SOCIALISM IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY.

SOCIAL problems are now everywhere discussed, and with a zeal and earnestness, combined with a seriousness of purpose, which proves that they are regarded as having an importance above almost any other problems which come before us. They are regarded not only with a speculative interest, which calls out the largest intellectual enthusiasm of the time, but the discussion has a practical purpose in view, and aims at the regeneration of society. Our generation feels that society can be improved, and that the means for its improvement are within our reach, and should be applied by us.

The interest and zeal which were once given to speculative questions in theology have been diverted to the problems of social organization and reform. In a measure this results because religion aims at a practical influence on the life which now is, and seeks to infuse into it the spirit of whatever practical considerations religion has to offer mankind. Such a prophet of social regeneration as Mr. Bellamy, in his "Looking Backward," appeals to very much the same considerations which have in all ages made the great religious reformers successful in dealing with the present hopes and desires of men.

The word socialism and that for which it stands are of very recent origin; they belong to the present generation. Recent as is the origin of socialism as a theory of society, it has come to have a most significant relation to social problems of every kind. This has been shown most emphatically in the great success of "Looking Backward," in the eagerness with which it is read and its theories accepted. What the author stumbled upon in the dark, according to his own statement, has been accepted with enthusiasm and unbounded confidence. It has already become a cult, a propagandi, and by some it has been accepted as a religion. It does not follow from this fact that the socialism of Mr. Bellamy is to take the place of every other form of political organization, only that the thoughts of men are turned to social reform and to the need of a new order of social organization. The dreams of men are now of this kind, their desires run this way, and their convictions of what ought to be make them wish for a better humanity, and a humanity which can be secured by some form of socialism.

It is characteristic of such prophets as Mr. Bellamy that they

ignore the past and the lessons of history; they think only of what is present, and of what ought to be. They see the evils which beset mankind, and they wish to get rid of those evils. They give little heed as to how the evils came into existence, or as to how society itself came to be what it is. This is something outside the trend of their thoughts, and something which they evidently think has no relation to the making of society better. To more studious minds, and to minds less given to dreaming, it is of great importance that mankind has had a history, and that order and law run through it from beginning to end. Society is not merely a play of individual forces or a shuttlecock of haphazard influences; but it is in a true sense an organism, every part of which has relation to every other part. The origin and growth of that organism can be explained by evolution, and by evolution alone. Society is not what it is as the result of chance, but as the result of all the past of mankind, and as the result of mighty forces of growth, order, law, and ideal aspiration, which have ever been at work in it.

man.

The greatest of all influences which has ever worked in human society, to produce change and progress, has been the individual What could not have been brought about in any other way, has been accomplished by the individual force of such men as the Apostle Paul, Hildebrand, Dante, or Napoleon Bonaparte. Outside the influence of such individual and unique men, men whose coming cannot be anticipated or their influence explained on any other grounds than their own individuality, we have no methods of progress except such as may be defined by the student of the social organism. When we would get rid of what is evil in society the clearest and most direct way to do it is to work in harmony with the laws of social growth.

How has society come to be what it is? What are the laws of its growth? If we can discover by the study of the past how social changes have been brought about in other times and countries, we shall have a clearer conception of how we ought to proceed to secure a better social organization at the present time. History is always fruitful in suggestions concerning present problems; and the man who knows his history best is the man who has the clearest conception of what is the best solution of any urgent problem in the politics of to-day. The men among the founders of our Republic who had read history the most diligently were the men who did the most to shape its institutions, and to give them a character of fitness and stability.

It is now one of the most thoroughly established of historical conclusions, that society as we know it, that the State and all which belongs to it, including the Church and the School, began with the family. The family was the primary cell of the social organism; and through its differentiation, its expansion, every other form of social life has come into being. What existed before the family we cannot tell from history; but at the earliest period of our knowledge of mankind, from any kind of authentic record, the patriarchal family was the only form of social organization. Of this form of primitive life we do not know by the means of written records, or even from monuments, but from the evidence afforded by the study of words, and from the evidence of this primitive life imbedded in later institutions and forms of thought.

