dooms, [though] doubtless drawn from pre-existing custom or usage," are supposed to "come directly into his mind by divine dictation from on high, to be conceived by him spontaneously or through divine prompting." 1 It is in connection with the personage whom we call the king that law, civil or criminal, enforced by penalties to be inflicted in this world, first makes its appearance in the Hindu Sacred Book. The archaic king is the supreme judge and legislator, as well as the supreme general, and is invested also with a distinctly religious character. It is interesting to observe how these attributes of kingship, in its earliest form, even now attach, in theory, to its latest development. The Queen is still the source of legislation: statutes are enacted by Her Most Excellent Majesty. The judges of the High Court are her judges, and derive their authority from her commission. She is the head of the Army and Navy: we speak of the troops as Her Majesty's troops, of the fleet as Her Majesty's fleet. She is, in virtue of her ecclesiastical supremacy, the ultimate arbiter in causes, whether of faith or morals, within the National Church; and her decisions of them, given upon the advice of her Privy Council, are irreformable. I merely note this point in passing. I go on to remark that the whole history of the progressive races of the world is a moving away, ever farther and farther, from the patriarchal state.

1 Dissertations on Early Law and Custom, p. 163. 2 Ibid. p. 38.

The unit of archaic society is not the man, but the family. The individual, as we conceive of him, has been slowly developed during thousands of years. Human history may be not improperly regarded as the history of his evolution.

History, then, shows us the family as the origin of the State, and traces how it developed from that rudimentary or embryonic monarchy, into the varied and complex forms in which it now exists. And if we ask why it is that men live gregariously, and not in isolation, the answer is that in so doing they merely obey a law of their being. That is the true account of the families of the earth. The extra social man of whom Rousseau fabled, is not man at all. Such a being, Aristotle rightly judged, would be either a wild beast or a god. Unus homo, nullus homo. It may be sometimes necessary, for the purposes of argument, to abstract man from the society which is his normal condition. But, as a matter of fact, he is found only in society. He is, in the Aristotelian phrase just now quoted, "a political animal.” Here, and not in the theories of contract, of force, of divine right, of utility, is the true explanation of the why of the State. I am far from denying that in those theories there are elements of truth. I suppose no one now believes that human society is the outcome of a social contract. Probably Rousseau himself did not believe it. Mani

festly a contract presupposes the State, not the State a contract. Without the coercive power of the State, an agreement would not possess the binding force of a contract; it would be merely a nude pact. But we may say, in the language of the jurisprudents, that the obligation of obeying the laws regarding things in themselves indifferent, arises quasi ex contractu, or from what we may call a virtual contract. Again: no doubt force is an essential element in every regimen. But it is curious that any thoughtful person should have found in it the sufficient explanation of government. Every polity, however rude, requires the ideas of right, and of law for the maintenance of right. Might, without these ideas, would not give rise to gang of robbers; to

a commonwealth, but to a anarchy plus the sword. Once more. Utility is, doubtless, a conspicuous note of civil polity. For civil polity is an instrument of incalculable good to the human race. It is a condition and a means of man's progress, both material and ethical. This is the sufficient justification of the State. But it is no more than that.

And the authors of the American Declaration of Independence greatly erred when they pronounced it "self-evident" that "Governments are instituted among men to secure certain inalienable rights." That is the effect of governments, doubtless. It is not the reason which causally determined their institution. Lastly: there is a sense in which

divine right may be truly predicated of the State: not the absurd sense admirably ridiculed by Pope, of "the right divine of kings to govern wrong, whether the king be a single or a multitudinous despot; but this, that civil society is natural to man, and so may, and must, be regarded by all theists as instituted by the Author of Nature. And now let us look more closely at the matter.

Man is by no means the only animal that lives in community. Not to multiply instances, bees and ants display an instinct analogous to that which gives rise to human commonwealths. What is the essential difference between human society and animal society? To answer that question we must ask another: What is the essential difference between men and animals? It is a question of psychology, of what is called-I know not whether very happily-comparative psychology. The lower animals unquestionably exhibit many of man's psychical powers. As unquestionably, they are deficient in others. They have a kind of self-consciousness, a kind of volition, a certain feeling of causation, and of the adaption of means to ends; they are endowed with appetites, desires, emotions; they can form mental images, or phantasmata, and can associate them. But all these things belong to the sensitive faculty. Can we, without absurdity, ascribe to them acts of our intellectual faculty? The ancients explained

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intellect as intus legens; and the explanation undoubtedly indicates a great truth, whatever we may think of the etymology. Consider for a moment what human knowledge really implies. And here I may be permitted to repeat words which I have written elsewhere, as I do not know how to better them, though, for my present purpose, I shall a little compress them.

ence.

The

The images presented to our intellect by the eye, the ear, the touch-Aristotle and the schoolmen after him called them phantasmata-are the direct results of sensuous experiBut knowledge means something more than that. We may go on-we do go on-to the reflex act of subjecting those phantasmata to the judging faculty. Passive sensation does not constitute knowledge, in the true sense. instrument of knowledge is thought (quo cognoscimus). Knowledge (quod cognoscitur) is what is gained by thought. There is a perception of sense which is concerned with the material, the extended, the corporeal. There is an analytical interpretation of that perception, an intellectual appropriation of it (das Bewusstwerden) which has to do with the immaterial, the unextended, the uncorporeal. The two are often confused. But there is no great difficulty in distinguishing them. Let us picture to ourselves the intellect at its actual contact with the presentments of sense. I take into my hand a stone. I am directly conscious of it as an otherness, a non-self. Feeling proper (sensation) reveals to me so much. And I proceed-this is the next step-to interpret the sensation intellectually, to cognise the stone as hard and heavy. Thus does the thinking subject respond to the stimulating object, and convert the feeling into a felt thing. Here is something more than sensation; here is an interior expression of sensation formulated in words; here is intellection. Surely, so much is clear. But we may advance yet a step further. From the cognition of the stone as hard and heavy, we may, by comparison and abstrac