Produced by gdurb




Transcriber’s Note: The text is that of the first edition, with the
errata incorporated. Because there are no page breaks, footnotes are
placed under the paragraphs or quotations to which they relate, and
renumbered accordingly. Page numbers have been inserted into the text
in braces.

THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEORY OF THE STATE

BY

BERNARD BOSANQUET

C’est le peuple qui compose le genre humain; ce qui n’est pas
peuple est si peu de chose que ce n’est pas la peine de le
compter. (Émile, livre 4.)

LONDON  MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

NEW YORK  THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1899

All rights reserved

GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO.

To:  CHARLES STEWART LOCH




{vii}

PREFACE.

The present work is an attempt to express what I take to be the
fundamental ideas of a true social philosophy. I have criticised
and interpreted the doctrines of certain well-known thinkers only
with the view of setting these ideas in the clearest light. This is
the whole purpose of the book; and I have intentionally abstained
from practical applications, except by way of illustration. It is
my conviction, indeed, that a better understanding of fundamental
principles would very greatly contribute to the more rational
handling of practical problems. But this better understanding is
only to be attained, as it seems to me, by a thorough examination
of ideas, apart from the associations of practical issues about
which a fierce party spirit has been aroused. And, moreover, it
is my belief that the influence of the ideas here maintained upon
practical discussion, would be, in a certain sense, to detach it from
philosophical theory. The principles which I advocate would destroy
so many party prejudices, would put the mind in possession of so many
clues to fact, that practical “social” issues would in consequence
be considered as problems of life and mind, to be treated only with
intimate experience, and by methods adequate to their subtlety. The
{viii} result would be that such discussions would be regarded, if
one may use the expression, more respectfully, and would acquire an
independence and completeness worthy of their importance. The work of
the social reformer should no more be regarded as a mere appendix to
social theory than that of the doctor is regarded as a mere appendix
to physiology. Such a division of labour is, of course, no hindrance
to the interchange of facts and ideas between theory and practice.
On the contrary, it tends to promote such an interchange, by
increasing the supply on either side, and improving the intellectual
communication between them.

It will occur to philosophical readers that the essence of the
theory here presented is to be found not merely in Plato and in
Aristotle, but in very many modern writers, more especially in Hegel,
T.H. Green, Bradley, [1] and Wallace. [2] And they may be inclined
to doubt the justification for a further work on the same lines
by one who can hardly expect to improve upon the writings of such
predecessors.

[1] See especially the chapter in _Ethical Studies_ entitled “My
Station and its Duties.”

[2] See _Lectures and Essays_ by the late Professor Wallace,
especially p. 213, “Our Natural Rights,” and p. 427, “The Relation of
Fichte and Hegel to Socialism.”

On this point I should like to make a brief explanation. To begin
with, it is a truism that every generation needs to be addressed
in its own language; and I might even plead that the greatness of
a tradition justifies some urgency in calling attention to it. But
further, as regards T.H. Green in particular, whom in many points
I follow very closely, I had two special reasons for desiring {ix}
to express myself independently. One of these is to be found in my
attempt to apply the conceptions of recent psychology to the theory
of State coercion and of the Real or General Will, and to explain the
relation of Social Philosophy to Sociological Psychology. For a short
discussion of the Imitation Theory, which the purpose of the present
work would not permit me to include in it, I may refer to a paper
which will shortly appear in _Mind_.

My other reason lay in the conviction that the time has gone by for
the scrupulous caution which Green displayed in estimating the value
of the State to its members. I have referred to this subject in the
body of my work (ch. x.); but I desire to emphasise my belief that
our growing experience of all social “classes” proves the essentials
of happiness and character to be the same throughout the social
whole. Scepticism on this point is the product, I am convinced, of
defective social experience. Indeed, it seems worth while to observe
that the attention which is now rightly paid to such disadvantages,
affecting the poorer classes of citizens, as it may be possible
to remedy, has given rise to a serious confusion. The zeal of the
advocate has led him to slander his client. In proving that under
such and such conditions it would be no wonder if “the poor” were
bad, he forgets to observe that in fact they are generally just
as good as other people. The all-important distinction between a
poor home and a bad home is neglected. And yet it seems probable
that, omitting the definitely criminal quarters, there is no
larger proportion of bad homes among the poor than among the rich.
Such terms as “den” and “slum” {x} are too freely used, with an
affectation of intimacy, for homes in which thousands of respectable
citizens reside. Our democratic age will be remarkable to posterity
for having dimmed the time-honoured belief in the virtues of the
poor. There was cant, no doubt, in the older doctrine, but it was not
so far from the fact as the opposite cant of today, and it is time
that the truth in it should be revived.

I must repeat that these remarks are not intended to be
controversial. There is nothing in them which serious men of all
schools may not accept. They are meant to defend my attitude in
treating the Real Will, and Freedom in the greater Self, as matters
of universal concern, and not merely as hopes and fancies cherished
by “educated” persons. Indeed, although it would be churlish for a
student to disparage literary education, it must never be forgotten
that, as things are today, the citizens who live by handicraft
possess a valuable element of brain-culture, which is on the whole
denied to the literary class. Whatever, therefore, may be wanting
in the following pages, it is not, I think, the relation of their
subject-matter to the general life of peoples.

The social student should shun mere optimism; but he should not
be afraid to make the most of that which he studies. It is an
unfortunate result of the semi-practical aims which naturally
influence social philosophers, that they are apt throughout to take
up an indifferent, if not a hostile, attitude to their given object.
They hardly believe in actual society as a botanist believes in
plants, or a biologist believes in vital processes. And hence, social
theory comes off badly. No student can really appreciate an object
for which he is always apologising. There is a {xi} touch of this
attitude in all the principal writers, except Hegel and Bradley,
and therefore, as I venture to think, they partly fail to seize the
greatness and ideality of life in its commonest actual phases. It is
in no spirit of obscurantism, and with no thought of resisting the
march of a true social logic, that some take up a different position.
They are convinced that an actual living society is an infinitely
higher creature than a steam-engine, a plant or an animal; and that
the best of their ideas are not too good to be employed in analysing
it. Those who cannot be enthusiastic in the study of society as it
is, would not be so in the study of a better society if they had it.
“Here or nowhere is your America.”

Bernard Bosanquet
Caterham, March, 1899.




{xiii}

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I

RISE AND CONDITIONS OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEORY OF THE STATE  1-16

1. Meaning of “Philosophical Theory”  1

2. Philosophy and the “State,”  3
    a. The Greek City-State  4
    b. Type of mind implied in it  5
    c. Type of political philosophy suggested by it  5

3. Transition from City-State to Nation-State. Law of Nature  9

4. Rise of Nation-States and of modern political philosophy.
   Rousseau  11

CHAPTER II

SOCIOLOGICAL COMPARED WITH PHILOSOPHICAL THEORY  17-52

1. Problems of Social Physics and of Idealism  17

2. Social Theory as influenced by special sciences  19
    (i) Mathematics  19
   (ii) Biology  21
  (iii) Economics  27
   (iv) Jurisprudence and the theory of Right  34
        _(a)_  Law as “ideal fact”  34
        _(b)_  Sociological analysis of Law  36
    (v) Idea of the “spirit of laws” or mind of peoples;
            Anthropology in widest sense  39
   (vi) Psychology  42
  (vii) Connection of points of view and kinds of fact  47

3. Comparison of Psychological Sociology and Social Philosophy  48

CHAPTER III

THE PARADOX OF POLITICAL OBLIGATION; SELF-GOVERNMENT  53-78

1. The conception of self-government  53

2. Law and Liberty in Bentham  56

3. Examination of Mill’s “Liberty”  60
    (i) Mill’s idea of Individuality  60
   (ii) His view of the authority of Society over the Individual  61
  (iii) His applications of his principle  66

4. Views of Herbert Spencer  69
    (i) Spencer and Bentham on Natural Right  70
   (ii) Liberty and restraint in Spencer and Huxley  71

5. Mill’s criticism of Self-Government  73

CHAPTER IV

THE PROBLEM OF POLITICAL OBLIGATION MORE RADICALLY TREATED  79-102

1. Nature of above theories not expressed by term Individualism.
    “Theories of the first look”  79

2. Rousseau’s earlier Essays  84

3. Problem of the _Contrat Social_  87

4. Conflict of ideas in Rousseau’s statement  89

5. Nature of his solution  91

6. Reality of the “Moral Person” and conception of Civil Liberty  94

CHAPTER V.

THE CONCEPTION OF A “REAL” WILL  103-123

1. The Supreme Will in Hobbes and Locke  103

2. Meaning of the General Will for Rousseau  107

3- The General Will contrasted with the Will of All  111

4- The General Will and the work of the Legislator  117

CHAPTER VI

THE CONCEPTION OF LIBERTY AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE FOREGOING
    SUGGESTIONS  118-154

1. Liberty as the condition of our being ourselves  118

2. Illustrated by the idea of Nature and Natural  128

3. Phases of idea of Liberty  133
    _(a)_  Juristic phase = “absence of restraint”  134
    _(b)_  Political phase = “rights of citizenship”  135
    _(c)_  Positive connection of _(a)_  and _(b)_   136
    _(d)_  Philosophical phase = “being oneself in
           fullest sense”  137
    _(e)_  Danger and justification of using same term
           for _(a)_ and _(d)_  142

4. Liberty as attribute of the will that wills itself  146

5. This “real” will identified with State  149
    _(a)_  State in this sense is social life as a whole  150
    _(b)_  How State is force as extension of “individual” mind  152

CHAPTER VII

PSYCHOLOGICAL ILLUSTRATION OF THE IDEA OF A
REAL OR GENERAL WILL  155-179

1. Object of the Chapter  155

2. Connection between social and mental groupings  156
    (1) Analogy between them  156
        (i) Associations of persons and of ideas  156
       (ii) Organisation of social groups and of ideas  159
    (2) Identity of social and mental groupings  170
        (i) Social groups as an aspect of mental systems  170
       (ii) Individual minds as structures of
            appercipient systems  173
      (iii) Social whole as a system of mental systems  175

CHAPTER VIII

NATURE OF THE END OF THE STATE AND CONSEQUENT LIMIT OF STATE ACTION  180-234

1. Distinction between Individual and Society
   irrelevant to question of Social Means and End  180

2. True contrast: Automatism and Consciousness  181

3. End of State, and Means at its disposal _qua_ State  184

4. State can only secure “external” actions  186

5. Principle of the hindrance of hindrances  190

6. State action as the maintenance of rights  201
    _(a)_  System of rights from standpoint of community  203
    _(b)_  From standpoint of individuals. “Position”  204
        (i) As Rights or recognised claims  206
       (ii) As Obligations or recognised debts  206
    _(c)_  Rights as implying Duties  208
        (i) When Duty = Obligation  208
       (ii) When Duty = Purpose, which is source of Right  209
    _(d)_  Rights, why _recognised_ claims? 210
        (i) A “Position” involves recognition  210
       (ii) No right based on individual caprice  212

7. State action as punishment  216
    (i) Punishment as reformatory 221
   (ii) Punishment as retributory  223
  (iii) Punishment as deterrent  228

   Conclusion. State Action as exercise of a _General Will_  232

CHAPTER IX

ROUSSEAU’S THEORY AS APPLIED TO THE MODERN STATE:
    KANT, FICHTE, HEGEL 235-255

1. Rousseau’s literary influence in Germany  235

2. Freedom and Social Contract in Kant  238

3. Freedom and Social Contract in Fichte  244

4. Freedom in Hegel’s _Philosophy of Right_  247
    _(a)_  Supposed reactionary tendency in Hegel  248
    _(b)_  Relation of analysis and idealisation  290

5. The Philosophy of Right as a chapter in the
   Philosophy of Mind  252

CHAPTER X

THE ANALYSIS OF A MODERN STATE. HEGEL’S “PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT”  256-295

1. Logic of Society as an _ideal fact_  256

2. Sphere of Right or Law and its sub-divisions  258

3. The Letter of the Law  260

4. The Morality of Conscience  262

5. Social Ethics  266
    (i) Social Ethics as an actual world  266
   (ii) Social Ethics as the nature of self-consciousness  267

6. Sub-divisions of Social Ethics. The Family  269
    _(a)_  Depends on natural fact  269
    _(b)_ Is factor in the State  270
    _(c)_  Ethical and Monogamous Household  271
    _(d)_  Relation to Property  272

7. Bourgeois Society. Justice, State Regulation, and
   Trade Societies  272

8. The State proper, or Political Constitution  280

9. Public discussion and public opinion  285

10. Criticism of such an analysis of the Modern State 287

CHAPTER XI

INSTITUTIONS CONSIDERED AS ETHICAL IDEAS  296-334

1. The individual soul and the social mind  296

2. Institutions as common substance of minds  297

3. The Family and Property as elements of mind  299

4. The District or Neighbourhood as an element of mind  304

5. Class as an element of mind. “The Poor” as an ethical idea  310

6. The Nation-State as an element of mind 320

7. Morality of public and private action  322

8. Humanity as an element of mind  328
    _(a)_  Humanity not predicable of mankind as a whole  328
    _(b)_  Humanity does not = mankind as a true community  329
    _(c)_  Dichotomous expressions for humanity and mankind  330
    _(d)_  The self beyond any actual society; Art,
           Philosophy, Religion  332

INDEX  335




{1}

CHAPTER I.

RISE AND CONDITIONS OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEORY OF THE STATE

1. First, it will be well to indicate, in a very few words, what is
implied in a “philosophical theory,” as distinguished from theories
which make no claim to be philosophical. The primary difference
is, that a philosophical treatment is the study of some thing as a
whole and for its own sake. In a certain sense it may be compared
to the gaze of a child or of an artist. It deals, that is, with the
total and unbroken effect of its object. It desires to ascertain
what a thing is, what is its full characteristic and being, its
achievement in the general act of the world. History, explanation,
analysis into cause and conditions, have value for it only in so
far as they contribute to the intelligent estimation of the fullest
nature and capabilities of the real individual whole which is under
investigation. We all know that a flower is one thing for the
geometrician, another for the chemist, another for {2} the botanist,
and another, again, for the artist. Now, philosophy can of course
make no pretension to cope with any one of the specialists on his
own ground. But the general nature of the task imposed upon it is
this: aiding itself, so far as possible, by the trained vision of all
specialists, to make some attempt to see the full significance of
the flower as a word or letter in the great book of the world. And
this we call studying it, as it is, and for its own sake, without
reservation or presupposition. It is assumed, then, for the purpose
of a philosophical treatment, that everything, and more particularly
in this case the political life of man, has a nature of its own,
which is worthy of investigation on its own merits and for its own
sake. How its phases come into being, or what causes or conditions
have played a part in its growth, are other questions well worthy of
investigation. But the philosophical problem is rather to see our
object as it is and to learn what it is, to estimate, so to speak,
its kind and degree of self-maintenance in the world, than to trace
its history or to analyse its causation.

Yet such phrases as “what it is” and “for its own sake” must not
mislead us. They do not mean that the nature of any reality which we
experience can be appreciated in isolation from the general world of
life and knowledge. On the contrary, they imply that when fully and
fairly considered from the most thoroughly adequate point of view,
our subject matter will reveal its true position and relations with
reference to all else that man can do and can know. This position and
these relations constitute its rank or significance in the totality
{3} of experience, and this value or significance--in the present
case, what the form of life in question enables man to do and to
become--is just what we mean by its nature “in itself,” or its full
and complete nature, or its significance when thoroughly studied “for
its own sake” from an adequate point of view. Further illustrations
of the distinction between an adequate point of view and partial or
limited modes of consideration, and of the relations between the
former and the latter, will be found in the following chapter.

2. In a certain sense it would be true to say that wherever men have
lived, there has always been a “State.” That is to say, there has
been some association or corporation, larger than the family, and
acknowledging no power superior to itself. But it is obvious that
the experience of a State in this general sense of the word is not
co-extensive with true political experience, and that something much
more definite than this is necessary to awaken curiosity as to the
nature and value of the community in which man finds himself to be a
member.

Such curiosity has been awakened and sustained principally if not
exclusively by two kindred types of associated life--the City-state
of ancient Greece, and the Nation-state of the modern world. It will
throw light on the nature of our subject if we glance rapidly at the
characteristics to which it is due that political philosophy began in
connection with the former, and revived in connection with the latter.

In considering the Greek city-states in connection with the birth of
political philosophy, there are three points which press upon our
attention:{4}
    _a_. the type of experience which they presented;
    _b_. the type of mind which that experience implied; and
    _c_. the type of interpretation which such a mind elicited from
    such an experience.

_a_. A Greek city-state presented a marked contrast to the modes
of human association which prevailed in the non-Greek world. It
differed from them above all things by its distinct individuality.
No doubt there was a recognisable character in the life and conduct
of Egypt or of Assyria, of Phoenicia or of Israel. But the community
which has a youth, a maturity, and a decadence, as distinct as those
of a single human being, and very nearly as self-conscious; which
has a tone and spirit as recognisable in the words and bearing of
its members as those of a character in a play; and which expresses
its mind in the various regions of human action and endurance
much as an artist expresses his individuality in the creations of
his genius--such a community had existed, before the beginnings
of the modern world, in the Greek city-state, and in the Greek
city-state alone. A political consciousness in the strict sense
was a necessary factor in the experience of such a commonwealth.
The demand for “autonomy”--government by one’s own law,--and for
“isonomy”--government according to equal law--though far from
being always satisfied, was inherent in the Greek nature; and its
strenuousness was evinced by the throes of revolution and the labours
of legislation which were shaking the world of Greece at the dawn of
history. The very instrument of all political action was invented,
so far as we can see, by the Greeks. The simple device by which an
orderly vote is {5} taken, and the minority acquiesce in the will
of the majority as if it had been their own--an invention no less
definite than that of the lever or the wheel--is found for the first
time as an everyday method of decision in Greek political life.

_b_. Such a type of experience implies a corresponding type of mind.
It is not surprising that science and philosophy should owe their
birth to the genius from which politics sprang. For politics is
the expression of reason in the relations that bind man to man, as
science and philosophy are the expression of it in the relations
which link together man’s whole experience. The mind which can
recognise itself practically in the order of the commonwealth,
can recognise itself theoretically in the order of nature. And
ultimately, though not at first (for curiosity is awakened by
objects perceived in space and time, before attention is turned to
the very hinge and centre of man’s own being), science passes into
philosophy; and mind, and conduct, and the political consciousness,
are themselves made objects of speculation. It has become a
commonplace that this transference of curiosity from the outer to the
inner--really, that is, from the partial to the total world--took
shape in the work of Socrates, who invested with the greatness of
his own intelligence and character a movement which the needs of
the age had rendered inevitable. And thus there arose the ethical
and political philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, the successors of
Socrates, just at the time when the distinctive political life of
Greece was beginning to decay.

_c_. This philosophy, like all genuine philosophy, {6} was an
interpretation of the experience presented to it; and in this case
the interpretation was due to minds which were themselves a part
of the phenomena on which they reflected. Such minds, hostile as
they may feel themselves to the spirit of the age, and however
passionately they may cry out for reform or for revolution, are none
the less its representatives; and their interpretation, though it
may modify and even mutilate the phenomena, will nevertheless be
found to throw the central forces and principles of the time into
the clearest light. So Plato’s negative treatment of the family, and
of other elements which seem essential to Greek civilisation, was
no bar to his grasping, and representing with unequalled force, the
central principle of the life around him. The fundamental idea of
Greek political philosophy, as we find it in Plato and Aristotle,
is that the human mind can only attain its full and proper life in
a community of minds, or more strictly in a community pervaded by a
single mind, uttering itself consistently though differently in the
life and action of every member of the community. This conception
is otherwise expressed by such phrases as “the State is natural,”
_i.e._ is a growth or evolution, apart from which the end implied
in man’s origin cannot be attained; “the State is prior to the
individual,” _i.e._ there is a principle or condition underlying
the life of the human individual, which will not admit of that life
becoming what it has in it to be, unless the full sphere or arena
which is constituted by the life of the State is realised in fact.
The whole is summed up in the famous expression of Aristotle, “Man is
a creature formed for the life of the City-state.” The {7} working
out of this idea, as we find it in Plato’s commonwealth, is bizarre
to our minds; but its difficulty really lies in its simplicity and
directness; and there is no sound political philosophy which is not
an embodiment of Plato’s conception. The central idea is this: that
every class of persons in the community--the statesman, the soldier,
the workman--has a certain distinctive type of mind which fits its
members for their functions, and that the community essentially
consists in the working of these types of mind in their connection
with one another, which connection constitutes their subordination
to the common good. This working or adjustment obviously depends in
the last resort on the qualities present in the innermost souls of
the members of the community; and thus the outward organisation of
society is really as it were a body which at every point and in every
movement expresses the characteristics of a mind. We must not pause
here to follow up the consequences of such a conception; but it will
be seen at once, by those who reflect upon it, to imply that every
individual mind must have its qualities drawn out in various ways to
answer to--in fact, to constitute--the relations and functions which
make up the community; and that in this sense every mind is a mirror
or impression of the whole community from its own peculiar point of
view. The ethical assumption or principle of Plato’s conception is,
that a healthy organisation of the commonwealth will involve, by a
necessary connection, a healthy balance and adjustment of qualities
in the individual soul, and _vice versa_. An attempt will be made
to illustrate this principle further in the latter portion {8} of
the present work. The general nature of Plato’s conception--the
characteristic conception of Greek political philosophy--is all that
concerns us here.

It is important to observe that during the very genesis of this
philosophical conception of society, an antagonistic view was
powerfully represented. The individual could not freely find himself
in the community unless he was capable of repudiating it; the
possibility of negation, as a logician might express it, is necessary
to a really significant affirmation. Thus we find in the very age of
Plato and Aristotle the most startling anticipations of those modern
ideas which seem diametrically opposed to theirs. We find the idea
of nature identified not with the mature fulness, but with the empty
starting point of life; we meet with the phenomena of vegetarianism,
water-drinking, the reduction of dress to its minimum, in short, the
familiar symptoms of the longing for the “return to nature,” with all
that it implies; we find law and political unity treated as a tissue
of artifice and convention, and the individual disdaining to identify
himself with the citizenship of a single state, but claiming to be a
stranger in the city and a citizen of the world. To prove that these
ideas were not without their justification, it is enough to point out
that in some instances they were accompanied by a polemic against
slavery, which, as a form of solidarity, was upheld in a qualified
sense at least by Aristotle. The existence of this negative criticism
is enough to show how distinctly the Greek intellect set before
itself the fundamental problem of the relation between the individual
and society, and of how high a quality was the bond of union which
{9} maintained this relation in such intimacy among minds of a temper
so analytic.

