Society And its Purpose
Book 3 - Determining the End of Civil Societies
CHAPTER 10
Continuation — Founders and first legislators
419. What has been said in the preceding chapter indicates high praise for the principle of individual activity which, however, cannot be considered as all powerful. Many great men have tried and desired in vain to carry out for the public advantage things that mediocre people have later achieved. Some suitable disposition amongst the masses is always necessary if the action of individuals is to produce any great effect on them. This disposition is difficult to observe, but it is undoubtedly real, and the major force in what is achieved. Without it, the masses do not understand what individual wise men are saying; they remain unmoved by appeals and stand firm against efforts to effect some result. The suitable disposition of which we are speaking is manifested amongst the masses only at the moment designated by divine Providence, neither sooner nor later. It works and reaches its effect secretly in the heart of families through the three above-mentioned principles: 1. the divine principle; 2. the clan-principle; 3. the individual principle, all of which are tempered in various ways in succeeding generations.
420. The same may be said about Founders and Legislators of civil societies. Founders would not have been able to establish cities unless the masses were furnished with a certain quantity of proximate power over the use of their intelligence and already prepared for what they considered as necessary association. When the mass of people are suitably prepared and mature, only the occasion for union is lacking. This is provided by some superior individual who feels more than others the need felt by all. This individual’s intelligence is better suited than that of others for involving him in society, although all are more or less ready for society. This person places himself at the head of the masses and, by making himself worthy of the post through his courage and prudence, interprets and fulfils the universal desire. At this point, the masses crowd around him like bees around their queen. Thus two causes are responsible for the foundation of civil societies: 1. a disposition on the part of the masses corresponding to 2. the activity of an individual who rises from and above the masses. The necessary correspondence between these two causes is fixed and harmonised not by human beings but by God.
421. The same can be said about the first legislators. Laws are powerless if they are not rooted in the way of life or the moral and intellectual dispositions of the people. Particular laws are only relatively good; the perspicacity of legislators consists simply in penetrating the common thought and desire. By that, I mean the part of thought that is upright and just (some part normally remains upright in the depth of the human heart). The legislator’s skill, therefore, consists in measuring with a glance the kind and quantity of intelligence in the masses to which he can appeal, and the quantity of mobility or immobility in their way of life. Only through such observations, which his skilful mind embraces and unites in a single thought, does he arrive at laws in which all that is good in the opinions and will of all the people is transfused, and which contain teaching proportioned to the common state of mind, that is, to a new good seen, understood and felt by everyone.