SOCIETY
75
SOCIETY
the common purpose is immoral. They also fall un-
der the restrictions of the civil law, when the existence
or action of such an organization comes to have a
bearing, whether of promise or of menace, upon the
common weal. In such case the State lays down its
essential requirements for the formation of such
bodies, and so we come to have what is known as a
legal .society, a society, namely, freely established
under the sanction and according to the requirements
of the civil law. Such are mercantile corporations
and beneficial organizations with civil charter.
Natural Societies. — Standing apart from, the foregoing in a cliiss by themselves are the family, the ■ State, and the Church. That these differ from all other societies in purpose and means, is clear and universally admitted. That they have a general ap- plication to the whole human race, history declares. That there is a difference between the bond holding them in existence and the bond of union in every other society, has been disputed — with more enthusiasm and imagination, however, than logical force. The logical view of the matter brings us to the concept of a natural society, a society, that is to say, which men are in general under a mandate of the natural law to establish, a society by consequence whose essential requisites are firmly fixed by the same natural law To get at this is simple enough, if the philosophical problems are taken up in due order. Ethics may not be divided from psychology and theodicy, any more than from deductive logic. With the proper pre- misals then from one and the other here assumed, we say that the Creator could not have given man a fixed nature, as He has. witliout willing man to work out the pm-pose for which that nature is framed. He can- not act idl.y and without purpose, cannot form His creature discordantly with the purpose of His will. He cannot multiply men on the face of the earth with- out a plan for working out the destiny of mankind at large. This plan must contain all the eleinenis necessary to His purpose, and these necessary details He must have willed man freely to accomplish, that is to say. He must have put upon man a strict obliga- tion thereunto. Other details may be alternatives, or helpful but not necessary, and these He has left to man's free choice; though where one of these ele- ments would of its nature be far more helpful than another, God's counsel to man will be in favoiu- of the former. God's will directing man through his nature to his share in the full purpose of the cosmic plan, we know as the natural law, containing precept, permis- sion, and counsel, according to the necessity, help- fulness, or extraordinary value of an action to the achievement of the Divine purpose. We recognize these in the concrete by a rational study of the essen- tial characteristics of human nature and its relations with the rest of the universe. If we find a natural aptitude in man for an action, not at variance with the general purpose of things, we recognize also the licence of the natural law to that action. If we find a more urgent natural propensity to it, we recognize further the counsel of the law. If we find the use of a natural faculty, the following up of a natural pro- pensity, inseparable from the rational fulfilment of the ultimate destiny of the individual or of the human race, we know that thereon lies a mandate of the natural law, obliging the conscience of man. We must not, however, miss the difference, that if the need of the action or effort is for the individual natural destiny, the mandate lies on each human being sever- ally: but if the need be for the natural destiny of the race, the precept does not descend to this or that par- ticular inrlividual. so long as the necessary bulk of men accomplish the detail so intended in the plan for the natural destiny of the race. This is abstract rea- soning, but necessary for the understanding of a natural society in the fulness of its idea. A Society Natural by Mandate. — A society,
then, is natural by mandate, when the law of nature
sets the precept upon mankind to establish that
society. The precept is recognized by the natural
aptitude, propensity, and need in men for the estab-
lishment of such a union. From this point of view
the gift of speech alone is sufficient to show man's
aptitude for fellowship with his kind. It is empha-
sized by his manifold perfectibility through contact
with others and through then- permanent companion-
ship. Furthermore his normal shrinking from soli-
tude, from working out the problems of life alone,
is evidence of a social propensity to which mankind
has always j'ielded. If again we consider his depen-
dence for existence and comfort on the multiplied
products of co-ordinate human effort; and his de-
pendence for the development of his physical, intel-
lectual, and moral perfectibility on complex intercourse
with others, we see a need, in view of man's ultimate
destiny, that makes the actualization of man's ca-
pacity of organized social co-operation a stringent law
upon mankind. Taking then the kinds of social
organization universally existent among men, it is
plain not only that they are the result of natural
propensities, but that, as analysis shows, they are a
human need and hence are prescribed in the code of
the Natiual Law.
A Society Natural in Essentials. — Further- more, as we understand a legal contract to be one which, because of its abutment on common interests, the civil law hedges round with restrictions and reser- vations for their protection, similarly on examination we shall find that all agreements by which men enter into stable social union are fenced in with limitations set by the natural law guarding the essential interests of the good of mankind. When, moreover, we come to social unions prescribed for mankind by mandate of that law, we expect to find the purpose of the union set by the law (otherwise the law would not have pre- scribed the union), all the details morally necessary for the rational attainment of that purpose fixed by the law, and all obstacles threatening sure defeat to that purpose, proscribed by the same. A natural society, then, besides being natural by mandate, will also be natural in all its essentials, for as much as these too shall be determined and ordained by the law.
The Fa.mily a Natural Society. — Working along these lines upon the data given by experience, per- sonal as well as through the proxy of history, the philosopher finds in man's nature, considered physio- logically and psychologicall}', the aptitude, propensity, and, both as a general thing and for mankind at large, the need of the matrimonial relation. Seeing the natm-al and needful purpose to which this relation shapes itself to be in full the mutually perfecting com- pensation of common life between man and woman, as well as the procreation and education of the child, and keeping in mind that Nature's Lawgiver has in view the rational development of the race (or human nature at large) as well as of the individual, we con- clude not only to abiding rational love as its distin- guishing characteristic, but to monogamy and a stability that is exclusive of absolute divorce. This gives us the essential requisites of domestic society, a stable union of man and wife bound together to work for a fixed common good to themselves and humanity. When this company is filled out with children and its incidental complement of household servants, we have domestic society in its fullness. It is created under mandate of the natural law, for though this or that individual may safely eschew matrimony for some good purjjose, mankind may not. The individual in exception need not be concerned about the purpose of the Lawgiver, a-s human nature is so constituted that mankind will not fail of its ful- filment. The eflicient cause of this domestic union in the concrete instance is the free consent of the initial couple, but the character of the juridical bond
