ciological and anthropological science was unable to find the flaws we see today. The American mind avidly accepted the idea as it had avidly accepted the idea of "Natural Law" and "Natural Rights." The idea of society as a social compact is implicit in the Declaration of Independence and is written clearly and deep into the Federal Constitution and into nearly all of the Constitutions of the different American States. In general, however, we must look for the most explicit official expression of the essential American tradition in the Declaration of Independence and in the bills of rights of the State Constitutions rather than in the Federal Constitution. The Federal Constitution was made in critical times. Much of the essential American aspiration is implicit in it. But much that is not so characteristically American is also implicit in it. Summary. On the "tabula rasa" which the American political mind had been made, many basic political ideas-crystallised out of all the European past-had quickly been deeply traced, ideas which, because they found almost universal official acceptation by the early American governments, have frequently been claimed to be the vital parts of the essential American tradition. We have traced the origin and development of three of the most important of these characteristic ideas—the emergence as a political force of the individual, the acceptation of the theory of "Natural Law" and "Natural Rights," the founding of the nation, implicitly and explicitly, upon the idea of all society as a voluntary social compact of free individuals. The great mass movement of millions of men over many generations was not, obviously, rendered completely articulate by these ideas. But these ideas, phrased in the terms of an earlier century, may, because they found such widespread, enthusiastic, and continuing acceptation, certainly be felt to approximate a satisfactory expression of the common political impulses and aspirations prompting the mass movement of the American adventure or accentuated by the experiences resulting from that adventure. CHAPTER TWO THE CHARACTERISTIC AMERICAN POLITICAL IDEAS FROM THE VIEWPOINT OF PRESENT-DAY POLITICAL THEORY. The Original American Ideas-as Expressed- No one of these essential and characteristic American ideasas originally expressed-is now widely accepted by the foremost exponents of political science throughout the world. These ideas as expressed-are, indeed, beginning to be vigorously denied. Political writers in many countries and of many shades of opinion unite in refusing to accept any of them. The individualistic tendency of an age in which men were everywhere trying to overthrow arbitrarily established authority has been supplanted by the collectivist tendency of an age in which many individuals-politically free-increasingly recognise the necessity for their voluntary contribution to and support of the social organisation of which they are inevitably a part. (44) The following are, for example, characteristic contemporary criticisms: "We no longer believe, as we once believed, that a good social organisation can be secured merely by stressing our rights. The emphasis is being laid more and more on social duties. The efficiency of the social group is taking on in our eyes a greater importance than it once had. We are not, it is true, taking the view that the individual man lives for the state of which he is a member and that state efficiency is in some mysterious way an admirable end in itself. But we have come to the conclusion that man under modern conditions is primarily a member of society and that only as he recognises his duties as a member of society can he secure the greatest opportunities as an individual." (45) "One idea and one alone possessed this type (the early American Pioneer), the idea of independent freedom from restraint. He was the high priest of the religion of do-asyou-like. He was the supreme individualist, the ultimate democrat whose non-social doctrine has so cursed modern America." (46) "Man is regarded now through Europe, contrary to the view expressed by Rousseau, primarily as a member of society and secondarily as an individual. The rights which he possesses, are, it is believed, conferred on him, not by his creator, but rather by the society to which he belongs. What they are is to be determined by the legislative authority in view of the needs of that society. Social expediency, rather than natural right, is thus to determine the sphere of individual action. The political philosophy of the eighteenth century was formulated before the announcement of the acceptance of the theory of evolutionary development. The natural rights doctrine presupposed that society was static and stationary, rather than dynamic or progressive, in character." (47) Within limits such criticisms are typical and it would be possible to find numerous other examples in contemporary political thought. By the Korzybskian concept of man (41) all political theories based on the older ideas of individualism appear to have been rendered finally untenable. It may be pointed out, however, that the progress of any science, of any branch of knowledge, consists largely in creating new vocabularies, in discovering and accentuating new relationships, in perfecting new and more subtle analyses. Ideas which have profoundly influenced large masses of men over long periods of time can rarely be arbitrarily dismissed. They can only be shown to be crude and pragmatic-the tangling of minor errors with some main thread of truth which scientific criticism later succeeds in disentangling or detaching. It may be that this holds true in the case of the essential American ideas. It may be that, for all the errors and confusions which present-day criticism has discovered in them, there was, nevertheless, some crude and pragmatic grasp of a truth, still impregnable to entirely disintegrating criticism. The ideas were postulates but they were postulates evolved by long and terrible experience. (53) What was the Central Core of Truth in These Ideas? What was the central core of truth amidst all the metaphysical and philosophical implications of the men whose ideas were written into the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights of the Federal and State Constitutions? The idea of society as a "social organism"-a living, growing thing-increasingly influences contemporary (1925) political thought. Woodrow Wilson, for example, wrote: "Government is not a machine but a living thing. It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life. It is accountable to Darwin, not to Newton. It is modified by its environment, necessitated by its tasks, shaped to its functions by the sheer pressure of life." Possibly by examining the early American ideas in relation to this newer concept we may gain clearer understanding of any central core of truth in these ideas. In the ancient world no state had any real organic quality. There was no sphere of human relationships to which the arbitrary interference of the government might not be extended. There was no part of the individual's concerns into which the government did not claim the right, implicitly or explicitly, to thrust itself. Yet all of these governments had been established by force, and exercised arbitrary positive law in the making of which the individual had had no part. "Social Organisations" and "Social Organisms." These states were, at worst, mere herds or groups. They were, at best, social organisations held together by the will of some man or men, whose desires and opinions were forced upon the community. They were not even approximately social organisms in which the will of the community was expressed by a government of laws superior to any man; in which the will of the community, and not the will of any man or group in the community was all-powerful. The Denial of Individualism in Any Larger Sense. It is certain that philosophy and sociology today come more and more to deny individualism in any larger sense. We recognise that everything which exists is inextricably connected with everything else which exists. The individual man is but a cell in the organism of the human race. As an intellectual being his mind has been formed by the experiences of his progenitors for hundreds of thousands of years. The higher capacities of man result inevitably from his association with his fellow men in mutual development. The individual may gain stimulation from occasional breaking of restricting social customs or institutions; from occasional withdrawals from society. But if no new and fresh customs are formed, if the association with society becomes too tenuous, development of the higher capacities is inevitably retarded. (48) Yet, even if these ideas are accepted in their widest possible implications, there is only an apparent and not a real conflict between them and the individualism asserted by early Americans in the political sphere. The Fundamental Individualist Idea. For early America did not seek to permit the individual man necessarily to detach himself from the social organisation. It sought to free him from any tyranny enforced by any other individual or individuals within the social organisation. This appears the most fundamental political impulse of early America. The arbitrary power originally gained and exercised by force or craft in all governments existing in 1776 was not the authority of society over the individual. It was the authority of part of society over another part of society. It was not the authority of the common will of all the men constituting any particular nation. It was the authority of the arbitrary will of a few men over their fellows. By freeing the individual from all such arbitrary authority or power, early America, by the subtler implications of the "Social Compact" theory which it accepted, sought to make |