THE PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT.
THE PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT.
THE PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT.
THE PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT.
It was remarked previously that Nature is consistent in all her operations throughout her entire domain; to which may now be added that the nearer the human approximates his rules and methods to those exhibited in the departments of Nature below him, the nearer will he approach to true rules and methods. Arbitrary and dogmatic formulas do not belong to Nature in her free manifestations, nor can they be administered in any of her combinations. In all the uses men may make of the elements of matter, he must comply with the laws of their existence: he cannot frame a law, and then command that Nature shall obey it.
Certain quantities of certain elements will combine and form a compound; but no other proportions of the same elements will combine to form the same compound, and in many cases they will not combine at all, unless certain fixed quantities are adhered to. Again, an effort may be made to unite two or more bodies, and they will be found to be incompatibles; that is, incapable of being united, because each has a stronger self-affinity than for any property existing in either of the other bodies with which they are brought in contact; but to these two or more bodies another principle may be added, which will produce the effect of uniting the whole. It is this principle in nature by which its elements combine and form all the various and diversified manifestations that are visible everywhere. These forms are none of them absolutely independent: they may, by their inherent power, attract other forms to themselves, or be by others attracted; the more complex and distinctly individuated ones being dependent upon those from which they spring for their existence; thus, as was before stated, the animal world is absolutely dependent upon the vegetable world for the protoplasm it must make use of to replace that expended by the animal economy. No animal can take the elements protoplasm is composed of and manufacture it; that process is alone the office of the vegetableworld. And thus it is that a complete and infinite system of dependence exists from the lowest form of organic life to the highest; each is necessary to every other, while every one fills a special individual position of its own, and this is because they are all bound together by the same controlling powers or principles of action.
It is readily seen that the principles referred to are the same that are expressed by a common humanity, a universal brotherhood: one is a brotherhood of the elements; the other is a brotherhood of the ultimates of elements, of which mind is a product. Each kingdom has its beginning and culmination, and by the observation of their evolution we must draw the deductions as to what really governs that age of the world, and the special kingdom we find ourselves living in. The beginning of the mineral kingdom was when simple elements began to unite to form compounds; which was when the cooling process had so far progressed as to allow of combination; this process of the uniting and dispersing of elements culminated in the production of the simplest vegetable life, and thus ushered in the vegetable kingdom. In this, again the same process of uniting and dispersing was gone through with that had characterized the mineral. It began as it did, and culminated as it did by producing the next higher, or the animal kingdom, the simplest form of which is a single unit of nucleated protoplasm. Upon this single unit the animal kingdom began to be built. The same process of integration and disintegration continued through countless ages and until a form was produced, which is the ultimate of form in the animal kingdom. This ultimate, man, is the perfection of form that protoplasm can produce, and hence is the grand ultimate of the process of elemental combination first referred to. No other or higher form is possible to be arranged from the elements that the earth is composed of. Therefore, all future advancement to perfection must be in the perfecting process in man, and therefore it is logical to conclude that the same law that governed the beginning, the evolution and the ultimation of each of the kingdoms that produced man, will also govern the beginning, the evolution and the ultimation of the different stages in the perfecting process in him; and not only in the perfecting process as a whole, but in each division of the perfecting process; and this brings us to that part of the process illustrated by government, and to the principles of government which are under consideration.
It will be observed that there is a perfect analogy in the process of evolution that is observed below man, and in that which comes of man. First, there was the elementary unit, which corresponds to whatwas the governmental unit—the family government. Next, and second, there was the vegetable division, which corresponds to the second order of government—the consolidation of families into tribes. Third, there was the animal division of the process, which corresponds to the amalgamation of tribes into nations. Fourth, there was man, the ultimate of the whole process, containing in him the elementary principles represented by all the preceding forms—in none of which were they all represented as they are represented in him—and he corresponds to the ultimate of the process of governmental evolution, the complete consolidation of nations into one grand nation, as man is the complete consolidation of all animal forms in one grand animal form. His form is the animal form, containing all animal forms. A universal government would be a national form, containing the form of all nations gathered into one grand form. Here it is that the analogy is complete, and Nature is consistent in all her parts and processes, at all times and in all forms observing the simple general principles which so unerringly lead her.
There is, however, one important addition to the processes in which man takes part, over those where principles apply only in the so-called material control. Below man there is nature only. After man there is art added to nature; and it is this power to administer to Nature’s processes, to assist in them, and to remove and replace obstacles to activity in higher channels, that distinguishes man from all previous formations, and which virtually makes him an assistant in the after and higher evolutions of mind, which have, until very recently, been generally considered not of material origin, but which science now demonstrates are purely physical results—are combinations in consciousness of consecutive manifestations of matter. Here we have the ultimate production of the ultimate of the animal kingdom, the mental kingdom, or the kingdom of ideas.
Science also demonstrates that ideas evolve after the same formula which all preceding processes observed, and that all new discoveries of ideas are not discoveries of existing facts, but that they are new truths evolved from preceding forms of truth; or, in other words, that they are higher forms of truth.
These relations are thus specifically stated, because in them is found the authority for man to make use of all things which exist, that by such use, higher purposes may be subserved and better general conditions obtained. As the gardener destroys all weeds and foreign growths about the vegetables he would produce, so must the gardenerin ideas pull up, eradicate or destroy, all false or decaying ideas which sap the vitality from those he would have flourish; and this authority is the same—the authority of the higher over the lower, to the extent of individual freedom and within the limits of the general good.
Such is the province of art, and man, in whatever department of nature he operates, is the artist, adding to her beauties, which she can produce by her laws, those which the evolution of higher ideas proposes. Thus art utilizes and beautifies all that nature produces. Nature alone could never produce a Central Park, nor the perfection in fruits and flowers that is now presented to please the taste and gladden the eye. No one will question the right of man to make from nature the most of beauty it is capable of, nor to make it most conducive to all his natural desires. And here is found the basis for the authority from which it is analogically argued, that man has the right to practice as an artist in ideas. The position this artist in ideas should be assigned should be as much higher in the scale of importance as ideas are higher than crude matter.
Government being the most formidable director of ideas and the most powerful opponent of their diffusion, if they are not in channels it can operate through, its perfectability according to the highest existing ideas is a matter of the most fearful importance. It is for this reason that so great importance attaches to the diffusion among the people of knowledge of the principles government should be constructed upon that its administration may be productive of the greatest individual, and the greatest public good, which it is possible to obtain from the application of the highest evolved ideas.