Enlightenment versus Romantic Thinking
Three Types of Political Theories
Modern Political Theory: Social Contract
Enlightenment
versus Romantic Thinking
You may
already know that during the Enlightenment, there was unprecedented confidence
in the ability of Reason, once it has been freed from all “irrational
impediments” to solve any problem. If
only we could be “rational” and conquer our fears, our prejudices, our unreasoned
emotional attachments to doctrines, our superstitions etc. there would be no
problem we could not overcome. There
must be an rational explanation for whatever happens, and the wise “man of
science” is committed to finding that explanation and using this knowledge to
improve the human condition. During this
period, it was believed that what had impeded the progress of science and
knowledge for the previous 1000 years or so was the lack of reason, or at least
a sufficiently strong commitment to reason.
We had been too given to superstition, knowledge as received doctrine
and blind faith.
For
instance, Aristotle (384-322 BCE) had claimed that objects of differing weights
fall at different rates of speed. And this
was taught thereafter for nearly two thousand years. Do objects of differing weights fall at
different rates of speed? No. Objects fall at the same rate of speed (when you account for wind resistance), but no one bothered to
question that for nearly 2000 years!
Galileo (1564-1642 CE) did. Legend has it that he dropped lead balls of
different weights off the Leaning Tower of Pisa and discover the rate of free-fall
is independent of weight. The point is
that the progress of knowledge had been impeded by unquestioned acceptance of
Aristotle's (et alia) authority. When we
adopted this skeptical and critical mindset, we began to make comparatively
swift progress where previously there was only stagnation.
Some of the
important figures from the Enlightenment were champions of science and vocal
critics of religion. They tried to solve
scientific, medical, navigational, commercial problems as well as moral,
political, legal and even religious/theological problems by means of hyper-rational
arguments and theories. Even religion
and theology would have to conform to rational modes of investigation and
explanation. Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804)
argues for Religion within the Boundaries
of Mere Reason and the rational necessity of God. Gottfried Leibniz (1646 –1716) suggested that
God’s existence can be demonstrated by the principle of sufficient reason. But if argument fails to demonstrate the
existence of God, or indeed, could demonstrate the nonexistence of God, then,
continuing to believe was both irrational and immoral. Doing so could only contribute to the
gullibility of society, the very social ill responsible for so much lingering
ignorance and unhappiness. This was the
theme of the French materialist philosopher Baron d'Holbach
(1723 – - 1789) 1761 work Christianisme dévoilé ("Christianity Unveiled") in which he
argued that Christianity and religion in general was an impediment to the
advancement of humanity. Enlightenment
required jettisoning blind faith, it would seem.
But
Enlightenment Thinking led to a starker, less friendly view of reality. Instead of humans being the crowning glory of
a magnificent creation fashioned by a good, loving, wise and powerful God, humanity
was largely the accident and the universe was seen as slipshod draftsmanship at
best by a third rate engineer, or perhaps, not the product of thoughtful
creation at all. The Earth was no longer
seen as the mainstage on which the history of the
entire cosmos was being played out, but rather an insignificant bit of dust in
an insignificant corner of a really, really big place. And it very much seems like what goes on in
this little low-rent district of the cosmos matters to no one but us, and then
only so long as we have the energy and memory to care. Rather than looking forward to a blissful,
eternal reward, where our every question is answered, our every illness healed,
our sorrow comforted away, we have only to look forward to meaningless death
and oblivion.
It don’t get
no better than this. How sad.
Little
wonder that by the mid-1700’s Western Culture was looking for a change. It had become disenchanted (so to speak) with
Enlightenment thinking. And it was
followed by what is now known as “Romanticism.”
But what is at the heart of Romanticism?
The eerie warning “Beware, Reason does not, cannot reveal all!” There are some things in this world that go
beyond the ability of Reason to explain or even comprehend. There is a “supra-rational” realm. Think here of Blaise Pascal’s (1623-1662)
perhaps anticipating Romanticism a bit, quote: : Le cœur
a ses raisons que la raison
ne connaît pas.”
