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LECTURES ON THE PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL OBLIGATION

BY

THOMAS HILL GREEN LATE FELLOW OF BALLIOL COLLEGE AND WHYTE'S
PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

REPRINTED FROM GREEN'S PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS, VOL II. WITH PREFACE BY
BERNARD BOSANQUET

NEW IMPRESSION

LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO LTD 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK,
BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA

1911

All rights reserved

PREFACE.

The present volume consists of the late Professor Green's lectures
on the 'Principles of Political Obligation,' together with a chapter
on the different senses of the term 'Freedom,' taken from a course
directly connected with the former. The work thus re-issued is a
reprint of pp. 307-553 of Vol. II. of Professor Green's Philosophical
Works, with the addition of a brief supplement (p. 248) furnished
by the present writer, consisting of English renderings for some
quotations which appear in the text (pp. 49-59).

The reason for this re-issue is as follows. The course of lectures in
question has long been known to teachers as a most valuable text-book
for students of political theory. But as a portion of a large and
expensive volume, which is itself part of a set of collected works,
it naturally was not accessible to members of popular audiences.
In discussing the selection of a text-book for a projected course
of instruction on political theory, to be given in London, it was
suggested that a separate volume, containing the 'Principles of
Political Obligation' would be the best conceivable book for the
purpose. No other recent writer, it was felt, has the classical
strength and sanity of Professor Green, who was never more thorough
and more at home then when dealing with those questions affecting
citizenship in and for which, it may be said, he lived. Many of the
troubles of today reflect the distraction of minds to which a sane
and balanced view of society has never been adequately presented;
and the importance of the service which might be rendered to general
education by the re-issue of these lectures in a convenient form
appeared to justify an application to those who had the power of
carrying out the suggestion which had been made.

The friends of genuine political philosophy will have good cause, it
is hoped, to be grateful to Mrs T.H. Green for her cordial assent
to the proposed republication, as also to Messrs. Longman for their
promptitude in agreeing to undertake it. The elaborate table of
contents, reprinted from the Philosophical Works, was compiled by
their editor, the late Mr. Lewis Nettleship. It adds very greatly to
the value of the book.

BERNARD BOSANQUET

Transcriber's Note: each of Green's footnotes has been placed after
the paragraph to which it refers, and renumbered accordingly.
The footnotes added by R.L. Nettleship are treated the same way,
remain in the square brackets with which he distinguished them,
and are marked 'RLN'. The transcriber has added a few footnotes,
mainly explaining Greek words in the text. These are also in square
brackets, marked 'Tr'.

CONTENTS

ON THE DIFFERENT SENSES OF 'FREEDOM' AS APPLIED TO WILL AND TO THE
MORAL PROGRESS OF MAN.

1. In one sense (as being search for _self_-satisfaction) _all_ will
is free; in another (as the satisfaction sought is or is not real) it
may or may not be free

2. As applied to the inner life 'freedom' always implies a metaphor.
Senses of this metaphor in Plato, the Stoics, St. Paul

3. St. Paul and Kant. It would seem that with Kant 'freedom' means
merely consciousness of the _possibility_ of it, ('knowledge of sin')

4. Hegel's conception of freedom as objectively realised in the state

5. It is true in so far as society does supply to the individual
concrete interests which tend to satisfy the desire for perfection

6. Though (like the corresponding conception in St. Paul) it is not
and could not be realised in any actual human society

7. In all these uses 'freedom' means, not mere self-determination or
acting on preference, but a particular kind of this

8. The extension of the term from the outer to the inner relations of
life, though a natural result of reflection, is apt to be misleading

9. Thus the question, Is a man free? which may be properly asked in
regard to his _actions_, cannot be asked in the same sense in regard
to his _will_

10. The failure to see this has led to the errors (1) of regarding
motive as something apart from and acting on will, (2) of regarding
will as independent of motive

11. Thus the fact that a man, _being what he is, must_ act in a
certain way, is construed into the negation of freedom

12. And to escape this negation recourse is had to the notion of an
unmotived will, which is really no will at all

13. The truth is that the will is the man, and that the will cannot
be rightly spoken of as 'acting on' its objects or _vice versa_,
because they are neither anything without the other

14. If however the question be persisted in, Has a man power over his
will? the answer must be both 'yes' and 'no'

15. 'Freedom' has been taken above (as by English psychologists
generally) as applying to will, whatever the character of the object
willed

16. If taken (as by the Stoics, St. Paul, Kant (generally), and
Hegel) as applying only to _good_ will, it must still be recognised
that this particular sense implies the generic

17. Whatever the propriety of the term in the particular sense,
both 'juristic' and 'spiritual' freedom spring from the same
self-asserting principle in man

18. And though the former is only the beginning of full freedom, this
identity of source will always justify the use of the word in the
latter sense

19. But does not the conception of 'freedom' as = the moral ideal
imply an untenable distinction like that of Kant between the 'pure'
and 'empirical' ego?

20. The 'pure' and 'empirical' ego are one ego, regarded (1) in its
possibility, (2) as at any given time it actually is

21. In man the self-realising principle is never realised; i.e. the
objects of reason and will only _tend_ to coincide

22. So far as they do coincide, man may be said to be 'free' and his
will to be 'autonomous'

23. The growing organisation of human life provides a medium for the
embodiment, and disciplines the natural impulses for the reception,
of the idea of perfection

24. The reconciliation of reason and will takes place as the
individual more and more finds his own self-satisfaction in meeting
the requirements of established morality

25. Until these come to be entirely superseded by the desire of
perfection for its own sake, and his will becomes really free.

LECTURES ON THE PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL OBLIGATION

    A. _The grounds of political obligation._

1. Subject of the inquiry

2. Its connection with the general theory of morals. Ideal goodness
is to do good for its own sake: but there must be acts considered
good on other grounds before they can be done for the sake of their
goodness

3. When, however, the ideal comes to be recognised as the ideal, the
lower interests and rules must be criticised and revised by it

4. The criticism of interests will yield a 'theory of moral
sentiments'; that of rules will relate (1) to positive law, (2) to
the law of opinion

5. As moral interests greatly depend on recognised rules of conduct,
and those again on positive law, it is best to begin by considering
the moral value of existing civil institutions

6. The condition of morality is the possession of will and reason,
and it is realised in a personal character in which they are
harmonised

7. Civil institutions are valuable so far as they enable will and
reason to be exercised, and so far they answer to 'jus naturae'

8. The essential questions as to the 'law of nature' are, (1) Are
there rights and obligations other than those actually enforced? (2)
If so, what is the criterion of them?

9. While rejecting the theory of a 'state of nature,' we may still
use 'natural' of those rights which _ought_ to be, though they
actually are not

10. Such 'natural law' is (as admitting _enforcement_) distinct from,
but (as implying a _duty_ to obey it) relative to, the moral law

11. Hence two principles for the criticism of law, (1) only external
acts can be matter of obligation proper, (2) the ideal of law must be
determined by reference to the moral end which it serves

12. Observe _(a)_ that in confining law to 'external actions,' we
mean by 'actions' _intentions_, without which there is properly no
'action'

13. _(b)_ That by 'external' we mean that law, though it does supply
motives to action, looks merely to whether the action is done, not to
whether it is done from a particular motive

14. Law then _can_ only enjoin or forbid certain acts; it _cannot_
enjoin or forbid motives

15. And the only acts which it _ought_ to enjoin or forbid are those
of which the doing or not doing, _from whatever motive_, is necessary
to the moral end of society

16. The principle of 'natural law,' then, should be to enjoin all
acts which further action from the highest motive, and no acts which
interfere with such action

17. This principle would condemn much legislation which has tended,
e.g., to weaken religion, self-respect, or family feeling

18. This, and not the principle of 'laissez-faire,' is the true
ground of objection to 'paternal government'

19. The theory of political obligation (i.e. of what law ought to
be, and why it ought to be obeyed) is not a theory _(a)_ as to how
existing law has come to be what it is

20. Nor _(b)_ as to how far it expresses or is derived from certain
original 'natural' rights

21. 'Natural' rights (like law itself) are relative to moral ends,
i.e. they are those which are necessary to the fulfilment of man's
moral vocation as man

22. This however is not the sense in which political obligation
was based on 'natural rights' in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, previously to utilitarianism

23. The utilitarian theory so far agrees with that here advocated
that it grounds existing law, not on a 'natural' law prior to it, but
on an end which it serves

24. The derivation of actual rights from natural (i.e. more
primitive) rights does not touch the real question, viz. how there
came to be _rights_ at all

25. The conception of a moral ideal (however dim) is the condition of
the existence of rights, and conversely anyone who is capable of such
a conception is capable of rights

26. Thus the consciousness of having rights is co-ordinate with the
recognition of others as having them, the ground of both being the
conception of a common good which _ought_ to be attained

27. Rights then can only subsist among 'persons,' in the _moral_
sense of 'persons,' i.e. being possessed of rational will

28. Though the moral idea of personality is later in formulation than
the legal, and this again than the actual existence of rights

29. Rights which are directly necessary to a man's acting as a moral
person at all may be called in a special sense 'personal'

30. Nor is there any objection to calling them 'innate' or 'natural,'
if this means 'necessary to the moral development of man' in which
sense 'duties' are equally 'natural'

31. Without a society conscious of a common interest there can be
only 'powers,' no 'rights'.

    B. _Spinoza._

32. Spinoza, seeing that 'jus naturae' = 'potentia,' and not seeing
that it is not really 'jus' at all, identifies all 'jus' with
'potentia,' both in the state and in the individual

33. From which it follows that the 'right' of the state against its
individual members is only limited by its 'power'

34. And the same principle applies to the relations of one state to
other states

35. But, according to Spinoza, though everything is 'lawful' for the
state, everything is not 'best,' and the 'best' state is that which
secures a life of 'peace,' i.e. rational virtue or perfection

36. This conclusion does not seem consistent with his starting-point,
according to which men are 'naturally enemies'

37. From such a 'status naturalis' there is no possible transition to
the 'status civilis,' and the phrase '_jus_ naturae' remains unmeaning

38. Spinoza's error of regarding 'rights' as possible apart from
society was confirmed by his denial of final causes

39. It was just because Plato and Aristotle regarded man as finding
his end in the end of the state, that they founded a true theory of
rights

40. Spinoza, however, while insisting that man is 'part of nature,'
yet places his 'good' in understanding nature and so acquiring a new
character

41. In thus recognising the idea of perfection as a determinant of
life, he really recognises an operative final cause, though without
seeing its bearing on the theory of right.

    C. _Hobbes._

42. Hobbes differs from Spinoza in regarding the right of the
sovereign, not as limited by his power, but as absolute

43. Statement of his doctrine

44. He uses 'person,' as in Roman law, for either (1) a complex of
rights, or (2) the subject of those rights

45. Though by his theory the sovereign may be one or many, and
sovereignty is transferable by the act of a majority, he tacitly
vindicates the absolute right of a _de facto_ monarchy

46. The radical fiction in his theory is that there can be any
'right' _after_ the institution of sovereignty, if (as he holds)
there is none before it

47. To justify his doctrine of absolute submission he has to assume a
'law of nature' which binds men to keep covenant, while yet he holds
the 'law of nature' to be mere 'power' and covenants to be only valid
under an _imperium,_

48. His 'contract' can confer none but natural right, and that is
either not a right at all, or (if it is) it belongs to all men,
subject and sovereign alike

49. The real flaw in the theory of contract is not that it is
unhistorical, but that it implies the possibility of rights and
obligations independently of society

50. Though it has not been popularly accepted as regards the rights
of sovereigns over subjects, the behaviour of individuals to society
is to a groat extent practically determined by it.

    D. _Locke._

51. The development of this latter side of it is peculiarly due to
Rousseau, but Locke, Hooker, and Grotius have essentially the same
conception: Spinoza alone differs

52. Ambiguity of their phrase 'state of nature.' They agree in
treating it as the negation of the 'political state.' But if so,
contract would be impossible in it

53. Nor could it be a state of 'freedom and equality,' as most of
them assume it to be

54. And if this state of nature implies consciousness of obligation,
it must imply recognition of social claims, and must therefore be
virtually a political state

55. In fact the theory of a state of nature governed by a law of
nature, as preceding civil society, must be untrue either to the
conception of _law_ or to that of _nature_

56. Locke differs from Hobbes (1) in distinguishing the 'state of
nature' from the 'state of war'

57. He implies (more consistently than Hobbes) that the 'state of
nature' is one in which the 'law of nature' is observed

58. (2) He limits the supreme power in the state by the legislature,
which holds its functions in trust from the community

59. And this distinction between the supreme community and the
supreme executive enables him to distinguish between dissolution of
the political society and dissolution of the government, which Hobbes
had confused

60. He invests the community with the right of resuming the powers
which they have delegated, and thus justifies revolution when it is
the act of the whole community

61. The difficulty is to determine when it _is_ the act of the whole
community, and on this Locke's theory gives no help

62. The difficulty indeed is not so great as that of conceiving the
act of original devolution of power, and is inherent in the theory of
contract

63. In the particular case of the reform of the English
representative system, Locke does not contemplate the carrying out of
his own theory.

    E. _Rousseau._

64. Rousseau conceives the community to be in continual exercise of
the power which Locke conceives it to have exercised once and to hold
in reserve

65. In his view of the motive for passing from the state of nature
into the civil state he is more like Spinoza than Locke

66. His statement of the origin and nature of the 'social contract'

67. Its effects upon the individual

68. His idea of the sovereign is really that of a supreme
disinterested reason, but he fuses this with the ordinary idea of a
supreme coercive power

69. The practical result of his theory has been a vague exaltation of
the will of the people, regardless of what 'the people' ought to mean

70. Further consequences of his ideal conception of sovereignty. It
cannot be alienated, represented, or divided

71. Thus the 'government' is never the same as the 'sovereign,' and
constitutions differ according to where the government, not the
sovereignty, resides

72. The institution of government is _not_ by contract, but by the
act of the sovereign, and this act must be confirmed or repealed
periodically

73. His distinction between the 'will of all' and the 'general will':
the latter always wills the common good, though it may be mistaken as
to means

74. He admits however that it may be overpowered by particular
interests, and so find no expression even in the vote of a general
assembly

75. What then is the test of the 'general' will? Absolute unanimity
is what Rousseau requires of the parties to the original contract

76. But what is to decide whether their successors are parties to it?
Not 'residence,' unless there is also freedom to migrate

77. The element of permanent value in Rousseau is his conception of
the state as representing the 'general will'

78. Difficulties in this conception. It seems that either no actual
state realises it, or that there may be a state without a true
sovereign

79. We may distinguish between _de facto_ and _de jure_ sovereignty,
and say that Rousseau meant the latter; but this is only an
_inference_ from what he says.

    F. _Sovereignty and the general will._

80. Hence it may be asked, (1) Is any actual sovereignty founded on
the 'general will'? (2) Can sovereignty _de jure_ be truly said to be
founded on it? (3) If so, must it be expressed through the vote of a
sovereign people?

81. (1) According to (e.g.) Austin's definition of sovereignty, we
should answer this question in the negative

82. (Observe that from Austin's definition it would follow that,
while every 'law' implies a 'sovereign,' a 'sovereign's' commands
need not be 'laws')

83. That definition directly contradicts that of Rousseau, in _(a)_
placing sovereignty in _determinate_ persons, _(b)_ making its
essence lie in power to compel obedience

84. Actual sovereignty combines both definitions; the habitual
obedience of subjects to the sovereign is due to the sense that by
obeying they secure certain ends

85. So far as Austin means that a fully developed state implies a
_determinate_ supreme source of law, he is right as against Rousseau

86. But if sovereign power = the aggregate influences which really
make the people obedient, it must be sought in the 'general will'

87. Such power need not be 'sovereign' in the narrower sense, and may
coexist with a separate coercive power which is 'sovereign'

88. This has been the case in ancient despotisms, and in the modern
empires of the East

89. So in states under foreign dominion, which retain a national
life, the technical sovereign is not the law-making and
law-maintaining power

90. Under the Roman Empire, in British India, in Russia, where the
technical is also the real sovereign, its strength rests in different
degrees on the general will

91. Thus the answer to question (1) depends on the sense of
'sovereign.' If it = a power which guarantees equal rights, it is
implied in every 'political' society

92. But _(a)_ it _need_ not be the supreme coercive power, and _(b)_
if it is so, it is not _because_ it is so that it commands habitual
obedience

93. Thus (retaining the technical use of 'sovereign') it is true that
if the sovereign is to be so _really_, it must express and maintain a
general will

94. Though this is compatible with the fact that some of the laws of
the sovereign conflict with the general will

95. Thus as to question (2) (above, sec. 80), if sovereignty is said
to rest on the general will 'de jure,' either 'sovereign' or 'jus' is
not used in the strict sense

96. An antithesis between sovereign 'de jure' and 'de facto' can only
arise from a confusion between 'sovereign' as = the source of law and
'sovereign' as = the 'general will'

97. Though there are cases in which (in a different sense) a
sovereign may be conveniently described as 'de facto,' not 'de jure,'
or _vice versa_

98. Similarly, to say that the people is 'sovereign de jure' is to
confuse the general will with the coercive power of the majority

99. Rousseau's confusion is due to the theory of 'natural rights'
(that the individual is not bound by anything which he has not
individually approved)

100. The individual must indeed judge for himself whether a law is
for the common good; but though he judge it not to be, he ought as a
rule to obey it

101. Cases in which a doubt may arise

102. _(a)_ Where the legal authority of the law is doubtful, owing to
the doubt where the sovereignty in the state resides

103. In such cases the truth generally is that the 'right,' on the
particular issue, has not yet formed itself

104. But it does not follow that because the 'right' is on both
sides, one is not 'better' than the other; though this may be the case

105. In such cases of disputed sovereignty the distinction of 'de
jure' and 'de facto' may be applied, though it is better to say that
the sovereignty is in abeyance

106. The individual, having no 'right' to guide him, should take the
side whose success seems likely to be best for mankind

107. _(b)_ Another case is where there is no legal way of getting
a bad law repealed. Here it is a question, not of _right_, but of
_duty_, to resist the sovereign

108. Nor is it a question of the right of a majority, _as a
majority_, to resist: it may be the duty of a helpless minority

109. Some general questions which the good citizen may put to himself
in such dilemmas

110. They can, indeed, seldom be applied by the agents at the time as
they can be after the event

111. In simple cases we may judge of the right or wrong of an act by
the character which it expresses, but generally we can only judge
them by its results

112. All that the historian can say is that on the whole the best
character is likely to produce the best results, notwithstanding
various appearances to the contrary.

    G. _Will, not force, is the basis of the state._

113. The doctrines which explain political obligation by contract
agree in treating sovereign and subject apart, whereas they are
correlative

114. For the desire for freedom in the individual is no real desire
unless he is one of a society which recognises it. (Slaves are not a
real exception to this)

115. And without an authority embodied in civil institutions he would
not have the elementary idea of right which enables him to question
the authority

116. But the theory of contract expresses, in a confused way, the
truth that only through the common recognition of a common good, and
its embodiment in institutions, is morality possible

117. Thus morality and political subjection have a common source.

118. And _both_ imply the twofold conception, _(a)_ 'I _must_ though
I do not like,' _(b)_ 'I must _because_ it is for the common good
which is also my good'

119. It is a farther and difficult question, how far the sense
of common interest can be kept alive either in the government or
subjects, unless the people participates directly in legislation

120. And this suggests the objection, Is it not trifling with words
to speak of political subjection in modern states as based on the
_will_ of the subjects?

121. We must admit _(a)_ that the idea of the state as serving a
common interest is only _partially_ realised, even by the most
enlightened subject, though so far as realised it is what makes him a
loyal subject

122. _(b)_ That if he is to be an intelligent patriot as well as a
loyal subject, he must take a personal part in the work of the state

123. And _(c)_ that even then his patriotism will not be a passion
unless it includes a feeling for the state analogous to that which he
has for his family and home

124. But are we not again assuming what was disputed, viz. that a
sense of its serving a common interest is necessary to the existence
of the state?

125. Observe that the idea of an end or function, realised by
agencies unconscious of it and into which it cannot be resolved, is
already implicit even if the state be treated as a 'natural organism'

126. Such a treatment, however, would ignore the distinction between
the 'natural' and the 'human' or 'moral' agencies which have operated
in the production of states

127. It may be objected that these 'human' agencies are not
necessarily 'moral,' but on the contrary are often selfish

128. But though human motives are never unalloyed, they only produce
good results so far as they are fused with and guided by some
unselfish element

129. If e.g. we would form a _complete_ estimate of Napoleon, we must
consider not only his ambition but the _particular form_ in which his
ambition worked

130. And further reflect that the _idiosyncrasy_ of such men plays
but a small part in the result, which is mainly due to agencies of
which they are only the most conspicuous instruments

131. Thus an ideal motive may co-operate with the motives of selfish
men, and only through such co-operation are they instrumental for good

132. The fact that the state implies a supreme coercive power gives
colour to the view that it is based on coercion; whereas the coercive
power is only supreme because it is exercised in a state, i.e.
according to some system of law, written or customary

133. In the absence of any other name, 'state' is the best for a
society in which there is such a system of law and a power to enforce
it

134. A state, then, is not an aggregate of individuals under
a sovereign, but a society in which the rights of men already
associated in families and tribes are defined and harmonised

135. It developes as the absorption of fresh societies or the
extended intercourse between its members widens the range of common
interests and rights

136. The point to be insisted on is that force has only formed states
so far as it has operated in and through a pre-existing medium of
political, tribal, or family 'rights'.

    H. _Has the citizen rights against the state?_

137. As long as power of compulsion is made the essence of the state,
political obligation cannot be explained either by the theory of
'consent,' or by that which derives all right from the sovereign

138. The state presupposes rights, rights which may be said to belong
to the 'individual' if this mean 'one of a society of individuals'

139. A right may be _analysed_ into a claim of the individual upon
society and a power conceded to him by society, but really the claim
and the concession are sides of one and the same common consciousness

140. Such common consciousness of interests is the ground of the
'natural right' of slaves and of the members of other states

141. But though in this way there may be rights outside the state,
the members of a state derive the rights which they have as members
of other associations from the state, and have no rights against it

142. i.e. as they derive their rights from their membership in the
state, they have no right to disobey the law unless it be for the
interest of the state

143. And even then only if the law violates some interest which is
_implicitly acknowledged_ by the conscience of the community

144. It is a farther question when the attempt to get a law repealed
should be exchanged for active resistance to it

145. e.g. should a slave be befriended against the law? The slave has
as a man certain rights which the state cannot extinguish, and by
denying which it forfeits its claim upon him

146. And it may be held that the claim of the slave upon the citizen,
as a man, overrides the claim of the state upon him, as a citizen

147. Even here, however, the law ought to be obeyed, supposing that
its violation tended to bring about general anarchy.

    I. _Private rights. The right to life and liberty._

148. There are rights which men have as members of associations,
which come to be comprised in the state, but which also exist
independently of it

149. These are 'private' rights, divided by Stephen into _(a)_
personal, _(b)_ rights of property, _(c)_ rights in private relations

150. _All_ rights are 'personal'; but as a man's body is the
condition of his exercising rights at all, the rights of it may be
called 'personal' in a special sense

151. The right of 'life and liberty' (better, of 'free life'), being
based on capacity for society, belongs _in principle_ to man as man,
though this is only gradually _recognised_

152. At first it belongs to man as against other members of his
family or tribe, then as against other tribes, then as against other
citizens, which in antiquity still implies great limitations

153. Influences which have helped to break down these limitations are
_(a)_ Roman equity, _(b)_ Stoicism, _(c)_ the Christian idea of a
universal brotherhood

154. This last is the logical complement of the idea that man as such
has a right to life; but the right is only _negatively recognised_ in
modern Christendom

155. It is ignored e.g. in war, nor is much done to enable men to
fulfil their capacities as members of humanity

156. Four questions as to the relation of the state to the right of
man as man to free life.

    K. _The right of the state over the individual in war._

157. (1) Has the state a right to override this right in war? It must
be admitted that war is _not_ 'murder,' either on the part of those
who fight or of those who cause the war

158. Yet it may be a violation of the right of life. It does not
prove it not to be so, that _(a)_ those who kill do not intend to
kill anyone in particular

159. Or that _(b)_ those who are killed have incurred the risk
voluntarily. Even if they have, it does not follow that they had a
'right' to do so

160. It may be said that the right to physical life may be overridden
by a right arising from the exigencies of moral life

161. But this only shifts the blame of war to those who are
responsible for those exigencies; it remains a wrong all the same

162. But in truth most wars of the last 400 years have _not_ been
wars for political liberty, but have arisen from dynastic ambition or
national vanity

163. Admitting, then, that virtue may be called out by war and that
it may be a factor in human progress, the destruction of life in it
is always a wrong

164. 'But if it be admitted that war may do good, may not those who
originate it have the credit of this?'

165. If they really acted from desire to do good, their share in the
wrong is less; but in any case the fact that war was the only means
to the good was due to human agency and was a wrong

166. (2) (See sec. 157). Hence it follows that the state, so far as
it is true to its principle, cannot have to infringe the rights of
men as men by conflicts with other states

167. It is not because states exist, but because they do not fulfil
their functions as states in maintaining and harmonising general
rights, that such conflicts are necessary

168. This is equally true of conflicts arising from what are called
'religious' grounds

169. Thus no state, as such, is _absolutely_ justified in doing a
wrong to mankind, though a particular state may be conditionally
justified

170. It may be objected that such a 'cosmopolitan' view ignores the
individuality of states, and could only be realised if they wore all
absorbed in a universal empire

171. It is true that public spirit, to be real, must be national; but
the more a nation becomes a true state, the more does it find outlets
for its national spirit other than conflicts with other nations

172. In fact the identification of patriotism with military
aggressiveness is a survival from a time when states in the full
sense did not exist

173. And our great standing armies are due, not to the development
of a system of states, but to circumstances which witness to the
shortcomings of that system

174. The better the organisation of each state, the greater is the
freedom of communication with others, especially in trade, which,
beginning in self-interest, may lead to the consciousness of a higher
bond

175. As compared with individuals, any bonds between nations must
be weak; on the other hand, governments have less temptation than
individuals to deal unfairly with one another.

    L. _The right of the state to punish._

176. (3) (See sec. 156). What right has the state to punish? The
right to live in a community rests on the capacity to act for the
common good, and implies the right to protect such action from
interference

177. A detailed theory of punishment implies a detailed theory of
rights. Here we can only deal with principles

178. Is punishment _retributive_? Not in the sense that it carries on
a supposed 'right' of private vengeance, for no such 'right' can exist

179. The most rudimentary 'right' of vengeance implies social
recognition and regulation, in early times by the family

180. And its development up to the stage at which the state alone
punishes is the development of a principle implied from the first

181. But if punishment excludes private vengeance, how can it be
retributory at all? And how can a wrong _to society_ be requited?

182. When a wrong is said to be 'done to society,' it does not mean
that a feeling of vindictiveness is excited in the society

183. The popular indignation against a great criminal is an
expression, not of individual desire for vengeance, but of the demand
that the criminal should have his due

184. And this does not mean an equivalent amount of suffering; nor
such suffering as has been found by experience to deter men from the
crime

185. Punishment, to be _just_, implies _(a)_ that the person punished
can understand what _right_ means, and _(b)_ that it is some
understood _right_ that he has violated

186. He will then recognise that the punishment is his own act
returning on himself; (it is in a different sense that the physical
consequences of immorality are spoken of as a 'punishment')

187. Punishment may be said to be_ preventive_, if it be remembered
_(a)_ that _what_ it 'prevents' must be the violation of a real
right, and _(b)_ that the _means by which_ it 'prevents' must be
really necessary

188. Does our criterion of the justice of punishment give any
practical help in apportioning it?

189. The justice of punishment depends on the justice of the system
of rights which it is to maintain

190. The idea that 'just' punishment is that which = the crime
in amount confuses retribution for the wrong to society with
compensation for damages to the individual

191. 'But why not hold that the pain of the punishment ought to = the
moral guilt of the crime?'

192. Because the state cannot gauge either the one or the other; and
if it could, it would have to punish every case differently

193. In truth the state has regard in punishing, not primarily to the
individuals concerned, but to the future prevention of the crime by
associating terror with it in the general imagination

194. The account taken of 'extenuating circumstances' may be
similarly explained; i.e. the act done under them requires little
terror to prevent it from becoming general

195 'But why avoid the simpler explanation, that extenuating
circumstances are held to diminish the _moral guilt_ of the act?'

196. Because _(a)_ the state cannot ascertain the _degree_ of moral
guilt involved in a crime; _(b)_ if it tries to punish immorality
(proper), it will check disinterested moral effort

197. Punishment, however, may be truly held to express the 'moral
disapprobation' of society, but it is to the external side of action
that the disapprobation is directed

198. The principle that punishment should be regulated by the
importance of the right violated explains the severity with which
'culpable negligence is punished

199. And the punishment of crimes done in drunkenness illustrates the
same principle

200. It also justifies the distinction between 'criminal' and 'civil'
injuries, (which is not a distinction between injuries to individuals
and to the community, for no 'right' is violated by injury done to an
individual _as such_)

201. There would be no reason in associating terror with breaches of
a right which the offender either did not know that he was breaking
or which he could not help breaking

202. When such ignorance and inability are culpable, it depends on
the seriousness of the wrong or the degree to which the civil suit
involves deterrent effects, whether they should be treated as crimes

203. Historically, the state has interfered first through the civil
process; gradually, as public alarm gets excited, more and more
offences come to be treated as crimes

204. Punishment must also be _reformatory_ (this being one way of
being preventive), i.e. it must regard the rights of the criminal

205. Capital punishment is justifiable only _(a)_ if it can be shown
to be necessary to the maintenance of society, _(b)_ if there is
reason to suppose the criminal to be permanently incapable of rights

206. Punishment, though _directly_ it aims at the maintenance of
rights, has indirectly a moral end, because rights are conditions of
moral well-being.

    M. _The right of the state to promote morality._

207. (4) (See sec. 156). The right of free life is coming to be more
and more recognised amongst us _negatively_; is it reasonable to do
so little _positively_ to make its exercise possible?

208. First observe that the capacity for free life is a moral
capacity, i.e. a capacity for being influenced by a sense of common
interest

209. This influence will only be weakened by substituting for it
that of law, but the state can do more than it usually does without
deadening spontaneous action; e.g. 'compulsory education' need not be
'compulsory' except to those who have no spontaneity to be deadened

210. So too with interference with 'freedom of contract'; we must
consider not only those who are interfered with, but those whose
freedom is increased by the interference.

N. _The right of the state in regard to property._

211. As to property two questions have to be kept distinct, _(a)_
how there has come to be property, _(b)_ how there has come to be
a _right_ of property. Each of those again may be treated either
historically or metaphysically

212. The confusion of those questions and methods has given rise
either to truisms or to irrelevant researches as to the nature of
property

213. Property implies _(a)_ appropriation, i.e. an act of will, of a
permanent self demanding satisfaction and expression

214. _(b)_ Recognition of the appropriation by others. This
recognition cannot be derived from contract (Grotius), or from a
supreme force (Hobbes)

215. Locke rightly bases the right of property on the same ground as
the right to one's own person; but he does not ask what that ground is

216. The ground is the same as that of the right of life, of which
property is the instrument, viz. the consciousness of a common
interest to which each man recognises every other man as contributing

217. Thus the act of appropriation and the recognition of it
constitute one act of _will_, as that in which man seeks a good at
once common and personal

218. The condition of the family or clan, in which e.g. land is held
in common, is not the negation, but on the contrary the earliest
expression of the right of property

219. Its defect lies _(a)_ in the limited scope for free moral
development which it allows the associates, _(b)_ in the limited
range of moral relations into which it brings them

220. But the expansion of the clan into the state has not brought
with it a corresponding emancipation of the individual. Is then the
existence of a practically propertyless class in modern states a
necessity, or an abuse?

221. In theory, everyone who is capable of living for a common good
(whether he actually does so or not) ought to have the means for so
doing: these means are property

222. But does not this theory of property imply freedom of
appropriation and disposition, and yet is it not just this freedom
which leads to the existence of a propertyless proletariate?

223. Property, whether regarded as the appropriation of nature by men
of different powers, or as the means required for the fulfilment of
different social functions, _must_ be unequal

224. Freedom of trade, another source of inequality, follows
necessarily from the same view of property: freedom of bequest is
more open to doubt

225. It seems to follow from the general right of a man to provide
for his future, and (with certain exceptions) to be likely to secure
the best distribution; but it does _not_ imply the right of entail

226. Returning to the question raised in sec. 220, observe _(a)_ that
accumulation by one man does not itself naturally imply deprivation
of other men, but rather the contrary

227. Nor is the prevalence of great capitals and hired labour in
itself the cause of the bad condition of so many of the working
classes

228. The cause is to be found, not in the right of property and
accumulation, but (partly at least) in the fact that the land has
been originally appropriated by conquest

229. Hence _(a)_ the present proletariate inherit the traditions
of serfdom, and _(b)_ under landowning governments land has been
appropriated unjustifiably, i.e. in various ways prejudicial to the
common interest

230. And further the masses crowded through these causes into large
towns have till lately had little done to improve their condition

231. Whether, if the state did its duty, it would still be advisable
to limit bequest of land, is a question which must be differently
answered according to circumstances

232. The objection to the appropriation by the state of 'unearned
increment' is that it is so hard to distinguish between 'earned' and
'unearned'.

    O._ The right of the state in regard to the family._

233. The rights of husband over wife and father over children are
_(a)_ like that of property in being rights against all the world,
_(b)_ unlike it in being rights over _persons_, and therefore
reciprocal

234. The latter characteristic would be expressed by German writers
by saying that both the 'subject' and the 'object' of these rights
are persons

235. Three questions about them: (1) What makes man capable of family
life? (2) How does it come to have rights? (3) What ought the form of
those rights to be?

236. (1) The family implies the same effort after permanent
self-satisfaction as property, together with a permanent interest in
a particular woman and her children

237. The capacity for this interest is essential to anything which
can be rightly called family life, whatever lower forms of life may
historically have preceded it

238. (2) The rights of family life arise from the mutual recognition
of this interest by members of the same clan (in which the historical
family always appears as an element)

239. Its development has been in the direction _(a)_ of giving _all_
men and women the right to marry, _(b)_ of recognising the claims of
husband and wife to be _reciprocal_. Both these imply monogamy

240. Polygamy excludes many men from marriage and makes the wife
practically not a wife, while it also prevents real reciprocity of
rights both between husband and wife and between parents and children

241. The abolition of slavery is another essential to the development
of the true family life, in both the above respects

242. (3) Thus the _right_ (as distinct from the _morality_) of family
life requires _(a)_ monogamy, _(b)_ duration through life, _(c)_
terminability on the infidelity of husband or wife

243. Why then should not adultery be treated as a crime? Because
(unlike other violations of right) it is generally in the public
interest that it should be condoned if the injured person is willing
to condone it

244. Nor would the higher purposes of marriage be served by making
infidelity penal, for they depend on disposition, not on outward acts
or forbearances

245. All that the state can do, therefore, is to make divorce for
adultery easy, and to make marriage as serious a matter as possible

246. _(b)_ Should divorce be allowed except for adultery? Sometimes
for lunacy or cruelty, but not for incompatibility, the object of the
state being to make marriage a 'consortium omnis vitae'.

    P._ Rights and virtues._

247. Outline of remaining lectures, on (1) rights connected with
the functions of government, (2) social virtues. (The antithesis of
'social' and 'self-regarding' is false)

248. Virtues, being dispositions to exercise rights, are best
co-ordinated with rights. Thus to the right of life correspond those
virtues which maintain life against nature, force, and animal passion

249. Similarly there are active virtues, corresponding to the
negative obligations imposed by property and marriage

250. 'Moral sentiments' should be classified with the virtues, of
which they are weaker forms

251. Although for clearness _obligations_ must be treated apart
from _moral duties_, they are really the outer and inner side of
one spiritual development, in the joint result of which the idea of
perfection is fulfilled.

Supplement.

Some Quotations rendered into English.

ON THE DIFFERENT SENSES OF 'FREEDOM' AS APPLIED TO WILL AND TO THE
MORAL PROGRESS OF MAN.

Note of the Editor,

The lectures from which the following extract is taken were delivered
in the beginning of 1879, in continuation of the course in which the
discussion of Kant's moral theory occurred. The portions here printed
are those which were not embodied, at any rate in the same form, in
the _Prolegomena to Ethics_. See _Prolegomena to Ethics_, Book ii.
ch. i. sec. 100, Editor's note.

ON THE DIFFERENT SENSES OF 'FREEDOM' AS APPLIED TO WILL AND TO THE
MORAL PROGRESS OF MAN.

1. Since in all willing a man is his own object, the will is always
free. Or, more properly, a man in willing is necessarily free,
since willing constitutes freedom, [1] and 'free will' is the
pleonasm 'free freedom.' But while it is important to insist upon
this, it is also to be remembered that the nature of the freedom
really differs--the freedom means quite different things--according
to the nature of the object which the man makes his own, or with
which he identifies himself. It is one thing when the object in
which self-satisfaction is sought is such as to prevent that
self-satisfaction being found, because interfering with the
realisation of the seeker's possibilities or his progress towards
perfection: it is another thing when it contributes to this end. In
the former case the man is a free agent in the act, because through
his identification of himself with a certain desired object--through
his adoption of it as his good--he makes the motive which determines
the act, and is accordingly conscious of himself as its author. But
in another sense he is not free, because the objects to which his
actions are directed are objects in which, according to the law of
his being, satisfaction of himself is not to be found. His will to
arrive at self-satisfaction not being adjusted to the law which
determines where this self-satisfaction is to be found, he may be
considered in the condition of a bondsman who is carrying out the
will of another, not his own. From this bondage he emerges into real
freedom, not by overcoming the law of his being, not by getting
the better of its necessity,--every fancied effort to do so is but
a new exhibition of its necessity,--but by making its fulfilment
the object of his will; by seeking the satisfaction of himself in
objects in which he believes it _should be_ found, and seeking
it in them _because_ he believes it should be found in them. For
the objects so sought, however various otherwise, have the common
characteristic that, because they are sought in such a spirit, in
them self-satisfaction is to be found; not the satisfaction of this
or that desire, or of each particular desire, but that satisfaction,
otherwise called peace or blessedness, which consists in the whole
man having found his object; which indeed we never experience in
its fulness, which we only approach to fall away from it again, but
of which we know enough to be sure that we only fail to attain it
because we fail to seek it in the fulfilment of the law of our being,
because we have not brought ourselves to 'gladly do and suffer what
we must.'

To the above statement several objections may be made. They will
chiefly turn on two points; _(a)_ the use made of the term 'freedom';
_(b)_ the view that a man is subject to a law of his being, in virtue
of which he at once seeks self-satisfaction, and is prevented from
finding it in the objects which he actually desires, and in which he
ordinarily seeks it.

[1] In that sense in which 'freedom' expresses a state of the soul,
as distinct from a civil relation.

2. As to the sense given to 'freedom,' it must of course be admitted
that every usage of the term to express anything but a social and
political relation of one man to others involves a metaphor. Even in
the original application its sense is by no means fixed. It always
implies indeed some exemption from compulsion by others, but the
extent and conditions of this exemption, as enjoyed by the 'freeman'
in different states of society, are very various. As soon as the term
'freedom' comes to be applied to anything else than an established
relation between a man and other men, its sense fluctuates much more.
Reflecting on their consciousness, on their 'inner life' (i.e. their
life as viewed from within), men apply to it the terms with which
they are familiar as expressing their relations to each other. In
virtue of that power of self-distinction and self-objectification,
which he expresses whenever he says 'I,' a man can set over against
himself his whole nature or any of its elements, and apply to the
relation thus established in thought a term borrowed from relations
of outward life. Hence, as in Plato, the terms 'freedom' and
'bondage' may be used to express a relation between the man on the
one side, as distinguishing himself from all impulses that do not
tend to his true good, and those impulses on the other. He is a
'slave' when they are masters of him, 'free' when master of them.
The metaphor in this form was made further use of by the Stoics, and
carried on into the doctrines of the Christian Church. Since there is
no kind of impulse or interest which a man cannot so distinguish from
himself as to present it as an alien power, of which the influence on
him is bondage, the particular application of the metaphor is quite
arbitrary. It may come to be thought that the only freedom is to be
found in a life of absolute detachment from all interests; a life
in which the pure ego converses solely with itself or with a God,
who is the same abstraction under another name. This is a view into
which both saints and philosophers have been apt to fall. It means
practically, so far as it means anything, absorption in some one
interest with which the man identifies himself in exclusion of all
other interests, which he sets over against himself as an influence
to be kept aloof.

With St. Paul the application of the metaphor has a special character
of its own. With him 'freedom' is specially freedom from the law,
from ordinances, from the fear which these inspire,--a freedom which
is attained through the communication of what he calls the 'spirit
of adoption' or 'son-ship.' The law, merely as law or as an external
command, is a source of bondage in a double sense. Presenting to man
a command which yet it does not give him power to obey, it destroys
the freedom of the life in which he does what he likes without
recognising any reason why he should not (the state of which St.
Paul says 'I was alive without the law once'); it thus puts him in
bondage to fear, and at the same time, exciting a wish for obedience
to itself which other desires (φρόνημα σαρκός) [1] prevent from being
accomplished, it makes the man feel the bondage of the flesh. 'What
I will, that I do not'; there is a power, the flesh, of which I am
the slave, and which prevents me from performing my will to obey the
law. Freedom (also called 'peace,' and 'reconciliation') comes when
the spirit expressed in the law (for the law is itself 'spiritual'
according to St. Paul; the 'flesh' through which it is weak is mine,
not the law's) becomes the principle of action in the man. To the
man thus delivered, as St. Paul conceives him, we might almost apply
phraseology like Kant's. 'He is free because conscious of himself as
the author of the law which he obeys.' He is no longer a servant, but
a son. He is conscious of union with God, whose will as an external
law he before sought in vain to obey, but whose 'righteousness is
fulfilled' in him now that he 'walks after the spirit.' What was
before 'a law of sin and death' is now a 'law of the spirit of life.'
(See _Epistle to the Romans_, viii.)

[1] [Greek φρόνημα σαρκός (phronima sarkos) = carnal mind (KJV) Tr]

3. But though there is a point of connection between St. Paul's
conception of freedom and bondage and that of Kant, which renders
the above phrase applicable in a certain sense to the 'spiritual
man' of St. Paul, yet the two conceptions are very different. Moral
bondage with Kant, as with Plato and the Stoics, is bondage to the
flesh. The heteronomy of the will is its submission to the impulse
of pleasure-seeking, as that of which man is not in respect of his
reason the author, but which belongs to him as a merely natural
being. A state of bondage to law, as such, he does not contemplate.
It might even be urged that Kant's 'freedom' or 'autonomy' of the
will, in the only sense in which he supposed it attainable by man, is
very much like the state described by St. Paul as that from which the
communication of the spirit brings deliverance,--the state in which
'I delight in the law of God after the inward man, but find another
law in my members warring with the law of my reason and bringing
me into captivity to the law of sin in my members.' For Kant seems
to hold that the will is actually 'autonomous,' i.e. determined by
pure consciousness of what should be, only in rare acts of the best
man. He argues rather for our being conscious of the possibility of
such determination, as evidence of an ideal of what the good will
is, than for the fact that anyone is actually so determined. And
every determination of the will that does not proceed from pure
consciousness of what should be he ascribes to the pleasure-seeking
which belongs to man merely as a 'Natur-wesen,' or as St. Paul might
say 'to the law of sin in his members.' What, it may be asked, is
such 'freedom,' or rather such consciousness of the possibility of
freedom, worth? May we not apply to it St. Paul's words, 'By the law
is the knowledge of sin'? The practical result to the individual of
that consciousness of the possibility of freedom which is all that
the autonomy of will, as really attainable by man, according to
Kant's view, amounts to, is to make him aware of the heteronomy of
his will, of its bondage to motives of which reason is not the author.

4. This is an objection which many of Kant's statements of his
doctrine, at any rate, fairly challenge. It was chiefly because he
seemed to make freedom [1] an unrealised and unrealisable state,
that his moral doctrine was found unsatisfactory by Hegel. Hegel
holds that freedom, as the condition in which the will is determined
by an object adequate to itself, or by an object which itself as
reason constitutes, is realised in the state. He thinks of the state
in a way not familiar to Englishmen, a way not unlike that in which
Greek philosophers thought of the πόλις, [2] as a society governed
by laws and institutions and established customs which secure the
common good of the members of the society--enable them to make the
best of themselves--and are recognised as doing so. Such a state
is 'objective freedom'; freedom is realised in it because in it
the reason, the self-determining principle operating in man as his
will, has found a perfect expression for itself (as an artist may
be considered to express himself in a perfect work of art); and the
man who is determined by the objects which the well-ordered state
presents to him is determined by that which is the perfect expression
of his reason, and is thus free.

[1] In the sense of 'autonomy of rational will,' or determination by
an object which reason constitutes, as distinct from determination by
an object which the man makes his own; this latter determination Kant
would have recognised as characteristic of every human act, properly
so called.

[2] [Greek πόλις (polis) = city-state Tr.]

5. There is, no doubt, truth in this view. I have already tried to
show [1] how the self-distinguishing and self-seeking consciousness
of man, acting in and upon those human wants and ties and affections
which in their proper human character have as little reality apart
from it as it apart from them, gives rise to a system of social
relations, with laws, customs, and institutions corresponding; and
how in this system the individual's consciousness of the absolutely
desirable, of something that should be, of an ideal to be realised
in his life, finds a content or object which has been constituted
or brought into being by that consciousness itself as working
through generations of men; how interests are thus supplied to the
man of a more concrete kind than the interest in fulfilment of a
universally binding law because universally binding, but which yet
are the product of reason, and in satisfying which he is conscious
of attaining a true good, a good contributory to the perfection
of himself and his kind. There is thus something in all forms of
society that tends to the freedom [2] at least of some favoured
individuals, because it tends to actualise in them the possibility of
that determination by objects conceived as desirable in distinction
from objects momentarily desired, which is determination by reason.
[3] To put it otherwise, the effect of his social relations on a man
thus favoured is that, whereas in all willing the individual seeks to
satisfy himself, this man seeks to satisfy himself, not as one who
feels this or that desire, but as one who conceives, whose nature
demands, a permanent good. So far as it is thus in respect of his
rational nature that he makes himself an object to himself, his will
is autonomous. This was the good which the ideal πόλις, as conceived
by the Greek philosophers, secured for the true πολίτης, the man who,
entering into the idea of the πόλις, was equally qualified ἄρχειν
καὶ ἄρχεσθαι. [4] No doubt in the actual Greek πόλις there was some
tendency in this direction, some tendency to rationalise and moralise
the citizen. Without the real tendency the ideal possibility would
not have suggested itself. And in more primitive forms of society, so
far as they were based on family or tribal relations, we can see that
the same tendency must have been at work, just as in modern life the
consciousness of his position as member or head of a family, wherever
it exists, necessarily does something to moralise a man. In modern
Christendom, with the extension of citizenship, the security of
family life to all men (so far as law and police can secure it), the
establishment in various forms of Christian fellowship of which the
moralising functions grow as those of the magistrate diminish, the
number of individuals whom society awakens to interests in objects
contributory to human perfection tends to increase. So far the modern
state, in that full sense in which Hegel uses the term (as including
all the agencies for common good of a law-abiding people), does
contribute to the realisation of freedom, if by freedom we understand
the autonomy of the will or its determination by rational objects,
objects which help to satisfy the demand of reason, the effort after
self-perfection.

[1] [In a previous course of lectures. See _Prolegomena to Ethics_,
III. iii. RLN]

[2] In the sense of 'autonomy of will.'

[3] [This last clause is queried in the MS. RLN]

[4] [Greek πόλις (polis) = city-state, πολίτης (polites) = citizen,
ἄρχειν καὶ ἄρχεσθαι (archein kai archesthai) = to rule and to be
ruled Tr]

6. On the other hand, it would seem that we cannot significantly
speak of freedom except with reference to individual persons; that
only in them can freedom be realised; that therefore the realisation
of freedom in the state can only mean the attainment of freedom by
individuals through influences which the state (in the wide sense
spoken of) supplies,--'freedom' here, as before, meaning not the mere
self-determination which renders us responsible, but determination by
reason, 'autonomy of the will'; and that under the best conditions
of any society that has ever been such realisation of freedom is
most imperfect. To an Athenian slave, who might be used to gratify a
master's lust, it would have been a mockery to speak of the state as
a realisation of freedom; and perhaps it would not be much less so to
speak of it as such to an untaught and under-fed denizen of a London
yard with gin-shops on the right hand and on the left. What Hegel
says of the state in this respect seems as hard to square with facts
as what St. Paul says of the Christian whom the manifestation of
Christ has transferred from bondage into 'the glorious liberty of the
sons of God.' In both cases the difference between the ideal and the
actual seems to be ignored, and tendencies seem to be spoken of as
if they were accomplished facts. It is noticeable that by uncritical
readers of St. Paul the account of himself as under the law (in
_Romans_ vii.), with the 'law of sin in his members warring against
the law of his reason,' is taken as applicable to the regenerate
Christian, though evidently St. Paul meant it as a description of the
state from which the Gospel, the 'manifestation of the Son of God
in the likeness of sinful flesh,' set him free. They are driven to
this interpretation because, though they can understand St. Paul's
account of his deliverance as an account of a deliverance achieved
for them but not in them, or as an assurance of what is to be, they
cannot adjust it to the actual experience of the Christian life. In
the same way Hegel's account of freedom as realised in the state does
not seem to correspond to the facts of society as it is, or even
as, under the unalterable conditions of human nature, it ever could
be; though undoubtedly there is a work of moral liberation, which
society, through its various agencies, is constantly carrying on for
the individual.

7. Meanwhile it must be borne in mind that in all these different
views as to the manner and degree in which freedom is to be attained,
'freedom' does not mean that the man or will is undetermined, nor
yet does it mean mere self-determination, which (unless denied
altogether, as by those who take the strictly naturalistic view
of human action) must be ascribed equally to the man whose will
is heteronomous or vicious, and to him whose will is autonomous;
equally to the man who recognises the authority of law in what St.
Paul would count the condition of a bondman, and to him who fulfils
the righteousness of the law in the spirit of adoption. It means
a particular kind of self-determination; the state of the man who
lives indeed for himself, but for the fulfilment of himself as a
'giver of law universal' (Kant); who lives for himself, but only
according to the true idea of himself, according to the law of his
being, 'according to nature' (the Stoics); who is so taken up into
God, to whom God so gives the spirit, that there is no constraint
in his obedience to the divine will (St. Paul); whose interests,
as a loyal citizen, are those of a well-ordered state in which
practical reason expresses itself (Hegel). Now none of these modes
of self-determination is at all implied in 'freedom' according
to the primary meaning of the term, as expressing that relation
between one man and others in which he is secured from compulsion.
All that is so implied is that a man should have power to do what
he wills or prefers. No reference is made to the nature of the will
or preference, of the object willed or preferred; whereas according
to the usage of 'freedom' in the doctrines we have just been
considering, it is not constituted by the mere fact of acting upon
preference, but depends wholly on the nature of the preference, upon
the kind of object willed or preferred.

8. If it were ever reasonable to wish that the usage of words had
been other than it has been (any more than that the processes of
nature were other than they are), one might be inclined to wish
that the term 'freedom' had been confined to the juristic sense of
the power to 'do what one wills': for the extension of its meaning
seems to have caused much controversy and confusion. But, after all,
this extension does but represent various stages of reflection upon
the self-distinguishing, self-seeking, self-asserting principle, of
which the establishment of freedom, as a relation between man and
man, is the expression. The reflecting man is not content with the
first announcement which analysis makes as to the inward condition
of the free man, viz. that he can do what he likes, that he has the
power of acting according to his will or preference. In virtue of the
same principle which has led him to assert himself against others,
and thus to cause there to be such a thing as (outward) freedom,
he distinguishes himself from his preference, and asks how he is
related to it, whether he determines it or how it is determined. Is
he free to will, as he is free to act; or, as the act is determined
by the preference, is the preference determined by something else?
Thus Locke (_Essay_, II. 21) begins with deciding that freedom means
power to do or forbear from doing any particular act upon preference,
and that, since the will is merely the power of preference, the
question whether the will is free is an unmeaning one (equivalent
to the question whether one power has another power); that thus the
only proper question is whether a man (not his will) is free, which
must be answered affirmatively so far as he has the power to do or
forbear, as above. But he recognises the propriety of the question
whether a man is free to will as well as to act. He cannot refuse to
carry back the analysis of what is involved in a man's action beyond
the preference of one possible action to another, and to inquire
what is implied in the preference. It is when this latter question
is raised, that language which is appropriate enough in a definition
of outward or juristic freedom becomes misleading. It having been
decided that the man civilly free has power over his actions, to do
or forbear according to preference, it is asked whether he has also
power to prefer.

9. But while it is proper to ask whether in any particular case a
man has power over his actions, because his nerves and limbs and
muscles may be acted upon by another person or a force which is not
he or his, there is no appropriateness in asking the question in
regard to a preference or will, because this cannot be so acted on.
If so acted on, it would not be a will or preference. There is no
such thing as a will which a man is not conscious of as belonging to
himself, no such thing as an act of will which he is not conscious
of as issuing from himself. To ask whether he has power over it,
or whether some other power than he determines it, is like asking
whether he is other than himself. Thus the question whether a man,
having power to act according to his will, or being free to act,
has also power over his will, or is free to will, has just the same
impropriety that Locke points out in the question whether the will is
free. The latter question, on the supposition that there is power to
enact the will,--a supposition which is necessarily made by those who
raise the ulterior question whether there is power over the will,--is
equivalent, as Locke sees, to a question whether freedom is free.
For a will which there is power of enacting constitutes freedom, and
therefore to ask whether it is free is like asking (to use Locke's
instance) whether riches are rich ('rich' being a denomination from
the possession of riches, just as 'free' is a denomination from the
possession of freedom, in the sense of a will which there is power
to enact). But if there is this impropriety in the question whether
the will is free, there is an equal one in the question which Locke
entertains, viz. whether man is free to will, or has power over his
will. It amounts to asking whether a certain power is also a power
over itself: or, more precisely, whether a man possessing a certain
power--that which we call freedom--has also the same power over that
power.

10. It may be said perhaps that we are here pressing words too
closely; that it is of course understood, when it is asked whether
a man has power over his will, that 'power' is used in a different
sense from that which it bears when it is asked whether he has power
to enact his will: that 'freedom,' in like manner, is understood to
express a different kind of power or relation when we ask whether a
man is free to will, and when we ask whether he is free to act. But
granting that all this has been understood, the misleading effects
of the question in the form under consideration ('Is a man free
to will as well as to act?' 'Has he power over his will?') remain
written in the history of the 'free-will controversy.' It has mainly
to answer for two wrong ways of thinking on the subject; _(a)_ for
the way of thinking of the determining motive of an act of will,
the object willed, as something apart from the will or the man
willing, so that in being determined by it the man is supposed not
to be self-determined, but to be determined as one natural event by
another, or at best as a natural organism by the forces acting on it:
_(b)_, for the view that the only way of escaping this conclusion is
to regard the will as independent of motives, as a power of deciding
between motives without any motive to determine the decision, which
must mean without reference to any object willed. A man, having (in
virtue of his power of self-distinction and self-objectification)
presented his will to himself as something to be thought about, and
being asked whether he has power over it, whether he is free in
regard to it as he is free against other persons and free to use his
limbs and, through them, material things, this way or that, must
very soon decide that he is not. His will is himself. His character
necessarily shows itself in his will. We have already, in a previous
lecture, [1] noticed the practical fallacy involved in a man's saying
that he cannot help being what he is, as if he were controlled by
external power; but he being what he is, and the circumstances being
what they are at any particular conjuncture, the determination of the
will is already given, just as an effect is given in the sum of its
conditions. The determination of the will might be different, but
only through the man's being different, But to ask whether a man has
power over determinations of his will, or is free to will as he is to
act, as the question is commonly understood and as Locke understood
it, is to ask whether, the man being what at any time he is, it
is still uncertain (1) whether he will choose or forbear choosing
between certain possible courses of action, and (2) supposing him to
choose one or other of them, which he will choose.

[1] [_Prolegomena to Ethics_, Sections 107, ff.--RLN]

11. Now we must admit that there is really no such uncertainty.
The appearance of it is due to our ignorance of the man and the
circumstances. If, however, because this is so, we answer the
question whether a man has power over his will, or is free to
will, in the negative, [1] we at once suggest the conclusion that
something else has power over it, viz. the strongest motive. We
ignore the truth that in being determined by a strongest motive,
in the only sense in which he is really so determined, the man (as
previously explained) [2] is determined by himself, by an object of
his own making, and we come to think of the will as determined like
any natural phenomenon by causes external to it. All this is the
consequence of asking questions about the relation between a man and
his will in terms only appropriate to the relation between the man
and other men, or to that between the man and his bodily members or
the materials on which he acts through them.

[1] Instead of saying (as we should) that it is one of those
inappropriate questions to which there is no answer; since a man's
will is himself, and 'freedom' and 'power' express relations between
a man and something other than himself.

[2] [See _Prolegomena to Ethics_, Section 105.--RLN]

12. On the other side the consciousness of self-determination resists
this conclusion; but so long as we start from the question whether a
man has power over his will, or is free to will as well as to act,
it seems as if the objectionable conclusion could only be avoided by
answering this question in the affirmative. But to say that a man has
power over determinations of his will is naturally taken to mean that
he can change his will while he himself remains the same; that given
his character, motives, and circumstances as these at any time are,
there is still something else required for the determination of his
will; that behind and beyond the will as determined by some motive
there is a will, itself undetermined by any motive, that determines
what the determining motive shall be,--that 'has power over' his
preference or choice, as this has over the motion of his bodily
members. But an unmotived will is a will without an object, which is
nothing. The power or possibility, beyond any actual determination of
the will, of determining what that determination shall be is a mere
negation of the actual determination. It is that determination as it
becomes after an abstraction of the motive or object willed, which
in fact leaves nothing at all. If those moral interests, which are
undoubtedly involved in the recognition of the distinction between
man and any natural phenomenon, are to be made dependent on belief in
such a power or abstract possibility, the case is hopeless.

13. The right way out of the difficulty lies in the discernment
that the question whether a man is free to will, or has power over
the determinations of his will, is a question to which there is no
answer, because it is asked in inappropriate terms; in terms that
imply some agency beyond the will which determines what the will
shall be (as the will itself is an agency beyond the motions of the
muscles which determines what those motions shall be), and that as
to this agency it may be asked whether it does or does not lie in
the man himself. In truth there is no such agency beyond the will
and determining how the will shall be determined; not in the man,
for the will _is_ the self-conscious man; not elsewhere than in the
man, not outside him, for the self-conscious man has no outside. He
is not a body in space with other bodies elsewhere in space acting
upon it and determining its motions. The self-conscious man is
determined by objects, which in order to be objects must already be
in consciousness, and in order to be _his_ objects, the objects which
determine him, must already have been made his own. To say that they
have power over him or his will, and that he or his will has power
over them, is equally misleading. Such language is only applicable
to the relation between an agent and patient, when the agent and
the patient (or at any rate the agent) can exist separately. But
self-consciousness and its object, will and its object, form a single
individual unity. Without the constitutive action of man or his will
the objects do not exist; apart from determination by some object
neither he nor his will would be more than an unreal abstraction.

