Equality
Series Part Three
“To err is human”
Alexander Pope
So, how did
we become so obsessed with equality? This is a massive question to answer, and
I am writing another series that overlaps with this one which you can find here, here and here. But because of the work of some
incredible researchers we can tie down some reasonably solid answers to this
question. But before we turn to answer that question, it is important that I
address another point: why people are obsessed with equality?
There are
many different layers to this question which I could answer, but I think for
the average person the focus on equality is a benevolent pursuit. Most people
want to treat others fair, most of the time, and so they are not intending
equality to be a wedge issue to undermine all that is good in our society, they
simply want everyone to have a fair go, fair treatment, and fair
acknowledgement of their human value.
As one
friend said to me, most people do not define equality in such absolute terms as
I did in my previous two articles, as only properly referring to weights and
measurements and not to a value amongst people. As he put it, most people have
a fuzzier definition of equality, where they mean that people should be paid
the same for the same job, that people should be treated fairly before the law,
and other such matters. These are noble goals, and they are not what I am
seeking to argue against…
…However,
they also are not matters for equality, but rather matters of ius,
matters of justice, matters of what is objectively right and should be
subjectively applied to all people. My contention, which I will seek to address
in later articles is that the focus on equality undermines and derails justice,
it does not enhance it. Justice needs no qualifier. We SHOULD be advocating for
a more just society, and more righteous and upstanding society, and I will seek
to show how I think opposing the ideology of equality achieves this in a later
work. For now, I would just like to say to my friends who raised these points
that I hear you, I know you and I have the same goals in mind of a better
society, but I think it imperative that we use the word ‘just’ rather than
equality, because 1) it is actually possible, 2) it is genuinely noble, and 3)
it is supported by both argument to Scripture and natural law, so it thoroughly
defensible. Now, let’s turn to the main issue at hand: How did we become so
obsessed with equality?
As I
mentioned above, some brilliant researchers have laid down some incredible
foundations that allow us to attempt to answer this question. Martin van
Creveld’s Equality: The Impossible Quest, is a brilliant little book
exploring the history of Man’s quest for equality. Van Creveld shows that
whether it is the most primitive societies, or the most advanced like ours,
equality just doesn’t exist anywhere, and never can. Some progressives have
attempted to hark back to a hypothetical and idealized primitive past to seek
to establish that there were once societies that were structured around
egalitarian values, before patriarchal societies overcame them and forced us to
live in more successful, hierarchal civilisations.[1]
Now, putting aside that this is a terrible argument for egalitarianism, as this
would be effectively admitting that it is anti-civilisational, Van Creveld
shows that this is simply a myth, a phantom, anyway, such societies are
non-existent. This is what Van Creveld has to say about primitive societies:
Briefly, even in the simplest known human society of all,
simpler even than the tribes of the highlands of Papua/New Guinea, some people
were considered more equal than others. Indeed it might be said that, to the
extent that any kind of organization existed both inside and outside the
family, it both rested on inequality and perpetuated it.[2]
These
so-called “egalitarian” primitive societies are not egalitarian, which makes
sense, as the closer you get to dealing with the brutality of nature the more intelligence,
strength and leadership matter. Nature is an unforgiving environment and does
not entertain any of our pretentions. But even though this is really an obvious
point, still this idea has been attractive to many. There was considerable
discussion among the enlightenment thinkers about the so-called ‘egalitarian’
and free loving nature of the primitive societies European explorers were
finding all over the world. But, as Van Creveld notes,
Looking back, it appears that all the participants in the
debate were wrong. A closer examination of the facts would have shown that
hordes of perfectly free men and women enjoying equal authority, status and
access to resources of every kind, including each other's sexuality, have never
existed and probably could not have existed. To paraphrase Hobbes, perfect
equality, like its concomitant perfect liberty, can only exist when each
individual lives alone in a desert, where it is meaningless. Even the simplest
known societies were, to a considerable extent, based on inequality. While
there were neither permanent social classes nor institutions, different people
were caught up in what were often extremely complex networks of deference,
rights and duties.[3]
Even though
these societies are often described as egalitarian and are considered the
closest to equality that we can point to[4],
this is not even close to true. It is more accurate just to say that in some
instances their forms of structure were so different to what the western
observers were used to, that many explorers just failed to recognize them at
first glance. In other cases their way of life was being overly romanticized by
people who probably thought the grass was greener on the other side.