3. Many writers have told the story of the change which came over the
mind of Greece when the independent sovereignty of its City-states
became a thing of the past. For our purpose it is enough to draw
attention to the fact that with this change the political or social
philosophy of the great Greek time not only lost its supremacy,
but almost ceased to be understood. From this period forward, till
the rise of the modern Nation-states, men’s thoughts about life
and conduct were cast in the mould of moral theory, of religious
mysticism and theology, or of jurisprudence. The individual demanded
in the sphere of ethics and religion to be shown a life sufficing
to himself apart from any determinate human society--a problem
which Plato and Aristotle had assumed to be insoluble. Stoicism
and Epicureanism, the earliest non-national creeds of the western
world, triumphantly developed the ideas which at first, as we saw,
were little more than a rebellion against the central Socratic
philosophy. Cosmopolitanism, the conception of humanity, the ideal
of a “Society of Friends”--the Epicurean league--from which women
were not excluded, and the precept of “not expecting from life more
than it has to give,” take the place of the highly individualised
commonwealth, with its strenuous masculine life of war and politics,
and its passionate temper which felt that nothing had been
accomplished so long as anything remained undone.

With this change of temper in the civilised world there is brought
into prominence a great deal of {10} human nature which had not found
expression through the immediate successors of Socrates. In the
period between Aristotle and Cicero there is more than a whisper of
the sound which meets us like a trumpet blast in the New Testament,
“neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free.” But
the unworldliness which took final shape in Christianity was destined
to undergo a long transmigration through shapes of other-worldliness
before it should return in modern thought to the unity from which it
started; and the history of ethics and religion has little bearing
upon true political theory between the death of Aristotle and the
awakening of the modern consciousness in the Reformation.

In so far as the political ideas of antiquity were preserved
to modern times otherwise than in the manuscripts of Plato and
Aristotle, the influence which preserved them was that of Roman
Jurisprudence. The Roman rule, though it stereotyped the state of
things in which genuine political function and the spur of freedom
were unknown, had one peculiar gift by which it handed to posterity
the germs of a great conception of human life. This is not the place
to describe at length the origin of that vast practical induction
from the working of the “foreigners’ court” at Rome which obtained
for itself the name of the Law of Nations, and which, as tinged with
ideal theory, was known as the Law of Nature. Whatever fallacies may
be near at hand when “natural right” is named, the conception that
there is in man, as such, something which must be respected, a law
of life which is his “nature,” being indeed another name {11} for
his reason, and in some sense or other a “freedom” and an “equality”
which are his birthright--this conception was not merely a legacy
from Stoic ideas, which had almost a religious inspiration, but was
solidly founded on the judicial experience of the most practical race
that the world has ever seen.

4. In order that the forces which lay hidden in the conception
of Natural Right and Freedom, like the powers of vegetation in a
seed, might unfold themselves in the modern world, it was necessary
that conditions should recur analogous to those which had first
elicited them. And these earlier conditions were those of the Greek
City-state; for it was here, as we have seen, that the conception of
man’s nature had flourished, as the idea of a purposive evolution
into a full and many-sided social life, while in Stoic philosophy and
Roman juristic theory it had become more and more a shibboleth and
a formula which lost in depth of meaning what it gained in range of
application.

To restore their ancient significance, expanded in conformity with
a larger order of things, to the traditional formulae, demanded
just the type of experience which was furnished by the modern
Nation-state. The growth of Nation-states in modern Europe was in
progress, we are told, from the ninth to the fifteenth century. And
it is towards and after the close of this period, and especially
in the seventeenth century when the national consciousness of the
English people, as of others, had become thoroughly awakened, that
political speculation in the strict sense begins again, {12} after
an interval extending back to the Politics of Aristotle. To let one
example serve for many; when we read John of Gaunt’s praises of
England in Shakespeare’s Richard II., we feel ourselves at once in
contact with the mind of a social unity, such as necessarily to raise
in any inquiring intelligence all those problems which were raised
for Plato and Aristotle by the individuality of Athens and Sparta.
And so we see the earliest political speculation of the modern world
groping, as it were, for ideas by help of which to explain the
experience of an individual self-governing sovereign society. And
for the most part the ideas that offer themselves are those of Roman
Jurisprudence, but distorted by political applications and by the
rhetoric of Protestant fanaticism. As Mr. Ritchie [1] points out, the
conception of natural right and a law of nature makes a strange but
effective coalition with the temper of the Wycliffite cry

  “When Adam dalf, and Eve span,
   Who was then the gentleman?”

The notions of contract, of force, of representation in a
single legal “person,” are now applied separately or together
to the phenomenon of the self-governing individual community.
But the solution remains imperfect, and the fundamental fact of
self-government refuses to be construed either as the association of
individuals, originally free and equal, for certain limited purposes,
or as the absolute absorption of their wills in the “person” of a
despotic sovereign.

[1] _Natural Rights_, p. 8.

The revival of a true philosophical meaning {13} within the abstract
terms of juristic tradition was the work of the eighteenth century
as a whole. For the sake of clearness, and with as much historical
justice as ever attaches to an attribution of the kind, we may
connect it with the name of a single man--Jean Jacques Rousseau. For
it is Rousseau who stands midway between Hobbes and Locke on the
one hand, and Kant and Hegel on the other, and in whose writings
the actual revival of the full idea of human nature may be watched
from paragraph to paragraph as it struggles to throw off the husk of
an effete tradition. Between Locke and Rousseau the genius of Vico
and of Montesquieu had given a new meaning to the dry formulae of
law by showing the sap of society circulating within them. Moreover
the revived experience of the Greeks came in the nick of time. It
was influential with Rousseau himself, and little as he grasped the
political possibilities of a modern society, in matters of sheer
principle this influence led him on the whole in the right direction.
His insight was just, when it showed him that every political whole
presented the same problem which had been presented by the Greek
City-state, and involved the same principles. And he bequeathed
to his successors the task of substituting for the mere words and
fictions of contract, nature, and original freedom, the idea of the
common life of an essentially social being, expressing and sustaining
the human will at its best.

According to the view here indicated, the resurrection of true
political philosophy out of the dead body of juristic abstractions
was inaugurated by {14} Vico and Montesquieu, and decisively declared
itself in Jean Jacques Rousseau. The idea which most of us have
formed of “the new Evangel of a _Contrat Social_” is not in harmony
with this representation of the matter. Was it, we may be asked,
a genuine political philosophy which inspired the leaders of the
French Revolution? And the question cannot be evaded by denying all
connection between the theory and the practice of that age. The
phraseology of the revolutionary declarations [1]--which will strike
the reader accustomed to nineteenth century socialism as exceedingly
moderate and even conservative in tone--is undoubtedly to a great
extent borrowed from Rousseau’s writings.

[1] See the very interesting collection of documents in the Appendix
to Professor Ritchie’s _Natural Rights_.

Perhaps the truth of the matter may be approached as follows. The
popular rendering of a great man’s views is singularly liable to run
straight into the pit-falls against which he more particularly warned
the world. This could be proved true in an extraordinary degree of
such men as Plato and Spinoza, and still more astonishingly, perhaps,
of the founder of the Christian religion. The reason is obvious. A
great man works with the ideas of his age, and regenerates them. But
in as far as he regenerates them, he gets beyond the ordinary mind;
while in as far as he operates with them, he remains accessible to
it. And his own mind has its ordinary side; the regeneration of
ideas which he is able to effect is not complete, and the notions of
the day not only limit his entire range of achievement--where the
strongest runner will get to must depend on where he starts--but
float about unassimilated {15} within his living stream of thought.
Now all this ordinary side of his mind will partake of the strength
and splendour of his whole nature. And thus he will seem to have
preached the very superstitions which he combated. For in part he
has done so, being himself infected; in part the overwhelming bias
of his interpreters has reversed the meaning of his very warnings,
by transferring the importance, due to his central thought, to some
detail or metaphor which belongs to the lower level of his mind. It
is an old story how Spinoza, “the God-intoxicated man,” was held to
be an “atheist,” when in truth he was rather an “acosmist”; and in
the same way, on a lower plane, the writer who struggled through to
the idea that true sovereignty lay in the dominion of a common social
good as expressed through law and institutions, is held to have
ascribed absolute supremacy to that chance combination of individual
voices in a majority, which he expressly pointed out to have, in
itself, no authority at all.

But there is something more to be said of cases, like that under
discussion, where a great man’s ideas touch the practical world. If
the complete and positive idea becomes narrow and negative as it
impinges upon every-day life, this may be not only a consequence
of its transmission through every-day minds, but a qualification
for the work it has to do. The narrower truth may be, so to speak,
the cutting edge of the more complete, as the negation is of the
affirmation. And the vulgar notion of popular sovereignty and of
natural right may have been necessary to do a work which a more
organic social theory would have been too delicate to achieve. {16}
Like the faith in a speedy second coming of Christ among the early
Christians, the gospel according to Jean Jacques may have taken for
the minds of Revolutionary France a form which was serviceable as
well as inevitable at the moment. If, as we said above, the great man
is always misunderstood, it seems to follow that when his germinal
ideas have been sown they must assert themselves first in lower
phases if they are ever to bear fruit at all. And therefore, while
not denying the influence of Rousseau on the Revolution, we shall
attempt to show that he had another and a later influence, more
adequate to the true reach of his genius.




{17}

CHAPTER II.

SOCIOLOGICAL COMPARED WITH PHILOSOPHICAL THEORY.

1. There is no doubt that Sociology and Social Philosophy have
started, historically speaking, from different points of view. The
object of the present chapter is to ascertain the nature and estimate
the importance and probable permanence of the difference between
them. I propose first to explain the difference in general; then to
review the sources of social experience, which in other words are
facets or aspects of social life, by which social theory has been
influenced, and with which it has to deal; and, finally, to form some
idea of the distinctive services which may be rendered by sociology
and social philosophy respectively in view of the range of experience
which it is the function of social theory to organize.

Beginning with Vico’s [1] _New Science_, there has been more than one
attempt in modern Europe to inaugurate the Science of Society as a
new departure. But the distinctive and modern spirit of what is known
as Sociology, and under that {18} name has had a continuous growth
of half a century at least, first found unmistakable expression in
Auguste Comte. The conception which he impressed upon the science to
which he first gave the name of sociology or social physics, was a
characteristically modern conception. Its essence was the inclusion
of human society among the objects of natural science; its watchwords
were law and cause in the sense in which alone Positivism allowed
causes to be thought of--and scientific prediction. [2] It is true
that the large conception of unity which Comte embodied in his
philosophy had very much in common with the principles insisted on
by the Greek social philosophers. The close interdependence of all
social phenomena among each other, the unity of man with nature, and
the consequent correlation of moral and political theory with the
organised hierarchy of mathematical and physical sciences, are ideas
which Comte might have borrowed directly from Plato and Aristotle.
Nevertheless the modern starting-point is wholly different from that
of antiquity. The modern enquirer--the sociologist as such--was
to ask himself, according to Comte, in the language of physical
science, what are the laws and causes operative among aggregations
of human beings, and what are their predictable effects? The ancient
philosopher--the ethical and metaphysical theorist--had before
him primarily the problem, “what is the completest and most real
life of the human soul?” The work of the latter has been revived
by modern idealist philosophy dating from Rousseau and Hegel, and
finding a second {19} home in Great Britain, as that of the former
has developed itself within the peculiar limits and traditions of
sociological research, flourishing more especially upon French and
American soil. The continuance of these two streams of thought in
independent courses, though not without signs of convergence, is a
remarkable phenomenon of nineteenth century culture; and it will be
one of the problems which the present chapter, and in a larger sense
the whole of the present work, must deal with, to consider how far it
is necessary or desirable that they should blend.

[1] J. D. Rogers in Palgrave’s _Dict. of Pol. Econ._, art. “Social
Science.”

[2] See Gidding’s _Sociology_, p. 6.

2. Every science, no doubt, is to some extent, the playground
of analogies; but the complexity and the unmateriality of human
relations has forced this character upon social theory in an
extraordinary degree. It is impossible to account for the tendencies
of sociological as well as of philosophical thought without making
some attempt to pursue the line of investigation suggested by Mr.
Bagehot in his _Physics and Politics_. Predominant modes and types of
experience necessarily colour the whole activity of the mind, and, as
indicated above, this influence more especially affects a province of
research which is not _prima facie_ accessible to direct experiment
or sensuous observation. I must, therefore, endeavour to review, in
a brief outline, the principal branches of experience which have
furnished ideas for application to social theory, and to indicate
the leanings in speculation upon society, which have been due to
preoccupation with one or another special analogy.

i. The Newtonian theory of gravitation is the entrance gate to the
modern world of science. {20} “When the Newton of this subject
shall be seated in his place” [1] is the aspiration of the modern
investigator in every matter capable of being known. It is not
surprising, therefore, that the inclusion of human society within
the range of matters capable of being definitely understood, should
have been symbolized by demanding for social science a completeness
of explanation and a power of prediction analogous to those displayed
by astronomy or by mathematical physics. Representative of this
conception is the title, Social Physics--for Comte the alternative
and equivalent to the name Sociology. It is easy to see both the
merits and the dangers of such an ideal, which, as the embodiment
of perfection in a natural science, is presupposed by the attitude
of sociology down to the present day. Is a science necessarily a
natural science, and is a natural science necessarily an exact
science?--these are the fundamental questions involved in the
adoption of a mathematical ideal for the study of society. No fault
can be found with it on the ground of its implying the highest degree
of harmony and precision; the only question is whether an adequate
type of comparison is afforded for, let us say, the growth of an
institution, by the law of a curve. The general conception, indeed,
of a continuity between human relations and the laws of the cosmic
order is thoroughly in the spirit of Plato, and betokens a scientific
enthusiasm worthy to be the parent of great things. And especially
in the sphere of economic science, where certain relatively simple
hypotheses have proved on the whole to be effective instruments {21}
of explanation, an analysis of intricate phenomena has been effected,
which in some degree justifies the aspiration after the ideal of an
exact science.

[1] De Morgan, _Budget of Paradoxes_, p. 355.

ii. But it has been recognised from the earliest days of political
speculation that, within the general ideal of a perfect natural
science, the more special analogy of the living organism had a
peculiar bearing upon social phenomena. Beginning in the ancient
world with the comparison between individuals as “members” of a
social whole, and the parts or organs of a living body, or even the
constituent elements of a mind, this analogy has been extended and
reinforced in modern times by what amounts to the new creation of
the biological and anthropological sciences. The sense of continuity
thus intensified and implying all that is understood by the modern
term evolution, has brought an immense material of suggestions to
sociological research, but has imposed upon it at the same time a
characteristic bias from which it is just, perhaps, beginning to
shake itself free. This characteristic may be roughly stated as the
explanation of the higher, by which I mean the more distinctly human
phenomena, by the lower, or those more readily observed, or inferred,
among savage nations, or in the animal world. Any one familiar with
logic will be aware that there is a subtle and natural prejudice
which tends to strengthen such a bias by claiming a higher degree of
reality for that which, as coming earlier in temporal succession,
I presents itself in the light of what is called a I “cause.” So
strong has been this bias among sociologists, that the student,
primarily interested in the features and achievements of civilised
society, is {22} tempted to say in his haste that the sociologist [1]
as such seldom deals seriously with true social phenomena at all;
but devotes his main attention to primitive man and to the lower
animals, occasionally illustrating his studies in these regions by
allusions, showing no great insight or mastery, to the facts of
civilized society. Such a complaint becomes less and less justified
as the years go by, and sociology recovers its balance as against the
overwhelming influence of the sciences of lower life. How far the
approach from this “lower” or more purely natural side will remain in
the end characteristic of sociological science, is an integral part
of the main problem concerning its nature and destiny with which we
have to deal in the present work. But it remains true to say and very
important to observe, that no such serious successes have as yet been
won in the name and by the special methods of sociology as have been
achieved by many investigators approaching their problems directly
and with an immediate interest; whether in the sphere of political
economy proper, or in dealing with various questions of social
and ethical importance, such as pauperism, charity, sanitation,
education, the condition of the people, the comparative study of
politics, or the analysis of material and geographical conditions in
their reaction upon social and artistic development.

[1] By a “sociologist as such” I mean a writer who is professedly
dealing with sociology as such. Any independent researches, such as
Mr. and Mrs. Webb’s _Industrial Democracy_, may of course be ranked
under the heading “Sociology.” But works of this kind do not, as
a rule, attach themselves to the peculiar method and language of
sociological writers.

On the other hand, there is no doubt that the {23} epoch and
influence of which we speak has bequeathed a legacy of imperishable
value to the theory of society. In a word, it has made us sensitive
to the continuity of things, and therefore also to their unity. It
has shown us the crowning achievements of the human race, their
States, their Religion, their Fine Art, and their Science, as the
high-water mark of tendencies that have their beginnings far back
in the primitive organic world, and in their original sources have
also a connection with each other--as in the practical aspects
of religion,--which too easily escapes notice in their highest
individual development. The “return to nature” and the “noble savage”
have been invested with a significance which can never be forgotten,
and which criticism can never set aside. This is the sum and
substance of the general contribution which the latter half of the
eighteenth century and the greater part of the nineteenth have made
to sociology through the science of life and of man.

More particularly, it is necessary to notice the double operation of
biological influence on sociology, according to the unit from which
the analogy is drawn.

a. The idea which still bulks most largely in the popular mind, as
contributed by biology to social theory, is unquestionably that of
the struggle for life or the survival of the fittest. It should be
noticed that the social application of this analogy rests entirely
on the comparison of a human society, not to the individual animal
organism, and still less to the individual mind; but to a whole
animal species or even to the aggregate of all animal species, so
far as they or their members are in competition with one another.
One whole side of the sociological {24} doctrine, which Mr. Spencer
has advocated with unwearied persistence, is founded upon this
application of the biological analogy, and the paradox which he
has made his principle professes to be borrowed directly from the
dealings of nature with the individuals of the animal species. This
paradox, that benefits should be assigned inversely as services
in infancy but directly as services among adults, is his ultimate
sociological basis; the modification of which, to suit human society,
by the introduction of benevolence or altruism, so to speak, on the
top of it, only serves to display its inadequacy. But we may take it
that the analogy of the struggle for life has made it clear that, in
any given position, life can be maintained only in virtue of definite
qualities adapted to that position. And formal as this principle is
when taken by itself, its application in human society can never be
unnecessary.

b. A more recent school has insisted on the complementary analogy,
which might be taken as resting upon the comparison of a society
with an individual organism. Here, it must be remembered, lay the
resemblance which, in this region of ideas, first caught the eye
of social philosophers in antiquity. But it is alleged that the
aspect of co-operation can be traced as between individual members
of the animal world no less than between the parts of a single
organism, and it is affirmed that the view which sees nothing but
internecine competition in the animal kingdom has been too rough and
too superficial in its reading of the facts. And therefore it is
suggested that the phenomena of social fellowship, no less than those
of individual competition, have their source {25} and root in the
world of lower nature; and perhaps sociology is now not far from the
recognition that competition and co-operation are simply the negative
and positive aspect of the same general fact--the fact of the
division of labour, of essentiality of function, and of uniqueness
of true individual service. If it is suggested by the one organic
analogy that life depends upon qualities adequate to the position
which is to be filled, it is made obvious by the other that the
qualities which satisfy the claims of a certain position are those,
in general and in principle, by which a function is discharged in the
service of the whole.

In Mr. Spencer’s doctrine the two sides above indicated have been
brought into very marked relation by a suggestive criticism, [1]
which he has taken special pains to answer. If human society
corresponds to an individual organism--as is, in many ways, Mr.
Spencer’s well-known doctrine--how is it that the absolute central
control in which the perfection of an organism consists is, for Mr.
Spencer, a note of imperfection when it appears in a human society?
And the answer is in effect that human society corresponds in many
of its features rather to a local variety of a species than to an
individual organism. It is essentially discrete, not individual, and
at this point, therefore, the analogy of the individual organism
gives way to that of the group or species.

[1] _Sociology_, i. 586.

But Mr. Spencer does not really mean that a human society has
no more intrinsic bond between its members than the local group
of an animal species. To indicate its true nature he {26} gives
us a good word--but a word only--the word “super-organic.” [1]
It is a significant term, and brings us perhaps to the limit of
what biological sociology is able to suggest with regard to the
unity of a human commonwealth, and points us to something beyond.
It is remarkable that when the facts of true human society are
more thoroughly realised than by Mr. Spencer, but the clue of the
individual organism and the co-operative side of animal life is not
followed up, there is a tendency to sever the links which unite man
to “lower” nature, and to represent the ethical and cosmic processes
as absolutely opposed. We see this point of view decidedly adopted
by Mr. Huxley, [2] and its adoption perhaps indicates the inception
of an epoch in which sociology will cut itself free from a good deal
of pseudo-scientific lumber. Nevertheless, a patient and careful
study will continue to recognise the elements both of competition
and of co-operation as ineradicable and inseparable moments in
human society as in the animal world; the essential meaning of
competition in its higher forms being the rejection and suppression
of members who are unable to meet the ever advancing demand for
co-operative character and capacity; and the study of parasitism
[3] and of regressive selection will continue to {27} be a warning
against the attempt to emancipate mankind from the sterner general
conditions of the cosmic order. It will be recognised that there
is an adaptation to conditions which consists in degradation; but
the failure will be understood by comparison with the only true
“survival of the fittest,” [4] being that which reveals the full
unity and significance of organism and environment. It is important
to observe that, at least in the two eminent biologists just alluded
to, the doctrine of the individual self--of the relation between
self-assertion and self-restraint--is altogether of an uncivilised
and anti-social type. Biological categories do not, in their case
at least, appear to have afforded any suggestion for the treatment
of the social self as more and greater, in a positive sense, than
the self which is less bound up with social obligations. As for the
denying spirits in Plato’s _Republic_, so for both Mr. Spencer and
Mr. Huxley, “nature” is essentially self-assertion, and “society”
self-restraint. [5] Here again we touch the same limitation which
met us in Mr. Spencer’s term “super-organic,” and we feel that a
different point of view must be brought to bear.

[1] _Sociology_, vol. I., ch. i.

[2] _Evolution and Ethics_, p. 82.

[3] Geddes, in _Encyclo. Brit_., vol. xviii. 253a: “Further details
of the process of retrograde metamorphosis and of the enormously
important phenomena of degeneration cannot here be attempted; it must
suffice if the general dependence of such changes upon simplification
of environment--freedom from danger, abundant alimentation and
complete repose, etc. (in short, the conditions commonly considered
those of complete material well-being)--has been rendered clearer.”

[4] Cf. _Sutherland, Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct_, vol.
I., pp. 28, 29.

[5] Huxley, _Evolution and Ethics_, p. 31; Spencer, _Man v. State_,
p. 98.

iii. Political Economy existed before modern Sociology was born, and
is still the only part of it which is obviously and indisputably
successful as a science of explanation. The triumphant development
of this theory reacted even upon Hegel’s political philosophy, by
suggesting to him the distinction between “Bourgeois Society” and
“The {28} State.” _A fortiori_, it could not but have a serious
influence on the growing science of sociology itself, the ideal of
which might not unfairly be regarded as the extension to society as
a whole of that type of investigation which had proved so successful
in economic matter. From this influence has arisen the tendency
in sociological research which has been called by the name of the
economic or materialist view of history and consequently of society.
Primarily connected with the name of Marx, it may also be illustrated
by many contentions of Buckle and Le Play, and has become, indeed,
the formula of a school. In sum, the point of view amounts to this:
that the fundamental structure of civilisation, the type of the
family, for example, and the order relations and development of
classes in society, have been and must be determined by the primary
necessities of human existence, and the conditions of climate and
nutrition under which these necessities are met. Economic facts
alone, it is suggested, are real and causal; everything else is an
appearance and an effect.