14. If, however, the question is persisted in, 'Has a man power over
the determinations of his will?' we must answer both 'yes' and 'no.'
'No,' in the sense that he is not other than his will, with ability
to direct it as the will directs the muscles. 'Yes,' in the sense
that nothing external to him or his will or self-consciousness has
power over them. 'No,' again, in the sense that, given the man and
his object as he and it at any time are, there is no possibility of
the will being determined except in one way, for the will is already
determined, being nothing else than the man as directed to some
object. 'Yes,' in the sense that the determining object is determined
by the man or will just as much as the man or will by the object. The
fact that the state of the man, on which the nature of his object at
any time depends, is a result of previous states, does not affect
the validity of this last assertion, since (as we have seen [1])
all these states are states of a self-consciousness from which all
alien determination, all determination except through the medium of
self-consciousness, is excluded.

[1] [_Prolegomena to Ethics_, Section 102. RLN]

15. In the above we have not supposed any account to be taken of
the character of the objects willed in the application to the
will itself of the question 'free or not free,' which is properly
applied only to an action (motion of the bodily members) or to a
relation between one man and other men. Those who unwisely consent
to entertain the question whether a man is free to will or has
power over determinations of his will, and answer it affirmatively
or negatively, consider their answer, whether 'yes' or 'no,' to be
equally applicable whatever the nature of the objects willed. If
they decide that a man is 'free to will,' they mean that he is so in
all cases of willing, whether the object willed be a satisfaction of
animal appetite or an act of heroic self-sacrifice; and conversely,
if they decide that he is not free to will, they mean that he is not
so even in cases when the action is done upon cool calculation or
upon a principle of duty, as much as when it is done on impulse or
in passion. Throughout the controversy as to free will that has been
carried on among English psychologists this is the way in which the
question has been commonly dealt with. The freedom, claimed or denied
for the will, has been claimed or denied for it irrespectively of
those objects willed, on the nature of which the goodness or badness
of the will depends.

16. On the other hand, with the Stoics, St. Paul, Kant, and Hegel, as
we have seen, the attainment of freedom (at any rate of the reality
of freedom, as distinct from some mere possibility of it which
constitutes the distinctive human nature) depends on the character of
the objects willed. In all these ways of thinking, however variously
the proper object of will is conceived, it is only as directed to
this object, and thus (in Hegelian language) corresponding to its
idea, that the will is supposed to be free. The good will is free,
not the bad will. Such a view of course implies some element of
identity between good will and bad will, between will as not yet
corresponding to its idea and will as so corresponding. St. Paul
indeed, not being a systematic thinker and being absorbed in the
idea of divine grace, is apt to speak as if there were nothing in
common between the carnal or natural man (the will as in bondage to
the flesh) and the spiritual man (the will as set free); just as
Plato commonly ignores the unity of principle in all a man's actions,
and represents virtuous actions as coming from the God in man,
vicious actions from the beast. Kant and Hegel, however,-- though
they do not consider the will as it is in every man, good and bad,
to be free; though Kant in his later ethical writings, and Hegel
(I think) always, confine the term 'Wille' to the will as having
attained freedom or come to correspond to its idea, and apply the
term 'Willkür' to that self-determining principle of action which
belongs to every man and is in their view the mere possibility, not
actuality, of freedom,--yet quite recognise what has been above
insisted on as the common characteristic of all willing, the fact
that it is not a determination from without, like the determination
of any natural event or agent, but the realisation of an object which
the agent presents to himself or makes his own, the determination
by an object of a subject which itself consciously determines that
object; and they see that it is only for a subject free in this sense
('an sich' but not 'fur sich,' δυνάμει but not ενεργείᾳ) [1] that the
reality of freedom can exist.

[1] [Greek δυνάμει (dynamei) = potential, ενεργείᾳ (energiea) =
actuality Tr]

17. Now the propriety or impropriety of the use of 'freedom' to
express the state of the will, not as directed to any and every
object, but only to those to which, according to the law of nature
or the will of God or its 'idea,' it should be directed, is a matter
of secondary importance. This usage of the term is, at any rate,
no more a departure from the primary or juristic sense than is
its application to the will as distinct from action in any sense
whatever. And certainly the unsophisticated man, as soon as the usage
of 'freedom' to express exemption from control by other men and
ability to do as he likes is departed from, can much more readily
assimilate the notion of states of the inner man described as bondage
to evil passions, to terrors of the law, or on the other hand as
freedom from sin and law, freedom in the consciousness of union
with God, or of harmony with the true law of one's being, freedom
of true loyalty, freedom in devotion to self-imposed duties, than
he can assimilate the notion of freedom as freedom to will anything
and everything, or as exemption from determination by motives, or
the constitution by himself of the motives which determine his will.
And there is so far less to justify the extension of the usage of
the term in these latter ways than in the former. It would seem
indeed that there is a real community of meaning between 'freedom'
as expressing the condition of a citizen of a civilised state, and
'freedom' as expressing the condition of a man who is inwardly
'master of himself.' That is to say, the practical conception by
a man ('practical' in the sense of having a tendency to realise
itself) of a self-satisfaction to be attained in his becoming what
he should be, what he has it in him to be, in fulfilment of the
law of his being,--or, to vary the words but not the meaning, in
attainment of the righteousness of God, or in perfect obedience to
self-imposed law,--this practical conception is the outcome of the
same self-seeking principle which appears in a man's assertion of
himself against other men and against nature ('against other men,' as
claiming their recognition of him as being what they are; 'against
nature,' as able to use it). This assertion of himself is the demand
for freedom, freedom in the primary or juristic sense of power to
act according to choice or preference. So far as such freedom is
established for any man, this assertion of himself is made good;
and such freedom is precious to him because it is an achievement
of the self-seeking principle. It is a first satisfaction of its
claims, which is the condition of all other satisfaction of them.
The consciousness of it is the first form of self-enjoyment, of the
joy of the self-conscious spirit in itself as in the one object of
absolute value.

18. This form of self-enjoyment, however, is one which consists
essentially in the feeling by the subject of a possibility rather
than a reality, of what it has it in itself to become, not of what it
actually is. To a captive on first winning his liberty, as to a child
in the early experience of power over his limbs and through them over
material things, this feeling of a boundless possibility of becoming
may give real joy; but gradually the sense of what it is not, of the
very little that it amounts to, must predominate over the sense of
actual good as attained in it. Thus to the grown man, bred to civil
liberty in a society which has learnt to make nature its instrument,
there is no self-enjoyment in the mere consciousness of freedom as
exemption from external control, no sense of an object in which he
can satisfy himself having been obtained.

Still, just as the demand for and attainment of freedom from external
control is the expression of that same self-seeking principle
from which the quest for such an object proceeds, so 'freedom'
is the natural term by which the man describes such an object to
himself,--describes to himself the state in which he shall have
realised his ideal of himself, shall be at one with the law which
he recognises as that which he ought to obey, shall have become all
that he has it in him to be, and so fulfil the law of his being
or 'live according to nature.' Just as the consciousness of an
unattainable ideal, of a law recognised as having authority but with
which one's will conflicts, of wants and impulses which interfere
with the fulfilment of one's possibilities, is a consciousness of
impeded energy, a consciousness of oneself as for ever thwarted and
held back, so the forecast of deliverance from these conditions is
as naturally said to be a forecast of 'freedom' as of peace' or
'blessedness.' Nor is it merely to a select few, and as an expression
for a deliverance really (as it would seem) unattainable under
the conditions of any life that we know, but regarded by saints
as secured for them in another world, and by philosophers as the
completion of a process which is eternally complete in God, that
'freedom' commends itself. To any popular audience interested in any
work of self-improvement (e.g. to a temperance-meeting seeking to
break the bondage to liquor), it is as an effort to attain freedom
that such work can be most effectively presented. It is easy to tell
such people that the term is being misapplied; that they are quite
'free' as it is, because every one can do as he likes so long as he
does not prevent another from doing so; that in any sense in which
there is such a thing as 'free will,' to get drunk is as much an
act of free will as anything else. Still the feeling of oppression,
which always goes along with the consciousness of unfulfilled
possibilities, will always give meaning to the representation of the
effort after any kind of self-improvement as a demand for 'freedom.'

19. The variation in the meaning of 'freedom' having been thus
recognised and accounted for, we come back to the more essential
question as to the truth of the view which underlies all theories
implying that freedom is in some sense the goal of moral endeavour;
the view, namely, that there is some will in a man with which many
or most of his voluntary actions do not accord, a higher self that
is not satisfied by the objects which yet he deliberately pursues.
Some such notion is common to those different theories about freedom
which in the rough we have ascribed severally to the Stoics, St.
Paul, Kant, and Hegel. It is the same notion which was previously [1]
put in the form, 'that a man is subject to a law of his being, in
virtue of which he at once seeks self-satisfaction, and is prevented
from finding it in the objects which he actually desires, and in
which he ordinarily seeks it.' 'What can this mean?' it maybe asked.
'Of course we know that there are weak people who never succeed
in getting what they want, either in the sense that they have not
ability answering to their will, or that they are always wishing
for something which yet they do not will. But it would not be very
appropriate to apply the above formula to such people, for the man's
will to attain certain objects cannot be ascribed to the same law
of his being as the lack of ability to attain them, nor his wish
for certain objects to the same law of his being as those stronger
desires which determine his will in a contrary direction. At any
rate, if the proposition is remotely applicable to the man who is
at once selfish and unsuccessful, how can it be true in any sense
either of the man who is at once selfish and succeeds, who gets what
he wants (as is unquestionably the case with many people who live for
what _a priori_ moralists count unworthy objects), or of the man who
'never thinks about himself at all'? So far as the proposition means
anything, it would seem to represent Kant's notion, long ago found
unthinkable and impossible, the notion of there being two wills or
selves in a man, the 'pure' will or ego and the 'empirical' will or
ego, the pure will being independent of a man's actual desires and
directed to the fulfilment of a universal law of which it is itself
the giver, the empirical will being determined by the strongest
desire and directed to this or that pleasure. In this proposition the
'objects which the man actually desires and in which he ordinarily
seeks satisfaction' are presumably objects of what Kant called the
'empirical will,' while the 'law of his being' corresponds to Kant's
'pure ego.' But just as Kant must be supposed to have believed in
some identity between the pure and empirical will, as implied in the
one term 'will,' though he does not explain in what this identity
consists, so the proposition before us apparently ascribes man's
quest for self-satisfaction as directed to certain objects, to the
same law of his being which prevents it from finding it there. Is not
this nonsense?'

[1] [Above, section 1 RLN]

20. To such questions we answer as follows. The proposition before
us, like all the theories of moral freedom which we have noticed,
undoubtedly implies that the will of every man is a form of one
consciously self-realising principle, which at the same time is
not truly or fully expressed in any man's will. As a form of this
self-realising principle it may be called, if we like, a 'pure ego'
or 'the pure ego' of the particular person; as directed to this
or that object in such a way that it does not truly express the
self-realising principle of which it is a form, it may be called the
'empirical ego' of that person. But if we use such language, it must
be borne in mind that the pure and empirical egos are still not two
egos but one ego; the pure ego being the self-realising principle
considered with reference either to its idea, its possibility, what
it has in itself to become, the law of its being, or to some ultimate
actualisation of this possibility; the empirical ego being the same
principle as it appears in this or that state of character, which
results from its action, but does not represent that which it has
in itself to become, does not correspond to its idea or the law of
its being. By a consciously self-realising principle is meant a
principle that is determined to action by the conception of its own
perfection, or by the idea of giving reality to possibilities which
are involved in it and of which it is conscious as so involved; or,
more precisely, a principle which at each stage of its existence is
conscious of a more perfect form of existence as possible for itself,
and is moved to action by that consciousness. We must now explain a
little more fully how we understand the relation of the principle
in question to what we call our wills and our reason,--the will
and reason of this man and that,--and how we suppose its action to
constitute the progress of morality.

21. By 'practical reason' we mean a consciousness of a possibility of
perfection to be realised in and by the subject of the consciousness.
By 'will' we mean the effort of a self-conscious subject to satisfy
itself. In God, so far as we can ascribe reason and will to Him, we
must suppose them to be absolutely united. In Him there can be no
distinction between possibility and realisation, between the idea
of perfection and the activity determined by it. But in men the
self-realising principle, which is the manifestation of God in the
world of becoming, in the form which it takes as will at best only
_tends_ to reconciliation with itself in the form which it takes as
reason. Self-satisfaction, the pursuit of which is will, is sought
elsewhere than in the realisation of that consciousness of possible
perfection, which is reason. In this sense the object of will does
not coincide with the object of reason. On the other hand, just
because it is self-satisfaction that is sought in all willing, and
because by a self-conscious and self-realising subject it is only
in the attainment of its own perfection that such satisfaction can
be found, the object of will is intrinsically or potentially, and
tends to become actually, the same as that of reason. It is this
that we express by saying that man is subject to a law of his being
which prevents him from finding satisfaction in the objects in
which under the pressure of his desires it is his natural impulse
to seek it. This 'natural impulse' (not strictly 'natural') is
itself the result of the operation of the self-realising principle
upon what would otherwise be an animal system, and is modified, no
doubt, with endless complexity in the case of any individual by the
result of such operation through the ages of human history. But
though the natural impulses of the will are thus the work of the
self-realising principle in us, it is not in their gratification that
this principle can find the satisfaction which is only to be found
in the consciousness of becoming perfect, of realising what it has
it in itself to be. In order to any approach to this satisfaction
of itself the self-realising principle must carry its work farther.
It must overcome the 'natural impulses,' not in the sense of either
extinguishing them or denying them an object, but in the sense of
fusing them with those higher interests, which have human perfection
in some of its forms for their object. Some approach to this fusion
we may notice in all good men; not merely in those in whom all
natural passions, love, anger, pride, ambition, are enlisted in the
service of some great public cause, but in those with whom such
passions are all governed by some such commonplace idea as that of
educating a family.

22. So far as this state is reached, the man may be said to be
reconciled to 'the law of his being' which (as was said above)
prevents him from finding satisfaction in the objects in which he
ordinarily seeks it, or anywhere but in the realisation in himself of
an idea of perfection. Since the law is, in fact, the action of that
self-realising subject which is his self, and which exists in God as
eternally self-realised, he may be said in this reconciliation to be
at peace at once with himself and with God.

Again, he is 'free,' (1) in the sense that he is the author of the
law which he obeys (for this law is the expression of that which
is his self), and that he obeys it because conscious of himself
as its author; in other words, obeys it from that impulse after
self-perfection which is the source of the law or rather constitutes
it. He is 'free' (2) in the sense that he not merely 'delights in
the law after the inward man' (to use St. Paul's phrase), while his
natural impulses are at once thwarted by it and thwart him in his
effort to conform to it, but that these very impulses have been drawn
into its service, so that he is in bondage neither to it nor to the
flesh.

From the same point of view we may say that his will is 'autonomous,'
conforms to the law which the will itself constitutes, because the
law (which prevents him from finding satisfaction anywhere but in
the realisation in himself of an idea of perfection) represents the
action in him of that self-realising principle of which his will
is itself a form. There is an appearance of equivocation, however,
in this way of speaking, because the 'will' which is liable not to
be autonomous, and which we suppose gradually to approach autonomy
in the sense of conforming to the law above described, is not
this self-realising principle in the form in which this principle
involves or gives the law. On the contrary, it is the self-realising
principle as constituting that effort after self-satisfaction
in each of us which is liable to be and commonly is directed to
objects which are not contributory to the realisation of the idea of
perfection,--objects which the self-realising principle accordingly,
in the fulfilment of its work, has to set aside. The equivocation
is pointed out by saying, that the good will is 'autonomous' in the
sense of conforming to a law which the will itself, _as reason_,
constitutes; which is, in fact, a condensed way of saying, that the
good will is the will of which the object coincides with that of
practical reason; that will has its source in the same self-realising
principle which yields that consciousness of a possible
self-perfection which we call reason, and that it can only correspond
to its idea, or become what it has the possibility of becoming, in
being directed to the realisation of that consciousness.

23. According to the view here taken, then, reason and will, even
as they exist in men, are one in the sense that they are alike
expressions of one self-realising principle. In God, or rather in
the ideal human person as he really exists in God, they are actually
one; i.e. self-satisfaction is for ever sought and found in the
realisation of a completely articulated or thoroughly filled idea
of the perfection of the human person. In the historical man--in
the men that have been and are coming to be--they _tend_ to unite.
In the experience of mankind, and again in the experience of the
individual as determined by the experience of mankind, both the idea
of a possible perfection of man, the idea of which reason is the
faculty, and the impulse after self-satisfaction which belongs to
the will, undergo modifications which render their reconciliation
in the individual (and it is only in individuals that they can
be reconciled, because it is only in them that they exist) more
attainable. These modifications may be stated summarily as (1) an
increasing concreteness in the idea of human perfection; its gradual
development from the vague inarticulate feeling that there is such a
thing into a conception of a complex organisation of life, with laws
and institutions, with relationships, courtesies, and charities, with
arts and graces through which the perfection is to be attained; and
(2) a corresponding discipline, through inheritance and education, of
those impulses which may be called 'natural' in the sense of being
independent of any conscious direction to the fulfilment of an idea
of perfection. Such discipline does not amount to the reconciliation
of will and reason; it is not even, properly speaking, the beginning
of it; for the reconciliation only begins with the direction of the
impulse after self-satisfaction to the realisation of an idea of
what should be, as such (_because_ it should be); and no discipline
through inheritance or education, just because it is only impulses
that are natural (in the sense defined) which it can affect, can
bring about this direction, which, in theological language, must
be not of nature, but of grace. On the contrary, the most refined
impulses may be selfishly indulged; i.e. their gratification may
be made an object in place of that object which consists in the
realisation of the idea of perfection. But unless a discipline and
refinement of the natural impulses, through the operation of social
institutions and arts, went on _pari passu_ with the expression of
the idea of perfection in such institutions and arts, the direction
of the impulses of the individual by this idea, when in some form or
other it has been consciously awakened in him, would be practically
impossible. The moral progress of mankind has no reality except as
resulting in the formation of more perfect individual characters;
but on the other hand every progress towards perfection on the
part of the individual character presupposes some embodiment or
expression of itself by the self-realising principle in what may be
called (to speak most generally) the organisation of life. It is
in turn, however, only through the action of individuals that this
organisation of life is achieved.

24. Thus the process of reconciliation between will and reason,--the
process through which each alike comes actually to be or to do what
it is and does in possibility, or according to its idea, or according
to the law of its being,--so far as it comes within our experience
may be described as follows. A certain action of the self-realising
principle, of which individuals susceptible in various forms to the
desire to better themselves have been the media, has resulted in
conventional morality; in a system of recognised rules (whether in
the shape of law or custom) as to what the good of society requires,
which no people seem to be wholly without. The moral progress of
the individual, born and bred under such a system of conventional
morality, consists (1) in the adjustment of the self-seeking
principle in him to the requirements of conventional morality, so
that the modes in which he seeks self-satisfaction are regulated
by the sense of what is expected of him. This adjustment (which it
is the business of education to effect) is so far a determination
of the will as in the individual by objects which the universal or
national human will, of which the will of the individual is a partial
expression, has brought into existence, and is thus a determination
of the will by itself. It consists (2) in a process of reflection,
by which this feeling in the individual of what is expected of
him becomes a conception (under whatever name) of something that
universally should be, of something absolutely desirable, of a single
end or object of life. The content of this conception may be no more
than what was already involved in the individual's feeling of what is
expected of him; that is to say, if called upon to state in detail
what it is that has to be done for the attainment of the absolute
moral end or in obedience to the law of what universally should
be, he might only be able to specify conduct which, apart from any
such explicit conception, he felt was expected of him. For all that
there is a great difference between feeling that a certain line of
conduct is expected of me and conceiving it as a form of a universal
duty. So long as the requirements of established morality are felt
in the former way, they present themselves to the man as imposed
from without. Hence, though they are an expression of practical
reason, as operating in previous generations of men, yet, unless the
individual conceives them as relative to an absolute end common to
him with all men, they become antagonistic to the practical reason
which operates in him, and which in him is the source at once of the
demand for self-satisfaction and of the effort to find himself in,
to carry his own unity into, all things presented to him. Unless the
actions required of him by 'the divine law, the civil law, and the
law of opinion or reputation' (to use Locke's classification) tend to
realise his own idea of what should be or is good on the whole, they
do not form an object which, as contemplated, he can harmonise with
the other objects which he seeks to understand, nor, as a practical
object, do they form one in the attainment of which he can satisfy
himself. Hence before the completion of the process through which
the individual comes to conceive the performance of the actions
expected of him under the general form of a duty which in the freedom
of his own reason he recognises as binding, there is apt to occur a
revolt against conventional morality. The issue of this may either
be an apparent suspension of the moral growth of the individual,
or a clearer apprehension of the spirit underlying the letter of
the obligations laid on him by society, which makes his rational
recognition of duty, when arrived at, a much more valuable influence
in promoting the moral growth of society.

25. Process (2), which may be called a reconciliation of reason with
itself, because it is the appropriation by reason as a personal
principle in the individual of the work which reason, acting through
the media of other persons, has already achieved in the establishment
of conventional morality, is the condition of the third stage in
which the moral progress of the individual consists; viz. the growth
of a personal interest in the realisation of an idea of what should
be, in doing what is believed to contribute to the absolutely
desirable, or to human perfection, because it is believed to do so.
Just so far as this interest is formed, the reconciliation of the two
modes in which the practical reason operates in the individual is
effected. The demand for self-satisfaction (practical reason as the
will of the individual) is directed to the realisation of an ideal
object, the conceived 'should be,' which practical reason as our
reason constitutes. The 'autonomy of the will' is thus attained in
a higher sense than it is in the 'adjustment' described under (1),
because the objects to which it is directed are not merely determined
by customs and institutions which are due to the operation of
practical reason in previous ages, but are embodiments or expressions
of the conception of what absolutely should be as formed by the man
who seeks to satisfy himself in their realisation. Indeed, unless in
the stage of conformity to conventional morality the principle of
obedience is some feeling (though not a clear conception) of what
should be, of the desirable as distinct from the desired,--if it is
merely fear of pain or hope of pleasure,--there is no approach to
autonomy of the will or moral freedom in the conformity. We must not
allow the doctrine that such freedom consists in a determination
of the will by reason, and the recognition of the truth that the
requirements of conventional morality are a product of reason as
operating in individuals of the past, to mislead us into supposing
that there is any moral freedom, or anything of intrinsic value,
in the life of conventional morality as governed by 'interested
motives,' by the desire, directly or indirectly, to obtain pleasure.
There can be no real determination of the will by reason unless both
reason and will are operating in one and the same person. A will
is not really anything except as the will of a person, and, as we
have seen, a will is not really determinable by anything foreign
to itself: it is only determinable by an object which the person
willing makes his own. As little is reason really anything apart from
a self-conscious subject, or as other than an idea of perfection
to be realised in and by such a subject. The determination of will
by reason, then, which constitutes moral freedom or autonomy, must
mean its determination by an object which a person willing, in
virtue of his reason, presents to himself, that object consisting in
the realisation of an idea of perfection in and by himself. Kant's
view that the action which is merely 'pflichtmässig,' not done 'aus
Pflicht,' [1] is of no moral value in itself, whatever may be its
possible value as a means to the production of the will which does
act 'aus Pflicht,' is once for all true, though he may have taken
too narrow a view of the conditions of actions done 'aus Pflicht,'
especially in supposing (as he seems to do) that it is necessary
to them to be done painfully. There is no determination of will by
reason, no moral freedom, in conformity of action to rules of which
the establishment is due to the operation of reason or the idea of
perfection in men, unless the principle of conformity in the persons
conforming is that idea itself in some form or other.

[1] [German aus Pflicht = from duty, pflichtmässig = consistent with
duty--Tr.]

LECTURES ON THE PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL OBLIGATION.

Note of the Editor.

These lectures, which are partly critical and partly expository,
treat of the moral grounds upon which the state is based and upon
which obedience to the law of the state is justified. They were
delivered in 1879-80, following upon the course from which the
discussion of Kant's moral theory in this volume is taken. The two
courses are directly connected, civil institutions being throughout
regarded as the external expression of the moral progress of mankind,
and as supplying the material through which the idea of perfection
must be realised.

As is implied in section 5, the inquiry into the nature of political
obligation forms part of a wider inquiry into the concrete forms
of morality in general, 'the detail of goodness.' The lecturer
had intended to complete the course by a consideration of 'social
virtues' and 'moral sentiments'; but this intention was not carried
out. (See section 251.)

LECTURES ON THE PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL OBLIGATION.

    A. _THE GROUNDS OF POLITICAL OBLIGATION._

1. The subject of this course of lectures is the principles of
political obligation; and that term is intended to include the
obligation of the subject towards the sovereign, the obligation of
the citizen towards the state, and the obligation of individuals
to each other as enforced by a political superior. My purpose is
to consider the moral function or object served by law, or by the
system, of rights and obligations which the state enforces, and in so
doing to discover the true ground or justification for obedience to
law. My plan will be (1) to state in outline what I consider the true
function of law to be, this being at the same time the true ground of
our moral duty to obey the law; and throughout I distinguish moral
duty from legal obligation; (2) to examine the chief doctrines of
political obligation that have been current in modern Europe, and by
criticising them to bring out more clearly the main points of a truer
doctrine; (3) to consider in detail the chief rights and obligations
enforced in civilised states, inquiring what is their justification,
and what is the ground for respecting them on the principle stated.

2. In previous lectures I have explained what I understand moral
goodness to be, and how it is possible that there should be such
a thing; in other words, what are the conditions on the part of
reason and will which are implied in our being able to conceive
moral goodness as an object to be aimed at, and to give some partial
reality to the conception. Our results on this question may be
briefly stated as follows.

The highest moral goodness we found was an attribute of character,
in so far as it issued in acts done for the sake of their goodness,
not for the sake of any pleasure or any satisfaction of desire
which they bring to the agent. But it is impossible that an action
should be done for the sake of its goodness, unless it has been
previously contemplated as good for some other reason than that which
consists in its being done for the sake of its goodness. It must
have been done, or conceived as possible to be done, and have been
accounted good, irrespectively of the being done from this which we
ultimately come to regard as the highest motive. In other words, a
prior morality, founded upon interests which are other than the pure
interest in being good, and governed by rules of conduct relative to
a standard of goodness other than that which makes it depend on this
interest, is the condition of there coming to be a character governed
by interest in an ideal of goodness. Otherwise this ideal would be an
empty one; it would be impossible to say what the good actions were,
that were to be done for the sake of their goodness; and the interest
in this ideal would be impossible, since it would be an interest
without an object.

3. When, however, morality of the latter kind has come to be
recognised as the highest or the only true morality, the prior
morality needs to be criticised from the point of view thus gained.
Those interests, other than the interest in being good, which form
the motives on the part of the individual on which it rests, will
not indeed be rejected as of no moral value; for no one can suppose
that without them, or except as regulating them, the pure interest
in being good could determine conduct at all. But they will be
estimated according to their value as leading up to, or as capable
of becoming elements in, a character in which this interest is the
governing principle. Again, those rules of conduct, according to
which the terms right and wrong, good and bad, are commonly applied,
and which, as was just now said, are relative to a standard certainly
not founded on the conception of the good as consisting in the
character described, are not indeed to be rejected; for without
them there would be nothing to define the duties which the highest
character is prepared to do for their own sake. But they have to be
revised according to a method which inquires into their rationale
or justification, as conditions of approximation to the highest
character.

4. Such a criticism of moral interests--of the general motives
which determine moral conduct and regulate such moral approbation
or disapprobation as is not based on a strict theory of moral
good--may be called by the name of 'a theory of moral sentiments.'
The criticism of recognised rules of conduct will fall under two
heads, according as these rules are embodied in positive law (law of
which the observance is enforced on the individual by a political
superior), or only form part of the 'law of opinion' (part of what
the individual feels to be expected of him by some person or persons
to whose expectations he ought to conform).

5. Moral interests are so greatly dependent on generally recognised
rules of conduct that the criticism of the latter should come
first. The law of opinion, again, in so many ways presupposes a
social fabric supported by 'positive' law, that we can only fairly
take account of it when we have considered the moral value and
justifiability of the fabric so supported. I propose therefore to
begin our inquiry into the detail of goodness--into the particular
kinds of conduct which the man wishing to do good for the sake
of its goodness is entitled to count good--by considering what
is of permanent moral value in the institutions of civil life,
as established in Europe; in what way they have contributed and
contribute to the possibility of morality in the higher sense of
the term, and are justified, or have a moral claim upon our loyal
conformity, in consequence.

6. The condition of a moral life is the possession of will and
reason. Will is the capacity in a man of being determined to action
by the idea of a possible satisfaction of himself. An act of
will is an action so determined. A state of will is the capacity
as determined by the particular objects in which the man seeks
self-satisfaction; and it becomes a character in so far as the
self-satisfaction is habitually sought in objects of a particular
kind. Practical reason is the capacity in a man of conceiving the
perfection of his nature as an object to be attained by action.
All moral ideas have their origin in reason, i.e. in the idea of a
possible self-perfection to be attained by the moral agent. This
does not mean that the moral agent in every stage of his progress
could state this idea to himself in an abstract form, any more
than in every stage in the acquisition of knowledge about nature a
man can state to himself in an abstract form the conception of the
unity of nature, which yet throughout conditions the acquisition of
his knowledge. Ideas do not first come into existence, or begin to
operate, upon the formation of an abstract expression for them. This
expression is only arrived at upon analysis of a concrete experience,
which they have rendered possible. Thus we only learn to express the
idea of self-perfection in that abstract form upon an analysis of an
experience of self-improvement which we have ourselves gone through,
and which must have been gone through by those with whom we are
connected by the possession of language and an organisation of life,
however elementary: but the same analysis shows that the same idea
must have been at work to make such experience possible. In this idea
all particular moral ideas--all ideas of particular forms of conduct
as estimable--originate, though an abstract expression for the latter
is arrived at much sooner than such an expression for the idea in
which they originate. They arise, as the individual's conception of
the society on the well-being of which his own depends, and of the
constituents of that well-being, becomes wider and fuller; and they
are embodied in the laws, institutions, and social expectation, which
make conventional morality. This embodiment, again, constitutes the
moral progress of mankind. This progress, however, is only a _moral_
progress in so far as it tends to bring about the harmony of will and
reason, in the only form in which it can really exist, viz. in the
characters of persons. And this result is actually achieved, in so
far as upon habits disciplined by conformity to conventional morality
there supervenes an intelligent interest in some of the objects
contributory to human perfection, which that conventional morality
subserves, and in so far as that interest becomes the dominant
interest of the character.

7. The value then of the institutions of civil life lies in their
operation as giving reality to these capacities of will and reason,
and enabling them to be really exercised. In their general effect,
apart from particular aberrations, they render it possible for a
man to be freely determined by the idea of a possible satisfaction
of himself, instead of being driven this way and that by external
forces, and thus they give reality to the capacity called will:
and they enable him to realise his reason, i.e. his idea of
self-perfection, by acting as a member of a social organisation in
which each contributes to the better-being of all the rest. So far
as they do in fact thus operate they are morally justified, and may
be said to correspond to the 'law of nature,' the _jus naturae_,
according to the only sense in which that phrase can be intelligibly
used.

8. There has been much controversy as to what the _jus naturae_
('Naturrecht') really is, or whether there is such a thing at all.
And the controversy, when it comes to be dealt with in English, is
further embarrassed by the fact that we have no one term to represent
the full meaning of 'jus' or 'Recht,' as a system of correlative
rights and obligations, actually enforced or that should be enforced
by law. But the essential questions are: (1) whether we are entitled
to distinguish the rights and obligations which are anywhere actually
enforced by law from rights and obligations which really exist though
not enforced; and (2), if we are entitled to do so, what is to be
our criterion of rights and obligations which are really valid, in
distinction from those that are actually enforced.

9. No one would seriously maintain that the system of rights and
obligations, as it is anywhere enforced by law,--the 'jus' or 'Recht'
of any nation--is all that it ought to be. Even Hobbes holds that
a law, though it cannot be unjust, may be pernicious. But there
has been much objection to the admission of _natural_ rights and
obligations. At any rate the phrase is liable to misinterpretation.
It may be taken to imply that rights and obligations can exist in a
'state of nature'--a state in which every individual is free to do as
he likes--; that legal rights and obligations derive their authority
from a voluntary act by which individuals contracted themselves
out of this state; and that the individual retains from the state
of nature certain rights with which no legal obligations ought to
conflict. Such a doctrine is generally admitted to be untenable; but
it does not follow from this that there is not a true and important
sense in which natural rights and obligations exist,--the same sense
as that in which duties may be said to exist though unfulfilled.
There is a system of rights and obligations which _should be_
maintained by law, whether it is so or not, and which may properly be
called 'natural'; not in the sense in which the term 'natural' would
imply that such a system ever did exist or could exist independently
of force exercised by society over individuals, but 'natural' because
necessary to the end which it is the vocation of human society to
realise.

10. The 'jus naturae,' thus understood, is at once distinguished from
the sphere of moral duty, and relative to it. It is distinguished
from it because admitting of enforcement by law. Moral duties do not
admit of being so enforced. The question sometimes put, whether moral
duties should be enforced by law, is really an unmeaning one; for
they simply cannot be enforced. They are duties to act, it is true,
and an act can be enforced: but they are duties to act from certain
dispositions and with certain motives, and these cannot be enforced.
Nay, the enforcement of an outward act, the moral character of which
depends on a certain motive and disposition, may often contribute to
render that motive and disposition impossible: and from this fact
arises a limitation to the proper province of law in enforcing acts,
which will have to be further considered below. When obligations
then are spoken of in this connection, as part of the 'jus naturae'
correlative to rights, they must always be understood not as moral
duties, not as relative to states of will, but as relative to
outward acts, of which the performance or omission can and should
be enforced. There is a moral duty to discharge such obligations,
and to do so in a certain spirit, but the obligation is such as that
with which law has to do or may have to do, is relative to an outward
act merely, and does not amount to a moral duty. There is a moral
duty in regard to obligations, but there can be no obligation in
regard to moral duties. Thus the 'jus naturae'--the system of rights
and obligations, as it should become no less than as it actually is
maintained--is distinct from morality in the proper sense. But it is
relative to it. This is implied in saying that there is a moral duty
in regard to actual obligations, as well as in speaking of the system
of rights and obligations as it should become. If such language is
justifiable, there must be a moral ground both for conforming to, and
for seeking to develope and improve, established 'Recht'; a moral
ground which can only lie in the moral end served by that established
system.

11. Thus we begin the ethical criticism of law with two
principles:--(1) that nothing but external acts can be matter of
'obligation' (in the restricted sense); and (2) that, in regard
to that which can be made matter of obligation, the question what
should be made matter of obligation--the question how far rights and
obligations, as actually established by law, correspond to the true
'jus naturae'--must be considered with reference to the moral end, as
serving which alone law and the obligations imposed by law have their
value.[1]

[1] There are two definitions of 'Recht' or 'jus naturae,' quoted
by Ulrici (_Naturrecht_, p. 219), which embody the truths conveyed
in these statements. (1) Krause defines 'Recht' as 'das organische
Ganze der äusseren Bedingungen des Vernunftlebens,' 'the organic
whole of the outward conditions necessary to the rational life.' (2)
Henrici says that 'Recht' is 'was der Idee der Unverletzbarkeit der
materiellen wesentlichen Bedingungen des moralischen Menschenthums,
d. h. der menschlichen Persönlichkeit nach ihrer Existenz und
ihrer Vervollkommnung, oder der unveräusserlichen Menschengüter im
äusserlichen Verkehr entspricht': i.e. 'Right is what' (or, 'that
is properly matter of legal obligation which') 'in the outward
intercourse of men corresponds to the idea of the inviolability of
the essential material conditions of a moral humanity, i.e. of the
human personality in respect of its existence and its perfection;'
or, more simply, 'Right is that which is really necessary to the
maintenance of the material conditions essential to the existence and
perfection of human personality.' Cf. Trendelenburg, _Naturrecht_,
Sect. 46. 'Das Recht ist im sittlichen Ganzen der Inbegriff
derjenigen allgemeinen Bestimmungen des Handelns, durch welche es
geschieht dass das sittliche Ganze und seine Gliederung sich erhalten
und weiter bilden kann.' Afterwards he emphasises the words 'des
Handelns,' and adds: 'Zwar kann das Handeln nicht ohne den Willen
gedacht werden, der zum Grunde liegt: aber die Rechtbestimmungen
sind nicht Bestimmungen des Willens als solchen, was dem innern
Gebiet, der Ethik der Gesinnung, anheimfallen würde. Der Wille der
nicht Handlung wird entzieht sich dem Recht. Wenn das Recht Schuld
und Versehen, _dolus_ und _culpa_, in sein Bereich zieht, so sind
sie als innere aber charakteristische Beschaffenbeiten des Handelns
anzusehen.'

12. Before proceeding, some remarks have to be made as to what is
implied in these principles, _(a)_ Does the law, or is it possible
that it should, confine its view to external acts? What exactly is
meant by an external act? In the case of obligations which I am
legally punishable for disregarding, the law, in deciding whether
punishment is or is not due, takes account of much beside the
external act; and this implies that much beside external action
is involved in legal obligation. In the case where the person or
property of another is damaged by me, the law does not inquire
merely whether the act of damage was done, and done by means of my
bodily members, but whether it was done intentionally: and if not
done with the direct intention of inflicting the damage, whether
the damage arose in a manner that might have been foreseen out of
something which I did intend to do: whether, again, if it was done
quite accidentally the accident was due to culpable negligence. This,
however, does not show that the law can enforce or prevent anything
but external action, but only that it is _action_ which it seeks to
enforce or prevent, for without intention there is no action. We talk
indeed of a man acting against his will, but if this means acting
against intention it is what it is impossible to do. What I call an
act done against my will is either (1) an act done by someone else
using my body, through superior force, as a means: in which case
there is an act, but it is not mine (e.g. if another uses my hand
to pull the trigger of a gun by which someone is shot); or (2) a
natural event in which my limbs are affected in a certain way which
causes certain results to another person (e.g. if the rolling of a
ship throws me against another person who is thus thrown into the
water); or (3) an act which I do under the influence of some strong
inducement (e.g. the fear of death), but which is contrary to some
strong wish. In this case the act is mine, but mine because I intend
it; because it is not against my will as = intention. In saying,
then, that the proper, because the only possible, function of law is
to enforce the performance of or abstinence from external actions,
it is implied that its function is to produce or prevent certain
intentions, for without intention on the part of someone there is no
act.

13. But if an act necessarily includes intention, what is the nature
of the restriction implied in calling it external? An external action
is a determination of will as exhibited in certain motions of the
bodily members which produce certain effects in the material world;
not a determination of the will as arising from certain motives
and a certain disposition. All that the law can do is to enjoin or
forbid determinations of will as exhibited in such motions, &c. It
does indeed present a motive, for it enforces its injunctions and
prohibitions primarily by fear, by its threat of certain consequences
if its commands are disobeyed. This enforcement is not an exercise
of physical force in the strict sense, for in this sense no force
can produce an action, since it cannot produce a determination of
will; and the only way in which the law or its administrators employ
such force is not in the production but in the prevention of action
(as when a criminal is locked up or the police prevent mischievous
persons from assaulting us or breaking into our houses). But though,
in enforcing its commands by threats, the law is presenting a motive,
and thus, according to our distinction, affecting action on its
inner side, it does this solely for the sake of the external act. It
does not regard the relation of the act to the motive fear as of any
intrinsic importance. If the action is performed without this motive
ever coming into play under the influence of what the moralist counts
higher motives, the purpose of the law is equally satisfied. Indeed,
it is always understood that its purpose is most thoroughly served
when the threat of pains and penalties has ceased to be necessary,
and the obligations correlative to the relations of individuals and
of societies are fulfilled from other motives. Its business is to
maintain certain conditions of life--to see that certain actions are
done which are necessary to the maintenance of those conditions,
others omitted which would interfere with them. It has nothing to do
with the motive of the actions or omissions, on which, however, the
moral value of them depends.

14. It appears, then, that legal obligations--obligations which can
possibly form the subject of positive law--can only be obligations to
do or abstain from certain acts, not duties of acting from certain
motives, or with a certain disposition. It is not a question whether
the law should or should not oblige to anything but performance of
outward acts. It simply cannot oblige to anything else, because the
only means at its command for obtaining the fulfilment of obligations
are (1) threats of pain and offers of reward, by means of which it is
possible indeed to secure the general performance of certain acts,
but not their performance from the motive even of fear of the pain
threatened or hope of the reward offered, much less from any higher
motive; (2) the employment of physical force, _(a)_ in restraining
men disposed to violate obligations, _(b)_ in forcibly applying the
labour or the property of those who violate obligations to make good
the breach, so far as is possible: (as, e.g., when the magistrate
forestalls part of a man's wages to provide for a wife whom he has
deserted, or when the property of a debtor is seized for the benefit
of his creditors.)

15. Only outward acts, then, _can_ be matter of legal obligation; but
what sort of outward acts _should_ be matter of legal obligation?
The answer to this question arises out of the above consideration of
the means which law employs to obtain the fulfilment of obligations,
combined with the view of law as relative to a moral end, i.e. the
formation of a society of persons, acting from a certain disposition,
from interest in the society as such. Those acts only should be
matter of legal injunction or prohibition of which the performance or
omission, irrespectively of the motive from which it proceeds, is so
necessary to the existence of a society in which the moral end stated
can be realised, that it is better for them to be done or omitted
from that unworthy motive which consists in fear or hope of legal
consequences than not to be done at all.

16. We distinguish, then, the system of rights actually maintained
and obligations actually enforced by legal sanctions ('Recht' or
'jus') from the system of relations and obligations which _should be_
maintained by such sanctions ('Naturrecht'); and we hold that those
actions or omissions should be made obligations which, when made
obligations, serve a certain moral end; that this end is the ground
or justification or rationale of legal obligation; and that thus we
obtain a general rule, of both positive and negative application, in
regard to the proper matter or content of legal obligation. For since
the end consists in action proceeding from a certain disposition,
and since action done from apprehension of legal consequences does
not proceed from that disposition, no action should be enjoined or
prohibited by law of which the injunction or prohibition interferes
with actions proceeding from that disposition, and every action
should be so enjoined of which the performance is found to produce
conditions favourable to action proceeding from that disposition, and
of which the legal injunction does not interfere with such action.

17. Does this general rule give any real guidance in the difficulties
which practically arise in regard to the province of law--as to
what should be required by law, and what left to the inclination of
individuals? What cases are there or have there been of enactments
which on this principle we can pronounce wrong? Have attempts ever
been made by law to enforce acts as virtuous which lose their virtue
when done under fear of legal penalties? It would be difficult, no
doubt, to find instances of attempts to enforce by law actions of
which we should say that the value lies in the disposition from which
they are done, actions, e.g. of disinterested kindness, because the
clear conception of virtue as depending not on outward results,
but on disposition, is but slowly arrived at, and has never been
reflected in law. But without any strictly moral object at all, laws
have been made which check the development of the moral disposition.
This has been done _(a)_ by legal requirements of religious
observance and profession of belief, which have tended to vitiate the
religious source of morality; _(b)_ by prohibitions and restraints,
unnecessary, or which have ceased to be necessary, for maintaining
the social conditions of the moral life, and which interfere with the
growth of self-reliance, with the formation of a manly conscience and
sense of moral dignity,--in short, with the moral autonomy which is
the condition of the highest goodness; _(c)_ by legal institutions
which take away the occasion for the exercise of certain moral
virtues (e.g. the Poor-law which takes away the occasion for the
exercise of parental forethought, filial reverence, and neighbourly
kindness).

18. Laws of this kind have often been objected to on the strength
of a one-sided view of the function of laws; the view, viz., that
its only business is to prevent interference with the liberty of
the individual. And this view has gained undue favour on account of
the real reforms to which it has led. The laws which it has helped
to get rid of were really mischievous, but mischievous for further
reasons than those conceived of by the supporters of this theory.
Having done its work, the theory now tends to become obstructive,
because in fact advancing civilisation brings with it more and
more interference with the liberty of the individual to do as he
likes, and this theory affords a reason for resisting all positive
reforms, all reforms which involve an action of the state in the way
of promoting conditions favourable to moral life. It is one thing
to say that the state in promoting these conditions must take care
not to defeat its true end by narrowing the region within which the
spontaneity and disinterestedness of true morality can have play;
another thing to say that it has no moral end to serve at all, and
that it goes beyond its province when it seeks to do more than secure
the individual from violent interference by other individuals. The
true ground of objection to 'paternal government' is not that it
violates the 'laissez faire' principle and conceives that its office
is to make people good, to promote morality, but that it rests on a
misconception of morality. The real function of government being to
maintain conditions of life in which morality shall be possible, and
morality consisting in the disinterested performance of self-imposed
duties, 'paternal government' does its best to make it impossible by
narrowing the room for the self-imposition of duties and for the play
of disinterested motives.

19. The question before us, then, is, In what ways and how far do
the main obligations enforced and rights maintained by law in all
civilised societies contribute to the moral end described; viz.
to establish those conditions of life in which a true, i.e. a
disinterested or unselfish morality shall be possible? The answer
to this question will be a theory of the 'jus naturae'; i.e. it
will explain how far positive law is what it should be, and what
is the ground of the duty to obey it; in other words, of political
obligation. There are two things from which such a theory must be
distinguished. (1) It is not an inquiry into the process by which
actual law came to be what it is; nor (2) is it an inquiry how far
actual law corresponds to and is derived from the exercise of certain
original or natural rights. (1) It is not the former, because the
process by which the law of any nation and the law in which civilised
nations agree has come to be what it is, has not been determined
by reference to that end to which we hold that law ought to be
directed and by reference to which we criticise it. That is to say,
the process has not been determined by any such conscious reference
on the part of the agents in the process. No doubt a desire for
social good as distinct from private pleasure, for what is good on
the whole as distinct from what is good for the moment, has been a
necessary condition of it; but _(a)_, as an agent in the development
of law, this has not reached the form of a conception of moral good
according to that definition of it by which the value of law is to be
estimated; and _(b)_ in bringing law to its present state it has been
indistinguishably blended with purely selfish passions and with the
simple struggle for existence.

20. (2) A true theory of 'jus naturae,' a rationale of law or ideal
of what it should be, is not to be had by inquiring how far actual
law corresponds to, and is derived from, the exercise of certain
original or natural rights, if that is taken to mean that we know,
or can ascertain, what rights are natural on grounds distinct from
those on which we determine what laws are justifiable, and that then
we can proceed to ascertain what laws are justifiable by deduction
from such rights. 'Natural rights,' so far as there are such things,
are themselves relative to the moral end to which perfect law is
relative. A law is not good because it enforces 'natural rights,'
but because it contributes to the realisation of a certain end. We
only discover what rights are natural by considering what powers
must be secured to a man in order to the attainment of this end.
These powers a perfect law will secure to their full extent. Thus the
consideration of what rights are 'natural' (in the only legitimate
sense) and the consideration what laws are justifiable form one
and the same process, each presupposing a conception of the moral
vocation of man.

21. The doctrine here asserted, that all rights are relative to moral
ends or duties, must not be confused with the ordinary statement
that every right implies a duty, or that rights and duties are
correlative. This of course is true in the sense that possession
of a right by any person both implies an obligation on the part of
someone else, and is conditional upon the recognition of certain
obligations on the part of the person possessing it. But what is
meant is something different, viz. that the claim or right of the
individual to have certain powers secured to him by society, and
the counter-claim of society to exercise certain powers over the
individual, alike rest on the fact that these powers are necessary to
the fulfilment of man's vocation as a moral being, to an effectual
self-devotion to the work of developing the perfect character in
himself and others.

22. This, however, is not the ground on which the claim in question
has generally been asserted. Apart from the utilitarian theory, which
first began to be applied politically by Hume, the ordinary way of
justifying the civil rights of individuals (i.e. the powers secured
to them by law as against each other), as well as the rights of the
state against individuals (i.e. the powers which, with the general
approval of society, it exercises against them), has been to deduce
them from certain supposed prior rights, called natural rights. In
the exercise of these natural rights, it has been supposed, men with
a view to their general interest established political society.
From that establishment is derived both the system of rights and
obligations maintained by law as between man and man, and the right
of the state to the submission of its subjects. If the question,
then, is raised, why I ought to respect the legal rights of my
neighbours, to pay taxes, or have my children vaccinated, serve in
the army if the state requires it, and generally submit to the law,
the answer according to this theory will be that if I fail to do
so, I shall directly or indirectly be violating the natural rights
of other men; directly in those cases where the legal rights of my
neighbours are also natural rights, as they very well may be (e.g.
rights of liberty or personal safety); indirectly where this is not
the case, because, although the rights of the state itself are not
natural, and many rights exercised by individuals would not only
not be secured but would not exist at all but for legal enactment,
yet the state itself results from a covenant which originally, in
the exercise of their natural rights, men made with each other,
and to which all born under the state and sharing the advantages
derived from it must be considered parties. There is a natural right,
therefore, on the part of each member of a state to have this compact
observed, with a corresponding obligation to observe it; and this
natural right of all is violated by any individual who refuses to
obey the law of the state or to respect the rights, not in themselves
natural, which the state confers on individuals.

23. This, on the whole, was the form in which the ground of political
obligation, the justification of established rights, was presented
throughout the seventeenth century, and in the eighteenth till the
rise of the 'utilitarian' theory of obligation. Special adaptations
of it were made by Hobbes and others. In Hobbes, perhaps (of whom
more later), may be found an effort to fit an anticipation of the
utilitarian theory of political obligation into the received theory
which traced political obligation, by means of the supposition of
a primitive contract, to an origin in natural right. But in him as
much as anyone the language and framework of the theory of compact
is retained, even if an alien doctrine may be read between the
lines. Of the utilitarian theory of political obligation more shall
be said later. It may be presented in a form in which it would
scarcely be distinguishable from the doctrine just now stated, the
doctrine, viz., that the ground of political obligation, the reason
why certain powers should be recognised as belonging to the state
and certain other powers as secured by the state to individuals,
lies in the fact that these powers are necessary to the fulfilment
of man's vocation as a moral being, to an effectual self-devotion
to the work of developing the perfect character in himself and
others. Utilitarianism proper, however, recognises no vocation of
man but the attainment of pleasure and avoidance of pain. The only
reason why civil rights should be respected--the only justification
of them--according to it, would be that more pleasure is attained
or pain avoided by the general respect for them; the ground of our
consciousness that we ought to respect them, in other words their
ultimate sanction, is the fear of what the consequences would be if
we did not. This theory and that which I deem true have one negative
point in common. They do not seek the ground of actual rights in a
prior natural right, but in an end to which the maintenance of the
rights contributes. They avoid the mistake of identifying the inquiry
into the ultimate justifiability of actual rights with the question
whether there is a prior right to the possession of them. The right
to the possession of them, if properly so called, would not be a
mere power, but a power recognised by a society as one which should
exist. This recognition of a power, in some way or other, as that
which should be, is always necessary to render it a right. Therefore
when we had shown that the rights exercised in political society were
derived from prior 'natural' rights, a question would still remain
as to the ground of those natural rights. We should have to ask why
certain powers were recognised as powers which should be exercised,
and thus became these natural rights.

24. Thus, though it may be possible and useful to show how the more
seemingly artificial rights are derived from rights more simple and
elementary, how the rights established by law in a political society
are derived from rights that may be called natural, not in the
sense of being prior to society, but in the sense of being prior to
the existence of a society governed by written law or a recognised
sovereign, still such derivation is no justification of them. It is
no answer to the question why they should be respected; because this
question remains to be asked in regard to the most primitive rights
themselves. Political or civil rights, then, are not to be explained
by derivation from natural rights, but in regard to both political
and natural rights, in any sense in which there can be truly said
to be natural rights, the question has to be asked, how it is that
certain powers are recognised by men in their intercourse with each
other as powers that should be exercised, or of which the possible
exercise should be secured.

25. I have tried to show in lectures on morals that the conception
expressed by the 'should be' is not identical with the conception of
a right possessed by some man or men, but one from which the latter
conception is derived. It is, or implies on the part of whoever is
capable of it, the conception of an ideal, unattained condition of
himself, as an absolute end. Without this conception the recognition
of a power as a right would be impossible. A power on the part of
anyone is so recognised by others, as one which should be exercised,
when these others regard it as in some way a means to that ideal
good of themselves which they alike conceive: and the possessor of
the power comes to regard it as a right through consciousness of
its being thus recognised as contributory to a good in which he too
is interested. No one therefore can have a right except (1) as a
member of a society, and (2) of a society in which some common good
is recognised by the members of the society as their own ideal good,
as that which should be for each of them. The capacity for being
determined by a good so recognised is what constitutes personality
in the ethical sense; and for this reason there is truth in saying
that only among persons, in the ethical sense, can there come to be
rights; (which is quite compatible with the fact that the logical
disentanglement of the conception of rights precedes that of the
conception of the legal person; and that the conception of the moral
person, in its abstract and logical form, is not arrived at till
after that of the legal person).

Conversely, everyone capable of being determined by the conception of
a common good as his own ideal good, as that which unconditionally
should be (of being in that sense an end to himself), in other
words, every moral person, is capable of rights; i.e. of bearing
his part in a society in which the free exercise of his powers is
secured to each member through the recognition by each of the others
as entitled to the same freedom with himself. To say that he is
capable of rights, is to say that he ought to have them, in that
sense of 'ought' in which it expresses the relation of man to an
end conceived as absolutely good, to an end which, whether desired
or no, is conceived as intrinsically desirable. The moral capacity
implies a consciousness on the part of the subject of the capacity
that its realisation is an end desirable in itself, and rights are
the condition of realising it. Only through the possession of rights
can the power of the individual freely to make a common good his own
have reality given to it. Rights are what may be called the negative
realisation of this power. That is, they realise it in the sense of
providing for its free exercise, of securing the treatment of one
man by another as equally free with himself, but they do not realise
it positively, because their possession does not imply that in any
active way the individual makes a common good his own. The possession
of them, however, is the condition of this positive realisation of
the moral capacity, and they ought to be possessed because this end
(in the sense explained) ought to be attained.

26. Hence on the part of every person ('person' in the moral sense
explained) the claim, more or less articulate and reflected on, to
rights on his own part is co-ordinate with his recognition of rights
on the part of others. The capacity to conceive a common good as
one's own, and to regulate the exercise of one's powers by reference
to a good which others recognise, carries with it the consciousness
that powers should be so exercised; which means that there should be
rights, that powers should be regulated by mutual recognition. There
ought to be rights, because the moral personality,--the capacity on
the part of an individual for making a common good his own,--ought
to be developed; and it is developed through rights; i.e. through
the recognition by members of a society of powers in each other
contributory to a common good, and the regulation of those powers by
that recognition.

27. In saying that only among 'persons' can there come to be rights,
and that every 'person' should have rights, I have been careful to
explain that I use 'person' in the moral, not merely in the legal,
sense. In dealing, then, with such phrases as 'jura personarum'
and 'personal rights,' we must keep in view the difference between
the legal and ethical sense of the proposition that all rights are
personal, or subsist as between persons. In the legal sense, so far
as it is true,--and it is so only if 'person' is used in the sense
of Roman law,--it is an identical proposition. A person means a
subject of rights and nothing more. Legal personality is derived
from the possession of right, not _vice versa_. Like other identical
propositions, its use is to bring out and emphasise in the predicate
what is included in the understood connotation of the subject; to
remind us that when we speak of rights we imply the existence of
parties, in English phraseology, capable of suing and being sued.
In the ethical sense, it means that rights are derived from the
possession of personality as = a rational will (i.e. the capacity
which man possesses of being determined to action by the conception
of such a perfection of his being as involves the perfection of a
society in which he lives), in the sense _(a)_ that only among beings
possessed of rational will can there come to be rights, _(b)_ that
they fulfil their idea, or are justifiable, or such rights as should
be rights, only as contributing to the realisation of a rational
will. It is important to bear this distinction in mind in order that
the proposition in its ethical sense, which can stand on its own
merits, may not derive apparent confirmation from a juristic truism.

28. The moral idea of personality is constantly tending to affect
the legal conception of the relation between rights and persons.
Thus the 'jura personarum,' which properly = either rights arising
out of 'status,' or rights which not only (like all rights) reside
in someone having a legal status and are available against others
having a legal status, but are exercised over, or in respect of,
someone possessed of such status (e.g. a wife or a servant), come
to be understood as rights derived from the human personality or
belonging to man as man. It is with some such meaning that English
writers on law speak of rights to life and liberty as personal
rights. The expression might seem pleonastic, since no right can
exist except as belonging to a person in the legal sense. They do not
use the phrase either pleonastically or in the sense of the Roman
lawyers' 'jura personarum' above, but in the sense that these rights
are immediately derived from, or necessarily attach to, the human
personality in whatever that personality is supposed to consist.
There is no doubt, however, that historically the conception of the
moral person, in any abstract form, is not arrived at till after
that of the legal person has been thus disentangled and formulated;
and further that the abstract conception of the legal person, as the
sustainer of rights, is not arrived at till long after rights have
been actually recognised and established. But the disentanglement
or abstract formulation of the conception of moral personality is
quite a different thing from the action of the consciousness in which
personality consists.

29. The capacity, then, on the part of the individual of conceiving a
good as the same for himself and others, and of being determined to
action by that conception, is the foundation of rights; and rights
are the condition of that capacity being realised. No right is
justifiable or should be a right except on the ground that directly
or indirectly it serves this purpose. Conversely every power should
be a right, i.e. society should secure to the individual every power,
that is necessary for realising this capacity. Claims to such powers
as are directly necessary to a man's acting as a moral person at
all--acting under the conception of a good as the same for self and
others--may be called in a special sense personal rights (though they
will include more than Stephen includes under that designation); they
may also be called, if we avoid misconceptions connected with these
terms, 'innate' or 'natural' rights. They are thus distinguished from
others which are (1) only indirectly necessary to the end stated, or
(2) are so only under special conditions of society; as well as from
claims which rest merely on legal enactment and might cease to be
enforced without any violation of the 'jus naturae.'

30. The objection to calling them 'innate' or 'natural,' when
once it is admitted on the one side that rights are not arbitrary
creations of law or custom but that there are certain powers which
ought to be secured as rights, on the other hand that there are no
rights antecedent to society, none that men brought with them into a
society which they contracted to form, is mainly one of words. They
are 'innate' or 'natural' in the same sense in which according to
Aristotle the state is natural: not in the sense that they actually
exist when a man is born and that they have actually existed as long
as the human race, but that they arise out of, and are necessary for
the fulfilment of, a moral capacity without which a man would not be
a man. There cannot be innate rights in any other sense than that in
which there are innate duties, of which, however, much less has been
heard. Because a group of beings are capable each of conceiving an
absolute good of himself and of conceiving it to be good for himself
as identical with, and because identical with, the good of the rest
of the group, there arises for each a consciousness that the common
good should be the object of action, i.e. a duty, and a claim in each
to a power of action that shall be at once secured and regulated by
the consciousness of a common good on the part of the rest, i.e. a
right. There is no ground for saying that the right arises out of a
primary human capacity, and is thus 'innate,' which does not apply
equally to the duty.

31. The dissociation of innate rights from innate duties has gone
along with the delusion that such rights existed apart from society.
Men were supposed to have existed in a state of nature, which was
not a state of society, but in which certain rights attached to
them as individuals, and then to have formed societies by contract
or covenant. Society having been formed, certain other rights arose
through positive enactment; but none of these, it was held, could
interfere with the natural rights which belonged to men antecedently
to the social contract or survived it.

Such a theory can only be stated by an application to an imaginary
state of things, prior to the formation of societies as regulated
by custom or law, of terms that have no meaning except in relation
to such societies. 'Natural right,' as = right in a state of nature
which is not a state of society, is a contradiction. There can be
no right without a consciousness of common interest on the part of
members of a society. Without this there might be certain powers on
the part of individuals, but no recognition of these powers by others
as powers of which they allow the exercise, nor any claim to such
recognition; and without this recognition or claim to recognition
there can be no right.

