l66 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
sanctions that spring from the common desires of each. By persuading the mass of his army they clothe him with coercive sanctions over individuals. He orders traitors to be killed. He appoints, promotes, and reduces his lieutenants. He distributes material rewards, and determines the pay of all beneath him. When finally his conquest is successful, and the army has settled upon conquered peoples, we find the following organization and differentiation of sanctions radiating out from the will of the monarch : corporal sanctions, applicable to the conquered peoples and the intractable elements of the conqueror ; privative and remuneratory sanctions, including appointments, promotions, reductions, and removals, and control over the material sources of livelihood, applicable to the warriors and their chiefs ; per- suasive sanctions, applicable to the courtiers, favorites, and chief holders of fiefs, and also supplementary to the sanctions con- trolling all the other subordinate classes.
The organization of society is yet very loose. The thirst for private appropriation must precede the rise of public spirit. As soon as conquest is accomplished and the soil distributed among the chiefs, each becomes more or less a sovereign, and rids him- self of the coercive sanctions of the king.
In the feudal organization of society, when thus first loosely thrown together (having omitted the minor stages which inter- vened since the original emergence of self-consciousness) , we have the next extension of the principle of private property, the private appropriation of land. Primitive common property in land, so called, is not properly entitled to that designation, seeing that it did not spring from self-consciousness. It was simply the common use of land, which, in its abundance, attracted no more attention than did air and water. Animal instinct is adequate to mark off hunting-grounds, and to defend them against other animals. And, if we choose by metaphor to read into the minds of animals our refined and abstract self-conscious- ness, we may assert that they have developed the institution of property. But such would be only a metaphor. So, in our advanced civilization, after having developed the idea and the institution of property, we are tempted to read back into the
