inherent to the dawn of mankind. Christianity is not alone in teaching the contrary; everyone who acknowledges God as the author of the first human family believes that this family was created perfect and furnished with the knowledge and necessary force to practise virtue to the fullest extent. This knowledge, if it had been faithfully transmitted to posterity, would have formed humankind’s true, solid wisdom. Its alteration and loss have to be sought in the individual principle which tends to innovation, and can be turned to good or evil by the free will of individuals.(162)
The individual principle, therefore, introduced formerly unknown errors and superstitions into families. Clearly, the clan-principle, the conserving principle, is harmful, not beneficent, when this occurs; it now works to render unchangeable the harm wrought in families. When families reach this term, the pitiful seed sown in them by the individual principle can be rooted out only by the destruction and disintegration of families, as we have said. This also is the work of the same individual principle from which spring all kinds of warlike enterprises.
415. At this point, we find our argument has led us to God and to the teaching and grace he communicated to the first family. We have thus arrived at something superhuman. This element also has to be borne in mind as we list the factors which human beings have posited in the formation of civil societies. We have three principles, therefore, which have played a part in the formation of civil societies, and which contain the summary causes of their different natures:
1. a divine principle which is traditionally preserved;
2. a twofold clan-principle: a) inborn, given by nature, b)
acquired, received through education;
3. an individual principle which is also twofold, that is, a) inborn and
b) acquired through progressive use of one’s own inborn principle. Both
the clan-principle and the individual principle undergo some
alteration in every new generation.(163)
416. These are the three principles that make civil society possible by furnishing the individuals who compose it with the quantity of intelligence required for its formation. It is clear from what we have said that a great part is played by individual reason in the movement to civil society.
417. However, civil society needs other preliminaries when human beings have degenerated into wild, savage living. The first necessity is the restoration of the divine element; a uniform, external cult is required. As we have seen, all founders of the first civil communities were eager to ensure this.(164) The second necessity was instruction which enabled people to distinguish between years and months. An example of this may be seen in the account of Phegeus, son of Inachus, in the Peloponnesus.(165) It was necessary to institute marriage, which in Attica is attributed to Cecrops;(166) the use of the alphabet was necessary, and they say this was brought to Boeotia by Cadmus;(167) there was a need to teach people agriculture, as Triptolomus did in Eleusis and elsewhere;(168) finally, wild beasts and highwaymen had to be destroyed to enable people to work, plough and clear the land in safety, a work carried out by the Herculean and Theseusian types of antiquity.(169)
418. All these and other works are preliminaries to the institution of civil societies;(170) they remove the obstacles to common civil life amongst human beings, and provides the understanding with its necessary development. All the labour, or almost all of it, depends upon the speculative reason of certain eminent individuals; the individual element works for the universal good of the masses.
Notes
(158) This explains the natural origin of the poor and the proletariat. The isolated individual is weak and abandoned. A similar explanation may be given for the natural origin of the immensely rich and powerful. Individuals not totally loyal to their families tend towards greater associations which render them stronger than people tied to their own families.
(159) Genesis, chapter 10, contains the only clear, extant records of the most ancient origins of things. They describe the first families who took their origin from the three sons of Noah. Nimrod, a mighty man, the son of Cush and grandson of the founder, Cham, belonged at least to the initial stage of dominion, if not to the first civil society itself. However he appears in the Genesis narrative without family and as an isolated individual. The sacred history at this point interrupts the series of fathers and sons; it does not say that Nimrod generated anyone, but only that `he was the first on earth to be a mighty man.' Reputable authors add that Nimrod rebelled against subjection to his great-grandfather, Noah. This would explain his name which means precisely `rebel'. — All this shows that Nimrod, a violent man, must have had a constitution in which the original element of the clan was almost totally overcome by the individual element. Nevertheless, this did not deprive Nimrod of his freedom to choose to do good or evil.
(160) Cf. Gen 11, 8–9.
(161) Scripture frequently asserts that human generations are divided and led by God. This theme is developed especially in Psalm 32 where it says that `the thoughts of his [God's] heart [are] to all generations', that `he beholds ALL the sons of men' and that `he has made the hearts of EVERYONE of them' [Douai].
(162) Romagnosi exaggerates when he affirms that `the increase, development and division of professions in a given people is as much the work of nature as the growth, extension and fruition in plants' (Questioni sull'ordinamento delle statistiche, q. 6). — In the past, all human events had to be explained by the free will of a few individuals; now we recognise something independent of human beings in the movement of nations (some invisible hand that guides this movement), and we want to hear no more about free will — everything happens of itself in the nature of things. This is the exaggeration which has entrapped our modern historico-fatalist school! — Vico discovered an important truth when he observed that `nations follow certain fixed laws as they progress.' Abuse of this truth produced the harmful error that we have indicated.
(163) The reader will gather from this outline the necessary principles underlying a complete History of Humanity.
(164) Hyginus tells us that Phoroneus, son of Inachus, acquired the kingdom of Argols because he erected an altar to Juno. This occurred about 1800 BC, during the life of Abraham. Tatianus says: `After Inachus, under Phoroneus, the hunting and pastoral life of human beings took on a milder and more elegant form.' Clement of Alexandria (Bk. 1, Strom.) is able to quote a passage of Aculislaus of Argos, who affirms that Phoroneus was the first man. Nevertheless, it is claimed that Pelasgus, who succeeded Phoroneus after a gap of centuries, gave his name to the Pelasgi who, as we noted, were complete barbarians, totally without civil development. In other words, those populations reverted to barbarism after Phoroneus. — It is said that Cecrops was the first among the Greeks to call Jove `god'. The many other things he contributed to unify human beings by means of a single cult offered to the divinity can be seen in Eusebius (Praepar. Evang., bk. 10, c. 2), in St. Epiphanius (bk. 1, §1) and in St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei, 18: 9).
(165) `They thought Phegeus, brother of Phonoreus, was worthy of great honour because he had set up places of worship for the gods in part of his kingdom, and had taught his people how to keep track of months and years' (Aug. De C. D., 18: 3).
(166) Cecrops was the first Athenian to join one woman with one man. Before his time, they had come together promiscuously in common marriages (Athenaeus, bk. 13). — Cecrops reigned from about 1550 BC. during the lifetime of Moses.
(167) The Phoenicians who came with Cadmus brought a great deal of instruction to Greece including literacy, which the Greeks lacked (Herodotus, 5: 58). It is scarcely possible to conceive mentally of an analphabetical civil society. We may say, therefore, that as speech is the means of communication in family society, writing is the means of communication proper to civil society. — Cadmus was king of Thebae about 1519 BC.
(168) Triptolomus lived about 1409 BC.
(169) Hercules the Theban lived about 1280 BC. — Theseus reigned in Athens about 1236 BC.
(170) These labours continue after the establishment of society. Clearly, however, civil union could not have begun if the works we have enumerated had not been carried out to some extent beforehand.