And our only vehicle to this supra-rational realm, to commune with these
items is through emotion, passion and imagination.
Consider two
Paradigms of Horror:
Frankenstein:
Mary
Shelly’s Frankenstein could not
epitomize the Romantic Revolt against the Enlightenment more. (And I think we are all familiar with
revolting Romantics.) Dr. Frankenstein is a “Man of Science” unlike those
backward ignorant villagers. He knows
that death is not something to fear. How
will we ever conquer it if we persist in our irrational superstitions and
taboos against working with dead bodies, etc.?
Death is simply an engineering problem, and approached from that
perspective, may well admit of a rational solution. He has initial success, but then what? His creation turns into an irrational monster
which he cannot understand or control.
This product of science grabs him by the throat.
Robert Le Diable
Probably the
best known Romantic Ballets are La Selphide
and Giselle
and some of what I’m going to say applies to them as well, however, less well know is that what is considered the first Romantic
Ballet. It was the dance sequence from
the Opera Robert Le Diable, entitled the “Ballet
of the Nuns.” The scene was set at
midnight in the ruins of an abandon convent which was haunted by nuns who had
been unfaithful to the vows. OOOOOooooo!
Keep in mind
that it was one of the first theatrical productions which was able to use the
new gas lighting technology to good effect. This was one of the first times
that an audience was able to enter a darken theater and see displayed before
them simulated moonlight and all sort of fantastic images. And consider the subtext. The ruins of an abandon convent- a faith of a
bygone era, desolate and crumbling- yet haunted. And haunted by whom? By those who had lost faith, pining after what
was no longer attainable.
Perhaps the
most fundamental presumption of Horror movies is the triumph of un-reason, the
Romantic. The character who say, “Oh there has to be a rational explanation.” is
sure to be knocked off by the monster in the next scene. Or, if some how he
does survive the coming cataclysm, he will NEVER say THAT again. No it’s the old ones who
remember the old ways (or the
ever present Olde Prophecy or Grimorie)
or it’s the elfin-
children, unjaded
and in touch with the Spiritual Realm, who have the best chance of telling us
how to make it through to the final credits.
Three Types
of Political Theories:
From where
do governments derive their just right to govern?
Classical Political Theory
What
typifies Classical Political Theory is that the purpose of government was to
create a noble citizenry. In the
political theories of Plato and Aristotle, but even in the thinking of the
Roman Empire, you find that the mission of government was cultivating and
civilizing the citizens. Since the
mission of government is to form the character of the governed, the government
has broad authority to regulate the lives of the governed. Authority must be commensurate with
responsibility, so if the government has the responsibility to see that people
turn out ok, governments must therefore have the authority to tell people what
to do. This is a very paternalistic
model of government. Note further that
evaluation of government (a good government/ a bad government) turns on the effectiveness
that the government demonstrates in realizing its ends (functional account of
good).
Now, it would
be an overstatement to say this was universally accepted in in Classical
times. One can see the Sophocles play
“Antigone” as examining/questioning the relationship between the individual and
the State.
Medieval Political Theory
Typical of
Medieval Political Theory is the notion that the Universe is a Divine Monarchy
with God as the ultimate source of authority.
While we all must be obedient to God, there is a “chain of command” so
to speak. Throughout the middle ages
there was a debate about who, precisely, was “second in command.” The Roman Catholic Church maintained that it
was the bishop of Rome, the Pope (although there were some disputes about this
within the church). So, for instance, it
was Pope Leo III who crowned Charlemagne Holy Roman Emperor on Christmas Day,
in the year 800. This was a very public
way of demonstrating that the Pope is the one bestowing the title, and the Pope
is in the position to bestow this title because his authority comes directly
from God. (And what the Pope giveth, the Pope can taketh
away.) As the papacy's power grew during
the Middle Ages, Popes and emperors came into conflict. In one such conflict Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV was
excommunicated by Pope Gregory VII. As a
show of penance, the story goes, Henry stood in the snow outside the gates of
the castle where the Pope was staying for three days begging the pope to
rescind the excommunication.
