connection with a new conception of human community. Socialism had brought about recognition of this community with that of "society," and it had promoted the demand for ethical standards with the requisition that the industries of men should be judged in accordance with the whole sum of local, temporal, psychological conditions which are created by historical development. For the interpretation of the change which entered into German national economy in the second half of the nineteenth century, and for an understanding of the tendency founded upon the same which we now call the social political tendency, we must analyze more particularly these two scientific factors.

II

One of the most valuable scientific results of the socialistic literature, and of the discussions with reference to it, is the perception that the community of men which exists along with, and outside of, the state, built upon likeness of blood, of race, of economic, intellectual, and religious interests, leads a life which is peculiar, independent, and in a high degree detached from the state. It is this community which we designate as "society" when we consider it as a unity, and when we observe its own organic life. Hegel was the first in German moral philosophy to call attention to this, but in so doing he had in mind rather the conception of the individuals bound together through intercourse as a unity, and not the real actuality of the articulation of the Volk. The differentiation between society and state as two circles

The particular passage to be noted in this connection reads as follows: "Civic society is the difference which steps between the family and the state, although the completion of the same occurs later than that of the state; for as difference, this society presupposes the state, which the society must have before itself, as something independent in order to exist. In civic society each is an end unto himself, everything else is nothing to him. But without the relationships to the others he cannot attain the compass of his purposes. The others are for him means to the end of his particularity. Accordingly a system of all-sided dependence is founded, in which the subsistence, the weal of the individual and his legal being is woven into the subsistence, weal and rights of all, is based thereupon, and only in this interdependence is actual and assured."-Rechts philosophie, 1820, pp. 246-47. Philippovich adds: "The conception of civic society is of course much older. Goethe used it in 1774, in the Leiden des jungen Werthers, in the sense of a community ruled through laws and welfare somewhat as the word bourgeoisie was applied later."

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varying in compass and kind was more completely grasped by Ahrens. He saw in society "the unified totality of all life-spheres operating for the cardinal purposes of human life." He pointed out, further, that each of these spheres had its own organism of functions and organs. Accordingly the societary organism embraces the organism of legal life, of the state, of religious life, the church, the organization of industry and of trade, "with its progressively energetic and extended development," of instruction and of education, of science and of art. Among these life-circles, state and church have attained most independence and have taken the rest under their protection, guardianship, guidance, and control. In modern times, the endeavor of these life-circles after independence and freedom has grown constantly greater. It is, according to Ahrens, the task of the state, as the societary institution which has attained the relatively highest grade of development, to educate the others toward freedom and for this purpose to create the necessary limitations; but complete separation may never occur, since the state is the legal organism of the whole human society. Likewise, however, we should guard against making the state responsible for all the aims of life. This is the fundamental error of the socialists, who have properly turned against the previously negative formalistic doctrine of law and of the state. In their very endeavors, however, to bring into being a new societary organization, they have made the mistake of confusing state and society. Socialism directed its attack chiefly against the principle of competition; but this principle is in itself, according to Ahrens, a necessary consequence of freedom, and an indispensable promoter of all industrial progress. This freedom should, however, be joined with a principle of order, and therefrom results the conception of organization, which combines the two principles. "This organization can and should be called forth by the state, inasmuch as the state sets up the general legal condition for the regulation of the relationships among all the participants in labor, employers and employees, in their various gradations, but along with these

' Ahrens was probably the first who scientifically emphasized this difference: Cours du droit naturel, 1839, 2d part (f. Mohl's review, Heidelberger Jahrbücher, 1840, No. 3); more at length, in the Organische Staatslehre, 1850, pp. 48 ff.; die Rechtsphilosophie, 4. Aufl., 1852; Juristische Encyklopädie, 1855, pp. 107 ff.

general conditions permits also in every relationship a certain play of freedom, and in the exercise of this freedom the conditions which are most agreeable to all are fixed upon through agreements and contracts between the parties." In such an organization, endeavors after association in all circles will be accorded legal rights. The significance which this societary organization, supported, regulated, and promoted by the state, possesses for overcoming the evils of the times, demands that its life-conditions shall be investigated by a special science, the science of society (Gesellschaftswissenschaft), which, however, shall not be limited to the economic realm only, but must comprehend all realms of human activity. This investigation of the nature of man and of the principal relations of human life constitutes, then, the point of departure and the basis of philosophy of law, the task of which is to exhibit in these life-relations the concept and the task of the law and of the legal order. Wherein this task consists has already been indicated by what has been said, viz., the preservation of the freedom of the individual within the setting of an order which respects the interests of all. The internal structure of "society" is only casually touched upon by Ahrens in the course of his treatment of the rights of property. Stein, on the other hand, in his presentation of French socialism and communism, makes it a matter of special importance to show that the essence of society is formed by the economic conditions of life. Men are bound to one another through the division of labor. The labor of the one becomes a condition and presupposition of the labor of another. The ordering of human labor is consequently a necessary presupposition of the prosperity of all. Out of this ordering of labor, which confronts us as a sub- and super-ordination, arises consequently an ordination of the distribution of goods, in which for the individual the degree and position in which he participates in the labor of all determines also the part and the

