Understanding is fundamental to freedom. Freedom consists in
mastering our environment; and never except by accident or luck, can we
control what we do not understand. There is a part of the environment that
has come to us from nature and exists, as we exist, without our having
created it. The rest is the product of human efforts both in past generation
and is the present. As yet, neither the physical environment nor the man
made portion is wholly known to us. Perhaps some ultimates are not
completely knowable. But yearly, as research advances and experience
teaches, the areas that are known grow broader or deeper.
Extensions of knowledge, while they augment our understanding, do
not always enlarge the capacity for control. Particularly this holds true for
our relation to nature, some of whose phenomena are alterable by man
while others are not. To the latter we must adopt ourselves; the farmer we
can learn to bend our will. For instance, a geologist studies the nature of
earthquakes, until conceivably he may fully comprehend them. But he
cannot cause them or prevent their occurring. The astronomer and
physicist observe the sun and planets and discover the shape and motions
of the earth. Yet despite all increases in our information about heavenly phenomena, these lie entirely beyond human influence. Never shall
earth from spinning in its orbit. In such matters, the best may open to w
change the stars in their course or step the cooling of sun or prevent this
(in fact, the only way) is to accept the given necessities, adjust to their
requirements, and design our patterns of life accordingly. In other cases,
however, we are ourselves the determinants of nature, since the use s
make of natural forces produces results that we have caused. Here it is o
own choice that work for our weal or woe. Though we cannot arrest
hurricane or divert a tidal wave, we can control and harness a river. We
did not make the sail in which we live. But we can exhaust or restore its
fertility, provoke erosion or reclaim a desert, or even, as the Dutch
snatch land from the ocean. Granted these facts, what does it require to relate ourselves to nature
in a rational manner. Our first talk has to be an exercise of intellect. We
the Universe and understand the connections of cause and effect. At an
must learn the operation of the physical forces that manifest themselves in
unsophisticated level, people have tried to do this by methods that are
erroneous because their users are misinformed about the nature of things.
A primitive man, who thinks an eclipse of the sun is the work of demons,
beats a drum or sounds the temple gongs to scare away the evil spirits. He
is assuming connections that do not exist. Not comprehending the cause of
phenomenon, he mistakes its “cure” and believes in his own ability to
influence an even our which he has no control. The leap beyond the
available evidence, they take fiction for facts, they assume causes and
powers that are mythical. The rational method consists in acquiring
accurate knowledge about physical forces and how they function, human
freedom vis-à-vis nature depends on learning to conform where we must
and do control where we can. Against earthquakes, building can be so
constructed that they will with stand shocks more readily, serving to
mitigate the danger. In other sphere, applying scientific data through
technology, we can navigate a ship across an ocean or fly an airplane
around the globe. Further than that, we can launch a satellite into orbit
around the earth and propel a rocket beyond the reach of terrestrial
gravity.
Do the same considerations apply to the other part of our
environment, the part that is made by man? Is the same combinations to be
found here as in the physical environment? Is the social order also a
mixture of the inevitable to which we must somehow adjust and the malleable, which we can make and remake? The answers of these
questions are fundamental. Upon then hinges our picture o social man
either as floatman drifting along the streams of events or as a regulator
directing their flow. From then derive two views of political man, as
creature of his institutions or their creator. Both positions have their
supporters, which indicates that there is some evidence to be argued to
each side. Since we talk here about the political aspect of the man made
environment, it involves, as does any attempt at systematic treatment, a
series of assumptions about the nature of man and his social context.
The issues that form the context of the political process are five in
number. The first concerns the members themselves. Because they are
associated with the state, they must stand in some kind of relation to each
other. What is that to be? Are all members placed on an equal footing? Or
are some superior to the rest? The some questions may be differently
phrased. Is citizenship exclusive or all inclusive? If the former, then
members of the state are divided into two groups, one having rights of full
citizenship, and the other treated as inferiors or subjects. If citizenship is
all inclusive, however, then every body enjoy the same basic status
without discrimination or limitation. The master principle is a regime of
privilege in one case, of equality in the other.
The next issue arises from controversy over the functions that the
state performs for its members. Originating in the need for protection, the
state has traditionally widened the sphere of its activities. The question is
thus inevitably presented, whether there are; or are not, any limits to what
the state can effectively, and shall rightfully, undertake. On this point
schools of philosophy, as well as practices of politics, have been opposed
from times ancient to present. Some have held that no social activity and
no group can, or should, be exempt from the jurisdiction of the state.
Others maintain that somewhere a boundary line must be set within which
the state may freely move, but outside of which it trespasses an alien
ground.
Both the third and fourth issues deal with the subject of authority,
but are occupied with different aspects of it. One is the problem of
determining the source from which authority is derived. This question has
become acute because the state, in order to provide services to its citizens,
has needed to acquire and exercise power. Since its powers are channelled
into the hands of the government, and since the officials who compare the
latter are numerically fever than the rest of the community, the relation of government to governed becomes a debatable issue. Those who
try to retain the ultimate control over political power. It the distribution of
besides claiming authority, seek to justify their use of it; the governed,
power within the state is conceived in terms of a pyramid, the governmen
upward to the apex, or to originate in the apex, like goddess then in the
Authority can then be imagined either to stein from the base and travel
ancient myth springing fully armed form the head of Zeus, an and flow
downward to the hare, under the first line, the government would be
controlled by and responsible to, the people. Under the second, the people
are subjects of those who govern and are duty bound to obey commands,
The query about its sources, however, is not the only fundamental
issue that the existence and establishment of authority evoke. No matter
where authority originates from the base of pyramid or its apex another
issue concerns the manner in which authority, however derived, is
is possible, on the one hand, to have power
concentrated at a single focal point. Or power can be subdivided into
powers that are dispersed and diffused. There can be parcelled out among
separate branches of the government and distributed between different
levels Either the introduction of checks and balances or their removal may
be rough, and the machinery of government will vary accordingly.
subsequently organized.
There remains as the fifth basic political issue the problem of
magnitude with regard both to the area that the state covers and to the
population it contains, and the associated problems of relations between
separate states. How large or small should be the unit of government?
What is the optimum size of a state? Are there limits to its dimensions that
the state should not exceed? How are the independent states related? These
are vexing questions in the cogitations of political theorists and the
calculations of statecraft. Since the western world has already
experimented with units as diverse as the city-state, nation-state, and
empire-state, and continues to strive for few forms of international
organization, it is evident that much can be learnt from comparing
governments of small, middle, large, and mammoth scale and observing
the patterns of inter state politics.