Before saying a word as to the true importance of this point of
view, we may profitably correct the commonplace idea of its nature.
Materialism, in a strict philosophical sense, means the conviction
that nothing is real but that which is solid, or, perhaps, which
gravitates. By a not very convincing analogy from this idea, all
those passions and necessities which we speak of in a quite loose and
popular way as connected with the body, may be and often are regarded
as “material” in opposition to energies which it seems pleasanter
{29} to ascribe to incorporeal mind. But it should be noted that
this secondary usage, especially in a time when no one denies the
physical correlation of all psychical activity, has no important
ethical implication. Like the “flesh” or the “body” of St. Paul’s
religious language, the “bodily” or “material” needs and appetites
of man are an element of mind, the rank and value of which must be
determined on other grounds than the notion that they are connected
in some peculiar degree with “physical” conditions. The economic
view of history has been called and has called itself materialist
partly because of the commonplace usage, which I have just described,
by which certain passions and necessities, which it takes to be
fundamental, are apt to be called material as opposed to ethical or
ideal--a wholly unjustified opposition--and partly from the notion,
which I referred to at the beginning of this chapter, that the
success of political economy was in some way analogous to that of the
mathematical science of abstract matter.

Stripping off, then, the unjustified suggestion of philosophical
materialism, [1] what we have in the economic view of history,
amounts pretty much to what is expressed in the saying that while
statesmen are arguing, love and hunger are governing mankind. Climate
and natural resources make a {30} difference to history; occupations
determine the type of the family; an agricultural and an industrial
society will never exhibit the same relations between classes, and
very vast commercial operations cannot be carried on by the same
methods or by the same minds which sufficed for the retail trade of
a petty shop. But when it is clearly seen that economic needs and
devices are no detached, nor, so to speak, absolutely antecedent
department of human life [2]--a fact which the epithet “materialist”
has done something to obscure, for, in truth, in economics there is
no question of genuine material causation--then it becomes obvious
that we have not here any prior determining framework of social
existence, but simply certain important aspects of the operations
of the human mind, rather narrowly regarded in their isolation from
all others. If we seriously consider the import of such an economic
conception as the “standard of life,” it becomes plain that the
contrast too commonly accepted [3] between the mechanical pressure
of economic facts and the influence of ideas [4] stands in need of a
completely fresh criticism and of entire restatement. Discounting,
however, the exaggerations which have arisen from confused notions of
materialism, and from the genuine achievements of economic science,
we have remaining, in the point of view under consideration, a
thoroughly just assertion of man’s continuity with {31} the world
around him. Undoubtedly man lives the life of his planet, his
climate, and his locality, and is the utterance, so to speak, of the
conditions under which his race and his nation have evolved. The only
difficulty arises if, by some arbitrary line between man and his
environment, the conditions which are the very material of his life
come to be treated as alien influences upon it, with the result of
representing him as being the slave of his surroundings rather than
their concentrated idea and articulate expression. Do we think that
Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare would have been greater or more free in
their genius if one had not been the voice of Greece, another that of
Italy, and the third that of England? The world in which man lives
_is_ himself, but is constituted, of course, by presentation to a
mind and not by strictly physical causation; and even where strictly
physical causation plays a part, as in the bodily effects of a hot
climate or of a certain kind of nutrition, still it cannot determine
a type of human life except by passing into the world which a human
being presents to himself.

[1] Quite probably there may be in the Marxian view an echo of true
materialism--the idea that will and consciousness are “epiphenomena”
_i.e._ are effects which are not causes generated by molecular
movements. Such a view cannot be criticised here, only it may be
pointed out that, on such a basis, the “bodily” passions, etc.,
are in no way more “material” than, e.g., the moral “categorical
imperative,” and therefore no more causal.

[2] See note 4.

[2] Cf. _e.g._ Durkheim, _Annee Sociologique_, 1897, p. 159.

[4] _I.e._ as if economic conditions were a sort of iron girders put
up to begin with and civilisation was the embellishment of them. It
is the old story of forgetting that the skeleton is later than the
body, and is deposited and moulded by it.

The exclusive importance which has been attached to considerations
of this kind in recent social theory is partly due to an unfounded
opinion of their novelty. It is somewhat striking, though following
naturally enough from the sort of schism in the world of letters
which modern sociology and ancient social philosophy represent,
that the firm and well balanced handling of these problems which we
owe to Plato and Aristotle is for the most part ignored by modern
sociologists.

{32} The entire social conception of those writers is a continued
application of the principle, fundamental in their whole philosophy,
that “form” is the inherent organising life of “matter,” so that
the better life of a commonwealth can be nothing but the flower and
crown of the possibilities inherent in its material conditions and
industrial and economic organisation. The law which is ultimately
to reveal itself as the spring of all righteousness in the State,
has its most obvious and external symbol--so Plato tells us--in
the economic exchange of services; and every circumstance of site,
and industry, and trade, and the racial type of the citizen, helps
to constitute, both for him and for Aristotle, the living organic
possibility from which, in some appropriate individual form, the
higher life is to spring. If we ask ourselves what then is the
difference between the ancient view of economic causation, and that
of the “materialist” historical school, we shall find the answer in
the absence, from the former, of that unreal isolation upon which we
observed above. The relation of “matter” or “conditions” to “form”
or “purpose” is not, for the Greek thinker, the pressure of an
alien necessity, of a hostile environment, but the upspringing of a
life, continuous in principle through all its phases. The thought
of the legislator fixes in the shape of distinct consciousness and
will, what the assemblage of conditions embodies as a physical or
instinctive tendency, as the artist, to use an ancient simile, finds
the statue in the marble. Working with this idea, the connection is
far more thoroughly, because more sympathetically, traced than it
can be when we think that our science is but laying bare the fetters
of humanity. And following {33} in the spirit of the Greek thinkers
themselves, modern students of antiquity have devoted themselves to
eliciting the positive connection of conditions with history, up to
a point of success of which the common run of modern sociologists
appear to have no conception. When we reflect how typical and,
comparatively speaking, how readily isolated and exhausted is the
history of Ancient Greece in the greatest age, it seems extraordinary
that the considerable and minute researches which have been bestowed
upon its geographical, commercial, and economic conditions should
not be commonly drawn into account with a view to the illustration
of the relations between natural resources, commercial and economic
development, and historical greatness. [1]

[1] I have never, for example, seen the great work of Ernst
Curtius, on the geography of the Peloponnese in connection with its
historical development, referred to in any sociological treatise;
nor, again, Duncker, nor Büchsenschütz, nor Mr. Newman’s edition of
Aristotle’s _Politics_. Boeckh’s _Treatise on the Public Economy of
Athens_ receives only a word of contemptuous notice in M’Culloch’s
_Literature of Political Economy_.

However this may be, here at any rate, in the analysis of economic
and quasi-economic conditions in their bearing upon the life of
peoples, we get a real subject-matter which is perhaps, so far as
can yet be seen, the territory least disputably belonging to the
pure sociologist. It is not really a sphere of natural causation,
but it is a sphere of certain simple and general conditions in
psychical life, corresponding to external facts which admit of
more or less precise statement, and, we may hope, of reduction to
fairly trustworthy uniformities. Such for instance are M. Durkheim’s
investigations on the effect of {34} density of population upon the
division of labour, [1] or Professor Gidding’s observations upon the
causes and limiting conditions of the aggregation of populations. [2]
We now proceed to a branch of experience which seriously strains the
working conceptions of the sociologist.

[1] _De la Division du Travail Social_, Alcan, 1893.

[2] _Principles of Sociology_, bk. II., ch. i. Few things are more
interesting in this respect than Mr. Poore’s observations in _Rural
Hygiene_ on the mechanical conditions of modern city life, as regards
drainage and water supply, with their results in encouraging an
overcrowded and insanitary mode of living.

iv. A completely new vista reveals itself to the student of social
theory when he turns from biological analogies and economic
conditions to consider the wealth of experience and of ideas which
is furnished to him by Jurisprudence and the Science of Right. He
knows, indeed, by this time, that the obvious aspect of a province
of fact will not be the only one, and that a unity will certainly be
traceable between all the facets of social existence. But none the
less, he will be able to restrain the itch to explain things away,
and he will fairly and candidly give weight to the significance and
suggestiveness of the mass of history and of reflection which is now
brought before him.

_a_. For here, as the plainest and most unmistakable data of
experience, we are confronted with _ideal facts_. The vast mass
of documents which form the basis of the Science of Right--a more
complete and comprehensive set of records, perhaps, than any other
branch of social science can boast--bears witness in every case to
one social phenomenon at least, to a formal act of mind and will,
aimed at maintaining some relative right or {35} hindering some
relative wrong, and stamped with what in some sense and in some
degree amounts to a social recognition. Theorists have said too
hastily, though with a sound meaning, that right is independent
of fact. It would be as true to say that reason is independent of
civilisation, or the soul independent of culture. Right is not
exhausted in the facts of past history; but it is at every moment
embodied in facts; and to comprehend that the social phenomena
which are among the most solid and unyielding of our experiences,
are nevertheless ideal in their nature, and consist of conscious
recognitions, by intelligent beings, of the relations in which
they stand, is to make a great step towards grasping the essential
task of science in dealing with society. From the beginning of
social theory the facts of law have been set in opposition to the
idea of a natural growth. It has been observed that, as a definite
institution maintained by formal acts of will, society is artificial,
conventional, contractual. We all know to-day that there is much
more than this to be said about the nature and principles of social
growth. Nevertheless, it remains true that the social whole has an
artificial aspect, an aspect of will and of design, of the agreement
and mutual recognition of free conscious beings. And in so far as the
history of law has resulted in the conception of natural right, this
in no way derogates from the artificial or ideal character of society
as above understood. For “natural” right belongs to a “nature” which
includes and does not exclude that action of intelligence in virtue
of which society may be termed artificial; and is {36} merely the
revelation of the principle towards which the social will is working,
and which in some degree it has always embodied.

Therefore the facts of Jurisprudence and the Science of Right, or
of “Natural Right,” as the issue and outcome of Jurisprudence,
necessarily counterbalance the extreme ideas of continuous growth and
natural causation which social science derives from other analogies.
We are reminded that, after all, we are dealing with a self-conscious
purposive organism, which is aware of a better and a worse, and
has members bound together by conscious intelligence, though, it
may be, not by conscious intelligence alone. At one time the ideas
of Jurisprudence, such as Sovereignty or Contract, were considered
sufficient by themselves to equip a social theory. And if they are
now seen to need completion from both sides,--from the side of lower
nature, and from the side of the national spirit and culture,--this
should not make us neglectful of the important truths which the facts
of law and recognised obligation, more than any others, establish on
solid ground.

_b_. It is of course the case that Law has been treated from the
standpoint of economic history in the same way as the other phenomena
of civilised life. It may be taken simply as the form into which
substantive relations crystallise, under the influence of economic
conditions or of other elementary social forces. And obviously such
a view has its truth. The social will, like the will of any one of
us from day to day, is formed not _in vacuo_, but as the focus of
all the influences which penetrate our being. It is a fair object of
{37} research to ascertain the economic or other social meaning of
the statutes which we find on the statute book; and it is because
they have so much meaning that they are excellent object-lessons in
the play of the social consciousness and sense of right. But this
focussing of social influences makes the laws not less acts of social
will, but more. To suppose the contrary would be like supposing
that nothing is a true act of will which embodies an individual’s
distinctive purposes in life.

I will explain by an illustration the relative value of sociological
analysis in dealing with the facts of positive law. I am indebted
for it to M. Durkheim, whose writings appear to me among the most
original and suggestive works of modern sociology. I regret that my
immediate purpose does not justify me in stating and appreciating the
whole very interesting theory of repressive and contractual law from
which the point in question is selected.

An act is a crime, [1] we are told, for the pure sociologist, when
it offends the strong and definite collective sentiments of society.
This is the strictly causal view of the matter. The act is a crime
because it offends; it does not offend because it is a crime. And the
corollaries are valuable. It is idle to distinguish, on such a basis,
between the reformatory, the retributive, and the deterrent views of
the reaction which is punishment. [2] An offensive act is in itself
at once an exhibition of character, an injury, and a menace. If a man
{38} assaults me in the street, and I knock him down; how futile to
ask if my action is meant to cure him of his insolence, to punish him
for having hit me, or to prevent him from hitting me again! The real
fact is that I am offended, and I react by way of injury and negation
against that which offends me. Now, this view, I think, illuminates
the subject. By going back to the simple operative cause, as it may
be supposed to exist especially in the mind of a tribe in an early
stage of development (M. Durkheim is chiefly referring to religious
offences), we have got a plain type of mental reaction, easy to
imagine and to understand. In this type we see at once the unity of
aspects which the forms of law, and legal or philosophical theory,
tend later to dissociate in a fictitious degree. And moreover we are
reminded that a law must have something behind it; some positive
sentiment or conviction, without which it would be unaccountable and
unmeaning.

[1] Durkheim, _Op. cit_., livre I., ch. ii.

[2] See ch. viii. below.

But when all this is said, it must not be supposed that penal law
has been reduced to the level of a strong and definite collective
sentiment, or a crime to the level of an annoyance. The simplest
penal law of a self-existent social group is different from the
anger of a crowd or mob. There is in it some sense of permanence,
and permanence means responsibility and generality--a distinction of
right and wrong. The fact of formally constituting a crime, _i.e._
of announcing a law, implies that mere distaste is no ground of
punishment. The law means that there is something worth maintaining,
and that this is recognised, and that to violate this recognition is
not merely to be unpopular, but to {39} sin against the common good,
and to break an obligation. With less than this there is no true
crime.

Thus, if I am right, the relation of pure “sociological” causation
to juristic facts is the well-known relation of the more abstract
to the more concrete sciences, usually illustrated in logic by
the relation of the physical and the musical account of musical
sound. For the pure physicist, a harmony and a discord are only two
different combinations of shakings. For the musician they are not
only opposite effects, but are causes of divergent consequences. So
with the relation between a strong collective sentiment and a true
law. A strong sentiment, as such, is a mere fact, a mere force; and
as such the sociologist regards it. A law involves the pretension
to will what is just, and is therefore a sentiment and something
more, viz., the point of view of social good. It aims at a right and
implies a wrong, and demands to be apprehended and judged on this
ground. A mere force cannot by its reaction constitute a crime; for
that a law is necessary. The ideal aspect of law as recognition of
right is no less actual, no less solid and verifiable, than the facts
of sentiment or necessity which may have suggested and sustained it.
In this way the relation of sociological causation to the facts of
Jurisprudence is typical of the whole relation of Sociology conceived
as a natural science, to the larger facts with which social theory
has to deal.

v. But the ideas involved in mere legality, though they bear
emphatic testimony to the conscious and artificial aspect of the
social whole, have always {40} been regarded with some justice as
the type of what is empty and formal. To treat a law as a command
with a penalty annexed, or to enunciate the tendency of social
progress as being from status to contract, may convey important
meanings, but is obviously very far short of the whole truth. And,
indeed, generalisations of this kind, though characteristic of a
certain class of reflective Jurisprudence, do not at all represent
the highest level which has been reached within the science of
right itself. But yet, as we pass beyond these everyday working
conceptions, we are beginning to leave the central ground of
Jurisprudence, and to move towards a point of view which deals
more completely with life and culture. The need and occasion for
such a point of view may be measured by that revival of national
individuality which was referred to in the last chapter as
constituting the true ground and occasion for the rebirth of genuine
political philosophy in modern times. Montesquieu’s investigation
into the “spirit of laws,” and his treatment of a law as something
deeper than a command, following upon the similar endeavours of
Vico, was in fact a recognition of the fundamental unity of a
national civilisation, which, on its political side, even Hobbes and
Locke had already attempted to explain by help of the inadequate
instruments furnished to them by legal theory. Montesquieu’s and
Vico’s conceptions were only the forerunners of the many-sided
study of civilisation which characterised the latter part of the
eighteenth century, following up the problem which was enunciated in
Rousseau’s paradox, that “law itself must be created by the social
spirit which it aims at creating.” To recognise the social spirit
{41} of a people, as the central unity behind its law and culture
and politics, was the principle of the various researches dealing
with formative art, poetry, language, religion, and the state, which
marked the close of the eighteenth century (compare Wolf’s theory of
Homer as the utterance of a racial mind), and laid the foundation of
nineteenth century idealism.

The true Greek renaissance, initiated in the age of Winckelmann,
forcing modern minds into contact with Hellenic ideas in their
original form, and no longer through Latin intermediaries, furnished
a type and focus for these researches by bringing before the thoughts
of students the brilliant individuality of the ancient city-state,
the crude traditions of which had already exercised the most powerful
influence on Rousseau, and through him on the Revolution. At the
same time the organic sciences were full of activity. The life-work
of Goethe marks the parallelism of the two movements. It is plain
that the doctrines of Comte were no more than a very one-sided
attempt to formulate the significance of the fermentation around
him, and that deeply as he felt the unity of the social being, his
expression of it ignored half the lesson of the times. Thus the
generalities of Jurisprudence are vitalised and completed by the
work of the sciences of culture; and the conception of a national
mind and character takes its unquestioned place in modern social
theory. It may be well at this point also to call attention to the
researches which later historians have directed to what may be called
“Comparative Politics”; the relations, that is, of communities under
government with respect to the {42} mode in which they are governed.
[1] For this branch of inquiry once more, though narrow and empty by
itself, yet does aid in bringing to light the purposive and conscious
character of society, and in correcting the tendency to treat it
altogether as a “natural” phenomenon.

[1] Freeman’s _Comparative Politics_, and Seeley’s _Introduction to
Political Science_.

vi. “And so the whirligig of Time brings about his revenges.” French
Sociology to-day is a psychological science, though its founder
banished psychology from his sociological method. Nothing is more
instructive than to watch the gradual pressure of the various points
of view which are emphasised by the various departments of social
experience, as they reveal, under criticism, their tendency to
complete themselves and one another by suggesting the only category
which is adequate to them as a whole. As every serious student of
social matters knows by his own experience, it is impossible to touch
a physical fact, or a statistical datum, or a legal enactment, in
reference to its social bearing, without its at once, so to speak,
coming alive in his hands, and attaching itself to an underlying
relation of mind as the only unity which will make it intelligible,
and correlate it with other experiences, by themselves no less
fragmentary. In statistics, for example, you touch a moving creature,
as if through the holes in a wall, at this point and the other, and
write down where you have touched him. [1] But to see the creature
as he is, and combine your information of all kinds in a just and
complete idea, you {43} must get him into the open. And that,
when the question is of a life, you can only do by reconstructing
his mind, for even to see a social unit with your eyes gives you
a fragment only, and not a whole. On Fridays, we are told, the
passenger traffic returns of French railways, omnibuses, and steamers
show a decline. [2] What dumb fact is this? People do not like to
travel on Fridays, or prefer to travel upon other days. What is this
preference? The only unity that can really afford an explanation,
that can correlate this irregular fragment of fact with the whole
to which it belongs, is the living mind and will of the society in
which the phenomenon occurs. Explanation aims at referring things to
a whole; and there is no true whole but mind. Necessarily, therefore,
with widening experience and deepening criticism, mind has become the
centre of the experiences focussed by sociology.

[1] Cf. _Aspects of the Social Problem_ (Macmillan, 1895), C.S. Loch
on “Returns in Social Science,” p. 287.

[2] Tarde, _Les Lois de l’Imitation_, p. 115.

We may note some significant points in this development, although,
indeed, the whole course of modern sociology is one single
illustration of what has just been said. Discussions of the problem
in what the differentia of society consists, no longer deal with
organic or economic conceptions, but with such ideas as the
“Consciousness of kind,” [1] the “Mind of a Crowd,” [2] “Imitation”
and “Invention,” [3] similarities and differences in the social
consciousness, [4] “Social logic” and society considered as a
syllogism, [5] and the imitative and {44} inventive person. [6] The
work of M. Tarde in particular is typical of the whole movement,
and his phrases have largely been adopted whether in agreement or
in controversy. For him the one fact coextensive with the social
character is “Imitation”--the means by which ideas and practices
spread throughout groups and masses of intelligent beings. For the
characteristic of knowable phenomena, in his view, is Repetition,
and Imitation is the means and vehicle of Repetition in social
matters. Here, however, we have accounted only for generalisation,
and differentiation needs a separate origin. This will be supplied
by the idea of “Invention;” Invention and Imitation, therefore, are
the general form of all social process, the matter on the other hand
being analysable as Belief and Desire. Every institution is a belief,
[7] every activity is a want or desire. In the _Logique Sociale_
these conceptions of the general medium and process of social life
are pushed home into the actual formative operation of the social
mind and will. Society, we are told, may be compared not indeed to
an organism, but rather to a brain; it is a cooperative mind, a
syllogism, in which the principles held by one part are modified
and applied by another. M. Tarde’s extreme illustrative hypothesis
corresponds strangely with one thrown out by Mr. Sidgwick. Mr.
Sidgwick [8] has simplified an ethical question by supposing only a
single sentient conscious being in the universe; for M. {45} Tarde
there is, we might say, no single being at all; the typical social
man is a hypnotical creature, a somnambulist acting under suggestions
from others, though he does not know it, and is under the illusion
that he is himself. [9] Nothing could be of higher interest than to
see the necessities of social science thus working themselves out,
on slippery and unfamiliar ground, by the sheer force of facts and
experience. That a science of man must be a science of mind seems no
longer disputable.

[1] Giddings, p. 17.

[2] Le Bon, _Psychologie des Foules_.

[3] Tarde, _Les Lois de l’Imitation_.

[4] Durkheim, _La Division du Travail Social_.

[5] Tarde, _La Logique Sociale_.

[6] Baldwin, _Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental
Development_.

[7] Perhaps this expression originates with Fustel de Coulanges in
_La Cité Antique_.

[8] _Methods of Ethics_, p. 374.

[9] _Les Lois de l’Imitation_, p. 83.

On the substance of this development there is one observation which
inevitably suggests itself to any critic who approaches the problem
from the philosophical side.

Necessarily, as the relation of the individual to society is the
root of every social problem, psychological sociology consists to a
great extent in exercises upon the theme of identity and difference.
These exercises have hitherto been for the most part unconscious
and involuntary. And the high degree of substantial truth which is
attained by inquirers who have not thought the logic of identity
worthy of a single glance, is the strongest possible confirmation of
the common experience that it is safer to neglect theory than to be
careless of facts. Nevertheless, it has now become apparent, that
a point has been attained at which logical criticism is absolutely
essential, or if not logical criticism, at least some reference to
the familiar and well-established results of ancient or modern social
philosophy.