The history of the Aryan race has been traced back by scholars to a time when our forefathers lived in northern India, thousands of years ago. They describe for us the life of that far-off people, tell us how they lived, what they thought, and how they were organized socially. They tell us that these were an active people, restless with energy, and that some of them pushed away from the old home to settle in central and southern India; and traces of their life yet remain stamped upon the institutions and the religion of that country. Others of them migrated into Persia, and gave origin to the long record of empire and religion which that country affords. Other great migrations pushed farther west, wave on wave, founding countries, developing arts, literatures, and sciences, and laying the foundations of the greater part of the civilization and authentic history of the world. Out of these old Aryan migrations came the peoples of ancient Greece, Rome, and Germany, and of all the countries of Western Europe in modern times, which have sprung from them. Along this line of advancing life, from ancient India, through Persia, Greece, Rome, Germany, England, down to our own day and country, we can trace, step by step, the growth of the patriarchal family, into all the forms of social organization which these many thousands of years afford.

The Aryan people, when we first know of them and for a long time after, lived under a form of socialism, and knew no other kind of institutional life. How they came to outgrow this primitive socialism, because it was no longer fitted to their needs, because it was not expansive enough to permit of progress and the higher forms of civilization, is contained in one of the most

interesting of historic records; and none can have more of profit concerning the problems which are pressing upon us at this moment for solution.

The patriarchal family, as it is described by Sir Henry Maine, in his "Early History of Institutions," and in his "Village Communities in the East and West"; by Mr. William E. Hearn, in his "Aryan Household"; and by M. Fustel de Coulanges, in his "Ancient City," is very simple in character. The father retains his authority over his household so long as he lives, and over every child born into it. The family does not divide when the children come to maturity, but it holds together as one community, living in one common family, in one house or village, and having all things in common. When the sons of this family marry, the wives become integral parts of the family; into the family strangers are adopted by a solemn process, which makes them in the eyes of the family as if they had been born into it; and the children born of the members of the family have to be initiated by binding rites of a most sacred character. In this family there is no individual life apart from the community; no one can act for or by himself. The house, the cattle, the farm implements or the implements of the chase, and the land for tillage, pasturage, or for wood, belong to the family. In fact, here at the beginning of human society we find the most perfect form of socialism of which the world has known or of which it has dreamed.

It is just to call the patriarchal family a socialistic institution, because its members lived in one house or community, and because the possessions of the community belonged to it as a corporate body, and not to its individual members. The patriarchal family was much more than a family in the present sense of the word, for it included every human interest then known to men. The father of the family was its king and priest and judge; the heads of each branch of the united family formed a council for the management of its practical affairs, and the labors of the family, of every kind, were carried on by the united efforts of its members. On the hearth of the household a fire was ever kept burning, as a perpetual offering to its dead members, who were worshiped as the gods of the family. The uniting bond of this family life was religion, the sacredness of the family tie as watched over by the household spirits, and the worship offered around the common hearth to the family ancestors, and especially to its founder or first father. The oldest member of the family,

the living house-father, every day prayed to the household spirits and made offerings to them; and no act of the family life could take place without the sanction of its ancestral gods or guardian spirits. Birth, marriage, war, peace, the chase, tillage, death, were all under the oversight of the household spirits; and they gave authority and made sacred every deed of the community.

The primitive family was a corporate organization, held together by the most binding sanctions and obligations of religion, and by the closest ties of family interest and affection. The father had over the household the power of life and death; in his hands belonged all the other members of the family, and they could do nothing without his permission; and yet the housefather, who was at once the community chieftain and priest, could do nothing save through the corporate sanctions given him by the household of which he was the head. He did nothing as chief or as priest, acting simply as an individual; his every act in these official capacities had to be sanctioned by the corporate spirit of the community. When he spoke, it was the voice of the community which spoke through him; when he acted, it was the power of the community put in motion.

In this primitive family-community the land belonged to the household. It could not be alienated, it could not be sold, it could not be devised to another by will. Only at a much later period in social development was such a thing as a will known, for the individual had nothing which he could give to an individual descendant. Absolute as was in some respects the power of the father, he could not dispose in any way whatever of the land of the community. The land was a part of the life of the family, necessary to its perpetuity in the full sense, and every member of the family shared in it by absolute right. Most sacred did the primitive family hold its relations to its land and its other possessions, because the land held the family tomb, to it the most sacred of all spots on earth, for its life as a family, and its happiness hereafter, depended on the solemn continuance of the family connection with the house spirits. When the family tomb was alienated, the house spirits deserted the family, and without its gods of the hearth and the tomb the family was utterly bereft. The other property of the family also had its sacred relations to its life, because it helped to furnish the means by which the worship of the household spirits was preserved with sacred fidelity.

In the primitive family there was a most perfect community of interests. In the earliest time all the labors of the community