xi SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS 225 



becomes as important as land, and the tenure of property 

 becomes individualistic, only to give rise, as the economic 

 problem unrolls itself, to new forms of social control. In 

 this case, again, we are at the beginning rather than the end 

 of a stage, and have to recognise a problem rather than a 

 solution. But it would seem clear that the condition of 

 any solution is not to ignore the personal right to acquire, 

 hold and exchange, which has been gradually won, but 

 rather to define more accurately the conditions within which 

 these rights are contributory to the general welfare. The 

 case of contract is closely analogous. Here again early 

 custom reveals contract in our sense as something imper- 

 fectly understood. It is not consent but some ceremonial 

 form that is binding, and in the archaic structure of society 

 contract could at best have no important place. The 

 feudal regime admits of contract within limits, but these 

 limits mark out the main lines of life for all classes. Un- 

 fettered contract is the ideal of a commercial society which 

 has thrown off feudal bonds, but, like unrestricted indi- 

 vidualism in property, is soon seen to necessitate a new 

 form of social control. 



With the development of property the ethics of bene- 

 volence is closely correlated. Here we have first the simple 

 hospitality of early communism, with as much care for the 

 helpless as the general conditions of life allow. Then we 

 have charity as a duty of the superior, a duty which is also 

 a moral luxury and a means of other-worldly advancement. 

 This gives way to a criticism of benevolence in the interests 

 of individual character, and this criticism, taken in conjunc- 

 tion with the hard facts of economics, is seen to necessitate 

 the establishment of the definite right to the primal needs 

 of a civic life on the basis of a system of mutual obligations 

 as between the individual and the community. 



Thus in the development of property and contract, as in 

 that of the family, we notice a double movement. On the 

 one hand, in the more advanced societies there is a break- 

 down of older social structures limiting the actions of 

 the individual, and so a fuller recognition of personal right. 

 On the other hand there is a process of reconstruction, in 

 which the community as a whole exerts powers and under- 



