Systematism

“ If I am asked, what system of political philosophy I substituted for that which, as a philosophy, I had abandoned, I answer, No system: only a conviction that the true system was something much more complex and many-sided than I had previously had any idea of, and that its office was to supply, not a set of model institutions, but principles from which the institutions suitable to any given circumstances might be deduced. ”

“ Between the organization of a society and its customs proper we may distinguish by comparing the former to structure and the latter to function in the case of any organism. But we must bear in mind that, here, structure has been built up by, and is in process of modification by, the same forces that exhibit themselves in function. It would not be wholly out of place to describe a people as having the custom of being ruled by hereditary chiefs, of choosing their monarchs, or of governing themselves through elected representatives. ”

“ A social institution can be understood and modified only if we do not limit ourselves to the study of its formal organization but analyze the way in which it appears in the personal experience of various members of the group and follow the influence which it has on their lives. And an individual can be understood only if we do not limit ourselves to a cross-section of his life as revealed by a given act, a court record or a confession, or to the determination of what type of life-organization exists, but determine the means by which a certain life-organization is developed. ”

“ But, apart from the impossibility of constructing a classification which shall be more than relatively artificial, such a mere aggregate or collection is not a real system. In a true system, as distinct from a mere collection, the principle of unity has always some sort of significance for the members of the system themselves. ”

“ Every society, in fact, with its progressive and increasingly distinctive needs and occupations, is a product of the union of social classes which differ greatly in their organic and psychical characteristics. The physical constitution, the habits, sentiments, ideas, and tendencies of one social stratum are far from being the same as those of other strata. Here again we have, as Spencer would say, the law of evolution through a departure from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, from the simple to the complex, or, in the words of Ardigo, a natural formation by successive distinctions. ”

“ In brief, the general law, that the social organism and its units act and react in such ways as to become congruous, implies that every further extension of political organization increases the obstacle to reorganization, not only by increasing the strength of the regulative part and decreasing the strength of the part regulated, but also by producing in citizens thoughts and feelings in harmony with the resulting structure, and out of harmony with anything substantially different. ”

“ There have always been public authorities whom, with more or less strictness and in cases more or less accurately defined, the rest of the community obeyed, or according to general opinion were bound to obey. By following out this course of inquiry we shall find a number of requisites, which have been present in every society that has maintained a collective existence, and on the cessation of which it has either merged in some other society, or reconstructed itself on some new basis, in which the conditions were conformed to. ”

“ Every systematisation in the degree to which it is stable involves a degree of sacrifice, but for some the price to be paid in opportunities foregone is greater than for others. By the extent of the loss, the range of impulses thwarted or starved, and their degree of importance, the merit of a systematisation is judged. That organisation which is least wasteful of human possibilities is, in short, the best. ”

“ That a nation may manifest itself in its unity, it must be centralized in its religion, centralized in its justice, centralized in its army, centralized in its agriculture, industry, and commerce, centralized in its finances,—in a word, centralized in all its functions and faculties; the centralization must work from the bottom to the top, from the circumference to the centre; all the functions must be independent and severally self-governing. ”

“ You must change man, not systems. Can you and our vapouring friends of the Literary Chamber of Rennes, or any other learned society of France, devise a system of government that has never yet been tried? ”

“ Every too abrupt distinction into classes, political, economical, or intellectual, and all selection, which is the logical and natural consequence of such distinctions, are equally disastrous to mankind, to the elect as well as to the rest of men; "they produce with the latter deficiency, with the former excess of the element which is the principle of the distinction of classes." ”

“ Such is the power of an established system, even when far from universal; when not only in almost every period of history there have been great and well-known examples of the contrary system, but these have almost invariably been afforded by the most illustrious and most prosperous communities. ”

“ Societies whose object is the organization of a strong centralized structure, the State, with its empire-building tendencies at the expense of life and liberty of the individual components may, fron their nature, be characterized as organic, or structural.
In societies of the structural organic type centralization and organization with hypertrophy of structure are above rationalization ane individualization with an ever greater tendency to cleavage of the conscious self from the subconscious self. ”

“ In this condition, as we have pointed out, and which cannot be emphasized too much on account of its importance, holds good in most, if not all societies, known to us from history, societies in which the organic, institutional structure of centralization predominated over the freedom of individual activity and the critical independence of personality. ”

“ Yet the development of hereditary leadership, the dominance of privileged classes, and the formation of traditions, laws, and forms of government went on unabated, during which the division of industrial and social functions within, causing numerous classes to continually differentiate, took place.
The Functions of New Groups.—In all social groupings the function always precedes the form or structure of the social order. Society follows the method of organic evolution in growing by differentiation. New organs or parts are formed, which in time become strengthened and developed. ”