For it is a universal characteristic of the {46} sociological
movement before us, that identity and difference are referred to
different spheres, and the “one” and the “other” are regarded as
reciprocally exclusive atoms. [1] The difficulties and fallacies
which thus arise are innumerable. Thus we have the contagious common
feeling of a crowd [2] taken as the true type of a collective mind,
obviously because it is not understood how an identical structure can
include the differences, the rational distinctions and relations,
which really constitute the working mind of any society. So again
we have one type of law marked off as corresponding to social
similitude, [3] while a different type corresponds to the social
division of labour; simply because the category of resemblance has
been substituted for that of identity, and is treated as exclusive of
differentiation; with the result of a really terrible distortion of
facts in the attempt to separate the whole sphere of penal enactment
from that which deals with industrial organisation. So with the
entire set of notions of “Imitation,” “Repetition” and “Invention.”
[4] The separation of Imitation and Invention is simply the popular
exclusion of Difference from Identity; while the treatment of
Repetition as the characteristic of knowable phenomena and the mode
of utterance of social Imitation means the restriction of rational
Identity to its barest form, and the exclusion from {47} social
theory of absolutely every case of true cooperative structure. For
true cooperative structure is never characterised by repetition, but
always by identity in difference; it is the relation not of a screw
to an exactly similar screw, but of the screw to the nut into which
it fastens.

[1] M. Tarde’s view just mentioned might seem to conflict with this.
But note that he regards the man influenced by others as under an
illusion in thinking that he is himself: _i.e._, with Spencer and
Huxley, he regards the “self” and the “other” as irreconcilable
factors.

[2] Le Bon, Op. cit.

[3] Durkheim, Op. cit.

[4] Tarde and Baldwin, Op. cit.

In the discussions of Egoism and Altruism the difficulty comes to a
head. Some writers think Egoism prior to Altruism; others--the more
wary and enlightened--incline to treat Altruism as a phase earlier
than Egoism; M. Durkheim, whose eye for a fact is very keen, seeing
the absurdity of both these suppositions, is determined to include
the two characters in question from the very beginning in the human
consciousness, [1] but, of course, as contents belonging to different
spheres and consisting of contrasted elements. The conception of a
whole held together by its differences, its identity consisting in
and being measured by their very profoundness and individuality, is
not at the command of any of these writers, although the greater
part of M. Durkheim’s theory seems imperatively to demand such a
conception.

[1] _Division du Travail_, 216.

vii. Before considering, in conclusion, the relation of Sociology
as influenced by the above-mentioned sources and points of view, to
social philosophy proper, it will be well to devote a few words to
emphasising the way in which these “sources” ought to be regarded.

Every “source” of sociological science is at once a category, or
point of view, and also a certain group of actual social conditions.
This relation is effectively illustrated by the study of any social
{48} unity which is such as to invite a thorough conspectus of
its life from top to bottom of the social growth and underlying
conditions. I repeat that the history and life of ancient Greece, a
singularly complete working model of society on a very small scale,
analysed with remarkable thoroughness, and individual throughout, is
the prerogative example of such a treatment; but next to this, or in
addition to it, a thoroughly careful study of local history, life,
and conditions, in a limited region, [1] with which we are familiar
from top to toe, is an essential propaedeutic to true social theory.
To focus a number of groups of fact, and coordinate the points of
view which they substantiate, into the conception of a living being,
with its individual character and spiritual utterance, needs more
than a merely literary or statistical study. But by making this
effort we shall learn, as no economic charts or general scientific
works can teach us, what a social life is, and in what sense it
is true that all partial facts and experiences within it demand
ultimate coordination in the category of mind. It is not meant that
consciousness can make the weather hold up, but it is meant that no
fact has a true social bearing except in as far as, sooner or later,
it comes to form part of the world which a being capable of sociality
and therefore intelligent, presents to himself as his theatre of
action.

[1] Cf. Professor Geddes’ idea of a “Regional Survey,” with which
visitors to his delightful “Summer School” become acquainted.

3. Thus it may seem that by mere force of facts a necessary solution
has been arrived at, and that psychological sociology must be one and
the same science with social philosophy.

{49} But this is not quite the case. Up to the present time these two
sciences continue to approach their object-matter, as it were, from
different ends, and whether the two views will ultimately amalgamate
is perhaps mainly a problem of the personal division of labour.
But a question of principle, with reference to the true nature of
psychology, is indirectly involved. Only there seems no reason why
two kinds of psychology should not exist.

Psychology, as at present conceived by its best working
representatives, is a positive, though not a physical science.
“For (the psychologist) the crude superstitions of Australian
aborigines have as much interest and value as the developed and
accurate knowledge of a Newton or a Faraday.” [1] Its aim is “the
establishment of continuity among observed facts, by interpolating
among them intermediate links which elude observation.” [2] If
not a “physical” science, then, it is, in a common sense of the
term, a “natural” science. It has the impartiality, and uses the
watchwords--law, process, genesis--which belong to a natural science.
And like every impartial science, to which process and genesis are
watchwords, it tends to explain the higher by the lower. This springs
from no malice aforethought, but from the conditions of the case. The
lower is simpler, and usually comes first in time. It is naturally
dwelt upon, as that into which it is hoped to resolve the more
complex, and the explanation which is more adequate for the simple,
is less adequate for the complex. No difference of higher {50} and
lower is recognised by the impartial science, and its ideal, as a
science, is inevitably the expression of the complex in terms of the
simple; while, as far as genesis in time is insisted on, the bias
towards temporal causation is pretty sure to operate by attaching a
quasi-causal significance to the earlier phases.

[1] Stout, _Analytic Psychology_, Introduction.

[2] _Ib_. From a logical point of view this idea of explanation seems
seriously defective. See Bradley’s _Principles of Logic_, p. 491.

In all these characteristics psychology is at one with sociology.
And, therefore, though it is a gain that other points of view should
be resolved into the point of view of mind, yet the positive bias of
sociology is not transcended simply by this resolution.

Philosophy starts, we have said, as it were, from the other end. It
is critical throughout; it desires to establish degrees of value,
degrees of reality, degrees of completeness and coherence. Its
purpose might be termed “Ethical,” but for the extreme narrowness
of the meaning of that term. Society, for it, is an achievement or
utterance of human nature--of course not divorced from nature in
general--having a certain degree of solidity, so to speak; that is
to say, being able, up to a certain point, to endure the tests and
answer the questionings which are suggested by the scrutiny of human
life from the point of view of value and completeness. Is the social
life the best, or the only life for a human soul? In what way through
society, and in what characteristics of society, does the soul lay
hold upon its truest self, or become, in short, the most that it has
in it to be? How does the social life at its best compare with the
life of art, of knowledge, or of religion, and can the same principle
be shown to be active in all of them? And what have {51} they in
common, or peculiar to each, which has an imperative claim on the
mind of man?

Now it was hinted above that there might be two kinds of psychology,
or two tendencies within it. And if psychology were to be impelled,
as it has been more than once in the past, by the recognition that
where there is more of its object--of mind--its interest is greater
and the rank of its object-matter is higher, then there would not
be much to choose between the temper of psychology and that of
philosophy. And as sociology has found itself driven forward into
the territory of social “logic,” a name which at once suggests a
critical and philosophical science, it may well be that sociological
psychology will not remain wholly “positive” and impartial, but
will assume, as in the hands of Professor Giddings, for example, it
seems inclined to, at least a teleological attitude, testing social
phenomena by the quantity and quality of life which they display.

But, at any rate, the points of view of sociology, and of social
philosophy as above described, will continue to supplement each
other. Philosophy gives a significance to sociology; sociology
vitalises philosophy. The idea of mind is deepened and extended by
the unity and continuity which sociological analysis, throughout all
its many-sided sources, vindicates for the principle of growth and
order down to the roots and in all the fibres of the world. Every
natural resource and condition must be thought of as drawing forth
or constituting some new element in the mind which is the universal
focus; just as every shape and colour of the trees in the landscape
or every note of a melody finds its {52} definite and individual
response in the contemplative consciousness. The error lies, not in
identifying the mind and the environment, but in first uncritically
separating them, and then substituting not merely the one for the
other, but wretched fragments of the one for the whole in which alone
either can be complete.

Philosophy, on the other hand, in treating of society, has to deal
with the problems which arise out of the nature of a whole and its
parts, the relation of the individual to the universal, and the
transformation by which the particular self is lost, to be found
again in a more individual, and yet more universal form. In all
these respects its view is what might be called teleological; that
is to say, it recognises a difference of level or of degree in the
completeness and reality of life, and endeavours to point out when
and how, and how far by social aid, the human soul attains the most
and best that it has in it to become. As long as these two points
of view are clearly recognised, it is a matter of the mere personal
division of labour whether they are brought to bear by the same
thinkers and within the same treatises.




{53}

CHAPTER III.

THE PARADOX OF POLITICAL OBLIGATION: SELF-GOVERNMENT.

1. To every-day common sense there is something paradoxical in the
phenomena of political obligation; however it may acquiesce in
what, although not satisfactorily explicable, is plainly seen to
be necessary. Where, indeed, we meet with any form of absolutely
despotic government, we have not so much a paradox as a defect;
for, although government may exist in such a shape, it is open to
question how far true political obligation can be said to arise
under such a system. In as far as it does so, we shall find that the
fact is due to unacknowledged conditions and relations, which we
shall more easily analyse as they appear in free or constitutional
states. It would then be easy to show, if we were interested in
doing so, that the principles which will have been recognised as
operative in the freest states known to history, are and have
been, in various degrees, at the root of the common life of every
state or community which has held together effectively enough to
be treated as in any sense a political whole. But this would be a
historical investigation, unnecessary for the purpose of pure {54}
social theory. In this we may fairly start from the highest form of
political experience, in which, as we shall see, the mere defects
of political immaturity being outgrown, the paradox of political
obligation emerges with intensified emphasis.

Let us take as our starting point, then, the conception of
“self-government,” to which, it will be admitted on all hands, the
thought and feeling of mature communities has clung both in ancient
and modern times, as in some way containing the true root and ground
of political obligation. We shall find in it a striking illustration
of the strength and weakness of wide-spread popular notions. A
universal popular notion cannot but have a hold of some essential
truth, otherwise it could not survive and spread, and form a working
theory for an immense area of experience. On the other hand, a
popular notion, as such, cannot be critical of itself and aware of
its own foundations; and so in defending and applying itself it is
pretty sure to plunge deep into fallacy. “Self-government” is an idea
which will be found, as has been said, to contain the true ground and
nature of political obligation. But the rough and ready application
of it which, for example, represents the individual as simply one
with the community, and the community therefore as infallible in its
action affecting him, is a pure example of fallacy, and may be justly
characterised as a confusion pretending to be a synthesis. Of this
idea as of so many we must say that those who have pronounced it to
be self-contradictory have understood it much better than most of
those who accept it as self-evident.

In the conception of self-government then we {55} have the paradox of
obligation in its purest form. As applied to the individual himself,
it gives the paradox of Ethical Obligation. As applied to the
individuals who compose a society, it gives the paradox of Political
Obligation. This must be the preliminary distinction by which we
approach the subject; but we shall find that the two problems and the
two cases cannot be ultimately separated, although they are to be
distinguished in a certain respect.

The paradox of Ethical Obligation starts from what is accepted as
a “self,” and asks how it can exercise authority or coercion over
itself; how, in short, a metaphor drawn from the relations of some
persons to others can find application within what we take to be the
limits of an individual mind. [1]

[1] On this problem, see below, p. 139.

The paradox of Political Obligation starts from what is accepted as
authority or social coercion, and asks in what way the term “self,”
derived from the “individual” mind, can be applicable at once to the
agent and patient in such coercion, exercised _prima facie_ by some
persons over others. Both relations and their connection have been
pointed out by Plato. [1]

[1] _Republic_, 430, 431.

Our object in the present chapter is to enforce the reality of the
difficulties which attach to the idea of political self-government,
so long as current assumptions as to the union of individuals in
society are maintained. And for this purpose we are to examine the
views of some very distinguished philosophers to whom the paradox
has appeared irreconcilable, and law or government has seemed {56}
essentially antagonistic to the self or true individuality of man;
while the term self, if applied to the collective group by or within
which government is undoubtedly exercised, appears to them an empty
and misleading expression. The curious and significant point, to
which we shall call attention, is, in brief, that while maintaining
law and government to be in their nature antagonistic to the self of
man--whether as pain to pleasure or as fetters to individuality--they
nevertheless admit with one voice that a certain minimum of this
antagonistic element is necessary to the development of the sentient
or rational self. We have here a dualism which challenges examination.

2. The attitude towards law and government which Bentham adopted
(1748-1832) was in a great degree that of the philanthropic reformer.
His principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest number is
said [1] to have been derived from Beccaria, whose work on “Crimes
and Penalties” had great influence throughout Europe. And Howard,
“the philanthropist,” who was just twenty-two years Bentham’s senior
(1726-1790), represented a revolt against the abuses of the treatment
of criminals at that time, by which Bentham, who eulogised him as
“a martyr and apostle,” was strongly affected. The movement which
Bentham led was, in short, markedly hostile to the existing system
of law, and to the reasonings of its advocates. And substantial as
his knowledge and constructive genius proved to be, it never lost
the character which the direction of his approach to the subject had
marked upon it, a character of suspicion and antagonism, which is
{57} expressed in his description of law as a necessary evil, and
government as a choice of evils. [2]

[1] Professor Holland in _Encycl. Brit_., art.; Bentham.”

[2] Bentham, _Principles of Legislation_, p. 48.

Pain being the ultimate evil, it is clear why, on Bentham’s
principles, every law is an evil. For every law, for him, is
contrary to liberty; and every infraction of liberty is followed by
a natural sentiment of pain. [1] Against those who would deny the
proposition that every law is contrary to liberty he brings a charge
of perversion of language, in that they restrict liberty to the right
of doing what is not injurious to others. They give the term, that is
to say, a partly positive implication. For him then liberty has the
simplest and apparently widest meaning, [2] which includes liberty to
do evil, and is defined, we must suppose, purely as the absence of
restraint. And he therefore has no doubt whatever that the citizen
can acquire rights only by sacrificing part of his liberty. And in
this there is an appearance of truth, if we forget that in saying
that a part of one’s liberty is sacrificed it is implied that one
had, to begin with, a certain area of liberty, of which a portion
is abandoned to save the rest. But the idea of any such antecedent
liberty is just such a fiction as Bentham himself delighted to
expose. It is true, however, that some degree of restraint on what
we can _now_ easily imagine ourselves free to do, is involved in
political society. The point on which we have to fix our attention,
for the purposes of social theory, is the remarkable representation
of this state of things under the figure, as it were, of an amount of
general liberty, {58} which is increased by subtraction, or which can
only attain its maximum by the conversion of a certain edge or border
of it, so to speak, into constraint. This border of constraint is
implied to be capable of a minimum, such as to condition a maximum of
liberty, or possible individual initiative; a relation which, being
at first sight contradictory, demands further analysis. For it would
appear that if the sacrifice of some liberty is to be instrumental
to the increase of the whole amount, that whole can hardly be a
homogeneous given quantity, like, for instance, a piece of land; for
such a one must surely be diminished by the subtraction of any part
of it. It must, one would infer, be something which has a complex
nature like that of a living plant, such that certain restrictions or
negations which are essential to its prosperity are dictated by its
individual characteristics (which must be positive), and express the
same principle with them; and therefore are wholly relative to the
positive type and phase of the plant to be cultivated. Only in some
such sense can it be intelligible how constraint is instrumental to
effective self-assertion.

[1] Bentham, _Principles of Legislation_, p. 94.

[2] It is not really the widest, as will appear in the sequel.

But if this is so, the restrictive influences of law and government,
which are the measure of the constraint imposed, cannot be alien to
the human nature which they restrict, and ought not to be set down
as in their own nature antagonistic to liberty or to the making
the most of the human self. The root of the difficulty obviously
lies in assuming that the pressure of the claims of “others” in
society is a mere general curtailment of the liberty of the “one,”
while acknowledging, not {59} contrary to fact, but contrary to
the hypothesis of that curtailment, that the one, so far from
surrendering some of his capacity for life through his fellowship
with others, acquires and extends that capacity wholly in and through
such fellowship. On the above assumption the terms of the paradox
of self-government become irreconcilable, and government is made an
evil of which it is impossible to explain how it ministers to the
self which stands for the good. So long as to every individual, taken
as the true self, the restraint enforced by the impact of others is
alien and a diminution of the self, this result is inevitable.

It is instructive, therefore, to note Bentham’s uncompromising
hostility to all the theories of philosophical jurists. The common
point of all their theories, from Hobbes and Grotius to Montesquieu
and Rousseau, not to mention Kant and his successors, has lain in the
fact that their authors divined under the forms of power and command,
exercised by some over others, a substantive and general element of
positive human nature, which they attempted to drag to light by one
analogy after another. But neither Montesquieu’s “eternal relations,”
nor the “Social Contract,” nor “General Will,” nor “Natural Rights”
of other thinkers find favour in Bentham’s eyes. One and all they
are to him fiction and fallacy. He can understand nothing in law but
the character of a command; he can see no positive relation of it to
human nature beyond the degree in which it dispenses with the pain of
restraint while increasing the pleasure of liberty.

To describe the magnificent success which {60} attended the use of
this rule of thumb in the practical work of reform does not fall
within our immediate subject. Our purpose was merely to illustrate
the paradox implied in the conception of self-government, by pointing
out how fundamentally hostile to one another Bentham took its
constituent elements to be.

3. The same point may be further insisted on by examining the main
ideas of Mill’s “Liberty,” without by any means professing to give
a full account of Mill’s opinions on the relation of individuals
to society. What indeed is instructive in his position, for our
immediate purpose, is that, having so deep a sense, as he has, of
social solidarity, he nevertheless treats the central life of the
individual as something to be carefully fenced round against the
impact of social forces.

i. Mill’s idea of Individuality is plainly biassed by the Benthamite
tradition that law is an evil. It is to be remembered that Anarchism
of a speculative kind, the inevitable complement of a hide-bound
Conservatism, was current in the beginning of this century, as in
Godwin and Shelley. Thus we find concentrated in a few pages of
the “Liberty” [1] all those ideas on the nature of Individuality,
Originality, and Eccentricity, which are most opposed to the
teaching derived by later generations in England from the revival of
philosophy and criticism. It is worth while, after reading Mill’s
observations upon the relation of individuality to the Calvinistic
theory of life, [2] to turn to the estimate expressed by Mark
Pattison [3] of the force of individual character generated by {61}
the rule of Calvin at Geneva. That the individuality, or genius,
the fulness of life and completeness of development which Mill so
justly appreciates, is not nourished and evoked by the varied play
of relations and obligations in society, but lies in a sort of inner
self, to be cherished by enclosing it, as it were, in an impervious
globe, is a notion which neither modern logic [4] nor modern art
criticism will admit. In the same way, the connection of originality
and eccentricity, on which Mill insists, appears to us to-day to be
a fallacious track of thought; and in general, in all these matters,
we tend to accept the principle that, in order to go beyond a point
of progress, it is necessary to have reached it; and in order to
destroy a law, it is necessary to have fulfilled it. Here, however,
is the heart of the point on which we are insisting. If individuality
and originality mean or depend upon the absence of law and of
obligation; if eccentricity is the type of the fully developed self,
and if the community, penetrated by a sense of universal relations,
is therefore a prey to monotony and uniformity, then it needs no
further words to show that law is a curtailment of human nature, the
necessity of which remains inexplicable, so that self-government is a
contradiction in terms.

[1] pp. 35-9.

[2] _Ib._, p. 35.

[3] _Essays_, vol. I., “Calvin.”

[4] See below, p. 79.

ii. How then does Mill bring the two terms into relation? How does
he represent the phenomenon that, in the life of every society,
the factors of self and of government have to be reconciled, or at
anyrate to coexist?

To find the answer to this question, the whole {62} of the chapter,
“Of the limits of the authority of society over the individual,” [1]
should be carefully studied. A few characteristic sentences may be
quoted here.

[1] _On Liberty_, ch. iv.

  “What, then, is the rightful limit to the sovereignty of
  the individual over himself? Where does the authority of
  society begin? How much of human life should be assigned
  to individuality, and how much to society?

  “Each will receives its proper share, if each has that
  which more particularly concerns it. To individuality
  should belong the part of life in which it is chiefly the
  individual that is interested; to society, the part which
  chiefly interests society.”

Every one who lives in society, he continues in effect, is bound
not to interfere with certain interests of others (explicitly or
implicitly constituted as “rights”), and is bound to take his fair
share of the sacrifices incurred for the defence of society and
its members. These conditions society may enforce, at all costs to
recalcitrants. Further, it may punish by opinion, though not by law,
acts hurtful to others, but not going so far as to violate their
rights. But acts which affect only the agent, or need not affect
others unless they like, may be punished, we are given to understand,
neither by law nor by opinion. Mill expects his conclusions to be
disputed, and the following is the conclusion of the passage in which
he explains and re-affirms it:

   “... when a person disables himself, by conduct purely
  self-regarding, from the performance of some definite
  duty incumbent on him to the public, he is guilty of
  a social {63} offence. No person ought to be punished
  simply for being drunk; but a soldier or policeman should
  be punished for being drunk on duty. Wherever, in short,
  there is a definite damage, or a definite risk of damage
  either to an individual or to the _public, the case is
  taken out of the province of liberty, and placed in that
  of morality or law_.” [1]

[1] Italics are mine.

It will probably occur at once to the reader that, considered as a
practical rule, the view here maintained would by no means curtail
unduly the province of social interference. We should rather
anticipate that it would leave an easy opening for a transition
from administrative nihilism to administrative absolutism; and some
such transition seems to have taken place in Mill’s later views.
This tendency to a complete _bouleversement_ is the characteristic
of all conceptions which proceed by assigning different areas to
the several factors of an inseparable whole, which then reasserts
itself in its wholeness within the area of either factor to which
we may happen to attend. Indeed, even in the passage before us, the
defence of individuality has already well-nigh turned round into
its annihilation. Every act that carries a definite damage to any
other person belongs to the sphere of law, and every act that can
be supposed likely to cause such a damage, to that of morality; and
individuality has what is left. The extraordinary demarcation between
the sphere of morality and that of liberty is to be accounted for,
no doubt, by the Benthamite tradition which identified the moral and
social sanctions; so that in this usage the sphere of morality means
much the same as what, {64} in the first passage referred to, was
indicated as the sphere of opinion.

Now, it is obvious that the distinction which Mill is attempting to
describe and explain is one practically recognised by every society.
The question is whether it can be rightly described and explained
by a demarcation which, if strictly pressed, excludes individuality
from every act of life that has an important social bearing; while,
owing to the two-sided nature of all action, it becomes perfectly
arbitrary in its practical working as a criterion. For every act
of mine affects both myself and others; and it is a matter of mood
and momentary urgency which aspect may be pronounced characteristic
and essential. It may safely be said that no demarcation between
self-regarding and other-regarding action can possibly hold good.
What may hold good, and what Mill’s examples show to be present to
his mind, is a distinction between the moral and the “external”
aspects of action, on the ground of their respective accessibility
to the means of coercion which are at the disposal of society. The
peculiar sense in which the term “external” is here employed will
explain itself below. [1]

[1] See ch. viii. below.

