The Cosmocentric Family

and the Fate of Empires

“Can anything be better for a man than to be heir to himself?”

- Heliogabalus

John Hubbard’s The Fate of Empires published in 1913 is a short 130-page dissertation that asks one simple question, “Can there be a permanent society or are they all doomed to decline?” Hubbard argues that human behavior is shaped by the dynamic interplay between instinct and reason: instinct drives individuals to prioritize the welfare of the race (ethnos) through ruthless self-sacrifice, and reason, guides societal actions toward competition with contemporaries.

This inherent conflict between the individual and the collective creates an antagonistic relationship within each domain. The resolution, according to Hubbard, “cannot be achieved by either instinct or reason alone.” Reason advocates for the elimination of competition, risking a descent into the pitfalls of socialism, while instinct maintains a low developmental trajectory by sacrificing individual growth for the sake of the race.

Hubbard suggests finding a new suprarational foundation in the religious motive, elevating both propagation and competition. This religious motive transforms the individual into a member of a family with a vested interest in the past and future of the race, aligning personal and societal goals.

The religious motive provides a framework for anchoring our actions in a broader temporal context, attributing the significance of life to its connection with the infinite and the universe. As described by Hubbard, this motive can take either a geocentric or cosmocentric form, distinguished primarily by their temporal orientations. While the geocentric perspective, exemplified by Stoic philosophy, concentrates on the present moment, the cosmocentric outlook, exemplified by Christianity, transcends human conceptions of time. Hubbard asserts that the cosmocentric religious motive is more effective in pursuing racial and societal goals through self-sacrifice than its geocentric counterpart.

According to Hubbard, "Geocentric actions aim for a permanent civilization as an end but fall short, while cosmocentric actions achieve it without explicitly seeking it as an end." Additionally, the cosmocentric religious motive possesses the capacity to harmonize the rival spirit driven by individual and societal impulses with the reproductive imperative dictated by racial impulses, serving as a mechanism that imparts significance and a cohesive path to both pursuits.

One of the historical examples that Hubbard provides is that of the Roman family. He points to the strength of the family when rooted in a sense of ancestry and offspring, illustrating the critical role of this suprarational sanction. Conversely, Rome's decline coincided with individuals viewing themselves in opposition to the race, leading to the erosion of familial ties and the eventual dissolution of the state in the face of self-indulgent competition.

This self-indulgent competition resulted in the degradation of marriage. Rome knew three forms of marriage, cofarreatio, coemptio, and usus. The first of these confarreatio was a solemn religious form of marriage. The second coemptio was a respected form of civil marriage. The last, a lower form of marriage known as usus was a common law marriage resulting from cohabitation with the “husband,” for one year in which the woman passed under the patria potestas of her husband.

By the close of the Republic cofarreatio and coemptio had almost died out and during the height of the Empire usus dominated, but even usus had degraded. It became common for the wife to remain absent from her husband for three nights a year so that she never passed into the power of her husband. The result was that most “marriages,” were merely civil contracts dissoluble at pleasure and according to Hubbard, “most Roman men never married at all.”

Augustus attempted to reverse the revolt against marriage and revitalize religious fervor. Early in his reign, Augustus enacted his famous reform, the Lex Julia in 18 B.C. It was divided into three parts of which the Lex de maritandis ordinibus was designed to combat the rise in celibacy and sterility through a series of penalties and rewards.

Strict limitations were imposed on the inheritance rights of the unmarried. The transfer of property was contingent on having children, favoring those who were parents. In cases where a husband and wife had offspring, they could mutually inherit each other's possessions. However, if there were no children, only a tenth of the property could be passed on with the remainder going to the state. Furthermore, a widow or widower was granted a two-year period before remarriage became obligatory.

To encourage marriage and family life, incentives were devised. Married men with families were earmarked for promotions, given priority in theater seating, and granted tax relief.

In A.D. 9, Augustus created the Law Pappia Poppaea, which enacted penalties for adultery and complemented Augustus' Lex Iulia de maritandis ordinibus of 18 BC and the Lex Iulia de adulteriis coercendis of 17 BC. Agustin's reforms were taken seriously, as De Montesquieu writes in Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline,

“These laws were not permitted to become a dead letter. Julia herself, the only daughter of Augustus, the widow of Agrippa, the mother of Caius and Lucius Caesar, and the wife of Tiberius, was convicted under the drastic provisions of the Lex de adulteriis, and banished, at the age of thirty-seven, to the barren little island of Pandataria. The sentence was never revoked, and she died in extreme want and misery. Her daughter, of the same name, offended against the same law, and was banished to a small island in the Adriatic.”