“ It is most obvious, analogy renders it highly credible, that, upon supposition of a moral government, it must be a scheme, system, or constitution, whose parts correspond to each other, and to a whole; as really as any work of art, or of any particular model of a civil constitution and government. In this great scheme of the natural world, individuals have various peculiar relations to other individuals of their own species. And whole species are, we find, variously related to other species, upon this earth. ”

“ The one system, as the other, marks the end of individualism. The one system, as the other, would make each man the image of his neighbor. The one system, as the other, would hold back the progressive, and, by uniformity of reward, gain uniformity of type. ”

“ Hence, that which was to be illustrated by the conception of a product of nature, and which is equally taken from empirical observation, must be modified. The state, as an organization, is either the totality of mankind, or every two individuals may form a state. There is no ground why a state should be limited by another number than the totality of rational beings on earth, just as we found no ground why the conception of organized products of nature should be limited by only quantitative lines. ”

“ When these consequences of the purely arbitrary classification to which we allude have been pointed out and complained of, the only answer which we have ever seen made to the objection is, that the line of demarcation must be drawn somewhere, and that in every classification there are intermediate cases, which might have been included, with almost equal propriety, either in the one class or in the other. ”

“ The system, the beloved system, reasserts its tyrannic sway, and he either ignores, or moulds into fresh proofs of his theory as author, all which, an hour before, had given his theory the lie in his living perceptions as man. ”

“ All these and the other main features of the classificatory system become at once natural and intelligible if this system had its origin in a social structure in which exogamous social groups, such as the clan or moiety, were even more completely and essentially the social units than we know them to be to-day among the peoples whose social systems have been carefully studied. ”

“ The higher generalisations take their color from the broader features of the current scheme of life. The habits of thought that rule in the working-out of a system of knowledge are such as are fostered by the more impressive affairs of life, by the institutional structure under which the community lives. So long as the ruling institutions are those of blood-relationship, descent, and clannish discrimination, so long the canons of knowledge are of the same complexion. ”

“ The whole social structure, then, must rest, in the last resort, upon the existence of certain organic customs, which cannot be explained from without. They depend, for their force and vitality, upon the instincts of the individual as modified by the social factor; they correspond to a given state of the social tissue. A legal sanction may be added to any custom whatever, and thus it may seem that a state can make its own constitution and define its own organic laws ”

“ In all these systems, if the center be affected, the system is proportionately influenced. If any other part than the dominant center be affected, it is true that all other parts may also be affected, but the desired unity in result will not be secured. ”

“ Another law of progress, which is quite independent of differentiation, nay, even appears to a certain extent opposed to it, is the law of centralization. In general the whole organism is the more perfect the more it is organized as a unit, the more the parts are subordinate to the whole, and the more the functions and their organs are centralized. ”

“ II. The misconception which we have examined confounds centralization with over-governing. By the mistake which we shall now consider, it is deemed incompatible with the substance or spirit of what is commonly called free government.
Where the sovereign power resides in a body of persons, forming a fraction of the society, which may be deemed a large one, the government is popular or democratic; or, at least, the constitution of the government partakes largely of the popular or democratic element. ”

“ When it is proposed to "reorganize society" on any socialistic theory, or on no theory, it should be noticed that such an enterprise involves a blind speculation on the vicissitudes of classes and forms of property in the future. ”

“ It seems to be supposed by most of the writers who have treated of centralization, that homogeneity, or uniformity, of institutions constitutes its essence. They seem to suppose, for example, that where a government is perfectly centralized, one system of law obtains throughout the country; that the respective governments of the several localities have been cast in a common mould; that the departments and sub-departments of the general administration have been struck off from a common type ”

“ The institutions of existing states would come into comparison with the institutions of the Ideal State, their failures and defects would be criticised most effectually in that relation, and the whole science of collective psychology, the psychology of human association, would be brought to bear upon the question of the practicability of this proposed ideal. ”

“ Socially, the idea of self-determination is applied to evaluate the religious institutions, the class structure, and the value system. The application concerns, once again, the authority of the people to determine their own social patterns. ”

“ As previously pointed out, "complication of structure accompanies increase of mass," in social organisms as in individual organisms. When small societies are compounded into a larger society, the controlling agencies needed in the several component societies must be subordinated to a central controlling agency: new structures are required. Recompounding necessitates a kindred further complexity in the governmental arrangements; and at each of such stages of increase all other arrangements must become more complicated. ”

“ In the early changes of organic germs, we discovered further evidence that unlikenesses of structure follow unlikenesses of relations to surrounding agencies—evidence enforced by the tendency of the differently-placed members of each species to diverge into varieties. We found that the principle is also conformed to in the establishment of distinctions among our ideas; and that the contrasts, political and industrial, that arise between the parts of societies are no less in harmony with it. ”

“ We have heard the Rights of Man called a levelling system; but the only system to which the word levelling is truly applicable, is the hereditary monarchical system. It is a system of mental levelling. ”