    B. _SPINOZA._

32. Spinoza is aware of this. In the _Tractatus Politici_, IT. 4,
he says, 'Per _jus_ itaque _naturae_ intelligo ... ipsam naturae
potentiam.' [1] ... 'Quicquid unusquisque homo ex legibus suae
naturae agit, id summo naturae jure agit, tantumque in naturam
habet juris, quantum potentia valet.' If only, seeing that the
'jus naturae' was mere 'potentia,' he had denied that it was 'jus'
at all, he would have been on the right track. Instead of that,
however, he treats it as properly 'jus,' and consistently with this
regards all 'jus' as mere 'potentia': nor is any 'jus humanum'
according to him guided by or the product of reason. It arises, in
modern phrase, out of the 'struggle for existence.' As Spinoza says,
'homines magis caeca cupiditate quam ratione ducuntur; ac proinde
hominum naturalis potentia sive jus non ratione, sed quocumque
appetitu quo ad agendum determinantur, quoque se conservare conantur,
definiri debet' (II. 5). The 'jus civile' is simply the result of
the conflict of natural powers, which = natural rights, which arises
from the effort of every man to gratify his passions and 'suum esse
conservare.' Man is simply a 'pars naturae,' the most crafty of the
animals. 'Quatenus homines ira, invidia aut aliquo odii affectu
conflictantur, eatenus diverse trahuntur et invicem contrarii sunt,
et propterea eo plus timendi, quo plus possunt, magisque callidi
et astuti sunt, quam reliqua animalia; et quia homines ut plurimum
his affectibus natura sunt obnoxii, sunt ergo homines ex natura
hostes' (II. 14). Universal hostility means universal fear, and fear
means weakness. It follows that in the state of nature there is
nothing fit to be called 'potentia' or consequently 'jus'; 'atque
adeo concludimus jus naturae vix posse concipi nisi ubi homines
jura habent communia, qui simul terras, quas habitare et colere
possunt, sibi vindicare, seseque munire, vimque omnem repellere et
ex communi omnium sententia vivere possunt. Nam (per art. 13 hujus
cap.) quo plures in unum sic conveniunt, eo omnes simul plus juris
habent' (15). The collective body, i.e., has more 'jus in naturam,'
i.e. 'potentiam,' than any individual could have singly (13). In the
advantage of this increased 'jus in naturam' the individual shares.
On the other hand (16), 'Ubi homines jura communia habent omnesque
una veluti mente ducuntur, certum est (per art. 13 hujus cap.)
eorum unumquemque tanto minus habere juris, quanto reliqui simul
ipso potentiores sunt, hoc est, ilium revera jus nullum in naturam
habere praeter id, quod ipsi commune concedit jus. Ceterum quicquid
ex communi consensu ipsi imperatur, teneri exsequi vel (per art. 4
hujus cap.) jure ad id cogi.' This 'jus' by which the individual's
actions are now to be regulated, is still simply 'potentia.' 'Hoc
jus, quod multitudinis potentia definitur, imperium appellari solet'
(17). It is not to be considered anything different from the 'jus
naturae.' It is simply the 'naturalis potentia' of a certain number
of men combined; 'multitudinis quae una veluti mente ducitur' (III.
2). Thus in the 'status civilis' the 'jus naturae' of the individual
in one sense disappears, in another does not. It disappears in the
sense that the individual member of the state has no mind to act or
power to act against the mind of the state. Anyone who had such mind
or power would not be a member of the state. He would be an enemy
against whose 'potentia' the state must measure its own. On the other
hand, 'in statu civili,' just as much as 'in statu naturali,' 'homo
ex legibus suae naturae agit suaeque utilitati consulit' (3). He
exercises his 'naturalis potentia' for some natural end of satisfying
his wants and preserving his life as he did or would do outside the
'status civilis.' Only in the 'status civilis' these motives on the
part of individuals so far coincide as to form the 'una veluti mens'
which directs the 'multitudinis potentia.' According to this view,
any member of a state will have just so much 'jus,' i.e. 'potentia,'
against other members as the state allows him. If he can exercise
any 'jus' or 'potentia' against another 'ex suo ingenio,' he is so
far not a member of the state and the state is so far imperfect. If
he could exercise any 'jus' or 'potentia' against the state itself,
there would be no state, or, which is the same, the state would not
be 'sui juris.'

[1] [Many of the Latin passages quoted in this chapter are translated
in Bosanquet's Supplement. Tr]

33. Is there then no limit to the 'jus' which the state may exercise?
With Spinoza this is equivalent to the question, is there no limit to
the 'potentia' which it can exercise? As to this, he suggests three
considerations.

(1). Its power is weakened by any action against right reason,
because this must weaken the 'animorum unio' on which it is founded.
'Civitatis jus potentia multitudinis, quae una veluti mente ducitur,
determinatur. At haec animorum unio concipi nulla ratione posset,
nisi civitas id ipsum maxime intendat, quod sana ratio omnibus
hominibus utile esse docet' (III. 7).

(2). The 'right' or 'power' of the state depends on its power of
affecting the hopes and fears of individual citizens.... 'Subditi
eatenus non sui, sed civitatis juris sint, quatenus ejus potentiam
seu minas metuunt, vel quatenus statum civilem amant (per art. 10
praeced. cap.). Ex quo sequitur, quod ea omnia, ad quse agenda nemo
praemiis aut minis induci potest, ad jura civitatis non pertineant'
(III. 8). Whatever cannot be achieved by rewards and threats, is
beyond the power and therefore beyond the 'right' of the state.
Examples are given in the same section.

(3). 'Ad civitatis jus ea minus pertinere, quae plurimi indignantur'
(III. 9). Severities of a certain kind lead to conspiracies against
the state, and thus weaken it. 'Sicut unusquisque civis sive homo
in statu naturali, sic civitas eo minus sui juris est, quo majorem
timendi causam habet.'

Just so far then as there are certain things which the state cannot
do, or by doing which it lessens its power, so far there are things
which it has no 'right' to do.

34. Spinoza proceeds to consider the relation of states or sovereign
powers to each other. Here the principle is simple. They are to each
other as individuals in the state of nature, except that they will
not be subject to the same weaknesses. 'Nam quandoquidem (per art.
2 hujus cap.) jus summae potestatis nihil est praeter ipsum naturae
jus, sequitur duo imperia ad invicem sese habere, ut duo homines in
statu naturali, excepto hoc, quod civitas sibi cavere potest, ne ab
alia opprimatur, quod homo in statu naturali non potest, nimirum
qui quotidie somno, saepe morbo aut animi aegritudine, et tandem
senectute gravatur, et prater haec aliis incommodis est obnoxius,
a quibus civitas securam se reddere potest' (III. 11). In other
words, '... duae civitates natura hostes sunt. Homines enim in
statu naturali hostes sunt. Qui igitur jus naturae extra civitatem
retinent, hostes manent' (III. 13). The 'jura belli' are simply the
powers of any one state to attack or defend itself against another.
The 'jura pacis,' on the other hand, do not appertain to any single
state, but arise out of the agreement of two at least. They last as
long as the agreement, the 'foedus,' lasts; and this lasts as long as
the fear or hope, which led to its being made, continues to be shared
by the states which made it. As soon as this ceases to be the case,
the agreement is necessarily at an end, 'nec dici potest, quod dolo
vel perfidia agat, propterea quod fidem solvit, simulatque metus vel
spei causa sublata est, quia haec conditio unicuique contrahentium
aequalis fuit, ut scilicet quae prima extra metum esse potest, sui
juris esset, eoque ex sui animi sententia uteretur, et praeterea quia
nemo in futurum contrahit nisi positis prsecedentibus circumstantiis'
(III. 14).

35. It would seem to follow from the above that a state can do no
wrong, in the sense that there are no rights that it can violate.
The same principle is applicable to it as to the individual. 'In
statu naturali non dari peccatum, vel si quis peccat, is sibi, non
alteri peccat: ... nihil absolute naturae jure prohibetur, nisi quod
nemo potest' (II. 18). A state is to any other state, and to its
subjects, as one individual to another 'in statu naturali.' A wrong,
a 'peccatum,' consists in a violation by individuals of the 'commune
decretum.' There can be no 'peccare' on the part of the 'commune
decretum' itself. But 'non id omne, quod jure fieri dicimus, optime
fieri affirmamus. Aliud namque est agrum jure colere, aliud agrum
optime colere; aliud, inquam, est sese jure defendere, conservare,
judicium ferre, &c, aliud sese optime defendere, conservare, atque
optimum judicium ferre; et consequenter aliud est jure imperare
et reipublicae curam habere, aliud optime imperare et rempublicam
optime gubernare. Postquam itaque de jure cujuscumque civitatis in
genere egimus, tempus est, ut de optimo cujuscumque imperii statu
agamus' (V. 1). Hence a further consideration 'de optimo cujusque
imperii statu.' This is guided by reference to the 'finis status
civilis,' which is 'pax vitaeque securitas.' Accordingly that is the
best government under which men live in harmony, and of which the
rights are kept inviolate. Where this is not the case, the fault lies
with the government, not with any 'subditorum malitia.' 'Homines
enim civiles non nascuntur, sed fiunt. Hominum praeterea naturales
affectus ubique iidem sunt' (V. 2).

The end is not fully attained where men are merely kept in order
by fear. Such a state of things is not peace but merely absence of
war. 'Pax enim non belli privatio, sed virtus est, quae ex animi
fortitudine oritur;[1] est namque obsequium constans voluntas id
exsequendi, quod ex communi civitatis decreto fieri debet' (V. 4).

The 'peace,' then, which it is the end of the state to obtain,
consists in rational virtue; in a common mind, governed by desire on
the part of each individual for perfection of being in himself and
others. The harmony of life, too, which is another way of expressing
its object, is to be understood in an equally high sense. The life
spoken of is one 'quae maxime ratione, vera mentis virtute et vita,
definitur.'

The 'imperium' which is to contribute to this end must clearly be one
'quod multitudo libera instituit, non autem id, quod in multitudinem
jure belli acquiritur.' Between the two forms of 'imperium' there
may be no essential difference in respect of the 'jus' which belongs
to each, but there is the greatest in respect of the ends which they
serve as well as in the means by which they have to be maintained (V.
6).

[1] For the definition of 'fortitudo,' see _Ethics_, III. 59,
Schol. 'Omnes actiones quae sequuntur ex affectibus qui ad mentem
referuntur, quatenus intelligit, ad fortitudinem refero, quam in
animositatem et generositatem distinguo. Nam per animositatem
intelligo cupiditatem, qua unusquisque conatur suum esse ex solo
rationis dictamine conservare. Per generositatem ... cupiditatem
qua unusquisque ex solo rationis dictamine conatur reliquos homines
juvare et sibi amicitia jungere.'

36. This conclusion of Spinoza's doctrine of the state does not seem
really consistent with the beginning. At the outset, no motives are
recognised in men but such as render them 'natura hostes.' From the
operation of these motives the state is supposed to result. Each
individual finds that the war of all against all is weakness for all.
Consequently the desire on the part of each to strengthen himself,
which is a form of the universal effort 'suum esse conservare,'
leads to combination, it being discovered that 'homini nihil homine
utilius' (_Eth_. IV. 18. Schol.). But we are expressly told that the
civil state does not bring with it other motives than those operative
'in statu naturali.' 'Homo namque tam in statu naturali quam civili
ex legibus suae naturae agit, suaeque utilitati consulit.' But then
it appears that there supervenes or may supervene on such motives
'constans voluntas id exsequendi quod ex communi civitatis decreto
fieri debet,' and that not of a kind which seeks to carry out the
'commune decretum' as a means of escaping pain or obtaining pleasure,
for it is said to arise from the 'animi fortitudo' which rests on
reason ('ad mentem refertur quatenus intelligit') and includes
'generositas' defined as above. It is also said that the true object
of 'imperium' is 'vitam concorditer transigere' or 'vitam colere' in
a sense of 'vita' in which it 'maxime ratione ... definitur.' And
as the 'imperium' established for this end is one which 'multitudo
libera instituit,' it seems [1] to be implied that there is a desire
for such an end on the part of the people. It is not explained
how such desires should arise out of the conflict of 'naturales
potentiae' or out of the impulses which render men 'natura hostes.'
On the other hand, if the elements of them already exist in the
impulses which lead to the formation of the 'status civilis,' the
reasons for saying that men are 'natura hostes' disappear, and we get
a different view of 'jus,' whether 'naturale' or 'civile,' from that
which identifies it simply with 'potentia.' Some power of conceiving
and being interested in a good _as common_, some identification of
the 'esse' of others with the 'suum esse' which every man, as Spinoza
says, seeks to preserve and promote, must be supposed in those who
form the most primitive social combinations, if these are to issue
in a state directed to such ends and maintained by such a 'constans
voluntas' as Spinoza describes. And it is the interest of men in a
common good, the desire on the part of each which he thinks of others
as sharing, for a good which he conceives to be equally good for
them, that transforms mere 'potentia' into what may fitly be called
'jus,' i.e. a power claiming recognition as exercised or capable of
being exercised for the common good.

[1] Certainly this is so, if we apply to the 'libera multitudo' the
definition of freedom applied to the 'liber homo.' 'Hominem eatenus
_liberum_ omnino voco, quatenus ratione ducitur, quia eatenus ex
causis, quae per solam eius naturam possunt adaequate intelligi,
ad agendum determinatur, tametsi ex iis necessario ad agendum
determinetur. Nam libertas agendi necessitatem non tollit, sed
ponit'(II. 11).

37. If this qualification of 'potentia' which alone renders it 'jus'
had been apprehended by Spinoza, he would have been entitled to speak
of a 'jus naturale' as preceding the 'jus civile,' i.e. of claims to
the recognition of powers and the actual customary recognition of
such, as exercised for a common good, preceding the establishment of
any regular institutions or general laws for securing their exercise.
As it is, the term 'jus naturale' is with him really unmeaning. If it
means no more than 'potentia,' why call it 'jus'? 'Jus' might have
a meaning distinct from that of 'potentia' in the sense of a power
which a certain 'imperium' enables one man to exercise as against
another. This is what Spinoza understands by 'jus civile.' But there
is no need to qualify it as 'civile,' unless 'jus' may be employed
with some other qualification and with a distinctive meaning. But
the 'jus naturale,' as he understands it, has no meaning other than
that of 'potentia,' and his theory as it stands would have been more
clearly expressed if instead of 'jus naturale' and 'jus civile' he
had spoken of 'potentia' and 'jus,' explaining that the latter was a
power on the part of one man against others, maintained by means of
an 'imperium' which itself results from a combination of 'powers.'
He himself in one passage shows a consciousness of the impropriety
of speaking of 'jus' except with reference to a community; 'jus
naturae, quod humani generis proprium est, vix posse concipi, nisi
ubi homines jura habent communia, qui simul terras, quas habitare
et colere possunt, sibi vindicare, seseque munire, vimque omnem
repellere et ex communi omnium sententia vivere possunt' (II. 15). He
takes no notice, however, of any forms of community more primitive
than that of the state. The division into the 'status naturalis'
and the 'status civilis' he seems to treat as exhaustive, and the
'status naturalis' he regards, after the manner of his time, as one
of pure individualism, of simple detachment of man from man, or of
detachment only modified by conflict. From such a 'status naturalis,'
lacking both the natural and the rational principles of social
development (the natural principle, i.e. the interest in others
arising primarily from family ties, and the rational principle, i.e.
the power of conceiving a good consisting in the more perfect being
of the individual and of those in whom he is interested), no process
could be traced to the 'status civilis.' The two 'status' stand over
against each other with an impassable gulf between. 'Homines civiles
non nascuntur, sed fiunt.' They are so made, he seems to hold, by
the action of the 'imperium' upon them. But how is the 'imperium'
to be made? Men must first be, if not 'civiles,' yet something very
different from what they are in the 'status naturalis,' between which
and the 'status civilis' Spinoza recognises no middle term, before
any 'imperium' which could render them 'civiles' could be possible.

38. The cardinal error of Spinoza's 'Politik' is the admission of the
possibility of a right in the individual apart from life in society,
apart from the recognition by members of a society of a correlative
claim upon and duty to each other, as all interested in one and the
same good. The error was the error of his time, but with Spinoza it
was confirmed by his rejection of final causes. The true conception
of 'right' depends on the conception of the individual as being
what be really is in virtue of a function which he has to fulfil
relatively to a certain end, that end being the common well-being
of a society. A 'right' is an ideal attribute ('ideal' in the sense
of not being sensibly verifiable, not reducible to any perceivable
fact or facts) which the individual possesses so far as this function
is in some measure freely fulfilled by him--i.e. fulfilled with
reference to or for the sake of the end--and so far as the ability
to fulfil it is secured to him through its being recognised by the
society as properly belonging to him. The essence of right lies in
its being not simply a power producing sensible effects, but a power
relative to an insensible function and belonging to individuals only
in so far as each recognises that function in himself and others. It
is not in so far as I _can_ do this or that, that I have a right to
do this or that, but so far as I recognise myself and am recognised
by others as able to do this or that for the sake of a common good,
or so far as in the consciousness of myself and others I have a
function relative to this end. Spinoza, however, objects to regard
anything as determined by relation to a final cause. He was not
disposed therefore to regard individuals as being what they are in
virtue of functions relative to the life of society, still less as
being what they are in virtue of the recognition by each of such
functions in himself and others. He looked upon man, like everything
else in nature, as determined by material and efficient causes, and
as himself a material and efficient cause. But as such he has no
'rights' or 'duties,' but only 'powers.'

39. It was because Plato and Aristotle conceived the life of the
πόλις [1] so clearly as the τέλος of the individual, relation to
which makes him what he is--the relation in the case of the πολίτης
proper being a conscious or recognised relation--that they laid the
foundation for all true theory of 'rights.' It is true that they have
not even a word for 'rights.' The claims which in modern times have
been advanced on behalf of the individual against the state under
the designation 'natural rights' are most alien from their way of
thinking. But in saying that the πόλις was a 'natural' institution
and that man was φύσει πολιτικός, Aristotle, according to the sense
which he attached to πόλις, was asserting the doctrine of 'natural
rights' in the only sense in which it is true. He regards the state
(πόλις) as a society of which the life is maintained by what its
members do for the sake of maintaining it, by functions consciously
fulfilled with reference to that end, and which in that sense imposes
duties; and at the same time as a society from which its members
derive the ability, through education and protection, to fulfil their
several functions, and which in that sense confers rights. It is thus
that the πολίτης μετέχει τοῦ ἄρχειν καὶ τοῦ ἄρχεσθαι. Man, being
φύσει πολίτης,--being already in respect of capacities and tendencies
a member of such a society, existing only in κοινωνίαι which contain
its elements,--has 'naturally' the correlative duties and rights
which the state imposes and confers. Practically it is only the Greek
man that Aristotle regards as φύσει πολίτης, but the Greek conception
of citizenship once established was applicable to all men capable of
a common interest. This way of conceiving the case, however, depends
on the 'teleological' view of man and the forms of society in which
he is found to live, i.e. on the view of men as being what they are
in virtue of non-sensible functions, and of certain forms of life
determined by relation to more perfect forms which they have the
capacity or tendency to become.

[1] [Greek πόλις (polis) = city, τέλος (telos) = end or purpose,
πολίτης (polites) = citizen, φύσει πολίτης or φύσει πολιτικός (physei
polites or politikos) = social or a citizen by nature, πολίτης
μετέχει τοῦ ἄρχειν καὶ τοῦ ἄρχεσθαι (polites metechei tou archein kai
tou archesthai) = a citizen by turns rules and is ruled, κοινωνίαι
(koinoniai) = associations. Tr]

40. Spinoza, like Bacon, found the assumption of ends which things
were meant to fulfil in the way of accurate inquiry into what things
are (materially) and do. He held Plato and Aristotle cheap as
compared with Democritus and Epicurus (_Epist_. LX. 13). Accordingly
he considers the individual apart from his vocation as a member of
society, the state apart from its office as enabling the individual
to fulfil that vocation. Each, so considered, is merely a vehicle of
so much power (natural force). On the other hand, he recognises a
difference between a higher and lower, a better and worse, state of
civil society, and a possibility of seeking the better state because
it is understood to be better. And this is to admit the possibility
of the course of human affairs being affected by the conception of
a final cause. It is characteristic of Spinoza that while he never
departs from the principle 'homo naturae pars,' he ascribes to him
the faculty of understanding the order of nature, and of conforming
to it or obeying it in a new way on account of that understanding.
In other words, he recognised the distinction called by Kant the
distinction between determination according to law and determination
according to the consciousness of law; though in his desire to assert
the necessity of each kind of determination he tends to disguise the
distinction and to ignore the fact that, if rational determination
(or the determination by a conception of a law) is a part of nature,
it is so in quite a different sense from determination merely
according to laws of nature. As he puts it, the clear understanding
that we are parts of nature, and of our position in the universe
of things, will yield a new character. We shall only then desire
what is ordained for us and shall find rest in the truth, in the
knowledge of what is necessary. This he regards as the highest state
of the individual, and the desire to attain it he evidently considers
the supreme motive by which the individual should be governed. The
analogue in political life to this highest state of the individual
is the direction of the 'imperium' by a 'libera multitudo' to the
attainment of 'pax vitaeque securitas' in the high sense which he
attaches to those words in _Tract. Pol_. cap. V. [1]

[1] Cp. _Eth_. IV. _Appendix_, xxxii. 'Ea quae nobis eveniunt contra
id, quod nostrae utilitatis ratio postulat, aequo animo feremus,
si conscii simus nos functos nostro officio fuisse, et potentiam,
quam habemus, non potuisse se eo usque extendere, ut eadem vitare
possemus, nosque partem totius naturae esse, cujus ordinem sequimur.
Quod si clare et distincte intelligamus, pars illa nostri, quae
intelligentia definitur, hoc est, pars melior nostri, in eo plane
acquiescet et in ea acquiescentia perseverare conabitur. Nam quatenus
intelligimus, nihil appetere nisi id, quod necessarium est, nec
absolute nisi in veris acquiescere possumus; adeoque quatenus haec
recte intelligimus, eatenus conatus melioris partis nostri cum ordine
totius naturae convenit.' _Eth_. IV. Preface ... 'Per _bonum_ ...
intelligam id, quod certo scimus medium esse, ut ad exemplar humanae
naturae, quod nobis proponimus, magis magisque accedamus.... Deinde
homines _perfectiores_ aut _imperfectiores_ dicemus, quatenus ad hoc
idem exemplar magis aut minus accedunt.'

41. The conclusion, then, is that Spinoza did really, though not
explicitly, believe in a final cause determining human life. That
is to say, he held that the conception of an end consisting in the
greater perfection of life on the part of the individual and the
community might, and to some extent did, determine the life of the
individual and the community. He would have said no doubt that
this end, like every good, existed only in our consciousness; that
it was 'nihil positivum in rebus in se consideratis' (_Ethics_,
IV. Preface); but an existence of the end in human consciousness,
determining human action, is a sufficiently real existence, without
being 'positivum in rebus.' But he made the mistake of ignoring the
more confused and mixed forms in which the conception of this end
operates; of recognising it only in the forms of the philosophic
'amor Dei,' or in the wisdom of the exceptional citizen, whom alone
he would admit 'ratione duci.' And in particular he failed to notice
that it is the consciousness of such an end to which his powers may
be directed, that constitutes the individual's claim to exercise
them as rights, just as it is the recognition of them by a society
as capable of such direction which renders them actually rights; in
short that, just as according to him nothing is good or evil but
thinking makes it so, so it is only thinking that makes a might a
right,--a certain conception of the might as relative to a social
good on the part at once of the person or persons exercising it, and
of a society which it affects.

    C. _HOBBES_.

42. All the more fruitful elements in Spinoza's political doctrine
are lacking in that of Hobbes, but the principle of the two theories
is very much the same. Each begins with the supposition of an
existence of human individuals, unaffected by society, and each
struggling for existence against the rest, so that men are 'natura
hostes.' Each conceives 'jus naturale' as = 'potentia naturalis.'
But Spinoza carries out this conception much more consistently. He
does not consider that the natural right, which is might, ceases to
exist or becomes anything else when a multitude combine their natural
rights or mights in an 'imperium.' If the ostensible 'imperium' comes
into collision with the powers of individuals, single or combined,
among those who have hitherto been subject to it, and proves the
weaker, it _ipso facto_ ceases to be an 'imperium.' Not having
superior power, it no longer has superior right to the 'subditi.'
It is on this principle, as we have seen, that he deals with the
question of limitations to the right of a sovereign. Its rights are
limited because its powers are so. Exercised in certain ways and
directions they defeat themselves. Thus as he puts it in _Epist_.
L. (where he points out his difference from Hobbes), 'Supremo
magistratui in qualibet urbe non plus in subditos juris, quam juxta
mensuram potestatis, qua subditum superat, competere statuo.' Hobbes,
on the other hand, supposes his sovereign power to have an absolute
right to the submission of all its subjects, singly or collectively,
irrespectively of the question of its actual power against them. This
right he considers it to derive from a covenant by which individuals,
weary of the state of war, have agreed to devolve their 'personae,'
in the language of Roman law, upon some individual or collection
of individuals, which is henceforward to represent them, and to be
considered as acting with, their combined powers. This covenant being
in the nature of the case irrevocable, the sovereign derives from it
an indefeasible right to direct the actions of all members of the
society over which it is sovereign.

43. The doctrine may be found in _Leviathan_, Part II., chapter 17.
In order 'to erect such a common power as may be able to defend them
from the invasion of foreigners and the injuries of one another,'
men 'confer all their power and strength upon one man or upon one
assembly of men,' ... i.e. 'appoint one man or assembly of men to
bear their person.... This is more than consent and concord; it is a
real unity of them all in one and the same person, made by covenant
of every man with every man, in such a manner as if every man should
say to every man, 'I authorise, and give up my right of governing
myself to this man or this assembly of men, on condition that thou
give up thy right to him and authorise all his actions in like
manner.' This done, the multitude so united in one person is called
a commonwealth, in Latin _civitas_ ... which (to define it) is one
person, of whose acts a great multitude by mutual covenant one with
another have made themselves everyone the author, to the end he may
use the strength and means of them all, as he shall think expedient,
for their peace and common defence. And he that carrieth this person
is called sovereign, and said to have sovereign power; and everyone
besides, his subject.'

44. In order to understand the form in which the doctrine is stated,
we have to bear in mind the sense in which 'persona' is used by
the Roman lawyers, as = either a complex of rights, or the subject
(or possessor) of those rights, whether a single individual or
a corporate body. In this sense of the word, a man's person is
separable from his individual existence as a man. 'Unus homo sustinet
plures personas.' A magistrate, e.g., would be one thing in respect
of what he is in himself, another thing in respect of his 'persona'
or complex of rights belonging to him as a magistrate, and so too a
monarch. On the same principle, a man, remaining a man as before,
might devolve his 'persona,' the complex of his rights, on another.
A son, when by the death of his father according to Roman law he was
delivered from 'patria potestas' and became in turn head of a family,
acquired a 'persona' which he had not before, the 'persona' which had
previously belonged to the father. Again, to take a modern instance,
the fellows of a college, as a corporation, form one 'persona,' but
each of them would bear other 'persons,' if, e.g., they happened to
be magistrates, or simply in respect of their rights as citizens.
Thus 'one person' above = one sustainer of rights; while in the
second passage, ... 'carrieth this person,' it rather = the rights
sustained.

45. Hobbes expressly states that the sovereign 'person' may be an
_assembly_ of men, but the natural associations of the term, when
the sovereign is spoken of as a person, favour the development of a
monarchical doctrine of sovereignty.

Sovereign power is attained either by acquisition or institution. By
acquisition, when a man makes his children and their children, or a
conqueror his enemies, to submit under fear of death. By institution,
when men agree among themselves to submit to some man or assembly
'on confidence to be protected against all others.' Hobbes speaks
(II. 17, end) as if there were two ways by which a commonwealth
and a sovereign defined as above could be brought into existence,
but clearly a sovereign by acquisition is not a sovereign in the
sense explained. He does not 'carry a person of whose acts a great
multitude by _mutual covenant_ one with another, have made themselves
everyone the author, to the end he may use the strength and means of
them all, as he shall think expedient, for their peace and common
defence.' And what Hobbes describes in the sequel (c. 18) are, as he
expressly says, rights of sovereigns by institution; but he seems
tacitly to assume that every sovereign may claim the same, though he
could hardly have supposed that the existing sovereignties were in
their origin other than sovereignties by acquisition.

'A commonwealth is said to be instituted, when a multitude of men
covenant, everyone with everyone, that to whatsoever man or assembly
of men shall be given by the major part the right to represent the
person of them all, everyone, as well he that voted for it as he
that voted against it, shall authorise all the actions and judgments
of that man or assembly of men, in the same manner as if they were
his own, to the end to live peaceably amongst themselves, and to be
protected against other men' (c. 18). Here a distinction is drawn
between the covenant of all with all to be bound by the act of the
majority in appointing a sovereign, and that act of appointment
itself which is not a covenant of all with all. The natural
conclusion would be that it was no violation of the covenant if the
majority afterwards transferred the sovereign power to other hands.
But in the sequel Hobbes expressly makes out such a transference to
be a violation of the original compact. This is an instance of his
desire to vindicate the absolute right of a _de facto_ monarch.

46. Throughout these statements we are moving in a region of fiction
from which Spinoza keeps clear. Not only is the supposition of
the devolution of wills or powers on a sovereign by a covenant
historically a fiction (about that no more need be said); the
notion of an obligation to observe this covenant, as distinct from
a compulsion, is inconsistent with the supposition that there is
no right other than power prior to the act by which the sovereign
power is established. If there is no such right antecedent to the
establishment of the sovereign power, neither can there be any
after its establishment except in the sense of a power on the part
of individuals which the sovereign power enables them to exercise.
This power, or 'jus civile,' cannot itself belong to the sovereign,
who enables individuals to exercise it. The only right which can
belong to the sovereign is the 'jus naturale,' [1] consisting in the
superiority of his power, and this right must be measured by the
inability of the subjects to resist. If they _can_ resist, the right
has disappeared. In a successful resistance, then, to an ostensibly
sovereign power, there can on the given supposition be no wrong done
to that power. To say that there is, would be a contradiction in
terms. Is such resistance, then, a violation of the 'jus civile' as
between the several subject citizens? In the absence of a sovereign
power, no doubt, the 'jus civile' (according to the view in question,
which makes it depend on the existence of an 'imperium') would cease
to exist. But then a successful resistance would simply show that
there was no longer such a sovereign power. It would not itself be a
violation of 'jus civile,' but simply a proof that the conditions of
'jus civile' were no longer present. It might at the same time be a
step to re-establishing them if, besides being a proof that the old
'imperium' no longer exists, it implied such a combination of powers
as suffices to establish a new one.

[1] 'The 'jus naturale' is the liberty each man hath to use his own
power as he will himself for the preservation of his own nature; that
is to say of his own life; and consequently of doing anything which
in his own judgment and reason he shall conceive to be the aptest
means thereunto.' (_Lev_., I. 14.)

47. No obligation, then, as distinct from compulsion, to submit
to an ostensibly sovereign power can consistently be founded on
a theory according to which right either = simple power, or only
differs from it, in the form of 'jus civile,' through being a power
which an 'imperium' enables individuals to exercise as against each
other. Hobbes could not, indeed, have made out his doctrine (of the
absolute submission to the sovereign) with any plausibility, if he
had stated with the explicitness of Spinoza that 'jus naturale' =
'naturalis potentia.' That it is so is implied in the account of the
state of things preceding the establishment of sovereignty as one
of 'bellum omnium contra omnes'; for where there is no recognition
of a common good, there can be no right in any other sense than
power. But where there are no rights but natural power, no obligatory
covenant can be made. In order, however, to get a sovereignty, to
which there is a perpetual obligation of submission, Hobbes has to
suppose a covenant of all with all, preceding the establishment of
sovereignty, and to the observance of which, therefore, there cannot
be an obligation in the sense that the sovereign punishes for the
non-observance (the obligation corresponding to 'jus civile' in
Spinoza's sense), but which no one can ever be entitled to break.
As the obligatoriness of this covenant, then, cannot be derived
from the sovereignty which is established through it, Hobbes has to
ascribe it to a 'law of nature' which enjoins 'that men perform their
covenants made' (_Lev_., I. 15). Yet in the immediate sequel of this
passage he says expressly, 'The nature of justice consisteth in the
keeping of valid covenants, but the validity of covenants begins not
but with the constitution of a civil power, sufficient to compel men
to keep them; and then it is also that propriety begins.' On this
principle the covenant by which a civil power is for the first time
constituted cannot be a valid covenant. The men making it are not in
a position to make a valid covenant at all. The 'law of nature,' to
which alone Hobbes can appeal according to his principles, as the
source of the obligatoriness of the covenant of all with all, he
defines as a 'precept or general rule, found out by reason, by which
a man is forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life, or
taketh away the means of preserving the same; and to omit that by
which he thinketh it may best be preserved' (I. 14). When a law of
nature, however, is said to command or forbid, we must not understand
those terms in that sense which, according to Hobbes, could only
be derived from the establishment of an 'imperium.' This 'law of
nature,' therefore, is merely an expression in a general form of the
instinct by which, as Spinoza says, every living creature 'in suo
esse perseverare conatur,' as guided by a calculation of consequences
(for no meaning but this can be given to 'reason' according to
Hobbes). The prohibition, then, by this law of nature of a breach of
that covenant of all with all, by which a sovereign power is supposed
to be established, can properly mean nothing more than that it is
everyone's interest to adhere to it. This, however, could only be a
conditional prohibition, conditional, in particular, on the way in
which the sovereign power is exercised. Hobbes tries to show that it
must always be for the advantage of all to obey it, because not to
do so is to return to the state of universal war; but a successful
resistance to it must be _ipso facto_ an establishment of a new
combined power which prevents the 'bellum omnium contra omnes' from
returning. At any rate, an obligation to submit to the established
'imperium,' measured by the self-interest of each in doing so, is
quite a different thing from the obligation which Hobbes describes in
terms only appropriate (according to his own showing) to contracts
between individuals enforced by a sovereign power.

48. It would seem that Hobbes' desire to prove all resistance
to established sovereignty unjustifiable leads him to combine
inconsistent doctrines. He adopts the notion that men are 'natura
hostes,' that 'jus naturale' = mere power, because it illustrates
the benefit to man's estate derived from the establishment of a
supreme power and the effects of the subversion of such power once
established, which he assumes to be equivalent to a return to a
state of nature. But this notion does not justify the view that a
rebellion, which is strong enough to succeed, is wrong. For this
purpose he has to resort to the representation of the sovereign as
having a right distinct from power, founded on a contract of all
with all, by which sovereignty is established. This representation
is quite alien to Spinoza, with whom sovereignty arises, it is true,
when 'plures in unum conveniunt,' but in the sense of combining
their powers, not of contracting. But after all, the fiction of this
contract will not serve the purpose which Hobbes wants it to serve.
The sovereignty established by the contract can only have a _natural_
right to be maintained inviolate, for all other right presupposes it,
and cannot be presupposed by it. If this natural right means mere
power, then upon a successful rebellion it disappears. If it means
anything else it must mean that there are natural rights of men,
other than their mere power, which are violated by its subversion.
But if there are such rights, there must equally be a possibility of
collision between the sovereign power and these natural rights, which
would justify a resistance to it.

49. It may be asked whether it is worth while to examine the internal
consistency of a theory which turns upon what is admitted to be
historically a fiction, the supposition of a contract of all with
all. There are fictions and fictions however. The supposition that
some event took place which as a matter of history did not take place
may be a way of conveying an essentially true conception of some
moral relation of man. The great objection to the representation
of the right of a sovereign power over subjects, and the rights
of individuals which are enforced by this 'imperium,' as having
arisen out of a contract of all with all, is that it conveys a
false notion of rights. It is not merely that the possibility of
such a contract being made presupposes just that state of things--a
_régime_ of recognised and enforced obligations--which it is assumed
to account for. Since those who contract must already have rights,
the representation of society with its obligations as formed by
contract implies that individuals have certain rights, independently
of society and of their functions as members of a society, which they
bring with them to the transaction. But such rights abstracted from
social function and recognition could only be powers, or (according
to Hobbes' definition) liberties to use powers, which comes to the
same; i.e. they would not be rights at all; and from no combination
or devolution of them could any right in the proper sense, anything
more than a combined power, arise.

50. Thus the only logical development of that separation of right
from social duty which is implied in the doctrine of 'social
contract' is that of Spinoza. Happily the doctrine has not been
logically developed by those whose way of thinking has been affected
by it. The reduction of political right--the right of the state over
its subjects--to superior power, has not been popularly accepted,
though the general conception of _national_ right seems pretty much
to identify it with power. Among the enlightened, indeed, there has
of late appeared a tendency to adopt a theory very like that of
Spinoza, without the higher elements which we noticed in Spinoza;
to consider all right as a power attained in that 'struggle for
existence' to which human 'progress' is reduced. But for one person,
who, as a matter of speculation, considers the right of society over
him to be a disguised might, there are thousands who, as a matter of
practice, regard their own right as independent of that correlation
to duty without which it is merely a might. The popular effect of
the notion that the individual brings with him into society certain
rights which he does not derive from society,--which are other than
claims to fulfil freely (i.e. for their own sake) certain functions
towards society,--is seen in the inveterate irreverence of the
individual towards the state, in the assumption that he has rights
against society irrespectively of his fulfilment of any duties to
society, that all 'powers that be' are restraints upon his natural
freedom which he may rightly defy as far as he safely can.

    D. _LOCKE._

51. It was chiefly Rousseau who gave that cast to the doctrine of
the origin of political obligation in contract, in which it best
lends itself to the assertion of rights apart from duties on the part
of individuals, in opposition to the counter-fallacy which claims
rights for the state irrespectively of its fulfilment of its function
as securing the rights of individuals. It is probably true that
the _Contrat Social_ had great effect on the founders of American
independence, an effect which appears in the terms of the Declaration
of Independence and in preambles to the constitutions of some of the
original American states. But the essential ideas of Rousseau are
to be found in Locke's _Treatise of Civil Government_, which was
probably well known in America for half a century before Rousseau was
heard of. [1] Locke again constantly appeals to Hooker's first book
on _Ecclesiastical Polity_,[2] and Grotius[3] argues in exactly the
same strain.

Hooker, Grotius, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau only differ in their
application of the same conception; viz. that men live first in a
state of nature, subject to a law of nature, also called the law of
reason; that in this state they are in some sense free and equal;
that 'finding many inconveniences' in it they covenant with each
other to establish a government--a covenant which they are bound by
the 'law of nature' to observe--and that out of this covenant the
obligation of submission to the 'powers that be' arises. Spinoza
alone takes a different line: he does not question the state of
nature or the origin of government in a combination of men who find
the state of nature 'inconvenient'; but he regards this combination
as one of powers directed to a common end, and constituting superior
force, not as a covenant which men are bound by the law of nature to
observe.

[1] Locke, _Civil Government_, chap. vii. sec. 87. 'Man, being born
with a title to perfect freedom, and an uncontrolled enjoyment of
all the rights and privileges of the law of nature, equally with any
other man or number of men in the world, hath by nature a power not
only to preserve his life, liberty, and estate against ... other men;
but to judge of and punish the breaches of that law in others....
There, and there only, is political society where every one of
the members hath quitted this natural power, resigned it up into
the hands of the community in all cases that exclude him not from
appealing for protection to the law established by it.'

[2] 'Laws human, of what kind soever, are available by consent,'
Hooker, _Eccl. Pol_. I. 10 (quoted by Locke, _l.c._ chap. xi. sec.
134). 'To be commanded we do consent, when that society, whereof we
be a part, hath at any time before consented, without revoking the
same after by the like universal agreement.' Hooker;_ ibid_.

[3] _De jure belli et pacis_, Proleg. secs. 15 and 16.

52. The common doctrine is so full of ambiguities that it readily
lends itself to opposite applications. In the first place 'state of
nature' may be understood in most different senses. The one idea
common to all the writers who suppose such a state to have preceded
that of civil society is a negative one. It was a state which was
_not_ one of political society, one in which there was no civil
government; i.e. no supreme power, exercised by a single person or
plurality of persons, which could compel obedience on the part of
all members of a society, and was recognised as entitled to do so
by them all, or by a sufficient number of them to secure general
obedience. But was it one of society at all? Was it one in which men
had no dealings with each other except in the way of one struggling
to make another serve his will and to get for himself what the other
had, or was it one in which there were ties of personal affection and
common interest, and recognised obligations, between man and man?
Evidently among those who spoke of a state of nature, there were very
various and wavering conceptions on this point. They are apt to make
an absolute opposition between the state of nature and the political
state, and to represent men as having suddenly contracted themselves
out of one into the other. Yet evidently the contract would have been
impossible unless society in a form very like that distinctively
called political had been in existence beforehand. If political
society is to be supposed to have originated in a pact at all, the
difference between it and the preceding state of nature cannot, with
any plausibility, be held to have been much more than a difference
between a society regulated by written law and officers with defined
power and one regulated by customs and tacitly recognised authority.

53. Again, it was held that in a state of nature men were 'free and
equal.' This is maintained by Hobbes as much as by the founders of
American independence. But if freedom is to be understood in the
sense in which most of these writers seem to understand it, as a
power of executing, of giving effect to, one's will, the amount
of freedom possessed in a state of nature, if that was a state of
detachment and collision between individuals, must have been very
small. Men must have been constantly thwarting each other, and (in
the absence of that 'jus in naturam,' as Spinoza calls it, which
combination gives) thwarted by powers of nature. In such a state
those only could be free, in the sense supposed, who were _not_
equal to the rest; who, in virtue of superior power, could use the
rest. But whether we suppose an even balance of weaknesses, in
subjection to the crushing forces of nature, or a dominion of few
over many by means of superior strength, in such a state of nature no
general pact would be possible. No equality in freedom is possible
except for members of a society of whom each recognises a good of
the whole which is also his own, and to which the free co-operation
of all is necessary. But if such society is supposed in the state
of nature--and otherwise the 'pact' establishing political society
would be impossible--it is already in principle the same as political
society.

54. It is not always certain whether the writers in question
considered men to be actually free and equal in the state of nature,
or only so according to the 'law of nature,' which might or might
not be observed. (Hobbes represents the freedom and equality in the
state of nature as actual, and this state as being for that reason
'bellum omnium contra omnes.') They all, however, implicitly assume
a _consciousness_ of the law of nature in the state of nature. It
is thus not a law of nature in the sense in which we commonly use
the term. It is not a law according to which the agents subject to
it act necessarily but without consciousness of the law. It is a
law of which the agent subject to it has a consciousness, but one
according to which he may or may not act; i.e. one according to which
he _ought_ to act. It is from it that the obligation to submission to
civil government, according to all these writers, is derived. But in
regard to such a law, two questions have to be asked: firstly, how
can the consciousness of obligation arise without recognition by the
individual of claims on the part of others--social claims in some
form or other--which may be opposed to his momentary inclinations?
and secondly, given a society of men capable of such a consciousness
of obligation, constituting a law according to which the members
of the society are free and equal, in what does it differ from a
political society? If these questions had been fairly considered,
it must have been seen that the distinction between a political
society and a state of nature, governed by such a law of nature, was
untenable; that a state of things out of which political society
could have arisen by compact, must have been one in which the
individual regarded himself as a member of a society which has claims
on him and on which he has claims, and that such society is already
in principle a political society. But the ambiguity attending the
conception of the law of nature prevented them from being considered.
When the writers in question spoke of a law of nature, to which men
in the state of nature were subject, they did not make it clear to
themselves that this law, as understood by them, could not exist at
all without there being some recognition or consciousness of it on
the part of those subject to it. The designation of it as 'law of
nature' or 'law of God' helped to disguise the fact that there was no
imponent of it, in the sense in which a law is imposed on individuals
by a political superior. In the absence of such an imponent, unless
it is either a uniformity in the relations of natural events or an
irresistible force--and it is not represented in either of these ways
in juristic writings--it can only mean a recognition of obligation
arising in the consciousness of the individual from his relations
to society. But this not being clearly realised, it was possible to
represent the law of nature as antecedent to the laws imposed by a
political superior, without its being observed that this implied the
antecedence of a condition of things in which the result supposed
to be obtained through the formation of political society--the
establishment, viz. of reciprocal claims to freedom and equality on
the part of members of a society--already existed.

55. In fact, the condition of society in which it could properly
be said to be governed by a law of nature, i.e. by an obligation
of which there is no imponent but the consciousness of man, an
obligation of which the breach is not punished by a political
superior, is not antecedent to political society, but one which it
gradually tends to produce. It is the radical fault of the theory
which finds the origin of political society in compact, that it has
to reverse the true process. To account for the possibility of the
compact of all with all, it has to assume a society subject to a law
of nature, prescribing the freedom and equality of all. But a society
governed by such a law as a law of nature, i.e. with no imponent
but man's consciousness, would have been one from which political
society would have been a decline, one in which there could have
been no motive to the establishment of civil government. Thus this
theory must needs be false to itself in one of two ways. Either it is
false to the conception of a law of nature, with its prescription of
freedom and equality, as governing the state of things prior to the
compact by which political society is established, only introducing
the law of nature as the ground of the obligatoriness of that
compact, but treating the state of nature as one of universal war in
which no reciprocal claims of any sort were recognised, (so Hobbes);
or just so far as it realises the conception of a society governed
by a law of nature, as equivalent to that spontaneous recognition by
each of the claims of all others, without which the covenant of all
with all is in fact unaccountable, it does away with any appearance
of necessity for the transition from the state of nature to that of
political society and tends to represent the latter as a decline from
the former. This result is seen in Rousseau; but to a great extent
Rousseau had been anticipated by Locke. The broad differences between
Locke and Hobbes in their development of the common doctrine, are
(1) that Locke denies that the state of nature is a state of war,
and (2) that Locke distinguishes the act by which political society
is established from that by which the government, legislative and
executive, is established, and is consequently able to distinguish
the dissolution of the political society from the dissolution of the
government (_Civ. Gov_. Chapter XIX. Sect. 211).

56. The 'state of nature' and the 'state of war' 'are so far distant
as a state of peace, good-will, mutual assistance and preservation,
and a state of enmity, malice, violence, and mutual destruction, are
from one another. Men living together, according to reason, without
a common superior on earth with authority to judge between them, is
properly the state of nature. But force, or a declared design of
force, upon the person of another, where there is no common superior
on earth to appeal to for relief, is the state of war' (_Civ. Gov_.
III. Sect. 19). In the state of nature, however, when the state of
war has once begun, there is not the same means of terminating it as
in civil society.

The right of war may belong to a man, 'though he be in society and
a fellow-subject,' when his person or property is in such immediate
danger that it is impossible to appeal for relief to the common
superior. 'But when the actual force is over, the state of war ceases
between those that are in society ... because there lies the remedy
of appeal for the past injury and to prevent future harm.' In the
state of nature, when the state of war has once begun, it continues
until the aggressor offers peace and reparation. The state of war,
though not proper to the state of nature, is a frequent incident of
it, and to avoid it is one great reason of men's putting themselves
into society (_ib_. Sect. 21). The state of nature is not one that is
altogether over and done with. 'All rulers of independent governments
all through the world are in a state of nature.' The members of one
state in dealing with those of another are in a state of nature,
and the law of nature alone binds them. 'For truth and keeping of
faith belongs to men as men, and not as members of society' (_Civ.
Gov_. II. Sect. 14). 'All men are naturally in that state and remain
so till by their own consents they make themselves members of some
politic society' (_ib_. Sect. 15).

57. The antithesis, as put above, between the state of nature and
the state of war, can only be maintained on the supposition that the
'law of nature' is observed in a state of nature. Locke does not
explicitly state that this is the case. If it were so, it would not
appear how the state of war should arise in the state of nature.
But he evidently thought of the state of nature as one in which men
recognised the law of nature, though without fully observing it. He
quotes with approval from Hooker language which implies that not only
is the state of nature a state of equality, but that in it there is
such consciousness of equality with each other on the part of men
that they recognise the principle 'do as you would be done by' (_Civ.
Gov_. II. Sect. 5). With Hobbes, in the supposed state of nature the
'law of nature' is emphatically _not_ observed, and hence it is a
state of war. As has been pointed out above, a 'law of nature' in the
sense in which these writers use the term, as a law which obliges but
yet has no imponent in the shape of a sovereign power, is, as Locke
says (Sect. 136), 'nowhere to be found but in the minds of men'; it
can only have its being in the consciousness of those subject to it.
If therefore we are to suppose a state of nature in which such a law
of nature exists, it is more consistent to conceive it in Locke's
way than in that of Hobbes; more consistent to conceive it as one in
which men recognise duties to each other than as a 'bellum omnium
contra omnes.'

58. As to the second point, from his own conception of what men
are in the state of nature, and of the ends for which they found
political societies, Locke derives certain necessary limitations
of what the supreme power in a commonwealth may rightfully do. The
prime business of the political society, once formed, is to establish
the legislative power. This is 'sacred and unalterable in the hands
where the community have once placed it' (_Civ. Gov_. XI. Sect. 134);
'unalterable,' that is, as we gather from the sequel, by anything
short of an act of the community which originally placed it in these
hands. But as men in a state of nature have 'no arbitrary power' over
each other (which must mean that according to the 'law of nature'
they have no such power), so they cannot transfer any such power to
the community nor it to the legislature. No legislature can have the
right to destroy, enslave, or designedly impoverish the subjects. And
as no legislature can be entitled to do anything which the individual
in the state of nature would not by the law of nature be entitled to
do, so its great business is to declare the law of nature in general
terms and administer it by known authorised judges. The state of
nature, Locke seemed to think, would have done very well, but for
the inconvenience of every man being judge in his own case of what
the law of nature requires. It is to remedy this inconvenience by
establishing (1) a settled law, received by common consent, (2) a
known and indifferent judge, (3) a power to enforce the decisions of
such a judge, that political society is formed.

Hence a legislature violates the 'trust that is put in it' by society
unless it observes the following rules: (1) it is to govern 'by
promulgated established laws,' not to be varied to suit particular
interests; (2) these laws are to be designed only for the good of
the people; (3) it must not raise taxes but by consent of the people
through themselves or their deputies; (4) it neither 'must, nor
can, transfer the power of making laws to anybody else, or place it
anywhere but where the people have' (_Civ. Gov_. XI. Sect. 142).

59. Thus 'the legislative being only a fiduciary power to act for
certain ends, there remains still in the people a supreme power
to remove or alter the legislature.' Subject to this ultimate
'sovereignty' (a term which Locke does not use) of the people, the
legislative is necessarily the supreme power, to which the executive
is subordinate. An appearance to the contrary can only arise in cases
where (as in England) the supreme executive power is held by a person
who has also a share in the legislative. Such a person may 'in a
very tolerable sense be called supreme.' It is not, however, to him
as supreme legislator (which he is not, but only a participator in
supreme legislation) but to him as supreme executor of the law that
oaths of allegiance are taken. It is only as executing the law that
he can claim obedience, his executive power being, like the power
of the legislative, 'a fiduciary trust placed in him' to enforce
obedience to law and that only (_Civ. Gov_. XIII. Sect. 151). This
distinction of the supreme power of the people from that of the
supreme executive, corresponding to a distinction between the act of
transferring individual powers to a society and the subsequent act
by which that society establishes a particular form of government,
enables Locke to distinguish what Hobbes had confounded, the
dissolution of government and the dissolution of political society.

60. He gets rid of Hobbes' notion, that because the 'covenant of all
with all,' by which a sovereignty is established, is irrevocable,
therefore the government once established is unalterable. He
conceives the original pact merely as an agreement to form a civil
society, which must indeed have a government, but not necessarily
always the same government. The pact is a transfer by individuals of
their natural rights to a society, and can only be cancelled through
the dissolution of the society by foreign conquest. The delegation
by the society of legislative and executive powers to a person or
persons is a different matter. The society always retains the right,
according to Locke, of resuming the powers thus delegated, and must
exercise the light in the event either of the legislative being
altered, (placed in different hands from those originally intended),
of a collision between its executive and legislative officers, or of
a breach between different branches of the legislature (when as in
England there are such different branches), or when legislative and
executive or either of them 'act contrary to their trust.' He thus in
effect vindicates the right of revolution, ascribing to a 'sovereign
people' the attributes which Hobbes assigned to a 'person,' single
or corporate, on which the people forming a society were supposed by
an irrevocable act to have devolved their powers. In other words,
he considered the whole civil society in all cases to have the
rights which Hobbes would only have allowed it to possess where the
government was not a monarchy or aristocracy but a democracy; i.e.
where the supreme 'person' upon which all devolve their several
'personae' is an 'assembly of all who will come together.' As such
a democracy did not then exist in Europe, any more than it does
now, except in some Swiss cantons, the practical difference between
the two views was very great. Both Locke and Hobbes wrote with a
present political object in view, Hobbes wishing to condemn the
Rebellion, Locke to justify the Revolution. For practical purposes,
Locke's doctrine is much the better; but if Hobbes' translation
of the irrevocableness of the covenant of all with all into the
illegitimacy of resistance to an established government in effect
entitles any tyrant [l] to do as he likes, on the other hand, it is
impossible upon Locke's theory to pronounce when resistance to a _de
facto_ government is legitimate or otherwise. It would be legitimate
according to him when it is an act of the 'sovereign people' (not
that Locke uses the phrase), superseding a government which has been
false to its trust. But this admitted, all sorts of questions arise
as to the means of ascertaining what is and what is not an act of the
'sovereign people.'

[1] According to Hobbes, tyranny = 'monarchy misliked'; oligarchy =
'aristocracy misliked.'

61. The rapid success of the revolution without popular disorder
prevented Locke's theory from becoming of importance, but in the
presence of such sectarian enthusiasm as existed in Hobbes' time
it would have become dangerous. It would not any more than that of
Hobbes justify resistance to 'the powers that be' on the part of any
body of men short of the civil society acting as a whole, i.e. by a
majority. The sectaries of the time of the Rebellion, in pleading
a natural or divine right to resist the orders of the government,
would have been as much condemned by Locke's theory as by that of
Hobbes. But who can say when any popular action by which established
powers, legislative or executive, are resisted or altered is an
act of the 'sovereign people,' of the civil society acting as a
whole, or no. Where government is democratic, in Hobbes' sense,
i.e. vested in an assembly of all who will come together, the act
of the 'sovereign people' is unmistakeable. It is the act of the
majority of such an assembly. But in such a case the difficulty
cannot arise. There can be no withdrawal by the sovereign people
of power from its legislative or executive representatives, since
it has no such representatives. In any other case it would seem
impossible to say whether any resistance to, or deposition of, an
established legislative or executive is the act of the majority of
the society or no Any sectary or revolutionary may plead that he has
the 'sovereign people' on his side. If he fails, it is not certain
that he has them not on his side; for it may be that, though he has
the majority of the society on his side, yet the society has allowed
the growth within it of a power which prevents it from giving effect
to its will. On the other hand, if the revolution succeeds, it is not
certain that it had the majority on its side when it began, though
the majority may have come to acquiesce in its result. In short,
on Locke's principle that any particular government derives its
authority from an act of the society, and society by a like act may
recall the authority, how can we ever be entitled to say that such an
act has been exercised?

62. It is true that there is no greater difficulty about supposing
it to be exercised in the dissolution than in the establishment of a
government, indeed not so much; but the act of first establishing a
government is thrown back into an indefinite past. It may easily be
taken for granted without further inquiry into the conditions of its
possibility. On the other hand, as the act of legitimately dissolving
a government or superseding one by another has to be imagined as
taking place in the present, the inquiry into the conditions of
its possibility cannot well be avoided. If we have once assumed
with Hobbes and Locke, that the authority of government is derived
from a covenant of all with all,--either directly or mediately by a
subsequent act in which the covenanted society delegates its powers
to a representative or representatives,--it will follow that a like
act is required to cancel it; and the difficulties of conceiving
such an act under the conditions of the present are so great, that
Hobbes' view of the irrevocableness of the original act by which
any government was established has much to say for itself. If the
authority of any government--its claim on our obedience--is held to
be derived not from an original covenant, or from any covenant, but
from the function which it serves in maintaining those conditions
of freedom which are conditions of the moral life, then no act of
the people in revocation of a prior act need be reckoned necessary
to justify its dissolution. If it ceases to serve this function,
it loses its claim on our obedience. It is a παρέκβασις. [1] (Here
again the Greek theory, deriving the authority of government not
from consent but from the end which it serves, is sounder than the
modern.) Whether or no any particular government has on this ground
lost its claim and may be rightly resisted, is a question, no doubt,
difficult for the individual to answer with certainty. In the long
run, however, it seems generally if not always to answer itself. A
government no longer serving the function described--which, it must
be remembered, is variously served according to circumstances--brings
forces into play which are fatal to it. But if it is difficult
upon this theory for the individual to ascertain, as a matter of
speculation, whether resistance to an established government is
justified or no, at any rate upon this theory such a justification of
resistance is possible. Upon Locke's theory, the condition necessary
to justify it--viz. an act of the whole people governed--is one
which, anywhere except in a Swiss canton, it would be impossible
to fulfil. For practical purposes, Locke comes to a right result
by ignoring this impossibility. Having supposed the reality of one
impossible event,--the establishment of government by compact or
by the act of a society founded on compact,--he cancels this error
in the result by supposing the possibility of another transaction
equally impossible, viz, the collective act of a people dissolving
its government.

[1] [Greek παρέκβασις (parekbasis) = a government without a proper
basis Tr]

63. It is evident from the chapter (XIX.) on the 'dissolution of
government' that he did not seriously contemplate the conditions
under which such an act could be exercised. What he was really
concerned about was to dispute 'the right divine to govern wrong'
on the part of a legislative as much as on the part of an executive
power; to maintain the principle that government is only justified
by being for the good of the people, and to point out the difference
between holding that some government is necessarily for the good of
the people, and holding that any particular government is for their
good, a difference which Hobbes had ignored. In order to do this,
starting with the supposition of an actual deed on the part of a
community establishing a government, he had to suppose a reserved
right on the part of the community by a like deed to dissolve
it. But in the only particular case in which he contemplates a
loss by the legislature of its representative character, he does
not suggest the establishment of another by an act of the whole
people. He saw that the English Parliament in his time could not
claim to be such as it could be supposed that the covenanting
community originally intended it to be. 'It often comes to pass,'
he says, 'in governments where part of the legislative consists of
representatives chosen by the people, that in tract of time this
representation becomes very unequal and disproportionate to the
reasons it was first established upon.... The bare name of a town,
of which there remains not so much as the ruins, where scarce so
much housing as a sheepcote, or more inhabitants than a shepherd is
to be found, sends as many representatives to the grand assembly of
law-makers, as a whole county, numerous in people, and powerful in
riches. This strangers stand amazed at, and everyone must confess
needs a remedy; though most think it hard to find one, because the
constitution of the legislative being the original and supreme act
of the society antecedent to all positive laws in it, and depending
wholly on the people, no inferior power can alter it. And therefore
the people, when the legislative is once constituted, having, in such
a government as we have been speaking of, no power to act as long as
the government stands, this inconvenience is thought incapable of a
remedy' (Chapter XIII. Sect. 157). The only remedy which he suggests
is not an act of the sovereign people, but an exercise of prerogative
on the part of the executive, in the way of redistributing
representation, which would be justified by 'salus populi suprema
lex.'

    E. _ROUSSEAU._

64. That 'sovereignty of the people,' which Locke looks upon as
held in reserve after its original exercise in the establishment
of government, only to be asserted in the event of a legislature
proving false to its trust, Rousseau supposes to be in constant
exercise. Previous writers had thought of the political society
or commonwealth, upon its formation by compact, as instituting a
sovereign. They differed chiefly on the point whether the society
afterwards had or had not a right of displacing an established
sovereign. Rousseau does not think of the society, _civitas_ or
commonwealth, as thus instituting a sovereign, but as itself in the
act of its formation becoming a sovereign and ever after continuing
so.