For our present purpose, however, what we have to observe is merely
that the demarcation between individuality and society, contrived in
defence of the former, has pretty nearly annihilated it. And thus we
see once more how overwhelming is the _prima facie_ appearance that,
in the idea of self-government, the factors of self and government
are alien and opposed; and yet how hopeless it remains {65} to
explain the part played by these factors in actual society, so long
as we aim at a demarcation between them as opposites, rather than at
a relative distinction between them as manifestations of the same
principle in different media.

iii. A few words may here be said on the applications by which Mill
illustrates his doctrine, in order to point out what confusion
results from relying on a demarcation which cannot strictly be made.

It will be noted in the first place that he objects altogether to
the attempt to prevent by punishment either immorality or irreligion
as such. [1] This objection a sound social theory must uphold. But
if we look at Mill’s reason for it, we find it simply to be that
such an attempt infringes liberty, by interfering with action which
is purely self-regarding. Without entering further upon the endless
argument whether this or any action is indeed purely self-regarding,
we may observe that by taking such ground, Mill causes the above
objection, which is substantially sound, to appear as on all fours
with others which are at any rate very much more doubtful. Such is
the objection on principle to all restrictions imposed upon trade
with a distinct view to protecting the consumer, not from fraud,
but from opportunities of consumption injurious to himself. The
regulation or prohibition of the traffic in alcoholic liquors is of
course the main question here at issue; and it may be admitted that
Mill’s discussion, with the many distinctions which he lays down,
is full of shrewdness and suggestiveness. But the ultimate ground
which he takes, as above stated, is quite different from the genuine
reasons which exist {66} against attempting to enforce morality by
law and penalty, and introduces confusion into the whole question of
State interference by ranking the two objections together. Closely
analogous are his objections to the statutes respecting unlawful
games, [2] which, whether wise or unwise, are quite a different thing
from an attempt to punish personal immorality as such. And lastly,
the same principle is illustrated by his whole attitude to the strong
feeling and the various legal obligations which determine and support
the monogamous family. In maintaining the general indissolubility
of marriage, and supporting the parental power, the State is
interfering, for him, with the freedom of parties to a contract, and
conferring power over individuals, the children, who have a right to
be separately considered. Such interference is for him _ipso facto_
of a suspected nature. It is an interference hostile to liberty; and
whether it is or is not an external condition of good life, which
the State is able effectively to maintain, is a question which he
does not discuss. Throughout all these objections to authoritative
interference we trace the peculiar prejudice that the criterion of
its justifiability lies in the boundary line between self and others,
rather than in the nature of what coercive authority is and is not
able to do towards the promotion of good life. On many points indeed,
when the simple protection of “others” is concerned, Mill’s doctrine
leads to sound conclusions. Such, for example, is the problem of
legislation after the pattern of the Factory Acts.

[1] Pp. 48 and 50.

[2] P. 59.

But yet a strange nemesis attaches to grounds {67} alleged with
insufficient discrimination. Just as, by ranking inner morality and
outer action alike under the name of freedom, Mill is led to object
to interference which may be perfectly justified and effectual; so
by the same confusion he is led to advocate coercive treatment in
impossibly stringent forms, and in cases where it runs extreme risk
of thwarting a true moral development. We are amazed when he strongly
implies, in respect to the education of children and the prospect of
supporting a family, that moral obligations [1] ought to be enforced
by law. The proposal of universal State-enacted examinations by
way of enforcing the parental duty of educating children, to the
exclusion of the task of providing education by public authority,
in which Mill sees danger to individuality, opens a prospect of a
Chinese type of society, from which, happily, the good sense of
Englishmen has recoiled. And just the reverse of his proposal has
come to pass under the influence of the logic of experience. The
State has taken care that the external conditions of an elementary
education are provided, and, while doing this, has no doubt exercised
compulsion in order that these conditions may be a reality. But the
individual inquisition by examination is tending to drop out of the
system; and the practical working of the public education is more and
more coming to be that the State sees to it that certain conditions
are maintained, of which the parents’ interest and public spirit
leads them to take advantage. Sheer compulsion is not the way to
enforce a moral obligation.

[1] Pp. 62 and 64.

{68} Still more startling is the suggestion that it might be just to
interdict marriage to those unable to show the means of supporting
a family, on the ground of possible evil both to the children
themselves through poverty, and to others through over-population.
This is a case in which authoritative interference (except on account
of very definite physical or mental defects) must inevitably defeat
its object. No foresight of others can gauge the latent powers to
meet and deal with a future indefinite responsibility; and the result
of scrupulous timidity, in view of such responsibilities, is seen in
the tendency to depopulation which affects that very country from
which Mill probably drew his argument. To leave the responsibility
as fully as possible where it has been assumed is the best that law
can do, and appeals to a spring of energy deeper than compulsion can
reach.

Thus we have seen that by discriminating the spheres of
non-interference and interference, according to a supposed
demarcation between the sphere of “self” and of “others,” a
hopelessly confused classification has been introduced. Sometimes
the maintenance of external conditions of good life, well within the
power of the State, is forbidden on the same grounds as the direct
promotion of morality, which is impossible to it. In other cases
the enforcement of moral obligations is taken to lie within the
functions of the State, although not only is the enforcement of moral
obligations _per se_ a contradiction in terms, but almost always,
as in the cases in question, the attempt to effect it is sure to
frustrate itself, by destroying the springs on which moral action
depends.

{69} It is worth noticing, in conclusion, that in two examples,
[1] the one trivial, the other that of slavery, both theoretically
and practically very important, Mill recognises a principle wholly
at variance with his own. Here he is aware that it may be right,
according to the principle of liberty, to restrain a man, for
reasons affecting himself alone, from doing what at the moment he
proposes to do. For we are entitled to argue from the essential
nature of freedom to what freedom really demands, as opposed to
what the man momentarily seems to wish. “It is not freedom to be
allowed to alienate his freedom,” as it is not freedom to be allowed
to walk over a bridge which is certain to break down and cause his
death. Here we have in germ the doctrine of the “real” will, and a
conception analogous to that of Rousseau when he speaks of a man
“being forced to be free.”

[1] Pp. 57 and 61.

4. Before referring to Mill’s explicit utterances on the problem of
self-government, which are of the same general character as those
of Mr. Herbert Spencer, it will be well to note some instructive
points in the views of the latter thinker. The study of Mr. Spencer’s
writings, and more especially of those which appear most directly
opposed to the popular conceptions of the day, cannot be too strongly
urged upon the sociological student. And this for two reasons. In the
first place, no other writer has exhibited with equal vividness the
fatal possibilities of a collective governmental stupidity. That in
practice these possibilities are continually tending to become facts,
just as in theory they are {70} represented by recurrent fallacies,
[1] is a proof of the extreme arduousness of the demands made by the
task of self-government upon the people which undertakes it. And no
theorist is fitted to discuss the problem of social unity who has
not realised the arduousness of these demands in all its intensity.
And, in the second place, the student will observe an instructive
meeting of extremes between elements of Mr. Spencer’s ideas and
popular social theories of an opposite cast. The revival of doctrines
of the natural rights of man on a biological foundation [2] is a
case in point. An uncriticised individualism is always in danger of
transformation into an uncritical collectivism. The basis of the two
is in fact the same.

[1] As, for example, in Rousseau’s attempts to explain the action of
a collective mind, in which he constantly falls into the advocacy of
a soulless _régime_ of mass-meetings.

[2] _Man v. State_, p. 95.

i. A comparison of the conception of “right” as entertained by
Bentham and by Herbert Spencer forms a striking commentary on ideas
in which “government” is antagonistic to “self.” Bentham, seeing
clearly that the claims of the actual individual, taken as he
happens to be, are casual and unregulated, fulminates against the
idea of natural right as representing those claims. Right is for
him a creation of the State, and there can be no right which is not
constituted by law. And the truth of the contention seems obvious.
How, in fact, could individual claims or wishes constitute a right,
except as in some way ratified by a more general recognition?

But to Mr. Herbert Spencer the contrary proposition is absolutely
convincing, and, indeed, on {71} their common premises, with equal
reason. [1] It is ridiculous, he points out, to think of a people as
creating rights, which it had not before, by the process of creating
a government in order to create them. It is absurd to treat an
individual as having a share of rights _qua_ member of the people,
while in his private capacity he has no rights at all.

[1] _Ib_., p. 88.

We need not labour this point further. It is obvious that Mr. Herbert
Spencer is simply preferring the opposite extreme, in the antithesis
of “self” and “government,” to that which commended itself to
Bentham. If it is a plain fact that “a right” can only be recognised
by a society, it is no less plain that it can only be real in an
individual. If individual claims, apart from social adjustment, are
arbitrary, yet social recognitions, apart from individual qualities
and relations, are meaningless. As long as the self and the law are
alien and hostile, it is hopeless to do more than choose at random in
which of the two we are to locate the essence of right.

ii. And how alien and hostile the self and the law may seem we see
even more crudely enunciated in Herbert Spencer than in Bentham
or Mill, as the fundamental principle of the tradition has worked
itself more definitely to the front. “The liberty [1] which a citizen
enjoys is to be {72} measured, not by the nature of the governmental
machinery he lives under, whether representative or other, but by
the relative paucity of the restraints it imposes on him.” And so
we are astounded to find it maintained that the positive and active
element in the right to carry on self-sustaining activities is of a
non-social character, depending only on the laws of life, [2] and
if the matter were pushed home, would have to be identified, one
must suppose, with the more strictly animal element of the mind;
while only the negative element arises from social aggregation, and
it is this negative element alone which gives ethical character to
the right to live. Though these distinctions apply primarily to
the ground of the _right to live_, yet it appears inevitable that
they represent the point of view from which the active self or
individuality must be regarded on the principle we are pursuing.
The ground of the right to live, as here stated, is simply the
recognition that life is a good; and if the positive element of this
good is non-social and only the negative is of social origin, and
this alone is ethical, it seems clearly to follow that the making
the most of life--its positive expansion and intensification--is
excluded from the ethical aspects of individuality, and, indeed, that
individuality has no ethical aspect at all. Here is the ultimate
result of accepting as irreducible the distinction between the self
and government, or the negative relation of individuality and law.
Liberty and self are divorced from the moral end, a tendency which we
noted even in Mill. Selves in society are regarded as if they {73}
were bees building their cells, and their ethical character becomes
comparable to the absence of encroachment by which the workers
maintain the hexagonal outline due to their equal impact on each
other as they progress evenly from equidistant centres. The self,
which has ranked through out these views as the end, to whose liberty
all is to be sacrificed, turns out to be the non-ethical element of
life.

[1] _Man v. State_, p. 15. Cf. Seeley, _Introd. to Political
Science_, p. 119: “Perfect liberty is equivalent to total absence
of government.” I have attempted to point out the fallacy of this
in a way applying to its practical and everyday meaning in my essay
on “Liberty and Legislation,” in the volume of essays called _The
Civilisation of Christendom_.

[2] _Man v. State_, p. 98.

Thus, when Professor Huxley speaks of “self-restraint as the essence
of the ethical process,” [1] while “natural liberty” consists in
“the free play of self-assertion,” we see how the whole method of
approaching social and ethical phenomena is turned upside down unless
the paradox of self-government is conquered once for all. The idea
that assertion and maximisation of the self and of the individuality
first become possible and real in and through society, and that
affirmation and not negation is its main characteristic; these
fundamental conceptions of genuine social philosophy [2] can only
be reached through a destructive criticism of the assumptions which
erect that paradox into an insoluble contradiction.

[1] _Evolution and Ethics_; pp. 27 and 31.

[2] For the Greek, it is society which is natural, positive, and
promotive of man’s individuality. See ch. ii. above.

5. We may now restate the essence of the problem of self-government
as it presents itself to the thinkers whom we have been reviewing.
On the assumptions which they accept, the annihilating criticism of
self-government in the first chapter of Mill’s Liberty is indeed
irresistible. He begins by pointing out that in times of political
immaturity, {74} the conception of political liberty consisted
in setting limits to the power which the ruler, considered as an
independent force opposed in interest [1] to his subjects, should
be suffered to exercise over the community. But as it was found
possible, in a greater and greater degree, to make the ruling power
emanate from the periodical choice of the ruled,

  “some persons began to think that too much importance
  had been attached to the limitation of the power itself.
  _That_, it might seem, was a resource against rulers
  whose interests were habitually opposed to those of the
  people. What was now wanted was, that the rulers should
  be identified with the people; that their interest and
  will should be the interest and will of the nation. The
  nation did not need to be protected against its own will.
  There was no fear of its tyrannising over itself.”

Rousseau in some moods is the victim of this fallacy, and it is
widely triumphant to-day.

[1] So early an analysis of government as that made by Plato in the
_Republic_ shows indeed that this was never the sole theory, as it is
not the truest, of the cohesive forces of any community whatever. But
it has a certain validity, proportioned to the degree of political
imperfection.

But with the success of the democratic principle,

  “elective and responsible government became subject to
  the observations and criticisms which wait upon a great
  existing fact. It was now observed that such phrases as
  ‘self-government’, and ‘the power of the people over
  themselves’, do not express the true state of the case.
  The ‘people’ who exercise the power are not always the
  same people with those over whom it is exercised; and the
  ’self-government’ spoken of is not the government of each
  by himself, but of each by all the rest. The {75} will of
  the people, moreover, practically means the will of the
  most numerous or the most active _part_ of the people;
  the majority, or those who succeed in making themselves
  accepted as the majority ... and precautions are as
  much needed against this as against any other abuse
  of power. The limitation, therefore, of the power of
  government loses none of its importance when the holders
  of power are regularly accountable to the community, that
  is, to the strongest party therein. ... In political
  speculations, the ‘tyranny of the majority’ is now
  generally included among the evils against which society
  requires to be on its guard.”

The paradox of self-government then, so far from being theoretically
solved by the development of political institutions to their highest
known maturity, is simply intensified by this development. When
the arbitrary and irrational powers of classes or of individuals
have been swept away, we are left face to face, it would seem, with
the coercion of some by others as a necessity in the nature of
things. And, indeed, however perfectly “self-government” has been
substituted for despotism, it is flying in the face of experience
to suggest that the average individual self, as he exists in you or
me, is _ipso facto_ satisfied, and at home, in all the acts of the
public power which is supposed to represent him. If he were so, the
paradox of self-government would be resolved by the annihilation of
one of its factors. The self would remain, but “government” would
be superfluous; or else “government” would be everything, and the
self annihilated. If, on the other hand, we understand the “self”
in “self-government” to stand for the whole sovereign group or {76}
community, which is usually called a “self-governing,” as opposed to
a subject, state, then we have before us the task of showing that
this self is a reality in any sense which justifies the acceptance of
what is done by the public power as an act of the whole community.
But on the ground where we stand in the theories reviewed in the
present chapter, no such self can be shown. Government, in fact
and in principle, reveals itself as coercion exercised by “the
others” over “the one.” And so long as this is the case, and as the
government is alien to the self, not only do the rights of majorities
remain without explanation, but no less is it impossible to say on
what rational ground an entire community can apply coercion to a
single recalcitrant member. We have seen that Mill would solve the
problem by a demarcation, according to which the aim and ground of
government is to protect the self from the impact of others, and
leave it in its isolated purity. Herbert Spencer, it may be noted,
[1] has recourse to one of those hypotheses of tacit consent which
would reduce a community to the level of a joint-stock company, [2]
_minus_ a written instrument of association; which in the case of
the State has to be replaced by Mr. Spencer’s estimate of purposes,
which would _probably_ be accepted with unanimity _if_ the question
were asked! Bentham alone, founding {77} himself on the actual nature
of social life, genially overrides the whole question of individual
right, and while maintaining law to be a necessary evil, and pouring
scorn on all attempts to exhibit a positive unity throughout the
selves which compose a society, makes the promotion of a free and
happy life the sole criterion of governmental interference.

[1] _Man v. State_, p. 83 _sq_.

[2] It is a remarkable testimony to the inherent vitality of
associations of human beings that even a joint-stock company often
finds its work and aims so developing on its hands that it has to
obtain additional powers from Parliament. It transcends, therefore,
the limits of the shareholders original contract, and Herbert
Spencer’s loud complaints of this procedure show how little he
recognises the nature of social necessity.

On the basis of every-day reflection, then, we are brought to an
absolute deadlock in the theory of political obligation. If, as
popular instinct maintains, and as common sense seems somehow to
insist, there is a theory and a justification of social coercion
latent in the term “self-government,” we cannot find a clue to it
in the reasoning of our most recent and popular political thinkers.
Nor should we find a comprehensive theory, though we might find
suggestions towards one, if we recurred to our more philosophical
teachers, such as Hobbes and Locke, who are further from popular
modes of thought. If there is anything satisfactory in the conception
of self-government, every interpretation of it is at once condemned
which does not give the fullest force to both terms of the paradox,
at the same time that it exhibits their reconciliation. What this
fullest force is, and the antagonism which it involves, we have seen
in the present chapter. We must start from an actual self, which is
capable of rebelling against law and government; and from an actual
“government,” which is capable of tyrannising over the individual
self. We must not treat the self as _ipso facto_ annihilated by
government; nor must we treat government as a pale reflection,
pliable to all the vagaries of the actual self. Nor, again, must
we divide the inseparable {78} content of life, and endeavour to
assign part to the assertion of the individual as belonging to self,
and part to his impact on others, as belonging to government. We
must take the two factors of the working idea of self-government in
their full antagonism, and exhibit, through and because of this, the
fundamental unity at their root, and the necessity and conditions
of their coherence. We must show, in short, how man, the actual man
of flesh and blood, demands to be governed; and how a government,
which puts real force upon him, is essential, as he is aware, to his
becoming what he has it in him to be. And if we fail to destroy the
assumptions which hinder us from doing this, we shall have to admit
that the maturity of democratic institutions has only liberated us
from arbitrary despotism to subject us to necessary tyranny; and
though, in spite of such a failure, we might still acquiesce in
“counting heads to save breaking them,” we should have to agree that
this may indeed be the shrewdest device of political expediency, but
that the difference between the two processes corresponds to no real
capacity of the human individual for partaking, by the exercise of
will and intelligence, in a peacefully organised and yet effectually
governed whole. We shall then, in short, be compelled to agree with
Bentham and Mill and Spencer that “self-government” and “the general
will” are meaningless phantoms, combinations of hostile factors,
incapable of being united in a real experience.




{79}

CHAPTER IV.

THE PROBLEM OF POLITICAL OBLIGATION MORE RADICALLY TREATED.

1. The reader will no doubt have observed that the theory dealt
with in the last chapter belongs to the general type of what is
currently known as Individualism. For several reasons I have
preferred not to make use of this hackneyed word. In the first place,
it is very hackneyed; and the employment of such terms takes all
life and expressiveness out of philosophy. And, in the next place,
Individualism may mean many things, and in its fullest, which is
surely, for the student of philosophy, its truest meaning, it is far
too good for the theories under discussion. An “Individual” may be
“individual” or indivisible because he has so little in him, that
you cannot imagine it possible to break him up into lesser parts;
or because, however full and great his nature, it is so thoroughly
one, so vital and so true to itself, that, like a work of art, the
whole of his being cannot be separated into parts without ceasing to
be what it essentially is. In the former case the “individual” is an
“atom”; in the latter he is “a great individuality.” [1] The sense
in which we shall make {80} use of the notion of the individual, so
far as we use it at all, will be the latter and not the former. And,
therefore, we shall as far as possible discard the hackneyed term
“Individualism,” which embodies the former meaning only.

[1] See Nettleship’s _Remains_, i. 160.

If then we are to coin an expression which will indicate the
common features of the theories outlined in the previous chapter,
we may venture upon some such phrase as “_prima facie_ theories,”
or “theories of the first look.” By this I do not mean that they
stand in the same rank with the views of the Greek thinkers, who,
undisturbed by previous speculation, saw the great facts of social
experience with a freshness and wholeness of vision with which
they can never be seen again. The “first look” of our own day is
of a different kind. It is the first look of the man in the street
or of the traveller, struggling at a railway station, to whom the
compact self-containedness and self-direction of the swarming human
beings before him seems an obvious fact, while the social logic
and spiritual history which lie behind the scene fail to impress
themselves on his perceptive imagination.

We see then that these theories of the first appearance are mainly
guided by this impression of the natural separateness of the human
unit. For this reason, as we noted, the experience of self-government
is to them an enigma, with which they have to compromise in various
ways. And because their explanations of it are not true explanations
but only compromises, they rest on no principle, and dictate no
consistent attitude. For Bentham all solid right is actually in the
State, {81} though conceived by himself as a means to individual
ends; for Mill, it is divided between the State and the individual,
by a boundary which cannot be traced and therefore cannot be
respected; for Herbert Spencer all right is in the individual,
and the State has become little more than a record office of his
contracts and consents.

The assumption common to the theories in question is dictated by
their very nature. It is not precisely, as is often supposed to
be the case, that the individual is the end to which Society is
a means. Such a definition fails to assign a character which is
distinctive for any social theories whatever. For Society, being,
at the lowest rate, a plurality of individuals, whatever we say of
the individual may be construed as true of Society and _vice versa_,
so long as all individuals are understood in the same sense as one.
Thus the “means” and the “ends” are liable to change places, as, for
practical purposes, we saw that they did in Bentham. The ethical term
“altruism” illustrates this principle. It shows that by taking “the
individual” as the “end,” nothing is determined as to the relation
between each individual and all, and it remains a matter of chance
how far it is required of “each” individual, in the name of the
welfare of “the individual,” to sacrifice himself to “all.”

The fact is that the decisive issue is not whether we call the
“individual” or “society” the “end”; but what we take to be the
nature at once of individuals and of society. This is the question
of principle; and views which are at one in this have nothing which
can in principle keep them apart, {82} although they may diverge to
the seemingly opposite poles of the liberty of each and the welfare
of all. We have observed this sliding from one narrowness to its
opposite, as between Bentham, Mill, and Herbert Spencer.

The root idea then, of the views which we have been discussing, is
simply that the individual or society--it makes no difference which
we take--is what it _prima facie_ appears to be. This is why we have
called them “_prima facie_” theories, or “theories of the first
look.” It would be a long story to explain how a first look can be
possible in the eighteenth or nineteenth century A.D. But in brief,
the history of thought shows certain leaps or breaks in culture; when
the human mind seems to open its eyes afresh, or to emerge on a new
platform, from which new point of view all its adjustments have to be
re-made and its perceptions re-analysed. In these new stages a great
advance is involved; but the advance is potential, and the possible
insight has to be paid for by an initial blindness.

