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Social Harmonism; Human Rights Under Functional Government [By I'll I SOCIAL HARMONISM Human Rights Under Functional Government HOLMES W. MERTON PUBLISHED BY HOLMES W. MERTON New York City Generated for deveneyjp (University of Chicago) on 2015-12-16 13:39 GMT / http://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hxpifl / GMT 13:39 2015-12-16 on Chicago) of (University deveneyjp for Generated http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-google / Google-digitized Domain, Public CANCCLLLD FROM BAKER LIBRARY 5366 \ Copyright. 1914 International Copyright. 1914 By Holmes W. Merton Generated for deveneyjp (University of Chicago) on 2015-12-16 13:39 GMT / http://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hxpifl / GMT 13:39 2015-12-16 on Chicago) of (University deveneyjp for Generated http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-google / Google-digitized Domain, Public CONTENTS / PAGE Pbeliminabt Subvey 6 CONCERNING LIFE UNDER MIS-REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. The Criterion of Government 17 Progress and the Emotions 43 Mental Servitude 49 Concerning Majorities 63 Executives and the Judiciary 75 Vocation Representation 85 Ownership : Rent : Interest 91 CONCERNING LIFE UNDER REAL REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. Functional Representation Ill Department op Science— The Law of Logic 125 Department of Industry— The Law of Industry 141 Department of Wealth — The Law of Ownership 167 Department of Arts— The Law of Perception 191 Department of Letters —The Law of Memory 205 Department of Culture— The Law of Progress 21 7 Department of Marriage — The Law of Sexality 229 Department of Familism —The Law of Parentity 245 Department of Home — The Law of Bodily Wants 257 Department of Commerce —The Law of Distribution 267 Department of Rulership — The Law of Ranks 277 Department of Religion— The Law of Responses 287 The Transition Period 299 Generated for deveneyjp (University of Chicago) on 2015-12-16 13:39 GMT / http://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hxpifl / GMT 13:39 2015-12-16 on Chicago) of (University deveneyjp for Generated http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-google / Google-digitized Domain, Public Generated for deveneyjp (University of Chicago) on 2015-12-16 13:39 GMT / http://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hxpifl Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-google PRELIMINARY SURVEY An equitable, just government, a government which shall provide for the conscious personal secur ity of every individual who obeys the Law of Indus try, a government which shall make possible a har monious social and civil state is the great need of the age. In attempting to draft a plan of rational govern ment, what shall we' choose as the source of our laws? Where shall we seek a criterion, where a model, where a natural basis for a working govern ment? Or, to push the question to a finality, where may we expect to find the highest order of natural law? If such a basis were to be found in history, it would be ours to-day by inheritance ; if it were to be found in moral codes, it seems as if it would at least be generally discerned to-day ; if it were to be found ■ in past legislation, the present statutes would be its full-fledged descendants. Clearly, we must look for some source other than history, moral codes or human statutes for a basis of rational government. Led by "conservative" thought and selfish power, the race has always been enamored of old laws. Most of these old common and statutory laws are low laws arising from the low natural laws of man's nature. Their operative results have been selfish aggrandizement for the party in power, for the man in control, and for the elements of society in control. 5 Generated for deveneyjp (University of Chicago) on 2015-12-16 13:39 GMT / http://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hxpifl / GMT 13:39 2015-12-16 on Chicago) of (University deveneyjp for Generated http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-google / Google-digitized Domain, Public 6 SOCIAL HARMONISM We inherited old English Common Laws, and in general we cling to them —virtues, faults and all. Here and there, we have changed their forms or their intensity. We do not have capital punishment for some two hundred crimes, and land-owners and titled aristocrats do not have private hangings for the edification and the advancement of the morals of the poachers, the sheep stealers and the populace, as was the English custom some three hundred years ago. Our present governing low laws, with some slight modifications from century to century, are ours by a series of race inheritances ; directly from the English, who inherited most of them from the Normans and Romans, and these races in turn had inherited their laws from the Greeks, Egyptians, Aryans and Mon golians back through the ages. In past ages those who had power, financial or hereditary, sought to restrain progress, to deny the slowly rising