It was the passion for power that led to the first social groupings and
developed the social instincts. Our varied sympathies, our parental and
filial impulses, our heroisms and generosities, all go back to social
habits born of individual needs. “Since fear of solitude exists in all
men, because no one in solitude is strong enough to defend himself and
procure the necessaries of life, it follows that men by nature tend
towards social organization.”[106] “Let satirists scoff at human affairs
as much as they please, let theologians denounce them, and let the
melancholy, despising men and admiring brutes, praise as much as they
can a life rude and without refinement,--men will nevertheless find out
that by mutual help they can much more easily procure the things they
need, and that it is only by their united strength that they can avoid
the dangers which everywhere threaten them.”[107] _Nihil homine homini
utilius._ Men discover that they are useful to one another, and that
mutual profit from social organization increases as intelligence grows.
In a “state of nature”--that is, before social organization--each man
has a “natural right” to do all that he is strong enough to do; in
society he yields part of this sovereignty to the communal organization,
because he finds that this concession, universalized, increases his
strength. The fear of solitude, and not any positive love of fellowship,
is the prime force in the origin of society. Man does not join in social
organization because he has social instincts; he develops such instincts
as the result of joining in such organization.
VIII
Freedom and Order
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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