Such an occasion it was on which the legislator or economist or
natural philosopher of the modern world turned his gaze upon man
in society. He saw him as “one of millions enjoying the protection
of the law,” [1] and society as the millions of which he is one.
Such an onlooker inevitably proceeds to treat the social whole as
composed of units A, B, C, etc., who, _as they stand, and just as
they seem to us when we rub against them in daily intercourse_,
are taken to be the organs and centres of human life. From this
assumption all {83} the rest follows. Each of us, A, B, C, and all
the others, seems to be, and to a great extent in the routine of life
actually is, self-complete, self-satisfied, and self-willed. To each
of us, A, B, or C, all the rest are “others.” They are “like” him;
they are “repetitions” of him, but they are not himself. He knows
that they are something to himself; but this “something” is still
“something else,” and even in ethical reflection he is apt to call
his recognition of it “altruism”--an indefinite claim and feeling,
touching his being at its margin of contact with neighbouring
circles, the centres of which are isolated.

[1] B. Jowett, in conversation, to author.

To the individual and society thus conceived--A, B, C, and the
rest--it is plain that government can be nothing but self-protection.
It is, in fact, a form of the impact of “others,” scientifically
minimised, and accepted because it is minimised. For this reason it
is, as we saw throughout, alien to the self, and incapable of being
recognised as springing from a common root with the spontaneous
life which we pretend to be aware of only within our private magic
circle. Then the forcible impact of B and C upon the circle of A
is a necessary evil, a diminution, _pro tanto_, of A. And the more
altruistic A is, the more he will recognise this, as affecting not
himself only, but B and C also.

It is for this reason that, on the views in question, all law and
government necessarily remain formal and negative as compared with
the substantive and positive ends of the self. The maintenance of
“liberty,” of the circular or hexagonal [1] fences round A, B, C,
and the rest, is {84} conceived as involving no determinate type of
life, no relation to the ends which the units pursue within their
hexagons. If in any way the self went beyond itself, and A recognised
a positive end and nature which peremptorily bound him to B and the
others, it would be impossible to keep this nature and end from
reflecting themselves in the determinate content of the conditions
of association between them. The assumption would be destroyed which
keeps “government” alien to “self,” and it would be possible to
consider in what sense and for what reason the nature of a spiritual
animal turns against itself with the dualism which the paradox of
self-government embodies, and that in pursuit of its true unity.

[1] See P. 73

2. We will now discuss Rousseau’s treatment of the paradox of
“self-government.” And we discuss it, not because it is complete or
self-consistent, but rather because, while breaking through to the
root of the whole matter, it is as incomplete and as inconsistent
as are the efforts of our own minds to lay hold of any profound
truth. It displays, in fact, on the great stage of the history
of philosophy, precisely the struggle which each of us has to go
through if he tries to pierce the surface of commonplace fiction
and tradition which persistently weaves itself about social facts.
On almost every page there is relapse and vacillation. The fictions
which are being cast aside continually reassert themselves; the
embodiment of the principle which the author’s genius has discerned
is sought for in expedients essentially opposite to its nature, while
the instruments which it has developed for itself are contemptuously
rejected.

{85} We are going to examine the main thesis of Rousseau’s _Contrat
Social_. The reader who is surprised to find in our account little
or nothing of the “return to nature,” “natural equality,” and the
“natural rights of the individual,” may refer for these to Rousseau’s
earlier essays on theses propounded by the Academy of Dijon. The
first of the theses (1750) ran, “Whether the re-establishment of the
sciences and the arts contributed to purify morals”; and Rousseau’s
discourse, which won the prize, following the lead of the thesis,
started from the later Renaissance, and dealt in general with the
phenomena of decadence--a very real problem. The notable feature
of this brief essay is its constant vacillation between the attack
on science, art, and education as such, and the criticism, by no
means an undiscerning criticism, of their abuses. Rousseau’s head
is full, not of primitive man, but of Socrates and Cato, of Sparta
and republican Rome. A writer who speaks of Newton and Verulam
as preceptors of the human race can hardly be hostile to true
intellectual achievement. [1] It is noteworthy that his zeal for
educational reform is already apparent in this first published work.

[1] The whole piece breathes a spirit of prize essay paradox, and
though, if sympathetically read, it is seen to be most characteristic
of the author, no serious conclusion should be drawn from it as to
his hostility to civilisation. A comic instance of his vacillation is
produced by the necessity he felt himself under, of excepting, from
his general dispraise of modern letters, such Academies as that of
Dijon, which was to judge his essay. For an excellent appreciation
of these earlier works, and of Rousseau in general, see the essay
on “Our Natural Rights,” in the _Lectures and Essays_ of the late
Professor W. Wallace, Clarendon Press, 1898.

The second essay (1754), a much longer and {86} more serious
piece, is on the thesis, “What is the origin of Inequality among
mankind, and is it justified by natural law?” It was dedicated, with
expressions of extravagant laudation, to Rousseau’s native state,
the Republic of Geneva. His enthusiasm for this community, as for
the ancient city-states, is a far truer guide to his genuine social
ideas than any of his paradoxes about the state of nature and the
bondage of social man. His genius, in fact, is very much under-rated
by those who suppose him at any time to have believed the primitive
state of nature, or earliest imaginable condition of the human
race, to be capable of furnishing an ideal of life. He is perfectly
aware that a state of nature, which is to furnish an ideal, must be
selected at least from among the higher phases of man’s evolution,
after morality and the family have begun to form themselves, and
language and property have made some advance. Here, again, his
vacillation is strikingly observable, and we can see that it arises
from his profound insight. The vices of civilisation tend to force
the desirable state of man down the scale of evolution, but the
value of morality and respect for human nature tend to force it up,
and Rousseau’s argument embodies the struggle. For Rousseau is far
too critical and clear-sighted to ascribe true morality or strictly
human nature to a state of animal innocence, and he knows that virtue
involves potential vice; [1] and therefore it is with hesitation
and regret that he selects a middle state as {87} representing his
ideal, fully aware that it has forfeited animal innocence without
having attained human morality. Even the famous declamation against
the first founder of property in land seems to pass away in an
admission that this was an inevitable stage in the growth of human
capacities, which the author would not seriously desire to remain
undeveloped. Two further points may be noted; first, the fundamental
contention that men are by nature not equal but unequal, the
evil of civilisation lying just in the replacement of natural by
political inequality. If this political inequality were considered as
modifiable, it is plain that the view would point to an advantage in
the way of equality [2] possessed by society over nature. Secondly,
the view here taken of natural liberty in relation to the social
pact should be compared with that of the _Contrat Social_. In the
essay, “natural liberty” is on the whole preferred; in the _Contrat_,
another kind of liberty is held a truer good, although much of the
tone and language associated with the preference of natural liberty
continues by the side of the later view. It is plain that we are
dealing, not with an unconsidering fanatical enthusiasm for one or
another state of man, but with a struggling insight, which sees evil
but also good in all, and, with hesitation and reluctance, depresses
the scale first in favour of the one, and then in favour of the other
condition of human beings.

[1] He seems to regard the beginnings of industrial co-operation as
the end of the “state of nature” in the widest sense. The remark that
“iron and corn civilised man and ruined the human race,” anticipates
much in later speculations.

[2] We find Rousseau actually drawing attention to this in the
_Contrat Social_. See _Cont. Soc_., I. ix. fin., where observe (i)
that he half believes himself to have spoken of natural equality,
and not of natural inequality, in the “Essay”; and (2) the “hedging”
footnote on the illusoriness of social equality.

3. The famous opening words of chap. i. of the {88} _Contrat Social_
(published 1762) sound like the beginning of a tirade against
civilisation and the State. “Man is born free, and everywhere he is
in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, who does not
fail to be more of a slave than they.” Here we might well suppose
ourselves to be reading the preface to a demonstration that all
social constraint is slavery, and that man, in a state of nature,
possessed a liberty which he has now lost. We expect such an opening
to be followed by a denunciation of the fetters of society, and a
panegyric on the pre-social life. And there can hardly be a doubt
that these sentences, along with a few similar phrases which stick in
the memory, are the ground of the popular idea of Rousseau, shared
by too many scholars. [1] But how does Rousseau go on? Here are the
succeeding sentences. “How did this change take place? I do not
know. What can render it legitimate? I think I can tell.” Here, as
previously in the discourse on “Equality,” he (1) cuts himself loose
in principle from the historical fiction of a social pact succeeding
a state of nature; and (2) he promises to furnish a justification
for the change (or, striking out the quasi-historical term “change,”
for the condition of man), which is expressed by the words, “is
everywhere in chains.”

[1] Professor Henry Sidgwick and Professor Ritchie are notable
exceptions. See also, and pre-eminently, the essay of the late
Professor Wallace referred to above.

This then is the task which he has set himself. The sentences last
cited show that his answer will, in some degree, turn its back on his
question, and that really man had little natural freedom to lose, and
is not everywhere in chains. But the fact that {89} the problem first
struck Rousseau’s mind through a feeling of rebellion against social
slavery, and a loathing for the civilisation of his day, sets him at
the very beginning of the path which social theory has to traverse,
and ensures that the difficulties which we all feel at times will be
met in their sharpest form. He knows, in short, that something, which
can look like utter bondage, is a fact; and he knows that this fact
has to be justified.

After some chapters devoted to clearing away inadequate solutions of
the problem, he re-states it as follows, in terms of that form of the
supposed social contract in which it was regarded as a compact of all
with all for the constitution of a community:

   “To find a form of association which shall defend and
  protect, with the entire common force, the person and
  the goods of each associate, and by which, each, uniting
  himself to all, may nevertheless obey only himself, and
  remain as free as before.” [1]

[1] _Contrat Social_, bk. i., ch. vi.

4. Before proceeding to examine the true meaning of this formula and
its answer, we will briefly notice the conflict of ideas suggested
by it. Man’s freedom, it is implied, remains at the same level. Even
his power is not increased; it is only that individuals combine
their forces, previously isolated. These implications suit neither
the view he starts from, nor the view he arrives at. If man had a
natural freedom, and then submitted to society, though merely to
increase his force of action, some of his freedom must be lost, and
he cannot remain as free as he was before. But if man in society {90}
has a nature, which he could not have out of society, such that his
individuality is maximised by the organisation of a social whole,
then it is plain that he is not merely as free “as he was before,”
but very much more free; free, indeed, strictly speaking, under
social conditions alone. The notion which Rousseau started from,
that man has surrendered some part of a previous freedom in order to
make the most of the remainder, appears, as here, in the language
of compromise, frequently through the _Contrat Social_. But it is
not effectively relied on, for Rousseau is too acute to attempt a
demarcation theory, and while he assumes, for example, according
to the literal notion of a compact, that man only surrenders as
much of his liberty as is necessary to the community, he sees that
the sovereign is sole judge of this proportion and consequently is
absolute. [1] In the same way he first deduces the sovereign’s right
of inflicting capital punishment from the individual’s pre-existing
right to risk his life in order to save it, in virtue of which he
has transferred to the sovereign a right to demand his life when
necessary to the public safety, which includes his own. And then,
feeling this to be a fiction, he ekes it out by the precisely
contrary suggestion that a criminal has broken the social treaty,
has ceased to be a member of the community, and is dealt with as an
enemy on terms of war. [2] This supplementation shows that Rousseau
is aware of the weakness of his other account of the matter, based
on non-social individual right. His constant failure, entire or
partial, to free himself from the language of “first appearance {91}
theories,” as we have ventured to call them, is just what makes him
so instructive, in view of the similar inclination which besets us
all.

[1] _Contrat Social_, bk. II., ch. v.

[2] Bk. II., ch. v.

5. We will now examine the real nature of his solution. For the
historical fiction of a social contract, he substitutes, in answer
to the problem formulated above (see section 3, end), the conditions
which constitute a “people” or commonwealth. He speaks, indeed, of
the “act” or “contract” which constitutes it--a survival of the
language which belongs to the fiction. [1] But it is plain, even
if he had not said so distinctly in the first chapter, that he is
dealing not with an act in historical time, but with the essential
nature of a social body. The “clauses of the contract,” he explains,
are dependent on “the nature of the act”; they are implicit and
universal--that is to say, not capable of being affected by any
actual or supposed agreement in contravention of what the essence
of a body politic requires. He is, as he has clearly said in the
previous chapter, analysing the “act” “by which a people is a
people,” _i.e._ the conditions of political unity.

[1] _Contrat Social_, bk. II., ch. v.

The “clauses of the contract” then reduce themselves to a single one,
“the total alienation of each associated member, with all his rights,
(the language is moulded by the fiction of an actual contract and
pre-social rights,) to the community as a whole.” The community as
a whole is therefore absolute. The subsequent passage, referred to
above, [1] in which he speaks as if individual rights were retained,
is a case of the vacillation on which we have remarked.

[1] P. 90.

{92} The essence of this “social pact” is further reducible to the
following formula:

  “Each of us puts into the common stock his person and
  his entire powers under the supreme direction of the
  general will: and we further receive each individual as
  an indivisible member of the whole.”

  “Instantaneously, in place of the particular person of
  each contracting party, this act of association produces
  a moral and collective body, composed of as many members
  as the assembly has voices, which receives from this same
  act its unity, its common self (_son moi commun_), its
  life, and its will. This public person which thus forms
  itself, by the union of all the others, used to take
  the name of city, [1] and now takes that of republic or
  body politic, which is called by its members State when
  it is passive, Sovereign when it is active, Power when
  comparing it with others.”

[1] Rousseau’s footnote _in loc_. “The true sense of this word is
almost entirely effaced among the moderns; most of them take a town
for a city, and a townsman for a citizen. They are not aware that the
houses make the town, but the citizens make the city.”

In this passage the formula of association, and much of the
commentary upon it, imply the “contract” to have been an event in
history. Such is the bearing of the words “act of association,”
“produces,” “receives,” “forms itself.” It is admitted that
Rousseau’s thoughts are always more or less struggling with this
conception, which, it must however be remembered, he explicitly
refuses to rely on; and henceforward, having sufficiently called
attention to it, we shall not encumber ourselves with observing upon
it in every instance.

Putting aside then the defective terminology, and {93} bearing in
mind that Rousseau considers himself to be analysing the essence
of that act or character “by which a people is a people,” we find
in this passage very far-reaching ideas. We find that the essence
of human society consists in a common self, a life and a will,
which belong to and are exercised by the society as such, or by
the individuals in society as such; it makes no difference which
expression we choose. The reality of this common self, in the action
of the political whole, receives the name of the “general will,” and
we shall examine its nature and attributes in the following chapter.

The primary point which it is necessary to make clear, however, is
whether the whole set of ideas is to be seriously pressed, or whether
the unity which they indicate is merely formal and superficial.
For phrases of the kind here employed may be found in many earlier
writers. The term “person,” for example, comes through Hobbes from
the Roman law. “_Persona_,” in Roman law, we are told, [1] means
either a complex of rights or the possessor of those rights, whether
an individual or a corporate body. “_Unus homo sustinet plures
personas_.” Thus a man may devolve his “_persona_” on another man. A
corporation has a single “_persona_.” It is in this sense that for
Hobbes, the State is a “real unity in one person,” which person has
been devolved by all the individuals of a multitude upon one man or
a definite assembly of men, whose acts therefore are, politically
speaking, the acts of the whole multitude so united in one “person.”

[1] See, _e.g._, Green’s _Lectures on the Principles of Political
Obligation_, p. 61.

{94} This use of the term “person” is one of the cases alluded to
in ch. I., where an abstraction of law has preserved the seed of a
philosophical idea of unity. How far the unity thus indicated is an
empty fiction, or how far it is grasped as something vital, into
which the individual mind goes out and in which it finds what its
nature demands, is what we now have to consider further.

6. Chapters vii. and viii. of book I. of the _Contrat Social_ show
the outcome of Rousseau’s conflicting ideas in a very few remarkable
propositions.

The question is whether the unity of a body politic is an arbitrary
abstraction or a fundamental force and reality.

Rousseau is discussing in chapter vii. the guarantees which exist
for a fulfilment of obligations by the sovereign (or whole) to its
members and by the members to the sovereign respectively. As regards
the obligation of the sovereign to its members, he runs straight
into the fallacy referred to in ch. I. He contends, that is to say,
that the whole is necessarily, by its constitution, that which it
ought to be, and being composed of all the individuals can have no
interest opposite to theirs as a whole, while, _qua_ sovereign, it
is debarred from any such special [1] action as might be hurtful
to any single individual. This presupposes that the whole always
acts according to its idea as a whole, and neither is “captured” by
individual interests nor transgresses the limits set to its action
by restriction to true public concerns. But if this were so, the
State would be perfectly wise and {95} good; and we do not need to
be told that a State, _qua_ wise and good, could do no injustice to
its members. The whole is of course liable to vices correlative to
those which Rousseau is about to guard against when they arise in the
individual.

[1] See below, p. 112.

And his view of individual disloyalty is decisive as to the vitality
of his conception of political unity.

  “Indeed,” he says, “each individual may, as a man, have
  a particular will contrary to or unlike the general will
  which he has as citizen; his particular interest may
  speak to him quite differently from the common interest;
  his absolute and naturally independent existence may
  make him regard what he owes to the common cause as a
  gratuitous contribution, the loss of which would be
  less injurious to others than its payment is burdensome
  to himself; and considering the moral person which
  constitutes the State as an abstraction (_être de
  raison_) because it is not a man, he would enjoy the
  rights of the citizen without consenting to fulfil the
  duties of the subject--an injustice the progress of which
  would cause the ruin of the body politic.”

  “In order, then, that the social pact may not be a
  vain formula, it tacitly includes the covenant, which
  alone can confer binding force on the others, that
  whoever shall refuse to obey the general will shall be
  constrained to do so by the whole body, which means
  nothing else than that he will be forced to be free.”

In this passage Rousseau lays bare the very heart of what some would
call political faith, and others political superstition. This lies
in the {96} conviction that the “moral person [1] which constitutes
the state” is a reality, as opposed to the natural idea that it is an
abstraction or fiction of the reflective mind (an “_ens rationis_,”
_être de raison_), because it is not an actual individual human
being. The theories of the first appearance, as we have called
them, are characterised by accepting as ultimate “the absolute and
naturally independent existence” of the physical individual, and
therefore regarding government as an encroachment on the self, and
force as oppression. Whereas, if the social person is taken as the
reality, it follows, as Rousseau points out, that force against the
physical individual may become a condition of freedom. We saw even in
Mill how extreme cases bring out the necessity for assuming a “real”
will at variance with the individual’s immediate desire. [2] There is
more to be said, of course, as to the limits within which force can
be so applied. [3]

[1] For the meaning of “person,” see account above, p. 93. Note
on the meaning of “moral” as here used that it is determined by a
general opposition to physical, as in “moral certainty.” None the
less, this use of “moral person” forms an interesting stage in the
advance from the physical individual through the legal “person”
towards the notion of a higher or greater self.

[2] The trivial case which he takes, of its being no curtailment to
freedom to keep a man off an untrustworthy bridge, as he certainly
does not want to be drowned, has received terrible illustration of
late (June, 1898) by the disaster at the launch of the “Albion.”
The disaster occurred because not enough force was used against the
passionate momentary eagerness of individuals, and in favour of what
it is fair to presume their real will would be.

[3] See below, ch. VIII.

It is worth while to cite here the whole of the short chapter viii.,
which draws out the {97} consequences of the above conception of a
social pact and of sovereignty.

  “_Of the Civil Condition_.--This passage from the state
  of nature to the civil state produces in man a very
  remarkable change by replacing, in his conduct, instinct
  by justice, and giving to his actions the morality which
  they lacked before. It is then alone that, the voice
  of duty succeeding to physical impulse, and right to
  appetite, man, who till then had only considered himself,
  sees himself compelled to act on other principles, and to
  consult his reason before listening to his inclinations.
  Although he deprives himself in this state of several
  advantages which he holds from nature, he gains such
  great ones in their place, his faculties exercise and
  develop themselves, his ideas expand, his sentiments are
  ennobled, his whole soul is exalted to such a degree,
  that, if the abuses of his new condition did not often
  degrade him below that from which he has emerged, [1]
  it would be his duty to bless without ceasing the happy
  instant which tore him from it for ever, and, from a
  stupid and narrow animal, made him an intelligent being
  and human.

  “Let us reduce these _pros_ and _cons_ to terms easy
  to compare. What man loses by the social contract is
  his natural liberty and an unlimited right to all which
  attracts him and which he can obtain; what he gains is
  civil liberty and the {98} property of what he possesses.
  To avoid error in these reckonings we must carefully
  distinguish natural liberty, which has no bounds but the
  powers of the individual, from the civil liberty which
  is limited by the general will; and possession, which
  is only the effect of force or the right of the first
  occupant, from property, which can only be founded on a
  positive title.

  “We might, in view of the preceding, add to the gains
  of the civil state the moral freedom which alone makes
  man master of himself; for the impulsion of appetite
  alone is slavery, and obedience to the law which we have
  prescribed to ourselves is liberty. But I have already
  said too much on this head, and the philosophical sense
  of the word liberty is not my subject here.”

[1] Cf. the well-known lines of Faust:

        “Ein wenig besser würd er leben,
    Hätt’st Dur ihm nicht den Schein des Himmelslichts gegeben;

        Er nennt’s Vernunft, und braucht’s allein
    Nur thierischer als jedes Thier zu seyn.”

Besides the terminology of the historical fiction this curious
passage shows in the strongest light the struggle by which Rousseau
passed from the position of the “Discourse on the Origin of
Inequality” to that of the “_Contrat Social_.” The “hedging” of
the sentence, “Although he deprives himself,” etc., represents a
loathing of the decadent society of his day, which was deep-seated
in Rousseau’s mind, and which his life enables us thoroughly to
understand. The son of a Genevese artisan, with a touch of vagabond
impulses, and more than a touch of Wordsworthian genius, he was the
first, perhaps, of great modern writers to feel the true democratic
passion, [1] and to see his artificial age as Plato or as Ruskin
might {99} have seen it. It was no small feat of insight to subdue
his just repugnance so far as to estimate, in the language of the
chapter before us, the use, as distinct from the abuse, of law and
society.

[1] Note the sentence in Émile, “C’est le peuple qui compose le genre
humain; ce qui n’est pas peuple est si peu de chose que ce n’est pas
la peine de le compter.” (Bk. iv., 3rd maxim.)

As a feature of this conflict of ideas, we may observe more
especially the notion of original individual right, ascribed to a
condition of man in which, according to the previous paragraph,
right could not exist. The phrase is merely taken up from previous
writers, as is also the so-called “right of the first occupant.”
And the antithesis with true right and property, recognised by the
social mind, in which this chapter presents them, has the effect of a
destructive analysis of these uncritical conceptions. [1]

[1] Rousseau’s brilliant criticism, bk. I., ch. iii., has finally
destroyed the conception of a right, whether natural or social,
founded merely on force.

True right, then, begins with that social unity “by which a people is
a people,” figured by Rousseau under the image of the social compact.
This unity is one aspect of the rule of reason, the sense of duty,
and the essence of humanity. The quality of man is liberty, [1]
and we here see that this fundamental principle which Rousseau has
above laid down in an undetermined sense, must, in the course of his
reasoning, take on the higher meaning demanded by the conceptions of
this chapter.

[1] Bk. i., ch. iv.

