Systematist

“ 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. ”

“ Yet if society be, as I assume it to be, an organism operating on mechanical principles, we may perhaps, by pondering upon history, learn enough of those principles to enable us to view, more intelligently than we otherwise should, the social phenomena about us. What we call civilization is, I suspect, only, in proportion to its perfection, a more or less thorough social centralization, while centralization, very clearly, is an effect of applied science. ”

“ If the organization of the system be crude and confused, the number, naturally, is comparatively large; if the organization be regular or systematic, the number, naturally, is comparatively small; for the more orderly the distribution of the various functions, the more easy is it, without damaging the efficiency of the system, to combine or cumulate functions in one and the same functionary. It is, therefore, the tendency of centralization, which supposes a regular administration, to reduce the functionaries required by the public wants to the lowest possible number. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Distinction then being necessary, it would naturally, as with individuals, be based on relativity of age, seniority within certain limits confering priority. Thus gradually each generation, as indeed with actual lower races, would, qua generation, come to be a distinctly defined class with certain separate rights and obligations. In this simple necessity of a classification of the connected persons, we see the origin of the classificatory system itself, as an institution. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Still more important, however, is the fact that among the peoples who use the classificatory system there is an infinitely greater variety of social institution, and especially of forms of marriage, than exist among civilised peoples whose main social unit, the family, is not one which is capable of any extended range of variation. The result of the complete survey has been to justify my use of the classificatory system as the means whereby to demonstrate the dependence of the terminology of relationship upon social conditions. ”

“ The Order of the Main Classes.—The reasons which determined the adoption of a certain sequence of classes in this system may be briefly set forth here, instead of any argument or attempt to justify the order. The battle which has raged, and is still raging, among scientists, as to the best and most desirable order in which to arrange the great branches of human knowledge in order to produce a ‘hierarchy,’ must deter a non-scientific classifier from arguing on such a complicated and difficult topic. ”

“ The want of either of these factors, the distinct individual units, or the scientific grouping and marshaling of units in a collective unity, deprives a body of its place in the organic world. The same factors must enter into every social organization which is entitled to the name. We have in this country an example of a true organization in our federative political system, composed of townships, counties, States, and nation, with its motto, "Out of many, one." I have drawn thence the designation Federative for the organized Homestead. ”

“ 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 therefore the people sets up an hereditary government, whether it be monarchical and confined to one family, or aristocratic and confined to a class, what it enters into is not an undertaking; the administration is given a provisional form, until the people chooses to order it otherwise. ”

“ As representative of family, they have a definite constitution, expressive of a distinct and specific model, in forms resembling those of the representatives of other genera. As representative of order, they take definite rank, as compared with the representatives of other families. As representative of class, they manifest the structural plan of their ramifications by the aid of special means, and according to specific directions. As representative of branches the individuals are all organised on a distinct plan which differs from the plan of other branch-lines. ”

“ The obvious truth is, that the over-governing imputed to centralization descends from states of society in which centralization was impossible. It comes from the crude conceptions of the legitimate province of government, which were naturally entertained by the middle ages and the ages immediately following them—ages which were just as incapable of centralized and regular government, as of conceiving the advanced science and the advanced industry which (like centralization) are products of a high civilization. ”

“ The more firmly and technically the organization of the group is elaborated, the more objectively and formally will the schemes of superordination and subordination present themselves. Then, as a supplementary matter, the proper persons are selected for these relationships, or they are filled out by the mere accidents of birth and other chances. In this connection we are by no means to think merely of the hierarchy of civil positions. Financial economy creates within the spheres of its control a wholly similar formation of society. ”

“ Such constitutions may secure harmony between the dispositions and the station of individuals through the fact that the separate life spheres are relatively broad, and their demands and opportunities are extensive enough to offer appropriate places for the individuals, diverse as they may be from variations of heredity, education, and example. A class constitution, consequently, provides for a preëstablished harmony between the qualities or dispositions of the individual and his position in the social whole. ”

“ A perfect definition of centralization would involve a definition of sovereignty and independent political society; but since a definition of these fundamental notions would not consist with our limited purposes, we confine ourselves to the following assumptions:—That every political society is subject to a person or persons who may be styled the sovereign: That the political powers, active or passive, of this individual or body, are not limitable by positive law ”

“ His influence was exercised, however, not only in dogmatic questions but in matters of discipline, by means of appeals, petitions and consultations, not to mention spontaneous intervention. This state of affairs was defined and developed in the course of centuries, till it produced the present state of centralization, according to a law which can equally be observed in other societies. ”

“ These magistrates, whose powers it has increased, will still be functionaries, men of its own, and the commune, thus widened and glorified, will be a State institution—we shall watch this phase—until, under the law of serfdom, the approaching evolution gives it yet another form—the autonomy of the galleys, the association of the chain that binds one pair of legs to another. ”

“ I. Centralization, as it is commonly conceived, is mistaken for over-governing. A centralized government, according to the same conception, is an over-regulating, over-restraining, over-protecting government;—paternal, as its friends would call it; a pestilent busy-body, as it would be called by its enemies. We think that this is the conception which is commonly associated with the word; and our impression is confirmed by two of the books whose titles we have prefixed to this Article—De la Liberté du Travail, by Mr Dunoyer; and Notes of a Traveller, by Mr Laing. ”

“ The system has grown up without any reference to abstract principles or symmetrical plan. The legal order supposes a traditional common law, as the ecclesiastical order a traditional creed, and the organisation is explicable only by historical causes. The system represents a series of compromises, not the elaboration of a theory. If the squire undertook by way of supererogation to justify his position he appealed to tradition and experience. ”

“ If the two kinds of control which eventually grow into civil and religious governments, originally include scarcely anything beyond observance of ceremonies, the precedence of ceremonial control over other controls is a corollary.
Divergent products of evolution betray their kinship by severally retaining certain traits which belonged to that from which they were evolved; and the implication is, that whatever traits they have in common, arose earlier in time than did the traits which distinguish them from one another. ”

“ The whole institutional fabric was the outgrowth of the group of ideas and habits that belong to a state of society ignorant of and incapable of imagining any other form of organization than the clan held together by the tie of a common maternal ancestry. ”

“ An exceptional form of the classificatory system, in which there is a departure from the usual rule limiting a term of relationship to members of the same generation, is found to be the natural consequence of a social regulation which enjoins the marriage of persons belonging to different generations. ”

“ If it be necessary, as it is beyond all question necessary, that society should be split into divisions and subdivisions, in order that its several duties may be well performed, yet we must be careful not to yield up ourselves wholly and exclusively to the guidance of this system ”

“ Since in case of the equal right of all to all positions it would be impossible to satisfy every legitimate claim, the social order which includes ranks and classes provides at the outset for a limiting selection which pays no attention to the individual, but rather on the contrary determines the individual. ”

“ Divisions are working hypotheses, adopted for convenience. We are tending more and more toward an appreciation of the truth that, after all, there are few rules; there are chiefly standards and degrees. It is a question of degree whether I have been negligent. It is a question of degree whether in the use of my own land, I have created a nuisance which may be abated by my neighbor. ”

“ 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 their civil assemblies; and this is grounded upon the principles of nature and common reason, which in all difficulties or dangers, where prudence or courage is required, rather incite us to fly for counsel or assistance to a single person, than a multitude. The second natural division of power is, of such men, who have acquired large possessions, and consequently dependencies, or descend from ancestors who have left them great inheritances, together with an hereditary authority. ”