65. In his conception of a state of nature, Rousseau does not differ
from Locke. He conceives the motive for passing out of it, however,
somewhat differently and more after the manner of Spinoza. With
Locke the motive is chiefly a sense of the desirability of having
an impartial judge, and efficient enforcement of the law of nature.
According to Rousseau, some pact takes place when men find the
hindrances to their preservation in a state of nature too strong for
the forces which each individual can bring to bear against them.
This recalls Spinoza's view of the 'jus in naturam' as acquired by a
combination of the forces of individuals in civil society.

66. The 'problem of which the social contract is a solution' Rousseau
states thus: 'To find a form of association which protects with the
whole common force the person and property of each associate, and in
virtue of which everyone, while uniting himself to all, only obeys
himself and remains as free as before.' (_Contrat Social_, I, vi.)
The terms of the contract which solves this problem Rousseau states
thus: 'Each of us throws into the common stock his person and all
his faculties under the supreme direction of the general will; and
we accept each member as an individual part of the whole.... There
results from this act of association, in place of the several persons
of the several contracting parties, a collective moral body, composed
of as many members as there are voices in the assembly, which body
receives from this act its unity, its common self, its life, and its
will.... It is called by its members a _state_ when it is passive, a
_sovereign_ when it is active, a _power_ when compared with similar
bodies. The associates are called collectively a _people_, severally
_citizens_ as sharing in the sovereign authority, _subjects_ as
submitted to the laws of the state.' (_Ib_.) Each of them is under
an obligation in two relations, 'as a member of the sovereign body
towards the individuals, and as a member of the state towards the
sovereign.' All the subjects can by a public vote be placed under a
particular obligation towards the sovereign, but the sovereign cannot
thus incur an obligation towards itself. It cannot impose any law
upon itself which it cannot cancel. Nor is there need to restrict
its powers in the interest of the subjects. For the sovereign body,
being formed only of the individuals which constitute it, can have no
interest contrary to theirs. 'From the mere fact of its existence,
it is always all that it ought to be' (since, from the very fact of
its institution, all merely private interests are lost in it). On
the other hand, the will of the individual (his particular interest
as founded upon his particular desires) may very well conflict with
that general will which constitutes the sovereign. Hence the social
pact necessarily involves a tacit agreement, that anyone refusing to
conform to the general will shall be forced to do so by the whole
body politic; in other words, 'shall be forced to be free,' since the
universal conformity to the general will is the guarantee to each
individual of freedom from dependence on any other person or persons.
(I, vii.)

67. The result to the individual may be stated thus. He exchanges
the natural liberty to do and get what he can, a liberty limited by
his relative strength, for a liberty at once limited and secured by
the general will; he exchanges the mere possession of such things
as he can get, a possession which is the effect of force, for a
property founded on a positive title, on the guarantee of society. At
the same time he becomes a moral agent. Justice instead of instinct
becomes the guide of his actions. For the moral slavery to appetite
he substitutes the moral freedom which consists in obedience to a
self-imposed law. Now for the first time it can be said that there is
anything which he _ought_ to do, as distinguished from that which he
is _forced_ to do. (I, viii.)

68. Such language makes it clear that the sovereignty of which
Rousseau discusses the origin and attributes, is something
essentially different from the supreme coercive power which previous
writers on the 'jus civile' had in view. A contemporary of Hobbes had
said that

    'there's on earth a yet auguster thing,
    Veiled though it be, than Parliament and King.'

It is to this 'auguster thing,' not to such supreme power as English
lawyers held to be vested in 'Parliament and King,' that Rousseau's
account of the sovereign is really applicable. What he says of it is
what Plato or Aristotle might have said of the θεῖος νοῦς, [1] which
is the source of the laws and discipline of the ideal polity, and
what a follower of Kant might say of the 'pure practical reason,'
which renders the individual obedient to a law of which he regards
himself, in virtue of his reason, as the author, and causes him to
treat humanity equally in the person of others and in his own always
as an end, never merely as a means. But all the while Rousseau
himself thinks that he is treating of the sovereign in the ordinary
sense; in the sense of some power of which it could be reasonably
asked how it was established in the part where it resides, when and
by whom and in what way it is exercised. A reader of him who is more
or less familiar with the legal conception of sovereignty, but not at
all with that of practical reason or of a 'general will.' a common
ego, which wills nothing but what is for the common good, is pretty
sure to retain the idea of supreme coercive power as the attribute of
sovereignty, and to ignore the attribute of pure disinterestedness,
which, according to Rousseau, must characterise every act that can be
ascribed to the sovereign.

[1] [Greek θεῖος νοῦς (theios nous) = divine mind or intelligence Tr]

69. The practical result is a vague exaltation of the prerogatives
of the sovereign people, without any corresponding limitation of the
conditions under which an act is to be deemed that of the sovereign
people. The justifiability of laws and acts of government, and of
the rights which these confer, comes to be sought simply in the fact
that the people wills them, not in the fact that they represent a
true 'volonté générale,' an impartial and disinterested will for the
common good. Thus the question of what really needs to be enacted
by the state in order to secure the conditions under which a good
life is possible, is lost sight of in the quest for majorities;
and as the will of the people in any other sense than the measure
of what the people will tolerate is really unascertainable in the
great nations of Europe, the way is prepared for the sophistries of
modern political management, for manipulating electoral bodies, for
influencing elected bodies, and procuring plébiscites.

70. The incompatibility between the ideal attributes which Rousseau
ascribes to the sovereign and any power that can actually be
exercised by any man or body of men becomes clearer as we proceed. He
expressly distinguishes 'sovereignty' from power, and on the ground
of this distinction holds that it cannot be alienated, represented,
or divided. 'Sovereignty being simply the exercise of the general
will can never be alienated, and the sovereign, who is only a
collective being, can only be represented by himself. Power can be
transmitted, but not will.' (II, i.) In order to the possibility of a
representation of the general will, there must be a permanent accord
between it and the individual will or wills of the person or persons
representing it. But such _permanent_ accord is impossible. (_Ib_.)
Again, a general will is from the nature of the case indivisible.
It is commonly held to be divided, not, indeed, in respect of its
source, but in respect of the objects to which its acts are directed,
e.g. into legislative and executive powers; into rights of taxation,
of war, of justice, &c. But this supposed division of sovereign
powers or rights implies that 'what are only emanations from the
sovereign authority are taken to be parts of it.' (II, ii.) The only
exercise of sovereign power, properly so called, is in legislation,
and there is no proper act of legislation except when the whole
people comes to a decision with reference to the whole people. Then
the matter decided on is as general as the will which decides on it;
and this is what constitutes a law. (II, vi.) By this consideration
several questions are answered. Whose office is it to make laws?
It is that of the general will, which can neither be alienated nor
represented. Is the prince above the law? The answer is, He is a
member of the state, and cannot be so. Can the law be unjust? No one
can be unjust to himself: therefore not the whole people to the whole
people. How can we be free and yet subject to the laws? The laws are
the register of our own will. (_Ib_.) Laws, in short, are properly
those general 'conditions of civil association' which the associates
impose on themselves. Where either of the specified conditions is
lacking, where either it is not the universal will from which an
ordinance proceeds or it is not the whole people to which it relates,
it is not a law but a decree, not an act of sovereignty but of
magistracy. (_Ib_.)

71. This leads to a consideration of the nature and institution of
magistracy or government. (III, i.) The government is never the same
as the sovereign. The two are distinguished by their functions,
that of the one being legislative, that of the other executive.
Even where the people itself governs, its acts of government must
be distinguished from its acts of sovereignty, the former having
a particular, the latter a general, reference. Government is the
exercise according to law of the executive power, and the 'prince'
or 'magistrate' is the man or body of men charged with this
administration; 'a body intermediary between the subjects and the
sovereign, charged with the execution of the laws, and with the
maintenance of civil and political freedom' (_Ib_.) Where all or
most of the citizens are magistrates, or charged with the supreme
functions of government, we have a democracy; where a few, an
aristocracy; where one is so charged, a monarchy. (III, iii.) The
differences depend, not as Hobbes and others had supposed, on the
quarter where the sovereignty resides--for it must always reside in
the whole body of people--but on that in which government resides.
The idea of government is that the dominant will of the prince should
be the general will or law, that it should be simply the public
force by which that general will is brought to bear on individuals
or against other states, serving the same purpose in the state as
the union of soul and body in the individual (III, i.); and this
idea is most likely to be satisfied under a democracy. There, the
general will (if there _is_ a general will, which the democracy is
no guarantee for there being, according to Rousseau's distinction
between the 'volonté générale' and 'volonté de tous,' of which more
hereafter) cannot fail to coincide with the dominant will of the
government. The prevalence of particular interests may prevent there
being a will at all of the kind which Rousseau would count general or
truly sovereign, but they cannot be more prevalent in the magistracy,
constituted by the whole people, than in the same people acting
in the way of legislation. In a democracy, therefore, the will of
the sovereign, so far as there is a sovereign in the proper sense,
necessarily finds expression in the will of the magistracy. On the
other hand, though under either of the other forms of government
there is danger of collision between sovereign and government, yet
the force of the government is greater than in a democracy. It is
greatest when the government is a monarchy, because under all other
forms there is more or less discrepancy between the individual wills
of the several persons composing the government, as directed to the
particular good of each, and the corporate will of the government of
which the object is its own efficiency, and under a monarchy this
source of weakness is avoided. (III, ii.) As there is more need of
force in the government in proportion to the number of subjects whose
particular wills it has to control, it follows that monarchy is best
suited to the largest, democracy to the smallest states. (III, iii.)

72. As to the institution of government, Rousseau maintains
strenuously that it is not established by contract. 'There is only
one contract in the state, viz. that of the original association;
and this excludes every other. No other public contract can be
imagined which would not be a violation of the first.' (III, xvi.)
Even when government is vested in an hereditary body, monarchic
or aristocratic, this is merely a provisional arrangement, made
and liable to be reversed by the sovereign, whose officers the
governors are. The act by which government is established is twofold,
consisting firstly of the passing of a law by the sovereign, to the
effect that there shall be a government; secondly, of an act in
execution of this law, by which the governors--the 'magistrates'--are
appointed. But it may be asked, How can the latter act, being one not
of sovereignty but of magistracy (for it has a particular reference
in the designation of the governors), be performed when as yet there
is no government? The answer is that the people resolves itself
from a sovereign body into a body of magistrates, as the English
Parliament resolves itself constantly from a legislative body into
a committee. In other words, by a simple act of the general will a
democracy is for the time established, which then proceeds either to
retain the government in its own hands, or to place it in those of an
officer, according to the form in which the sovereign has decided to
establish the government. (III, xvii.) Acts similar to that by which
the government was originally constituted need to be periodically
repeated in order to prevent the government from usurping the
functions of the sovereign, i.e. the function of legislation.
(Could this usurpation occur under a democracy?) In order that the
sovereignty may not fall into abeyance, it must be exercised, and
it can only be exercised in assemblies of the whole people. These
must be held periodically, and at their opening two questions ought
to be submitted; one, whether it pleases the sovereign to maintain
the present form of government; the other, whether it pleases the
people to leave the administration in the hands of those at present
charged with it. (III, xviii.) Such assemblies are entitled to
revise and repeal all previously enacted laws. A law not so repealed
the sovereign must be taken tacitly to confirm, and it retains
its authority. But as the true sovereign is not any law but the
general will, no law, even the most fundamental, can be exempt from
liability to repeal. Even the social pact itself might legitimately
be dissolved, by agreement of all the citizens assembled. (_Ib_.)
(Whether unanimity is necessary for the purpose is not specified.)
Without such assemblies there can be no exercise of the general will
(which, as before stated, cannot be represented), and consequently
no freedom. The English people, e.g., is quite mistaken in thinking
itself free. It is only free while the election of members of
Parliament is going on. As soon as they are elected, it is in
bondage, it is nothing. In the short moments of its freedom it makes
such a bad use of it that it well deserves to lose it. (III, xv.)

73. It appears from the above that, according to Rousseau, the
general will, which is the true sovereign, can only be exercised
in assemblies of the whole people. On the other hand, he does not
hold that an act of such an assembly is necessarily an act of the
general will. After telling us that the 'general will is always
right, and always tends to the public good,' he adds, 'but it does
not follow that the deliberations of the people have always the same
rectitude.... There is often a great difference between the will
of all and the general will. The latter only looks to the common
interest; the other looks to private interests, and is only a sum of
the wills of individuals.' (II, iii.) Again (II, iv.), 'that which
generalises the will is not so much the number of voices as the
common interest which unites them.' He holds apparently that in the
assembly of the whole people, if they had sufficient information, and
if no minor combinations of particular interests were formed within
the entire body, the difference between the wills of individuals
would neutralise each other, and the vote of the whole body would
express the true general will. But in fact in all assemblies there
is at least a liability to lack of information and to the formation
of cliques; and hence it cannot be held that the vote of the
assembly necessarily expresses the general will. Rousseau, however,
does not go so far as to say that unless the law is actually such
as contributes to the common good, it is not an expression of the
general will. The general will, according to him, always aims at
or wills the common good, but is liable to be mistaken as to the
means of attaining it.' It is always right, but the judgment which
guides it is not always enlightened.... Individuals see the good
which they reject; the public wills the good which it does not
see.' (II, vi.) Hence the need of a guide in the shape of a great
lawgiver. Apparently, however, the possible lack of enlightenment on
the part of the general will does not, in Rousseau's view, prevent
its decisions from being for the public good. In discussing the
'limits of the sovereign power' he maintains that there can be no
conflict between it and the natural right of the individual, because,
'although it is only that part of his power, his goods, his freedom,
of which the use is important to the community, that the individual
transfers to the sovereign by the social pact, yet the sovereign
alone can be judge of the importance'; and the sovereign 'cannot
lay on the subjects any constraint which is not for the good of the
community.' 'Under the law of reason' (which is thus identified with
the general will) 'nothing is done without a cause, any more than
under the law of nature.' (II, iv.)

74. But though even an unenlightened general will is the general
will still, and (as we are left to infer) cannot in its decisions
do otherwise than promote the public good, Rousseau distinctly
contemplates the possibility of the general will being so overpowered
by particular interests that it finds no expression in the votes of
a popular assembly, though the assembly be really one of a whole
people, and the vote of the majority is duly taken. (IV, i.) In such
cases it is not that the general will is 'annihilated or corrupted;
it is always constant, unalterable, and pure.' Even in the individual
whose vote is governed by his private interest the general will
is not extinct, nor is he unaware either of what the public good
requires or of the fact that what is for the public good is also for
his own. But his share in the public evil to which he knows that
his vote will contribute, seems nothing by the side of the special
private good which he hopes to gain. By his vote, in short, he does
not answer the question, Is so and so for the advantage of the state?
but, Is it for the advantage of this particular man or party? (Ib.)

75. The test of the dominance of the general will in assemblies of
the people is an approach to unanimity. 'Long debates, discussions,
tumult, indicate the ascendency of particular interests and the
decline of the state.' (IV, ii.) Rousseau, however, does not venture
to say that absolute unanimity in the assembly is necessary to an
expression of the general will, or to give a law a claim upon the
obedience of the subjects. This would have been to render effectual
legislation impossible. Upon the theory, however, of the foundation
of legitimate sovereignty in consent, the theory that the natural
right of the individual is violated unless he is himself a joint
imponent of the law which he is called to obey, it is not easy to see
what rightful claim there can be to the submission of a minority.
Rousseau so far recognises the difficulty that he requires unanimity
in the original compact. (IV, ii.) If among those who are parties
to it there are others who oppose it, the result is simply that
the latter are not included in it. 'They are strangers among the
citizens.' But this does not explain how they are to be rightfully
controlled, on the principle that the only rightful control is
founded on consent; or, if they are not controlled, what is the
value of the 'social compact.' How can the object of the pact be
attained while those who are bound by it have these 'strangers'
living among them who are not bound by it, and who, not being bound
by it, cannot be rightfully controlled? The difficulty must recur
with each generation of the descendants of those who were parties to
the original pact. The parties to the pact, it is true, have no right
to resist the general will, because the pact is _ex hypothesi_ to the
effect that each individual, in all things of common concern, will
take the general will for his own. The true form, therefore, of the
question upon which each party to the pact should consider himself
to be voting in the assembly is, as Rousseau puts it, not 'Is the
proposed measure what I wish for, or what I approve, or no?' but 'Is
it in conformity with the general will?' If, having voted upon this
question, he finds himself in a minority, he is bound to suppose that
he is mistaken in his views of the general will, and to accept the
decision of the majority as the general will which, by the pact, he
is bound to obey. So far all is consistent; though how the individual
is to be answered if he pleads that the vote of the assembly has been
too much biassed by particular interests to be an expression of the
general will, and that therefore it is not binding on him, does not
appear.

76. But after the first generation of those who were parties to
the supposed original compact, what is to settle whether anyone
is a party to it or no? Rousseau faces the question, but his only
answer is that when once the state is instituted, consent is implied
in residence; 'to dwell on the territory is to submit to the
sovereignty.' (IV, ii.) This answer, however, will scarcely stand
examination. Rousseau himself does not consider that residence in
the same region with the original parties to the pact renders those
so resident also parties to it. Why should it do so, when the pact
has descended to a later generation? It may be argued of course that
everyone residing in a settled society, which secures him in his
rights of person and property, has the benefit of the society from
the mere fact of his residence in it, and is therefore morally bound
to accept its laws. But this is to abandon the doctrine of obligation
being founded on consent. Residence in a territory governed by a
certain sovereign can only be taken to imply consent to the rule of
that sovereign, if there is any real possibility of relinquishing it,
and this there can scarcely ever be.

77. Rousseau certainly carried out the attempt to reconcile
submission to government with the existence of natural rights
antecedent to the institution of government, by the hypothesis of a
foundation of government in consent, more consistently than any other
writer; and his result shows the hopelessness of the attempt. To the
consistency of his theory he sacrifices every claim to right on the
part of any state except one in which the whole body of citizens
directly legislates, i.e. on the part of nearly all states then or
now existing; and finally he can only justify the control of the
minority by the majority in any state whatever by a subterfuge. It
does not follow, however, because the doctrine of natural rights and
the consequent conception of government as founded on compact are
untenable, that there is no truth in the conception of the state
or sovereign as representing a general will, and as authorised or
entitled to obedience on that account. It is this conception, as the
permanently valuable thing in Rousseau, that we have now further to
consider.

78. The first remark upon it which suggests itself is that, as
Rousseau puts the matter, there may be an independent political
society in which there is no sovereign power at all, or in which, at
any rate, it is not exercised. The sovereign is the general will.
But the general will can only be exercised through the assembly of
a whole people. The necessary conditions of its exercise, then,
in Rousseau's time, were only fulfilled in the Swiss cantons and
(perhaps) in the United Provinces. In England they were fulfilled in
a way during the time of a general election. But even where these
conditions were fulfilled, it did not follow that the general will
was put in force. It might be overpowered, as in the Roman comitia,
by particular interests. Is it then to be understood that, according
to Rousseau, either there can be independent states without any
sovereignty in actual exercise, or that the European states of his
time, and equally the great states of the present day (for in none
of these is there any more exercise of the general will than in the
England of his time), are not properly states at all?

79. We may try to answer this question by distinguishing sovereign
_de facto_ from sovereign _de jure_, and saying that what Rousseau
meant was that the general will, as defined by him and as exercised
under the conditions which he prescribes, was the only sovereign _de
jure_, but that he would have recognised in the ordinary states of
his time a sovereign _de facto_; and that in the same way, when he
describes the institution of government as arising out of a twofold
act consequent on the original pact (an act in which the sovereign
people first decides that there shall be a government, and then,
not as a sovereign people, but as a democratic magistracy, decides
in what hands the government shall be placed), he does not conceive
himself to be describing what has actually taken place, but what is
necessary to give a government a moral title to obedience. Whether
Rousseau himself had this distinction in view is not always clear.
At the outset he states his object thus: 'Man is born free, and
everywhere he is in fetters. How has this change come about? I do
not know. What can render it legitimate? That is a question which
I deem myself able to answer.' (I, i.) The answer is the account
of the establishment of a sovereign by social pact. It might be
inferred from this that he considered himself in the sequel to be
delineating transactions to the actual occurrence of which he did
not commit himself, but which, if they did occur, would constitute
a duty as distinct from a physical necessity of submission on the
part of subjects to a sovereign, and to which some equivalent must
be supposed, in the shape of a tacit present convention on the part
of the members of a state, if their submission is to be matter of
duty as distinct from physical necessity, or is to be explained as
a matter of right by the ostensible sovereign. This, however, would
merely be an inference as to his meaning. His actual procedure is to
describe transactions, by which the sovereignty of the general will
was established, and by which it in turn established a government, as
if they had actually taken place. Nor is he content with supposing a
tacit consent of the people as rendering subjection legitimate. The
people whose submission to law is to be 'legitimate' must actually
take part in sovereign legislative assemblies. It is very rarely that
he uses language which implies the possibility of a sovereign power
otherwise constituted. He does indeed speak [1] of the possibility
of a prince (in the special meaning of the term, as representing
the head of the executive) usurping sovereignty, and speaks of the
sovereignty thus usurped as existing _de facto_, not _de jure_; but
in no other connection (so far as I have observed) does he speak of
anything short of the 'volonté générale' exercised through the vote
of an assembled people as sovereign at all. And the whole drift of
his doctrine is to show that no sovereign, otherwise constituted, had
any claim on obedience. There was no state in Europe at his time in
which his doctrine would not have justified rebellion, and even under
existing representative systems the conditions are not fulfilled
which according to him are necessary to give laws the claim on our
obedience which arises from their being an expression of the general
will. The only system under which these conditions could be fulfilled
would be one of federated self-governing communes, small enough to
allow each member an active share in the legislation of the commune.
It is probably the influence of Rousseau that has made such a system
the ideal of political enthusiasts in France.

[1] 'If it happened that the prince had a private will more active
than that of the sovereign, and that he made use of the public
force placed in his hands as the instrument of this private will,
there would result, so to speak, two sovereignties, one _de jure_,
the other _de facto_; but from that moment the social union would
disappear, and the body politic would be dissolved.' (III, i.) 'When
the prince ceases to administer the state according to the laws, and
usurps the sovereign power ... then the state in the larger sense is
dissolved, and there is formed another within it, composed only of
the members of the government ... the social pact is broken ... and
all the ordinary citizens return as a matter of right to their state
of natural liberty, and are merely forced, but not obliged, to obey.'
(III, X.)

    F. _SOVEREIGNTY AND THE GENERAL WILL._ Rousseau and Austin.

80. The questions then arise (1) whether there is any truth in
Rousseau's conception of sovereignty as founded upon a 'volonté
générale' in its application to actual sovereignty. Does anything
like such a sovereignty exist in the societies properly called
political? (2) Is there any truth in speaking of a sovereignty _de
jure_ founded upon the 'volonté générale? (3) If there is, are we to
hold with Rousseau that this 'will' can only be exercised through the
votes of a sovereign people?

81. (1) The first question is one which, if we take our notions
of sovereignty from such writers as Austin, we shall be at first
disposed decidedly to negative. Austin is considered a master of
precise definition. We may begin, therefore, by looking to his
definition of sovereignty and the terms connected with it. His
general definition of law runs as follows: 'A law, in the most
general and comprehensive acceptation in which the term, in its
literal meaning, is employed, may be said to be a rule laid down
for the guidance of an intelligent being by an intelligent being
having power over him.' [1] These rules are of two kinds: (1) laws
set by God to men, or the law of nature; and (2) laws set by men to
men, or human law. We are only concerned with the latter, the human
laws. These are again distinguished into two classes, according as
they are or are not established by political superiors. 'Of the laws
or rules set by men to men, some are established by _political_
superiors, sovereign and subject; by persons exercising supreme and
subordinate _government_, in independent nations, or independent
political societies' (pp. 88 and 89). 'The aggregate of the rules
established by political superiors is frequently styled _positive_
law, or law existing _by position_' (p. 89). This is distinguished
from 'positive morality.' Laws are further explained as a species of
commands. A command is a signification of desire, distinguished by
the fact that the party to whom it is addressed is liable to evil
from the party expressing the desire in case he does not comply
with it (p. 91). This liability to evil forms the sanction of the
command. Where a command 'obliges _generally_ to acts or forbearances
of _a class_, it is a law' (p. 95). 'Every positive law, or every
law simply and strictly so called, is set by a sovereign person or a
sovereign body of persons to a member or members of the independent
political society wherein that person or body is sovereign or
supreme. Or (changing the expression) it is set by a monarch, or
sovereign member, to a person or persons in a state of subjection to
its author. Even though it sprung directly from another fountain or
source, it is a positive law, or a law strictly so called, by the
institution of that present sovereign in the character of political
superior. Or (borrowing the language of Hobbes) the legislator is he,
not by whose authority the law was first made, but by whose authority
it continues to be a law' (pp. 225 and 226).

'The notions of sovereignty and independent political society may be
expressed concisely thus. If a _determinate_ human superior, _not_ in
a habit of obedience to a like superior, receive _habitual_ obedience
from the _bulk_ of a given society, that determinate superior is
sovereign in that society, and the society (including the superior)
is a society political and independent' (p. 226).

'In order that a given society may form a society political and
independent, the two distinguishing marks which I have mentioned
above must unite. The _generality_ of the given society must be in a
_habit_ of obedience to a _determinate_ and _common_ superior; whilst
that determinate person, or determinate body of persons, must _not_
be habitually obedient to a determinate person or body. It is the
union of that positive with this negative mark which renders that
certain superior sovereign or supreme, and which renders that given
society (including that certain superior) a society political and
independent' (p. 227).

[1] _Lectures on Jurisprudence_, vol. i. p. 88 (edit. of 1869, in two
vols.)

82. It may be remarked in passing that, according to the above, while
every law implies a sovereign, from whom directly or indirectly
(through a subordinate political superior) it proceeds, it is not
necessary to a sovereign that his commands should take the form of
laws, as opposed to 'particular or occasional commands.' A superior
might signify his desires only in the form of such particular and
occasional commands, and yet there might be a habit of obedience to
him, and he might not be habitually obedient to any other person or
body; in which case he would be a 'sovereign.'

83. Austin's doctrine seems diametrically opposite to one which
finds the sovereign in a 'volonté générale,' because _(a)_ it only
recognises sovereignty in a _determinate_ person or persons, and
_(b)_ it considers the essence of sovereignty to lie in the power, on
the part of such determinate persons, to put compulsion without limit
on subjects, to make them do exactly as it pleases. [1] The 'volonté
générale,' on the other hand, it would seem, cannot be identified
with the will of any determinate person or persons; it can, indeed,
according to Rousseau, only be expressed by a vote of the whole body
of subject citizens; but when you have got them together, there is
no certainty that their vote does express it; and it does not--at
any rate necessarily--command any power of compulsion, much less
unlimited power. Rousseau expressly contemplates the possibility of
the executive power conflicting with and overbearing the general
will. Indeed, according to his view, it was the ordinary state
of things; and though this view may be exaggerated, no one could
maintain that the 'general will,' in any intelligible sense of the
words, had always unlimited force at its command.

[1] Cf. Maine's statement of Austin's doctrine in _The Early History
of Institutions_, pp. 349 and 350: 'There is in every independent
political community--that is, in every political community not in the
habit of obedience to a superior above itself--some single person or
some combination of persons which has the power of compelling the
other members of the community to do exactly as it pleases. This
single person or group--this individual or this collegiate sovereign
(to employ Austin's phrase) may be found in every independent
political community as certainly as the centre of gravity in a mass
of matter. If the community be violently or voluntarily divided into
a number of separate fragments, then, as soon as each fragment has
settled down (perhaps after an interval of anarchy) into a state of
equilibrium, the sovereign will exist, and with proper care will be
discoverable in each of the now independent portions. The sovereignty
over the North American colonies of Great Britain had its seat in
one place before they became the United States, in another place
afterwards; but in both cases there was a discoverable sovereign
somewhere. This sovereign, this person or combination of persons,
universally occurring in all independent political communities, has
in all such communities one characteristic, common to all the shapes
sovereignty may take, the possession of irresistible force, not
necessarily exerted, but capable of being exerted. According to the
terminology preferred by Austin, the sovereign, if a single person,
is or should be called a monarch; if a small group, the name is an
oligarchy; if a group of considerable dimensions, an aristocracy;
if very large and numerous, a democracy. Limited monarchy, a phrase
perhaps more fashionable in Austin's day than it is now, is abhorred
by Austin, and the government of Great Britain he classes with
aristocracies. That which all the forms of sovereignty have in
common is the power (the power but not necessarily the will) to put
compulsion without limit on subjects or fellow-subjects.'

84. The two views thus seem mutually exclusive, but perhaps it may
be by taking each as complementary to the other that we shall gain
the truest view of sovereignty as it actually exists. In those
states of society in which obedience is habitually rendered by the
bulk of society to some determinate superior, single or corporate,
who, in turn, is independent of any other superior, the obedience
is so rendered because this determinate superior is regarded as
expressing or embodying what may properly be called the general
will, and is virtually conditional upon the fact that the superior
is so regarded. It is by no means an unlimited power of compulsion
that the superior exercises, but one dependent in the long run, or
dependent for the purpose of insuring an _habitual_ obedience, upon
conformity to certain convictions on the part of the subjects as to
what is for their general interest. As Maine says (_Early History
of Institutions_, p. 359), 'the vast mass of influences, which we
may call for shortness moral, perpetually shapes, limits, or forbids
the actual direction of the forces of society by its sovereign.'
Thus, quite apart from any belief in the right of revolution, from
the view that the people in any state are entitled to an ultimate
sovereignty, or are sovereign _de jure_, and may withdraw either
legislative or executive power from the hands in which it has been
placed in the event of its being misused, it may fairly be held that
the ostensible sovereign--the determinate person or persons to whom
we can point and say that with him or them lies the ultimate power of
exacting habitual obedience from the people--is only able to exercise
this power in virtue of an assent on the part of the people, nor
is this assent reducible to the fear of the sovereign felt by each
individual. It is rather a common desire for certain ends--specially
the 'pax vitaeque securitas'--to which the observance of law or
established usage contributes, and in most cases implies no conscious
reference on the part of those whom it influences to any supreme
coercive power at all. Thus when it has been ascertained in regard to
any people that there is some determinate person or persons to whom,
in the last resort, they pay habitual obedience, we may call this
person or persons sovereign if we please, but we must not ascribe to
him or them the real power which governs the actions and forbearances
of the people, even those actions and forbearances (only a very
small part) which are prescribed by the sovereign. This power is a
much more complex and less determinate, or less easily determinable,
thing; but a sense of possessing common interests, a desire for
common objects on the part of the people, is always the condition of
its existence. Let this sense or desire--which may properly be called
general will--cease to operate, or let it come into general conflict
with the sovereign's commands, and the habitual obedience will cease
also.

85. If, then, those who adopt the Austinian definition of a sovereign
mean no more than that in a thoroughly developed state there must be
some determinate person or persons, with whom, in the last resort,
lies the recognised power of imposing laws and enforcing their
observance, over whom no legal control can be exercised, and that
even in the most thorough democracy, where laws are passed in the
assembly of the whole people, it is still with determinate persons,
viz. a majority of those who meet in the assembly, that this power
resides, they are doubtless right. So far they only need to be
reminded that the thoroughly developed state, as characterised by
the existence of such definite sovereignty, is even among civilised
people but imperfectly established. It is perfectly established (1)
where customary or 'common' or 'judge-made' law, which does not
proceed from any determinate person or persons, is either superseded
by express enactments that do proceed from such person or persons,
or (as in England) is so frequently trenched upon by statute law
that it may fairly be said only to survive upon sufferance, or to be
itself virtually enacted by the sovereign legislature; and (2) where
no question of right can be raised between local legislatures or
authorities and the legislature claiming to be supreme, as in America
before the war of secession, and as might perhaps be found to be the
case in Germany now, if on certain educational and ecclesiastical
matters the imperial legislature came to be at issue with the local
legislatures. But though the organisation of the state, even in
civilised and independent nations, is not everywhere complete, it
no doubt involves the residence with determinate persons, or a body
or bodies, of supreme i.e. legally uncontrolled power to make and
enforce laws. The term 'sovereign' having acquired this definite
meaning, Rousseau was misleading his readers when he ascribed
sovereignty to the general will. He could only be understood as
meaning, and in fact understood himself to mean, that there was no
legitimate sovereign except in the most thorough democracy, as just
described.

86. But the Austinians, having found their sovereign, are apt to
regard it as a much more important institution than--if it is to
be identified with a determinate person or persons--it really is;
they are apt to suppose that the sovereign, with the coercive power
(i.e. the power of operating on the fears of the subjects) which
it exercises, is the real determinant of the habitual obedience of
the people, at any rate of their habitual obedience in respect of
those acts and forbearances which are prescribed by law. But, as we
have seen, this is not the case. It then needs to be pointed out
that if the sovereign power is to be understood in this fuller, less
abstract sense, if we mean by it the real determinant of the habitual
obedience of the people, we must look for its sources much more
widely and deeply than the 'analytical jurists' do; that it can no
longer be said to reside in a determinate person or persons, but in
that impalpable congeries of the hopes and fears of a people, bound
together by common interests and sympathy, which we call the general
will.

87. It may be objected that this view of the general will, as that
on which habitual obedience to the sovereign really depends, is at
best only applicable to 'self-governing' communities, not to those
under a despotic sovereign. The answer is that it is applicable in
all forms of society where a sovereign in the sense above defined
(as a determinate person or persons with whom in the last resort
lies the recognised power of imposing laws and enforcing their
observance) really exists, but that there are many where there cannot
fairly be said to be any such sovereign at all; in other words, that
in all organised communities the power which practically commands
the habitual obedience of the people in respect of those acts and
forbearances which are enjoined by law or authoritative custom, is
one dependent on the general will of the community, but this power is
often not sovereign in the sense in which the ruler of an independent
state is sovereign. It may very well be that there is at the same
time another power merely coercive, a power really operating on
people simply through their fears, to which obedience is rendered,
and which is not in turn representative of a general will; but where
this is the case we shall find that such power is only in contact
with the people, so to speak, at one or two points; that their
actions and forbearances, as determined by law and custom, are in the
main independent of it; that it cannot in any proper sense be said
to be a sovereign power over them; at any rate, not in the sense in
which we speak of King, Lords, and Commons as sovereign in England.

88. Maine has pointed out (_Early History of Institutions_, Lecture
XIII.) that the great despotic empires of ancient times, excluding
the Roman, of which more shall be said directly, and modern empires
in the East were in the main tax-collecting institutions. They
exercise coercive force over their subjects of the most violent kind
for certain purposes at certain times, but they do not impose laws
as distinct from 'particular and occasional commands' nor do they
judicially administer or enforce a customary law. In a certain sense
the subjects render them habitual obedience, i.e. they habitually
submit when the agents of the empire descend on them for taxes and
recruits, but in the general tenor of their lives their actions and
forbearances are regulated by authorities with which the empire
never interferes,--with which probably it could not interfere
without destroying itself. These authorities can scarcely be said
to reside in a determinate person or persons at all, but, so far as
they do so, they reside mixedly in priests or exponents of customary
religion, in heads of families acting within the family, and in some
village-council acting beyond the limits of the family. Whether, in
such a state of things, we are to consider that there is a sovereign
power at all, and, if so, where it is to be considered to reside,
are chiefly questions of words. If complete uncontrolledness by a
stronger power is essential to sovereignty, the local authorities
just spoken of are not sovereign. The conquering despot could descend
on them and sweep them away, leaving anarchy in their place, and he
does compel them to be put in exercise for a particular purpose,
that of raising tribute or sometimes recruits. On the other hand,
these authorities, which represent a general will of the communities,
form the power which determines such actions and forbearances of the
individual as do not proceed from natural inclination. The military
ruler, indeed, is sovereign in the sense of possessing irresistible
coercive power, but in fact this power is only exercised within
narrow limits, and not at all in any legislative or judicial way. If
exercised beyond these limits and in conflict with customary law,
the result would be a general anarchy. The truest way of expressing
the state of the case is to say that, taking the term 'sovereign' in
the sense which we naturally associate with it, and in which it is
used by modern European writers on sovereignty, there is under such
conditions no sovereign, but that the practical regulation of life,
except during intervals of military violence and anarchy, rests with
authorities representing the general will, though these are to a
certain extent interfered with by an alien force.

89. The same account is applicable to most cases of foreign
dominion over a people with any organised common life of their own.
The foreign power is not sovereign in the sense of being a maker
or maintainer of laws. Law-making, under such conditions, there
is properly none. The subject people inherits laws, written or
unwritten, and maintains them for itself, a certain shelter from
violence being afforded by the foreign power. Such, in the main,
was the condition of North Italy, for instance, under Austrian
domination. Where this is the case, the removal of the coercive
power of the foreigner need not involve anarchy, or any violation of
established rights (such as Hobbes supposes to follow necessarily
from the deposition of an actual sovereign). The social order does
not depend on the foreign dominion, and may survive it. The question
whether in any particular case it actually can do so must depend on
the possibility of preventing further foreign aggression, and on the
question whether there is enough national unity in the subject people
to prevent them from breaking up into hostile communities when the
foreign dominion is removed.

90. It is otherwise where the foreign power is really a law-making
and law-maintaining one, and is sovereign in that proper sense, as
was the Roman Empire. But just so far as the Roman Empire was of
this sovereign, i.e. law-making and law-maintaining, character, it
derived its permanence, its hold on the 'habitual obedience' of
its subjects, from the support of the general will. As the empire
superseded customary or written laws of conquered countries, it
conferred rights of Roman citizenship, a much more perfect system of
protection in action and acquisition than the conquered people had
generally possessed before. Hence, while nothing could be further
removed from what Rousseau would have counted liberty than the
life of the citizens of the Roman Empire, for they had nothing to
do with making the laws which they obeyed, yet probably there was
never anv political system more firmly grounded on the good-will of
the subjects, none in the maintenance of which the subjects felt a
stronger interest. The British power in India exercises a middle
function between that of the Roman Empire and that of the mere
tax-collecting and recruit-raising empire with which the Roman Empire
has just been contrasted. It presents itself to the subject people
in the first place as a tax-collector. It leaves the customary law
of the people mostly untouched. But if only to a very small extent
a law-making power, it is emphatically a law-maintaining one. It
regulates the whole judicial administration of the country, but
applies its power generally only to enforce the customary law which
it finds in existence. For this reason an 'habitual obedience' may
fairly be said to be rendered by the Indian people to the English
government, in a sense in which it could not be said to be rendered
to a merely tax-collecting military power; but the 'habitual
obedience' is so rendered only because the English government
presents itself to the people, not merely as a tax-collector, but
as the maintainer of a customary law, which, on the whole, is the
expression of the general will. The same is true in principle of
those independent states which are despotically governed, in which,
i.e., the ultimate legislative power does not reside, wholly or in
part, with an assembly representing the people, or with the people
themselves; e.g. Russia. It is not the absolute coercive power of
the Czar which determines the habitual obedience of the people. This
coercive power, if put to the test as a _coercive_ power, would
probably be found very far from absolute. The habitual obedience
is determined by a system of law, chiefly customary, which the
administration controlled by the Czar enforces against individuals,
but which corresponds to the general sense of what is equitable and
necessary. If a despotic government comes into anything like habitual
conflict with the unwritten law which represents the general will,
its dissolution is beginning.

91. The answer, then, to the question whether there is any truth
in Rousseau's conception of sovereignty as founded upon a 'volonté
générale,' in its application to actual sovereignty, must depend on
what we mean by 'sovereign.' The essential thing in political society
is a power which guarantees men rights, i.e. a certain freedom of
action and acquisition conditionally upon their allowing a like
freedom in others. It is but stating the same condition otherwise
to speak of a power which guarantees the members of the society
these rights, this freedom of action and acquisition, impartially
or according to a general will or law. What is the lowest form in
which a society is fit to be called political, is hard to say. The
political society is more complete as the freedom guaranteed is more
complete, both in respect of the persons enjoying it and of the range
of possible action and acquisition over which it extends. A family
or a nomad horde could not be called a political society, on account
of the narrow range of the political freedom which they severally
guarantee. The nomad horde might indeed be quite as numerous as a
Greek state, or as the sovereign canton of Geneva in Rousseau's
time; but in the horde the range within which reciprocal freedom of
action and acquisition is guaranteed to the individual is exceedingly
small. It is the power of guaranteeing rights, defined as above,
which the old writers on sovereignty and civil government supposed to
be established by covenant of all with all, translating the common
interest which men have in the maintenance of such a power into an
imaginary historical act by which they instituted it. It was this
power that they had chiefly in view when they spoke of sovereignty.

92. It is to be observed, however, that the power may very well exist
and serve its purpose where it is not sovereign in the sense of being
exempt from any liability of being interfered with by a stronger
coercive power, such as that of a tax-collecting military ruler. The
occasional interference of the military ruler is so far a drawback
to the efficiency with which freedom of action and acquisition is
guaranteed, but does not nullify the general maintenance of rights.
On the other hand, when the power by which rights are guaranteed is
sovereign (as it is desirable that it should be) in the special sense
of being maintained by a person or persons, and wielding coercive
force not liable to control by any other human force, it is not
this coercive force that is the important thing about it, or that
determines the habitual obedience essential to the real maintenance
of rights. That which determines this habitual obedience is a power
residing in the common will and reason of men, i.e. in the will and
reason of men as determined by social relations, as interested in
each other, as acting together for common ends. It is a power which
this universal rational will exercises over the inclinations of
the individual, and which only needs exceptionally to be backed by
coercive force.

93. Thus, though it may be misleading to speak of the general will
as anywhere either actually or properly sovereign, because the term
'sovereign' is best kept to the ordinary usage in which it signifies
a determinate person or persons charged with the supreme coercive
function of the state, and the general will does not admit of being
vested in a person or persons, yet it is true that the institutions
of political society--those by which equal rights are guaranteed to
members of such a society--are an expression of, and are maintained
by, a general will. The sovereign should be regarded, not in
abstraction as the wielder of coercive force, but in connection with
the whole complex of institutions of political society. It is as
their sustainer, and thus as the agent of the general will, that the
sovereign power must be presented to the minds of the people if it
is to command habitual loyal obedience; and obedience will scarcely
be habitual unless it is loyal, not forced. If once the coercive
power, which must always be an incident of sovereignty, becomes the
characteristic thing about it in its relation to the people governed,
this must indicate one of two things; either that the general
interest in the maintenance of equal rights has lost its hold on
the people, or that the sovereign no longer adequately fulfils its
function of maintaining such rights, and thus has lost the support
derived from the general sense of interest in supporting it. It may
be doubted whether the former is ever really the case; but whatever
explanation of the case may be the true one, it is certain that when
the idea of coercive force is that predominantly associated with
the law-imposing and law-enforcing power, then either a disruption
of the state or a change in the sources of sovereignty must sooner
or later take place. In judging, however, whether this is the case,
we must not be misled by words. In England, e.g., from the way in
which many people speak of 'government,' we might suppose that it
was looked on mainly as the wielder of coercive force; but it would
be a mistake on that account to suppose that English people commonly
regard the laws of the country as so much coercion, instead of as an
institution in the maintenance of which they are interested. When
they speak disapprovingly of 'government,' they are not thinking of
the general system of law, but of a central administrative agency,
which they think interferes mischievously with local and customary
administration.

94. It is more true, then, to say that law, as the system of rules
by which rights are maintained, is the expression of a general will
than that the general will is the sovereign. The sovereign, being
a person or persons by whom in the last resort laws are imposed
and enforced, in the long run and on the whole is an agent of the
general will, contributes to realise that will. Particular laws may,
no doubt, be imposed and enforced by the sovereign, which conflict
with the general will; not in the sense that if all the subject
people could be got together to vote upon them, a majority would
vote against them,--that might be or might not be,--but in the sense
that they tend to thwart those powers of action, acquisition, and
self-development on the part of the members of the society, which
there is always a general desire to extend (though the desire may
not be enlightened as to the best means to the end), and which it is
the business of the law to sustain and extend. The extent to which
laws of this kind may be intruded into the general 'corpus juris'
without social disruption it is impossible to specify. Probably
there has never been a civilised state in which they bore more than
a very small proportion to the amount of law which there was the
strongest general interest in maintaining. But, so far as they go,
they always tend to lessen the 'habitual obedience' of the people,
and thus to make the sovereign cease to be sovereign. The hope must
be that this will result in the transfer of sovereignty to other
hands before a social disruption ensues; before the general system
of law has been so far perverted as to lose its hold on the people.
Of the possibility of a change in sovereignty without any detraction
from the law-abiding habits of the people, France has lately given
a conspicuous example. Here, however, it must be remembered that a
temporary foreign conquest made the transition easier.

95. (2) After what has been said, we need not dwell long on the
second question raised [1] concerning Rousseau's theory: Is there
any truth in speaking of a sovereignty 'de jure' founded upon the
'volonté générale'? It is a distinction which can only be maintained
so long as either 'sovereign' is not used in a determinate sense, or
by 'jus' is understood something else than law or right established
by law. If by 'sovereign' we understand something short of a person
or persons holding the supreme law-making and law-enforcing power,
e.g. an English king who is often called sovereign, we might say
that sovereignty was exercised 'de facto' but not 'de jure' when
the power of such a 'sovereign' was in conflict with, or was not
sanctioned by, the law as declared and enforced by the really supreme
power. Thus an English king, so far as he affected to control the
army or raise money without the co-operation of Parliament, might be
said to be sovereign 'de facto' but not 'de jure'; only, however,
on the supposition that the supreme law-making and law-enforcing
power does not belong to him, and thus that he is called 'sovereign'
in other than the strict sense. If he were sovereign in the full
sense 'de facto,' he could not fail to be so 'de jure,' i.e.
legally. In such a state of things, if the antagonism between king
and parliament continued for any length of time, it would have to
be admitted that there was no sovereign in the sense of a supreme
law-making and law-enforcing power; that sovereignty in this sense
was in abeyance, and that anarchy prevailed. Or the same thing might
be explained by saying that sovereignty still resided 'de jure'
with the king and parliament, though not 'de facto' exercised by
them; but if we use such language, we must bear in mind that we are
qualifying 'sovereignty' by an epithet which neutralises its meaning
as an actually supreme power. If, however, the king succeeded in
establishing such a power on a permanent footing, he would have
become sovereign in the full sense, and there would be no ground
for saying, as before, that he was not sovereign 'de jure'; for the
qualifications 'de jure' and 'not de jure,' in that sense in which
they might be applied to a power which is not supreme, are equally
inapplicable to the power of making and enforcing law which is
supreme. The monarch's newly established supremacy may be in conflict
with laws that were previously in force, but he has only to abolish
those laws in order to render it legal. If, then, it is still to
be said to be not 'de jure,' it must be because 'jus' is used for
something else than law or right established by law; viz. either
for 'natural right' (if we admit that there is such a thing), and
'natural right' as not merely = natural power; or for certain claims
which the members of the subject community have come to recognise as
inherent in the community and in themselves as members of it, claims
regarded as the foundation of law, not as founded upon it, and with
which the commands of the sovereign conflict. But even according to
this meaning of 'jus,' a sovereign in the strict Austinian sense,
that is not so 'de jure,' is in the long run an impossibility.
'Habitual obedience' cannot be secured in the face of such claims.

[1] [Above, sec. 80. RLN]

96. But whether or no in any qualified sense of 'sovereign' or 'jus,'
a sovereign that is not so 'de jure' is possible, once understand
by 'sovereign' the determinate person or persons with whom the
ultimate law-imposing and law-enforcing power resides, and by 'jus'
law, it is then obviously a contradiction to speak of a sovereign
'de jure' as distinguished from one 'de facto.' The power of the
ultimate imponent of law cannot be derived from, or limited by, law.
The sovereign may no doubt by a legislative act of its own lay down
rules as to the mode in which its power shall be exercised, but if
it is sovereign in the sense supposed, it must always be open to it
to alter these rules. There can be no illegality in its doing so.
In short, in whatever sense 'jus' is derived from the sovereign, in
that sense no sovereign can hold his power 'de jure.' So Spinoza held
that 'imperium' was 'de jure' indeed, but 'de jure naturali' ('jus
naturale' = natural power), which is the same as 'de jure divino';
only powers exercised in subordination to 'imperium' are 'de jure
civili.' So Hobbes said that there could be no 'unjust law.' A law
was not a law unless enacted by a sovereign, and 'the just' being
that to which the sovereign obliges, the sovereign could not enact
the unjust, though it might enact the inequitable and the pernicious,
the 'inequitable' presumably meaning that which conflicts with a law
of nature, the 'pernicious' that which tends to weaken individuals
or society. Rousseau retains the same notion of the impeccability of
the sovereign, but on different grounds. Every act of the sovereign
is according to him 'de jure,' not because all right is derived from
a supreme coercive power and the sovereign is that power, but because
the sovereign is the general will, which is necessarily a will for
the good of all. The enactment of the sovereign could as little, on
this view, be 'inequitable' or 'pernicious' as it could be 'unjust.'
But this view necessitates a distinction between the sovereign, thus
conceived, and the actually supreme power of making and enforcing
law as it exists anywhere but in what Rousseau considered a perfect
state. Rousseau indeed generally avoids calling this actually supreme
power 'sovereign,' though he cannot, as we have seen, altogether
avoid it; and since, whatever he liked to call it, the existence
of such a power in forms which according to him prevented its
equivalence to the general will was almost everywhere a fact, his
readers would naturally come to think of the actually supreme power
as sovereign 'de facto,' in distinction from something else which was
sovereign 'de jure.' And further, under the influence of Rousseau's
view that the only organ of the general will was an assembly of
the whole people, they would naturally regard such an assembly as
sovereign 'de jure,' and any other power actually supreme as merely
sovereign 'de facto.' This opposition, however, really arises out of
a confusion in the usage of the term 'sovereign'; out of inability
on the one side to hold fast the identification of sovereign with
general will, on the other to keep it simply to the sense of the
supreme law-making and law-enforcing power. If 'sovereign' = 'general
will,' the distinction of 'de facto' and 'de jure' is inapplicable
to it. A certain desire either is or is not the general will. A
certain interest is or is not an interest in the common good. There
is no sense in saying that such desire or interest is general will
'de jure' but not 'de facto,' or _vice versa_. On the other hand, if
'sovereign' = the supreme law-making and law-enforcing power, the
distinction is equally inapplicable to it. If any person or persons
have this power at all, they cannot be said to have it merely 'de
facto' while others have it 'de jure.'

97. It may be urged with much truth that the actual possession of
such power by a determinate person or persons is rather a convenient
hypothesis of writers on jurisprudence than an actual fact; and, as
we have seen, the actual condition of things at certain times in
certain states may conveniently be expressed by saying that there was
a sovereign 'de facto' that was not so 'de jure,' or vice versa; but
only on the supposition that 'sovereign' is not taken necessarily
in the full sense of a supreme law-making and law-enforcing power.
In a state of things that can be so described, however, there is no
'sovereignty' at all in the sense of an actually supreme power of
making and enforcing law resident in a determinate person or persons.
Sovereignty in this sense can only exist 'de facto'; and when it so
exists, it is obvious that no other can in the same sense exist 'de
jure.' It may be denied indeed in particular cases that an actually
supreme power of making and enforcing law is exercised 'de jure,' in
a sense of that phrase already explained (see section 95). Reasons
were given for doubting whether a power could really maintain its
sovereign attributes if conflicting with 'jus,' in the sense thus
explained. But supposing that it could, the fact that it was not
exercised 'de jure' would not entitle us to say that any other person
or persons were sovereign 'de jure,' without altering the meaning of
'sovereign.' If any one has supreme power 'de facto,' that which any
one else has cannot be supreme power. The qualification of a power as
held not 'de facto' but 'de jure' is one which destroys its character
as supreme, i.e. as sovereign in the sense before us.

98. It is only through trying to combine under the term 'sovereign'
the notions of the general will and of supreme power that we are led
to speak of the people as sovereign 'de jure,' if not 'de facto.'
There would be no harm indeed in speaking of the general will as
sovereign, if the natural association of 'sovereign' with supreme
coercive power could be got rid of; but as this cannot be, when once
we have pronounced the general will 'sovereign,' we are pretty sure
to identify the general will with a vote of the majority of citizens.
A majority of citizens can be conceived as exercising a supreme
coercive power, but a general will, in the sense of an unselfish
interest in the common good which in various degrees actuates men in
their dealings with each other, cannot be so conceived. Thus for the
sovereignty, in an impalpable and unnatural sense, of the general
will, we get a sovereignty, in the natural and demonstrable sense, of
the multitude. But as the multitude is not everywhere supreme, the
assertion of its sovereignty has to be put in the form that it is
sovereign 'de jure.' The truth which underlies this proposition is
that an interest in common good is the ground of political society,
in the sense that without it no body of people would recognise any
authority as having a claim on their common obedience. It is so far
as a government represents to them a common good that the subjects
are conscious that they ought to obey it, i.e. that obedience to it
is a means to an end desirable in itself or absolutely. This truth
is latent in Rousseau's doctrine of the sovereignty of the general
will, but he confounds with it the proposition that no government has
a claim on obedience, but that which originates in a vote passed by
the people themselves who are called on to obey (a vote which must
be unanimous in the case of the original compact, and carried by a
majority in subsequent cases).

99. This latter doctrine arises out of the delusion of natural right.
The individual, it is thought, having a right, not derived from
society, to do as he likes, can only forego that right by an act to
which he is a party. Therefore he has a right to disregard a law
unless it is passed by an assembly of which he has been a member,
and by the decision of which he has expressly or tacitly agreed to
be bound. Clearly, however, such a natural right of the individual
would be violated under most popular sovereignties no less than under
one purely monarchical, if he happened to object to the decision of
the majority; for to say, as Rousseau says, that he has virtually
agreed, by the mere fact of residence in a certain territory, to be
bound by the votes of the majority of those occupying that territory,
is a mere trick to save appearances. But in truth there is no such
natural right to do as one likes irrespectively of society. It is on
the relation to a society, to other men recognising a common good,
that the individual's rights depend, as much as the gravity of a body
depends on relations to other bodies. A right is a power claimed and
recognised as contributory to a common good. A right against society,
in distinction from a right to be treated as a member of society, is
a contradiction in terms. No one, therefore, has a right to resist a
law or ordinance of government, on the ground that it requires him
to do what he does not like, and that he has not agreed to submit
to the authority from which it proceeds; and if no one person has
such a right, no number of persons have it. If the common interest
requires it, no right can be alleged against it. Neither can its
enactment by popular vote enhance, nor the absence of such vote
diminish, its right to be obeyed. Rousseau himself well says that
the proper question for each citizen to ask himself in regard to any
proposal before the assembly is not, Do I like or approve it? but,
Is it according to the general will? which is only another way of
asking, Is it according to the general interest? It is only as the
organ of this general interest that the popular vote can endow any
law with the right to be obeyed; and Rousseau himself, if he could
have freed himself from the presuppositions of natural right, might
have admitted that, as the popular vote is by no means necessarily
an organ of the general interest, so the decree of a monarch or of
an aristocratic assembly, under certain conditions, might be such an
organ.

100. But it may be asked, Must not the individual judge for himself
whether a law is for the common good? and if he decides that it is
not, is he not entitled to resist it? Otherwise, not only will laws
passed in the interest of individuals or classes, and against the
public good, have a claim to our absolute and permanent submission,
but a government systematically carried on for the benefit of a few
against the many can never be rightfully resisted. To the first
part of this question we must of course answer 'yes,' without
qualification. The degree to which the individual judges for himself
of the relation between the common good and the laws which cross
the path of his ordinary life, is the measure of his intelligent,
as distinguished from a merely instinctive, recognition of rights
in others and in the state; and on this recognition again depends
his practical understanding of the difference between mere powers
and rights as recognised by himself. Supposing then the individual
to have decided that some command of a 'political superior' is not
for the common good, how ought he to act in regard to it? In a
country like ours, with a popular government and settled methods of
enacting and repealing laws, the answer of common sense is simple
and sufficient. He should do all he can by legal methods to get the
command cancelled, but till it is cancelled he should conform to it.
The common good must suffer more from resistance to a law or to the
ordinance of a legal authority, than from the individual's conformity
to a particular law or ordinance that is bad, until its repeal can be
obtained. It is thus the social duty of the individual to conform,
and he can have no right, as we have seen, that is against his social
duty; no right to anything or to do anything that is not involved in
the ability to do his duty.

101. But difficulties arise when either (I) it is a case of disputed
sovereignty, and in consequence the legal authority of the supposed
command is doubtful; or (2) when the government is so conducted
that there are no legal means of obtaining the repeal of a law; or
(3) when the whole system of a law and government is so perverted
by private interests hostile to the public that there has ceased to
be any common interest in maintaining it; or (4),--a more frequent
case,--when the authority from which the objectionable command
proceeds is so easily separable from that on which the maintenance of
social order and the fabric of settled rights depends, that it can be
resisted without serious detriment to this order and fabric. In such
cases, may there not be a right of resistance based on a 'higher law'
than the command of the ostensible sovereign?

102. (1) As to cases where the legal authority of the supposed
command is doubtful. In modern states the definition of
sovereignty,--the determination of the person or persons with whom
the supreme power of making and enforcing law legally resides,--has
only been arrived at by a slow process. The European monarchies have
mostly arisen out of the gradual conversion of feudal superiority
into sovereignty in the strict sense. Great states, such as Germany
and Italy, have been formed by the combination of independent or
semi-dependent states. In England the unity of the state goes back
much further than anywhere else, but in England it was but gradually
that the residence of sovereignty jointly in king, lords, and commons
came to be practically established, and it is still founded merely on
a customary law. In the United States, with a written constitution,
it required all Austin's subtlety to detect where sovereignty lay,
and he places it where probably no ordinary citizen of the United
States had ever thought of it as residing, viz. 'in the states'
governments as forming one aggregate body: meaning by a state's
government, not its ordinary legislature, but the body of citizens
which appoints its ordinary legislature, and which, the union apart,
is properly sovereign therein.' He bases this view on the provision
in the constitution, according to which amendments to it are only
valid 'when ratified by the legislature in three-fourths of the
several states, or by convention in three-fourths thereof.' (I, p.
268.) But no ordinary citizen of the United States probably ever
thought of sovereignty except as residing either in the government
of his state or in the federal government consisting of congress and
president, or sometimes in one way, sometimes in the other. In other
countries, e.g. France, where since Louis XIV the quarter in which
sovereignty resides has at any given time been easily assignable,
there have since the revolution been such frequent changes in the
ostensible sovereign that there might almost at any time have been a
case for doubting whether the ostensible sovereign had such command
over the habitual obedience of the people as to be a sovereign in
that sense in which there is a social duty to obey the sovereign, as
the representative of the common interest in social order; whether
some prior sovereignty was not really still in force. For these
various reasons there have been occasions in the history of all
modern states at which men, or bodies of men, without the conscious
assertion of any right not founded upon law, might naturally deem
themselves entitled to resist an authority which on its part claimed
a right--a legally established power--to enforce obedience, and
turned out actually to possess the power of doing so.