And the import of the term “liberty” in this chapter is a measure
of the modification of ideas which has been brought about in the
process of “justifying” the “bondage” of man. [1] The famous {100}
sentence, “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains,” now
turns out to mean, “Man is born in natural liberty (which, if it
refers to any actual condition at all, implies, in animal isolation),
and by subservience to social law, he attains the civil liberty
through which alone he becomes truly man.” Of course, however, the
phrase “born free” has the under current of meaning, “is born _for_
the truest freedom,” but in order that this import may be elicited
the rhetorical antithesis, “and everywhere is in chains,” must be
abandoned.

[1] See bk. i., ch. i.

The final paragraph of chapter viii. makes it clear that Rousseau
considers the civil state as an embodiment of moral liberty, while
he is rightly anxious not to seem to cut the knot of his problem by
appealing to the merely ethical or philosophical sense of the term
freedom. For this latter conception, taken by itself, is apt to be
understood as the establishment of unity in the self by the path of
renunciation. Now, the freedom of the true civil state is, on the
one hand, only a stage in the ascent towards perfect ethical freedom
or unity, for it involves rather the recognition of such freedom as
the imperative end of social law, than the actual attainment of it;
and, on the other hand, it is something broader and more substantial
than ethical freedom is apt to be conceived as implying, because of
that outgrowth of the self into an organised social content which the
civil condition involves. The distinction between the civil state and
ethical freedom is therefore a sound one, but yet does not prevent
their juxta-position in this passage from throwing {101} important
light on Rousseau’s conception of the former.

The expansion of old conceptions in Rousseau’s hands, and the
direction in which his views are advancing, are well illustrated by
the paragraph before us in comparison with Locke’s idea of consent.
A recent editor of the _Contrat_ [1] cites in illustration of the
words, “Obedience to the law which we have prescribed to ourselves
is liberty” Locke’s sentence, “The liberty of man in society is
to be under no other legislative power but that established by
consent in the commonwealth.” [2] But Locke is speaking, according
to his theory, of the actual or tacit consent of individuals to
the establishment of a governing power; a consent which, for him,
is conditional and revocable, and therefore fails to meet the full
difficulty of self-government. Rousseau, borrowing very likely his
actual phrases from Locke, is speaking of something quite different,
viz., the recognition of a law and a will, with which one’s everyday
self may be at odds, as nevertheless one’s truer and fuller self, and
imperative as against the commonplace trivial moods which constitute
one’s inferior existence.

[1] M. Dreyfus-Brisac.

[2] _Civil Government_, ii. 22.

Thus far, then, we have seen how the problem of self-government is
transformed by a deeper insight. _(a)_ The negative relation of the
self to other selves begins to dissolve away before the conception
of the common self; and _(b)_ the negative relation of the self to
law and government begins to disappear in the idea of a law which
expresses our real will, as opposed to our trivial and rebellious
moods. The whole notion of man as one among {102} others tends to
break down; and we begin to see something in the one which actually
identifies him with the others, and at the same time tends to make
him what he admits that he ought to be. We have now to follow these
ideas to their application.




{103}

CHAPTER V.

THE CONCEPTION OF A “REAL” WILL.

1. We saw in the course of the last chapter that for Rousseau’s
political theory everything turns on the reality of the “moral
person” which constitutes the State. When active, this “moral”
or “public person,” or common self, is called sovereign; [1] and
sovereignty for Rousseau consists in the exercise of the General
Will; [2] and it is in this characteristic of political society that
he finds that justification for the use of force upon individuals [3]
which he set out to seek. At the close of the last chapter we noted
the transformation in the problem of “self-government” which such a
conception tends to produce. In face of it, the opposition between
self and others, and between self and law or government, will have to
be interpreted altogether afresh. The present chapter will be devoted
to explaining the idea of a General Will with reference to Rousseau’s
presentation of it, and the rest of the work will develop and apply
it more freely.

[1] Bk. I., ch. vi.

[2] Bk. II., ch. i.

[3] Bk. i., ch. vii.; cf. I., ch. i.

A few words may be said upon Rousseau’s relation to Hobbes [1] and
Locke, simply to {104} illustrate the process by which deepening
political experience awakened the ancient meaning within abstractions
which had preserved it in a latent form.

[1] See also p. 93 above.

Both Hobbes and Locke use expressions, in treating of the government
and unity of a commonwealth, which closely resemble Rousseau’s
phrases respecting the General Will, the moral person, and the real
unity.

Hobbes, for example, insisted that sovereignty must lie in a will,
and that this will must be real and must be taken as representing
or standing for the will of the community. “This is _more than
consent or concord; it is a real unity of them all_ in one and the
same person.” [1] Only, interpreting “real” as implying inherence in
tangible determinate individuals, he in fact _substituted_ the will
(taking the word in its ordinary sense) of a certain individual or
certain individuals _for_ the will of the community or moral person
as such. His temperament was emphatically one of those described by
Rousseau as treating the “_moral_ person” as a fiction. But so far
from abandoning for that reason all idea of actual effective unity,
he replaces the fictitious or abstract unity of the “person” by the
“real unity” of an actual human being or a determinate group of human
beings, to be _taken as_ the unity of the Commonwealth as such. Thus,
for instance, with a logic which is irresistible on the basis which
he adopts, he denies all possibility of other representation of the
people where there is already a sovereign power. For the one and
only representative of the people is for him the {105} sovereign,
on whom the “person” of the community is, by the very fact of his
sovereignty, assumed to be conferred. We may say then, in short, that
Hobbes places the unity of political society in a will, and that, in
his sense, a real or actual will, but emphatically not in a general
will. He inherits the language which enables him to predicate unity
and personality of the state, but in his mouth the terms have not
recovered a true political meaning, and the social right, which they
are intended to account for, remains a mere name.

[1] _Leviathan_, pt. II., ch. xvii. Italics mine.

Locke brings to bear a truer political experience, but a far less
coherent logic. He feels that actual government is a trust, and that
the ultimate supreme power remains in the community as a whole. The
difficulty in his case is to understand how the will or interest of
the community as such obtains determinate expression. Generally,
and apart from particular causes of dissent, it is to be taken as
one with the will of the governing body to which, according to the
constitution, the work of government is given in trust. But the trust
is conditional, and theoretically revocable; the ultimate supreme
power is in the community at large, which may withdraw the trust if
its conditions are violated. Of course, no determinate means of doing
this in a lawful manner is, or can be, suggested, [1] and therefore
the will of the people is not expressed by Locke as a real or actual
will. And so the right, which was to be displayed as social, remains
{106} a latent right in individuals to assent or to dissent, and
society is not represented as a genuine unity.

[1] The referendum is not really such a means. It can only work
within a well organised constitution, and could not be used to
re-make the whole constitution--the forms and conditions of
sovereignty--at a blow.

For Hobbes, then, we might venture to say, political unity lies in
a will which is actual, but not general; while for Locke it lies
in a will which is general, but not actual. If the two are pressed
to extremes, the former theory annihilates “self,” and the latter
annihilates “government.” For the former there is no true right,
because the will of the state is related as mere force to the actual
individual will; for the latter there is no true right, because
the individual’s will remains a mere natural claim, which is never
thoroughly transformed by social recognition and adjustment.

But if it were possible to inspire a logic as coherent as that of
Hobbes, with a political content as large as that which animates
Locke, a new ground would be won. And this is what Rousseau has
attempted in his conception of a will at once actual and general; on
the one hand, an absolute and determinate adjustment and recognition
of rights; on the other hand, embodying in its recognitions all
individual claims which represent a true individuality. Here, if
such a theory were workable, we should have a genuine account of
self-government, political obligation, and social right. It may be
admitted that the theory is not workable in the form which Rousseau
gave it. As Bentham contemptuously said, his doctrine would make
all laws invalid, excepting, perhaps, those of the Republic of San
Marino. But we shall see that these difficulties arise just where
Rousseau failed to be true to his own best insight; and we shall find
indications in his writings which suggest a different conclusion.

{107} 2. What Rousseau means to indicate by his expression, “the
General Will,” may seem to many persons, as he clearly saw, to have
no actual existence. It is of the nature of a principle operating
among and underneath a great variety of confusing and disguising
factors, and can only be defined by the help of an “as such” or “in
so far as.” It is, we might say, the will of the whole society “as
such” or the wills of all individuals “in so far as” they aim at the
common good. It is expressed in law, “in so far as” law is what it
ought to be; and sovereignty, “as such,” _i.e._ when truly itself
because rightly acting for the common interest, is the exercise
of the General Will. In its idea, as the key to the whole problem
of self-government and freedom under law, it is that identity
between my particular will and the wills of all my associates in
the body politic which makes it possible to say that in all social
co-operation, and in submitting even to forcible constraint, when
imposed by society in the true common interest, I am obeying only
myself, and am actually attaining my freedom. It embodies indeed the
same factors as the conception of self-government, but in a shape
which is a stage nearer to reconciliation. It postulates a will which
in some sense transcends the individual whose will it is, and is
directed upon an object of wider concern. And in one way or other, we
know that this may be, and indeed always is the case, for our will is
always directed to something which we are not.

We may, perhaps, approach Rousseau’s thought more successfully by
starting from the idea of what is implied in the nature of will, as
a characteristic {108} of an intelligent being. We may then find
ground for conceiving that my will or yours, as we exercise it in the
trivial routine of daily life, does not fulfil all that it implies
or suggests. It is narrow, arbitrary, self-contradictory. It implies
a “true” or “real” or “rational” will, which would be completely, or
more completely, what ours attempts to be, and fails. Thus, it has
been said that what Rousseau really aimed at, with his conception of
the General Will, was the will “in itself,” or the will as it would
be if it carried out what its nature implies and demands.

We can see that some notion of this kind floats before Rousseau’s
mind from the predicates which he assigns to Sovereignty and the
General Will, which are for him nearly convertible terms.

Sovereignty, for example, is inalienable and indivisible; [1] that is
to say, it is a simple consequence of the nature of a body politic,
“that by which a people is a people.” You can no more alienate or
break it into parts than you can alienate or break into parts the
use of your own judgment. To be capable of sovereignty means to be
a people “as such” or “as a whole,” that is a living and choosing
people. The people may of course give general orders to subordinates
to hold good till revoked, as I may give a power of attorney for more
or less specified purposes to another man. But that is the delegation
“of power, not of will.”

[1] Bk. II., chs. i. and ii. Here Rousseau is following Hobbes very
closely.

We see the author’s intention still more clearly when he
maintains that the General Will is always {109} right, [1] and is
indestructible. [2] Though it is always right, as Will, yet the
people may be misled in their knowledge and judgment of details;
though it is indestructible in the human breast, yet a man may vote
at the polling booth on another issue than that which he would
have before him if he consulted the General Will. He may answer by
his vote not the question, “Is this for the public good?” but the
question, “Is this for my private good?” If so, he does not indeed
extinguish the General Will in himself, but he evades it. Or, as we
might say, the man does not altogether cease, however ignorant or
interested, to possess a man’s leaning towards making the real best
of himself, though his private interest may at times so master his
mind as to throw the higher or common good into the second place.
Thus, the relation of the general will to a community is plainly
apprehended by Rousseau much in the spirit of the doctrine that
man always aims at something which he takes to be good. And so the
General Will is as much implied in the life of a society as some sort
of will for good in the life of an individual. The two, in fact, are
not merely analogous but to a great extent identical. The General
Will seems to be, in the last resort, the ineradicable impulse of an
intelligent being to a good extending beyond itself, in as far as
that good takes the form of a common good. Though this impulse may be
mastered or cheated in a degree, yet, if it were extinct, human life
would have ceased.

[1] Bk. II., ch. iii.

[2] Bk. iv., ch. i.

We need not enter at length upon the question whether the good
which extends beyond oneself {110} is adequately described as the
good which is general or common to oneself and others. It is plain
that the unity of myself with others in a common good is the same
in principle as the unity of myself with myself which I aim at in
aiming at my own good. Thought and language, we should bear in mind,
unite me to myself just as they unite me to others, and they expand
my being by binding my own life into a whole no less than by making
intercourse possible between my fellow men and myself. Just so, the
good at which I aim extends beyond my trivial or momentary self--that
is to say, is universal as against myself as particular--in ways
which are not _prima facie_ exhausted by saying that they include the
good of others. But again, just like thought and language, the good
which enables me to enter deeper into communion with myself or with
the world must always have an aspect of extending that communion to
others; and therefore, for the purposes of social philosophy, we may
treat the universal good or self as also in its nature a general or
common good or self. It is that at least, though it may be more, in
accordance with the logical relation between the rational universal,
and the numerical generality.

This indestructible impulse towards the Good, which is necessarily
a common good, the substantial unity and filling of life by the
interests through which man is human, is what Rousseau plainly has
before him in his account of the General Will. But it has rightly
been observed [1] that he did not really distinguish this conception,
analogous as it is to what Plato or Aristotle might have said {111}
of the “divine reason which is the source of the laws and discipline
of the ideal polity,” from the legal idea of the sovereign “in the
sense of some power of which it could reasonably be asked how it was
established in the part where it resides, when and by whom and in
what way it is exercised.” We will point out, however, the negative
and positive indications which he furnishes as to where it is not and
where it is to be looked for. That he fails to emancipate himself
from the fallacies which he acutely indicates is a phenomenon for
which the reader is, I trust, sufficiently prepared.

[1] Green, _Principles of Political Obligation_, p. 82.

3. Rousseau develops his idea of a General Will by the contrast
which he draws between the General Will and the Will of All. [1] The
General Will aims at a common interest; and it is this community
of interest, and not the number of votes in which it may find
expression, which in truth “generalises the will.” [2] The Will of
All aims at private interest as such (“_l’intérêt privé_”) and is
only a sum of particular wills. Only, Rousseau fancies, if you let
the particular wills fight it out freely, their differences are
likely to cancel each other, and the General Will to make itself
felt, like any pervading factor through a chaos of indefinite
variations.

[1] _Contrat Social_, II. iii.

[2] _Ib._ II. iv.; cf. above.

The important point in the idea of the Will of All” lies in its
being “a sum” of “particulars,” as opposed to something common or
general in its nature. Thus, in the limiting case, you may have a
unanimous vote in favour of a certain course of action, and yet the
voters may severally have been determined by aims and considerations
which {112} Rousseau would not admit to be capable of entering at
all into a determination of the General Will. For a private affair
_as such_ is incapable in Rousseau’s view of being made the subject
of law, that is of an act of the General Will. Such an act must be
general, not only in the number of votes (which, as we have seen, is
the less important factor), but in the nature of its subject-matter,
which must be, as we should say, a question of genuine public
interest. [1] Now, when men’s minds leave out of sight the public
or truly general aspect of a question, and are determined, each
of them severally, by the expected consequences to himself as a
private individual; then, though all may practically agree in the
decision which is arrived at, yet such a decision is founded on no
view of truly public interest, but is what Rousseau calls “a sum of
particular wills.” The distinction between such a sum of wills, and
a will that aims at a truly common interest or good, rests upon that
fundamental contrast between a mere aggregate and an organic unity,
which is embodied in the opposing views of society which we have
been discussing. Pushed to extremes, it might raise a difficulty
for those who are not familiar with the logical distinction between
a Judgment of Allness and a true Universal Judgment. [2] What harm
can there be, it may be asked, in my voting according to the effect
a measure will have upon my affairs, if everyone else is allowed
to vote according to the effect it will have upon his affairs,
especially as in the extreme case suggested, the result is that we
are all agreed? What can be more for the general {113} interest than
a decision in which every particular interest is satisfied? On the
mere basis of comparative generality, as estimated by number, there
is plainly no answer to this objection. We meet here with another
instance of the difficulties which arise from working with the notion
of society as “self and others,” and of the good as an altruistic
aim. For in the case supposed, the others are all satisfied as
much as myself; and so I should give weight to no higher aim by
considering their interest than by considering my own, unless I
considered it on different grounds from those which I admitted in
judging of my own advantage. But any different, higher, or deeper
grounds might just as well present themselves to me with reference to
my own advantage as with reference to theirs; and would differ from
motives of private interest, not by bringing about a more unanimous
adhesion, but by belonging to a deeper appreciation of the common
good, and therefore producing a less superficial unity of resolve.
The real difference between Allness and true Universality is that
a “universal” characteristic goes more deeply into the nature of
that which it characterises than does a mark or attribute which,
like the owner’s name in the books of a library, simply happens to
be attached _ab extra_ to all the objects in question. So here, the
supposed accordant decisions of all the voters, as guided each by his
strictly private interest, are not really or completely accordant.
They happen to come together in one point which has to be settled
at the moment; but beyond that they express no oneness of life or
principle; still less can they give voice to any demand of the
greater or rational {114} self in which the real common good resides.
This is what Rousseau means by saying that it is the community of
the interest or the nature of the object, and not the number of
voices, which distinguishes the General Will from the Will of All.
It follows, therefore, that the private interest as such, which in
the case supposed determines the individual voter, is not ultimately
his true interest; and it may be said, “But if each followed his
own true interest the Will of All would be right.” But a true
interest, as opposed to an apparent interest, necessarily has just
the characters which the true Universal has as against the collection
of particulars, or the General Will against the Will of All. So that
to say, “If everyone pursued his own _true_ private interest the
Will of All would be right,” is merely to say, “If everyone pursued
his _true_ private interest he would pursue the common interest”;
or, “The Will of All, if directed to the common good, would be one
with the General Will.” The reason why it is necessary to insist
upon the distinction between true and apparent interest, universal
and aggregate of particulars, General Will and Will of All, is
just that a true interest generally requires some degree of energy
or effort, perhaps of self-sacrifice; while the purely private or
apparent interest, the interest of each of us in his routine frame
of mind, is that by which many are always determined, and a whole
community is only too likely to be guided. That is why it is worth
while to distinguish the Will of All from the General Will. Let us
suppose that Themistocles had been beaten in the Athenian assembly
when he proposed that, instead of dividing the revenue {115} from the
silver mines among all the citizens, they should devote this revenue
annually to building a fleet--the fleet which fought at Salamis. It
is easy to see that in such a case a relatively ideal end, demanding
a certain self-denial, might appear less attractive to all the
individuals--each keeping before himself his own separate share of
profit--than the accustomed distribution of money. And if such a
view had gained the day, history would never have told, and no free
Europe would have existed to understand, by what decision the true
general will and common interest of Athens might have transcended
the aggregate private interests of all her citizens. No doubt, it
may be added, a true universal end is usually more powerful than a
limited interest even in the mere area of its operation; and we may
ultimately find, in the benefits conferred by Athens on the world,
a justification of her courage and self-denial, even by the rough
and unreliable standard of the number of individuals beneficially
affected.

[1] _Contrat Social_, II. iv.

[2] Cf. p. 110 above.

If such a theory as that just stated were to be literally pressed, it
would lead to the conclusion that a law which was not _really_ for
the general interest was not binding on the subjects of a state. For,
by the definition, such a law could not be a true act of sovereignty.
No political theorist, however visionary, could accept such a
conclusion as this, and Rousseau, seeing that the decision of the
recognised sovereign must be final, attempts to show how and when it
comes nearest to a true General Will.

The decisive point of his doctrine on this subject is his hostility
to representative government, [1] {116} and his consequent demand of
a primary assembly and a small community as the only guarantees for
the genuine expression of a will for the common good. “The English
people,” according to his well-known saying, “is only free during
a general election.” Further, it is a sign that the Will of All
is, on the whole, coinciding with the General Will, when unanimity
prevails in the assembly. But long discussions and the organisation
of minor “interests” and associations within the state, in short,
all the phenomena of mature political life, are signs and conditions
of failure to express the General Will, which is most likely to make
itself felt when particular wills neutralise one another in the way
explained above. [2]

[1] Bk. III. xv.; cf. IV. ii.

[2] P. 111

Now all this makes it clear that in endeavouring to point out the
signs of the General Will, Rousseau is really enthroning the Will
of All. He aims at eliciting a direct opinion, uncontaminated by
external influence or interest, from each and every member of the
citizen body. In this aim, what is present to his mind is of course
the popular idea of the ancient City-State. But the actual working
even of Athenian or of Roman institutions was far more subtle
and complex than this. And more especially, the very core of the
common good represented by the life of a modern Nation-State is
its profound and complex organisation, which makes it greater than
the conscious momentary will of any individual. By reducing the
machinery for the expression of the common good to the isolated and
unassisted judgment of the members of the whole body of citizens,
Rousseau is ensuring the {117} exact reverse of what he professes
to aim at. He is appealing from the organised life, institutions,
and selected capacity of a nation to that nation regarded as an
aggregate of isolated individuals. And, therefore, he is enthroning
as sovereign, not the national mind, but that aggregate of private
interests and ideas which he has himself described as the Will of
All. He is so far aware of this that, as we have seen, he refuses to
contemplate a great modern nation as a political whole, because he
fails to conceive how, for such a community, the General Will can
satisfactorily find expression. But in as far as he commits himself
to the view that the sovereign, constituted as he would have it,
“necessarily is what it ought to be,” or “is incapable of injustice
to any of its members,” so far he has forgotten the dangers of the
Will of All, and has affirmed the absolute supremacy of the popular
will in the very sense against which his conception of the Will of
All is a protest. The notion of primary assemblies and of direct
participation in citizen life has no doubt a real lesson for the
political theorist; but it does not point to reducing the whole
political system of a great state to a model which never, perhaps,
thoroughly fulfilled its idea except under very special conditions.

4. The other and more fruitful direction of Rousseau’s speculations
upon the General Will is to be found in his remarks on the function
of the Legislator. We will approach them by help of a short
restatement of the problem as it now stands.

It was observed above that what Rousseau had before him in his notion
of the General Will might {118} be described as the “Will in itself,”
or the Real Will. Any such conception involves a contrast between the
Real Will and the Actual Will, which may seem to be meaningless. How
can there be a Will which is no one’s Will? and how can anything be
my Will which I am not fully aware of, or which I am even averse to?

This question will be treated more fully on psychological grounds in
a later chapter. For the present, it is enough to call attention to
the plain fact that often when people do not know what they mean,
they yet mean something of very great importance; or that, as has
commonly been said, “what people demand is seldom what would satisfy
them if they got it.” We may recall the instances [1] in which even
Mill admitted that it is legitimate to infer, from the inherent
nature of will, that people do not really “will” something which
they desire to do at a given moment. The example of slavery is a
striking one. A man may contract to become a slave, but no civilised
government will enforce his contract at law, and the ultimate reason
for the refusal is, as Mill in effect points out, that man’s nature
is to exercise will--to have liberty--and a resolution to divest
himself of this capacity must be taken as _ipso facto_ void, by
contradicting the very essence of humanity. [2]

[1] P. 69 above.

[2] “Liberty is the quality of man.” (Rousseau, _Contrat Social_).

