2io THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ment of the law, the law is usually no longer necessary. In other 

 words, voluntary consent is the essential condition of all stable 

 social arrangements, instead of governmental coercion. 



It may be objected that the social philosopher is compelled to 

 recognize that, under the law of relativity, arbitrary and pater- 

 nal forms of government have had and still have their proper 

 place in the order of societary evolution. They are adapted to 

 certain phases of culture and civilization, wherein order could 

 not be maintained under freer and more democratic governmental 

 institutions. This is true ; but such forms of government are 

 always temporary and unstable, where the conditions of social 

 progress are steadily operative. As populations attain to a higher 

 degree of intelligence and culture, a larger freedom is demanded ; 

 and no arbitrary government can long resist this popular demand. 

 The result of such resistance, when it is attempted, if not revolu- 

 tion, is stagnation, atrophy, and arrested development. 



This principle of voluntary consent is well illustrated in the 

 earliest and most primitive type of societary development the 

 family. The family is based upon the marriage relation; and 

 while, in the savage and barbarous stages of human evolution, we 

 have marriage by capture and the exercise of various modes of 

 coercion sanctioned by custom and authority, it is universally 

 admitted in all highly civilized communities that true marriage 

 rests upon the uncoerced consent of both contracting parties. As 

 this consent is less a matter of mere formality and becomes more 

 perfect and complete, involving the recognition of attractions 

 not only emotional and physical, but also intellectual, moral, and 

 spiritual, so is the union more permanent and satisfying. 



The principle herein laid down holds good in every stage of 

 social combination, however complex and widely extended it may 

 be. It is a sound political philosophy which is enunciated in 

 that paragraph of our Declaration of Independence which affirms 

 that all just powers of government rest upon the consent of the 

 governed. This is as true of the older autocratic and monarchi- 

 cal systems as it is of our own democratic - republican form 

 of government. An autocracy which finds no response in the 

 hearts of the people, but is maintained solely by the iron rule of 

 external compulsion, is a tyranny, unstable in its foundations, 

 unadapted to its societary environment, and destined to early 

 destruction, either by peaceful evolutionary measures or by force- 

 ful revolution. In such a state, nihilism and anarchism are 

 natural products of the existing social conditions. The pent-up 

 forces of an artificially restrained individualism must somehow 

 find vent, even if it be by means of revolutionary violence. Rus- 

 sia to-day offers an instructive example of the truth of this prin- 

 ciple. 