Furthermore, according to Tacitus,

"Spies were appointed, who by the Law Pappia Poppaea were encouraged with rewards to watch such as neglected the privileges of marriage, in order that the State, the common parent, might obtain their vacant possessions."

Nevertheless, the laws failed in their purpose. Tacitus continues…

"Not even by this means (Lex Pappia Poppaea) did marriages and the bringing up of children become more in vogue, the advantage of having no children to inherit outweighing the penalty of disobedience."

In A.D. 9, thirty-four years after the enactment of the Lex Julia, Augustus faced significant grievances regarding the high number of unmarried Equites. Recognizing the substantial impact this had, both in itself and as a negative influence on others, the matter became of great consequence to the Emperor. In response, he promptly convened the entire body of the Equestrian Order, directing the assembly to segregate the married and unmarried individuals. According to Echard, Augustus then addressed the unmarried Equestrians...

“… Their lives and Actions have been so peculiar, that he knew not by what name to call them; not by that of Men, for they performed nothing that was manly; nor by that of citizens, for the city might perish notwithstanding their care: nor by that of Romans, for they designed to extirpate the Roman name. Then proceeding to shew his tender care and hearty affection for his people, he further told them. That their course of life was of such pernicious consequence to the glory and grandeur of the Roman Nation, that he could not choose but tell them that all other crimes put together could not equalize theirs: for they were guilty of murder, in not suffering those to be born, which should proceed from them; of impiety, in causing the names and honors of their ancestors to cease; and of sacrilege, in destroying their kind, which proceed from the immortal gods, and human nature, the principal thing consecrated to them therefore, in that respect they dissolved the government, in disobeying its laws; betraying their country, by making it barren and waste; nay and demolished their city, in depriving it of inhabitants, and he was sensible that all this proceeded not from any kind of virtue or abstinence, but from looseness and wantonness which ought never be encouraged in any civil government.”

Fifty years after Augustus' death, Tacitus observed that "nearly all the Equites and the greater number of the senators betrayed a servile (slave) origin." The decline in marriage and birth rates compelled Rome to rely on a constant influx of aliens, predominantly slaves from the east and German invaders from the north. The manumission of slaves became imperative, as slaves were entitled to a peculium (private savings) for purchasing their freedom. Upon liberation, those of servile birth entered the class of libertines or freedmen, and even in the era of the first Caesar, being born free was sufficient for qualifying as a citizen rather than foreign-born. Citizenship, according to Gibbon, was determined by the mother's condition, "if her freedom could be ascertained, during a single moment, between conception and delivery."

Despite the influx of aliens and servile citizens, Rome's population decline persisted. Hubbard notes, "Reason did not spare the newcomers, and multitudes poured into Italy, only to vanish, like a river flowing into sands."

No leader made as fervent an effort to combat population decline as Augustus. His lifelong endeavor proved unsuccessful, and the Roman world faced the corrosive question of Emperor Heliogabalus, "Can anything be better for a man than to be heir to himself?" Romans concluded that nothing could surpass spending their inheritance on themselves. Twenty-six years after Diocletian's abdication, Constantine shifted the seat of imperial power from the Tiber to the Bosphorus and Lactantius documented the ominous depopulation of Italy and the oppressive taxation burdening the few survivors.

Hubbard's thesis posits that enduring civilizations cannot thrive on instinct or reason alone; their permanence lies in safeguarding racial preservation and tempering pure reason through cosmocentric religious motives and strong family structures. Ad hoc religiousness proves insufficient; history demonstrates that, despite Christians restoring the dignity of marriage during Justinian's time, they could not undo the influence of earlier conditions that rationalized it away.

Hubbard's theory underscores the pivotal roles of religious motives and robust family bonds as essential elements for the enduring vitality of civilizations. Maintaining a balance between instinct and reason becomes crucial to prevent the erosion of societal values. The geocentric religious motive in Rome, primarily serving practical purposes, underscores the detrimental impact of prioritizing individual gratification over familial and societal commitments. Hubbard's insights illuminate the timeless principles that sustain civilizations, emphasizing the imperative integration of reason, instinct, and a transcendent religious foundation for navigating and upholding a civilization.

-TJS

“Religious controversy is the offspring of arrogance and folly; that true piety is most laudably expressed by silence and submission; that man, ignorant of his own nature, should not presume to scrutinize the nature of his God; and that it is sufficient for us to know, that power and benevolence are the perfect attributes of the Deity.”
― Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire