into his product; so that all members of the home circle, but especially the husband and wife, are partners in business, and since they share in the producing, are entitled to share in the production, both in consuming and in disbursing. Beside this, it should be distinctly recognized that all possessions are held and managed as trusts, and their agreed testamentary distribution should be regulated accordingly. The testator is bound to provide suitably for the family, thus discharging his primary obligation as its trustee. A surplus may rightly become matter of bequest to collaterals, to friends, or to the general public, in the founding or endowing hospitals, schools, libraries, and such like benefactions, according to the best judgment of the trustee representing the family in this discharge of its alien obligations.

CHAPTER III

THE COMMUNITY

§ 122. Human beings manifest a strong disposition to gather into groups more or less permanent. In some of these population is massed, as in cities; in others it is more sparse, as in villages, hamlets, neighborhoods. Hence in any inhabited region, it is easy to point out centers of population, though the circumference be quite indefinite. Besides the gregarious instinct of the human animal, there are many rational determinants of this tendency, both economical and ethical. Every one owes his existence to progenitors and also is indebted for its continuance, for all physical means, conveniences and comforts of living, for all intellectual and moral culture, so entirely to association, more or less intimate, with his fellows, that all the interests of life, his whole welfare, is bound up with them. Strict independence is a practical impossibility.1

1 "La nature de l'homme le porte à vivre en société. Quelle qu'en soit la cause, le fait se manifeste en toute occasion. Partout où l'on a rencontré des hommes, ils vivaient en troupes, en herdes, en corps de nation. Peutêtre est ce afin d'unir leur forces pour leur sûreté commune; peut-être afin de pourvoir plus aisément à leur besoins; toujours il est vrai qu'il est dans la nature de l'homme de se reunir en société, comme font les abeilles et plusieurs espèces d'animaux; on remarque des traits communs dans toutes ces reunions d'hommes, en quelque parti du monde qu'ils habitent." — SAY, Cours d'Econ. Polit.

"The impulse which leads to combination lies in the necessity of supplementing the force of the individual by that of others, without which the aims of life are not completely attainable. Here belong not merely the conceivable advantages which one receives from another, but above all the social intercourse itself, without which a really human development is inconceivable."— LOTZE, Pract. Phil., § 56.

A group of people thus specially related by living in proximity is a community. This is not merely a collection but a body of people; for the necessities of its members which draw them together determine at once an organic constitution.2 Each member contributes more or less directly to the welfare of every other, and to the welfare of the whole, in which welfare he participates. The variations of function are determined by the pressure of various needs, and by the fitness of various abilities to meet them. There is a tacit consensus in the distribution of these functions; but since there is no formal and definite enactment of a constitution, the community is often spoken of as unorganized society; whereas, though not formally, yet it is essentially an organism, necessitated by the interdependence of its members.3

1 "Common = public, general, usual, vulgar; Fr. from Lat. com-, for cum, with, and munis, complaisant, obliging, binding by obligation.”. SKEAT. Community, from Lat. communitas, fellowship, from cum-, together with, mutually, and munis, ready to serve.

2 "Quam fluctus diversi, quam mare conjuncti." 3 "A quoi bon la société ? Restez dans la nature. Soyez les sauvages. Otaïti est un paradis. Seulement, dans ce paradis on ne pense pas. Mieux vaudrait encore un enfer intelligent qu'un paradis bête. Mais non, point d'enfer. Soyons la société humaine. Plus grande que nature ? Oui. Si vous n'ajoutez rien à la nature, pourquoi sortir de la nature ? Alors, contentez-vous du travail comme la fourmi, et du miél comme l'abeille. Restez la bête ouvrière au lieu d'être l'intelligence reine. Si vous ajoutez quelque chose à la nature, vous serez nécessairement plus grand qu'elle; ajouter, c'est augmenter, c'est grandir. La société, c'est la nature sublimée. Je veux tout ce qui manque aux ruches, tout ce qui manque aux fourmilières, les monuments, les arts, la poésie, les héros, les génies. Porter des fardeaux éternels, ce n'est pas la loi de l'homme. Non, non, non, plus de parias, plus d'esclaves plus de forçats, plus de damnés ! je veux que chacun des attributs de l'homme soit un symbole de civilisation et un patron de progrès; je veux la liberté devant l'esprit, l'égalité devant le cœur, la fraternité devant l'âme. Non! plus de joug! l'homme est fait, non pour traîner des chaînes, mais pour ouvrir des ailes. Plus d'homme reptile. Je veux la transfiguration de la larve en lépidoptère, je veux que le ver de terre se vivante, change en fleur et s'envole." - VICTOR HUGO, Quatrevingt-Treize, p. 495.