Now this was
not just because Henry wanted to once again resume his membership within the
Church. Loyalty was assured in the
Universal Chain of Command by oaths of allegiance. But these oaths need not be honored to one
who was not part of the Church. Once
excommunicated, no one who had sworn an oath to Henry needed to honor that
(including oaths to pay taxes, crops, use of land, military support, etc.) Excommunicated, Henry was politically weaken
and vulnerable to challenge.
Later in the
Middle Ages arose the idea of the Divine
Right of Kings. This theory claims
that kings receive their authority directly from God. The thinking here was that if God did want
the King to be the King, He (God) could/would remove him. The fact that the King is King itself is
evidence that it is God’s will.
Therefore kings were answerable only to God and it was therefore sinful for
their subjects to resist them. Further, this put the king on equal footing with
the pope. James VI / I (1566 – 1625)
upheld the doctrine in his speeches and writings. This theory was supported by
his son Charles I and his chief adviser, William Laud, the Archbishop of
Canterbury. Laud argued that the king had been appointed by God and people who
disagreed with him were bad Christians.
Modern
Political Theory:/ Social Contract
By the time
the Enlightenment was underway, supernatural explanations of political power
and systems seem unreasonable and no longer tenable. What was sought instead were rational,
scientific explanations of the rise of government and their just right to
govern. In a way they turned the
medieval pyramid of power upside down.
Rather than claiming authority came from the top down, modern political
theory suggests that authority comes from the bottom up, that governments derive their
just right to govern from the consent of the governed. We will look in some detail at the theories
of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. As you
will see, the political theories presented by these two philosophers were
extremely influential in the founding of the Unites States.
Three terms
both of these theories use:
Natural Law: Laws which hold whether a government exists or
not.
Social Contract: An agreement among people to
share certain interests and to make certain compromises for good of them all. The result of this contract may be the
formation and legitimizing of a governing political body.
State of Nature:
The real or imagined situation where you have a community of people, but
there is no government.
Thomas Hobbes:
Hobbes wrote
the classic Leviathan where he
considers the question of government and its justification. One way to figure out why we have a government
is to try to imagine what life would be like without one. Hence he proceeds to consider the “State of
Nature.”
What life
would be like in the State of Nature, where humans are “governed” by nothing
other than Natural Law? Note, we would
have prefect liberty to whatever we wanted whenever we wanted without fear of
government interference. This may sound
like a good thing, even desirable. But
Hobbes doesn’t think so. On the contrary,
he claims that our ruthless competition with one another to satisfy individual
desires and establish our own security will quickly lead to what Hobbes calls
"the war of each against all," a "state of nature" in which
life is "nasty, brutish, and short."
Why is this
so? Well in the State of Nature humans
will only be subject to Natural Law.
Predicting their behavior in the State of Nature then requires a working
from a concepts of “Human Nature,” that is, the natural laws that govern human
behavior and motivations. We cannot imagine how the “natural” human will act (or
collective of humans acts) unless we have an understanding of human nature. Hobbes provides this. He was both a Ethical Egoist, and a
Psychological Egoist. The first is a
moral view about what makes right actions right. The second is a psychological theory about
what motivates human actions. According
to Hobbes then, human beings are primarily self-interested and desire-driven. We are compelled by our nature to do what we
believe to be in our own best interest.
This is the one thing you can count on whether in or out of the State of
Nature.
But why should
life be so contentious in the State of Nature?
Why can’t we all “just get along?”
Well the biggest threat to my
security is the liberty of my fellow humans
(you). Conversely, I am the
biggest threat to your security. My
security can only be had if I neutralize you as a threat, that is, I can harm
you, but you cannot harm me. But if I
ever achieved that, that would destroy your security. So you work constantly to see that that
doesn’t happen and you can always harm me (which effectively undermines my
security). According to Hobbes, people
are not naturally capable of virtue and wisdom. Concepts of “Virtue,” Wisdom”
or “Justice” are not “natural” and do not arise until one leaves the State of
Nature. They cannot arise when life is a
“war of all against all” and a daily struggle for self-preservation. We are “at war” with each other in very much
the same way that the US and the old USSR were in an arms race during the Cold
War. Each was a threat to the other’s
security. Each sought to have “first
strike” capability without fear of retaliation.