103. In such cases the truest retrospective account to be given
of the matter will often be, that at the time there was nothing
amounting to a right on either side. A right is a power of which the
exercise by the individual or by some body of men is recognised by
a society, either as itself directly essential to a common good, or
as conferred by an authority of which the maintenance is recognised
as so essential. But in cases of the kind described the authorities,
appealed to on each side as justifying respectively compulsion and
resistance, often do not command a sufficiently general recognition
of their being necessary to the common good to enable them to confer
rights of compulsion or resistance. One or other of them may be
coming to do so, or ceasing to do so, but rights, though on the one
hand they are eternal or at least coeval with human society, on the
other hand take time to form themselves in this or that particular
subject and to transfer themselves from one subject to another; (just
as one may hold reason to be eternal, and yet hold that it takes
time for this or that being to become rational.) Hence in periods
of conflict between local or customary and imperial or written law,
between the constituent powers of a sovereignty, such as king and
parliament in England, of which the relation to each other has not
become accurately defined, between a falling and a rising sovereign
in a period of revolution, between federal and state authorities in
a composite state, the facts are best represented by saying that
for a time there may be no right on either side in the conflict,
and that it is impossible to determine precisely the stage at which
there comes to be such a right on the one side as implies a definite
resistance to right on the other. This of course is not to be taken
to mean that in such periods rights in general are at an end. It is
merely that right is in suspense on the particular point at issue
between the conflicting powers. As we have seen, the general fabric
of rights in any society does not depend on the existence of a
definite and ascertained sovereignty, in the restricted sense of the
words; on the determination of a person or persons in whom supreme
power resides; but on the control of the conduct of men according to
certain regular principles by a society recognising common interests;
and though such control may be more or less weakened during periods
of conflict of the kind supposed, it never ceases.

104. It does not follow, however, because there may often not be
strictly a right on either side in such periods of conflict, that
there is not a good and an evil, a better and a worse, on one side
or the other. Of this we can only judge by reference to the end,
whatever it be, in which we conceive the good of man to consist.
There may be clear ground for saying, in regard to any conflict,
that one side rather than the other _ought_ to have been taken, not
because those on one side were, those on the other were not, entitled
to say that they had a right to act as they did, but because the
common good of a nation or mankind was clearly promoted by one line
of action, not by the other. E.g. in the American war of secession,
though it would be difficult to say that a man had not as much a
right to fight for his seceding state as for the Union, yet as the
special interest of the seceding states was that of maintaining
slavery, there was reason for holding that the side of the Union, not
that of the seceding states, was the one which ought to be taken. On
the other hand, it does not follow that in a struggle for sovereignty
the good of man is more served by one of the competing powers than
by the other. Good may come out of the conflict without one power
contributing more to it than the other. There may thus be as little
ground retrospectively for saying that one side or the other ought
to have been taken, as that men had a right to take one and not
the other. At the same time, as regards the individual, there is
no reason for doubting that the better the motive which determines
him to take this side or that, the more he is actuated in doing so
by some unselfish desire for human good, the more free he is from
egotism, and that conceit or opinionatedness which is a form of
egotism, the more good he will do whichever side he adopts.

105. It is in such cases as we have been considering that the
distinction between sovereign 'de facto' and sovereign 'de jure'
arises. It has a natural meaning in the mouths of those who, in
resisting some coercive power that claims their obedience, can point
to another determinate authority to which they not only consider
obedience due, but to which such obedience in some considerable
measure is actually rendered; a meaning which it has not when all
that can be opposed to sovereign 'de facto' is either a 'general
will,' or the mere name of a fallen dynasty exercising no control
over men in their dealings with each other. But where this opposition
can be used with a natural meaning, it is a truer account of the
matter (as we have seen) to say that sovereignty is in abeyance. The
existence of competing powers, each affecting to control men in the
same region of outward action, and each having partisans who regard
it alone as entitled to exercise such control, implies that there is
not that unity of supreme control over the outward actions of men
which constitutes sovereignty and which is necessary to the complete
organisation of a state. The state has either not reached complete
organisation, or is for the time disorganised, the disorganisation
being more or less serious according to the degree to which the
everyday rights of men (their ordinary freedom of action and
acquisition) are interfered with by this want of unity in the supreme
control.

106. In such a state of things, the citizen has no rule of 'right'
(in the strict sense of the word) to guide him. He is pretty sure
to think that one or other of the competing powers has a right to
his obedience because, being himself interested (not necessarily
selfishly interested) in its support, he does not take account of its
lacking that general recognition as a power necessary to the common
good which is requisite in order to give it a right. But we looking
back may see that there was no such right. Was there then nothing to
direct him either way? Simply, I should answer, the general rule of
looking to the moral good of mankind, to which a necessary means is
the organisation of the state, which again requires unity of supreme
control, in the common interest, over the outward actions of men.
The citizen ought to have resisted or obeyed either of the competing
authorities, according as by doing so he contributed most to the
organisation of the state in the sense explained. It must be admitted
that without more knowledge and foresight than the individual can be
expected to possess, this rule, if he had recognised it, could have
afforded him no sure guidance; but this is only to say that there are
times of political difficulty in which the line of conduct adopted
may have the most important effect, but in which it is very hard to
know what is the proper line to take. On the other side must be set
the consideration that the man who brings with him the character most
free from egotism to the decision even of those questions of conduct,
as to which established rules of right and wrong are of no avail, is
most sure on the whole to take the line which yields the best results.

107. We come next to the question of the possible duty of resistance
in cases where no law, acknowledged or half-acknowledged,
written or customary, can be appealed to against a command
(general or particular) contrary to the public good; where no
counter-sovereignty, in the natural sense of the words, can be
alleged against that of the imponent of the law; and where at the
same time, from the people having no share, direct or indirect, in
the government, there is no means of obtaining a repeal of the law
by legal means. I say the 'duty' of resistance because, from the
point of view here adopted, there can be no 'right,' unless on the
ground that it is for the common good, and if so, there is a duty. In
writings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, starting with
the assumption of natural rights, the question was never put on its
proper footing. It was not asked, When, for the sake of the common
good, the citizen ought to resist the sovereign? but, What sort of
injury to person or property gave him a natural right to resist? Now
there is sense in inquiring upon what sort and amount of provocation
from government individuals inevitably will resist; how (in Spinoza's
language) that 'indignatio' is excited which leads them 'in unum
conspirare'; but there is none in asking what gives them a right to
resist, unless we suppose a wrong done to society in their persons;
and then it becomes a question not of right merely, but of duty,
whether the wrong done is such as to demand resistance. Now when the
question is thus put, no one presumably would deny that under certain
conditions there might be a duty of resistance to sovereign power.

108. It is important, however, that instead of discussing the right
of a majority to resist, we should discuss the duty of resistance as
equally possible for a minority and a majority. There can be no right
of a majority of citizens, as such, to resist a sovereign. If by
law, written or customary, the majority of citizens possess or share
in the sovereign power, then any conflict that may arise between it
and any power cannot be a conflict between it and the sovereign. The
majority may have a right to resist such a power, but it will not be
a right to resist a _sovereign_. If, on the other hand, the majority
of citizens have no share by law or custom in the supreme law-making
and law-enforcing power, they never can have a right, simply as a
majority, to resist that power.

In such a case, there may arise a social duty to resist, and the
exercise of men's powers in fulfilment of that duty may be sustained
by such a general recognition of its being for the public good, as to
become a right; but the resistance may be a duty before a majority of
the citizens approve it, and does not necessarily become a duty when
a majority of them do approve it; while that general recognition of
its exercise as being for the common good, through which the power
of resistance becomes a right, must be something more habitual and
sustained and penetrating than any vote of a majority can convey.
Incidentally, however, the consideration of the attitude of the mass
of the people in regard to a contemplated resistance to established
government must always be most important in determining the question
whether the resistance should be made. It should be made, indeed, if
at all, not because the majority approve it, but because it is for
the public good; but account must be taken of the state of mind of
the majority in considering whether it is for the public good or no.
The presumption must generally be that resistance to a government is
not for the public good when made on grounds which the mass of the
people cannot appreciate; and it must be on the presence of a strong
and intelligent popular sentiment in favour of resistance that the
chance of avoiding anarchy, of replacing the existing government
by another effectual for its purpose, must chiefly depend. On the
other hand, it is under the worst governments that the public spirit
is most crushed; and thus in extreme cases there may be a duty of
resistance in the public interest, though there is no hope of the
resistance finding efficient popular support. (An instance is the
Mazzinian outbreaks in Italy.) Its repeated renewal and repeated
failure may afford the only prospect of ultimately arousing the
public spirit which is necessary for the maintenance of a government
in the public interest. And just as there may thus be a duty of
resistance on the part of a hopeless minority, so on the other side
resistance even to a monarchic or oligarchic government is not
justified by the fact that a majority, perhaps in some temporary
fit of irritation or impatience, is ready to support it, if, as may
very well be, the objects for which government subsists--the general
freedom of action and acquisition and self-development--are likely to
suffer from an overthrow of the government in the popular interest.

109. No precise rule, therefore, can be laid down as to the
conditions under which resistance to a despotic government becomes
a duty. But the general questions which the good citizen should
ask himself in contemplating such resistance will be, __(a)__ What
prospect is there of resistance to the sovereign power leading to
a modification of its character or an improvement in its exercise
without its subversion? _(b)_ If it is overthrown, is the temper of
the people such, are the influences on which the general maintenance
of social order and the fabric of recognised rights depend so far
separable from it, that its overthrow will not mean anarchy? _(c)_ If
its overthrow does lead to anarchy, is the whole system of law and
government so perverted by private interests hostile to the public,
that there has ceased to be any common interest in maintaining it?

110. Such questions are so little likely to be impartially
considered at a time when resistance to a despotic government is
in contemplation, and, however impartially considered, are so
intrinsically difficult to answer, that it may seem absurd to dwell
on them. No doubt revolutionists do and must to a great extent 'go
it blind.' Such beneficent revolutions as there have been could not
have been if they did not. But in most of those questions of right
and wrong in conduct, which have to be settled by consideration of
the probable effects of the conduct, the estimate of effects which
regulates our approval or disapproval upon a retrospective survey,
and according to which we say that an act should or should not have
been done, is not one which we could expect the agent himself to have
made. The effort to make it would have paralysed his power of action.

111. In the simple cases of moral duty, where there is no real doubt
as to the effects of this or that action, and danger arises from
interested self-sophistication, we can best decide for ourselves
whether we ought to act in this way or that by asking whether it
is what is good in us--a disinterested or unselfish motive--that
moves us to act in this way or that; and in judging of the actions
of others, where the issues and circumstances are simple, the moral
question, the question of 'ought' or 'ought not,' is often best put
in the form, How far was the action such as could represent a good
character? That indeed is the form in which the question should
always be put, when the nature of the case admits it; since, as
argued elsewhere [_Prol. to Ethics_, Bk II, Chaps I and II], it is
only in its relation to character that action is in the full sense
good or bad. But where the probable effects of a certain line of
action are at the time of taking it very obscure, we cannot be sure
that relatively the best character will lead a man to take the line
which turns out best in the result, or that because a line of action
has turned out well in result, the character of the man who adopted
it was good. This being so, in judging of the act retrospectively we
have to estimate it by the result simply, in abstraction from the
character of the agent. Thus in looking back upon a revolutionary
outbreak we can only judge whether it was vindicated by the result.
If in the light of the result it appears that conditions were not
present under which it would have furthered rather than interfered
with the true objects of government, we judge that it should not
have been made; if otherwise, we approve it,--judge that the persons
concerned in it were doing their duty in acting as they did. But
whether they were really doing their duty in the full sense of
the term in acting as they did in a case when the outbreak was
successful, or not doing it in a case where it failed, is what we
simply cannot tell; for this depends on the state of character which
their action represented, and that is beyond our ken.

112. Such is the necessary imperfection under which all historical
judgments labour, though historians are not apt to recognise it and
would be thought much more dull if they did. They would have fewer
readers if they confined themselves to the analysis of situations,
which may be correctly made, and omitted judgments on the morality
of individuals for which, in the proper sense, the data can never
be forthcoming. We scarcely have them for ourselves (except that we
know that we are none of us what we should be), still less for our
intimate acquaintance; not at all for men whom we only know through
history, past or present, in regard to them, we can only fall back on
the generalisation, that the best man--the man most disinterestedly
devoted to the perfecting of humanity, in some form or other, in
his own person or that of others--is more likely to act in a way
that is good as measured by its results, those results again being
estimated with reference to an ideal of character, and that this is
so even under circumstances of political complication. Appearances
to the contrary, appearances of harm done from good motives, may be
met by the considerations, (1) that there is often much egotism in
what calls itself conscientiousness, and that the 'conscientious'
motives which lead to mischievous acts may not be in the highest
sense disinterested; (2) that to what we call the consequences of an
action many influences contribute besides the action which we call
the cause, and if evil seems to clog the consequences of action pure
in motive, this may be due to other influences connected with motives
less worthy, while the consequences which in the rough we call bad
might have been worse but for the intervention of the purely-motived
action; (3) that the beneficent results are often put to the credit
of the actions of selfish men when they should rather be credited to
influences more remote and complex, without which those actions would
have been impossible or had no good effect, and which have arisen out
of unselfish activities. We see the evil in a course of events and
lay the blame on someone who should have acted differently, and whom
perhaps we take as an instance of how good men cause mischief; but
we do not see the greater evil which would otherwise have ensued. In
regard to the questions stated above as those which the good citizen
should set himself in contemplation of a possible rebellion, though
they are questions to which it is impossible for a citizen in the
heat of a revolutionary crisis to give a sufficient answer, and which
in fact can only be answered after the event, yet they represent
objects which the good citizen will set before himself at such times;
and in proportion to the amount of good citizenship, as measured by
interest in those objects, interest in making the best of existing
institutions, in maintaining social order and the general fabric of
rights, interest which leads to a _bona fide_ estimate of the value
of the existing government in its relation to public good, will be
the good result of the political movement.

    G. _WILL, NOT FORCE, IS THE BASIS OF THE STATE._

113. Looking back on the political theories which we have discussed,
we may see that they all start with putting the question to be dealt
with in the same way, and that their errors are very much due to the
way in which they put it. They make no inquiry into the development
of society and of man through society. They take no account of
other forms of community than that regulated by a supreme coercive
power, either in the way of investigating their historical origin
and connection, or of considering the ideas and states of mind which
they imply or which render them possible. They leave out of sight the
process by which men have been clothed with rights and duties, and
with senses of right and duty, which are neither natural nor derived
from a sovereign power. They look only to the supreme coercive power
on the one side and to individuals, to whom natural rights are
ascribed, on the other, and ask what is the nature and origin of
the right of that supreme coercive power as against these natural
rights of individuals. The question so put can only be answered by
some device for representing the individuals governed as consenting
parties to the exercise of government over them. This they no doubt
are so long as the government is exercised in a way corresponding to
their several wishes; but, so long as this is the case, there is no
interference with their 'natural liberty' to do as they like. It is
only when this liberty is interfered with, that any occasion arises
for an explanation of the compatibility of the sovereign's right with
the natural right of the individual; and it is just then that the
explanation by the supposition that the right of the sovereign is
founded on consent, fails. But the need of the fictitious explanation
arises from a wrong way of putting the question; the power which
regulates our conduct in political society is conceived in too
abstract a way on the one side, and on the other are set over against
it, as the subjects which it controls, individuals invested with all
the moral attributes and rights of humanity. But in truth it is only
as members of a society, as recognising common interests and objects,
that individuals come to have these attributes and rights; and the
power, which in a political society they have to obey, is derived
from the development and systematisation of those institutions for
the regulation of a common life without which they would have no
rights at all.

114. To ask why I am to submit to the power of the state, is to
ask why I am to allow my life to be regulated by that complex of
institutions without which I literally should not have a life to
call my own, nor should be able to ask for a justification of what
I am called on to do. For that I may have a life which I can call
my own, I must not only be conscious of myself and of ends which I
present to myself as mine; I must be able to reckon on a certain
freedom of action and acquisition for the attainment of those ends,
and this can only be secured through common recognition of this
freedom on the part of each other by members of a society, as being
for a common good. Without this, the very consciousness of having
ends of his own and a life which he can direct in a certain way, a
life of which he can make something, would remain dormant in a man.
It is true that slaves have been found to have this consciousness
in high development; but a slave even at his lowest has been partly
made what he is by an ancestral life which was not one of slavery
pure and simple, a life in which certain elementary rights were
secured to the members of a society through their recognition of a
common interest. He retains certain spiritual aptitudes from that
state of family or tribal freedom. This, perhaps, is all that could
be said of most of the slaves on plantations in modern times; but
the slavery of the ancient world, being mainly founded on captivity
in war, was compatible with a considerable amount of civilisation
on the part of the slaves at the time when their slavery began. A
Jewish slave, e.g., would carry with him into slavery a thoroughly
developed conception of right and law. Slavery, moreover, implies the
establishment of some regular system of rights in the slave-owning
society. The slave, especially the domestic slave, has the signs
and effects of this system all about him. Hence such elementary
consciousness of rights--of powers that are his own to make the best
of--as the born slave may inherit from an ancestral life of freedom,
finds a stimulus to its inward development, though no opportunity
for outward exercise, in the habits and ideas of civilised life with
which a common language enables the slave to become conversant, and
which, through the sympathy implied in a common language, he to some
extent makes his own. Thus the appearance in slaves of the conception
that they should be masters of themselves, does not conflict with
the proposition that only so far as a certain freedom of action and
acquisition is secured to a body of men through their recognition of
the exercise of that freedom by each other as being for the common
good, is there an actualisation of the individual's consciousness
of having life and ends of his own. The exercise, manifestation,
expression of this consciousness through a freedom secured in the way
described is necessary to its real existence, just as language of
some sort is necessary to the real existence of thought, and bodily
movement to that of the soul.

115. The demand, again, for a justification of what one is called on
by authority to do presupposes some standard of right, recognised
as equally valid for and by the person making the demand and others
who form a society with him, and such a recognised standard in turn
implies institutions for the regulation of men's dealings with each
other, institutions of which the relation to the consciousness of
right may be compared, as above, to that of language to thought.
It cannot be said that the most elementary consciousness of right
is prior to them, or they to it. They are the expressions in which
it becomes real. As conflicting with the momentary inclinations
of the individual, these institutions are a power which he obeys
unwillingly; which he has to, or is made to, obey. But it is only
through them that the consciousness takes shape and form which
expresses itself in the question, 'Why should I thus be constrained?
By what right is my natural right to do as I like overborne?'

116. The doctrine that the rights of government are founded on the
consent of the governed is a confused way of stating the truth,
that the institutions by which man is moralised, by which he comes
to do what he sees that he must, as distinct from what he would
like, express a conception of a common good; that through them that
conception takes form and reality; and that it is in turn through its
presence in the individual that they have a constraining power over
him, a power which is not that of mere fear, still less a physical
compulsion, but which leads him to do what he is not inclined to
because there is a law that he should.

Rousseau, it will be remembered, speaks of the 'social pact' not
merely as the foundation of sovereignty or civil government, but as
the foundation of morality. Through it man becomes a moral agent; for
the slavery to appetite he substitutes the freedom of subjection to a
self-imposed law. If he had seen at the same time that rights do not
begin till duties begin, and that if there was no morality prior to
the pact there could not be rights, he might have been saved from the
error which the notion of there being natural rights introduces into
his theory. But though he does not seem himself to have been aware
of the full bearing of his own conception, the conception itself
is essentially true. Setting aside the fictitious representation
of an original covenant as having given birth to that common 'ego'
or general will, without which no such covenant would have been
possible, and of obligations arising out of it, as out of a bargain
made between one man and another, it remains true that only through
a recognition by certain men of a common interest, and through the
expression of that recognition in certain regulations of their
dealings with each other, could morality originate, or any meaning be
gained for such terms as 'ought' and 'right' and their equivalents.

117. Morality, in the first instance, is the observance of such
regulations, and though a higher morality, the morality of the
character governed by 'disinterested motives,' i.e. by interest
in some form of human perfection, comes to differentiate itself
from this primitive morality consisting in the observance of rules
established for a common good, yet this outward morality is the
presupposition of the higher morality. Morality and political
subjection thus have a common source, '_political_ subjection'
being distinguished from that of a slave, as a subjection which
secures rights to the subject. That common source is the rational
recognition by certain human beings--it may be merely by children of
the same parent--of a common well-being which is their well-being,
and which they conceive as their well-being whether at any moment
any one of them is inclined to it or no, and the embodiment of that
recognition in rules by which the inclinations of the individuals are
restrained, and a corresponding freedom of action for the attainment
of well-being on the whole is secured.

118. From this common source morality and political subjection in
all its forms always retain two elements in common, one consisting
in antagonism to some inclination, the other consisting in the
consciousness that the antagonism to inclination is founded on reason
or on the conception of some adequate good. It is the antagonism
to inclination involved in the moral life, as alone we know it,
that makes it proper to speak analogically of moral 'laws' and
'imperatives.' It must be remembered, however, that such language
_is_ analogical, and that there is an essential difference between
laws in the strictest sense (laws which are indeed not adequately
described as general commands of a political superior, sanctioned
by liability to pains which that superior can inflict, but in which
a command so sanctioned is an essential element), and the laws of
conscience, of which it is the peculiar dignity that they have no
external imponent and no sanction consisting in fear of bodily evil.
The relation of constraint, in the one case between the man and the
externally imposed law, in the other between some particular desire
of the man and his consciousness of something absolutely desirable,
we naturally represent in English, when we reflect on it, by the
common term 'must.' 'I _must_ connect with the main drainage,' says
the householder to himself, reflecting on an edict of the Local
Board. 'I _must_ try to get A.B. to leave off drinking,' he says to
himself, reflecting on a troublesome moral duty of benevolence to his
neighbour. And if the 'must' in the former case represents in part
the knowledge that compulsion may be put on the man who neglects to
do what he must, which is no part of its meaning in the second, on
the other hand the consciousness that the constraint is for a common
good, which wholly constitutes the power over inclination in the
second case, must always be an element in that obedience which is
properly called obedience to law, or civil or political obedience.
Simple fear can never constitute such obedience. To represent it as
the basis of civil subjection is to confound the citizen with the
slave, and to represent the motive which is needed for the restraint
of those in whom the civil sense is lacking, and for the occasional
reinforcements of the law-abiding principle in others, as if it were
the normal influence in habits of life of which the essential value
lies in their being independent of it. How far in any particular act
of conformity to law the fear of penalties may be operative, it is
impossible to say. What is certain is, that a habit of subjection
founded upon such fear could not be a basis of political or free
society; for to this it is necessary, not indeed that everyone
subject to the laws should take part in voting them, still less
that he should consent to their application to himself, but that it
should represent an idea of common good, which each member of the
society can make his own so far as he is rational, i.e. capable of
the conception of a common good, however much particular passions
may lead him to ignore it and thus necessitate the use of force
to prevent him from doing that which, so far as influenced by the
conception of a common good, he would willingly abstain from.

119. Whether the legislative and administrative agencies of society
can be kept in the main free from bias by private interests, and
true to the idea of common good, without popular control; whether
again, if they can, that 'civil sense,' that appreciation of common
good on the part of the subjects, which is as necessary to a free or
political society as the direction of law to the maintenance of a
common good, can be kept alive without active participation of the
people in legislative functions; these are questions of circumstances
which perhaps do not admit of unqualified answers. The views of those
who looked mainly to the highest development of political life in a
single small society, have to be modified if the object sought for
is the extension of political life to the largest number of people.
The size of modern states renders necessary the substitution of a
representative system for one in which the citizens shared directly
in legislation, and this so far tends to weaken the active interest
of the citizens in the common weal, though the evil may partly be
counteracted by giving increased importance to municipal or communal
administration. In some states, from the want of homogeneity or
facilities of communication, a representative legislature is
scarcely possible. In others, where it exists, a great amount of
power, virtually exempt from popular control, has to be left with
what Rousseau would have called the 'prince or magistrate.' In all
this there is a lowering of civil vitality as compared with that of
the ancient, and perhaps of some exceptionally developed modern,
commonwealths. But perhaps this is a temporary loss that we have to
bear as the price of having recognised the claim to citizenship as
the claim of all men. Certainly all political ideals, which require
active and direct participation by the citizens in the functions of
the sovereign state, fail us as soon as we try to conceive their
realisation on the wide area even of civilised mankind. It is easy
to conceive a better system than that of the great states of modern
Europe, with their national jealousies, rival armies, and hostile
tariffs; but the condition of any better state of things would seem
to be the recognition of some single constraining power, which would
be even more remote from the active co-operation of the individual
citizen than is the sovereign power of the great states at present.

120. These considerations may remind us how far removed from any
foundation in their own will the requirements of the modern state
must seem to be to most of those who have to submit to them. It is
true that the necessity which the state lays upon the individual
is for the most part one to which he is so accustomed that he no
longer kicks against it; but what is it, we may ask, but an external
necessity, which he no more lays on himself than he does the weight
of the atmosphere or the pressure of summer heat and winter frosts,
that compels the ordinary citizen to pay rates and taxes, to serve
in the army, to abstain from walking over the squire's fields,
snaring his hares, or fishing in preserved streams, to pay rent,
to respect those artificial rights of property which only the
possessors of them have any obvious interest in maintaining, or
even (if he is one of the 'proletariate') to keep his hands off the
superfluous wealth of his neighbour, when he has none of his own
to lose? Granted that there are good reasons of social expediency
for maintaining institutions which thus compel the individual to
actions and forbearances that are none of his willing, is it not
abusing words to speak of them as founded on a conception of general
good? A conception does not float in the air. It must be somebody's
conception. Whose conception, then, of general good is it that these
institutions represent? Not that of most of the people who conform
to them, for they do so because they are made to, or have come to
do so habitually from having been long made to; (i.e. from being
frightened at the consequences of not conforming, not consequences
which follow from not conforming in the ordinary course of nature,
but consequences which the state inflicts, artificial consequences.)
But when a man is said to obey an authority from interest in a common
good, some other good is meant than that which consists in escaping
the punishment which the authority would inflict on disobedience. Is
then the conception of common good which is alleged a conception of
it on the part of those who founded or who maintain the institutions
in question? But is it not certain that private interests have been
the main agents in establishing, and are still in maintaining, at any
rate all the more artificial rights of property? Have not our modern
states, again, in nearly every case been founded on conquest, and are
not the actual institutions of government in great measure the direct
result of such conquest, or, where revolutions have intervened, of
violence which has been as little governed by any conception of
general good? Supposing that philosophers can find exquisite reasons
for considering the institutions and requirements which have resulted
from all this self-seeking and violence to be contributory to the
common good of those who have to submit to them, is it not trifling
to speak of them as founded on or representing a conception of this
good, when no such conception has influenced those who established,
maintain, or submit to them? And is it not seriously misleading, when
the requirements of the state have so largely arisen out of force
directed by selfish motives, and when the motive to obedience to
those requirements is determined by fear, to speak of them as having
a common source with the morality of which it is admitted that the
essence is to be disinterested and spontaneous?

121. If we would meet these objections fairly, certain admissions
must be made. The idea of a common good which the state fulfils has
never been the sole influence actuating those who have been agents in
the historical process by which states have come to be formed; and
even so far as it has actuated them, it has been only as conceived
in some very imperfect form that it has done so. This is equally
true of those who contribute to the formation and maintenance of
states rather as agents, and of those who do so rather as patients.
No one could pretend that even the most thoughtful and dispassionate
publicist is capable of the idea of the good served by the state to
which he belongs, in all its fulness. He apprehends it only in some
of its bearings; but it is as a common good that he apprehends it,
i.e. not as a good for himself or for this man or that more than
another, but for all members equally in virtue of their relation
to each other and their common nature. The idea which the ordinary
citizen has of the common good served by the state is much more
limited in content. Very likely he does not think of it at all in
connection with anything that the term 'state' represents to him.
But he has a clear understanding of certain interests and rights
common to himself with his neighbours, if only such as consist in
getting his wages paid at the end of the week, in getting his money's
worth at the shop, in the inviolability of his own person and that
of his wife. Habitually and instinctively, i.e. without asking the
reason why, he regards the claim which in these respects he makes
for himself as conditional upon his recognising a like claim in
others, and thus as in the proper sense a right,--a claim of which
the essence lies in its being common to himself with others. Without
this instinctive recognition he is one of the 'dangerous classes,'
virtually outlawed by himself. With it, though he have no reverence
for the 'state' under that name, no sense of an interest shared with
others in maintaining it, he has the needful elementary conception of
a common good maintained by law. It is the fault of the state if this
conception fails to make him a loyal subject, if not an intelligent
patriot. It is a sign that the state is not a true state; that it is
not fulfilling its primary function of maintaining law equally in
the interest of all, but is being administered in the interest of
classes; whence it follows that the obedience which, if not rendered
willingly, the state compels the citizen to render, is not one that
he feels any spontaneous interest in rendering, because it does not
present itself to him as the condition of the maintenance of those
rights and interests, common to himself with his neighbours, which he
understands.

122. But if the law which regulates private relations and its
administration are so equally applied to all, that all who are
capable of a common interest are prompted by that interest to conform
to the law, the result is still only the loyal subject as distinct
from the intelligent patriot, i.e. as distinct from the man who so
appreciates the good which in common with others he derives from the
state--from the nation organised in the form of a self-governing
community to which he belongs--as to have a passion for serving
it, whether in the way of defending it from external attack, or
developing it from within. The citizens of the Roman empire were
loyal subjects; the admirable maintenance of private rights made them
that; but they were not intelligent patriots, and chiefly because
they were not, the empire fell. That active interest in the service
of the state, which makes patriotism in the better sense, can hardly
arise while the individual's relation to the state is that of a
passive recipient of protection in the exercise of his rights of
person and property. While this is the case, he will give the state
no thanks for the protection which he will come to take as a matter
of course, and will only be conscious of it when it descends upon him
with some unusual demand for service or payment, and then he will be
conscious of it in the way of resentment. If he is to have a higher
feeling of political duty, he must take part in the work of the
state. He must have a share, direct or indirect, by himself acting
as a member or by voting for the members of supreme or provincial
assemblies, in making and maintaining the laws which he obeys. Only
thus will he learn to regard the work of the state as a whole, and
to transfer to the whole the interest which otherwise his particular
experience would lead him to feel only in that part of its work that
goes to the maintenance of his own and his neighbour's rights.

123. Even then his patriotism will hardly be the passion which it
needs to be, unless his judgment of what he owes to the state is
quickened by a feeling of which the 'patria,' the fatherland, the
seat of one's home, is the natural object; and of this feeling
the state becomes the object only so far as it is an organisation
of a people to whom the individual feels himself bound by ties
analogous to those which bind him to his family, ties derived from a
common dwelling-place with its associations, from common memories,
traditions and customs, and from the common ways of feeling and
thinking which a common language and still more a common literature
embodies. Such an organisation of an homogeneous people the modern
state in most cases is (the two Austrian states being the most
conspicuous exceptions), and such the Roman state emphatically was
not.

124. But, it will be said, we are here again falling back on our
unproved assumption that the state is an institution for the
promotion of a common good. This granted, it is not difficult to
make out that in most men at any rate there is a sufficient interest
in some form of social well-being, sufficient understanding of the
community between their own well-being and that of their neighbours,
to make them loyal to such an institution. But the question is,
whether the promotion of a common good, at any rate in any sense
appreciable by the multitude, is any necessary characteristic of a
state. It is admitted that the outward visible sign of a state is
the presence of a supreme or independent coercive power, to which,
habitual obedience is rendered by a certain multitude of people,
and that this power may often be exercised in a manner apparently
detrimental to the general well-being. It may be the case, as we
have tried to show that it is, that a power which is in the main so
exercised, and is generally felt to be so, is not likely long to
maintain its supremacy; but this does not show that a state cannot
exist without the promotion of the common good of its subjects, or
that (in any intelligible way) the promotion of such good belongs
to the idea of a state. A short-lived state is not therefore not a
state, and if it were, it is rather the active interference with the
subject's well-being, than a failure to promote it, that is fatal
to the long life of a state. How, finally, can the state be said to
exist for the sake of an end, or to fulfil an idea, the contemplation
of which, it is admitted, has had little to do with the actions which
have had most to do with bringing states into existence?

125. The last question is a crucial one, which must be met at
the outset. It must be noticed that the ordinary conception of
organisation, as we apply it in the interpretation of nature, implies
that agents may be instrumental in the attainment of an end or the
fulfilment of an idea of which there is no consciousness on the
part of the organic agents themselves. If it is true on the one
hand that the interpretation of nature by the supposition of ends
external to it, with reference to which its processes are directed,
has been discarded, and that its rejection has been the condition
of growth in an exact knowledge of nature, on the other hand the
recognition of ends immanent in nature, of ideas realised within it,
is the basis of a scientific explanation of life. The phaenomena
of life are not ideal, in the sense in which the ideal is opposed
to that which is sensibly verifiable, but they are related to the
processes of material change which are their conditions, as ideas
or ideal ends which those processes contribute to realise, because,
while they determine the processes (while the processes would not
be what they are but for relation to them), yet they are not those
processes, not identical with any one or number of them, or all of
them together. Life does not reside in any of the organs of life,
or in any or all of the processes of material change through which
these pass. Analyse or combine these as you will, you do not detect
it as the result of the analysis or combination. It is a function or
end which they realise according to a plan or idea which determines
their existence before they exist and survives their disappearance.
If it were held, then, that the state were an organised community
in the same sense in which a living body is, of which the members
at once contribute to the function called life, and are made what
they are by that function, according to an idea of which there is no
consciousness on their part, we should only be following the analogy
of the established method of interpreting nature.

126. The objection to such a view would be that it represents the
state as a purely natural, not at all as a moral, organism. Moral
agency is not merely an agency by which an end is attained, or an
idea realised, or a function fulfilled, but an agency determined by
an idea on the part of the agent, by his conception of an end or
function; and the state would be brought into being and sustained
by merely natural, as opposed to moral, agency, unless there were
a consciousness of ends--and of ends the same in principle with
that served by the state itself--on the part of those by whom it is
brought into being, and sustained. I say 'ends the same in principle
with that served by the state itself,' because, if the state arose
out of the action of men determined, indeed, by the consciousness of
ends, but ends wholly heterogeneous to that realised by the state,
it would not be a moral institution, would not stand in any moral
relation to men. Now among the influences that have operated in the
formation of states, a large part, it must be admitted, are simply
natural. Such are the influences of climate, of distribution of
mountain and plain, land and water, &c, of all physical demarcations
and means of communication. But these, it is clear, are only organic
to the formation of states so far as, so to speak, they take a
character, which does not belong to them as merely natural, from
agencies distinctively human.

127. 'Human, if you like,' it may be replied, 'but not moral, if a
moral agency implies any reference to a social or human good, to a
good which the individual desires because it is good for others, or
for mankind, as well as himself. In the earth--hunger of conquering
hordes, in the passions of military despots, in the pride or avarice
or vindictiveness which moved such men as Louis XI or Henry VIII to
override the semi-anarchy of feudalism with a real sovereignty, what
is there of reference to such good? Yet if we suppose the influence
of such motives as these, together with the natural influences just
spoken of, to be erased from the history of the formation of states,
its distinguishing features are gone.'

128. The selfish motives described must not, any more than the
natural influences, be regarded in abstraction, if we would
understand their true place in the formation of states. The pure
desire for social good does not indeed operate in human affairs
unalloyed by egotistic motives, but on the other hand what we call
egotistic motives do not act without direction from an involuntary
reference to social good,--'involuntary' in the sense that it is so
much a matter of course that the individual does not distinguish it
from his ordinary state of mind. The most conspicuous modern instance
of a man who was instrumental in working great and in some ways
beneficial changes in the political order of Europe, from what we
should be apt to call the most purely selfish motives, is Napoleon.
Without pretending to analyse these motives precisely, we may say
that a leading one was the passion for glory; but if there is to
be truth in the statement that this passion governed Napoleon, it
must be qualified by the farther statement that the passion was
itself governed by social influences, operative on him, from which
it derived its particular direction. With all his egotism, his
individuality was so far governed by the action of the national
spirit in and upon him, that he could only glorify himself in the
greatness of France; and though the national spirit expressed itself
in an effort after greatness which was in many ways of a mischievous
and delusive kind, yet it again had so much of what may be called the
spirit of humanity in it, that it required satisfaction in the belief
that it was serving mankind. Hence the aggrandisement of France, in
which Napoleon's passion for glory satisfied itself, had to take at
least the semblance of a deliverance of oppressed peoples, and in
taking the semblance it to a great extent performed the reality; at
any rate in western Germany and northern Italy, wherever the Code
Napoléon was introduced.

129. It is thus that actions of men, whom in themselves we reckon
bad, are 'overruled' for good. There is nothing mysterious or
unintelligible in such 'overruling.' There is nothing in the effect
which we ascribe to the 'overruling,' any more than in any effect
belonging to the ordinary course of nature, which there was not
in the cause as it really was and as we should see it to be if we
fully understood it. The appearance to the contrary arises from our
taking too partial and abstract a view of the cause. We look at the
action e.g. of Napoleon with reference merely to the selfishness
of his motives. We forget how far his motives, in respect of their
concrete reality, in respect of the actual nature of the ends
pursued as distinct from the particular relation in which those
ends stood to his personality, were made for him by influences with
which his selfishness had nothing to do. It was not his selfishness
that made France a nation, or presented to him continuously an end
consisting in the national aggrandisement of France, or at particular
periods such ends as the expulsion of the Austrians from Italy, the
establishment of a centralised political order in France on the
basis of social equality, the promulgation of the civil code, the
maintenance of the French system along the Rhine. His selfishness
gave a particular character to his pursuit of these ends, and (so far
as it did so) did so for evil. Finally it led him into a train of
action altogether mischievous. But at each stage of his career, if
we would understand what his particular agency really was, we must
take account of his ends in their full character, as determined by
influences with, which, his passion for glory no doubt co-operated,
but which, did not originate with it or with him, and in some measure
represented the struggle of mankind towards perfection.

130. And not only must we thus correct our too abstract views of the
particular agency of such a man as Napoleon. If we would understand
the apparent results of his action, we must bear in mind how much
besides his particular agency has really gone to produce them, so far
as they were good; how much of unnoticed effort on the part of men
obscure because unselfish, how much of silent process in the general
heart of man. Napoleon was called the 'armed soldier of revolution,'
and it was in that character that he rendered what service he did
to men; but the revolution was not the making of him or his likes.
Caesar again we have learnt to regard as a benefactor of mankind, but
it was not Caesar that made the Roman law, through which chiefly or
solely the Roman empire became a blessing. The idiosyncrasy, then,
of the men who have been most conspicuous in the production of great
changes in the condition of mankind, though it has been an essential
element in their production, has been so only so far as it has been
overborne by influences and directed to ends, which were indeed not
external to the men in question--which on the contrary helped to make
them inwardly and spiritually what they really were--but which formed
no part of their distinguishing idiosyncrasy. If that idiosyncrasy
was conspicuously selfish, it was still not through their selfishness
that such men contributed to mould the institutions by which nations
have been civilised and developed, but through their fitness to act
as organs of impulses and ideas which had previously gained a hold on
some society of men, and for the realisation of which the means and
conditions had been preparing quite apart from the action of those
who became the most noticeable instruments of their realisation.

131. The assertion, then, that an idea of social good is represented
by, or realised in, the formation of states, is not to be met by
pointing to the selfishness and bad passions of men who have been
instrumental in forming them, if there is reason to think that the
influences, under the direction of which these passions became thus
instrumental, are due to the action of such an idea. And when we
speak thus we do not refer to any action of the idea otherwise than
in the consciousness of men. It may be legitimate, as we have seen,
to consider ideas as existing and acting otherwise, and perhaps,
on thinking the matter out, we should find ourselves compelled to
regard the idea of social good as a communication to the human
consciousness, a consciousness developing itself in time, from an
eternally complete consciousness. But here we are considering it as
a source of the moral action of men, and therefore necessarily as
having its seat in their consciousness, and the proposition advanced
is that such an idea is a determining element in the consciousness of
the most selfish men who have been instrumental in the formation or
maintenance of states; that only through its influence in directing
and controlling their actions could they be so instrumental; and
that, though its active presence in their consciousness is due to the
institutions, the organisation of life, under which they are born
and bred, the existence of these institutions is in turn due to the
action, under other conditions, of the same idea in the minds of men.

132. It is the necessity of a supreme coercive power to the existence
of a state that gives plausibility to the view that the action of
merely selfish passions may lead to the formation of states. They
have been motive causes, it would seem, in the processes by which
this 'imperium' has been established; as, e.g., the acquisition of
military power by a tribal chieftain, the conquest of one tribe
by another, the supersession of the independent prerogatives of
families by a tyrant which was the antecedent condition of the
formation of states in the ancient world, the supersession of feudal
prerogatives by the royal authority which served the same purpose in
modern Europe. It is not, however, supreme coercive power, simply
as such, but supreme coercive power exercised in a certain way and
for certain ends, that makes a state; viz. exercised according to
law, written or customary, and for the maintenance of rights. The
abstract consideration of sovereignty has led to these qualifications
being overlooked. Sovereignty = supreme coercive power, indeed,
but such power as exercised in and over a state, which means with
the qualifications specified; but the mischief of beginning with
an inquiry into sovereignty before the idea of a state has been
investigated, is that it leads us to adopt this abstract notion of
sovereignty, as merely supreme coercive power, and then, when we
come to think of the state as distinguished by sovereignty, makes
us suppose that supreme coercive power is all that is essential
to a state, forgetting that it is rather the state that makes the
sovereign, than the sovereign that makes the state. Supposing one
man had been master of all the slaves in one of the states of the
American Union, there would have been a multitude of men under one
supreme coercive power, but the slaves and the master would have
formed no state, because there would have been no recognised rights
of slave against slave enforced by the master, nor would dealings
between master and slaves have been regulated by any law. The fact
that sovereign power, as implied in the fact of its supremacy,
can alter any laws, is apt to make us overlook the necessity of
conformity to law on the part of the sovereign, if he is to be the
sovereign of a state. A power that altered laws otherwise than
according to law, according to a constitution, written or unwritten,
would be incompatible with the existence of a state, which is a body
of persons, recognised by each other as having rights, and possessing
certain institutions for the maintenance of those rights. The office
of the sovereign, as an institution of such a society, is to protect
those rights from invasion, either from without, from foreign
nations, or from within, from members of the society who cease to
behave as such. Its supremacy is the society's independence of such
attacks from without or within. It is an agency of the society, or
the society itself acting for this end. If the power, existing for
this end, is used on the whole otherwise than in conformity either
with a formal constitution or with customs which virtually serve the
purpose of a constitution, it is no longer an institution for the
maintenance of rights and ceases to be the agent of a state. We only
count Russia a state by a sort of courtesy on the supposition that
the power of the Czar, though subject to no constitutional control,
is so far exercised in accordance with a recognised tradition of what
the public good requires as to be on the whole a sustainer of rights.

It is true that, just as in a state, all law being derived from the
sovereign, there is a sense in which the sovereign is not bound by
any law, so there is a sense in which all rights are derived from
the sovereign, and no power which the sovereign refuses to allow
can be a right; but it is only in the sense that, the sovereign
being the state acting in a certain capacity, and the state being
an institution for the more complete and harmonious maintenance of
the rights of its members, a power, claimed as a right, but which
the state or sovereign refuses to allow, cannot be really compatible
with the general system of rights. In other words, it is true only
on the supposition that a state is made a state by the functions
which it fulfils of maintaining the rights of its members as a
whole or a system, in such a way that none gains at the expense of
another (no one has any power guaranteed to him through another's
being deprived of that power). Thus the state, or the sovereign as
a characteristic institution of the state, does not create rights,
but gives fuller reality to rights already existing. It secures and
extends the exercise of powers, which men, influenced in dealing with
each other by an idea of common good, had recognised in each other
as being capable of direction to that common good, and had already
in a certain measure secured to each other in consequence of chat
recognition. It is not a state unless it does so.

133. It may be said that this is an arbitrary restriction of the
term 'state.' If any other word, indeed, can be found to express
the same thing, by all means let it be used instead. But some word
is wanted for the purpose, because as a matter of fact societies of
men, already possessing rights, and whose dealings with each other
have been regulated by customs conformable to those rights, but not
existing in the form to which the term 'state' has just been applied
(i.e. not having a systematic law in which the rights recognised are
harmonised, and which is enforced by a power strong enough at once
to protect a society against disturbance within and aggression from
without), have come to take on that form. A word is needed to express
that form of society, both according to the idea of it which has
been operative in the minds of the members of the societies which
have undergone the change described (an idea only gradually taking
shape as the change proceeded), and according to the more explicit
and distinct idea of it which we form in reflecting on the process.
The word 'state' is the one naturally used for the purpose. The exact
degree to which the process must have been carried before the term
'state' can be applied to the people in which it has gone on, cannot
be precisely determined, but as a matter of fact we never apply it
except in cases where it has gone some way, and we are justified in
speaking of the state according to its idea as the society in which
it is completed.

134. It is a mistake then to think of the state as an aggregation
of individuals under a sovereign; equally so whether we suppose the
individuals as such, or apart from what they derive from society, to
possess natural rights, or suppose them to depend on the sovereign
for the possession of rights. A state presupposes other forms of
community, with the rights that arise out of them, and only exists
as sustaining, securing, and completing them. In order to make a
state there must have been families of which the members recognised
rights in each other (recognised in each other powers capable of
direction by reference to a common good); there must further have
been intercourse between families, or between tribes that have grown
out of families, of which each in the same sense recognised rights
in the other. The recognition of a right being very short of its
definition, the admission of a right in each other by two parties,
whether individuals, families, or tribes, being very different from
agreement as to what the right consists in, what it is a right to do
or acquire, the rights recognised need definition and reconciliation
in a general law. When such a general law has been arrived at,
regulating the position of members of a family towards each other
and the dealings of families or tribes with each other; when it is
voluntarily recognised by a community of families or tribes, and
maintained by a power strong enough at once to enforce it within
the community and to defend the integrity of the community against
attacks from without, then the elementary state has been formed.

135. That, however, is the beginning, not the end, of the state.
When once it has come into being, new rights arise in it (1) through
the claim for recognition on the part of families and tribes living
on the same territory with those which in community form the state,
but living at first in some relation of subjection to them. A common
humanity, of which language is the expression, necessarily leads to
the recognition of some good as common to these families with those
which form the state. This is in principle the recognition of rights
on their part; and the consequent embodiment of this recognition in
the laws of the state is their admission as members of it. (Instances
of this process are found in the states of Greece and the early
history of Rome.) (2) The same thing may happen in regard to external
communities ('external' territorially), whether these have been
already formed into states or no. It may happen through the conquest
of one by another, through their submission to a common conqueror,
as under the Roman empire, or through voluntary combination, as
with the Swiss cantons and the United States of America. However
the combination may arise, it results in new rights as between the
combined communities within the system of a single state. (3) The
extended intercourse between individuals, which the formation of the
state renders possible, leads to new complications in their dealings
with each other, and with it to new forms of right, especially in
regard to property; rights as far removed from any obvious foundation
on the _suum cuique_ principle as the right of a college to the great
tithes of a parish for which it does nothing. (4) The administration
of the state gives rise to rights, to the establishment of powers
necessary for its administration. (5) New situations of life may
arise out of the extended dealings of man with man which the state
renders possible (e.g. through the crowding of population in certain
localities) which make new modes of protecting the people a matter
virtually of right. And, as new rights arise in the state once
formed, so further purposes are served. It leads to a development and
moralisation of man beyond the stage which they must have reached
before it could be possible.

136. On this I shall dwell more in my next course of lectures. What
I am now concerned to point out is that, however necessary a factor
force may have been in the process by which states have been formed
and transformed, it has only been such a factor as co-operating with
those ideas without which rights could not exist. I say 'could not
_exist_,' not 'could not be recognised,' because rights are made by
recognition. There is no right 'but thinking makes it so'; none that
is not derived from some idea that men have about each other. Nothing
is more real than a right, yet its existence is purely ideal, if by
'ideal' is meant that which is not dependent on anything material
but has its being solely in consciousness. It is to these ideal
realities that force is subordinate in the creation and development
of states. The force of conquest from without, the force exercised
within communities by such agents as the early Greek tyrants or the
royal suppressors of feudalism in modern Europe, has only contributed
to the formation of states in so far as its effects have taken
a character which did not belong to them as effects of force; a
character due to their operation in a moral world, in which rights
already existed, resting on the recognition by men of each other as
determined, or capable of being determined, by the conception of a
common good. It is not indeed true that only a state can produce a
state, though modern history might seem to favour that notion. As a
matter of fact, the formation of modern states through feudalism out
of an earlier tribal system has been dependent on ideas derived from
the Roman state, if not on institutions actually handed down from it;
and the improvement and development of the state-system which has
taken place since the French Revolution has been through agencies
which all presuppose and are determined by the previous existence
of states. But the Greek states, so far as we know, were a first
institution of the kind, not a result of propagation from previously
existing states. But the action which brought them into being was
only effectual for its purpose, because the idea of right, though
only in the form of family or tribal right, was already in operation.

    H. _HAS THE CITIZEN RIGHTS AGAINST THE STATE?_

137. I propose to pursue the inquiry, begun in my last course,
into the nature and functions of the state. In the last course we
were chiefly occupied with criticism. We have seen that no true
conception of the rights of individuals against each other or against
the state, or of the rights of the state over individuals, can be
arrived at, while we look upon the state merely as an aggregation
of individuals under a sovereign power that is able to compel their
obedience, and consider this power of compelling a general obedience
to be the characteristic thing in a state. So long as this view is
retained, no satisfactory answer can be given to the question, by
what right the sovereign compels the obedience of individuals. It can
only be met either by some device for representing the individuals
as so consenting to the exercise of sovereign power over them that
it is no violation of their individual rights, or by representing
the rights of individuals as derived from the sovereign and thus
as having no existence against it. But it is obviously very often
against the will of individuals that the sovereign power is exercised
over them; indeed if it were not so, its characteristic as a power
of compulsion would be lost; it would not be a sovereign power; and
the fact that the majority of a given multitude may consent to its
exercise over an unconsenting minority, is no justification for its
exercise over that minority, if its justification is founded on
consent; the representation that the minority virtually consent to be
bound by the will of the majority being an obvious fiction. On the
other hand, the theory that all right is derived from a sovereign,
that it is a power of which the sovereign secures the exercise to
the individual, and that therefore there can be no right against the
sovereign, conflicts with the primary demands of human consciousness.
It implies the identification of 'I ought' with 'I am forced to.'
Reducing the 'right' of the sovereign simply to a power, it makes
it unintelligible that this power should yet represent itself as a
right, and claim obedience to itself as such. No such theory indeed
admits of consistent statement. To say (with Hobbes) that a law may
be inequitable or pernicious, though it cannot be unjust, is to admit
a criticism of laws, a distinction between those enactments of the
sovereign which are what they should be and those which are not. And
this is to recognise the individual's demand for a justification of
the laws which he obeys; to admit in effect that there is some rule
of right, of which the individual is conscious, and to which law
ought to conform.

138. It is equally impossible, then, to hold that the right of the
sovereign power in a state over its members is dependent on their
consent, and, on the other hand, that these members have no rights
except such as are constituted and conferred upon them by the
sovereign. The sovereign, and the state itself as distinguished by
the existence of a sovereign power, presupposes rights and is an
institution for their maintenance. But these rights do not belong to
individuals as they might be in a state of nature, or as they might
be if each acted irrespectively of the others. They belong to them
as members of a society in which each recognises the other as an
originator of action in the same sense in which he is conscious of
being so himself (as an 'ego,' as himself the object which determines
the action), and thus regards the free exercise of his own powers as
dependent upon his allowing an equally free exercise of his powers
to every other member of the society. There is no harm in saying
that they belong to individuals as such, if we understand what
we mean by 'individual,' and if we mean by it a self-determining
subject, conscious of itself as one among other such subjects, and
of its relation to them as making it what it is; for then there is
no opposition between the attachment of rights to the individuals
as such and their derivation from society. They attach to the
individual, but only as a member of a society of free agents, as
recognising himself and recognised by others to be such a member, as
doing and done by accordingly. A right, then, to act unsocially,--to
act otherwise than as belonging to a society of which each member
keeps the exercise of his powers within the limits necessary to the
like exercise by all the other members,--is a contradiction. No one
can say that, unless he has consented to such a limitation of his
powers, he has a right to resist it. The fact of his not consenting
would be an extinction of all right on his part.

139. The state then presupposes rights, and rights of individuals. It
is a form which society takes in order to maintain them. But rights
have no being except in a society of men recognising each other as
ἴσοι καὶ ὅμοιοι. [1] They are constituted by that mutual recognition.
In analysing the nature of any right, we may conveniently look at
it on two sides, and consider it as on the one hand a claim of the
individual, arising out of his rational nature, to the free exercise
of some faculty; on the other, as a concession of that claim by
society, a power given by it to the individual of putting the claim
in force. But we must be on our guard against supposing that these
distinguishable sides have any really separate existence. It is only
a man's consciousness of having an object in common with others, a
well-being which is consciously his in being theirs and theirs in
being his,--only the fact that they are recognised by him and he by
them as having this object,--that gives him the claim described.
There can be no reciprocal claim on the part of a man and an animal
each to exercise his powers unimpeded by the other, because there is
no consciousness common to them. But a claim founded on such a common
consciousness is already a claim conceded; already a claim to which
reality is given by social recognition, and thus implicitly a right.

[1] [Greek ἴσοι καὶ ὅμοιοι (isoi kai homoioi) = equals and alike,
plural Tr]

140. It is in this sense that a slave has 'natural rights' They are
'natural' in the sense of being independent of, and in conflict with,
the laws of the state in which he lives, but they are not independent
of social relations. They arise out of the fact that there is a
consciousness of objects common to the slave with those among whom
he lives,--whether other slaves or the family of his owner,--and
that this consciousness constitutes at once a claim on the part of
each of those who share it to exercise a free activity conditionally
upon his allowing a like activity in the others, and a recognition
of this claim by the others through which it is realised. The slave
thus derives from his social relations a real right which the law of
the state refuses to admit. The law cannot prevent him from acting
and being treated, within certain limits, as a member of a society of
persons freely seeking a common good. Now that capability of living
in a certain limited community with a certain limited number of
human beings, which the slave cannot be prevented from exhibiting,
is in principle a capability of living in community with any other
human beings, supposing the necessary training to be allowed; and as
every such capability constitutes a right, we are entitled to say
that the slave has a right to citizenship, to a recognised equality
of freedom with any and every one with whom he has to do, and that
in refusing him not only citizenship but the means of training his
capability of citizenship, the state is violating a right founded on
that common human consciousness which is evinced both by the language
which the slave speaks, and by actual social relations subsisting
between him and others. And on the same principle upon which a state
is violating natural rights in maintaining slavery, it does the same
in using force, except under the necessity of self-defence, against
members of another community. Membership of any community is so
far, in principle, membership of all communities as to constitute a
right to be treated as a freeman by all other men, to be exempt from
subjection to force except for prevention of force.

141. A man may thus have rights as a member of a family or of human
society in any other form, without being a member of a state at
all,--rights which remain rights though any particular state or all
states refuse to recognise them; and a member of a state, on the
ground of that capability of living as a freeman among freemen which
is implied in his being a member of a state, has rights as against
all other states and their members. These latter rights are in fact
during peace recognised by all civilised states. It is the object of
'private international law' to reduce them to a system. But though
it follows from this that the state does not create rights, it may
be still true to say that the members of a state derive their rights
from the state and have no rights against it. We have already seen
that a right against society, as such, is an impossibility; that
every right is derived from some social relation: that a right
against any group of associated men depends on association, as
ἴσος καὶ ὅμοιος [1], with them and with some other men. Now for
the member of a state to say that his rights are derived from his
social relations, and to say that they are derived from his position
as member of a state, are the same thing. The state is for him the
complex of those social relations out of which rights arise, so far
as those rights have come to be regulated and harmonised according to
a general law, which is recognised by a certain multitude of persons,
and which there is sufficient power to secure against violation from
without and from within. The other forms of community which precede
and are independent of the formation of the state, do not continue
to exist outside it, nor yet are they superseded by it. They are
carried on into it. They become its organic members, supporting its
life and in turn maintained by it in a new harmony with each other.
Thus the citizen's rights, e.g. as a husband or head of a family or a
holder of property, though such rights, arising out of other social
relations than that of citizen to citizen, existed when as yet there
was no state, are yet to the citizen derived from the state, from
that more highly developed form of society in which the association
of the family and that of possessors who respect each other's
possessions are included as in a fuller whole; which secures to the
citizen his family rights and his rights as a holder of property, but
under conditions and limitations which the membership of the fuller
whole--the reconciliation of rights arising out of one sort of social
capability with those arising out of another--renders necessary. Nor
can the citizen have any right against the state, in the sense of a
right to act otherwise than as a member of some society, the state
being for its members the society of societies, the society in which
all their claims upon each other are mutually adjusted.

[1] [Greek ἴσος καὶ ὅμοιος (isos kai homoios) = equal and alike,
singular Tr.]

142. But what exactly is meant by the citizen's acting 'as a member
of his state'? What does the assertion that he can have no right
to act otherwise than as a member of his state amount to? Does it
mean that he has no right to disobey the law of the state to which
he belongs, whatever that law may be? that he is not entitled to
exercise his power in any way that the law forbids and to refuse
to exercise them in any way that it commands? This question was
virtually dealt with before [1] in considering the justifiability of
resistance to an ostensible sovereign. The only unqualified answer
that can be given to it is one that may seem too general to be of
much practical use, viz. that so far as the laws anywhere or at any
time in force fulfil the idea of a state, there can be no right to
disobey them; or, that there can be no right to disobey the law of
the state except in the interest of the state; i.e. for the purpose
of making the state in respect of its actual laws more completely
correspond to what it is in tendency or idea, viz. the reconciler
and sustainer of the rights that arise out of the social relations
of men. On this principle there can be no right to disobey or evade
any particular law on the ground that it interferes with any freedom
of action, any right of managing his children or 'doing what he
will with his own,' which but for that law the individual would
possess. Any power which has been allowed to the individual up to a
certain time, he is apt to regard as permanently his right. It has,
indeed, been so far his right, if the exercise of that power has been
allowed with any reference to social good, but it does not, as he
is apt to think, remain his right when a law has been enacted that
interferes with it. A man e.g. has been allowed to drive at any pace
he likes through the streets, to build houses without any reference
to sanitary conditions, to keep his children at home or send them to
work 'analphabetic,' to buy or sell alcoholic drinks at his pleasure.
If laws are passed interfering with any or all of these powers,
he says that his rights are being violated. But he only possessed
these powers as rights through membership of a society which secured
them to him, and of which the only permanent bond consists in the
reference to the well-being of its members as a whole. It has been
the social recognition grounded on that reference that has rendered
certain of his powers rights. If upon new conditions arising, or
upon elements of social good being taken account of which had been
overlooked before, or upon persons being taken into the reckoning as
capable of participation in the social well-being who had previously
been treated merely as means to its attainment,--if in any of these
ways or otherwise the reference to social well-being suggest the
necessity of some further regulation of the individual's liberty to
do as he pleases, he can plead no right against this regulation,
for every right that he has possessed has been dependent on that
social judgment of its compatibility with general well-being which in
respect to the liberties in question is now reversed.

