THE NATION. CHAPTER I. THE SUBSTANCE OF THE NATION. THE premise of political speculation has been the assumption of the existence of man apart from the state. It has portrayed an age when the conflict of right and wrong was unknown: there was in the lives of men no care, nor toil, nor endeavor; there was neither chief nor law, neither soldier nor battle; there was no judge nor police, no plaintiff or defendant; there was neither marriage nor homes; property was unrecognized, no boundaries of land were traced, and the ample gifts of the earth were held by all in common; the individual existed in the fullness of all his powers, while yet, as in the traditional, and the ancients say derisive, line of Homer,1 "No tribe, nor state, nor home hath he." 1 This imaginary state is drawn by the old counselor, in the Tempest: "Gon.-I would by contraries Execute all things; for no kind of traffic No occupation; all men idle, all; And women too, but innocent and pure; No sovereignty. All things in common nature should produce But this scene, as it is traced in political speculation, soon closed, its course was interrupted and disturbed; the impulses of men arousing, brought them in collision; strong desires came to clash with each other; there was the necessity for toil, and the lives of men were harassed with care; there was division, and distrust was provoked; then some power was required to maintain the imperiled security, to punish fraud and restrain violence; and thus the state came into being; its origin was in necessity, and its form was that of a repressive force in the institution of an external order. The same premise, in the assumption of the contrasted picture, has represented the primitive condition as characterized by every evil. It was a constant warfare; fear and self-interest directed human action; the grasp of avarice brooked no limit; hatred was the habitude of men; tumult and violence alone prevailed. Then it is conceived that the state came into being, as an evil also, but slighter and sooner to be borne than those which existed apart from it, and as before in the form of a repressive force. These imaginary pictures divest man of the actual circumstance and the actual relations of life. They are only abstractions. There is no trace of the natural man, and of the primitive age which they portray. They are assumed as the necessary material out of which to construct the Of its own kind, all foison, all abundance, To feed my innocent people. "Seb. No marrying 'mong his subjects? "Ant. —None, man; all idle: whores and knaves." The Tempest, act ii. sc. 1. In contrast to this, Shakespeare has represented the actual condition of man apart from society, in the Caliban. This condition is not ascertained from the fragmentary traces of savage life, for in the lowest stage of the actual condition of man, there is the recognition of some relations, some principles of association, and some authority, in the will of a chief or the sanction of custom. The most exact representation of this condition is thus in some assumed character, as the Caliban. artificial systems of political schools. They have no foundation in the nature, or in the history of man. The position of Aristotle is the necessary postulate of political science, "Man is by nature a political being.' The elements of the nation are in his nature, and its progress is in the development of his nature. The earliest and the widest records of his existence disclose a condition in which there is the recognition of some common relation, and men appear as dependent upon each other, and as seeking association with each other; they make sacrifices for it, and accept obligations in it. The nation has its foundations laid in the nature of man. It is the normal condition of human existence. There is in it, as the organization of human society, the manifestation of human nature. The nature of man, apart from the nation, is unfulfilled; and in the individual, in his isolation, the destination of humanity is unrealized; the old words are verified, unus homo, nullus homo. The nation, therefore, is not to be regarded as an artifice which man has devised, nor as an expedient suggested by circumstance, to secure certain special and temporary ends. It has other ground and other elements. It is often described as a contrivance of human skill, and government as the cunning or clumsy device for the accomplishment of certain objects in certain transient periods. A recent writer, identifying government with the nation, says it is it is "a machine for applying certain principles," etc.; but even as an illustration, this conveys a misconception. The machine, when it is made, is apart from the maker, and complete in itself, and separate from the power which impels it; but the nation never exists as a complete construction, and always is in identity with the people. The nation, moreover, cannot be moved as a machine, but has in itself thought and will and power to do or not to do, and capacity to suffer or rejoice. The nation exists, only as men are lifted out of a mechanical existence; in it there is the assertion of their determination, and their free endeavor. And man does not owe the conception of the nation to the genius of an individual, nor is it the invention of a separate age. The highest ingenuity could not have compassed it, and it is not to be counted among the achievements of human wisdom. The machine also wears out, with time and use, when another is made in its stead; but it is not thus with states, and there is no law of physical necessity which thus limits them. This representation of the nation as a mechanism - the work of human craftsmen - is the root of the confusion which appears in the definition of man's savage or rude condition as the "natural state," and the emergence from it into civilization, as the "artificial state." It is the distinction, on the assumption of which so many social schemes and such vast social theories of natural and artificial society have been built. The law of Aristotle has here its application in political science, "The nature of that which is, is to be ascertained from its mature condition; " not in its germ, nor yet in its decay, but in its fullness and its perfectness do we discern the true nature of a thing; or, what every being is in its perfect condition, that certainly is the nature of that being.1 1 Aristotle's Politics, bk. i. ch. 2. R. von Mohl, in one of his later works, represents the state as only one in the successive spheres of human life which he enumerates as the sphere of the individual, of the family, of the race, of society, of the state, and of the association of states in their international relation. The special characteristic of this description is the distinction of society and the state; the former is described as the common, yet the unorganized and the unformed life of man. But this distinction has no justification, and in it society in itself is undefined, and every trait which is drawn to give to it a positive substance and form is derived from what is represented as another sphere - either that of the individual, or of the state. When it is further said that there is a law and rights belonging to society, as apart from the state, which yet have the character of neither national nor common law, and of neither political nor civil rights, the absence of all ground for the distinction becomes still more apparent, for law and rights presume an organic life and an organized society. R. von Mohl, Encyklopadie der Staatswissenschaften, p. 17. See also Bluntschli's Geschichte, p. 616. The nation is a relationship. They who exist in it are not held only by some external force, and are not bound only by some formal law. In the sketches given of existence apart from society, the state was represented as if men entered it from a condition of individual isolation, and as itself the resultant of their individual accession. This isolation is unreal; it is the atomy of the state, which regards it as the collection of so many units. It is a premise which is devised to sustain political systems and political abstractions. The isolation of men presumes a conception which is inhuman, and it is not in its separation but in its relations that humanity is comprehended. If, moreover, this isolation be allowed, it does not furnish the elements out of which the state can be formed, and it can suggest no law in which the transition to the state may be made. The origin of the state is not in some speculative theory nor in some formal scheme. The entrance to it is not through a reflective process, nor by an act of individual volition. It has the characteristic of all relationships, in that it has not its beginning in a reflective or a voluntary act, while in it the individual is conscious of existence as a person. It is not, in its normal course, out of a condition which is external that men enter the nation, but they are born in it, and it has the natural condition of relationship. The recognition of its law, and the obedience to its authority, is not then conditioned upon the arbitrary choice of those who constitute it, but in reference to it the arbitrary action of the individual is precluded. It is a common relationship, and there are none exempt from its conditions, and none in the nation can make their lives to be as if it had not been. There are none unaffected by it, but each is involved in every moment of its existence. In the politics of Aristotle, human relationships — the |