It is
important for our whole argument that the myth of equality existing in the
primitive state be exposed as the falsehood it is, and as we continue you will
see exactly why.
When it
comes to discussing the origins of the concept of structuring society along the
lines of equality Creveld takes us to ancient Greece. Greece is famous for its
attempt to establish egalitarian societies. But while equality was an idea that
the Greeks toyed with, it is something they never really achieved, in fact they
did not even come close. For example, we are told of Agamemnon, a King during
the time of the Illiad, that his “tents are full of copper and many choice
captive women.” And while the city states of the classical period gave the
population more rights and more of a say in the decisions of the city, they did
not enfranchise the slaves, or the women, or even other Greeks. The Greeks may
have invented democracy, but they did not really achieve equality. Let’s have a
look at the two most notable attempts to do so, in the city states of Sparta
and Athens.
The Spartan
way of life was based on an extreme, almost monkish, form of equality among the
Spartan warrior class; the Spartiates. From the age of seven to the grave their
life was one of frugal living, devoted to military pursuits, and based on a
harsh form of enforced equality.
Such was the importance Lycurgus attributed to equality that
it applied even to death. Not only did he prohibit any kind of objects to be
buried with their owners, but tombs were not supposed to carry the names of
their occupants. The only exceptions to this rule were men who had been killed
in battle and women who had died in childbirth.[5]
I love that
the Spartans regarded mothers as honourable as warriors, but, as with all other
attempts at establishing a society based on equality, Sparta never really
reached its goals:
In all this, the major deviations from equality were the fact
that private individuals could not speak in the assembly; that only old men
could be elected to the Senate; and that the kingship was hereditary and
limited to members of just two families, the Agiads and the Eurypontids. When
somebody asked Lycurgus about this his response, presented as a typical example
of “Laconian” brevity and pungency, was to tell the man to “go and first
establish democracy in your own household.”[6]
Even the
supposed lifestyle of frugal and brutal equality that the Spartan men enjoyed,
if ‘enjoyed’ is the right word, rested on the massive slave labour force they
were able to bring to bear to maintain their society. While the helots, the
Spartan slave labourers, toiled in the fields, and the perioikoi toiled
in the house, the Spartan men could dedicate themselves to military training.[7]
There is also their famous and disgusting treatment of infants they considered
not “equal” enough, which were either killed or raised as slaves. Spartan
equality really was not a form of equality at all, but a monkish military
elitism, that placed one class of men much higher than everyone else on the
hierarchy.
Athens, is
the other notable example of pretensions of equality in the ancient world. Under
a leader called Solon, the Athenians began to propose the idea of equality
before the law, isonomia, even at one point setting all Athenians free
from debts and servitude, in an attempt to bring more equality to the Athenian
people.
The move did not mean that slavery was abolished. Both
Athenian individuals and the state could, and would, continue to own slaves.
What changed was the
fact that the slaves in question could not be Athenian citizens. From this
point on, in other words, all Athenian citizens were, by definition, free.[8]
But even
these free and “equal” citizens were not really equal. The Athenian people were
separated into different classes by Solon, based on wealth and status, with
only people of certain ranks being allowed to enter respective positions of
power.[9]
Indeed, “…some modern historians have argued that, at this time, isonomia meant
no more than equality among aristocrats.”[10]
Then, as now it seems, the elites used cries of “equality, liberty, fraternity”
to gain more power for themselves, or to put it another way; equality for some
but not for others.
Later in its
history, Athens moved toward a more general democracy and further towards
equality…for Athenian men…that is to say, for the privileged few who had the
right citizenship. It was not as exclusive as Sparta, but it was still not full
equality.
Ephialtes’s successor was the great Pericles. Under his
leadership, which lasted for some thirty years, Athenian democracy assumed its
classic form. One indication of this was the appearance, besides
isonomia—formed out of iso, equal, with nomos, meaning usage, custom, or law—of
a whole series of closely related concepts. Among them were isogeria, meaning
an equal right of all citizens to address the various political assemblies;
isophsephos, i.e. one man, one vote; as well as isokratia, or equality of power.
