Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“The individual was primary; the State, the Church, society, the family, secondary.”
- Source
- Eighty Years and More
- Date
- 1898
Meaning of “The individual was primary; the State, the Church,…”
The hierarchy places inherent personhood before social institutions, arguing that family, church, society, and government should serve rather than erase individual conscience and dignity.
Where does it come from?
Eighty Years and More (1898), Chapter XIV, “Views on Marriage and Divorce,” Project Gutenberg #11982. This sentence immediately follows Stanton’s individual-sovereignty claim inside her quoted April 1894 Arena article: she contrasts older state/family primacy with the Christian claim of individual conscience and judgment. The passage is historical reform argument, not modern constitutional or family-law doctrine.