[1] [Above, sections 100, 101. RLN]

143. 'Is then,' it may be asked, 'the general judgment as to the
requirements of social well-being so absolutely authoritative that
no individual right can exist against it? What if according to this
judgment the institution of slavery is so necessary that citizens are
prohibited by law from teaching slaves to read and from harbouring
runaways? or if according to it the maintenance of a certain form
of worship is so necessary that no other worship can be allowed
and no opinion expressed antagonistic to it? Has the individual no
rights against enactments founded on such accepted views of social
well-being?' We may answer: A right against society as such, a right
to act without reference to the needs or good of society, is an
impossibility, since every right depends on some social relation, and
a right against any group of associated men depends upon association
on some footing of equality with them or with some other men. We
saw how the right of the slave really rested on this basis, on a
social capacity shown in the footing on which he actually lives
with other men. On this principle it would follow, if we regard the
state as the sustainer and harmoniser of social relations, that the
individual can have no right against the state; that its law must be
to him of absolute authority. But in fact, as actual states at best
fulfil but partially their ideal function, we cannot apply this rule
to practice. The general principle that the citizen must never act
otherwise than as a citizen, does not carry with it an obligation
under all conditions to conform to the law of his state, since those
laws may be inconsistent with the true end of the state as the
sustainer and harmoniser of social relations. The assertion, however,
by the citizen of any right which the state does not recognise must
be founded on a reference to an acknowledged social good. The fact
that the individual would like to exercise the power claimed as a
right does not render the exercise of it a right, nor does the fact
that he has been hitherto allowed to exercise it render it a right,
if social requirements have arisen under changed conditions, or have
newly come to be recognised, with which its exercise is incompatible.
The reason that the assertion of an illegal right must be founded on
reference to acknowledged social good is that, as we have seen, no
exercise of a power, however abstractedly desirable for the promotion
of human good it might be, can be claimed as a right unless there is
some common consciousness of utility shared by the person making the
claim and those on whom it is made. It is not a question whether or
no it ought to be claimed as a right; it simply cannot be claimed
except on this condition. It would have been impossible, e.g., in
an ancient state, where the symbol of social union was some local
worship, for a monotheistic reformer to claim a right to attempt the
subversion of that worship. If a duty to do so had suggested itself,
consciousness of the duty could never have expressed itself in the
form of a claim of right, in the absence of any possible sense of
a public interest in the religious revolution to which the claim
could be addressed. Thus, just as it is not the exercise of every
power, properly claimable as a right, that is a right in the full
or explicit sense of being legally established, so it is not every
power, of which the exercise would be desirable in an ideal state
of things, that is properly claimable as a right. The condition of
its being so claimable is that its exercise should be contributory
to some social good which the public conscience is capable of
appreciating, not necessarily one which in the existing prevalence
of private interests can obtain due acknowledgment, but still one of
which men in their actions and language show themselves to be aware.

144. Thus to the question, Has the individual no rights against
enactments founded on imperfect views of social well-being? we may
answer, He has no rights against them founded on any right to do
as he likes. Whatever counter-rights he has must be founded on a
relation to the social well-being, and that a relation of which his
fellow -citizens are aware. He must be able to point to some public
interest, generally recognised as such, which is involved in the
exercise of the power claimed by him as a right; to show that it is
not the general well-being, even as conceived by his fellow-citizens,
but some special interest of a class that is concerned in preventing
the exercise of the power claimed. In regard to the right of teaching
or harbouring the slave, he must appeal to the actual capacity of the
slave for community with other men as evinced in the manner described
above, to the recognition of this capacity as shown by the actual
behaviour of the citizens in many respects towards the slave, to
the addition to social well-being that results from the realisation
of this capacity in all who possess it through rights being legally
guaranteed to them. In this way he must show that the reference to
social well-being, on which is founded the recognition of powers as
rights, if fairly and thoroughly carried out, leads to the exercise
of powers in favour of the slave, in the manner described, not to
the prohibition of that exercise as the supposed law prohibits it.
The response which in doing so he elicits from the conscience of
fellow-citizens shows that in talking of the slave as 'a man and a
brother,' he is exercising what is implicitly his right, though it is
a right which has not become explicit through legal enactments. This
response supplies the factor of social recognition which, as we have
seen, is necessary in order to render the exercise of any power a
right. To have an implicit right, however, to exercise a power which
the law disallows is not the same thing as having a right to exercise
that right. The right may be claimed without the power being actually
exercised so long as the law prohibits its exercise. The question,
therefore, would arise whether the citizen was doing his duty as
such--acting as a member of the state--if he not merely did what he
could for the repeal of the law prohibiting the instruction of a
slave or the assistance of runaways, but himself in defiance of the
law instructed and assisted them. As a general rule, no doubt, even
bad laws, laws representing the interests of classes or individuals
as opposed to those of the community, should be obeyed. There can
be no right to disobey them, even while their repeal is urged on
the ground that they violate rights, because the public interest,
on which all rights are founded, is more concerned in the general
obedience to law than in the exercise of those powers by individuals
or classes which the objectionable laws unfairly withhold. The
maintenance of a duty prohibiting the import of certain articles in
the interest of certain manufacturers would be no justification for
smuggling these articles. The smuggler acts for his private gain,
as does the man who buys of him; and no violation of the law for
the private gain of the violator, however unfair the law violated,
can justify itself by reference to a recognised public good, or
consequently be vindicated as a right. On the other hand, there may
be cases in which the public interest--not merely according to some
remote philosopher's view of it, but according to conceptions which
the people are able to assimilate--is best served by a violation
of some actual law. It is so in regard to slavery when the public
conscience has come to recognise a capacity for right (for exercising
powers under the control of a reference to general well-being) in a
body of men to whom legal rights have hitherto been refused, but when
some powerful class in its own interest resists the alteration of the
law. In such a case the violation of the law on behalf of the slave
is not only not a violation in the interest of the violator; the
general sense of right on which the general observance of law depends
being represented by it, there is no danger of its making a breach in
the law-abiding habits of the people.

145. 'But this,' it will be said, 'is to assume a condition of things
in which the real difficulty of the question disappears. What is to
be done when no recognition of the implicit rights of the slave can
be elicited from the public conscience; when the legal prohibitions
described are supported by the only conceptions of general good of
which the body of citizens is capable? Has the citizen still a right
to disregard these legal prohibitions? Is the assertion of such a
right compatible with the doctrine that social recognition of any
mode of action as contributory to the common good is necessary to
constitute a right so to act, and that no member of a state can
have a right to act otherwise than according to that position?' The
question, be it observed, is not as to the right of the slave, but
as to the right of the citizen to treat the slave as having rights
in a state of which the law forbids his being so treated. The claim
of the slave to be free, his right implicit to have rights explicit,
i.e. to membership of a society of which each member is treated by
the rest as entitled to seek his own good in his own way, on the
supposition that he so seeks it as not to interfere with the like
freedom of quest on the part of others, rests, as we have seen, on
the fact that the slave is determined by conceptions of a good common
to himself with others, as shown by the actual social relations in
which he lives. No state-law can neutralise this right. The state
may refuse him family rights and rights of property, but it cannot
help his living as a member of a family, acting and being treated as
a father, husband, son, or brother, and therefore cannot extinguish
the rights which are necessarily involved in his so acting and being
so treated. Nor can it prevent him from appropriating things and from
associating with others on the understanding that they respect each
other's appropriations, and thus possessing and exercising rights of
property. He has thus rights which the state neither gives nor can
take away, and they amount to or constitute a right to freedom in
the sense explained. The state, under which the slave is a slave,
refusing to recognise this right, he is not limited in its exercise
by membership of the state. He has a right to assert his right to
such membership in any way compatible with that susceptibility to
the claims of human fellowship on which the right rests. Other men
have claims upon him, conditioning his rights, but the state, as
such, which refuses to recognise his rights, has no claim on him. The
obligation to observe the law, because it is the law, does not exist
for him.

146. It is otherwise with the citizen. The slave has a claim upon him
to be treated in a certain way, the claim which is properly described
as that of a common humanity. But the state which forbids him so to
treat the slave has also a claim upon him, a claim which embodies
many of the claims that arise out of a common humanity in a form
that reconciles them with each other. Now it may be argued that the
claim of the state is only absolutely paramount on the supposition
that in its commands and prohibitions it takes account of all the
claims that arise out of human fellowship; that its authority over
the individual is in principle the authority of those claims, taken
as a whole; that if, as in the case supposed, its ordinances conflict
with those claims as possessed by a certain class of persons, their
authority, which is essentially a conditional or derived authority,
disappears; that a disregard of them in the interest of the claims
which they disregard is really conformity to the requirements of
the state according to its true end or idea, since it interferes
with none of the claims or interests which the state has its value
in maintaining or protecting, but, on the contrary, forces on
the attention of members of the state claims which they hitherto
disregarded; and that if the conscience of the citizens is so far
mastered by the special private interests which the institution of
slavery breeds that it cannot be brought to recognise action on the
slave's behalf as contributory to a common good, yet there is no
ground under such conditions for considering a man's fellow-citizens
to be the sole organs of the recognition which is needed to render
his power of action a right; that the needful recognition is at any
rate forthcoming from the slave, and from all those acquainted with
the action in whom the idea of a good common to each man with others
operates freely.

147. This may be truly urged, but it does not therefore follow that
the duty of befriending the slave is necessarily paramount to the
duty of obeying the law which forbids his being befriended: and if it
is possible for the latter duty to be paramount, it will follow, on
the principle that there is no right to violate a duty, that under
certain conditions the right of helping the slave may be cancelled
by the duty of obeying the prohibitory law. It would be so if the
violation of law in the interest of the slave were liable to result
in general anarchy, not merely in the sense of the dissolution of
this or that form of civil combination, but of the disappearance of
the conditions under which any civil combination is possible; for
such a destruction of the state would mean a general loss of freedom,
a general substitution of force for mutual good-will in men's
dealings with each other, that would outweigh the evil of any slavery
under such limitations and regulations as an organised state imposes
on it.

    I. _PRIVATE RIGHTS._ _THE RIGHT TO LIFE AND LIBERTY._

148. Returning from this digression, we resume our consideration of
the nature and functions of the state. In order to understand this
nature, we must understand the nature of those rights which do not
come into being with the state, but arise out of social relations
that may exist where a state is not; it being the first though
not the only office of the state to maintain those rights. They
depend for their existence, indeed, on society, a society of men
who recognise each other as ἴσοι καὶ ὅμοιοι, as capable of a common
well-being, but not on society's having assumed the form of a state.
They may therefore be treated as claims of the individual without
reference to the form of the society which concedes or recognises
them, and on whose recognition, as we have seen, their nature as
rights depends. Only it must be borne in mind that the form in which
these claims are admitted and acted on by men in their dealings with
each other varies with the form of society; that the actual form,
e.g., in which the individual's right of property is admitted under
a patriarchal _régime_ is very different from that in which it is
admitted in a state; and that though the principle of each right is
throughout the same, it is a principle which only comes to be fully
recognised and acted on when the state has not only been formed, but
fully developed according to its idea.

149. The rights which may be treated as independent of the state
in the sense explained are of course those which are commonly
distinguished as _private_, in opposition to _public_ rights. 'If
rights be analysed, they will be found to consist of several kinds.
For, first, they are such as regard a man's own person; secondly,
such as regard his dominion over the external and sensible things by
which he is surrounded; thirdly, such as regard his private relations
as a member of a family; fourthly, such as regard his social state or
condition as a member of the community: the first of which classes
may be designated as _personal rights_; the second, as _rights of
property_; the third, as _rights in private relations_; and the
fourth, as _public rights_.' (Stephen, _Comm_., I, p. 136.)

150. An objection might fairly be made to distinguishing one class
of rights as 'personal,' on the ground that all rights are so;
not merely in the legal sense of 'person' according to which the
proposition is a truism, since every right implies a person as its
subject, but in the moral sense, since all rights depend on that
capacity in the individual for being determined by a conception of
well-being, as an object at once for himself and for others, which
constitutes personality in the moral sense. By personal rights in the
above classification are meant rights of life and liberty, i.e. of
preserving one's body from the violence of other men, and of using
it as an instrument only of one's own will; if of another's, still
only through one's own. The reason why these come to be spoken of
as 'personal' is probably the same with the reason why we talk of a
man's 'person' in the sense simply of his body. They may, however,
be reckoned in a special sense personal even by those who consider
all rights personal, because the person's possession of a body and
its exclusive determination by his own will is the condition of
his exercising any other rights,--indeed, of all manifestation of
personality. Prevent a man from possessing property (in the ordinary
sense), and his personality may still remain. Prevent him (if it were
possible) from using his body to express a will, and the will itself
could not become a reality; he would not be really a person.

151. If there are such things as rights at all, then, there must be a
right to life and liberty, or, to put it more properly, to free life.
No distinction can be made between the right to life and the right
to liberty, for there can be no right to mere life, no right to life
on the part of a being that has not also the right to use the life
according to the motions of its own will. What is the foundation of
this right? The answer is, capacity on the part of the subject for
membership of a society, for determination of the will, and through
it of the bodily organisation, by the conception of a well-being
as common to self with others. This capacity is the foundation of
the right, or the right potentially, which becomes actual through
the recognition of the capacity by a society, and through the power
which the society in consequence secures to the individual of acting
according to the capacity. In principle, or intrinsically, or in
respect of that which it has it in itself to become, the right is
one that belongs to every man in virtue of his human nature (of the
qualities that render him capable of any fellowship with any other
men), and is a right as between him and any other men; because, as
we have seen, the qualities which enable him to act as a member of
any one society having the general well-being of its members for its
object (as distinct from any special object requiring special talent
for its accomplishment) form a capacity for membership of any other
such society; but actually, or as recognised, it only gradually
becomes a right of a man, as man, and against all men.

152. At first it is only a right of the man as a member of some one
particular society, and a right as between him and the other members
of that society, the society being naturally a family or tribe.
Then, as several such societies come to recognise, in some limited
way, a common well-being, and thus to associate on settled terms,
it comes to be a right not merely between the members of any one of
the societies, but between members of the several families or tribes
in their dealings with each other, not, however, as men, but only
as belonging to this or that particular family. This is the state
of things in which, if one man is damaged or killed, compensation
is made according to the terms of some customary law by the family
or tribe of the offender to that of the man damaged or killed, the
compensation varying according to the rank of the family. Upon
this system, generally through some fusion of family demarcations
and privileges, whether through pressure upward of a population
hitherto inferior, or through a levelling effected by some external
power, there supervenes one in which the relation between citizen
and citizen, as such, is substituted for that between family and
family as such. This substitution is one of the essential processes
in the formation of the state. It is compatible, however, with the
closest limitation of the privileges of citizenship, and implies
no acknowledgment in man as man of the right to free life ascribed
to the citizen as citizen. In the ancient world the companion
of citizenship is everywhere slavery, and it was only actual
citizenship, not any such capacity for becoming a citizen as might
naturally be held to be implied in civil birth, that was considered
to give a right to live; for the exposure of children was everywhere
practised [1] (and with the approval of the philosophers), a practice
in strong contrast with the principle of modern law that even a child
in the womb has a right to live.

[1] Tacitus speaks of it as a peculiarity of the Jews and Germans
that they did not allow the killing of younger children (_Hist_.,
V, 5; _Germ_. 19). Aristotle (Pol. 1335, b, 19) enjoins that μηδὲν
πεπηρωμένον shall be brought up, but seems to condemn exposure,
preferring that the required limit of population should be preserved
by destruction of the embryo, on the principle that τὸ ὅσιον καὶ τὸ
μὴ διωρισμένον τῇ αἰσθήσει καὶ τῷ ζῆν ἔσται Plato's rule is the same
as regards the defective children and the procuring abortion, but he
leaves it in the dark whether he meant any healthy children, actually
born, to be put out of the way (_Rep_. 460 C. and 461 C.).

[Greek μηδὲν πεπηρωμένον (meden peperomenon) = no deformed [child],
τὸ ὅσιον καὶ τὸ μὴ διωρισμένον τῇ αἰσθήσει καὶ τῷ ζῆν ἔσται (to
hosion kai to me diorismenon te aisthesei kai to zen estai) = what
may lawfully be done in such cases [of children not deformed] depends
on the question of sensation and life Tr]

153. The influences commonly pointed out as instrumental in
bringing about the recognition of rights in the man, as independent
of particular citizenship, are these: (1) The adjudication by
Roman praetors of questions at issue between citizens and those
who were not so, which led to the formation of the system of
'equity,' independent of the old civil law and tending gradually
to be substituted for it. The existence of such a system, however,
presupposes the recognition of rights so far independent of
citizenship in a particular state as to obtain between citizens of
different states. (2) The doctrine of a 'law of nature' applicable
to dealings of all men, popularised by the Stoics. (3) The Christian
conception of the universal redemption of a brotherhood, of which all
could become members through a mental act within the power of all.

154. The admission of a right to free life on the part of every man,
as man, does in fact logically imply the conception of all men as
forming one society in which each individual has some service to
render, one organism in which each has a function to fulfil. There
can be no claim on society such as constitutes a right, except in
respect of a capacity freely (i.e. under determination by conception
of the good) to contribute to its good. If the claim is made on
behalf of any and every human being, it must be a claim on human
society as a whole, and there must be a possible common good of
human society as a whole, conceivable as independent of the special
conditions of particular societies, to render such a claim possible.
We often find, however, that men assimilate a practical idea in
respect of one of its implications without doing so in respect of
the rest. Thus the idea of the individual's right to free life has
been strongly laid hold of in Christendom in what may be called an
abstract or negative way, but little notice has been taken of what
it involves. Slavery is everywhere condemned. It is established that
no one has a right to prevent the individual from determining the
conditions of his own life. We treat life as sacred even in the human
embryo, and even in hopeless idiots and lunatics recognise a right to
live, a recognition which can only be rationally explained on either
or both of two grounds: (1) that we do not consider either their
lives, or the society which a man may freely serve, to be limited to
this earth, and thus ascribe to them a right to live on the strength
of a social capacity which under other conditions may become what
it is not here; or (2) that the distinction between curable and
incurable, between complete and incomplete, social incapacity is so
indefinite that we cannot in any case safely assume it to be such as
to extinguish the right to live. Or perhaps it may be argued that
even in cases where the incapacity is ascertainably incurable, the
patient has still a social function (as undoubtedly those who are
incurably ill in other ways have), a passive function as the object
of affectionate ministrations arising out of family instincts and
memories; and that the right to have life protected corresponds to
this passive social function. The fact, however, that we have almost
to cast about in certain cases for an explanation of the established
belief in the sacredness of human life, shows how deeply rooted that
belief is unless where some counter-belief interferes with it.

155. On the other hand, it is equally noticeable that there are
counter-beliefs which, under conditions, do neutralise it, and that
certain other beliefs, which form its proper complement, have very
slight hold on the mind of modern Christendom. It is taken for
granted that the exigencies of the state in war, whether the war be
necessary or not for saving the state from dissolution, absolutely
neutralise the right to live. We are little influenced by the idea of
the universal brotherhood of men, of mankind as forming one society
with a common good, of which the conception may determine the action
of its members. In international dealings we are apt to suppose that
it can have no place at all. Yet, as has been pointed out, it is
the proper correlative of the admission of a right to free life as
belonging to man in virtue simply of his human nature. And though
this right can only be grounded on the capacity, which belongs to
the human nature, for freely fulfilling some function in the social
organism, we do very little to give reality to the capacity or to
enable it to realise itself. We content ourselves with enacting that
no man shall be used by other men as a means against his will, but we
leave it to be pretty much a matter of chance whether or no he shall
be qualified to fulfil any social function, to contribute anything to
the common good, and to do so freely (i.e. under the conception of a
common good). The only reason why a man should not be used by other
men simply as a means to their ends, is that he should use himself
as a means to an end which is really his and theirs at once. But
while we say that he shall not be used as a means, we often leave him
without the chance of using himself for any social end at all.

156. Four questions then arise: (1) With what right do the
necessities of war override the individual's right of life? (2) In
what relation do the rights of states to act for their own interest
stand to that right of human society, as such, of which the existence
is implied in the possession of right by the individual as a member
of that society, irrespectively of the laws of particular states?
(3) On what principle is it to be assumed that the individual by a
certain conduct of his own forfeits the right of free life, so that
the state (at any rate for a time) is entitled to subject him to
force; to treat him as an animal or a thing? Is this forfeiture ever
so absolute and final that the state is justified in taking away his
life? (4) What is the nature and extent of the individual's claim
to be enabled to realise that capacity for contributing to a social
good, which is the foundation of his right to free life?

    K. _THE RIGHT OF THE STATE OVER THE INDIVIDUAL IN WAR._

157. (1) It may be admitted that to describe war as 'multitudinous
murder' is a figure of speech. The essence of murder does not lie
in the fact that one man takes away the life of another, but that
he does this to 'gain his private ends' and with 'malice' against
the person killed. I am not here speaking of the legal definition
of murder, but of murder as a term of moral reprobation, in which
sense it must be used by those who speak of war as 'multitudinous
murder.' They cannot mean murder in the legal sense, because in
that sense only 'unlawful killing,' which killing in war is not, is
murder. When I speak of 'malice,' therefore, I am not using 'malice'
in the legal sense. In that sense 'malice' is understood to be the
attribute of every 'wrongful act done intentionally without just
or lawful excuse,' [1] and is ascribed to acts (such as killing an
officer of justice, knowing him to be such, while resisting him in a
riot) in which there is no ill-will of the kind which we suppose in
murder, when we apply the term in its natural sense as one of moral
disapprobation. Of murder in the moral sense the characteristics are
those stated, and these are not present in the case of a soldier who
kills one on the other side in battle. He has no ill-will to that
particular person or to any particular person. He incurs an equal
risk with the person whom he kills, and incurs that risk not for
the sake of killing him. His object in undergoing it is not private
to himself, but a service (or what he supposes to be a service) to
his country, a good which is his own no doubt (that is implied in
his desiring it), but which he presents to himself as common to him
with others. Indeed, those who might speak of war as 'multitudinous
murder' would not look upon the soldier as a murderer. If reminded
that there cannot be a murder without a murderer, and pressed to say
who, when a bloody battle takes place, the murderer or murderers
are, they would probably point to the authors of the war. It may be
questioned, by the way, whether there has ever been a war of which
the origination could be truly said to rest with a definite person
or persons, in the same way in which the origination of an act which
would be called murder in the ordinary sense rests with a particular
person. No doubt there have been wars for which certain assignable
individuals were specially blameable, wars which they specially
helped to bring about or had special means of preventing (and the
more the wickedness of such persons is kept in mind the better); but
even in these cases the cause of the war can scarcely be held to be
gathered up within the will of any individual, or the combined will
of certain individuals, in the same way as is the cause of murder or
other punishable acts. When A.B. is murdered, the sole cause lies in
some definite volition of CD. or others, however that volition may
have been caused. But when a war 'breaks out,' though it is not to
be considered, as we are too apt to consider it, a natural calamity
which could not be prevented, it would be hard to maintain that
the sole cause lies in some definite volition on the part of some
assignable person or persons, even of those who are most to blame.
Passing over this point, however, if the acts of killing in war are
not murders (in the _moral_ sense, the _legal_ being out of the
question) because they lack those characteristics on the part of the
agent's state of mind which are necessary to constitute a murder,
the persons who cause those acts to be committed, if such persons
can be pointed out, are not the authors of murder, multitudinous
or other. They would only be so if the characteristic of 'malice,'
which is absent on the part of the immediate agent of the act, were
present on their part as its ultimate agents. But this is not the
case. However selfish their motives, they cannot fairly be construed
into ill-will towards the persons who happened to be killed in the
war; and therefore, whatever wickedness the persons responsible for
the war are guilty of, they are not guilty of 'murder' in any natural
sense of the term, nor is there any murder in the case at all.

[1] Markby, _Elements of Law_, sec. 226.

158. It does not follow from this, however, that war is ever other
than a great wrong, as a violation on a multitudinous scale of the
individual's right to life. Whether it is so or not must be discussed
on other grounds. If there is such a thing as a right to life on the
part of the individual man as such, is there any reason to doubt that
this right is violated in the case of every man killed in war? It is
not to the purpose to allege that in order to a violation of right
there must be not only a suffering of some kind on the part of the
subject of a right, but an intentional act causing it on the part of
a human agent. There is of course no violation of right when a man
is killed by a wild beast or a stroke of lightning, because there is
no right as between a man and a beast or between a man and a natural
force. But the deaths in a battle are caused distinctly by human
agency and intentional agency. The individual soldier may not have
any very distinct intention when he fires his rifle except to obey
orders, but the commanders of the army and the statesmen who send it
into the field intend the death of as many men as may be necessary
for their purpose. It is true they do not intend the death of this or
that particular person, but no more did the Irishman who fired into
a body of police guarding the Fenian prisoners. It might fairly be
held that this circumstance exempted the Irishman from the special
moral guilt of murder, though according to our law it did not exempt
him from the legal guilt expressed by that term; but no one would
argue that it made the act other than a violation of the right to
life on the part of the policeman killed. No more can the absence
of an intention to kill this or that specific person on the part of
those who cause men to be killed in battle save their act from being
a violation of the right to life.

159. Is there then any condition on the part of the persons killed
that saves the act from having this character? It may be urged that
when the war is conducted according to usages that obtain between
civilised nations, (not when it is a village-burning war like that
between the English and Afghans), the persons killed are voluntary
combatants, and οὐδεὶς ἀδικεῖται ἑκών [1]. Soldiers, it may be said,
are in the position of men who voluntarily undertake a dangerous
employment. If some of them are killed, this is not more a violation
of the human right to life than is the death of men who have engaged
to work in a dangerous coal-pit. To this it must be answered that
if soldiers did in fact voluntarily incur the special risk of death
incidental to their calling, it would not follow that the right to
life was not violated in their being--killed. It is not a right
which it rests with a man to retain or give up at his pleasure. It
is not the less a wrong that a man should be a slave because he has
sold himself into slavery. The individual's right to live is but
the other side of the right which society has in his living. The
individual can no more voluntarily rid himself of it than he can of
the social capacity, the human nature, on which it is founded. Thus,
however ready men may be for high wages to work in a dangerous pit,
a wrong is held to be done if they are killed in it. If provisions
which might have made it safe have been neglected, someone is held
responsible. If nothing could make it safe, the working of the pit
would not be allowed. The reason for not more generally applying the
power of the state to prevent voluntary noxious employments, is not
that there is no wrong in the death of the individual through the
incidents of an employment which he has voluntarily undertaken, but
that the wrong is more effectually prevented by training and trusting
individuals to protect themselves than by the state protecting them.
Thus the waste of life in war would not be the less a wrong,--not the
less a violation of the right, which subsists between all members
of society, and which none can alienate, that each should have his
life respected by society,--if it were the fact that those whose
lives are wasted voluntarily incurred the risk of losing them. But
it can scarcely be held to be the fact. Not only is it impossible,
even when war is conducted on the most civilised methods, to prevent
great incidental loss of life (to say nothing of other injury) among
non-combatants; the waste of the life of the combatants is one which
the power of the state compels. This is equally true whether the army
is raised by voluntary enlistment or by conscription. It is obviously
so in the case of conscription; but under a system of voluntary
enlistment, though the individual soldier cannot say that he in
particular has been compelled by the government to risk his life,
it is still the case that the state compels the risk of a certain
number of lives. It decrees that an army of such a size shall be
raised, though if it can get the men by voluntary hiring it does not
exercise compulsion on the men of a particular age, and it sends the
army into the field. Its compulsive agency causes the death of the
soldiers killed, not any voluntary action on the part of the soldiers
themselves. The action of the soldiers no doubt contributes to the
result, for if they all refused to fight there would be no killing,
but it is an action put in motion and directed by the power of the
state, which is compulsive in the sense that it operates on the
individual in the last resort through fear of death.

[1] [Greek οὐδεὶς ἀδικεῖται ἑκών (oudeis adikeitai hekon) = there can
be no injustice to a person who has agreed to what is done to him Tr.]

160. We have then in war a destruction of human life inflicted on
the sufferers intentionally by voluntary human agency. It is true,
as we saw, that it is not easy to say in any case by whose agency in
particular. We may say indeed that it is by the agency of the state,
but what exactly does that mean? The state here must = the sovereign
power in the state; but it is always difficult to say by whom that
power is wielded, and if we could in any case specify its present
holders, the further question will arise whether their course of
action has not been shaped for them by previous holders of power.
But however widely distributed the agency may be which causes the
destruction of life in war, it is still intentional human agency. The
destruction is not the work of accident or of nature. If then it is
to be other than a wrong, because a violation of the right to mutual
protection of life involved in the membership of human society, it
can only be because there is exercised in war some right that is
paramount to this. It may be argued that this is the case; that there
is no right to the preservation of life at the cost of losing the
necessary conditions of 'living well'; that war is in some cases the
only means of maintaining these conditions, and that where this is
so, the wrong of causing the destruction of physical life disappears
in the paramount right of preserving the conditions under which alone
moral life is possible.

161. This argument, however, seems to be only available for shifting
the quarter in which we might be at first disposed to lay the blame
of the wrong involved in war, not for changing the character of
that wrong. It goes to show that the wrong involved in the death
of certain soldiers does not necessarily lie with the government
which sends those soldiers into the field, because this may be
the only means by which the government can prevent more serious
wrong; it does not show that there is no wrong in their death. If
the integrity of any state can only be maintained at the cost of
war, and if that state is more than what many so-called states have
been,--more than an aggregation of individuals or communities under
one ruling power,--if it so far fulfils the idea of a state, that
its maintenance is necessary to the free development of the people
belonging to it; then by the authorities or people of that state no
wrong is done by the destruction of life which war involves, except
so far as they are responsible for the state of things which renders
the maintenance of the integrity of the state impossible by other
means. But how does, it come about that the integrity of such a state
is endangered? Not by accident or by the forces of nature, but by
intentional human agency in some form or other, however complicated;
and with that agency lies the wrong-doing. To determine it (as we
might be able to do if a horde of barbarians broke in on a civilised
state, compelling it to resort to war for its defence) is a matter
of small importance: what _is_ important to bear in mind (being one
of those obvious truths out of which we may allow ourselves to be
sophisticated), is that the destruction of life in war is always
wrong-doing, whoever be the wrong-doer, and that in the wars most
strictly defensive of political freedom the wrong-doing is only
removed from the defenders of political freedom to be transferred
elsewhere. If it is difficult in any case to say precisely where,
that is only a reason for more general self-reproach, for a more
humbling sense (as the preachers would say) of complicity in that
radical (but conquerable, because moral) evil of mankind which
renders such a means of maintaining political freedom necessary. The
language, indeed, which we hear from the pulpit about war being a
punishment for the sins of mankind, is perfectly true, but it needs
to be accompanied by the reminder that this punishment of sin is
simply a consequence of the sin and itself a further sin, brought
about by the action of the sinner, not an external infliction brought
about by agencies to which man is not a party.

162. In fact, however, if most wars had been wars for the maintenance
or acquisition of political freedom, the difficulty of fixing the
blame of them, or at any rate of freeing one of the parties in
each case from blame, would be much less than it really is. Of the
European wars of the last four hundred years, how many could be
fairly said to have been wars in which either or any of the parties
were fighting for this end? Perhaps the wars in which the Dutch
Republics defended themselves against Spain and against Louis XIV,
and that in which Germany shook off the dominion of Napoleon. Perhaps
the more recent struggles of Italy and Hungary against the Austrian
Government. Perhaps in the first outset of the war of 1792 the French
may be fairly held to have been defending institutions necessary
for the development of social freedom and equality. In this war,
however, the issue very soon ceased to be one between the defenders
of such institutions on the one side, and their assailants on the
other, and in most modern wars the issue has not been of this kind
at all. The wars have arisen primarily out of the rival ambition of
kings and dynasties for territorial aggrandisement, with national
antipathies and ecclesiastical ambitions, and the passions arising
out of religious partisanship, as complicating influences. As nations
have come more and more to distinguish and solidify themselves, and
a national consciousness has come definitely to be formed in each,
the rival ambitions of nations have tended more and more first to
support, then perhaps to supersede, the ambitions of dynasties as
causes of war. The delusion has been practically dominant that the
gain of one nation must mean the loss of another. Hence national
jealousies in regard to colonial extension, hostile tariffs and
the effort of each nation to exclude others from its markets. The
explosion of this idea in the region of political economy has had
little effect in weakening its hold on men's minds. The people of
one nation still hear with jealousy of another nation's advance
in commerce, as if it meant some decay of their own. And if the
commercial jealousy of nations is very slow in disappearing, their
vanity, their desire apart from trade each to become or to seem
stronger than the other, has very much increased. A hundred and fifty
years ago national vanity could scarcely be said to be an influence
in politics. The people under one ruler were not homogeneous enough,
had not enough of a corporate consciousness, to develope a national
vanity. Now (under the name of patriotism) it has become a more
serious disturber of peace than dynastic ambition. Where the latter
is dangerous, it is because it has national vanity to work upon.

163. Our conclusion then is that the destruction of life in war (to
say nothing of other evils incidental to it with which we are not
here concerned) is always wrong doing, with whomsoever the guilt of
the wrong-doing may lie; that only those parties to a war are exempt
from a share in the guilt who can truly plead that to them war is
the only means of maintaining the social conditions of the moral
development of man, and that there have been very few cases in which
this plea could be truly made. In saying this it is not forgotten,
either that many virtues are called into exercise by war, or that
wars have been a means by which the movement of mankind, which there
is reason for considering a progress to higher good, has been carried
on. These facts do not make the wrong-doing involved in war any less
so. If nothing is to be accounted wrong-doing through which final
good is wrought, we must give up either the idea of there being such
a thing as wrong-doing, or the idea of there being such a thing as
final good. If final good results from the world of our experience,
it results from processes in which wrong-doing is an inseparable
element. Wrong-doing is voluntary action, either (in the deeper
moral sense) proceeding from a will uninfluenced by the desire to be
good on the part of the agent (which may be taken to include action
tending to produce such action), or (in the sense contemplated by
the 'jus naturae') it is action that interferes with the conditions
necessary to the free-play and development of a good-will on the
part of others. It may be that, according to the divine scheme of
the world, such wrong-doing is an element in a process by which men
gradually approximate more nearly to good (in the sense of a good
will). We cannot think of God as a moral being without supposing
this to be the case. But this makes no difference to wrong-doing in
those relations in which it is wrong-doing, and with which alone we
are concerned, viz. in relation to the will of human agents and to
the results which those agents can foresee and intend to produce. If
an action, so far as any results go which the agent can have in view
or over which he has control, interferes with conditions necessary
to the free-play and development of a good-will on the part of
others, it is not the less wrong-doing because, through some agency
which is not his, the effects which he intended, and which rendered
it wrong-doing, come to contribute to an ulterior good. Nor, if it
issues from bad will (in the sense explained), is it less wrong (in
the moral sense) because this will is itself, in the view of some
higher being, contributory to a moral good which is not, in whole or
part, within the view of the agent. If then war is wrong-doing in
both the above senses (as it is always, at any rate on the part of
those with whom the ultimate responsibility for it lies), it does not
cease to be so on account of any good resulting from it in a scheme
of providence.

164. 'But,' it may be asked, 'are we justified in saying that it
is always wrong-doing on the part of those with whom the ultimate
responsibility lies? It is admitted that certain virtues may be
evoked by war; that it may have results contributory to the moral
progress of mankind; may not the eliciting of these virtues, the
production of these results, be contemplated by the originators of
war, and does not the origination of war, so far as influenced by
such motives, cease to be wrong-doing? It must be admitted that
Caesar's wars in Gaul were unprovoked wars of conquest, but their
effect was the establishment of Roman civilisation with its equal law
over a great part of western Europe, in such a way that it was never
wholly swept away, and that a permanent influence in the progress of
the European polity can be traced to it. May he not be credited with
having had, however indefinitely, such an effect as this in view?
Even if his wish to extend Roman civilisation was secondary to a plan
for raising an army by which he might master the Republic, is he to
have no credit for the beneficent results which are admitted to have
ensued from the success of that plan? May not a similar justification
be urged for English wars in India? If, again, the establishment
of the civil unity of Germany and the liberation of Christian
populations in Turkey are admitted to have been gains to mankind, is
not that a justification of the persons concerned in the origination
of the wars that brought about those results, so far as they can be
supposed to have been influenced by a desire for them?'

165. These objections might be to the purpose if we were attempting
the task (generally, if not always, an impossible one) of determining
the moral desert, good or ill, of those who have been concerned
in bringing this or that war about. Their tendency merely is to
distribute the blame of the wrong-doing involved in war, to show
how widely ramified is the agency in that wrong-doing, not to
affect its character as wrong-doing. If the only way of civilising
Gaul was to kill all the people whom Caesar's wars caused to be
killed, and if the desire for civilising it was a prevailing motive
in Caesar's mind, so much the better for Caesar, but so much the
worse for the other unassignable and innumerable human agents who
brought it about that such an object could only be attained in such
a way. We are not, indeed, entitled to say that it could have been
brought about in any other way. It is true to say (if we know what
we are about in saying it) that nothing which happens in the world
could have happened otherwise than it has. The question for us is,
whether that condition of things which rendered e.g. Caesar's Gallic
wars, with the violation of human rights which they involved, the
interference in the case of innumerable persons with the conditions
under which man can be helpful to man (physical life being the first
of these), the _sine qua non_ in the promotion of ulterior human
welfare, was or was not the work of human agency. If it was (and
there is no doubt that it was, for to what merely natural agency
could the necessity be ascribed?), then in that ordinary sense of
the word 'could' in which it expresses our responsibility for our
actions, men _could_ have brought about the good result without the
evil means. They could have done so if they had been better. It was
owing to human wickedness--if less on Caesar's part, then so much
the more on the part of innumerable others--that the wrong-doing
of those wars was the appropriate means to this ulterior good. So
in regard to the other cases instanced. It is idle to speculate on
other means by which the permanent pacification of India, or the
unification of Germany, or the liberation of Christians in European
Turkey might have been brought about; but it is important to bear
in mind that the innumerable wrong acts involved in achieving
them--acts wrong, because violations of the rights of those directly
affected by them--did not cease to be wrong acts because under the
given condition of things the results specified would not have been
obtained without them. This given condition of things was not like
that (e.g.) which compels the castaways from a shipwreck, so many
days from shore, and with only so much provision in their boat, to
draw lots which shall be thrown overboard. It was a condition of
things which human wickedness, through traceable and untraceable
channels, brought about. If the individual promoters of wars,
which through the medium of multitudinous wrong-doing have yielded
good to mankind, have been really influenced by a desire for any
such good,--and much scepticism is justified in regard to such a
supposition,--then so much less of the guilt of the wrong-doing has
been theirs. No nation, at any rate, that has taken part in such wars
can fairly take credit for having been governed by such a motive. It
has been either a passive instrument in the hands of its rulers, or
has been animated by less worthy motives, very mixed, but of which
perhaps a diffused desire for excitement has been the most innocent.
On what reasonable ground can Englishmen or Germans or Russians claim
that their several nations took part in the wars by which India was
pacified, Germany unified, Bulgaria liberated, under the dominant
influence of a desire for human good? Rather, if the action of a
national conscience in such matters is possible at all, they should
take shame for their share in that general human selfishness which
rendered certain conditions of human development only attainable by
such means.

166. (2) Reverting then to the questions which arose [1] out of the
assertion of a right to free life on the part of the individual man
as such, it appears that the first must be answered in the negative.
No state of war can make the destruction of man's life by man other
than a wrong, though the wrong is not always chargeable upon all the
parties to a war. The second question is virtually answered by what
has been said about the first. In regard to the state according to
its idea the question could not arise, for according to its idea
the state is an institution in which all rights are harmoniously
maintained, in which all the capacities that give rise to rights have
free-play given to them. No action in its own interest of a state
that fulfilled this idea could conflict with any true interest or
right of general society, of the men not subject to its law taken as
a whole. There is no such thing as an inevitable conflict between
states. There is nothing in the nature of the state that, given a
multiplicity of states, should make the gain of the one the loss of
the other. The more perfectly each one of them attains its proper
object of giving free scope to the capacities of all persons living
on a certain range of territory, the easier it is for others to
do so; and in proportion as they all do so the danger of conflict
disappears.

[1] [Above, sec. 156. RLN]

167. On the other hand, the imperfect realisation of civil equality
in the full sense of the term in certain states, is in greater or
less degree a source of danger to all. The presence in states either
of a prerogatived class or of a body of people who, whether by open
denial of civil rights or by restrictive laws, are thwarted in
the free development of their capacities, or of an ecclesiastical
organisation which disputes the authority of the state on matters
of right and thus prevents the perfect civil fusion of its members
with other citizens, always breeds an imagination of there being
some competition of interests between states. The privileged class
involuntarily believes and spreads the belief that the interest of
the state lies in some extension without, not in an improvement of
organisation within. A suffering class attracts sympathy from without
and invites interference with the state which contains it; and that
state responds, not by healing the sore, but by defending against
aggression what it conceives to be its special interests, but which
are only special on account of its bad organisation. Or perhaps the
suffering population overflows into another state, as the Irish into
America, and there becomes a source not only of internal difficulty
but of hostile feeling between it and the state where the suffering
population still survives. People, again, who, in matters which the
state treats as belonging to itself, take their direction from an
ecclesiastical power external to the state under which they live,
are necessarily in certain relations alien to that state, and may at
any time prove a source of apparently conflicting interests between
it and some other state, which under the influence of the hostile
ecclesiastical power espouses their cause. Remove from European
states, as they are and have been during the last hundred years, the
occasions of conflict, the sources of apparently competing interests,
which arise in one or other of the ways mentioned,--either from the
mistaken view of state-interests which a privileged class inevitably
takes, or from the presence in them of oppressed populations, or from
what we improperly call the antagonism of religious confessions,--and
there would not be or have been anything to disturb the peace between
them. And this is to say that the source of war between states lies
in their incomplete fulfilment of their function; in the fact that
there is some defect in the maintenance or reconciliation of rights
among their subjects.

168. This is equally true in regard to those causes of conflict
which are loosely called 'religious.' These do not arise out of any
differences between the convictions of different people in regard
to the nature of God or their relations to Him, or the right way of
worshipping Him. They arise either out of some aggression upon the
religious freedom of certain people, made or allowed by the powers
of the state, which thus puts these people in the position of an
alien or unenfranchised class, or else out of an aggression on the
rights of the state by some corporation calling itself spiritual but
really claiming sovereignty over men's actions in the same relations
in which the state claims to determine them. There would be nothing
tending to international disturbance in the fact that bodies of
people who worship God in the Catholic manner live in a state where
the majority worship in the Greek or Protestant manner, and alongside
of another state where the majority is Catholic, but for one or other
or both of these circumstances, viz. that the Catholic worship and
teaching is interfered with by the Protestant or Greek state, and
that Catholics are liable to a direction by a power which claims to
regulate men's transactions with each other by a law of its own, and
which may see fit (e.g.) to prohibit the Catholic subjects in the
Greek or Protestant state from being married, or having their parents
buried, or their children taught the necessary arts, in the manner
which the state directs. This reciprocal invasion of right, the
invasion of the rights of the state by the church on the one side,
and on the other the restriction placed by the sovereign upon the
subject's freedom, not of conscience, (for that is impossible), but
of expressing his conscience in word and act, has sometimes caused a
state of things in which certain of the subjects of a state have been
better affected to another state than to their own, and in such a
case there is an element of natural hostility between the states. An
obvious instance to give of this relation between states would have
been that between Russia and Turkey, if Turkey could be considered to
have been constituted as a state at all. Perhaps a better instance
would be the position of Ireland in the past; its disaffection to
England and gravitation, first to France, then to the United States,
caused chiefly by Protestant penal laws which in turn were at least
provoked by the aggressive attitude of the church towards the English
state. Whenever a like invasion of rights still takes place, e.g.
in the treatment of the Catholic subjects of Russia in Poland, in
the ultramontane movement of resistance to certain requirements
of the state among the Catholic subjects of Germany, it tends to
international conflict. And what is now a somewhat remote tendency
has in the past been a formidable stimulant to war.

169. It is nothing then in the necessary organisation of the state,
but rather some defect of that organisation in relation to its proper
function of maintaining and reconciling rights, of giving scope to
capacities, that leads to a conflict of apparent interests between
one state and another. The wrong, therefore, which results to human
society from conflicts between states cannot be condoned on the
ground that it is a necessary incident of the existence of states.
The wrong cannot be held to be lost in a higher right, which attaches
to the maintenance of the state as the institution through which
alone the freedom of man is realised. It is not the state, as such,
but this or that particular state, which by no means fulfils its
purpose, and might perhaps be swept away and superseded by another
with advantage to the ends for which the true state exists, that
needs to defend its interests by action injurious to those outside
it. Hence there is no ground for holding that a state is justified
in doing whatever its interests seem to require, irrespectively
of effects on other men. If those effects are bad, as involving
either a direct violation of personal rights or obstruction to the
moral development of society anywhere in the world, then there is
no ultimate justification for the political action that gives rise
to them. The question can only be (as we have seen generally in
regard to the wrong-doing of war), where in particular the blame
lies. Whether there is any justification for a particular state,
which in defence of its interests inflicts an injury on some portion
of mankind; whether, e.g., the Germans are justified in holding
Metz, on the supposition that their tenure of such a thoroughly
French town necessarily thwarts in many ways the healthy activity
of the inhabitants, or the English in carrying fire and sword into
Afghanistan for the sake of acquiring a scientific frontier; this
must depend (1) on the nature of the interests thus defended, (2) on
the impossibility of otherwise defending them, (3) on the question
how they came to be endangered. If they are interests of which the
maintenance is essential to those ends as a means to which the state
has its value, if the state which defends them has not itself been a
joint-cause of their being endangered, and if they cannot be defended
except at the cost of injury to some portion of mankind, then the
state which defends them is clear of the guilt of that injury. But
the guilt is removed from it only to be somewhere else, however wide
its distribution may be. It may be doubted, however, whether the
second question could ever be answered altogether in favour of a
state which finds it necessary to protect its interests at the cost
of inflicting an injury on mankind.

170. It will be said, perhaps, that these formal arguments in proof
of the wrong-doing involved in war, and of the unjustifiability
of the policy which nations constantly adopt in defence of their
apparent interests, carry very little conviction; that a state is
not an abstract complex of institutions for the maintenance of
rights, but a nation, a people, possessing such institutions; that
the nation has its passions which inevitably lead it to judge all
questions of international right from its own point of view, and to
consider its apparent national interests as justifying anything;
that if it were otherwise, if the cosmopolitan point of view could
be adopted by nations, patriotism would be at an end; that whether
this be desirable or no, such an extinction of national passions is
impossible; that while they continue, wars are as inevitable between
nations as they would be between individuals, if individuals were
living in what philosophers have imagined to be the state of nature,
without recognition of a common superior; that nations in short are
in the position of men judging their own causes, which it is admitted
that no one can do impartially; and that this state of things cannot
be altered without the establishment of a common constraining power,
which would mean the extinction of the life of independent states,--a
result as undesirable as it is unattainable. Projects of perpetual
peace, to be logical, must be projects of all-embracing empire.

171. There is some cogency in language of this kind. It is true
that when we speak of a state as a living agency, we mean, not an
institution or complex of institutions, but a nation organised in
a certain way; and that members of the nation in their corporate
or associated action are animated by certain passions, arising out
of their association, which, though not egoistic relatively to the
individual subjects of them (for they are motives to self-sacrifice),
may, in their influence on the dealings of one nation with another,
have an effect analogous to that which egoistic passions, properly
so called, have upon the dealings of individuals with each other.
On the other hand, it must be remembered that the national passion,
which in any good sense is simply the public spirit of the good
citizen, may take, and every day is taking, directions which lead
to no collision between one nation and another; (or, to say the
same thing negatively, that it is utterly false to speak as if the
desire for one's own nation to show more military strength than
others were the only or the right form of patriotism); and that
though a nation, with national feeling of its own, must everywhere
underlie a state, properly so called, yet still, just so far as the
perfect organisation of rights within each nation, which entitles
it to be called a state, is attained, the occasions of conflict
between nations disappear; and again, that by the same process, just
so far as it is satisfactorily carried out, an organ of expression
and action is established for each nation in dealing with other
nations, which is not really liable to be influenced by the same
egoistic passions in dealing with the government of another nation as
embroil individuals with each other. The love of mankind, no doubt,
needs to be particularised in order to have any power over life and
action. Just as there can be no true friendship except towards this
or that individual, so there can be no true public spirit which is
not localised in some way. The man whose desire to serve his kind is
not centred primarily in some home, radiating from it to a commune,
a municipality, and a nation, presumably has no effectual desire to
serve his kind at all. But there is no reason why this localised
or nationalised philanthropy should take the form of a jealousy of
other nations or a desire to fight them, personally or by proxy.
Those in whom it is strongest are every day expressing it in good
works which benefit their fellow-citizens without interfering with
the men of other nations. Those who from time to time talk of the
need of a great war to bring unselfish impulses into play, give us
reason to suspect that they are too selfish themselves to recognise
the unselfish activity that is going on all round them. Till all
the methods have been exhausted by which nature can be brought into
the service of man, till society is so organised that everyone's
capacities have free scope for their development, there is no need to
resort to war for a field in which patriotism may display itself.

172. In fact, just so far as states are thoroughly formed, the
diversion of patriotism into the military channel tends to come to an
end. It is a survival from a condition of things in which, as yet,
the state, in the full sense, was not; in the sense, namely, that
in each territory controlled by a single independent government,
the rights of all persons, as founded on their capacities for
contributing to a common good, are equally established by one system
of law. If each separately governed territory were inhabited by a
people so organised within itself, there would be nothing to lead
to the association of the public spirit of the good citizen with
military aggressiveness,--an association which belongs properly not
to the πολιτεία [1], but to the δυναστεία. The Greek states, however
complete might be the equality of their citizens among themselves,
were all δυναστείαι in relation to some subject populations, and, as
such, jealous of each other. The Peloponnesian war was eminently a
war of rival δυναστείαι. And those habits and institutions and modes
of feeling in Europe of the present day, which tend to international
conflict, are either survivals from the δυναστείαι of the past, or
arise out of the very incomplete manner in which, as yet, over most
of Europe the πολιτεία has superseded the δυναστεία. Patriotism,
in that special military sense in which it is distinguished from
public spirit, is not the temper of the citizen dealing with
fellow-citizens, or with men who are themselves citizens of their
several states, but that of the follower of the feudal chief, or
of the member of a privileged class conscious of a power, resting
ultimately on force, over an inferior population, or of a nation
holding empire over other nations.

[1] [Greek πολιτεία (politeia) = constitutional government,
particularly a city-state, δυναστεία/ι (dunasteia/i) = narrow
oligarchy/ies Tr]

173. Standing armies, again, though existing on a larger scale now
than ever before, are not products of the civilisation of Europe, but
of the predominance over that civilisation of the old δυναστείαι.
The influences which have given rise to and keep up those armies
essentially belong to a state of things in which mankind--even
European mankind--is not yet thoroughly organised into political
life. Roughly summarised, they are these: (1). The temporary
confiscation by Napoleon to his own account of the products of the
French Revolution, which thus, though founded on a true idea of a
citizenship in which not the few only, but all men, should partake,
for the time issued in a δυναστεία over the countries which most
directly felt the effects of the revolution. (2). The consequent
revival in dynastic forms, under the influence of antagonism to
France, of national life in Germany. (3), The aspiration after
national unity elsewhere in Europe,--a movement which must precede
the organisation of states on a sound basis, and for the time readily
yields itself to direction by a δυναστεία. (4). The existence, over
all the Slavonic side of Europe, of populations which are only just
beginning to make any approach to political life--the life of the
πολιτεία, or 'civitas '--and still offer a tempting field to the
ambition of rival δυναστείαι, Austrian, Russian, and Turkish (which,
indeed, are by no means to be put on a level, but are alike as not
resting on a basis of citizenship). (5). The tenure of a great Indian
empire by England, which not only gives it a military character which
would not belong to it simply as a state, but brings it into outward
relations with the δυναστείαι just spoken of. This is no doubt a
very incomplete account of the influences which have combined to
'turn Europe into a great camp' (a very exaggerated expression); but
it may serve to show what a fuller account would show more clearly,
that the military system of Europe is no necessary incident of the
relations between independent states, but arises from the fact that
the organisation of state-life, even with those peoples that have
been brought under its influence at all, is still so incomplete.

174. The more complete that organisation becomes, the more the
motives and occasions of international conflict tend to disappear,
while the bonds of unity become stronger. The latter is the case, if
for no other reason, yet for this; that the better organisation of
the state means freer scope to the individual (not necessarily to do
as he likes, e.g. in, the buying and selling of alcohol, but in such
development of activity as is good on the whole). This again means
free intercourse between members of one state and those of another,
and in particular more freedom of trade. All restrictions on freedom
of wholesome trade are really based on special class-interests,
and must disappear with the realisation of that idea of individual
right, founded on the capacity of every man for free contribution
to social good, which is the true idea of the state. And as trade
between members of different states becomes freer and more full, the
sense of common interests between them, which war would infringe,
becomes stronger. The bond of peace thus established is sometimes
depreciated as a selfish one, but it need be no more selfish than
that which keeps the peace between members of the same state, who
have no acquaintance with each other. In one case as in the other
it may be said that the individual tries to prevent a breach of the
peace because he knows that he has more to gain than to lose by it.
In the latter case, however, this account of the matter would be, to
say the least, insufficient. The good citizen observes the law in
letter and in spirit, not from any fear of consequences to himself
if he did not, but from an idea of the mutual respect by men for
each other's rights as that which should be an idea which has become
habitual with him, and regulates his conduct without his asking airy
questions about it. There was a time, however, when this idea only
thus acted spontaneously in regulating a man's action towards his
family or immediate neighbours or friends. Considerations of interest
were the medium through which a wider range of persons came to be
brought within its range. And thus, although considerations of an
identity of interests, arising out of trade, may be the occasion of
men's recognising in men of other nations those rights which war
violates, there is no reason why, upon that occasion and through
the familiarity which trade brings about, an idea of justice, as a
relation which should subsist between all mankind as well as between
members of the same state, may not come to act on men's minds as
independently of all calculation of their several interests as does
the idea which regulates the conduct of the good citizen.

175. If the necessary or impelling power of the idea of what is
due from members of different nations to each other is weak, it
must be observed on the other hand that the individual members of a
nation have no such apparent interest in their government's dealing
unfairly with another nation as one individual may have in getting
the advantage of another. Thus, so far as this idea comes to form
part of the habit of men's minds, there ceases to be anything in the
passions of the people which a government represents to stimulate the
government to that unfairness in dealing with another government,
to which an individual might be moved by self-seeking passions in
dealing with another individual, in the absence of an impartial
authority having power over both. If at the same time the several
governments are purely representative of the several peoples, as they
should become with the due organisation of the state, and thus have
no dynastic interests of their own in embroiling one nation with
another, there seems to be no reason why they should not arrive at a
passionless impartiality in dealing with each other, which would be
beyond the reach of the individual in defending his own cause against
another. At any rate, if no government can ever get rid of some bias
in its own favour, there remains the possibility of mediation in
cases of dispute by disinterested governments. With the abatement of
national jealousies and the removal of those deeply-seated causes
of war which, as we have seen, are connected with the deficient
organisation of states, the dream of an international court with
authority resting on the consent of independent states may come to
be realised. Such a result may be very remote, but it is important
to bear in mind that there is nothing in the intrinsic nature of a
system of independent states incompatible with it, but that on the
contrary every advance in the organisation of man kind into states in
the sense explained is a step towards it.

    L. _THE RIGHT OF THE STATE TO PUNISH._

176. (3) We come now to the third of the questions raised [l] in
regard to the individual's right to free life, the question under
what conditions that right may be forfeited; the question, in other
words, of the state's right of punishment. The right (i.e. the power
secured by social recognition) of free life in every man rests on
the assumed capacity in every man of free action contributory to
social good ('free' in the sense of determined by the idea of a
common good. Animals may and do contribute to the good of man, but
not thus 'freely'). This right on the part of associated men implies
the right on their part to prevent such actions as interfere with
the possibility of free action contributory to social good. This
constitutes the right of punishment, the right so far to use force
upon a person (to treat him as an animal or a thing) as may be
necessary to save others from this interference.

[1] [Above, sec. 156. RLN]

177. Under what conditions a person needs to be thus dealt with,
what particular actions on his part constitute such an interference,
is a question which can only be answered when we have considered
what powers in particular need to be secured to individuals or to
officials in order to the possibility of free action of the kind
described. Every such power is a right of which the violation, if
intended as a violation of a right, requires a punishment, of which
the kind and amount must depend on the relative importance of the
right and of the extent to which its general exercise is threatened.
Thus every theory of rights in detail must be followed by, or
indeed implies, a corresponding theory of punishment in detail, a
theory which considers what particular acts are punishable, and how
they should be punished. The latter cannot precede the former: all
that can be done here is further to consider what general rules of
punishment are implied in the principle on which we hold all right of
punishment to rest, and how far in the actual practice of punishment
that principle has been realised.

178. It is commonly asked whether punishment according to its proper
nature is retributive or preventive or reformatory. The true answer
is that it is and should be all three. The statement, however,
that the punishment of the criminal by the state is retributive,
though true in a sense that will be explained directly, yet so
readily lends itself to a misunderstanding, that it is perhaps best
avoided. It is not true in the sense that in legal punishment as it
should be there survives any element of private vengeance, of the
desire on the part of the individual who has received a hurt from
another to inflict an equivalent hurt in return. It is true that
the beginning of punishment by the state first appears in the form
of a regulation of private vengeance, but it is not therefore to be
supposed that punishment by the state is in any way a continuation of
private vengeance. It is the essence of the former to suppress and
supersede the latter, but it only does so gradually, just as rights
in actuality are only formed gradually. Private vengeance belongs
to the state of things in which rights are not as yet actualised;
in the sense that the powers which it is for the social good that
a man should be allowed to exercise, are not yet secured to him
by society. In proportion as they are actualised, the exercise of
private vengeance must cease. A _right_ of private vengeance is an
impossibility; for, just so far as the vengeance is private, the
individual in executing it is exercising a power not derived from
society nor regulated by reference to social good, and such a power
is not a right. Hence the view commonly taken by writers of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries implies an entire misconception
of the nature of a right; the view, viz., that there first existed
rights of self-defence and self-vindication on the part of
individuals in a state of nature, and that these came to be devolved
on a power representing all individuals, so that the state's right
of using force against those men who use or threaten force against
other men, is merely the sum or equivalent of the private rights
which individuals would severally possess if there were no public
equivalent for them. This is to suppose that to have been a right
which in truth, under the supposed conditions, would merely have been
animal impulse and power, and public right (which is a pleonasm, for
all right is public) to have resulted from the combination of these
animal impulses and powers: it is to suppose that from a state of
things in which 'homo homini lupus' by mere combination of wolfish
impulses, there could result the state of things in which 'homo
homini deus.'

179. In a state of things in which private vengeance for hurt
inflicted was the universal practice, there could be no rights at
all. In the most primitive society in which rights can exist, it
must at least within the limits of the family be suppressed by
that authority of the family or its head which first constitutes
rights. In such a society it is only on the members of another
family that a man may retaliate at pleasure a wrong done to him, and
then the vengeance is not, strictly speaking, taken by individual
upon individual, though individuals may be severally the agent and
patient of it, but by family upon family. Just because there is as
yet no idea of a state independent of ties of birth, much less of
a universal society from relation to which a man derives rights,
there is no idea of rights attaching to him as a citizen or as a
man, but only as a member of a family. That social right, which is
at once a right of society over the individual, and a right which
society communicates and secures to the individual, appears, so far,
only as a control exercised by the family over its members in their
dealings with each other, as an authorisation which it gives them in
prosecuting their quarrels with members of another family, and at the
same time to a certain extent as a limitation on the manner in which
feuds between families may be carried on, a limitation generally
dependent on some religious authority equally recognised by the
families at feud.

180. From this state of things it is a long step to the régime of
law in a duly constituted state. Under it the arm of the state alone
is the organ through which force may be exercised on the individual;
the individual is prohibited from averting violence by violence,
except so far as is necessary for the immediate protection of life,
and altogether from avenging wrong done to him, on the understanding
that the society, of which he is an organ and from which he derives
his rights, being injured in every injury to him, duly protects him
against injury, and when it fails to prevent such injury from being
done, inflicts such punishment on the offender as is necessary for
future protection. But the process from the one state of things to
the other, though a long one, consists in the further development of
that social right [1] which properly speaking was the only right the
individual ever had, and from the first, or ever since a permanent
family tie existed, was present as a qualifying and restraining
element in the exercise of private vengeance so far as that exercise
partook at all in the nature of a right. The process is not a
continuance of private vengeance under altered forms, but a gradual
suppression of it by the fuller realisation of the higher principle
which all along controlled it.