Of isonomia itself Herodotus has a Persian nobleman say that it was the
“fairest word of all.” Nothing like this democracy had been attempted before.
And nothing like it was to be attempted again for many, many centuries to come.
Under this system the sovereign body was the popular assembly. It alone had the
power to pass laws, make treaties, declare war or peace, and appoint the most
important magistrates (the rest were selected by lot, thus giving every male
citizen a chance to participate in government).[11]
It was a
remarkably unique system in the ancient world, and it had lofty goals. But the
heights of true equality were not reached; “Phaleas, who is only known to us
from Aristotle, pointed out that, though a sort of civic and political equality
had been achieved, socio-economic gaps had not been closed.”[12]
In fact, all it had the effect of doing was create a new form of elite class,
and though some have seen it as the model for an egalitarian society,
By contrast, much of modern, particularly liberal and
socialist, criticism focused on how exclusive Greek equality was. In Sparta
only a small and diminishing fraction of the population consisted of homoioi.
In Athens equality probably covered more people—perhaps 40,000, or sixteen
percent, in a population estimated at a quarter million. Neither in Sparta nor
in Athens (nor in any modern state), did resident aliens possess political
rights. Slaves, both state - and privately-owned, had hardly any rights at all.
Though Solon did much to make Athens more egalitarian, he also passed a law
against slaves practicing gymnastics. Everywhere women were perpetual wards;
unattached widows and courtesans apart, they could only live under male
protection.[13]
Greek
equality may have been grand it its pretensions, but it was truly only enjoyed
by a very small, exclusive, and powerful class of people. It really was just an
equality among the select elite, though Athens was broader, and Sparta more
exclusive. But you cannot answer the question: ‘how did we become so obsessed
with equality?’, without discussing the Greek attempts at achieving it. Western
intellectual thought and civilisation begins with Greece. They are our
forbearers in philosophy, and their writings and civilization pervade our Western
consciousness, and have ever since the Germanic tribes began to clash with
Rome. But even though this is so, it still took a long time for the idea of
equality to filter through into wider western society. So, when did that
happen?
To answer
that, Van Creveld takes us to the early enlightenment, and especially Hobbes
and Locke. Prior to reading Van Creveld, I had found in my own reading that the
idea of equality of all men begins to pervade the wider consciousness of the
West through Locke’s Two Treatises, which I referred to in my first part
of this series on equality (here and here). But while Locke might have
popularized this idea, at least in regards to the American patriarchs, Hobbes
discussed the concept well before Locke did. Indeed, Van Creveld asserts, “The
definitive theoretical step towards the idea that all men—not women, that was
only to come many years later—are equal was made by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1579).”[14]
Part of Hobbes inspiration came from his translation of Thucydides, so there is
our Greek connection again.[15]
But also, Hobbes based his idea of equality on the state of nature:
Nature hath made men so equal in the faculties of body and
mind as that, though there be found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in
body or of quicker mind than another, yet when all is reckoned together the
difference between man and man is not so considerable as that one man can
thereupon claim to himself any benefit to which another may not pretend as well
as he. For as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to kill
the strongest, either by secret machination or by confederacy with others that
are in the same danger with himself.[16]
Hobbes
conception of equality was based upon his theorizing about the state of man in
his most primitive form, which will indicate to you why we began above by
discussing the band societies. As the most accurate representation of man in
his primitive state, close to nature, observation of these societies debunks
the idea of equality in the state of nature completely. Indeed, Hobbes’
theorizing reeks of a man who had no firsthand knowledge with the kind of
societies he was basing his conceptions on. Some might say, “Well Hobbes is
referring to an even more primitive state, before man joined into groups of any
form.” But no such human society has ever been observed, nor would even be
possible. The smallest state a human society could exist in is the family, and
the family always has a leader and a hierarchy, which is usually Patriarchal.
So, either way his ideas just do not work.
In his view
this state of natural equality led to complete anarchy, and therefore, “…to
avoid a war which would be ruinous to all, they have agreed to sign a covenant,
or social contract. Under that contract they give up all their rights and
transfer them to the commonwealth, or state, or Leviathan, instead.”[17]
I tend to agree with his observation that the more a society moves towards
equality the more it will tend towards anarchy, we see this in the West today,
egalitarianism is breaking down every structure. But, I still have to push back
against his conclusion; his accounting for how the state developed does not in
any way factor in how men work. Men naturally follow the strong, intelligent
and successful, especially if someone is both, and the evidence from history is
that such men pass their privileges onto their sons, who either defend them or
lose them based on their own strength, intelligence, skill and luck.
