GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

548
POLITICS
created them too. The relations of the individual to
other individuals produce society, or rather, since society
must be supposed to have existed from die very first,
they logically entail society. The ordinances of society
must be obeyed and the right relationships between men
in society must be observed, simply because these ordinances
and these right relationships derive from the
fundamental relationships between man and God and
man and man. That a particular government may seek
to abolish these ordinances or modify these right relation-
ships is true. It may, for example, seek to alter the family
relationship between men and women, or the parental
relationship between fathers and children; or it may
outrage the sentiment of nationality, or disrupt that system
of custom and tradition which makes a people into a
nation. If a government were so to act, it would, presumably
have to be disobeyed, since the ordinances of
societies and the relationships between and the loyalties
of men in societies possess a natural sanctity derived
from their divine origin, a sanctity which nothing can
abolish.
One wonders what Burke would have said of the Russian
Revolution; or rather, one does not wonder, for he would
have unhesitatingly condemned it, as he unhesitatingly
condemned the French. The bearing of all this upon the
doctrine of Natural Rights is clear. Society guarantees no
rights and the basis of our obligation to obey it cannot,
therefore, be established by representing society as a
guarantor of rights. Society is a growth which has developed
because God ordained it so, its purpose being to regularize
and stabilize the relations between man and man which
He also ordained The growth and development of society
so conceived are as natural as the growth of a trt5 or the
development of an art. The art of music, for example, is
not the result of a definite decision to produce music; it
flowers naturally from the spirit of man. Similarly with
society. And just as it is nonsensical to ask what rights a
man ought to have, and how far society ought to guarantee