[1] 'Social right,' i.e. right belonging to a society of persons
recognising a common good, and belonging through membership of the
society to the several persons constituting it. The society to which
the right belongs, is in principle or possibility a society of all
men as rendered capable of free intercourse with each other by the
organisation of the state. Actually at first it is only this or
that family; then some association of families; finally the state,
as including all other forms of association, reconciling the rights
which arise out of them, and thus the most perfect medium through
which the individual can contribute to the good of mankind and
mankind to his.

181. But it will be asked, how upon this view of the nature
of punishment as inflicted by the state it can be considered
retributory. If no private vengeance, no vengeance of the injured
individual, is involved in punishment, there can be no vengeance in
it at all. The conception of vengeance is quite inappropriate to the
action of society or the state on the criminal. The state cannot be
supposed capable of vindictive passion. Nor, if the essence of crime
is a wrong done to society, does it admit of retaliation upon the
person committing it. A hurt done to an individual can be requited by
the infliction of a like hurt upon the person who has done it; but no
equivalent of wrong done to society can be paid back to the doer of
it.

182. It is true that there is such a thing as a national desire
for revenge [1] (France and Germany): and, if a state = a nation
organised in a certain way, why should it not be 'capable of
vindictive passion'? No doubt there is a unity of feeling among the
members of a nation which makes them feel any loss of strength, real
or apparent, sustained by the nation in its corporate character, as
a hurt or disgrace to themselves, which they instinctively desire to
revenge. The corporate feeling is so strong that individuals feel
themselves severally hurt in the supposed hurt of the nation. But
when it is said that a crime is an offence against the state, it is
not meant that the body of persons forming the nation feel any hurt
in the sense in which the person robbed or wounded does, such a hurt
as excites a natural desire for revenge. What is meant is that there
is a violation of a system of rights which the nation has, no doubt,
an interest in maintaining, but a purely social interest, quite
different from the egoistic interest of the individual of which the
desire for vengeance is a form. A nation is capable of vindictive
feeling, but not so a nation as acting through the medium of a
settled, impartial, general law for the maintenance of rights, and
that is what we mean when we talk of the state as that against which
crimes are committed and which punishes them.

[1] 'Happy shall he be that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.'

183. It is true that when a crime of a certain sort, e.g. a
cold-blooded murder, has been committed, a popular sympathy with
the sufferer is excited, which expresses itself in the wish to
'serve out' the murderer. This has some resemblance to the desire
for personal revenge, but is really quite different, because not
egoistic. Indignation against wrong done to another has nothing in
common with a desire to revenge a wrong done to oneself. It borrows
the language of private revenge, just as the love of God borrows the
language of sensuous affection. Such indignation is inseparable from
the interest in social well-being, and along with it is the chief
agent in the establishment and maintenance of legal punishment. Law
indeed is necessarily general, while indignation is particular in its
reference; and accordingly the treatment of any particular crime,
so far as determined by law, cannot correspond with the indignation
which the crime excites; but the law merely determines the general
category under which the crime falls, and fixes certain limits to
the punishment that may be inflicted under that category. Within
those limits discretion is left to the judge as to the sentence that
he passes, and his sentence is in part influenced by the sort of
indignation which in the given state of public sentiment the crime
is calculated to excite; though generally much more by his opinion
as to the amount of terror required for the prevention of prevalent
crime. Now what is it in punishment that this indignation demands? If
not the sole foundation of public punishment, it is yet inseparable
from that public interest, on which the system of rights, with the
corresponding system of punishments protective of rights, depends.
In whatever sense then this indignation demands retribution in
punishment, in that sense retribution would seem to be a necessary
element in punishment. It demands retribution in the sense of
demanding that the criminal should have his due, should be dealt with
according to his deserts, should be punished justly.

184. This is quite a different thing from an equivalence between
the amount of suffering inflicted by the criminal and that which
he sustains in punishment. The amount of suffering which is caused
by any crime is really as incalculable as that which the criminal
endures in punishment, whatever the punishment. It is only in the
case of death for murder that there is any appearance of equivalence
between the two sufferings, and in this case the appearance is quite
superficial. The suffering involved in death depends almost entirely
on the circumstances, which are absolutely different in the case
of the murdered man and in that of the man executed for murder.
When a man is imprisoned with hard labour for robbery, there is not
even an appearance of equivalence of suffering between the crime
and the punishment. In what then does the justice of a punishment,
or its correspondence with the criminal's deserts consist? It will
not do to say that these terms merely represent the result of an
association of ideas between a crime and the penalty which we are
accustomed to see inflicted on it; that society has come to attach
certain penalties to certain actions as a result of the experience
(1) of suffering and loss caused by those acts, and (2) of the kind
of suffering of which the expectation will deter men from doing them;
and that these penalties having become customary, the onlookers and
the criminal himself, when one of them is inflicted, feel that he has
got what was to be expected, and call it his due or desert or a just
punishment. If this were the true account of the matter, there would
be nothing to explain the difference between the emotion excited by
the spectacle of a just punishment inflicted, or the demand that it
should be inflicted, on the one side, and on the other that excited
by the sight of physical suffering following according to the usual
course of things upon a physical combination of circumstances, or the
expectation that such suffering will follow. If it is said that the
difference is explained by the fact that in the one case both the
antecedent (the criminal act) and the consequent represent voluntary
human agency, while in the other they do not, we reply, Just so, but
for that reason the conception of a punishment as just differs wholly
from any conception of it that could result either from its being
customary, or from the infliction of such punishment having been
commonly found a means for protecting us against hurt.

185. The idea of punishment implies on the side of the person
punished at once a capacity for determination by the conception of a
common or public good, or in other words a practical understanding of
the nature of rights as founded on relations to such public good, and
an actual violation of a right or omission to fulfil an obligation,
the right or obligation being one of which the agent might have
been aware and the violation or omission one which he might have
prevented. On the side of the authority punishing, it implies equally
a conception of right founded on relation to public good, and one
which, unlike that on the part of the criminal, is realised in act; a
conception of which the punitive act, as founded on a consideration
of what is necessary for the maintenance of rights, is the logical
expression. A punishment is unjust if either element is absent; if
either the act punished is not a violation of known rights or an
omission to fulfil known obligations of a kind which the agent might
have prevented, or the punishment is one that is not required for
the maintenance of rights, or (which comes to the same thing), if
the ostensible rights for the maintenance of which the punishment
is required are not real rights, are not liberties of action or
acquisition which there is any real public interest in maintaining.

186. When the specified conditions of just punishment are fulfilled,
the person punished himself recognises it as just, as his due or
desert, and it is so recognised by the onlooker who thinks himself
into the situation. The criminal, being susceptible to the idea of
public good, and through it to the idea of rights, though this idea
has not been strong enough to regulate his actions, sees in the
punishment its natural expression. He sees that the punishment is his
own act returning on himself, in the sense that it is the necessary
outcome of his act in a society governed by the conception of rights,
a conception which he appreciates and to which he does involuntary
reverence.

It is the outcome of his act, or his act returning upon himself, in
a different way from that in which a man's act returns on himself
when, having misused his body, he is visited according to physical
necessity by painful consequences. The cause of the suffering which
the act entails in the one case is the relation of the act to a
society governed by the conception of rights; in the other it is not.
For that reason, the painful consequence of the act to the doer in
the one case is, in the other is not, properly a punishment. We do
indeed commonly speak of the painful consequences of imprudent or
immoral acts ('immoral' as distinct from 'illegal') as a punishment
of them, but this is either metaphorically or because we think of
the course of the world as regulated by a divine sovereign, whom we
conceive as a maintainer of rights like the sovereign of a state.
We may think of it as divinely regulated, and so regulated with a
view to the realisation of moral good, but we shall still not be
warranted in speaking of the sufferings which follow in the course of
nature upon certain kinds of conduct as punishments, according to the
distinctive sense in which crime is punished, unless we suppose the
maintenance of rights to be the object of the moral government of the
world,--which is to put the cart before the horse; for, as we have
seen, rights are relative to morality, not morality to rights (the
ground on which certain liberties of action and acquisition should
be guaranteed as rights being that they are conditions of the moral
perfection of society).

While there would be reason, then, as against those who say that the
punishment of crime is merely preventive, in saying that it is also
retributive, if the needed correction of the 'merely preventive'
doctrine could not be more accurately stated, it would seem that
the truth can be more accurately stated by the proposition that
punishment is not justified unless it is just, and that it is not
just unless the act punished is an intentional violation of real
right or neglect of real obligation which the agent could have
avoided (i.e. unless the agent knowingly and by intentional act
interferes with some freedom of action or acquisition which there is
a public interest in maintaining), and unless the future maintenance
of rights requires that the criminal be dealt with as he is in the
punishment.[1]

[1] The conceptions of the just and of justice implied in this
statement of the conditions of just punishment may be expressed
briefly as follows. 'The just' = that complex of social conditions
which for each individual is necessary to enable him to realise his
capacity of contributing to social good. 'Justice' is the habit of
mind which leads us to respect those conditions in dealing with
others,--not to interfere with them so far as they already exist,
and to bring them into existence so far as they are not found in
existence.

187. It is clear, however, that this requirement, that punishment of
crime should be just, may be covered by the statement that in its
proper nature it is preventive, if the nature of that which is to be
prevented by it is sufficiently defined. Its proper function is, in
the interest of rights that are genuine (in the sense explained), to
prevent actions of the kind described by associating in the mind of
every possible doer of them a certain terror with the contemplation
of the act,--such terror as is necessary on the whole to protect the
rights threatened by such action. The whipping of an ill-behaved
dog is preventive, but not preventive in the sense in which the
punishment of crime is so, because (1) the dog's ill conduct is not
an intentional violation of a right or neglect of a known obligation,
the dog having no conception of right or obligation, and (2) for
the same reason the whipping does not lead to the association of
terror in the minds of other dogs with the violation of rights and
neglect of obligations. To shoot men down who resist a successful
_coup d'état_ may be effectually preventive of further resistance
to the government established by the _coup d'état_, but it does not
satisfy the true idea of punishment, because the terror produced by
the massacre is not necessary for the protection of genuine rights,
rights founded on public interest. To hang men for sheep-stealing,
again, does not satisfy the idea; because, though it is a genuine
right that sheep-stealing violates, in a society where there was
any decent reconciliation of rights no such terror as is caused
by the punishment of death would be required for the protection
of the right. It is because the theory that punishment is 'merely
preventive' favours the notion that the repetition of any action
which any sufficient body of men find inconvenient may justifiably
be prevented by any sort of terror that may be convenient for the
purpose, that it requires to be guarded by substituting for the
qualifying 'merely' a statement of what it is which the justifiable
punishment prevents and why it prevents it.

188. But does our theory, after all has been said about the
wrongness of punishment that is not just, afford any standard for
the apportionment of just punishment, any criterion of the amount of
interference with a criminal's personal rights that is appropriate to
his crime, except such as is afforded by a prevalent impression among
men as to what is necessary for their security? Can we construe it so
as to afford such a criterion, without at the same time condemning
a great deal of punishment which yet society could be never brought
to dispense with? Does it really admit of being applied at all in
the presence of the admitted impossibility of ascertaining the
degree of moral guilt of criminals, as depending on their state of
character or habitual motives? How, according to it, can we justify
punishments inflicted in the case of 'culpable negligence,' e.g. when
an engine-driver, by careless driving, for which we think very little
the worse of him, is the occasion of a bad accident, and is heavily
punished in consequence?

189. It is true that there can be no _a priori_ criterion of just
punishment, except of an abstract and negative kind. We may say that
no punishment is just, unless the rights which it serves to protect
are powers on the part of individuals or corporations of which the
general maintenance is necessary to the well-being of society on
the whole, and unless the terror which the punishment is calculated
to inspire is necessary for their maintenance. For a positive and
detailed criterion of just punishment, we must wait till a system
of rights has been established in which the claims of all men, as
founded on their capacities for contributing to social well-being,
are perfectly harmonised, and till experience has shown the degree
and kind of terror with which men must be affected in order to the
suppression of the anti-social tendencies which might lead to the
violation of such a system of rights. And this is perhaps equivalent
to saying that no complete criterion of just punishment can be
arrived at till punishment is no longer necessary; for the state of
things supposed could scarcely be realised without bringing with it
an extinction of the tendencies which state-punishment is needed to
suppress. Meanwhile there is no method of approximation to justice
in punishment but that which consists in gradually making the system
of established rights just, i.e. in harmonising the true claims of
all men, and in discovering by experience the really efficient means
of restraining tendencies to violation of rights. An intentional
violation of a right must be punished, whether the right violated
is one that should be a right or no, on the principle that social
well-being suffers more from violation of any established right,
whatever the nature of the right, than from the establishment as a
right of a power which should not be so established; and it can only
be punished in the way which for the time is thought most efficient
by the maintainers of law for protecting the right in question by
associating terror with its violation. This, however, does not
alter the moral duty, on the part of the society authorising the
punishment, to make its punishments just by making the system of
rights which it maintains just. The justice of the punishment depends
on the justice of the general system of rights; not merely on the
propriety with reference to social well-being of maintaining this
or that particular right which the crime punished violates, but on
the question whether the social organisation in which a criminal has
lived and acted is one that has given him a fair chance of not being
a criminal.

190. We are apt to think that the justice of a punishment depends on
some sort of equality between its magnitude and that of the crime
punished, but this notion arises from a confusion of punishment as
inflicted by the state for a wrong done to society with compensation
to the individual for damage done him. Neither a crime nor its
punishment admits of strictly quantitative measurement. It may be
said, indeed, that the greater the crime the heavier should be its
punishment, but this is only true if by the 'heavier punishment' is
understood that with which most terror is associated in the popular
imagination, and if the conception of the 'greater crime' is taken on
the one hand to exclude any estimation of the degree of moral guilt,
and, on the other hand, to be determined by an estimate not only of
the importance in the social system of the right violated by the
crime, but of the amount of terror that needs to be associated with
the crime in the general apprehension in order to its prevention. But
when its terms are thus understood, the statement that the greater
the crime the heavier should be its punishment, becomes an identical
proposition. It amounts to this, that the crime which requires most
terror to be associated with it in order to its prevention should
have most terror thus associated with it.

191. But why do the terms 'heavier punishment' and 'greater crime'
need to be thus understood? Why should not the 'greater crime' be
understood to mean the crime implying most moral wickedness, or
partly this, partly the crime which violates the more important kind
of right? Why should a consideration of the amount of terror that
needs to be associated with it in order to its prevention enter into
the determination of the 'greater crime' at all? Why again should
not the 'heavier punishment' mean simply that in which the person
punished actually suffers most pain? Why should it be taken to mean
that with which most terror is associated upon the contemplation?
In short, is not the proposition in question at once true and
significant in the sense that the crime which implies the most moral
depravity, or violates the most important right (such as the right to
life), or which does both, should be visited with the punishment that
involves most pain to the sufferer?

192. The answer is: As regards heaviness of punishment, it is not in
the power of the state to regulate the amount of pain which it causes
to the person whom it punishes. If it could only punish justly by
making this pain proportionate in each case to the depravity implied
in the crime, it could not punish justly at all. The amount of pain
which any kind of punishment causes to the particular person depends
on his temperament and circumstances, which neither the state nor
its agent, the judge, can ascertain. But if it could be ascertained,
and if (which is equally impossible) the amount of depravity implied
in each particular crime could be ascertained likewise in order to
make the pain of the punishment proportionate to the depravity,
a different punishment would have to be inflicted in each case
according to the temperament and circumstances of the criminal. There
would be an end to all general rules of punishment.

193. In truth, however, the state in its capacity as the sustainer
of rights (and it is in this capacity that it punishes) has nothing
to do with the amount of moral depravity in the criminal, and the
primary reference in punishment, as inflicted by the state, is not
to the effect of the punishment on the person punished but to its
effect on others. The considerations determining its amount should
be prospective rather than retrospective. In the crime a right has
been violated. No punishment can undo what has been done, or make
good the wrong to the person who has suffered. What it can do is
to make less likely the doing of a similar wrong in other cases.
Its object, therefore, is not to cause pain to the criminal for the
sake of causing it, nor chiefly for the sake of preventing him,
individually, from committing the crime again, but to associate
terror with the contemplation of the crime in the mind of others
who might be tempted to commit it. And this object, unlike that of
making the pain of the punishment commensurate with the guilt of the
criminal, is in the main attainable. The effect of the spectacle
of punishment on the onlooker is independent of any minute inquiry
into the degree to which it affects the particular criminal. The
attachment of equal penalties to offences that are alike in respect
of the importance of the rights which they violate, and in respect
of the ordinary temptations to them, will, on the whole, lead to
the association of an equal amount of terror with the prospect of
committing like offences in the public mind. When the circumstances,
indeed, of two criminals guilty of offences alike in both the above
respects are very greatly and obviously different, so different as to
make the operation of the same penalty upon them very conspicuously
different, then the penalty may be varied without interfering with
its terrifying effect on the public mind. We will suppose e.g. that
a fraud on the part of a respectable banker is equivalent, both in
respect of the rights which it violates and of the terror needed to
prevent the recurrence of like offences, to a burglary. It will not
follow because the burglary is punished by imprisonment with hard
labour that hard labour should be inflicted on the fraudulent banker
likewise. The infliction of hard labour is in everyone's apprehension
so different to the banker from what it is to the burglar, that its
infliction is not needed in order to equalise the terror which the
popular imagination associates with the punishment in the two cases.

194. On the same principle may be justified the consideration of
extenuating circumstances in the infliction of punishment. In fact,
whether under that name or another, they are taken account of in
the administration of criminal law among all civilised nations.
'Extenuating circumstances' is not a phrase in use among our
lawyers, but in fact the consideration of them does constantly, with
the approval of the judge, convert what would otherwise have been
conviction for murder into conviction for manslaughter, and when
there has been conviction for murder, leads to the commutation of
the sentence. This fact is often taken to show that the degree of
moral depravity on the part of the criminal, the question of his
character and motive, is and must be considered in determining the
punishment due to him. In truth, however, 'extenuating circumstances'
may very well make a difference in the kind of terror which needs
to be associated with a crime in order to the future protection of
rights, and under certain conditions the consideration of them may be
sufficiently justified on this ground. Suppose a theft by a starving
man, or a hare shot by an angry farmer whose corn it is devouring.
These are crimes, but crimes under such extenuating circumstances
that there is no need to associate very serious terror with them in
order to the protection of the essential rights of property. In the
latter case the right which the farmer violates is one which perhaps
might be disallowed altogether without interference with any right
which society is interested in maintaining. In the former case the
right violated is a primary and essential one; one which, where there
are many starving people, is in fact pretty sure to be protected by
the most stringent penalties. And it might be argued that on the
principle stated this is as it should be; that, so far from the
hunger of the thief being a reason for lightening his punishment, it
is a reason for increasing it, in order that the special temptation
to steal when far gone in hunger may, if possible, be neutralised by
a special terror associated with the commission of the crime under
those conditions. But this would be a one-sided application of the
principle. It is not the business of the state to protect one order
of rights specially, but all rights equally. It ought not therefore
to protect a certain order of rights by associating special terror
with the violation of them, when the special temptation to their
violation itself implies a violation of right in the persons of
those who are so tempted, as is the case when a general danger to
property arises from the fact that many people are on the edge of
starvation. The attempt to do so is at once ineffectual and diverts
attention from the true way of protecting the endangered right, which
is to prevent people from falling into a state of starvation. In
any tolerably organised society the condition of a man, ordinarily
honest and industrious, who is driven to theft by hunger, will be
so abnormal that very little terror needs to be associated with the
crime as so committed in order to maintain the sanctity of property
in the general imagination. Suppose again a man to be killed in a
quarrel arising out of his having tampered with the fidelity of his
neighbour's wife. In such a case 'extenuating circumstances' may
fairly be pleaded against the infliction of the extremest penalty,
because the extremest terror does not need to be associated with
homicide, as committed under such conditions, in order to the general
protection of human life, and because the attempt so to associate it
would tend, so far as successful, to weaken the general sense of the
wrong--the breach of family right--involved in the act which, in the
case supposed, provokes the homicide.

195. 'After all,' it may be said, 'this is a far-fetched way of
explaining the admission of extenuating circumstances as modifying
the punishment of crime. Why so strenuously avoid the simpler
explanation, that extenuating circumstances are taken into account
because they are held to modify the moral guilt of the crime? Is not
their recognition a practical proof that the punishment of a crime by
the state represents the moral disapproval of the community? Does it
not show that, however imperfectly the amount of punishment inflicted
on a crime may in fact correspond to its moral wickedness, it is
generally felt that it ought to do so?'

196. The answer is that there are two reasons for holding that
the state neither can nor should attempt to adjust the amount of
punishment which it inflicts on a crime to the degree of moral
depravity which the crime implies. (1) That the degree of moral
depravity implied in any crime is unascertainable. It depends on the
motive of the crime, and on this as part of the general character of
the agent; on the relation in which the habitual set of his character
stands to the character habitually set on the pursuit of goodness. No
one can ascertain this in regard to himself. He may know that he is
always far from being what he ought to be; that one particular action
of his represents on the whole, with much admixture of inferior
motives; the better tendency; another, with some admixture of better
motives, the worse. But any question in regard to the degree of
moral goodness or badness in any action of his own or of his most
intimate friend is quite unanswerable. Much less can a judge or jury
answer such a question in regard to an unknown criminal. We may be
sure indeed that any ordinary crime--nay, perhaps even that of the
'disinterested rebel'--implies the operation of some motive which
is morally bad, for though it is not necessarily the worst men who
come into conflict with established rights, it probably never can be
the best; but the degree of badness implied in such a conflict in
any particular case is quite beyond our ken, and it is this degree
that must be ascertained if the amount of punishment which the state
inflicts is to be proportionate to the moral badness implied in the
crime. (2) The notion that the state should, if it could, adjust
the amount of punishment which it inflicts on a crime to the moral
wickedness of the crime, rests on a false view of the relation of
the state to morality. It implies that it is the business of the
state to punish wickedness, as such. But it has no such business. It
cannot undertake to punish wickedness, as such, without vitiating
the disinterestedness of the effort to escape wickedness, and thus
checking the growth of a true goodness of the heart in the attempt to
promote a goodness which is merely on the surface. This, however, is
not to be understood as meaning that the punishment of crime serves
no moral purpose. It does serve such a purpose, and has its value
in doing so, but only in the sense that the protection of rights,
and the association of terror with their violation, is the condition
antecedent of any general advance in moral well-being.

197. The punishment of crime, then, neither is, nor can, nor should
be adjusted to the degree of moral depravity, properly so called,
which is implied in the crime. But it does not therefore follow that
it does not represent the disapproval which the community feels for
the crime. On the whole, making allowance for the fact that law
and judicial custom vary more slowly than popular feeling, it does
represent such disapproval. And the disapproval may fitly be called
moral, so far as that merely means that it is a disapproval relating
to voluntary action. But it is a disapproval founded on a sense of
what is necessary for the protection of rights, not on a judgment
of good and evil of that kind which we call conscience when it is
applied to our own actions, and which is founded on an ideal of
moral goodness with which we compare our inward conduct ('inward,'
as representing motives and character). It is founded essentially on
the outward aspect of a man's conduct, on the view of it as related
to the security and freedom in action and acquisition of other
members of society. It is true that this distinction between the
outward and inward aspects of conduct is not present to the popular
mind. It has not been recognised by those who have been the agents
in establishing the existing law of crimes in civilised nations.
As the state came to control the individual or family in revenging
hurts, and to substitute its penalties for private vengeance, rules
of punishment came to be enacted expressive of general disapproval,
without any clear consciousness of what was the ground of the
disapproval. But in fact it was by what have been just described as
the outward consequences of conduct that a general disapproval of
it was ordinarily excited. Its morality in the stricter or inward
sense was not matter of general social consideration. Thus in the
main it has been on the ground of its interference with the general
security and freedom in action and acquisition, and in proportion
to the apprehension excited by it in this respect, that conduct has
been punished by the state. Thus the actual practice of criminal
law has on the whole corresponded to its true principle. So far as
this principle has been departed from, it has not been because the
moral badness of conduct, in the true or inward sense, has been
taken account of in its treatment as a crime, for this has not been
generally contemplated at all, but because 'religious' considerations
have interfered. Conduct which did not call for punishment by the
state as interfering with any true rights (rights that should be
rights) has been punished as 'irreligious.' This, however, did not
mean that it was punished on the ground of moral badness, properly
so called. It meant that its consequences were feared either as
likely to weaken the belief in some divine authority on which the
established system of rights was supposed to rest, or as likely to
bring evil on the community through provoking the wrath of some
unseen power.

198. This account of the considerations which have regulated the
punishment of crimes explains the severity with which 'criminal
negligence' is in some cases punished, and that severity is justified
by the account given of the true principle of criminal law, the
principle, viz., that crime should be punished according to the
importance of the right which it violates, and to the degree of
terror which in a well-organised society needs to be associated with
the crime in order to the protection of the right. It cannot be held
that the carelessness of an engine-driver who overlooks a signal
and causes a fatal accident, implies more moral depravity than is
implied in such negligence as all of us are constantly guilty of.
Considered with reference to the state of mind of the agent, it is
on a level with multitudes of actions and omissions which are not
punished at all. Yet the engine-driver would be found guilty of
manslaughter and sentenced to penal servitude. The justification is
not to be found in distinctions between different kinds of negligence
on the part of different agents, but in the effect of the negligence
in different cases upon the rights of others. In the case supposed,
the most important of all rights, the right to life, on the part
of railway passengers depends for its maintenance on the vigilance
of the drivers. Any preventible failure in such vigilance requires
to have sufficient terror associated with it in the mind of other
engine-drivers to prevent the recurrence of a like failure in
vigilance. Such punishment is just, however generally virtuous the
victim of it is, because it is necessary to the protection of rights
of which the protection is necessary to social well-being; and the
victim of it, in proportion to his sense of justice, which means his
habit of practically recognising true rights, will recognise it as
just.

199. On this principle crimes committed in drunkenness must be dealt
with. Not only is all depravity of motive specially inapplicable to
them, since the motives actuating a drunken man often seem to have
little connection with his habitual character; it is not always the
case that a crime committed in drunkenness is even intentional.
When a man in a drunken rage kills another, he no doubt intends
to kill him, or at any rate to do him 'grievous bodily harm,' and
perhaps the association of great penal terror with such an offence
may tend to restrain men from committing it even when drunk; but
when a drunken mother lies on her child and smothers it, the hurt
is not intentional but accidental. The drunkenness, however, is not
accidental, but preventible by the influence of adequate motives.
It is therefore proper to treat such a violation of right, though
committed unknowingly, as a crime, and to associate terror with it
in the popular imagination, in order to the protection of rights by
making people more careful about getting drunk, about allowing or
promoting drunkenness, and about looking after drunken people. It is
unreasonable, however, to do this and at the same time to associate
so little terror, as in practice we do, with the promotion of
dangerous drunkenness. The case of a crime committed by a drunkard is
plainly distinguishable from that of a crime committed by a lunatic,
for the association of penal terror with the latter would tend
neither to prevent a lunatic from committing a crime nor people from
becoming lunatics.

200. The principle above stated, as that according to which
punishment by the state should be inflicted and regulated, also
justifies a distinction between crimes and civil injuries, i.e.
between breaches of right for which the state inflicts punishment
without redress to the person injured, and those for which it
procures or seeks to procure redress to the person injured without
punishment of the person causing the injury. We are not here
concerned with the history of this distinction (for which see Maine,
_Ancient Law_, chap. x, and W.E. Hearn, _The Aryan Household_, chap.
xix), nor with the question whether many breaches of right now among
us treated as civil injuries ought not to be treated as crimes,
but with the justification that exists for treating certain kinds
of breach of right as cases in which the state should interfere
to procure redress for the person injured, but not in the way of
inflicting punishment on the injurer until he wilfully resists the
order to make redress. The principle of the distinction as ordinarily
laid down, viz. that civil injuries 'are violations of rights when
considered in reference to the injury sustained by the individual,'
while crimes are 'violations of rights when considered in reference
to their evil tendency as regards the community at large' (Stephen,
Book V, chap, i), is misleading; for if the well-being of the
community did not suffer in the hurt done to the individual, that
hurt would not be a violation of a right in the true sense at all,
nor would the community have any ground for insisting that the hurt
shall be redressed, and for determining the mode in which it shall
be redressed. A violation of right cannot in truth be considered
merely in relation to injury sustained by an individual, for, thus
considered, it would not be a violation of right. It may be said that
the state is only concerned in procuring redress for civil injuries,
because, if it left an individual to procure redress in his own way,
there would be no public peace. But there are other and easier ways
of preventing fighting than by procuring redress of wrong. We prevent
our dogs from fighting, not by redressing wrongs which they sustain
from each other (of wrongs as of rights they are in the proper sense
incapable), but by beating them or tying them up. The community would
not keep the peace by procuring redress for hurt or damage sustained
by individuals, unless it conceived itself as having interest
in the security of individuals from hurt and damage, unless it
considered the hurt done to individuals as done to itself. The true
justification for treating some breaches of right as cases merely for
redress, others as cases for punishment, is that, in order to the
general protection of rights, with some it is necessary to associate
a certain terror, with others it is not.

201. What then is the general ground of distinction between those
with which terror does, and those with which it does not, need to
be associated? Clearly it is purposeless to associate terror with
breaches of right in the case where the breaker does not know that
he is violating a right, and is not responsible for not knowing it.
No association of terror with such a breach of right can prevent men
from similar breaches under like conditions. In any case, therefore,
in which it is, to begin with, open to dispute whether a breach of
right has been committed at all, e.g. when it is a question whether
a contract has been really broken, owing to some doubt as to the
interpretation of the contract or its application to a particular
set of circumstances, or whether a commodity of which someone is
in possession properly belongs to another,--in such a case, though
the judge finally decides that there has been a breach of right,
there is no ground for treating it as a crime or punishing it. If,
in the course of judicial inquiry, it turns out that there has been
fraud by one or other of the parties to the litigation, a criminal
prosecution, having punishment, not redress, for its object, should
properly supervene upon the civil suit, unless the consequences of
the civil suit are incidentally such as to amount to a sufficient
punishment of the fraudulent party. Again, it is purposeless to
associate terror with a breach of obligation which the person
committing it knows to be a breach, but of an obligation which he has
no means of fulfilling, e.g. non-payment of an acknowledged debt by
a man who, through no fault of his own, is without means of paying
it. It is only in cases of one or other of the above kinds,--cases
in which the breach of right, supposing it to have been committed,
has presumably arisen either from inability to prevent it or from
ignorance of the existence of the right,--that it can be held as an
absolute rule to be no business of the state to interfere penally but
only in the way of restoring, so far as possible, the broken right.

202. But there are many cases of breach of right which can neither
be definitely reduced to one of the above kinds, nor distinguished
from them by any broad demarcation; cases in which the breaker of a
right has been ignorant of it, because he has not cared to know, or
in which his inability to fulfil it is the result of negligence or
extravagance. Whether these should be treated penally or no, will
depend partly on the seriousness of the wrong done through avoidable
ignorance or negligence, partly on the sufficiency of the deterrent
effect incidentally involved in the civil remedy. In the case e.g. of
inability to pay a debt through extravagance or recklessness, it may
be unnecessary and inadvisable to treat the breach of right penally,
in consideration that it is indirectly punished by poverty and the
loss of reputation incidental to bankruptcy, and the creditors
should not look to the state to protect them from the consequences
of lending on bad security. The negligence of a trustee, again,
may be indirectly punished by his being obliged to make good the
property lost through his neglect to the utmost of his means. This
may serve as a sufficiently deterrent example without the negligence
being proceeded against criminally. Again, damage done to property
by negligence is in England dealt with civilly, not criminally;
and it may be held that in this case the liability to civil action
is a sufficient deterrent. On the other hand, negligence which, as
negligence, is not really distinguishable from the above, is rightly
treated criminally when its consequences are more serious; e.g. that
of the railway-servant whose negligence results in a fatal accident,
that of the bank-director who allows a misleading statement of
accounts to be published, fraudulently perhaps in the eye of the
law, but in fact negligently. As a matter of principle, no doubt,
if intentional violation of the right of property is treated as
penal equally with the violation of the right of life, the negligent
violation should be treated as penal in the one case as much as in
the other. But as the consequences of an action for damages may
be virtually though not ostensibly penal to the person proceeded
against, it may be convenient to leave those negligences which do
not, like the negligence of a railway-servant, affect the most
important rights, or do not affect rights on a very large scale as
does that of a bank-director, to be dealt with by the civil process.

203. The actual distinction between crimes and civil injuries in
English law is no doubt largely accidental. As the historians of law
point out, the civil process, having compensation, not punishment,
for its object, is the form which the interference of the community
for the maintenance of rights originally takes. The community,
restraining private vengeance, helps the injured person to redress,
and regulates the way in which redress shall be obtained. This
procedure no doubt implies the conviction that the community is
concerned in the injury done to an individual, but it is only by
degrees that this conviction becomes explicit, and that the community
comes to treat all preventible breaches of right as offences against
itself or its sovereign representative, i.e. as crimes or penal; in
the language of English law, as 'breaches of the king's peace.' Those
offences are first so treated which happen to excite most public
alarm, most fear for general safety (hence, among others, anything
thought sacrilegious). In a country like England, where no code has
been drawn up on general principles, the class of injuries that
are treated penally is gradually enlarged as public alarm happens
to be excited in particular directions, but it is largely a matter
of accident how the classification of crimes on one side and civil
injuries on the other happens to stand at any particular time. [1]

[1] See Markby, _Elements of Law_, chap. xi, especially note 1, p.
243; and Austin, Lecture XXVII. Between crimes and civil injuries
the distinction, as it actually exists, is merely one of procedure
(as stated by Austin, p. 518). The violation of right in one case is
proceeded against by the method of indictment, in the other by an
'action.' The distinction that in one case punishment is the object
of the process, in the other redress, is introduced in order to
explain the difference of procedure; and to justify this distinction
resort is had to the further distinction, that civil injury is
considered to affect the individual merely, crime to affect the
state. But in fact the action for civil injury may incidentally have
a penal result (Austin, p 521), and if it had not, many violations
of right now treated as civil injuries would have to be treated as
crimes. As an explanation therefore of the distinction between crimes
and injuries as it stands, it is not correct to say that for the
former punishment is sought, for the latter merely redress. Nor for
reasons already given is it true of any civil injury to say that it
affects, or should be considered as affecting, injured individuals
_merely_. The only distinction of principle is that between
violations of right which call for punishment and those which do
not; and those only do not call for punishment in some form or other
which arise either from uncertainty as to the right violated, or from
inability to prevent the violation.

204. According to the view here taken, then, there is no direct
reference in punishment by the state, either retrospective or
prospective, to moral good or evil. The state in its judicial action
does not look to the moral guilt of the criminal whom it punishes,
or to the promotion of moral good by means of his punishment in
him or others. It looks not to virtue and vice but to rights and
wrongs. It looks back to the wrong done in the crime which it
punishes; not, however, in order to avenge it, but in order to the
consideration of the sort of terror which needs to be associated
with such wrong-doing in order to the future maintenance of rights.
If the character of the criminal comes into account at all, it
can only be properly as an incident of this consideration. Thus
punishment of crime is preventive in its object; not, however,
preventive of any or every evil and by any and every means, but
(according to its idea or as it should be) _justly_ preventive
of _injustice_; preventive of interference with those powers of
action and acquisition which it is for the general well-being that
individuals should possess, and according to laws which allow those
powers equally to all men. But in order effectually to attain its
preventive object and to attain it justly, it should be reformatory.
When the reformatory office of punishment is insisted on, the
reference may be, and from the judicial point of view must be, not
to the moral good of the criminal as an ultimate end, but to his
recovery from criminal habits as a means to that which is the proper
and direct object of state-punishment, viz. the general protection
of rights. The reformatory function of punishment is from this point
of view an incident of its preventive function, as regulated by the
consideration of what is just to the criminal as well as to others.
For the fulfilment of this latter function, the great thing, as we
have seen, is by the punishment of an actual criminal to deter other
possible criminals; but for the same purpose, unless the actual
criminal is to be put out of the way or locked up for life, it must
be desirable to reform him so that he may not be dangerous in future.
Now when it is asked why he should not be put out of the way, it
must not be forgotten that among the rights which the state has to
maintain are included rights of the criminal himself. These indeed
are for the time suspended by his action in violation of rights, but
founded as they are on the capacity for contributing to social good,
they could only be held to be finally forfeited on the ground that
this capacity was absolutely extinct.

205. This consideration limits the kind of punishment which the
state may justly inflict. It ought not in punishing to sacrifice
unnecessarily to the maintenance of rights in general what might be
called the reversionary rights of the criminal, rights which, if
properly treated, he might ultimately become capable of exercising
for the general good. Punishment therefore either by death or by
perpetual imprisonment is justifiable only on one of two grounds;
either that association of the extremest terror with certain actions
is under certain conditions necessary to preserve the possibility of
a social life based on the observance of rights, or that the crime
punished affords a presumption of a permanent incapacity for rights
on the part of the criminal. The first justification may be pleaded
for the executions of men concerned in treasonable outbreaks, or
guilty of certain breaches of discipline in war (on the supposition
that the war is necessary for the safety of the state and that such
punishments are a necessary incident of war). Whether the capital
punishment is really just in such cases must depend, not only on
its necessity as an incident in the defence of a certain state,
but on the question whether that state itself is fulfilling its
function as a sustainer of true rights. For the penalty of death
for murder both justifications may be urged. It cannot be defended
on any other ground, but it may be doubted whether the presumption
of permanent incapacity for rights is one which in our ignorance we
can ever be entitled to make. As to the other plea, the question is
whether, with a proper police system and sufficient certainty of
detection and conviction, the association of this extremest terror
with the murderer is necessary to the security of life. Where the
death-penalty, however, is unjustifiable, so must be that of really
permanent imprisonment; one as much as the other is an absolute
deprivation of free social life, and of the possibilities of moral
development which that life affords. The only justification for
a sentence of permanent imprisonment in a case where there would
be none for capital punishment would be that, though inflicted as
permanent, the imprisonment might be brought to an end in the event
of any sufficient proof appearing of the criminal's amendment.
But such proof could only be afforded if the imprisonment were so
modified as to allow the prisoner a certain amount of liberty.

206. If punishment then is to be just, in the sense that in its
infliction due account is taken of all rights, including the
suspended rights of the criminal himself, it must be, so far as
public safety allows, reformatory. It must tend to qualify the
criminal for the resumption of rights. As reformatory, however,
punishment has for its direct object the qualification for the
exercise of rights, and is only concerned with the moralisation of
the criminal indirectly so far as it may result from the exercise
of rights. But even where it cannot be reformatory in this sense,
and over and above its reformatory function in cases where it has
one, it has a moral end. Just because punishment by the state has
for its direct object the maintenance of rights, it has, like every
other function of the state, indirectly a moral object, because true
rights, according to our definition, are powers which it is for
the general well-being that the individual (or association) should
possess, and that well-being is essentially a moral well-being.
Ultimately, therefore, the just punishment of crime is for the
moral good of the community. It is also for the moral good of the
criminal himself, unless--and this is a supposition which we ought
not to make--he is beyond the reach of moral influences. Though not
inflicted for that purpose, and though it would not the less have to
be inflicted if no moral effect on the criminal could be discerned,
it is morally the best thing that can happen to him. It is so, even
if a true social necessity requires that he be punished with death.
The fact that society is obliged so to deal with him affords the best
chance of bringing home to him the anti-social nature of his act. It
is true that the last utterances of murderers generally convey the
impression that they consider themselves interesting persons, quite
sure of going to heaven; but these are probably conventional. At
any rate if the solemn infliction of punishment on behalf of human
society, and without any sign of vindictiveness, will not breed the
shame which is the moral new birth, presumably nothing else within
human reach will.

    M. _THE RIGHT OF THE STATE TO PROMOTE MORALITY._

207. The right of the individual man as such to free life is
constantly gaining on its negative side more general recognition. It
is the basis of the growing scrupulosity in regard to punishments
which are not reformatory, which put rights finally out of the reach
of a criminal instead of qualifying him for their renewed exercise.
But the only rational foundation for the ascription of this right
is the ascription of capacity for free contribution to social good.
We treat this capacity in the man whose crime has given proof of
its having been overcome by anti-social tendencies, as yet giving
him a title to a further chance of its development; on the other
hand, we act as if it conferred no title on its possessors, before
a crime has been committed, to be placed under conditions in which
its realisation would be possible. Is this reasonable? Yet are not
all modern states so acting? Are they not allowing their ostensible
members to grow up under conditions which render the development of
social capacity practically impossible? Was it not more reasonable,
as in the ancient states, to deny the right to life in the human
subject as such, than to admit it under conditions which prevent the
realisation of the capacity that forms the ground of its admission?
This brings us to the fourth of the questions that arose [1] out of
the assertion of the individual's right to free life. What is the
nature and extent of the individual's claim to be enabled positively
to realise that capacity for freely contributing to social good which
is the foundation of his right to free life?

[1] [Above, sec. 156. RLN]

208. In dealing with this question, it is important to bear in mind
that the capacity we are considering is essentially a free or (what
is the same) a moral capacity. It is a capacity, not for action
determined by relation to a certain end, but for action determined
by a conception of the end to which it is relative. Only thus is
it a foundation of rights. The action of an animal or plant may
be made contributory to social good, but it is not therefore a
foundation of rights on the part of an animal or plant, because
they are not affected by the conception of the good to which they
contribute. A right is a power of acting for his own ends,--for
what he conceives to be his good,--secured to an individual by the
community, on the supposition that its exercise contributes to the
good of the community. But the exercise of such a power cannot be so
contributory, unless the individual, in acting for his own ends, is
at least affected by the conception of a good as common to himself
with others. The condition of making the animal contributory to human
good is that we do not leave him free to determine the exercise of
his powers; that we determine them for him; that we use him merely
as an instrument; and this means that we do not, because we cannot,
endow him with rights. We cannot endow him with rights because
there is no conception of a good common to him with us which we can
treat as a motive to him to do to us as he would have us do to him.
It is not indeed necessary to a capacity for rights, as it is to
true moral goodness, that interest in a good conceived as common to
himself with others should be a man's dominant motive. It is enough
if that which he presents to himself from time to time as his good,
and which accordingly determines his action, is so far affected by
consideration of the position in which he stands to others,--of
the way in which this or that possible action of his would affect
them, and of what he would have to expect from them in return,--as
to result habitually, without force or fear of force, in action not
incompatible with conditions necessary to the pursuit of a common
good on the part of others. In other words, it is the presumption
that a man in his general course of conduct will of his own motion
have respect to the common good, which entitles him to rights at
the hands of the community. The question of the moral value of the
motive which may induce this respect--whether an unselfish interest
in common good or the wish for personal pleasure and fear of personal
pain--does not come into the account at all. An agent, indeed, who
could only be induced by fear of death or bodily harm to behave
conformably to the requirements of the community, would not be a
subject of rights, because this influence could never be brought to
bear on him so constantly, if he were free to regulate his own life,
as to secure the public safety. But a man's desire for pleasure
to himself and aversion from pain to himself, though dissociated
from any desire for a higher object, for any object that is desired
because good for others, may constitute a capacity for rights, if
his imagination of pleasure and pain is so far affected by sympathy
with the feeling of others about him as to make him, independently of
force or fear of punishment, observant of established rights. In such
a case the fear of punishment may be needed to neutralise anti-social
impulses under circumstances of special temptation, but by itself it
could never be a sufficiently uniform motive to qualify a man, in the
absence of more spontaneously social feelings, for the life of a free
citizen. The qualification for such a life is a spontaneous habit
of acting with reference to a common good, whether that habit be
founded on an imagination of pleasures and pains or on a conception
of what ought to be. In either case the habit implies at least an
understanding that there is such a thing as a common good, and a
regulation of egoistic hopes and fears, if not an inducing of more
'disinterested' motives, in consequence of that understanding.

209. The capacity for rights, then, being a capacity for spontaneous
action regulated by a conception of a common good, either so
regulated through an interest which flows directly from that
conception, or through hopes and fears which are affected by it
through more complex channels of habit and association, is a capacity
which cannot be generated--which on the contrary is neutralised--by
any influences that interfere with the spontaneous action of social
interests. Now any direct enforcement of the outward conduct,
which ought to flow from social interests, by means of threatened
penalties--and a law requiring such conduct necessarily implies
penalties for disobedience to it--does interfere with the spontaneous
action of those interests, and consequently checks the growth of
the capacity which is the condition of the beneficial exercise of
rights. For this reason the effectual action of the state, i.e. the
community as acting through law, for the promotion of habits of
true citizenship, seems necessarily to be confined to the removal
of obstacles. Under this head, however, there may and should be
included much that most states have hitherto neglected, and much that
at first sight may have the appearance of an enforcement of moral
duties, e.g. the requirement that parents have their children taught
the elementary arts. To educate one's children is no doubt a moral
duty, and it is not one of those duties, like that of paying debts,
of which the neglect directly interferes with the rights of someone
else. It might seem, therefore, to be a duty with which positive law
should have nothing to do, any more than with the duty of striving
after a noble life. On the other hand, the neglect of it does tend
to prevent the growth of the capacity for beneficially exercising
rights on the part of those whose education is neglected, and it is
on this account, not as a purely moral duty on the part of a parent,
but as the prevention of a hindrance to the capacity for rights on
the part of children, that education should be enforced by the state.
It may be objected, indeed, that in enforcing it we are departing in
regard to the parents from the principle above laid down; that we are
interfering with the spontaneous action of social interests, though
we are doing so with a view to promoting this spontaneous action
in another generation. But the answer to this objection is, that a
law of compulsory education, if the preferences, ecclesiastical or
otherwise, of those parents who show any practical sense of their
responsibility are duly respected, is from the beginning only felt
as compulsion by those in whom, so far as this social function is
concerned, there is no spontaneity to be interfered with; and that in
the second generation, though the law with its penal sanctions still
continues, it is not felt as a law, as an enforcement of action by
penalties, at all.

210. On the same principle the freedom of contract ought probably
to be more restricted in certain directions than is at present the
case. The freedom to do as they like on the part of one set of men
may involve the ultimate disqualification of many others, or of a
succeeding generation, for the exercise of rights. This applies most
obviously to such kinds of contract or traffic as affect the health
and housing of the people, the growth of population relatively to
the means of subsistence, and the accumulation or distribution of
landed property. In the hurry of removing these restraints on free
dealing between man and man, which have arisen partly perhaps from
some confused idea of maintaining morality, but much more from the
power of class-interests, we have been apt to take too narrow a view
of the range of persons--not one generation merely, but succeeding
generations--whose freedom ought to be taken into account, and of
the conditions necessary to their freedom ('freedom' here meaning
their qualification for the exercise of rights). Hence the massing
of population without regard to conditions of health; unrestrained
traffic in deleterious commodities; unlimited upgrowth of the class
of hired labourers in particular industries which circumstances have
suddenly stimulated, without any provision against the danger of an
impoverished proletariate in following generations. Meanwhile, under
pretence of allowing freedom of bequest and settlement, a system has
grown up which prevents the landlords of each generation from being
free either in the government of their families or in the disposal of
their land, and aggravates the tendency to crowd into towns, as well
as the difficulties of providing healthy house-room, by keeping land
in a few hands. It would be out of place here to consider in detail
the remedies for these evils, or to discuss the question how far it
is well to trust to the initiative of the state or of individuals in
dealing with them. It is enough to point out the directions in which
the state may remove obstacles to the realisation of the capacity for
beneficial exercise of rights, without defeating its own object by
vitiating the spontaneous character of that capacity.

    N. _THE RIGHT OF THE STATE IN REGARD TO PROPERTY._

211. We have now considered the ground of the right to free life,
and what is the justification, if any, for the apparent disregard of
that right, _(a)_ in war, __(b)__ in the infliction of punishment. We
have also dealt with the question of the general office of the state
in regard to the development of that capacity in individuals which
is the foundation of the right, pointing out on the one hand the
necessary limitation of its office in this respect, on the other hand
the directions in which it may remove obstacles to that development.
We have next to consider the rationale of the rights of property.

In discussions on the 'origin of property' two questions are apt
to be mixed up which, though connected, ought to be kept distinct.
One is the question how men have come to appropriate; the other
the question how the idea of right has come to be associated with
their appropriations. As the term 'property' not only implies a
permanent possession of something, or a possession which can only be
given up with the good will of the possessor, but also a possession
recognised as a right, an inquiry into the origin of property must
involve both these questions, but it is not the less important that
the distinction between them should be observed. Each of them again
has both its analytical and its historical side. In regard to the
first question it is important to learn all that can be learnt as
to the kind of things that were first, and afterwards at successive
periods, appropriated; as to the mode in which, and the sort of
persons or societies by whom, they were appropriated. This is an
historical inquiry. But it cannot take the place of a metaphysical
or psychological analysis of the conditions on the part of the
appropriating subject implied in the fact that he does such a thing
as appropriate. So, too, in regard to the second question, it is
important to investigate historically the forms in which the right
of men in their appropriations has been recognised; the parties,
whether individuals or societies, to whom the right has been allowed;
and the sort of objects, capable of appropriation, to which it has
been considered to extend. But neither can these inquiries help us
to understand, in the absence of a metaphysical or moral analysis,
either what is implied in the ascription of a right to certain
appropriations, or why there should be a right to them.

212. We have then two questions, as above stated, each requiring
two different methods of treatment. But neither have the questions
themselves, nor the different methods of dealing with them, been duly
distinguished.

It is owing to confusion between them that the right of property
in things has been supposed to originate in the first occupancy of
them. This supposition, in truth, merely disguises the identical
proposition that in order to property there must to begin with
have been some appropriation. The truism that there could be no
property in anything which had not been at some time and in some
manner appropriated, tells us nothing as to how or why the property
in it, as a right, came to be recognised, or why that right should
be recognised. But owing to the confusion between the origin of
appropriation and the origin of property as a right, an identical
proposition as to the beginning of appropriation seemed to be an
instructive statement as to the basis of the rights of property. Of
late, in a revulsion from theories founded on identical propositions,
'historical' inquiries into the 'origin of property' have come into
vogue. The right method of dealing with the question has been taken
to lie in an investigation of the earliest forms in which property
has existed. But such investigation, however valuable in itself,
leaves untouched the questions, (1) what it is in the nature of men
that makes it possible for them, and moves them, to appropriate; (2)
why it is that they conceive of themselves and each other as having a
right in their appropriations; (3) on what ground this conception is
treated as a moral authority,--as one that should be acted on.

213. (1) Appropriation is an expression of will; of the individual's
effort to give reality to a conception of his own good; of his
consciousness of a possible self-satisfaction as an object to be
attained. It is different from mere provision to supply a future
want. Such provision appears to be made by certain animals, e.g.
ants. It can scarcely be made under the influence of the imagination
of pain incidental to future want derived from previous experience,
for the ant lays up for the winter though it has not previously
lived through the winter. It may be suggested that it does so from
inherited habit, but that this habit has originally arisen from an
experience of pain on the part of ants in the past. Whether this is
the true account of the matter we have not, I think,--perhaps from
the nature of the case we cannot have--the means of deciding. We
conceal our ignorance by saying that the ant acts instinctively,
which is in effect a merely negative statement, that the ant is not
moved to make provision for winter either by imagination of the
pain which will be felt in winter if it does not, or by knowledge
(conception of the fact) that such pain will be felt. In fact,
we know nothing of the action of the ant from the inside, or as
an expression of consciousness. If we are not entitled to deny
dogmatically that it expresses consciousness at all, neither are
we entitled to say that it does express consciousness, still less
what consciousness it expresses. On the other hand we are able to
interpret the acts of ourselves, and of those with whom we can
communicate by means of signs to which we and they attach the same
meaning, as expressions of consciousness of a certain kind, and thus
by reflective analysis to assure ourselves that acts of appropriation
in particular express a will of the kind stated; that they are not
merely a passing employment of such materials as can be laid hands on
to satisfy this or that want, present or future, felt or imagined,
but reflect the consciousness of a subject which distinguishes itself
from its wants; which presents itself to itself as still there and
demanding satisfaction when this or that want, or any number of
wants, have been satisfied; which thus not merely uses a thing to
fill a want, and in so doing at once destroys the thing and for the
time removes the want, but says to itself, 'This shall be mine to do
as I like with, to satisfy my wants and express my emotions as they
arise.'

214. One condition of the existence of property, then, is
appropriation, and that implies the conception of himself on the
part of the appropriator as a permanent subject for whose use, as
instruments of satisfaction and expression, he takes and fashions
certain external things, certain things external to his bodily
members. These things, so taken and fashioned, cease to be external
as they were before. They become a sort of extension of the man's
organs, the constant apparatus through which he gives reality to
his ideas and wishes. But another condition must be fulfilled in
order to constitute property, even of the most simple and primitive
sort. This is the recognition by others of a man's appropriations as
something which they will treat as his, not theirs, and the guarantee
to him of his appropriations by means of that recognition. What then
is the ground of the recognition? The writers of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, who discussed the basis of the rights of
property, took it for granted, and in so doing begged the question.
Grotius makes the right of property rest on contract, but clearly
until there is a recognised 'meum' and 'tuum' there can be no
contract. Contract presupposes property. The property in a particular
thing may be derived from a contract through which it has been
obtained in exchange for another thing or for some service rendered,
but that implies that it was previously the property of another,
and that the person obtaining it had a property in something else,
if only in the labour of his hands, which he could exchange for it.
[1] Hobbes is so far more logical that he does not derive property
from contract, but treats property and 'the validity of covenants'
as co-ordinately dependent on the existence of a sovereign power
of compulsion. [2] But his account of this, as of all other forms
of right, is open to the objection (before dwelt on) that if the
sovereign power is merely a strongest force it cannot be a source of
rights; and that if it is other than this, if it is a representative
and maintainer of rights, its existence presupposes rights, which
remain to be accounted for. As previously shown, Hobbes, while
professing to make all rights dependent on the sovereign power,
presupposes rights in his account of the institution of this power.
The validity of contracts 'begins not but with its institution,'
yet its own right is derived from an irrevocable contract of all
with all in which each devolves his 'persona,' the body of his
rights, upon it. Without pressing his particular forms of expression
unfairly against him, it is clear that he could not really succeed
in thinking of rights as derived simply from supreme force; that he
could not associate the idea of absolute right with the sovereign
without supposing prior rights which it was made the business of the
sovereign to enforce, and in particular such a recognised distinction
between 'meum' and 'tuum' as is necessary to a covenant. Nor when we
have dropped Hobbes' notion of government or law-making power, as
having originated in a covenant of all with all, shall we succeed any
better in deriving rights of property, any more than other rights,
from law or a sovereign which makes law, unless we regard the law or
sovereign as the organ or sustainer of a general social recognition
of certain powers, as powers which should be exercised.

[1] Grotius, _De Jure, etc_. Book II, chap. ii. Sect. 5. 'Simul
discimus quomodo res in proprietatem iverint ... pacto quodam aut
expresso, ut per divisionem, aut tacito, ut per occupationem: simul
atque enim communio displicuit, nec instituta est divisio, censeri
debet inter omnes convenisse ut, quod quisque occupasset, id proprium
haberet.' But he supposes a previous process by which things had been
appropriated (Sect. 4), owing to the necessity of spending labour on
them in order to satisfy desire for a more refined kind of living
than could be supplied by spontaneous products of the earth. 'Hinc
discimus quae fuerit causa, ob quam a primaeva communione rerum
primo mobilium, deinde et immobilium discessum est: nimirum quod non
contenti homines vesci sponte natis, antra habitare ... vitae genus
exquisitius delegissent, industria opus fuit, quam singuli rebus
singulis adhiberent.' ... The 'communio rerum,' thus departed from
when labour came to be expended on things, Grotius had previously
described (Sect. 1) as a state of things in which everyone had a
right to whatever he could lay hands on. 'Erant omnia communia et
indivisa omnibus, veluti unum cunctis patrimonium esset. Hinc factum
ut statim quisque hominum ad suos usus arripere posset quod vellet,
et quae consumi poterant consumere, ac talis usus universalis juris
erat tum vice proprietatis. Nam quod quisque sic arripuerat, id ei
eripere alter nisi per injuriam non poterat.' Here then a virtual
right of property, though not so called, seems to be supposed in
two forms previous to the establishment of what Grotius calls the
right of property by contract. There is (1) a right of property in
what each can 'take to his use and consume' out of the raw material
supplied by nature; (2) a further right of each man in that on which
he has expended labour. Grotius does not indeed expressly call this
a right, but if there is a right, as he says there is, on the part
of each man to that which he is able 'ad suos arripere usus,' much
more must there be a right to that which he has not only taken but
fashioned by his labour. On the nature and rationale of this right
Grotius throws no light, but it is clearly presupposed by that right
of property which he supposes to be derived from contract, and must
be recognised before any such contract could be possible.

[2] 'There is annexed to the sovereignty the whole power of
prescribing the rules whereby every man may know what goods he may
enjoy and what actions he may do without being molested by any of
his fellow-subjects: and this is it men call propriety. For before
constitution of sovereign power all men had right to all things,
which necessarily causeth war; and therefore this propriety, being
necessary to peace, and depending on sovereign power, is the act
of that power in order to the public peace.' (_Leviathan_, pt. II,
chap. xviii.) 'The nature of justice consisteth in keeping of valid
covenants, but the validity of covenants begins not but with the
constitution of a civil power, sufficient to compel men to keep them;
and then it is also that propriety begins.' (_Ibid_. chap, xv.)

215. Locke [1] treats property--fairly enough so long as only its
simplest forms are in question--as derived from labour. By the same
law of nature and reason by which a man has 'a property in his
own person,' 'the labour of his body and the work of his hand are
properly his' too. Now that the right to free life, which we have
already dwelt on, carries with it a certain right to property, to
a certain permanent apparatus beyond the bodily organs, for the
maintenance and expression of that life, is quite true. But apart
from the difficulty of tracing some kinds of property, in which men
are in fact held to have a right, to the labour of anyone, even of
someone from whom it has been derived by inheritance or bequest (a
difficulty to be considered presently), to say that it is a 'law of
nature and reason' that a man should have a property in the work
of his hands is no more than saying that that on which a man has
impressed his labour is recognised by others as something which
should be his, just as he himself is recognised by them as one that
should be his own master. The ground of the recognition is the same
in both cases, and it is Locke's merit to have pointed this out; but
what the ground is he does not consider, shelving the question by
appealing to a law of nature and reason.

[1] _Civil Government_, chap. v. The most important passages are
quoted in Fox Bourne's _Life of Locke_, vol. ii. pp. 171 and 172.

216. The ground of the right to free life, the reason why a man is
secured in the free exercise of his powers through recognition of
that exercise by others as something that should be, lay, as we saw,
in the conception on the part of everyone who concedes the right to
others and to whom it is conceded, of an identity of good for himself
and others. It is only as within a society, as a relation between
its members, though the society be that of all men, that there can
be such a thing as a right; and the right to free life rests on the
common will of the society, in the sense that each member of the
society within which the right subsists contributes to satisfy the
others in seeking to satisfy himself, and that each is aware that the
other does so; whence there results a common interest in the free
play of the powers of all. And just as the recognised interest of a
society constitutes for each member of it the right to free life,
just as it makes each conceive of such life on the part of himself
and his neighbour as what should be, and thus forms the basis of
a restraining custom which secures it for each, so it constitutes
the right to the instruments of such life, making each regard the
possession of them by the other as for the common good, and thus
through the medium first of custom, then of law, securing them to
each.

