possible the development of a new type of state, of a real "social organism," in which the authority to be wielded would be (approximately and within practical limits) the authority of continuing society and not of any temporary group in society.

"Organs" of Government.

Even a majority must not, in a tyrannical sense at least, be permitted to exercise this authority. Society must be protected even from the power of majorities. There must be organic laws not only defining the "organs" of government but voicing the will of the social organism-laws of the whole society to which every individual and group of individuals, no matter how small or how large, is always subordinate.

We begin to understand that these early Americans—acting under urgent and unusual impulses were attempting something for which the contemporary philosophy and vocabulary afforded no proper means of expression. We must seek to understand the expression of their aspirations in terms of today. We must seek to re-express it in terms applicable to today. It must be admitted that we also must struggle with a vocabulary not yet entirely capable of expressing these strong but diffuse racial aspirations.

The Denial of "Natural Rights."

Immediately concerned with individualism is the idea of "Natural Rights."

It is contended that the Eighteenth Century theory of "Natural Rights" is exploded. (49) There can be no denial of this although this theory performed a great service for mankind.

The Nature of Individual Rights.

The individual may have no "Natural Rights" in the old sense but he has some rights as conditioned by life itself. Because of his nature he cannot cut himself entirely off, physically or otherwise, from society. The only human authority before which he must, philosophically as well as practically, remain always powerless, however, is the authority of society itself, never the authority of any part of society, however much that part may appear to be identical with the whole; however much that part may temporarily be able to wield the power of the whole.

Society, in this sense, cannot, it stands to reason, ever be tyrannical or oppressive. (50) Wherever there is tyranny or oppression it results from the irresponsible control of society by some part of society. And against this tyranny and oppression free men-Natural Rights or no Natural Rights— must endlessly contend.

Society Like a Human Body.

In the individual organism-the human body, for example— there is health and well being when all the parts can freely develop and fulfil the functions inevitably enforced upon them by evolutionary development and evolutionary adaptation to environment. Let any part of the human body develop at the expense of any other part and there is eventual internal conflict-pain, disease, even death.

Social Health.

So with the organism of society. Against autocracy, theocracy, oligarchy, aristocracy, plutocracy, mobocracy-against any control by any part of society-the individual cells of society can and must protect themselves as the individual cells of the human body might protect themselves against dominion by the cells of the liver, kidneys, the stomach-did these seek to dominate the whole.

Only when all the cells of the body, functioning properly, contribute to the well-being of the brain and the central nervous system which, in turn, function for the whole organism are there, or can there be, individual health, harmony, well-being, and the most rapid development.

So, only when all sections of society function freely and support a continuing law more potent than any of them, can there be social health. Early America, possibly unconsciously, sought to free the individual cell of the social organism from any authority save that of the organism as a whole. (51)

"Government by Laws

Not by Men."

It certainly appears to have believed that the greatest good of the greatest number can result only from the deliberate creation by intelligence of human institutions seeking to free society from all forces preventing it from becoming a social organism analogous to all living organisms.

At the present stage of human development society, to be thus freed, must be regulated by laws founded in reason, crystallised out of experience, understood and accepted by the greatest possible number of citizens of successive generations; exercised and administered by honest men carefully chosen and held by an intricate system of checks and balances within the laws which have been made infinitely more powerful than any group or groups whatsoever in the state.

The greatest possible degree of personal freedom, spiritual, intellectual, and physical, must be afforded the individual that he may not have cause to resist or obstruct the growth of the social organism but, by harmoniously growing and developing in every way, may most effectively and wholesomely aid the harmonious development of society-to all the individuals composing which he is, by the inexorable conditions of existence, bound by an infinite number of interrelations, mutual inheritances, mutual interdependencies, and mutual interactions.

Only by granting the individual the maximum practical freedom can the social organism be brought into conscious being or most rapidly and wholesomely develop; only by contributing to the rapid and wholesome development of every phase and aspect of the entire social organism can the individual derive the maximum freedom and happiness from life.