Had either side achieved this, however, the security of the other would
evaporate. Neither side did and the
“war” went on for decades.
The Prisoners’ Dilemma:
Imagine the
following scenario:
You and I
commit some crime together. The police
do not have enough evidence to put either of us away for a very long time. They really need to get at least one of us to
confess. So they devise a plan. They keep us separated. One officer comes to me with a deal. She tells me that if I confess and you do
not, I will get off scot free. However,
if I don’t confess and you do, I get 20 years.
If we BOTH confess, we will each get ten years. (They don’t tell me this, but I know that if
we both simply keep our mouths shut, we’ll each only get 6 months.) Further, they tell me that they will be
making the same deal with you. I don’t
know what you are going to do; I can’t talk to you, so I just have to
guess. Assuming I am rational and
self-interested (as Hobbes supposes) what will I/ should I do?
Here a table
of my options:
|
|
Things I
cannot control |
||
|
You
confess. |
You do not
confess. |
||
|
Things I can
control |
I confess. |
I get 10
years |
I get off
with not time served |
|
I do not
confess. |
I get 20
years |
I get a 6
month sentence. |
|
Well I’m gonna confess. I
have a shot at the best and I avoid the worst.
But of course, if you get the same deal, and you are just as rational
and self-interested as I, you’ll do the same thing and the result is that we
will both be going away for 10 years.
Now suppose
the cops make a mistake. Accidentally
they allow us to sit together. I quickly
explain the deal I was offer and you tell me that you got the same deal. “Well you know what we should do,” I say to
you, “we should both keep our mouths shut.
I’ll promise you that I won’t confess if you promise not to confess as
well.” You agree and promise not to
confess.
What should
I do now?
CONFESS!
(and of
course, so should you.)
This
scenario is called The Prisoners'
Dilemma.
The
Prisoners' Dilemma: The
hypothetical case used to illustrate Hobbes point that strictly pursuing one's
own self-interest in an intelligent fashion results not in the best or even the
second best possible situation.
It’s a
dilemma because neither one of us is doing something stupid or irrational. On the contrary, we are both acting
rationally and pursuing our own best interests in an intelligent fashion. Nevertheless I am not getting my best option
or even my second best option, and neither are you. People in the State of Nature are in the very
same position, according to Hobbes. They
can’t escape the State of Nature simply by promising each other not to attack
at the next opportunity. The moment one
of them lets his or her guard down the others would be compelled, by the law of
human nature, to at advantage of the opportunity to attack.
Now, imagine
our Prisoners’ Dilemma again, only this time we not only promise not to
confess, but we contract a “promise-enforcer” and we tell this enforcer that he
should kill either one of us if we defect from our agreement. Both of us would have very good reason NOT to
confess (the threat of death) and both of us would have the reasonable
expectation that the other will also not confess. Since it is in my best interest now to keep
quiet I will, and so will you and we will have not the best option (0 time),
but at least will get the second best (6 mons.)
Put another
way, the best scenario for me would be for me to do whatever I want and get
away with it and you can’t do anything about it. But I can’t really have that so I am willing
to compromise and reign in my behavior (no stealing, murdering, cheating, etc.)
provided that everyone else to the same.[1] And we hire an enforcer to make sure we all
keep the social contract. That’s the
Sovereign.
This is how
sovereign governments come to be and are justified, according to Hobbes. We contract with one another to create a
Sovereign enforcer who will enforce the “Social Contract.” It will punish any who defect from the contract
and fails to conform his or her behavior or threatens the security of fellow
contractors. Such a contract does not
exist in paper. However, we are bound by it even if we never signed or saw such
an agreement. Living in society implies
the acceptance of such contracts, its rules and obedience of its laws.
