The State: Its History and Development Viewed SociologicallyOppenheimer, Franz
History
The State: Its History and Development Viewed Sociologically
Oppenheimer, Franz
State, The
We saw in the second stage, as set forth above, how the net of
psychical relations becomes ever tighter and closer enmeshed, as the
economic amalgamation advances. The two dialects become one language;
or one of the two, often of an entirely different stock from the other,
becomes extinct. This, in some cases, is the language of the victors,
but more frequently that of the vanquished. Both cults amalgamate to
one religion, in which the tribal god of the conquerors is adored as
the principal divinity, while the old gods of the vanquished become
either his servants, or, as demons or devils, his adversaries. The
bodily type tends to assimilate, through the influence of the same
climate and similar mode of living. Where a strong difference between
the types existed or is maintained,[45] the bastards, to a certain
extent, fill the gap--so that, in spite of the still existing ethnic
contrast, everybody, more and more, begins to feel that the type of the
enemies beyond the border is more strange, more “foreign” than is the
new co-national type. Lords and subjects view one another as “we,” at
least as concerns the enemy beyond the border; and at length the memory
of the different origin completely disappears. The conquerors are held
to be the sons of the old gods. This, in many cases, they literally
are, since these gods are nothing but the souls of their ancestors
raised to godhead by apotheosis.
Since the new “states” are much more aggressive than the former
communities bound together by mere blood relationship, the feeling
of being different from the foreigner beyond the borders, growing in
frequent feuds and wars, becomes stronger and stronger among those
within the “realm of peace.” And in the same measure there grows
among them the feeling of belonging to another; so that the spirit
of fraternity and of equity, which formerly existed only within the
horde and which never ceased to hold sway within the association of
nobles, takes root everywhere, and more and more finds its place in the
relations between the lords and their subjects.
At first these relations are manifested only in infrequent cases:
equity and fraternity are allowed only such play as is consistent
with the right to use the political means; but that much is granted.
A far stronger bond of psychical community between high and low,
more potent than any success against foreign invasion, is woven by
legal protection against the aggression of the mighty. “_Justitia
fundamentum regnorum._” When, pursuant to their own ideals of justice,
the aristocrats as a social group execute one of their own class
for murder or robbery, for having exceeded the bounds of permitted
exploitation, the thanks and the joy of the subjects are even more
heartfelt than after victory over alien foes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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