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NEW ENGLAND

MAGAZINE

VOL. LII

T

SEPTEMBER, 1914

NUMBER I

FROM PRIMITIVE TO MODERN SELF-
GOVERNMENT

HERE is probably no part of the

world where some degree of selfgovernment may not be found. The primitive social entity, the family, is everywhere self-governing. It follows its own customs as it wills, and it regulates the conduct of its minors under an absolutism that, as a rule, effectively meets the ends for which the family was created. Self-government in this form is conducted without any interference from higher authority except in the case of flagrant abuse, or when internal disturbance mars ternal peace. As a rule, however, this petty four-walled state exercises unquestioned jurisdiction within territory inviolate.

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It seems curious that in the next higher grade of social organization we should find uncivilized man exhibiting a strikingly effective form of self-government. With the better class of savages the community is a pure democracy. With no elaborate paraphernalia of ballot and of formal elections, and without enacted laws, the community governs itself without conscious effort. The process is a sort of instinctive automatism, not unlike that which regulates the collective life of gregarious animals: beavers, prairiedogs, bees and ants. In the conduct of affairs public opinion asserts itself according to an intuitive sense of right and of justice. This, of course, so far as it goes, represents an ideal political condition-a paradise that has been

lost to us in the maze of the intricate strivings, the multitudinous achievements and the manifold contentions thereover, necessarily attendant upon civilized progress.

If this progress means anything it cannot mean that it must carry us ever farther and farther away from the primitive ideal. Though our modern civilization is of increasingly complex growth it may not well go on indefinitely under conditions that make such complexity an ever waxing burden. The load would at last grow too heavy; civilization would perforce perish from the incubus of its own accretions. It will not do for the greater part of the energies of civilized man forever to be devoted to the mechanism of government-regulating, policing, punishing, and otherwise protecting the individual in his rights and against the aggressions of his fellows-until little time or strength is left either to achieve or enjoy the fruits of our advanced development. It would be much like possessing a library so fine and so extensive that the task of properly, caring for it left us no time to enjoy its contents. But the waste of energy that attends the care of creaking political machinery--worn out in some parts by the friction of over-use and in others by mal-adjustment-threatens the secure possession and profitable utilization of what civilization has gained for us.

The thoughtful student of affairs sees that the end and aim of civilization-if

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its immense achievements in science and industry are to be made abidingly worth while-must be the shaping of individual character to the requirements of an ideal State which shall assure freedom in the full enjoyment of all its blessings; a State in which all public functions shall be conducted under the smooth-running machinery of a perfected organism that gives the individual no more conscious concern than do the workings of the innumerable parts of his own healthy body. There seems no reason why this end should not ultimately be reached under the wisdom made potential by the vast store of knowledge accumulated in the course of civilization; a wisdom directed and applied by an enlightened sense of right, just as under the more limited conditions of the better savage state a like end is attained through the intuitive application of the knowledge represented in funds of accumulated experience and of traditions of right doing, guided by an innate sense of equity and of consideration for one's fellows.

Moreover, in the savage state every individual enjoys equally with his fellows all the benefits resident in the fact of social organization. In this respect that state stands far ahead of civilization in its present stages; even in its highest developments civilization has nothing like this to show. On the contrary, the fruits of civilization are enjoyed only by a comparatively few persons. The great mass remains excluded from its blessings, or at the best is accorded meager crumbs from the board so abundantly spread. The miserable are all the more wretched for the consciousness of better conditions about them. The degradation of of civilized men is far darker and more repellant than are similar moral and physical conditions upon correspond

ing planes of savagery, which mean retarded elevation rather than degradation. In this respect civilization in its present aspects has more kinship with the barbaric stage than with the free democracy of savagery. Barbarism, as in the native States of India, for example, accumulates the fruits of collective toil for the exclusive enjoyment of a few potentates who surround themselves with the evidences of fabulous wealth and revel in sensuous delights; the masses labor on in wretchedness and go the hopeless ways of famine and pestilence.

It is, however, in no pessimistic spirit that these statements are made. If civilization were to halt on its present levels, were to rest content with its present achievements and hold aloft no higher standards than those of material advantage that nowadays are so flauntingly displayed for the multitude's ambition-even as conquerors of new lands whetted the desires of their men with alluring presentments of golden cities awaiting pillage-then it well might be indicted as a failure. To this the freedom of a frank and intelligent savagery would be vastly preferable. But civilization has ideals and barbarism lacks them utterly. Barbarism is a completed phase; civilization represents an incomplete evolution. Civilization has carried along with it much of barbarism, and thus far has failed to eliminate the desires, the passions, the greeds, and the perverted motives of the latter. On every hand the spirit of barbarism finds expression among us in sentiment and in conduct-manifest in the spirit that scoffs at every effort to realize ideals commonly accepted. And in its fermentings civilization has precipitated great masses of humanity to the abasement of an inverted savagery, noisome and foul, to infest the slums

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