Ignorance is not an excuse. Further, it is in my own best interest to support the
Sovereign and the Social Contract since this is all the stands between me and
the chaos of the State of Nature.
Anything I do to threaten or destabilize either is ultimately not in my
own best interest.
The Social
Contract, according to Hobbes, is an agreement of equal and self-interested persons not to commit mutual murder.
Liberty:
By 'liberty'
Hobbes means the absence of restraints or impediments on one's powers to
act. So in the State of Nature, where
there is no government, the individual has “perfect liberty.” Now initially that may seem like a good
thing, even desirable, but Hobbes argues that in fact is not.
Hobbes
points out that in the “State of Nature” where there is no government nor
governmental censorship we have perfect liberty, but it is useless. “Free Speech” only takes on value within
a civil society. Therefore if censorship
is required to safeguard that free speech, it is justified. From Hobbes’s perspective, we have nothing to
complain about if the sovereign chooses to limit free speech, even to limit it
severely. We had all the free speech we
could stand in the State of Nature, but it did us no good. We give up our liberty and invest it in the
Sovereign and the return on this investment is a civil society more secure and
predicable than the State of Nature. It
is in our own best interest then (and thus required by natural law) that we
support the stability of the civil society and accept the restrictions on individual
liberty imposed by the Sovereign, when,
in its view, these restrictions are required to maintain order.
Revolution
and defying the Sovereign would only be in our own best interest (and thus
permitted/ justified by Natural Law) if life under the sovereign is worse
that life in the State of Nature. But life
it the State of Nature, according to Hobbes, was SO terrible, that one can
hardly imagine a scenario where life under the Sovereign is worse. The only one that Hobbes can imagine is where
the sovereign has commanded you to certain death. (At least in the State of Nature you have a
fighting chance.)
With regard
to "justice" Thomas Hobbes believed that when and where there is no
government there is no such thing as justice.
What we call justice is a creation of government.
For Hobbes,
the proper role of government to provide security to the citizen and prevent
them from committing mutual murder.
John Locke
John Locke
also employs the notions of Natural Law, State of Nature and Social Contract,
but his account is strikingly different from Hobbes. For one thing, he disagrees with Hobbes’s
Psychological Egoism. He believe that in
addition to self-interest, we are also motivated beneficence and the Common
Good. We are therefore naturally
disposed to cooperate and collaborate with our fellow humans. Further, we have a natural appreciation of
our own rights and by extension, the rights of others. So life in the State of Nature is not that
bad. This paints a picture of a civil
orderly collective. Why bother with
forming a government then? Well, while we
have natural appreciation of rights and justice, we inevitably enter into
disputes where our personal bias prevents us from seeing clearly what the just
resolution would be. We want the just
resolution, but find it difficult to see what that it. We need a neutral third party to resolve such
disputes. So the Social Contract then is
the agreement that the governed negotiates with the Sovereign. We invest our liberty in the Sovereign in
return that Sovereign ensures justice and rights protection.
This is the
role of government then: to secure the justice and protect the rights which we
had a natural appreciation of in the State of Nature, but which we could only
imperfectly achieve on our own. By no
means to we give up our liberty or rights upon entering into a Civil Society;
indeed is for our rights protection that we create the government in the first
place. For Locke governments arise and
are justified by the natural impulse of humans to live and work together for
their mutual benefit and social development seeking to protect their own and one
another rights and justice.
This is the
dominant thinking behind the Declaration of Independence. Consider the opening lines:
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one
people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another
and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to
which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to
the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which
impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to
secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just
powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government
becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to
abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such
principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most
likely to effect their Safety and Happiness
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established
should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all
experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed
to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing
the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing
invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute
Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government,
and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient
sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains
them to alter their former Systems of Government.
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of
repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the
establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let
Facts be submitted to a candid world.
