Under ancient republicanism, there were rights of the state and rights of the citizen, but no rights of man, held independently of society, and not derived from God through the state.The recognition of these rights by modern society is due to Christianity: some say to the barbarians, who overthrew the Roman empire; but this last opinion is not well founded.The barbarian chiefs and nobles had no doubt a lively sense of personal freedom and independence, but for themselves only.They had no conception of personal freedom as a general or universal right, and men never obtain universal principles by generalizing particulars.They may give a general truth a particular application, but not a particular truth--understood to be a particular truth--a general or universal application.They are too good logicians for that.The barbarian individual freedom and personal independence was never generalized into the doctrine of the rights of man, any more than the freedom of the master has been generalized into the right of his slaves to be free.The doctrine of individual freedom before the state is due to the Christian religion, which asserts the dignity and worth of every human soul, the accountability to God of each man for himself, and lays it down as law for every one that God is to be obeyed rather than men.The church practically denied the absolutism of the state, and asserted for every man rights not held from the state, in converting the empire to Christianity, in defiance of the state authority, and the imperial edicts punishing with death the profession of the Christian faith.In this she practically, as well as theoretically, overthrew state absolutism, and infused into modern society the doctrine that every individual, even the lowest and meanest, has rights which the state neither confers nor can abrogate; and it will only be by extinguishing in modern society the Christian faith, and obliterating all traces of Christian civilization, that state absolutism can be revived with more than a partial and temporary success.
The doctrine of individual liberty may be abused, and so explained as to deny the rights of society, and to become pure individualism; but no political system that runs to the opposite extreme, and absorbs the individual in the state, stands the least chance of any general or permanent success till Christianity is extinguished.Yet the assertion of principles which logically imply state absolutism is not entirely harmless, even in Christian countries.Error is never harmless, and only truth can give a solid foundation on which to build.
Individualism and socialism are each opposed to the other, and each has only a partial truth.The state founded on either cannot stand, and society will only alternate between the two extremes.To-day it is torn by a revolution in favor of socialism; to-morrow it will be torn by another in favor of individualism, and without effecting any real progress by either revolution.Real progress can be secured only by recognizing and building on the truth, not as it exists in our opinions or in our theories, but as it exists in the world of reality, and independent of our opinions.
Now, social despotism or state absolutism is not based on truth or reality.Society has certain rights over individuals, for she is a medium of their communion with God, or through which they derive life from God, the primal source of all life; but she is not the only medium of man's life.Man, as was said in the beginning, lives by communion with God, and he communes with God in the creative act and the Incarnation, through his kind, and, through nature.This threefold communion gives rise to three institutions--religion or the church, society or the state, and property.The life that man derives from God through religion and property, is not derived from him through society, and consequently so much of his life be holds independently of society; and this constitutes his rights as a man as distinguished from his rights as a citizen.In relation to society, as not held from God through her, these are termed his natural rights, which, she must hold inviolable, and government protect for every one, whatever his complexion or his social position.These rights--the rights of conscience and the rights of property, with all their necessary implications--are limitations of the rights of society, and the individual has the right to plead them against the state.Society does not confer them, and it cannot take them away, for they are at least as sacred and as fundamental as her own.
But even this limitation of popular sovereignty is not all.The people can be sovereign only in the sense in which they exist and act.The people are not God, whatever some theorists may pretend--are not independent, self-existent, and self-sufficing.
They are as dependent collectively as individually, and therefore can exist and act only as second cause, never as first cause.
They can, then, even in the limited sphere of their sovereignty, be sovereign only in a secondary sense, never absolute sovereign in their own independent right.They are sovereign only to the extent to which they impart life to the individual members of society, and only in the sense in which she imparts it, or is its cause.She is not its first cause or creator, and is the medial cause or medium through which they derive it from God, not its efficient cause or primary source.Society derives her own life from God, and exists and acts only as dependent on him.Then she is sovereign over individuals only as dependent on God.Her dominion is then not original and absolute, but secondary and derivative.