However,
contrary to Van Creveld, who links liberal equality back to Hobbes, and its
transmission into society through the enlightenment thinkers he inspired[18],
the idea of drawing a natural state of equality from nature goes back to at
least the 12th century. Brian Tierney, a Medievalist, has made his case well that
the ideas that flourished in the enlightenment, can be traced with varying
degrees to philosophical discussions between the medieval jurists.[19]
Locke and Hobbes are simply the most prominent exponents of a long tradition of
thought, that they modified and passed on,
According to the natural law that medieval jurists and
philosophers knew, humans were by nature free and equal. For many of them, as
for Locke, it was the fact of subordination under a government that called for
an explanation. The Aristotelian teaching that the polis was natural to man in
the sense that humans could flourish best in a political society was widely
accepted— Locke himself thought that life in a political community was best for
humans— but it was not taken to mean that such societies just came to exist
naturally without any human initiative.[20]
For Locke,
and the medieval jurists, government was the curiosity. How did such an
organization come about?
There are various examples in the centuries before Locke of
writers who envisaged a beginning of political society through individuals’
consenting together to enter into compacts with one another. Already in the
twelfth century the canonist Rufinus envisaged a state of affairs after the
Fall of Adam when humans had lived without any ordered government and with only
the law of nature to guide them. He depicted the human condition then as
brutish and savage, rather in the manner of Hobbes. But, Rufinus allowed, men
retained enough sense of justice to come together and enter into compacts and
covenants with one another and so establish a body of law by which they could
live.”[21]
In the
fourteenth century,
Francisco de Vitoria also envisaged individuals uniting to
form a political community, and he observed that they would all at first be
equal since each had a natural right of self-defense. Vitoria also noted, like
Locke in a later age, that a unanimous consensus was not necessary to establish
a government; a majority vote of the people concerned would suffice.[22]
Both Rufinus
and Vitoria here are arguing for a society based on the consent of the
governed, and Vitoria also explicitly refers explicitly refers to equality
amongst men, as Locke did, in this early state. So as can be seen, the idea of
men being naturally equal was not knew with Hobbes, and while Locke propagated
these ideas wider than anyone before him, he was carrying on a long tradition
of thought.
There is
much more which can be said here about the grand tradition – and it truly is
grand, there is no western civilisation without the genius of medieval theologians
- of medieval thought that exists on the topic of the natural rights and
natural law, but this will have to be reserved for another day. For now, I want
us to note something; where do these thinkers keep coming back to regarding
equality, whether medieval, or the enlightenment? They didn’t find these ideas
in the Bible, because as we have conclusively shown the Bible does not teach
them, so they had to conjure them up in a theoretical, indeed mythical, past;
the “state of nature.”
It is no
wonder such ideas took so long to take any hold in society, even though we can
trace the idea of the “equality of men” to certain medieval jurists, this was
in no way the mainstream conception of humanity. Rather than being obsessed
with equality,
Medieval minds were fascinated, captivated by an alternate
vision – the vision of hierarchy. In real life they were ruled by hierarchies
of government in church and state. But beyond this they perceived the whole
universe as a great hierarchal chain of being. From God authority flowed to an
angelical hierarchy in heaven to an ecclesiastical hierarchy on earth…To
medieval men, divinely ordained hierarchy seemed, not just an abstract theory,
but and observable fact of nature.[23]
And it is an
observable fact of nature, everywhere we go, amongst people or creatures great
and small, we observe hierarchies in action, they are unavoidable. This is not
an argument for absolute tyranny either. The medieval thinkers were onto
something when they sought to establish God given or natural rights, and limits
and responsibilities of power. There is much good in their arguments there, and
we would be foolish to reject all of the grand nobility of medieval thought,
just because we are quibbling with one very minor aspect of it. Chaucer
captures the medieval understanding of why God ordained hierarchy, and shows us
why it is a noble aspect of the world that should be preserved, not rejected,
Now, as I have said, since it was because sin was the first
cause of thralldom, then it stands thus: that all the while all the world was
in sin, it was in thralldom and subjection. But certainly, since the time of
grace came, God ordained that some folk should be higher in rank and state and
some folk lower, and that each should be served according to his rank and his
state… but in as much as the estate of Holy Church might not have come into
being, nor the common advantage kept, nor any peace and rest established on
earth, unless God had ordained that some men should have higher rank and some
lower: therefore was sovereignty ordained to guard and maintain and defend its
underlings or its subjects within reason and so far as lies in its power, and
not to destroy or to confound them.[24]
God ordains
the strong that they might protect the weak. Chaucer argues that thralldom,
that is slavery, came into the world because of sin, and he is right, slavery
is a result of sin, but hierarchy is one of God’s means of limiting evil, and
it is built into the fabric of creation; Adam named his wife, this is a signet
of authority. Hierarchy protects, a rightly practiced hierarchy that is.
