tory. Certain social institutions like the family,
the state, and the church have thrown restraint about the individual,
and when this restraint is removed he tends to run amuck. From the
beginning the family was the unit of the social order, and the
authority of its head was the source of wisdom. Self-control was not a
substitute for paternal discipline, but was a fact only in presence of
the dread of paternal discipline. The idea of absolute authority
passed over into the state, and absolutism was the theory of
efficiency in the ancient state, down to the fall of the Roman Empire
in the West. It was a theory that made slavery possible. It
strengthened the position of the high priest of every religious cult,
created the thought of the kingdom of God and moulded the Christian
creeds, and made possible the mediaeval papacy. It has been the
fundamental principle of all monarchical government. It has remained a
royal theory in eastern Europe and Asia until our own day, and
survives in the political notion of the right of the strongest and in
the business principle that capital must control the industrial system
if prosperity and efficiency are to endure.

Irresponsible absolutism has been giving way slowly to paternalism.
This showed itself first in a growing conviction that kings owed it to
their subjects to rule well. Certain enlightened monarchs consulted
the interests of the people and, relying on their own wisdom,
instituted measures of reform. This type of paternalism was not
successful, but it has been imitated by modern states, even republics
like the United States, in various paternalistic measures of economic
and social regulation. Those who hold the theory that external
authority is necessary have been urgent in calling for the regulation
of railroads, of trusts, and of combinations of labor, until some have
felt that the authority of representative democracy bore more heavily
than the authority of monarchy. It is the principle of those who favor
government regulation that only by governmental restraint can free
competition continue, and everybody be assured of a square deal; their
opponents argue that such restraint throttles ambition and is
destructive of the highest efficiency that comes as a survival of the
fittest in the economic struggle.

379. =Socialism.=--Socialism is a third variety of the theory that
social order and efficiency depend on external authority. Socialists
aim at improving the social wel