217. Thus the doctrine that the foundation of the right of property
lies in the will, that property is 'realised will,' is true enough
if we attach a certain meaning to 'will'; if we understand by it,
not the momentary spring of any and every spontaneous action, but a
constant principle, operative in all men qualified for any form of
society, however frequently overborne by passing impulses, in virtue
of which each seeks to give reality to the conception of a well-being
which he necessarily regards as common to himself with others. A
will of this kind explains at once the effort to appropriate, and
the restraint placed on each in his appropriations by a customary
recognition of the interest which each has in the success of the
like effort on the part of the other members of a society with which
he shares a common well-being. This customary recognition, founded
on a moral or rational will, requires indeed to be represented by
some adequate force before it can result in a real maintenance of
the rights of property. The wild beast in man will not otherwise
yield obedience to the rational will. And from the operation of
this compulsive force, very imperfectly controlled by the moral
tendencies which need its co-operation,--in other words from the
historical incidents of conquest and government, --there result
many characteristics of the institution of property, as it actually
exists, which cannot be derived from the spiritual principle which
we have assigned as its foundation. Still, without that principle
it could not have come into existence, nor would it have any moral
justification at all.

218. It accords with the account given of this principle that the
right of property, like every other form of right, should first
appear within societies founded on kinship, these being naturally
the societies within which the restraining conception of a common
well-being is first operative. We are apt indeed to think of the
state of things in which the members of a family or clan hold land
and stock in common, as the antithesis of one in which rights
of property exist. In truth it is the earliest stage of their
existence, because the most primitive form of society in which the
fruit of his labour is secured to the individual by the society,
under the influence of the conception of a common well-being. The
characteristic of primitive communities is not the absence of
distinction between 'meum' and 'tuum,' without which no society of
intelligent as opposed to instinctive agents would be possible at
all, but the common possession of certain materials, in particular
land, on which labour may be expended. It is the same common interest
which prevents the separate appropriation of these materials, and
which secures the individual in the enjoyment and use of that which
his labour can extract from them.

219. From the moral joint of view, however, the clan-system is
defective, because under it the restraint imposed upon the individual
by his membership of a society is not, and has not the opportunity
of becoming, a self-imposed restraint, a free obedience, to which,
though the alternative course is left open to him, the individual
submits, because he conceives it as his true good. The area within
which he can shape his own circumstances is not sufficient to allow
of the opposite possibilities of right and wrong being presented to
him, and thus of his learning to love right for its own sake. And the
other side of this moral tutelage of the individual, this withholding
from him of the opportunity of being freely determined by recognition
of his moral relations, is the confinement of those relations
themselves, which under the clan-system have no actual existence
except as between members of the same clan. A necessary condition
at once of the growth of a free morality, i.e. a certain behaviour
of men determined by an understanding of moral relations and by the
value which they set on them as understood, and of the conception
of those relations as relations between all men, is that free play
should be given to every man's powers of appropriation. Moral freedom
is not the same thing as a control over the outward circumstances
and appliances of life. It is the end to which such control is a
generally necessary means, and which gives it its value. In order to
obtain this control, men must cease to be limited in their activities
by the customs of the clan. The range of their appropriations must
be extended; they must include more of the permanent material on
which labour may be expended, and not merely the passing products of
labour spent on unappropriated material; and they must be at once
secured and controlled in it by the good-will, by the sense of common
interest, of a wider society, of a society to which any and every
one may belong who will observe its conditions, and not merely those
of a particular parentage; in other words by the law, written or
unwritten, of a free state.

220. It is too long a business here to attempt an account of the
process by which the organisation of rights in the state has
superseded that of the clan, and at the same time the restriction of
the powers of appropriation implied in the latter has been removed.
It is important to observe, however, that this process has by no
means contributed unmixedly to the end to which, from the moral
point of view, it should have contributed. That end is at once the
emancipation of the individual from all restrictions upon the free
moral life, and his provision with means for it. But the actual
result of the development of rights of property in Europe, as part of
its general political development, has so far been a state of things
in which all indeed _may_ have property, but great numbers in fact
cannot have it in that sense in which alone it is of value, viz. as a
permanent apparatus for carrying out a plan of life, for expressing
ideas of what is beautiful, or giving effect to benevolent wishes.
In the eye of the law they have rights of appropriation, but in fact
they have not the chance of providing means for a free moral life,
of developing and giving reality or expression to a good will, an
interest in social well-being. A man who possesses nothing but his
powers of labour and who has to sell these to a capitalist for bare
daily maintenance, might as well, in respect of the ethical purposes
which the possession of property should serve, be denied rights
of property altogether. Is the existence of so many men in this
position, and the apparent liability of many more to be brought to
it by a general fall of wages, if increase of population goes along
with decrease in the productiveness of the earth, a necessary result
of the emancipation of the individual and the free play given to
powers of appropriation? or is it an evil incident, which may yet be
remedied, of that historical process by which the development of the
rights of property has been brought about, but in which the agents
have for the most part had no moral objects in view at all?

221. Let us first be clear about the points in which the conditions
of property, as it actually exists, are at variance with property
according to its idea or as it should be. The rationale of property,
as we have seen, is that everyone should be secured by society in the
power of getting and keeping the means of realising a will, which
in possibility is a will directed to social good. Whether anyone's
will is actually and positively so directed, does not affect his
claim to the power. This power should be secured to the individual
irrespectively of the use which he actually makes of it, so long as
he does not use it in a way that interferes with the exercise of
like power by another, on the ground that its uncontrolled exercise
is the condition of attainment by man of that free morality which is
his highest good. It is not then a valid objection to the manner in
which property is possessed among us, that its holders constantly
use it in a way demoralising to themselves and others, any more than
such misuse of any other liberties is an objection to securing men in
their possession. Only then is property held in a way inconsistent
with its idea, and which should, if possible, be got rid of, when the
possession of property by one man interferes with the possession of
property by another; when one set of men are secured in the power of
getting and keeping the means of realising their will, in such a way
that others are practically denied the power. In that case it may
truly be said that 'property is theft.' The rationale of property,
in short, requires that everyone who will conform to the positive
condition of possessing it, viz. labour, and the negative condition,
viz. respect for it as possessed by others, should, so far as social
arrangements can make him so, be a possessor of property himself,
and of such property as will at least enable him to develope a sense
of responsibility, as distinct from mere property in the immediate
necessaries of life.

222. But then the question arises, whether the rationale of property,
as thus stated, is not inconsistent with the unchecked freedom of
appropriation, or freedom of appropriation checked only by the
requirement that the thing appropriated shall not have previously
been appropriated by another. Is the requirement that every honest
man should be a proprietor to the extent stated, compatible with
any great inequalities of possession? In order to give effect to
it, must we not remove those two great sources of the inequality of
fortunes, (1) freedom of bequest, and the other arrangements by which
the profits of the labour of several generations are accumulated
on persons who do not labour at all; (2) freedom of trade, of
buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest, by which
accumulated profits of labour become suddenly multiplied in the
hands of a particular proprietor? Now clearly, if an inequality of
fortunes, of the kind which naturally arises from the admission of
these two forms of freedom, necessarily results in the existence of a
proletariate, practically excluded from such ownership as is needed
to moralise a man, there would be a contradiction between our theory
of the right of property and the actual consequence of admitting the
right according to the theory; for the theory logically necessitates
freedom both in trading and in the disposition of his property by the
owner, so long as he does not interfere with the like freedom on the
part of others; and in other ways as well its realisation implies
inequality.

223. Once admit as the idea of property that nature should be
progressively adapted to the service of man by a process in which
each, while working freely or for himself, i.e. as determined by
a conception of his own good, at the same time contributes to the
social good, and it will follow that property must be unequal. If we
leave a man free to realise the conception of a possible well-being,
it is impossible to limit the effect upon him of his desire to
provide for his future well-being, as including that of the persons
in whom he is interested, or the success with which at the prompting
of that desire he turns resources of nature to account. Considered
as representing the conquest of nature by the effort of free and
variously gifted individuals, property must be unequal; and no less
must it be so if considered as a means by which individuals fulfil
social functions. As we may learn from Aristotle, those functions
are various and the means required for their fulfilment are various.
The artist and man of letters require different equipment and
apparatus from the tiller of land and the smith. Either then the
various apparatus needed for various functions must be provided for
individuals by society, which would imply a complete regulation of
life incompatible with that highest object of human attainment, a
free morality; or we must trust for its provision to individual
effort, which will imply inequality between the property of different
persons.

224. The admission of freedom of trade follows from the same
principle. It is a condition of the more complete adaptation of
nature to the service of man by the free effort of individuals. 'To
buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market' is a phrase which
may no doubt be used to cover objectionable transactions, in which
advantage is taken of the position of sellers who from circumstances
are not properly free to make a bargain. It is so employed when the
cheapness of buying arises from the presence of labourers who have
no alternative but to work for 'starvation wages.' But in itself it
merely describes transactions in which commodities are bought where
they are of least use and sold where they are of most use. The trader
who profits by the transaction is profiting by what is at the same
time a contribution to social well-being.

In regard to the freedom which a man should be allowed in disposing
of his property by will or gift, the question is not so simple. The
same principle which forbids us to limit the degree to which a man
may provide for his future, forbids us to limit the degree to which
he may provide for his children, these being included in his forecast
of his future. It follows that the amount which children may inherit
may not rightly be limited; and in this way inequalities of property,
and accumulations of it to which possessors have contributed
nothing by their own labour, must arise. Of course the possessor
of an estate, who has contributed nothing by his own labour to its
acquisition, may yet by his labour contribute largely to the social
good, and a well-organised state will in various ways elicit such
labour from possessors of inherited wealth. Nor will it trust merely
to encouraging the voluntary fulfilment of social functions, but
will by taxation make sure of some positive return for the security
which it gives to inherited wealth. But while the mere permission
of inheritance, which seems implied in the permission to a man to
provide unlimitedly for his future, will lead to accumulations of
wealth, on the other hand, if the inheritance is to be equal among
all children, and, failing children, is to pass to the next of kin,
the accumulation will be checked. It is not therefore the right of
inheritance, but the right of bequest, that is most likely to lead to
accumulation of wealth, and that has most seriously been questioned
by those who hold that universal ownership is a condition of moral
well-being. Is a proprietor to be allowed to dispose of his property
as he likes among his children (or, if he has none, among others),
making one very rich as compared with the others, or is he to be
checked by a law requiring approximately equal inheritance?

225. As to this, consider that on the same principle on which we
hold that a man should be allowed to accumulate as he best can for
his children, he should have discretion in distributing among his
children. He should be allowed to accumulate, because in so doing he
at once expresses and developes the sense of family responsibility,
which naturally breeds a recognition of duties in many other
directions. But if the sense of family responsibility is to have
free play, the man must have due control over his family, and this
he can scarcely have if all his children as a matter of necessity
inherit equally, however undutiful or idle or extravagant they may
be. For this reason the true theory of property would seem to favour
freedom of bequest, at any rate in regard to wealth generally. There
may be special reasons, to be considered presently, for limiting it
in regard to land. But as a general rule, the father of a family, if
left to himself and not biassed by any special institutions of his
country, is most likely to make that distribution among his children
which is most for the public good. If family pride moves him to endow
one son more largely than the rest, in order to maintain the honour
of his name, family affection will keep this tendency within limits
in the interest of the other children, unless the institutions of his
country favour the one tendency as against the other. And this they
will do if they maintain great dignities, e.g. peerages, of which the
possession of large hereditary wealth is virtually the condition, and
if they make it easy, when the other sons have been impoverished for
the sake of endowing the eldest, to maintain the former at the public
expense by means of appointments in the church or state.

It must be borne in mind, further, that the freedom of bequest which
is to be justified on the above principles must not be one which
limits that freedom in a subsequent generation, It must therefore be
distinguished from the power of settlement allowed by English law and
constantly exercised in dealing with landed estate; for this power,
as exercised by the landowning head of a family in one generation,
prevents the succeeding head of the family from being free to make
what disposition he thinks best among his children and ties up
the succession to the estate to his eldest son. The practice of
settlement in England, in short, as applied to landed estate, cancels
the freedom of bequest in the case of most landowners and neutralises
all the dispersive tendency of family affection, while it maintains
in full force all the accumulative tendency of family pride. This,
however, is no essential incident of a system in which the rights of
individual ownership are fully developed, but just the contrary.

226. The question then remains, whether the full development of
those rights, as including that of unlimited accumulation of wealth
by the individual and of complete freedom of bequest on his part,
necessarily carries with it the existence of a proletariate, nominal
owners of their powers of labour, but in fact obliged to sell
these on such terms that they are owners of nothing beyond what is
necessary from day to day for the support of life, and may at any
time lose even that, so that, as regards the moral functions of
property, they may be held to be not proprietors at all; or whether
the existence of such a class is due to causes only accidentally
connected with the development of rights of individual property.

We must bear in mind (1) that the increased wealth of one man does
not naturally mean the diminished wealth of another. We must not
think of wealth as a given stock of commodities of which a larger
share cannot fall to one without taking from the share that falls
to another. The wealth of the world is constantly increasing in
proportion as the constant production of new wealth by labour exceeds
the constant consumption of what is already produced, There is no
natural limit to its increase except such as arises from the fact
that the supply of the food necessary to sustain labour becomes more
difficult as more comes to be required owing to the increase in the
number of labourers, and from the possible ultimate exhaustion of the
raw materials of labour in the world. Therefore in the accumulation
of wealth, so far as it arises from the saving by anyone of the
products of his labour, from his bequest of this capital to another
who farther adds to it by saving some of the profit which the capital
yields, as employed in the payment for labour or in trade either by
the capitalist himself or someone to whom he lends it, and from the
continuation of this process through generations, there is nothing
which tends to lessen for anyone else the possibilities of ownership.
On the contrary, supposing trade and labour to be free, wealth
must be constantly distributed throughout the process in the shape
of wages to labourers and of profits to those who mediate in the
business of exchange.

227. It is true that the accumulation of capital naturally leads
to the employment of large masses of hired labourers. But there
is nothing in the nature of the case to keep these labourers in
the condition of living from hand to mouth, to exclude them from
that education of the sense of responsibility which depends on the
possibility of permanent ownership. There is nothing in the fact
that their labour is hired in great masses by great capitalists to
prevent them from being on a small scale capitalists themselves. In
their position they have not indeed the same stimulus to saving, or
the same constant opening for the investment of savings, as a man
who is αὐτουργός; [1] but their combination in work gives them every
opportunity, if they have the needful education and self-discipline,
for forming societies for the investment of savings. In fact, as
we know, in the well-paid industries of England the better sort
of labourers do become capitalists, to the extent often of owning
their houses and a good deal of furniture, of having an interest in
stores, and of belonging to benefit-societies through which they
make provision for the future. It is not then to the accumulation
of capital, but to the condition, due to antecedent circumstances
unconnected with that accumulation, of the men with whom the
capitalist deals and whose labour he buys on the cheapest terms, that
we must ascribe the multiplication in recent times of an impoverished
and reckless proletariate.

[1] [Greek αὐτουργός (autourgos) = yeoman farmer, literally one who
works for himself Tr.]

228. It is difficult to summarise the influences to which is due
the fact that in all the chief seats of population in Europe the
labour-market is constantly thronged with men who are too badly
reared and fed to be efficient labourers; who for this reason, and
from the competition for employment with each other, have to sell
their labour very cheap; who have thus seldom the means to save, and
whose standard of living and social expectation is so low that, if
they have the opportunity of saving, they do not use it, and keep
bringing children into the world at a rate which perpetuates the
evil. It is certain, however, that these influences have no necessary
connection with the maintenance of the right of individual property
and consequent unlimited accumulation of capital, though they no
doubt are connected with that régime of force and conquest by which
existing governments have been established,--governments which do not
indeed create the rights of individual property, any more than other
rights, but which serve to maintain them. It must always be borne
in mind that the appropriation of land by individuals has in most
countries--probably in all where it approaches completeness--been
originally effected, not by the expenditure of labour or the results
of labour on the land, but by force. The original landlords have been
conquerors.

229. This has affected the condition of the industrial classes in at
least two ways: (1) When the application of accumulated capital to
any work in the way of mining or manufacture has created a demand for
labour, the supply has been forthcoming from men whose ancestors, if
not themselves, were trained in habits of serfdom; men whose life has
been one of virtually forced labour, relieved by church--charities
or the poor law (which in part took the place of these charities);
who were thus in no condition to contract freely for the sale of
their labour, and had nothing of that sense of family--responsibility
which might have made them insist on having the chance of saving.
Landless countrymen, whose ancestors were serfs, are the parents of
the proletariate of great towns. (2) Rights have been allowed to
landlords, incompatible with the true principle on which rights of
property rest, and tending to interfere with the development of the
proprietorial capacity in others. The right to freedom in unlimited
acquisition of wealth, by means of labour and by means of the saving
and successful application of the results of labour, does not imply
the right of anyone to do as he likes with those gifts of nature,
without which there would be nothing to spend labour upon. The earth
is just as much an original natural material necessary to productive
industry, as are air, light, and water, but while the latter from
the nature of the case cannot be appropriated, the earth can be and
has been. The only justification for this appropriation, as for any
other, is that it contributes on the whole to social well-being; that
the earth as appropriated by individuals under certain conditions
becomes more serviceable to society as a whole, including those who
are not proprietors of the soil, than if it were held in common. The
justification disappears if these conditions are not observed; and
from government having been chiefly in the hands of appropriators
of the soil, they have not been duly observed. Landlords have been
allowed to 'do what they would with their own,' as if land were
merely like so much capital, admitting of indefinite extension.
The capital gained by one is not taken from another, but one man
cannot acquire more land without others having less; and though a
growing reduction in the number of landlords is not necessarily
a social evil, if it is compensated by the acquisition of other
wealth on the part of those extruded from the soil, it is only not
an evil if the landlord is prevented from so using his land as to
make it unserviceable to the wants of men (e.g. by turning fertile
land into a forest), and from taking liberties with it incompatible
with the conditions of general freedom and health; e.g. by clearing
out a village and leaving the people to pick up house-room as they
can elsewhere (a practice common under the old poor-law, when the
distinction between close and open villages grew up), or, on the
other hand, by building houses in unhealthy places or of unhealthy
structure, by stopping up means of communication, or forbidding
the erection of dissenting chapels. In fact the restraints which
the public interest requires to be placed on the use of land if
individual property in it is to be allowed at all, have been pretty
much ignored, while on the other hand, that full development of its
resources, which individual ownership would naturally favour, has
been interfered with by laws or customs which, in securing estates to
certain families, have taken away the interest, and tied the hands,
of the nominal owner--the tenant for life--in making the most of his
property.

230. Thus the whole history of the ownership of land in Europe has
been of a kind to lead to the agglomeration of a proletariate,
neither holding nor seeking property, wherever a sudden demand has
arisen for labour in mines or manufactures. This at any rate was the
case down to the epoch of the French Revolution; and this, which
brought to other countries deliverance from feudalism, left England,
where feudalism had previously passed into unrestrained landlordism,
almost untouched. And while those influences of feudalism and
landlordism which tend to throw a shiftless population upon the
centres of industry have been left unchecked, nothing till quite
lately was done to give such a population a chance of bettering
itself, when it had been brought together. Their health, housing,
and schooling were unprovided for. They were left to be freely
victimised by deleterious employments, foul air, and consequent
craving for deleterious drinks. When we consider all this, we shall
see the unfairness of laying on capitalism or the free development
of individual wealth the blame which is really due to the arbitrary
and violent manner in which rights over land have been acquired and
exercised, and to the failure of the state to fulfil those functions
which under a system of unlimited private ownership are necessary to
maintain the conditions of a free life.

231. Whether, when those functions have been more fully recognised
and executed, and when the needful control has been established in
the public interest over the liberties which landlords may take in
the use of their land, it would still be advisable to limit the right
of bequest in regard to land, and establish a system of something
like equal inheritance, is a question which cannot be answered on
any absolute principle. It depends on circumstances. Probably the
question should be answered differently in a country like France or
Ireland, where the most important industries are connected directly
with the soil, and in one like England where they are not so. The
reasons must be cogent which could justify that interference with
the control of the parent over his family, which seems to be implied
in the limitation of the power of bequeathing land when the parent's
wealth lies solely in land, and which arises, be it remembered,
in a still more mischievous way from the present English practice
of settling estates. But it is important to bear in mind that the
question in regard to land stands on a different footing from that
in regard to wealth generally, owing to the fact that land is a
particular commodity limited in extent, from which alone can be
derived the materials necessary to any industry whatever, on which
men must find house-room if they are to find it at all, and over
which they must pass in communicating with each other, however much
water or even air may be used for that purpose. These are indeed not
reasons for preventing private property in land or even free bequest
of land, but they necessitate a special control over the exercise of
rights of property in land, and it remains to be seen whether that
control can be sufficiently established in a country where the power
of great estates has not first been broken, as in France, by a law of
equal inheritance.

232. To the proposal that 'unearned increment' in the value of the
soil, as distinct from value produced by expenditure of labour and
capital, should be appropriated by the state, though fair enough in
itself, the great objection is that the relation between earned and
unearned increment is so complicated, that a system of appropriating
the latter to the state could scarcely be established without
lessening the stimulus to the individual to make the most of the
land, and thus ultimately lessening its serviceableness to society.

    O. _THE RIGHT OF THE STATE IN REGARD TO THE FAMILY._

233. In the consideration of those rights which do not arise out of
the existence of the state, but which are antecedent to it (though
of course implying society in some form), and which it is its office
to enforce, we now come to family or household rights--also called,
though not very distinctively, rights in private relations--of which
the most important are the reciprocal rights of husband and wife,
parent and child. The distinctive thing about these is that they are
not merely rights of one person as against all or some other persons
over some thing, or to the performance of or abstention from some
action; they are rights of one person as against all other persons
to require or prevent a certain behaviour on the part of another.
Right to free life is a right on the part of any and every person to
claim from all other persons that course of action or forbearance
which is necessary to his free life. It is a right against all the
world, but not a right over any particular thing or person. A right
of property, on the other hand, is a right against all the world, and
also over a particular thing; a right to claim from any and every
one certain actions and forbearances in respect of a particular
thing (hence called 'jus in rem'). A right arising from contract,
unlike the right of property or the right of free life, is not a
right as against all the world, but a right as against a particular
person or persons contracted with to claim a certain performance or
forbearance. It may or may not be a right over a particular thing,
but as it is not necessarily so, while it is a right against a
particular person or persons in distinction from all the world, it
is called 'jus in personam' as distinct from 'in rem.' The right of
husband over wife and that of parent over children (or _vice versa_)
differs from the right arising out of contract, inasmuch as it is
not merely a right against the particular person contracted with,
but a right against all the world. In this respect it corresponds
to the right of property; but differs again from this, since it is
not a right over a thing but over a person. It is a right to claim
certain acts or forbearances from all other persons in respect of a
particular person: or (more precisely) to claim a certain behaviour
from a certain person, and at the same time to exclude all others
from claiming it. Just because this kind of right is a right over a
person, it is always reciprocal as between the person exercising it
and the person over whom it is exercised. All rights are reciprocal
as between the person exercising them and the person against whom
they are exercised. My claim to the right of free life implies a
like claim upon me on the part of those from whom I claim acts and
forbearances necessary to my free life. My claim upon others in
respect of the right of property, or upon a particular person in
respect of an action which he has contracted to perform, implies
the recognition of a corresponding claim upon me on the part of all
persons or the particular party to the contract. But the right of a
husband in regard to his wife not merely implies that all those as
against whom he claims the right have a like claim against him, but
that the wife over whom he asserts the right has a right, though not
a precisely like right, over him. The same applies to the right of a
father over a son, and of a master over a servant.

234. A German would express the peculiarity of the rights now under
consideration by saying that, not only are persons the subjects of
them, but persons are the objects of them. By the 'subject' of rights
he would mean the person exercising them or to whom they belong;
by 'object' that in respect of which the rights are exercised. The
piece of land or goods which I own is the 'object' of the right
of property, the particular action which one person contracts to
perform for another is the 'object' of a right of contract; and in
like manner the person from whom I have a right to claim certain
behaviour, which excludes any right on the part of anyone else to
claim such behaviour from him or her, is the 'object' of the right.
But English writers commonly call that the subject of a right which
the Germans would call the object. By the subject of a right of
property they would not mean the person to whom the right belongs,
but the thing over which, or in respect of which, the right exists.
And in like manner, when a right is exercised over, or in respect of
a person, such as a wife or a child, they would call that person, and
not the person exercising the right, the subject of it. By the object
of a right, on the other hand, they mean the action or forbearance
which someone has a right to claim. The object of a right arising
out of contract would be the action which the person contracting
agrees to perform. The object of a connubial right would not be, as
according to German usage, the person in regard to, or over, whom
the right is exercised--that person would be the subject of the
right--but either the behaviour which the person possessing the right
is entitled to claim from that person, or the forbearances in respect
to that person, which he is entitled to claim from others. (Austin,
I. 378 and II. 736.) Either usage is justifiable in itself. The only
matter of importance is not to confuse them. There is a convenience
in expressing the peculiarity of family rights by saying, according
to the sense of the terms adopted by German writers, that not only
are persons subjects of them but persons are objects of them. It is
in this sense that I shall use these terms, if at all.

235. So much for the peculiarity of family rights, as distinct from
other rights. The distinction is not merely a formal one. From the
fact that these rights have persons for their objects, there follow
important results, as will appear, in regard to the true nature
of the right, to the manner in which it should be exercised. The
analytical, as distinct from the historical, questions which have to
be raised with reference to family rights correspond to those raised
with reference to rights of property. As we asked what in the nature
of man made appropriation possible for him, so now we ask (1) what
it is in the nature of man that makes him capable of family life. As
we asked next how appropriations came to be so sanctioned by social
recognition as to give rise to rights of property, so now we have to
ask (2) how certain powers exercised by a man, certain exemptions
which he enjoys from the interference of others, in his family life,
come to be recognised as rights. And as we inquired further how far
the actual institutions of property correspond with the idea of
property as a right which for social good should be exercised, so now
we have to inquire (3) into the proper adjustment of family rights,
as determined by their idea; in what form these rights should be
maintained; bearing in mind _(a)_ that, like all rights, their value
depends on their being conditions of which the general observance is
necessary to a free morality, and __(b)__ their distinctive character
as rights of which, in the sense explained, persons are the objects.

236. (1) We saw that appropriation of that kind which, when secured
by a social power, becomes property, supposes an effort on the part
of the individual to give reality to a conception of his own good,
as a whole or as something permanent, in distinction from the mere
effort to satisfy a want as it arises. The formation of family life
supposes a like effort, but it also supposes that in the conception
of his own good to which a man seeks to give reality there is
included a conception of the well-being of others, connected with
him by sexual relations or by relations which arise out of these. He
must conceive of the well-being of these others as a permanent object
bound up with his own, and the interest in it as thus conceived must
be a motive to him over and above any succession of passing desires
to obtain pleasure from, or give pleasure to, the others; otherwise
there would be nothing to lead to the establishment of a household,
in which the wants of the wife or wives are permanently provided
for, in the management of which a more or less definite share is
given to them (more definite, indeed, as approach is made to a
monogamistic system, but not wholly absent anywhere where the wife is
distinguished from the female), and upon which the children have a
recognised claim for shelter and sustenance.

237. No doubt family life as we know it is an institution of gradual
growth. It may be found in forms where it is easy to ignore the
distinction between it and the life of beasts. It is possible that
the human beings with whom it first began--beings 'human' because
capable of it--may have been 'descended' from animals not capable of
it, i.e. they may have been connected with such animals by certain
processes of generation. But this makes no difference in the nature
of the capacity itself, which is determined not by a past history
but by its results, its functions, that of which it is a capacity.
As the foundation of any family life, in the form in which we know
it, implies that upon the mere sexual impulse there has supervened on
the part of the man a permanent interest in a woman as a person with
whom his own well-being is united, and a consequent interest in the
children born of her, so in regard to every less perfect form out of
which we can be entitled to say that the family life, as we know it,
has developed, we must be also entitled to say that it expresses some
interest which is in principle identical with that described, however
incompletely it has emerged from lower influences.

238. (2) Such an interest being the basis of family relations, it
is quite intelligible that everyone actuated by the interest should
recognise, and be recognised by, everyone else to whom he ascribes
an interest like his own, as entitled to behave towards the objects
of the interest--towards his wife and children--in a manner from
which everyone else is excluded; that there should thus come to be
rights in family relations to a certain privacy in dealing with them;
rights to deal with them as his alone and not another's; claims,
ratified by the general sense of their admission being for the common
good, to exercise certain powers and demand certain forbearances
from others, in regard to wife and children. It is only indeed at an
advanced stage of reflection that men learn to ascribe to other men,
simply as men, the interests which they experience themselves; and
hence it is at first only within narrow societies that men secure
to each other the due privileges and privacies of family life. In
others of the same kin or tribe they can habitually imagine an
interest like that of which each feels his own family life to be
the expression, and hence in them they spontaneously respect family
rights; but they cannot thus practically think themselves into the
position of a stranger, and hence towards him they do not observe the
same restraints. They do not regard the women of another nation as
sacred to the husbands and families of that nation. But that power
of making another's good one's own, which in the more intense and
individualised form is the basis of family relations, must always at
the same time exist in that more diffused form in which it serves as
the basis of a society held together by the recognition of a common
good. Wherever, therefore, the family relations exist, there is
sure to exist also a wider society which by its authority gives to
the powers exercised in those relations the character of rights. By
what process the relations of husband and wife and the institution
of the household may have come to be formed among descendants of a
single pair, it is impossible to conceive or to discover, but in
fact we find no trace in primitive history of households except as
constituents of a clan recognising a common origin; and it is by the
customs of the clan, founded on the conception of a common good, that
those forbearances on the part of members of one household in dealing
with another, which are necessary to the privacy of the several
households, are secured.

239. The history of the development of family life is the history of
the process _(a)_ by which family rights have come to be regarded
as independent of the special custom of a clan and the special
laws of a state, as rights which all men and women, as such, are
entitled to. This, however, characterises the history of all rights
alike. It is a history farther _(b)_ of the process by which the
true nature of these rights has come to be recognised, as rights
over persons; rights of which persons are the objects, and which
therefore imply reciprocal claims on the part of those over whom they
are exercised and of those who exercise them. The establishment of
monogamy, the abolition of 'patria potestas' in its various forms,
the 'emancipation of women' (in the proper sense of the phrase), are
involved in these two processes. The principles (1) that all men and
all women are entitled to marry and form households, (2) that within
the household the claims of the husband and wife are throughout
reciprocal, cannot be realised without carrying with them not merely
monogamy, but the removal of those faulty relations between men and
women which survive in countries where monogamy is established by law.

240. Under a system of polygamy, just so far as it is carried out,
there must be men who are debarred from marrying. It can only exist,
indeed, alongside of a slavery, which excludes masses of men from
the right of forming a family. Nor does the wife, under a polygamous
system, though she ostensibly marries, form a household, or become
the co-ordinate head of a family, at all. The husband alone is
head of the family and has authority over the children. The wife,
indeed, who for the time is the favourite, may practically share
the authority, but even she has no equal and assured position. The
'consortium omnis vitae,' the 'individua vitae consuetudo,' which
according to the definition in the Digest is an essential element in
marriage, is not hers. [1] [2]

And further as the polygamous husband requires a self-restraint
from his wife which he does not put on himself, he is treating her
unequally. He demands a continence from her which, unless she is
kept in the confinement of slavery, can only rest on the attachment
of a person to a person and on a personal sense of duty, and at the
same time is practically ignoring the demand, which this personal
attachment on her part necessarily carries with it, that he should
keep himself for her as she keeps herself for him. The recognition of
children as having claims upon their parents reciprocal to those of
the parents over them, equally involves the condemnation of polygamy.
For these claims can only be duly satisfied, the responsibilities of
father and mother towards the children (potentially persons) whom
they have brought into the world can only be fulfilled, if father and
mother jointly take part in the education of the children; if the
children learn to love and obey father and mother as one authority.
But if there is no permanent 'consortium vitae' of one husband with
one wife, this joint authority over the children becomes impossible.
The child, when its physical dependence on the mother is over, ceases
to stand in any special relation to her. She has no recognised duties
to him, or he to her. These lie between him and his father only, and
just because the father's interests are divided between the children
of many wives, and because these render their filial offices to
the father separately, not to father and mother jointly, the true
domestic training is lost.

[1] 'Nuptiae sunt conjunctio maris et feminae, consortium omnis
vitae, divini et humani juris communicatio' _Digest_, xxiii. 2,
1. 'Matrimonium est viri et mulieris conjunctio individuam vita
consuetudinem continens.' Inst., i.9.2. (Quoted by Trendelenburg,
_Naturrecht_, p. 282.)

[2] [Latin consortium omnis vitae = partnership for life individua
vitae consuetudo = unbroken companionship of life Tr]

241. Monogamy, however, may be established, and an advance so far
made towards the establishment of a due reciprocity between husband
and wife, as well as towards a fulfilment of the responsibilities
incurred in bringing children into the world, while yet the true
claims of men in respect of women, and of women in respect of men,
and of children upon their parents, are far from being generally
realised. Wherever slavery exists alongside of monogamy, on the one
side people of the slave class are prevented from forming family
ties, and on the other those people who are privileged to marry,
though they are confined to one wife, are constantly tempted to be
false to the true monogamistic idea by the opportunity of using women
as chattels to minister to their pleasures. The wife is thus no more
than an institution, invested with certain dignities and privileges,
for the continuation of the family; a continuation, which under pagan
religions is considered necessary for the maintenance of certain
ceremonies, and to which among ourselves an importance is attached
wholly unconnected with the personal affection of the man for the
wife. [1] When slavery is abolished, and the title of all men and
women equally to form families is established by law, the conception
of the position of the wife necessarily rises. The ἑταίρα and παλλακή
[2] cease at any rate to be recognised accompaniments of married
life, and the claim of the wife upon the husband's fidelity, as
reciprocal to his claim upon hers, becomes established by law.

[1] Her position among the Greeks is well illustrated by a passage
from the speech of Demosthenes (?) against Neaera, Sect. 122 (quoted
by W. E. Hearn, _The Aryan Household_, p. 71). τὰς μὲν γὰρ ἑταίρας
ἡδονῆς ἕνεκʹ ἔχομεν, τὰς δὲ παλλακὰς τῆς καθʹ ἡμέραν θεραπείας του
σώματος, τὰς δὲ γυναῖκας τοῦ παιδοποιεῖσθαι γνησίως καὶ τῶν ἔνδον
φύλακα πιστὴν ἔχειν (tas men gar hetairas hedones henek echomen, tas
de pallakas tes kath' hemeran therapeias tou somatos, tas de gynaikas
tou paidopoieisthai gnesios kai ton endon phylaka pisten echein).
[The query as to Demosthenes' authorship is in Green's text. Hearn
translates this passage: Mistresses we keep for pleasure, concubines
for daily attendance on our persons, wives to bear us legitimate
children and to be our faithful housekeepers. Tr]

[2] [Greek ἑταίρα (hetaira) = courtesan, παλλακή (pallake) =
concubine. Tr]

242. Thus that marriage should only be lawful with one wife, that it
should be for life, that it should be terminable by the infidelity
of either husband or wife, are rules of right; not of morality, as
such, but of right. Without such rules the rights of the married
persons are not maintained. Those outward conditions of family life
would not be secured to them, which are necessary on the whole for
the development of a free morality. Polygamy is a violation of the
rights, (1) of those who through it are indirectly excluded from
regular marriage, and thus from the moral education which results
from this; (2) of the wife, who is morally lowered by exclusion
from her proper position in the household and by being used, more
or less, as the mere instrument of the husband's pleasure; (3)
of the children, who lose the chance of that full moral training
which depends on the connected action of father and mother. The
terminability of marriage at the pleasure of one of the parties to it
(of its terminability at the desire of both we will speak presently)
is a violation of the rights at any rate of the unconsenting party,
on the grounds _(a)_ that liability to it tends to prevent marriage
from becoming that 'individua vitae consuetudo' which gives it its
moral value, and _(b)_ that, when the marriage is dissolved, the
woman, just in proportion to her capacity for self-devotion and the
degree to which she has devoted herself to her original husband, is
debarred from forming that 'individua vitae consuetudo' again, and
thus crippled in her moral possibilities. It is a violation of the
rights of children for the same reason for which polygamy is so.

On the other hand, that the wife should be bound indissolubly by
the marriage-tie to an unfaithful husband (or _vice versa_), is a
violation of the right of wife (or husband, as the case may be),
because on the one hand the restraint which makes her liable to be
used physically as the instrument of the husband's pleasures, when
there is no longer reciprocal devotion between them, is a restraint
which (except in peculiar cases) renders moral elevation impossible;
and on the other, she is prevented from forming such a true marriage
as would be, according to ordinary rules, the condition of the
realisation of her moral capacities. Though the husband's right
to divorce from an unfaithful wife has been much more thoroughly
recognised than the wife's to divorce from an unfaithful husband, he
would be in fact less seriously wronged by the inability to obtain a
divorce, for it is only the second of the grounds just stated that
fully applies to him. The rights of the children do not seem so
plainly concerned in the dissolution of a marriage to which husband
or wife has been unfaithful. In some cases the best chance for them
might seem to lie in the infidelities being condoned and an outward
family peace re-established. But that their rights are violated by
the infidelity itself is plain. In the most definite way it detracts
from their possibilities of goodness. Without any consent on their
part, quite independently of any action of their own will, they are
placed by it in a position which tends--though special grace may
counteract it--to put the higher kinds of goodness beyond their reach.

243. These considerations suggest some further questions which may be
discussed under the following heads. (1) If infidelity in marriage is
a violation of rights in the manner stated, and if (as it must be) it
is a wilful and knowing violation, why is it not treated as a crime,
and, like other such violations of rights, punished by the state
in order to the better maintenance of rights? (2) Should any other
reason but the infidelity of husband or wife be allowed for the legal
dissolution of the marriage-tie? (3) How are the rights connected
with marriage related to the morality of marriage?

(1) There is good reason why the state should not take upon itself
to institute charges of adultery, but leave them to be instituted
by the individuals whose rights the adultery violates. The reasons
ordinarily alleged would be, _(a)_ the analogy of ordinary breaches
of contract, against which the state leaves it to the individual
injured to set the law in motion; _(b)_ the practical impossibility
of preventing adultery through the action of the functionaries of
the state. The analogy, however, from ordinary breaches of contract
does not really hold. In the first place, though marriage involves
contract, though without contract there can be no marriage, yet
marriage at once gives rise to rights and obligations of a kind
which cannot arise out of contract, in particular to obligations
towards the children born of the marriage. These children, at any
rate, are in no condition to seek redress--even if from the nature
of the case redress could be had--for the injuries inflicted on
them by a parent's adultery, as a person injured by a breach of
contract can seek redress for it. Again, though the state leaves
it to the individual injured by a breach of contract to institute
proceedings for redress, if the breach involves fraud, it, at any
rate in certain cases, treats the fraud as a crime and punishes. Now
in every breach of the marriage-contract by adultery there is that
which answers to fraud in the case of ordinary breach of contract.
The marriage-contract is broken knowingly and intentionally. If there
were no reason to the contrary, then, it would seem that the state,
though it might leave to the injured individuals the institution of
proceedings against adultery, should yet treat adultery as a crime
and seek to prevent it by punishment in the interest of those whose
virtual rights are violated by it, though not in the way of breach of
contract. But there are reasons to the contrary--reasons that arise
out of the moral purposes served by the marriage-tie--which make it
desirable both that it should be at the discretion of the directly
injured party whether a case of adultery should be judicially dealt
with at all, and that in no case should penal terror be associated
with such a violation of the marriage-bond Under ordinary conditions,
it is a public injury that a violation of his rights should be
condoned by the person suffering it. If the injured individual were
likely to fail in the institution of proceedings for his own redress
or defence, the public interest would require that the matter should
be taken out of his hands. But if an injured wife or husband is
willing to condone a breach of his or her rights through adultery,
it is generally best that it should be condoned. That married life
should be continued in spite of anything like dissoluteness on
the part of husband or wife, is no doubt undesirable. The moral
purposes which married life should serve cannot be served, either
for the married persons themselves or for the children, under such
conditions. On the other hand, the condonation of a single offence
would generally be better for all concerned than an application for
divorce. The line cannot be drawn at which, with a view to the higher
ends which marriage should serve, divorce becomes desirable. It is
therefore best that the state, while uniformly allowing the right of
divorce where the marriage-bond has been broken by adultery (since
otherwise the right of everyone to form a true marriage, a marriage
which shall be the basis of family life, is neutralised,) and taking
care that procedure for divorce be cheap and easy, should leave the
enforcement of the right to the discretion of individuals.

244. On similar grounds, it is undesirable that adultery as such
should be treated as a crime, that penal terror should be associated
with it. Though rights, in the strict sense, undoubtedly arise out
of marriage, though marriage has thus its strictly legal aspect, it
is undesirable that this legal aspect should become prominent. It
may suffer in respect of its higher moral purposes, if the element
of force appears too strongly in the maintenance of the rights to
which it gives rise. If a husband who would otherwise be false to
the marriage-bond is kept outwardly faithful to it by fear of the
punishment which might attend its breach, the right of the wife and
children is indeed so far protected, but is anything gained for those
moral ends, for the sake of which the maintenance of these rights
is alone of value? The man in whom disloyal passion is neutralised
by fear of punishment will contribute little in his family life to
the moral development of himself, his wife, or his children. If he
cannot be kept true by family affection and sympathy with the social
disapprobation attaching to matrimonial infidelity (and unless it is
a matter of social disapprobation no penalties will be effectually
enforced against it), he will not be kept true in a way that is of
any value to those concerned by fear of penalties. In other words,
the rights that arise out of marriage are not of a kind which can in
their essence be protected by associating penal terror with their
violation, as the rights of life and property can be. They are not
rights to claim mere forbearances or to claim the performance of
certain outward actions, by which a right is satisfied irrespectively
of the disposition with which the act is done. They are claims which
cannot be met without a certain disposition on the part of the person
upon whom the claim rests, and that disposition cannot be enforced.
The attempt to enforce the outward behaviour in order to satisfy the
claim, which is a claim not to the outward behaviour merely but to
this in connection with a certain disposition, defeats its own end.

245. For the protection, therefore, of the rights of married persons
and their children against infidelity, it does not appear that the
law can do more than secure facilities of divorce in the case of
adultery. This indeed is not in itself a protection against the wrong
involved in adultery, but rather a deliverance from the further
wrong to the injured husband or wife and to the children that would
be involved in the continuance of any legal claim over them on the
part of the injurer. But indirectly it helps to prevent the wrong
being done by bringing social disapprobation to bear on cases of
infidelity, and thus helping to keep married persons faithful through
sympathy with the disapprobation of which they feel that they would
be the objects when they imagine themselves unfaithful. The only
other effectual way in which the state can guard against the injuries
in question is by requiring great precaution and solemnity in the
contraction of marriages. This it can do by insisting on the consent
of parents to the marriage of all minors, exacting a long notice
(perhaps even a preliminary notice of betrothal), and, while not
preventing civil marriage, by encouraging the celebration of marriage
in the presence of religious congregations and with religious rites.

246. Question (2) is one that does not admit of being answered on
any absolute principle We must bear in mind that all rights--in
idea or as they should be--are relative to moral ends. The ground
for securing to individuals in respect of the marriage-tie certain
powers as rights, is that in a general way they are necessary to
the possibility of a morally good life, either directly to the
persons exercising them or to their children. The more completely
marriage is a 'consortium omnis vitae' in the sense of a unity in
all interests and for the whole of a lifetime, the more likely are
the external conditions of a moral life to be fulfilled in regard
both to married persons and their children. Therefore the general
rule of the state in dealing with marriage should be to secure such
powers as are favourable and withhold such as are not favourable to
the 'consortium omnis vitae.' But in the application of the principle
great difficulties arise. Lunacy may clearly render the 'consortium
omnis vitae' finally impossible; but what kind and degree of lunacy?
If the lunatic may possibly recover, though there is undoubtedly
reason for the separation from husband or wife during lunacy, should
permanent divorce be allowed? If it is allowed, and the lunatic
recovers, a wrong will have been done both to him and to the children
previously born of the marriage. On the other hand, to reserve the
connubial rights of a lunatic of whose recovery there is hope, and
to restore them when he recovers, may involve the wrong of bringing
further children into the world with the taint of lunacy upon them.
Is cruelty to be a ground of divorce, and if so, what amount? There
is a degree of persistent cruelty which renders 'consortium omnis
vitae' impossible, but unless it is certain that cruelty has reached
the point at which a restoration of any sort of family life becomes
impossible, a greater wrong both to wife and children may be involved
in allowing divorce than in refusing it. A husband impatient for the
time of the restraint of marriage may be tempted to passing cruelty
as a means of ridding himself of it, while if no such escape were
open to him he might get the better of the temporary disturbing
passion and settle down into a decent husband. The same consideration
applies still more strongly to allowing incompatibility of temper
as a ground of divorce. It would be hard to deny that it might be
of a degree and kind in which it so destroyed the possibility of
'consortium omnis vitae,' that, with a view to the interests of the
children, who ought in such a case to be chiefly considered, divorce
implied less wrong than the maintenance of the marriage-tie. But on
the other hand, to hold out the possibility of divorce on the ground
of incompatibility is just the way to generate that incompatibility.
On the whole, the only conclusion seems to be that this last ground
should not be allowed, and that in deciding on other grounds large
discretion should be allowed to a well-constituted court.

    P. _RIGHTS AND VIRTUES_

247. We have now considered in a perfunctory way those rights which
are antecedent to the state, which are not derived from it but may
exist where a state is not, and which it is the office of the state
to maintain. We have inquired what it is in the nature of man that
renders him capable of these rights, what are the moral ends to
which the rights are relative, and in what form the rights should be
realised in order to the attainment of these ends. In order to make
the inquiry into rights complete, we ought to go on to examine in
the same way the rights which arise out of the establishment of a
state, the rights connected with the several functions of government;
how these functions come to be necessary, and how they may best be
fulfilled with a view to those moral ends to which the functions of
the state are ultimately relative. According to my project, I should
then have proceeded to consider the social virtues, and the 'moral
sentiments' which underlie our particular judgments as to what is
good and evil in conduct. All virtues are really social; or, more
properly, the distinction between social and self-regarding virtues
is a false one. Every virtue is self-regarding in the sense that it
is a disposition, or habit of will, directed to an end which the man
presents to himself as his good; every virtue is social in the sense
that unless the good to which the will is directed is one in which
the well-being of society in some form or other is involved, the will
is not virtuous at all.

248. The virtues are dispositions to exercise positively, in some way
contributory to social good, those powers which, because admitting of
being so exercised, society should secure to him; the powers which
a man has a right to possess, which constitute his rights. It is
therefore convenient to arrange the virtues according to the division
of rights. E.g. in regard to the right of all men to free life, the
obligations, strictly so called, correlative to that right having
been considered (obligations which are all of a negative nature,
obligations to forbear from meddling with one's neighbour), we
should proceed to consider the activities by which a society of men
really free is established, or by which some approach is made to its
establishment ('really free,' in the sense of being enabled to make
the most of their capabilities). These activities will take different
forms under different social conditions, but in rough outline they
are those by which men in mutual helpfulness conquer and adapt
nature, and overcome the influences which would make them victims of
chance and accident, of brute force and animal passion. The virtuous
disposition displayed in these activities may have various names
applied to it according to the particular direction in which it is
exerted; 'industry,' 'courage,' 'public spirit.' A particular aspect
of it was brought into relief among the Greeks under the name of
ἀνδρεια. [1] The Greek philosophers already gave an extension to the
meaning of this term beyond that which belonged to it in popular
usage, and we might be tempted further to extend it so as to cover
all the forms in which the habit of will necessary to the maintenance
and furtherance of free society shows itself. The name, however,
does not much matter. It is enough that there are specific modes of
human activity which contribute directly to maintain a shelter for
man's worthier energies against disturbance by natural forces and
by the consequences of human fear and lust. The state of mind which
appears in them may properly be treated as a special kind of virtue.
It is true that the principle and the end of all virtues is the same.
They are all determined by relation to social well-being as their
final cause, and they all rest on a dominant interest in some form
or other of that well-being; but as that interest may take different
directions in different persons, as it cannot be equally developed at
once in everyone, it may be said roughly that a man has one kind of
virtue and not others.

[1] [Greek ἀνδρεια (andreia) = manliness Tr.]

249. As the kind of moral duties (in distinction from those
obligations which are correlative to rights) which relate to the
maintenance of free society and the disposition to fulfil those
duties should form a special object of inquiry, so another special
kind would be those which have to do with the management of property,
with the acquisition and expenditure of wealth. To respect the
rights of property in others, to fulfil the obligations correlative
to those rights, is one thing; to make a good use of property, to
be justly generous and generously just in giving and receiving, is
another, and that may properly be treated as a special kind of virtue
which appears in the duly blended prudence, equity, and generosity
of the ideal man of business. Another special kind will be that
which appears in family relations; where indeed that merely negative
observance of right, which in other relations can be distinguished
from the positive fulfilment of moral duties, becomes unmeaning. As
we have seen, there are certain aggravations and perpetuations of
wrong from which husband or wife or children can be protected by law,
but the fulfilment of the claims which arise out of the marriage-tie
requires a virtuous will in the active and positive sense--a will
governed by unselfish interests--on the part of those concerned.

250. What is called 'moral sentiment' is merely a weaker form of
that interest in social well-being which, when wrought into a man's
habits and strong enough to determine action, we call virtue. So far
as this interest is brought into play on the mere survey of action,
and serves merely to determine an approbation or disapprobation, it
is called moral sentiment. The forms of moral sentiment accordingly
should be classified on some principle as forms of virtue, i.e. with
relation to the social functions to which they correspond.

251. For the convenience of analysis, we may treat the obligations
correlative to rights, obligations which it is the proper office of
law to enforce, apart from moral duties and from the virtues which
are tendencies to fulfil those duties. I am properly _obliged_ to
those actions and forbearances which are necessary to the general
freedom, necessary if each is not to interfere with the realisation
of another's will. My _duty_ is to be interested positively in my
neighbour's well-being. And it is important to understand that,
while the enforcement of obligations is possible, that of moral
duties is impossible. But the establishment of obligations by law or
authoritative custom, and the gradual recognition of moral duties,
have not been separate processes They have gone on together in the
history of man. The growth of the institutions by which more complete
equality of rights is gradually secured to a wider range of persons,
and of those interests in various forms of social well-being by
which the will is moralised, have been related to each other as the
outer and inner side of the same spiritual development, though at a
certain stage of reflection it comes to be discovered that the agency
of force, by which the rights are maintained, is ineffectual for
eliciting the moral interests. The result of the twofold process has
been the creation of the actual content of morality; the articulation
of the indefinite consciousness that there is something that should
be--a true well-being to be aimed at other than any pleasure or
succession of pleasures--into the sentiments and interests which
form an 'enlightened conscience.' It is thus that when the highest
stage of reflective morality is reached, and upon interests in this
or that mode of social good there supervenes an interest in an ideal
of goodness, that ideal has already a definite filling; and the man
who pursues duty for duty's sake, who does good for the sake of being
good or in order to realise an idea of perfection, is at no loss to
say what in particular his duty is, or by what particular methods the
perfection of character is to be approached.

SUPPLEMENT.

_Some Quotations rendered into English._

From Sect. 32. _Tractatus Politici_, II. 4 ('Per jus itaque'). 'By
right of nature (natural right) I understand ... the actual power of
nature.' 'Whatever an individual man does by the laws of his nature,
that he does with the highest natural right, and his right towards
nature goes just as far as his power holds out.'

'Jus naturae' = 'natural right.' 'Potentia' = 'power.' 'Jus' =
'right.' 'Jus humanum' = 'right of man,' or 'right _qua_ human.'

_Ib_. II. 5 ('Homines magis'). 'Human beings are led more by blind
desire than by reason; and hence their natural power or right should
be marked out not by reason but by any inclination by which they
are determined to act, and by which they endeavour after their own
preservation.'

'Jus civile' = 'civic right or law.'

_Ib_. II. 14 ('Quatenus homines'). 'In as far as human beings are
troubled by anger, jealousy, or any emotion of hate, so far they are
drawn in different directions and are antagonistic to one another,
and therefore they are more to be feared in so far as they are more
powerful, and more shrewd and astute, than the other animals; and
because human beings are in the highest degree liable by nature to
these emotions, therefore they are natural enemies (to one another).'

_Ib_. 15 ('Atque adeo'). 'And so we conclude that natural right can
hardly be conceived unless where human beings have laws in common,
(human beings) who have power at once to assert possession of the
lands which they are able to inhabit and to till, and to defend
themselves, and to repel all violence, and to live in accordance
with the common sentiment of all. For (by art. 13 of this chapter)
the more that thus come together into one, the more right they all
together possess.'

_Ib_. 16 ('Ubi homines'). 'Where human beings have laws in common
and all together are guided as by one mind, it is certain (by art.
13 of this chapter) that each of them has so much the less right as
the rest are together more powerful than he; that is, that he in fact
has no right over nature beyond that which the common (social) law
concedes him. But whatever is enjoined upon him by common consent, he
is bound to perform, or (by art. 4 of this chapter) he is compelled
to it by law.'

_Ib_. 17 ('Hoc jus'). 'This law (or right), which is coextensive
with the power of the plurality, is usually called 'imperium'
('authority,' 'government').

_Ib_. III. 2 ('Multitudinis quae'). 'Of a number or plurality, which
is guided as if by a single mind.' 'Status civilis' = 'civic, or
social, condition.'

_Ib_. III. 3 ('Homo ex legibus'). [In the civic condition as well as
in the state of nature] 'man acts from the laws of his own nature
and consults his own interest.' 'Sui juris' = 'in its own right,'
'autonomous.'

Sect. 33 (1). _Ib_. III. 7 ('Civitatis jus'). 'The right of the state
is coextensive with the power of the plurality which is guided as if
by one mind. But this oneness of minds is inconceivable, unless the
state has for its main intention what sound reason shows to be for
the interest of all men.'

(2). _Ib_. III. 8 ('Subditi eatenus'). 'Subjects are not in their own
right, but under the right (or law) of the state, so far as they fear
its power or threats, or so far as they love the social condition
(by art. 10 of preceding chapter). From which it follows, that all
those acts to which no one can be impelled by rewards or threats lie
outside the right (or law) of the state.'

(3). _Ib_. III. 9 ('Ad civitatis jus'). 'That belongs to the right
of the state in a less degree, which causes indignation in a greater
number.' ('Sicut'). 'Like the individual citizen, or the man in a
state of nature, the state is less in its own right in proportion as
it has greater cause for fear.'

Sect. 34. _Ib_. III. 11 ('Nam quandoquidem'). 'For seeing that (by
art. 2 of this chapter) the right of the supreme power is nothing but
the actual right of nature, it follows that two governments are to
one another as two men in the state of nature, except that the state
can defend itself against external aggression in a way impossible for
man in a state of nature, inasmuch as he is overcome daily by sleep,
often by disease or distress, and in the end by old age, and besides
this is exposed to other inconveniences, against which the state can
protect itself.'

_Ib_. III. 13 ('Duae civitates'). 'Two states are natural enemies.
For men in the state of nature are enemies. Those, therefore, who
retain the right of nature, as not being in the same state, are
enemies.'

_Ib_. III. 14 ('Nec dici potest'). 'Nor can it be said to act with
craft or perfidy in that it dissolves its promise as soon as the
cause of fear or hope is removed; because this condition was the same
for both contracting parties, that whichsoever is first enabled to be
free from fear should be in its own right, and should use its right
according to the sentiment of its mind; and, moreover, because no one
contracts for the future except on supposition of the circumstances
under which he contracts.'

Sect. 35. _Ib_. II. 18 ('In statu'). 'In a state of nature there
can be no transgression, or if one transgresses, he does so against
himself, not against another; ... nothing is absolutely forbidden by
the law of nature, except what no one has power to do.'

'Commune decretum' = 'the common (or social) behest.'

_Ib_. V. 1 ('Non id omne'). 'Not everything which we say is done
rightfully, do we affirm to be the best to be done. It is one thing
to till a field within your right, and another thing to till it in
the best way; it is one thing, I say, to defend yourself, preserve
yourself, give judgment &c. within your right, and another thing to
do all these acts in the best way; and accordingly it is one thing to
govern and manage a state within its rights, and another thing to do
this in the best way. Thus, now that we have treated in general of
the right of every state, it is time to treat of the best condition
of every state.'

'Finis status civilis' = 'the end or aim of the civic or social
condition.'

_Ib_. V. 2 ('Homines enim'). 'Men are not born of civic temper, but
become so. Moreover, the natural dispositions of men are everywhere
the same.'

_Ib_. V. 4 ('Pax enim'). 'Peace is not absence of war, but a virtue
which arises from fortitude of mind; for obedience is a constant will
to perform that which the common behest of the state requires to be
done.'

_Ethics_, III. 59, Schol. (in footnote on preceding passage) ('Omnes
actiones'). 'All the actions which follow from the affects which
are related to the mind, in so far as it thinks, I ascribe to
_fortitude_, which I divide into _strength of mind_ and _generosity_.
By _strength of mind_ I mean the desire by which each person
endeavours, from the dictates of reason alone, to preserve his own
being. By _generosity_ I mean the desire by which, from the dictates
of reason alone, each person endeavours to help other people and to
join them to him in friendship.'

('Quae maxime'). 'Which is mainly coextensive with reason, the true
virtue and life of the mind.'

('Quod multitudo libera'). [An authority which] 'a free plurality
institutes, not one which is acquired against the plurality by the
right of war.'

Sect. 36. 'Suum esse conservare' = 'to preserve his own being.'

'Homini nihil' = 'nothing is more useful to man, than man.'

'Homo namque.' See on sect. 32.

'Constans voluntas.' See on sect. 35.

'Vitam concorditer transigere' = 'to live in harmony.'

Footnote on 'Libera multitudo,' II. 11 ('Hominem eatenus'). 'The
sense in which at all I call a man _free_ is in so far as he is
guided by reason; because thus far he is determined to action by
causes which can be adequately understood out of his nature alone,
although by them he be necessarily determined to action. For freedom
of action does not deny but affirms necessity.'

On Sect. 37. II. 15 ('Jus naturae'). See on sect. 32.

On Sect. 39. πόλις (polis) = state, including much that we mean by
'society.'

τέλος (telos) = end, aim, final cause.

πολίτης (polites) = citizen.

φύσει πολιτικός (phusei politikos) = social, or civic, by nature.

πολίτης μετέχει τοῦ ἄρχειν καὶ τοῦ ἄρχεσθαι (polites metechei) 'The
citizen takes his share both in governing and in being governed.'

On Sect. 40. Footnote, _Eth_. IV. _Appendix_, xxxii ('Ea quae').
'We shall bear with equanimity those things which happen to us
contrary to what a consideration of our own profit demands, if we are
conscious that we have performed our duty, that the power we have
could not reach so far as to enable us to avoid those things, and
that we are a part of the whole of nature, whose order we follow.
If we clearly and distinctly understand this, the part of us which
is determined by intelligence--that is to say, the better part of
us--will be entirely satisfied therewith, and in that satisfaction
will endeavour to persevere; for, in so far as we understand, we
cannot desire anything excepting what is necessary, nor absolutely
can we be satisfied with anything but the truth. Therefore, in so
far as we understand these things properly will the efforts of the
better part of us agree with the whole order of nature.' _Eth_. IV.
_Preface_ ('Per bonum'). 'By good, therefore, I understand in the
following pages everything which we are certain is a means by which
we may approach nearer and nearer to the model of human nature we
set before us.... Again, I shall call men more or less perfect or
imperfect in so far as they approach nearer and nearer to the model
of human nature we set before us.'

On Sect. 41. 'Nihil positivum in rebus in se consideratis' = 'nothing
positive in things considered in themselves.'

In all the quotations from Spinoza's_ Ethics_ Mr. Hales White's
translation has been followed.