A good
example of this is strong fathers in the home. It is well known and well
established that children in fatherless homes are more likely to experience
abuse, neglect, or tend towards criminal behaviour, than children in homes with
a mother and father.[25]
Equalitarians would have us believe all family types are equal, and fathers not
really that necessary, prison wardens, and reality, would disagree. As Robin of
Locksley says in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves: “And one free man
defending his home is more powerful than ten hired soldiers.”[26]
We have foolishly rejected one of the most basic necessities of human
relationships: clear, hierarchical, structures with strong boundaries of
protection.
For the
Christian reader, what fits better with actual scripture, this concept of
hierarchy leading up to the ultimate king, the Lord of creation, or the idea of
equality? The answer is clear when you ask it like that, isn’t it?
Paul makes a
case for a great chain of hierarchy himself more than once, 1 Corinthians
11:2-3 – “2 Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and
maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you. 3 But I want you to
understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her
husband, and the head of Christ is God.” And another example is in Ephesians
5:22-24 –
22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For
the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church,
his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so
also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
The idea of
God, heaven, earthly authorities of church and state, then man and woman, fits
much more with the scriptural worldview, than our modern idea of equality. Indeed,
it is clear in my mind that the idea of equality is a deliberate and SUCCESSFUL
stratagem for undermining the proper hierarchy of creation, that God designed
as a protective structure.
That to me,
is why the original philosophical and legal theories of equality need to turn
to a theoretical “state of nature” to support their arguments, because
observable nature and Scripture contradict the idea of equality in EVERY way. There
is nothing more evident than that there are vast differences between human
beings, we are all created in the image of God and reflect that, but
differently, and this is by design.
So, Hobbes,
Locke and other enlightenment thinkers transmitted and popularized a concept
that had been discussed for centuries beforehand, but never really caught on.
Indeed, even in Lockean England it was sometime before equality worked its way
through the class system and religious structure. In fact in the land of
equality itself, the US, the struggle for equality is still trumpeted loudly by
many politicians on both sides of the isle, as if it that nation’s reason for
existence is to see equality once and for all achieved.
So how did
we become obsessed with equality? Partly because of our Greek heritage of
thought, partly because of medieval discussions about the state of nature,
transmitted to us through enlightenment giants, but I would have to say largely
because the most powerful nation for the last 80-100 years or so, and prior to
that an admired nation still, made it a founding principle of their liberty
from tyranny,
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
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…[27]
The reigning
world empire will dominate the culture of the world in its day, and the success
of this nation has done wonders for the advancement of egalitarian ideas in the
last century and beginnings of this century. I think there is more that can be
said in answer to this, and I am dealing with that in my Satanic Feminism
series linked above. But what I have been determined to establish so far in
this series is two things: 1) That the scriptures did not teach us this idea of
equality, it came from outside the words of scripture, 2) That nature does not
self-evidently show that all are created equal. Therefore, it has not rational
basis.
Indeed, it
is precisely because the opposite is true that much of the history of the
United States has been in turmoil because of its disconnect from its national
rhetoric and its national reality. The same man who inspired the US’s position
on equality, Locke, also made philosophical arguments about why the native
American did not have an equal claim to their own land and therefore why it
could be confiscated. The inherent issues in the US today can be at least
partially attributed to this national mythos of equality, this impossible goal,
that leads to many inherent contradictions, and constant pressure to realize
them, all of which appears to be falling apart right now.