§ 123. Recur to the primary ethical principle that every one has a right to gratify his normal desires, and to this, beside, that it is his obligation not merely passively to allow their impulse, but actively to seek their gratification, and it is manifest that the fulfillment of obligation is impracticable apart from society.1 For, no class of normal desires can properly be gratified without reference to associates; but especially the affections, which are conditioned on the presentation of sentient objects, can have no exercise in solitary life. In such life the chiefest, indeed the sole function of humanity is perverted and comes to naught. Mankind is a brotherhood, and it is only by close fraternization, only by being a man among men, that it is possible to be wholly a man. Whoever lives his life in its natural and rightful fullness is a constant recipient from his fellows of the necessary means, for which he is dependent on them, and therefore is constantly incurring an indebtedness which requires a constant reciprocal activity to repay.

These considerations forbid an ascetic life, which, under the guise of righteous self-denial, renounces invigorating enjoyment, and thus leads to such an impoverishment of spiritual power that its dues go unpaid.2 Nor can the life of a recluse be approved, which seeks self-sufficiency in solitude and retired contemplation, or an escape from thronging ills by a timid retreat into privacy, idle ease, and indifference to the common welfare. Likewise we must condemn the life of a reserved student who, enamored of truth, withdraws from familiar intercourse, and in the scholarly seclusion of his library seeks to accumulate knowledge with no intent or thought of sharing it, and thereby promoting the well-being even of his compeers.3 These several forms of social seques

8" We are right in being enthusiastic for science only on account of the fact, partly that we discern the usefulness of its impulse for the sum-total of

tration can be approved only when they are temporary, and for the purpose of recuperation and preparation for better service in subsequent life. Thus only can they be acquitted of selfishness, and accepted as transient phases of that active life of practical benevolence which alone develops the moral dignity of true manhood.1

§ 124. The reciprocal obligations of the members of a community are recognized in a code of social intercourse, an unwritten common law, which prevails throughout and regulates communication. This law, like the unwritten Common Law of the courts, is a detail of rights and duties. Both systems originated in the exigencies of popular intercourse, and

human life so well as to renounce all claim to see a special application for every individual (einzelne) truth, and partly that the general character of truth, its consistency, and the manifoldness of the consequences that follow with certainty, from a few principles, places before our eyes an actualization (Verwirklichung) of what we ought to attain in the moral world by our own conduct."- LOTZE, Pract. Phil., § 30.

1 Moral isolation is not in being retired, but in being selfish. One may be "Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife," yet in a communion that braces and strengthens; and amid the turmoil of the throng, he may be apart, alone.

"To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,

To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,

Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,
And mortal foot hath ne'er, or rarely been;

To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,

With the wild flock that never needs a fold;

Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean;
This is not solitude; 'tis but to hold

Converse with nature's charms, and view her stores unrolled.

But 'midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men,

To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess,

And roam along, the world's tired denizen,
With none who bless us, none whom we can bless;
Minions of splendour shrinking from distress!
None that, with kindred consciousness endued,
If we were not, would seem to smile the less
Of all that flatter'd, follow'd, sought and sued;

This is to be alone; this, this is solitude."

— BYRON, Childe Harold, Canto ii, 25, 26.