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��THE ORGAKIC BASIS OF LAW.
��THE OBOANIC BASIS OF LAW.
��BY C. C. LORD.
��There is a story told of a miner who, laboring in a gold region, found a nug- get of prodigious size — so huge it was impossible for him to move it by his own unaided strength. A model of selfish- ness, he sat down by his treasure, stead- ily refusing all assistance from those of- fering, for the consideration of a share in the proceeds, to help him carry his prop- erty where its value could be made ac- tually available. At length, after pro- tracted watching, the demands of hunger became so urgent that he was constrained to offer one-half of his prize to any one who would bring him but a single plate of beans — a wealth of gold for a morsel of cheap food.
Law is the formula of human necessi- ties. Its written and its rational embod- iments are but the formulated express- ions of the organic law implied in con- stitutional human nature. The more this principle is ignored in its collective aspects, the more severe is its reaction upon the individual consciousness.
Organized society is a design for the easier fulfillment of the law of human necessities. The greater the degree in which the social design is effected with- out the assertion ot the abstract con- sciousness of the individual, the greater is the popular sense of privilege; the greater the degree in which the arroga- tion of abstract individuality prevails in society, the greater is the sense of public misfortune.
The organic basis of law suggests its inevitableness. Law cannot be escaped. This suggestion is profitable for the con- sideration of any aspiring to a realization of a state of lawlessness. Defiance of the forms and symbols of legally organ- ized society will not displace law ; it will only substitute civilized socialism by barbaric absolutism — the easier and more substantial for the harder and less sub-
��stantial appeal of law. Herein is defined the principle that, working in the con- stitutional fabric of human society, has made every past communistic enterprise degenerate and die in the wrangle of self- centered, individual interests. The pro- cesses of this degeneration and death are so revolting and painful, their bare con- templation affords all necessary instruc- tion in regard to their true character.
The necessity implied in the existence of law determines the extreme tempora- riness of all attempts at establishing and furthering an illegal status. It becomes us to contemplate the method of social restoration. This, too, is only an ex- pression of the law of necessity. Inher- ent social adaptation creates a demand for adequate social supplies. The prodigal, who, taking his own portion of goods, leaves his father's house, to do business solely in the fulfillment of an accounta- bility to individual selfhood, comes back again, starving, in rags and tatters. Here- in is also involved an emphatically ap- propriate reflection. The returning so- cial prodigal is even cravenly submissive to the. active formulas of collective hu- man life; having tasted the delusive sweets of abstract individualism, he pleads of rationally constituted society, " Make me as one of thy hired servants." If society would avoid a bigoted aristoc- racy, let it first beware of a licensed de- mocracy.
The organic law of society cannot be rescinded ; the attitude of human indi- vidual consciousness determines its en- franchising or enslaving character. The dual capacity of legal administration is illustrated by the difference between true manhood and real childhood, in that true manhood accepts voluntarily, and in part at least unconsciously, that to which real childhood submits only by constraint. True manhood is in a state of liberty ;
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