But we
should not single out the US alone, the French revolutions cry, “Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity” was every bit as utopian as the US Declaration of
Independence. Indeed, if you look at it closely, each precept contradicts the
others, you cannot have both liberty and equality, as we discussed at the
start, and if we are truly free, then we will choose not to be brothers with
everyone, opposing groups will form. “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” is a
nonsensical slogan, as many slogans are.
So, while
the answers we have given so far suffice to explain much of the reason why we
are obsessed with equality, I don’t think they give us the full answer. They
explain to us historically how it arose, but not existentially why we are
obsessed with it. For this I can think of no other answer, than this: we like
the idea, no matter all the faults, all the contradictions, all the
impossibilities we see with it, we like to think of ourselves as more than we
are, and forces in our society, both intellectual and spiritual, work very hard
to encourage us in this direction. But why?
I think Chaucer answered that for us above, it is a strategy for undermining
God’s Church and his order;
but in as much as the estate of Holy Church might not have
come into being, nor the common advantage kept, nor any peace and rest
established on earth, unless God had ordained that some men should have higher
rank and some lower: therefore was sovereignty ordained to guard and maintain
and defend its underlings or its subjects within reason and so far as lies in
its power, and not to destroy or to confound them.
If you mess
with the natural hierarchy ordained by God, you mess with the Church, the
family, and the national structures which protect these life-giving
institutions. Anarchy is the end game, because Locke, Hobbes and the medieval
jurists were right, if everyone is levelled then anarchy will ensue, not
because everyone is equal, but because the natural result of levelling is
disorder. Egalitarianism is disorder dressed up as a gift and we are
experiencing the repercussions of it every day in the West as our society
becomes further and further decivilized.
The reason
we are obsessed with equality is that humanity has an enemy, a real, spiritual
and wicked enemy, that worked out long ago, if you want to destroy humanity,
you barely have to lift a finger. All you have to do is convince everyone that
they are owed more, and they have every right to take it, “4 But the serpent
said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat
of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and
evil” (Genesis 3:4-5). It is the original temptation, and it still wreaks havoc
today. We are obsessed with equality, because our society believes the devils
lie that the utopian greatness it offers us is possible. Unless we oppose this
very clever deception, equalitarianism will continue to degrade our society.
List of
References
[2]
Van Creveld, Martin, 2015. Equality: The Impossible Quest. Castalia
House, Finland. Kindle Edition. Chapter 1.
[4]
This should give people a clue to the foolishness of the quest for equality. If
societies truly become more egalitarian the closer they are to primitive
baseline societies, then this fact along should be enough to convince us that
we don’t want to go any further down that road. Income equality really loses
its meaning if everybody has virtually nothing, and every day is a physical
struggle just to remain alive. Better societies based on justice, fairness and
competition, because this lifts up everyone’s standard of living.
[5] Van
Creveld, Martin, 2015. Equality: The Impossible Quest. Castalia House,
Finland. Kindle Edition. Chapter 2
[16] Hobbes,
Thomas. Hobbes: Leviathan, Behemoth, The Elements of Law & De Cive .
Titan Read, Denmark. Kindle Edition. Book one, chapter 13.
[17]
Van Creveld, Martin, 2015. Equality: The Impossible Quest. Castalia
House, Finland. Kindle Edition, Chapter 5.
[19]
Tierney, Brian, 2011. Response to S. Adam Seagrave's “How Old Are Modern
Rights? On the Lockean Roots of Contemporary Human Rights Discourse,” Journal
of the History of Ideas, Vol. 72, No. 3, pp. 461-468 (8 pages), Published
by: University of Pennsylvania Press.
[20]
Tierney, Brian, 2008, “Historical Roots of Modern Rights Before Locke and After,”
Rethinking Rights : Historical, Political, and Philosophical Perspectives,
edited by Kenneth L. Grasso, University of Missouri Press,, source: http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/slq/detail.action?docID=3440723
pp34-57, accessed on the 5/11/2020; P41.
[23] Tierney,
Brian, 1982. Religion, Law and the Growth of Constitutional Thought, Press
Syndicate of the University of Cambridge; Pp42-43.
[24]
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 2017, The Canterbury Tales, JKL Classics Publishers, Kindle
Edition; p516