Accepting the figure of society as a social organism, it is seen that unlike any other organism known the individual cell has intelligence. As the blood stream feeds each of the cells in the human body and is affected by each cell, so the intelligence of each social cell must be fed by the common intelligence of the whole organism to which it in turn contributes. Thought is the blood stream of society. It must flow through the whole, endlessly replenishing and stimulating, endlessly being affected, purified, and vitalised. When thought is poisoned or restricted the organism suffers, or is weakened. When thought is stopped the social organism dies.

The mind of every normal man can understand the essentials of all that mankind knows. The individual man must be af

forded full and never-abridged opportunity to understand the essentials of all human knowledge and to contribute to the growth of knowledge to the extent of his abilities.

Government should represent the common thought and the common will. It should be exercised for the greatest possible good of the whole society and for each cell in that society. It should be ideally—as immediately responsive to the general condition of the society as the human brain or nervous system is responsive to the general condition of the body.

It is obvious that any cancerous growth in the social organism will inevitably retard the flow or in some way poison the stream of society's thought and, by interfering with this immediate responsiveness, thus imperil the society.

An earlier variant and expression of this thought will be seen in some sentences used by the historian, George Bancroft:

"As the sea is made up of drops, American society is composed of separate, free, and constantly moving atoms, ever in reciprocal action, advancing, receding, crossing, struggling against each other and with each other, so that the Constitution and Laws of the country rise out of the masses of individual thought which, like the waters of the ocean, are rolling evermore.'

If these ideas are accepted as representing to some degree the general tendency of political development, it will be seen that there is no real conflict between the individualistic ideas of American statesmen of 1776 and the collectivist ideas of political thinkers of 1925. The Americans of 1776 appear to have desired-however faultily they may have expressed it— only to free the individual from all arbitrary coercion or oppression by any group within society, so that he might, by his voluntary allegiance and support, perfect that society and help to transform it from what we have called a social organisation into what we have called a social organism. This appears to be precisely what the collectivists of 1925, using merely a different vocabulary, proclaim as necessary and desirable.

The American attempt, whatever its formulas, was necessary. It was a phase of social development by which all future societies will profit no matter what their nature, no matter how contemptuous they may affect to be of the American experi

ment.

"Natural Law" in Terms

of Today.

Most of the ideas which could be advanced in defense of the conception of "Natural Law," held by the early Americans, have been implied in defending the central core of their conception of political individualism.

On page 40 an attempt was made to show how the best juridic minds of Europe had, even before the Renaissance and much more consciously and effectively after the Renaissance, been sifting and analysing the abstract ideas of law found in the writings of all the philosophers of all Europe's past. (52)

The attempt was made to show the process as a sort of analysis, over a period of several centuries, of all these thoughts until, in the minds of Milton, Locke, and many others, the temporary and non-important aspects, the obviously illogical and unfounded postulates and assumptions, theories, and deductions had, largely, been separated and the crystals of what appeared to them the most valid and continuing thought disclosed for the scrutiny, examination, and analysis of the world.

Because of continually changing political and social conditions; the enforced concern of men with physical reality, and the endless confusions and difficulties retarding systematic intellectual progress in nearly all ancient and medieval societies; only at rare intervals, as, for example, in the codes of Hammurabi, Moses, and Justinian, had there been definite attempts to codify positive law and to seek to analyse such codifications in search of some enduringly logical basis for such law.

With the new security and intellectual stimulation developing in the 15th and 16th centuries not only were the few codifications available to them closely scrutinised by scholars everywhere in Europe, but all of the previous theories of law and all criticisms of these codifications keenly analysed-much as crystals might be continuously analysed and examined in an attempt to find the most pure and flawless. Our desire has been to show the mind of Europe working in such an attempt.

The Search for a Logical Basis for

Society Did Not Stop in 1776.

Now it must be understood that this process did not stop in 1776. It is a continuous process. It has been carried on wherever conditions permitted, as there is some quality in the