In other
word, we were telling King George III, in the words of Donald Trump, “You’re
fired!” (But we will explain why we’re
firing you.) The rest of the Declaration
reads like a legal indictment. Rather
than protect our rights and ensure justice, King George trampled our rights,
according to The Declaration, thereby providing us with the justification to
“dissolve the political bands” which tied us to him and set up another
government (presumably one that will do a better job).
It is
noteworthy that we see in Modern Political Theory the flow of political
authority is reversed from that of Medieval Political Theory. Rather than
flowing from the top down, it flows instead from the bottom up. Executive authority is said to arise from the
masses themselves. This class captured
succinctly in the following documentary:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAaWvVFERVA
A final word
about Private Property:
Most who
defend the notion of private property being a right suggest that value is often
created through work. Since I have the
"right" to self determination and to my
body, I can do with it what I like (within certain limitations) and no one else
has that right. Likewise my labor is
"mine" and the increased value created by my labor is mine. I therefore have a right to that value and no
one else does. All this to say that
defender of private property say that individuals have the right to determine
what to do with their bodies, their labor and the fruits of their labor. In short, I own what a make and I am free to
keep it, sell it, trade it or give it away.
These are the free exchanges within the capitalist system
However,
note that Marx would critique this by pointing out that the factory owner is
not the producer of the value, but rather the factory workers. The owner of the factory can lay little claim
on the value produced by the factory workers.
That value belongs mostly, if not entirely, to the laborers, Marx would
claim.
Critics of
Marx would claim that the owner invested risk capital for there to be a factory
at all. They would also point out that the laborers negotiated to work for a agreed upon compensation package.
Adam Smith (1723-1790)
Smith seems
to have agreed with David Hume that humans have a natural impulse to sympathy,
and that helping one's fellow humans is inextricably bound to one's one
happiness and success. If so, then
economic individualism (Capitalism) would naturally result in societal
flourishing. Smith wrote in The Theory of Moral Sentiments,
“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there
are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune
of others and render their happiness necessary to him though he derives nothing
from it except the pleasure of seeing it.”[2]
Accordingly,
Smith approved of individual freely pursuing their “self-interest” since it was
paradoxically "other directed."
Smith did not view compassion for others and individual self-interest as
contradictory, but rather as complementary.
“Man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it
is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only,”[3]
Charity, government regulated and enforced or not, cannot sustain a
vibrant and innovative economy or system of wealth distribution.
Self-interested economic individualism (capitalism) can, he believed. Said Smith:
“It is not from the benevolence of the
butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from
their regard to their own interest” (ibid.).
[1]
Interesting that Plato anticipates this line of argument in his Republic and argues against it. The character Glaucon
suggests that morality is only a social construction, a compromise because we
can’t have what we really want (i.e. to do whatever we want whenever we want
and get away with it.) But if ever we could avoid sanction there is nothing we
would deem “immoral.” He tells the story
of the Myth of Gyges who discovers a magic ring that
has the power to make him invisible.
While invisible he can do whatever he likes and avoid detection. Even the gods don’t know what he’s doing when
he is invisible. (Remember the Greeks
did not think their gods were omniscient or could read minds; they could only
see what you were doing, assuming you were visible while doing it.)
Glaucon posits:
Suppose now that there were
two such magic rings, and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other;
no man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in
justice. No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could
safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any
one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects
be like a god among men. Then the actions of the just would be as the actions
of the unjust; they would both come at last to the same point. And this we may
truly affirm to be a great proof that a man is just, not willingly or because
he thinks that justice is any good to him individually, but of necessity, for
wherever anyone thinks that he can safely be unjust, there he is unjust. For
all men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more profitable to the
individual than justice, and he who argues as I have been supposing, will say
that they are right. If you could imagine any one obtaining this power of
becoming invisible, and never doing any wrong or touching what was another's,
he would be thought by the lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot, although
they would praise him to one another's faces, and keep up appearances with one
another from a fear that they too might suffer injustice. — Plato's Republic,
360b-d (Jowett trans.)
[2] Smith 1759, part I, section I, chap.
I, para. 1
[3] Wealth of Nations, Smith 1776, book
I, chap. 2, para. 2;