1 Die Rechtsphilosophie, 4. Aufl., 1852, Einl., chaps. V and VI.

2 Der Sozialismus und Kommunismus des heutigen Frankreichs, 1842, is so advanced as to contain emphasis of "society" as an independent arena upon which the social movement has its standing-ground. Stein does not have an exposition of the nature of society, however, until he makes it an introduction to the history of socialism in the second edition of his work, 1848.

degree of his share in the distribution of goods. In this way is determined the degree in which he can subject goods to himself, can possess them, can have them as property. But the possession again creates the opportunity to arrive at a better position with each distribution of goods. Thus arise societary classes which are separated by the antithesis between possession and non-possession. This stratification has, in the most recent period, through the transformation in the ways of carrying on industry, through the use of machinery and the development of great industries, as well as through the operation of free competition, been intensified and brought into the consciousness of the classes. The result of free competition was: "The whole class of the non-possessors has been defeated in its struggle for possession. It has through this free competition lost the necessary condition of the independence of the individual, and is daily losing it more. In the whole realm of industry there appears the division of the ruling and of the subjugated, of the possessor and of the non-possessor, and instead of the expected equality of the classes, competition has produced the incessantly increasing inequality of the same, the decisive victory of capital over the mere ability to labor." This is not an accidental but a necessary consequence of competition. It has brought things to the pass that the great class of non-producers, sunken into permanent dependence, is filled with the consciousness of its situation and is rising up against it. This class demands its share in possession on the grounds of the principle of equality and of personality, the fulfilment of which depends upon control of goods. Thus the proletariat of the present has come into existence, and the spirit with which it is filled is "perhaps the weightiest fact of the whole modern life of society." We see that through property the ordering of the community of men comes to be permanent, that it establishes the basis for the life-task and the life-philosophy of the individual in the education that it imparts. This ordering is protected by the law, it receives a fixed form, and this latter assigns a fixed course from the start to the career of each individual. This it is to which we give the name "society"

• Socialismus und Kommunismus, 1. Aufl., p. 119.

2 Ibid., 2. Aufl., 1. Bd., p. 47.

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(Gesellschaft). It is dominated by the laws which control the utilization of possessions, of capital in promotion, or, in other words: "the ordering of society rests upon the lordship of capital over available labor without capital." This fact of the proletariat "compels us to promote the manifold and frequently repeated observations about human society into a science of society; this science of society must teach us what the proletariat is, what it wants, and what it wants to be."3 A consideration of the relationship between society and the state shows us that always the societary position was a condition of sharing in the exercise of the civic power, so that the constitution of the state always reflects the constitution of the society, and the history of society is the basis of the history of constitutions. Until now the possessing classes alone have had a share in the political power. At present the proletariat is also striving to bring its principles into practical application through the possession of this power. The contradiction which must result from this struggle between the possessing and the non-possessing is absolute; it cannot be resolved through the principle of personal freedom. There is only one power which stands above these antitheses of society, that is the monarch; "hence the present and future of the state will rest upon the monarchical principle."4 In his system of Staatswissenschafts Stein attempts to find a deeper foundation for the theory of society, and to fix the limits between it and the related sciences such as Volkswirtschaftslehre and Staatslehre. As he makes the analysis, the first science shows how the individual and the society subject nature, the world of goods, to their purposes. In the state, the totality of the individuals is fused into a willing and working unity as a personality, which receives its peculiar form through the element of its society, and therewith of its system of controlling goods (Staatsverfassung), to which, however, at the same time, both realms, as objects on which the activity is exercised, are subordinated (Staatsverwaltung). The society on the other hand

1 Socialismus und Kommunismus, 2. Aufl. 1 Bd., p. 23.

2 Ibid., p. 39.

3 Ibid., p. 13.

4 Ibid., pp. 57 ff.

5 Two vols., 1852-56. Vol. I, System der Statistik, der Populationistik und der Volkswirtschaftslehre, 1852; Vol. II, Gesellschaftslehre, 1856.