expression of the more educated masses of mankind that sought legal or constitutional ad vance or the right to representation. The same autocratic, reactionary tactics are to-day employed by the "safe" and satisfied "few," who are in the financial governmental saddle and ride mankind. Moreover, they are ready with many spe cious reasons why better laws than those that are now operative cannot be discovered. One of these reasons being that the race has reached such a stage of advancement that to discover new social laws would be impossible! And a plan of government, never ! We are told that plans of government evolve ! That they spring out of human nature by accident! It is implied that social laws spring out of a sub Generated for deveneyjp (University of Chicago) on 2015-12-16 13:39 GMT / http://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hxpifl / GMT 13:39 2015-12-16 on Chicago) of (University deveneyjp for Generated http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-google / Google-digitized Domain, Public PRELIMINARY SURVEY 7 consciousness of nowhere, and have no prototype, no go-before except the mistakes of the past. But a spirit of a new and better day is manifest. Slight advancements in government, and in civil and social life have been forced, again and again, throughout the ages, by a mass of men when some shock has caused them rudely to realize that some old right had been grossly abused. Such widely aroused emotions generally culminated in destructive personal ambitions, rebellion and disastrous wars. The race has, however, reached that stage of men tal development where a large number of men and women are demanding that advance shall no longer be marked by bloodshed or by disrupting forces ; they demand that advancing changes must be the product of rational legislation, of adjudicated equities, of normal life and of harmonizing conditions. The age is here when something vastly better than the prevailing laws and the business "systems" must come as the order of social and industrial life, if we are to advance, nay, if even the good of to-day which the mass of men can claim is to endure. Again we ask, where shall we look for a basis of rational government? Where, but in the mentality of man himself ; that is, in the nature of the highest types of men. In "The Coming Race" Bulwer Lytton tried to imagine a race without the knowledge of evil ways or of the old order of human life. He tried to describe the life and social forms of such a supposi titious race. But his system of social life, like many another, was improbable and impossible. History and ethics were his supreme guides. He did not seem to realize that moral generalities are not competent Generated for deveneyjp (University of Chicago) on 2015-12-16 13:39 GMT / http://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hxpifl / GMT 13:39 2015-12-16 on Chicago) of (University deveneyjp for Generated http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-google / Google-digitized Domain, Public 8 SOCIAL HARMONISM criteria for government, or that history is not predic tive. History, always looking backward, represents the average mind of the past with, here and there, an exceptional mind whose power, or influence, has generally been minimized by the lethargy or oppo sition of the great majority of minds. Lytton failed to present a workable constitution of government because he did not understand the mental constitu tion of man, and the natural laws arising therefrom. It is almost inconceivable that rulers and legisla tors have seldom tried to find a natural basis for new and better laws, that they have never comprehended the one organic basis for equitable higher laws which shall give man's complex being complete representa tion. Out of every mental function there arises .a great natural law whose operations are the source of a series of natural needs and wants; those needs and wants are, in turn, the origin of a series of normal pleasures. These mental functions, their natural laws, and their operative results are the only organic basis of a rational form of government. A natural law is the uniform method of action of any part of nature —from the Solar System to the minutest organ of microscopic life. A natural law is inherent and is self-operative ; for instance, the law of capillary attraction which causes the sap to rise from the deep underground roots of trees to the topmost leaves. All the natural laws of human life inhere in man's nature —natural laws of his physical body, natural laws of the different parts of his mentality. Through out this book the words, natural laws, will refer only Generated for deveneyjp (University of Chicago) on 2015-12-16 13:39 GMT / http://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hxpifl / GMT 13:39 2015-12-16 on Chicago) of (University deveneyjp for Generated http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-google / Google-digitized Domain, Public PRELIMINARY SURVEY 9 to the natural laws of his mentality unless otherwise specified.
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