Now the contradiction, which here appears in an ultimate form,
pervades the “actual” will, which we exert from moment to moment as
conscious individuals, through and through. A comparison of our acts
of will through a month or a year is {119} enough to show that no one
object of action, as we conceive it when acting, exhausts all that
our will demands. Even the life which we wish to live, and which on
the average we do live, is never before us as a whole in the motive
of any particular volition. In order to obtain a full statement of
what we will, what we want at any moment must at least be corrected
and amended by what we want at all other moments; and this cannot
be done without also correcting and amending it so as to harmonise
it with what others want, which involves an application of the same
process to them. But when any considerable degree of such correction
and amendment had been gone through, our own will would return to
us in a shape in which we should not know it again, although every
detail would be a necessary inference from the whole of wishes
and resolutions which we actually cherish. And if it were to be
supplemented and readjusted so as to stand not merely for the life
which on the whole we manage to live, but for a life ideally without
contradiction, it would appear to us quite remote from anything which
we know. Such a process of harmonising and readjusting a mass of data
to bring them into a rational shape is what is meant by criticism.
And criticism, when applied to our actual will, shows that it is not
our real will; or, in the plainest language, that what we really want
is something more and other than at any given moment we are aware
that we will, although the wants which we are aware of lead up to it
at every point.

To obtain something which approximates to a real will, then, involves
a process of criticism and {120} interpretation, which may be either
natural or intellectual; that is to say, it may proceed by “natural
selection,” through the method of trial and error, or it may be
rapidly advanced at favourable moments by the insight of a great
mind. But some forwardness in this criticism and interpretation,
bringing with it some deposit, so to speak, of objects of volition
in which the private will, so far as it is distinguished at all,
finds harmony and expansion, must be coeval with social life, and, in
short, with humanity.

It is such a process of interpretation that Rousseau ascribes to
the legislator. He fathers on him the whole labour of history and
social logic in moulding the customs and institutions of mankind.
And in agreement with our general attitude to Rousseau’s historical
imagination, we may take what he says of legislation and the
legislator as an expression of his views on the function of customs
and ordinances in the constitution of will. It is very remarkable,
considering the other aspect of his views, that he should have
conceived so distinctly, as the following passage shows that he did,
the immense contrast between a real will and anything which could be
presented as a whole in the momentary consciousness of human beings.

Here is his statement of the problem.

  “Laws are, strictly speaking, only the conditions of
  civil association. The people which submits to the laws
  ought to be their author. Only the associates can have
  the right to regulate the conditions of the society.
  But how are they to regulate them? Can {121} it be done
  by a common agreement, by a sudden inspiration? Has the
  body politic an organ for pronouncing its acts of will?
  Who will give it the necessary foresight to form such
  acts and to publish them before they are needed? Or how
  is it to pronounce them at the moment when they are
  required? How is a blind multitude, which often does not
  know what it wills, because it rarely knows what is good
  for it, to execute for itself so great and difficult an
  enterprise as a system of legislation? Of itself, the
  people always wills the good, but it does not always see
  it. The general will is always right, but the judgment
  which guides it is not always enlightened. It must be
  made to see objects such as they are, and, sometimes,
  such as they ought to appear to it; it must be shown the
  right road which it seeks, must be protected from the
  allurements of private will; places and times must be
  brought close to its eyes, and the attractions of present
  and visible advantages counterbalanced by the danger of
  remote and latent evils. Private persons see the good
  which they reject; the public wills the good which it
  does not see. All alike need guidance. The former must
  be obliged to conform their will to their reason; the
  latter must be taught to know what it wills. [2] Then,
  from the public enlightenment there results the union of
  understanding and of will in the social body; and hence
  the precise co-operation of the parts and the greatest
  power {122} of the whole. Hence springs the necessity of
  a legislator.” [1]

[1] _Contrat Social_, bk. II., ch. vi.

[2] There is a _prima facie_ contradiction in this rhetorical
antithesis; if all private individuals were enlightened, but
selfishly interested, there could be no public good will. The
contrast must lie between different classes of persons, if it is to
have a meaning.

In the following chapter [1] Rousseau touches the essence of laws and
institutions in a few words, which only embody a contradiction or a
miracle because he is thinking of the legislator’s work as a creation
accomplished at one blow.

  “In order that a people at its birth should have the
  capacity to appreciate the sound maxims of policy and
  follow the fundamental rules of political reason, it
  would be necessary for the effect to become the cause;
  for the social spirit, which is meant to be the work of
  the legislation, to preside over the legislation itself,
  and for men to be, before laws are made, what they are
  meant to become by their means.”

The legislator then, in face of this contradiction, must have
recourse to supernatural sanctions.

[1] _Contrat Social_, II. vii.

But the paradox precisely expresses the fact. Laws and institutions
are only possible because man _is_ already, what they gradually
make more and more explicit; because he has a general will, that
is, because the good which he presents to himself as his own is
necessarily in some degree a good which extends beyond himself, or
a common good. The criticism or interpretation which elicits the
general will or actual social spirit, by removal of contradictions,
and embodiment in permanent form, is essentially one with the work
which Rousseau ascribes to the legislator. And his paradox is removed
when we understand that the legislator is merely one of the organs of
the social spirit itself, as it carries out its self-criticism and
self-interpretation, in part by trial and error {123} and in part by
conscious insight and adjustment. The habits and institutions of any
community are, so to speak, the standing interpretation of all the
private wills which compose it, and it is thus possible to assign
to the General Will an actual and concrete meaning as something
different at once from every private will, and from the vote of any
given assembly, and yet as standing, on the whole, for what both the
one and the other necessarily aim at sustaining as the framework of
their life. It is needless to observe that such a representation
of the Real Will is imperfect, since every set of institutions is
an incomplete embodiment of life; and any given system of life is
itself also incomplete. It is more important to remember that, though
always incomplete, just as the system of sciences is an incomplete
expression of truth, the complex of social institutions is, as we
have seen, very much more complete than the explicit ideas which at
any given instant move any individual mind in volition.




{124}

CHAPTER VI.

THE CONCEPTION OF LIBERTY, AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE FOREGOING
SUGGESTIONS.

1. We have now seen that the problem of Self-Government may be
regarded from a point of view other than that which presented it
as a contradiction in terms. The contradiction depended on the
absolute opposition between self and others which was embodied in
the _prima facie_ idea of society; the result of which was that all
increase of individuality and all assertion of self were at the
first view hostile as regarded others, and liberty, the condition
of individuality, became a negative idea, prescribing as it were a
maximum of empty space, to be preserved against all trespassers,
round every unit of the social whole. We saw that notions of this
kind were pushed so far as to endanger the fundamental principle,
according to which self-affirmation is the root of morality, and
it was maintained that the ethical attitude essentially lay in the
negation and limitation imposed by social life upon the natural
tendency to self-assertion. [1] According to these ideas, the self in
society is something less than, if it could so exist, it would {125}
be out of society, and liberty is the arrangement by which, at a
sacrifice of some of its activities, it is enabled to disport itself
_in vacuo_ with the remainder.

[1] Pp. 27 and 73.

But if we may give weight to the suggestions of the two previous
chapters, the assumptions which we work with are transformed. The
difference of principle is that the average individual, such as each
of us takes himself to be in his ordinary [1] trivial moods, when he
sees, or thinks he sees, nothing in life but his own private interest
and amusement,--this average individual is no longer accepted as the
real self or individuality. The centre of gravity of existence is
thrown outside him. Even his personality, his unique and personal
being, the innermost shrine of what he is and likes to be, is not
admitted to lie where a careless scrutiny, backed by theoretical
prejudice, is apt to locate it. It is not in the nooks and recesses
of the sensitive self, when the man is most withdrawn from things
and persons and wrapped up in the intimacies of his feeling, that
he enjoys and asserts his individual self to the full. This idea is
a caricature of the genuine experience of individuality. It is true
that to feel your individuality is to feel something distinctive,
which gives you a hold and substance in yourself and a definite
position among others, and, it may be, against them. But on a careful
consideration, it will be found that this substance and position are
always sustained by some kind {126} of determinate achievement or
expansion on the part of the self. It always comes from taking hold
of the world in some definite way; which, just because it is definite
and affirmative, is at once a distinct assertion of the self, and
a transition from the private self into the great communion of
reality. The simplest machine will show us that it is the differences
of the parts which enable them to make a whole. And so, we are now
suggesting, it is in the difference which contributes to the whole
that the self feels itself at home and possesses its individuality.

[1] There is a difficulty in stating this point without confusion,
just because the “ordinary” individual, being at the bottom different
from what he seems, is actually determined in all sorts of ways,
consciously and unconsciously, by demands and ideas which go far
beyond what he would admit to determine him.

Following up such thoughts as these, we see that there is a meaning
in the suggestion that our real self or individuality may be
something which in one sense we are not, but which we recognise as
imperative upon us. As Rousseau has said of the social self, we say
more generally of the self or life which extends beyond our average
private existence, that it is more real than we are, and we only feel
ourselves real in proportion as we identify ourselves with it.

With such suggestions in our minds, we see the problem of liberty in
a new light. Liberty, no doubt, is as Rousseau has told us, so far
agreeing with Mill, the essential quality of human life. It is so, we
understood, because it is the condition of our being ourselves. But
now that it has occurred to us that in order to be ourselves we must
be always becoming something which we are not, or in other words, we
must always recognise that we are something more than we have become,
liberty, as the condition of our being ourselves, cannot simply be
something which {127} we have, still less something which we have
always had--a _status quo_ to be maintained. It must be a condition
relevant to our continued struggle to assert the control of something
in us, which we recognise as imperative upon us or as our real self,
but which we only obey in a very imperfect degree. Thus it is that
we can speak, without a contradiction, of being forced to be free.
[1] It is possible for us to acquiesce, as rational beings, in a law
and order which on the whole makes for the possibility of asserting
our true or universal selves, at the very moment when this law and
order is constraining our particular private wills in a way which we
resent, or even condemn. Such a law and order, maintained by force,
which we recognise as on the whole the instrument of our greatest
self-affirmation, is a system of rights; and our liberty, or to use
a good old expression, our liberties, may be identified with such a
system considered as the condition and guarantee of our becoming the
best that we have it in us to be, that is, of becoming ourselves.
And because such an order is the embodiment up to a certain point of
a self or system of will which we recognise as what ought to be, as
against the indolence, ignorance, or rebellion of our casual private
selves, we may rightly call it a system of self-government or free
government; a system, that is to say, in which ourselves, in one
sense, govern ourselves in another sense; not as Mill has said, by
each one of us being subject to all the “others” (taking “others” in
the same sense in which each of us is “one”), {128} but by all of us,
as casual private units, being subject to an order which expresses,
up to a certain point, the rational self or will which, as rational
beings, we may be assumed [2] to recognise as imperative.

[1] For limitations see ch. viii. below.

[2] In principle, actual individual assent is not needed. The
question when the assumption breaks down belongs to the subject of
the duty of rebellion and the significance of punishment.

2. Before proceeding to develop the idea of liberty, we may consider
for a moment the closely analogous idea of “nature” and what is
“natural.”

Like the notion of “liberty” which is that of “being able to be
yourself,” the notion of nature, which is that of “coming to be
_of_ yourself, or _of_ itself,” has always, however imperfectly
apprehended, exercised immense power over the mind. It is felt that
you have touch with reality when you have found something which can
grow of itself. But again, like the notion of liberty, the notion
of nature is apt to be apprehended in a form so partial as to be
practically negative, and in this form, to be given a hostile bearing
against what are, in fact, completer phases of the same idea.

That which is natural, or by nature, in the most obvious sense--what
most plainly appears to have “come of itself”--is what comes first in
time, and what comes with the least putting together the primitive
and the simple as against the late and the complex. And so in the
theoretical inquiry after what is solid and can be relied upon, there
constantly recurs in all ages the tendency to story-telling; to the
narration of what is supposed to have come first, as the simple
{129} spontaneous beginning out of which the world as we know it has
emerged with greatly altered attributes. The note of story-telling is
unmistakable in this naïve theory, whether we find it in poets who
portray the Golden Age, from Hesiod downwards, [1] or represented
as a fallacy of social compact by Plato in the second book of the
_Republic_ [2] or adopted as a juristic theory by Tacitus [3] and
the writers who relied on the idea of a “state of nature,” down to
Rousseau.

[1] The resemblance between Hesiod’s dream of the Golden Age and
modern doctrines of intensive culture is startling, and there is
probably a true historical continuity between them. This does not
involve the assertion that there can be no truth in the latter, but
it does suggest that the disproportionate emphasis laid upon it
(_e.g._ by Fourier and in _Merrie England_) indicates an element of
the old “Nature” fallacy.

[2] _Rep_., 358 E.

[3] _Annals_, iii. 26; cf. _Germania_, ch. xix. 20, “Neque corrumpere
et corrumpi ‘seculum’ vocatur. ...” Note the identification of “our
age” with corruption; cp. use of _fin de siècle_.

It may be observed at this point that the conception of a “law of
nature” made a very valuable middle term between the conception of a
purely primitive condition of the world and the ideal of a complete
society. The logical reason is plain. The instinct of getting at
something solid and permanent, which first reveals itself by going
back to the supposed original or simple, soon attaches itself also
to what is _generally_ found to exist, understanding generality as
a mark of that tendency to come of itself which it feels to attach
to what is real and able to stand in its own right. But generality
is a clue which leads a long way; and the mind passes from saying
“Fire burns [1] by nature, {130} for it burns everywhere; but law
is variable” [2] to observing that there are features of law which
have their own generality, and there thus appears to be a “natural”
element in law, which may mean the right of the strongest, [3] but
may again amount to a tendency to come out of the “state of nature.”
Just in the same way, the conception of Liberty has always drawn
from experience a certain positive tendency to progress, and has
never perhaps, even in the most fanatical theory, maintained the full
demand for isolation which its negative bearing might seem to imply.

[1] Argument cited by Aristotle, _Eth_., v. 10.

[2] Just so, in strict science, from the Atomists downward, the
primary qualities (spatial) are real, the secondary (colours)
conventional (or, as we say, “subjective”); the former meaning holds
good more generally than the latter.

[3] Plato, _Gorgias_, p. 484.

But again, the instinct which, in looking for what has power to grow
or come of itself, lays hold of what is merely primitive or merely
general, has in all great epochs of thought been met by a deeper
insight.

It is not merely what we are born _as_, or what the world begins
with, that comes of itself. The most ordinary conception of growth
involves maturity, and the term nature in Greek and Latin, as in
English, can indicate not only what we are born _as_, but what we are
born _for_, our true, or real, or complete nature. Thus the great
thinkers of every age have been led to something like Aristotle’s
conception, “what a thing is when its growth is completed, that is
what we call its nature [1] (growth or evolution)”; and so, if we
are to think of “nature” as a whole, it will not be, {131} as when
we speak of “natural” science, an outward world, whether of atoms
or of organisms, contrasted both with God and with Man, “for nature
in Aristotle is not the outward world of created things; it is the
creative force, the productive principle of the universe.” [2] To
us, inclined to contrast the natural at once with the human and
the divine, there is something startling in the vivid reality with
which the Greek thinkers hold the three ideas together. The creative
activity of the divine principle seems for Plato to be actually one
with growth, or nature, or evolution. [3] It may be of interest to
cite the great passage in which Plato lays his finger on the common
fallacy. [4]

  “Many learned men say that the elements and inorganic
  and organic world below man came by nature and chance,
  but that law and justice and man’s works and social
  institutions and religion are merely conventional,
  variable, and untrue. But we must maintain that law and
  religion and man’s works exist by nature, or are not
  lower than nature, being the products of mind according
  to right reason.” ... “For they give the name of nature
  to the origin of the earliest things; [5] but if really
  mind is earliest of all things, then _it_ may rightly be
  said to be superlatively natural.”

[1] Aristotle, _Pol_., i. i.

[2] Butcher, _Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art_, p. 116.

[3] _Republic_, x. 597.

[4] _Laws_, 889 ff. abridged.

[5] We are not dealing here with Platonic interpretation, but it
seems necessary to point out that, literally taken, this passage
accepts the principle that nature = primary genesis, and sets out to
prove mind to be natural in this sense. We might rather reject the
appeal to succession in Time altogether, as at bottom Plato means
to. But we see how emphatically mind is for Plato the superlatively
natural.

And so, as the universe is for the great thinkers {132} at once
natural and divine, the same applies to human society. Not only in
Aristotle’s trenchant expressions to the effect that the City State
is a natural growth, but in the whole of Plato’s careful analysis
of moral and social life, we find society depicted as a living and
growing creature, in which man’s nature expands itself from more to
more, having its own essence progressively communicated to it. And so
we find that the peculiar naturalness of the primitive and the simple
is only an illusion, caused by the greater difficulty of recognising
the larger individuality which comes both of and to itself in the
later and more complex phases of life. But whatever it was that was
real and that came of itself in the primitive and simple is there to
a greater degree--with more reality and as the same self, only more
complete--in the later and complex. The idea of a diminution of being
as we pass from the simpler to the more developed self is a fallacy
of non-recognition.

Rousseau, as we saw, maintains in words the traditional opposition
between the natural and the civil or moral condition of man. From the
tendency of his views, however, we might have expected that in his
philosophy the wheel would come full circle, and the term “nature”
would revert to its Greek meaning. But this is not the case, though
in Émile there is a compromise which points in some such direction.
Yet a remarkable passage [1] from Burlamaqui, a Genevese jurist, the
earlier contemporary of Rousseau, shows the reversion to the Greek
view of social nature completed in principle.

  “La liberté civile l’emporte de {133} beaucoup sur la
  liberté naturelle, et, par conséquent, l’état civil qui
  l’a produit est de tous les états de l’homme le plus
  parfait, et, à parler exactement, le veritable état
  naturel de l’homme. L’établissement d’un gouvernement
  et d’une puissance souveraine, ramenant les hommes à
  l’observation des lois naturelles, [2] et par conséquent
  dans la route de bonheur, les fait rentrer dans leur état
  naturel, duquel ils étaient sortis par le mauvais usage
  qu’ils faisaient de leur liberté.”

[1] Cited in Dreyfus-Brisac’s edition of the _Contrat Social_, p. 39.

[2] Note the value of “natural law” as a middle term equivalent to
the general and rational features of positive law, and forming a
step by which the “natural” is carried beyond the supposed “state of
nature.”

Upon this reversion to ancient usage there followed the movement
of the age of romantic genius and of organic science, and with
Goethe’s Erdgeist and Wordsworth’s religion of Nature the restriction
of the natural to the primitive and simple was destroyed. Nature
still remains a point of view under which we regard what relatively
speaking “comes of itself,” but it has ceased to exist as a
question-begging predicate, attached to pre-social or extra-social
conditions of man.

3. Liberty, as understood by the writers who were discussed in ch.
iii. of the present work, is related to the State much as Nature, in
the mouth of story-telling theory, is related to civilised society.
We saw that Seeley in his _Introduction to Political Science_ [1]
lays it down that “perfect liberty is equivalent to total absence
of government.” And this no doubt fairly represents our first
notion of the matter, when cleared of the limitations imposed upon
it by practical life, which {134} limitations--really a first hint
of the truth--we are apt to mistake for mere sophistications and
imperfections. We noted in Rousseau the surviving contrast between
natural liberty on the one hand and civil or moral liberty on the
other, and we observed that the expanding idea of what was natural
could not be prevented from covering the ground of the civil or moral
life. The thread of connection, or rather the ferment of expansion,
we found to be, in the case of nature, the idea of self-origination.
That was natural which came of itself.

[1] Seeley, quoted p. 91 above.

_(a)_ In the simple ideal of liberty, as equivalent to the absence of
all government--for we must not forget that it is an ideal, obtained
by neglecting the facts of life which run counter to it--there is
clearly embodied a claim which commands our respect. The claim is so
self-evident and so convincing to average human feeling--Mr. Spencer
would indeed say, with some truth, to animal feeling in general--that
its precise nature is seldom stated in distinct language. We have
assumed above that the root of it lies in the claim to be ourselves.
But it is safer to take it in the shape which it actually has for the
average consciousness, and this is the negative shape, as a claim
to be free from constraint. [1] If we ask, “What is constraint?”
the answer is founded on the current distinction between myself
and others as different minds attached to different bodies. It is
constraint when my mind is interfered with in its control of my body
either by actual or by threatening physical {135} violence under the
direction of another mind. A permanent and settled condition of such
constraint, by which I become in effect the instrument of another
mind, is slavery. And it will not lead us far wrong if we assume that
the value put upon liberty and its erection into something like an
ideal comes from the contrast with slavery. The ideal of positive
political freedom presupposes more complex experiences. But Homer
already knows that “Zeus deprives a man of half his manhood when he
becomes a slave.”

[1] We must assume, I suppose, that in Seeley’s sentence “Government”
= “Constraint,” or its _vraisemblance_ is lost.

This, then, we may take as the practical starting point in the notion
of freedom. It is what, with reference to a formed society, we may
call a status; the position of a freeman as opposed to a slave; that
is, of one who, whatever oppression he may meet with _de facto_ from
time to time, or whatever specified services he may be bound to
render, normally regards himself and is regarded by others as, on the
whole, at his own disposal, and not the mere instrument of another
mind.

Thus the juristic meaning of the term liberty, based on the normal
distinction between one self-determining person and another, we may
set down as its literal meaning, and so far the English writers,
of whom Seeley is the latest type, are on solid ground when they
define liberty as the absence of restraint, or perfect liberty as the
absence of all government (in the sense of habitual constraint by
others).

_(b)_ It is obvious that the above definition would be wholly
inadequate to the simplest facts respecting the demands which have
through all history been asserted and achieved under the name
of political {136} liberty. A man may be a long way more than a
slave and yet a long way less than a citizen. If, as Seeley says,
the English writer of the verses, “Ah, Freedom is a noble thing,”
only meant by Freedom, being out of prison, it is certain that he
meant much less than the Greek historian who two thousand years
before used almost the same words. “The right of equal speech,” he
wrote, “demonstrates itself in every way as a noble thing.” [1]
By this, as his words and their occasion make plain, he meant a
certain determinate security for the positive exercise of activities
affecting the welfare of the social whole, and some such security
is always understood to be involved in the notion of political
liberty. But we will content ourselves at this point with noting the
distinction and connection between the negative or juristic, and
the varyingly positive or political conception of liberty. For the
latter is, in its degree, a case of that fuller freedom which we are
about to trace to its embodiment in the state; and the phenomena of
political liberty are covered, of course, by the point of view which
we shall take in indicating the state as the main organ and condition
of the fuller liberty.

[1] Hdt., v. 78.

(c) The connection, we said, between juristic and political liberty
should be observed at this point. It is merely an example of what
we shall find throughout, that the apparently negative has its
roots and its meaning in the positive, and, in proportion as its
true nature becomes evident, its positive aspects become explicit.
There is no true security for juristic liberty apart from political
{137} liberty; and it has constantly been the infraction of juristic
liberty that has been the origin of the demand for a share in highly
positive political duties and functions. Mere protection for person
and property may seem an easy thing to define and maintain with just
a little goodwill; but the questions when, how, and in what sense it
is to be maintained involve the positive character of the political
system, and there is no ultimate security unless that system is
moulded by the whole compass of individuality which society contains.

_(d)_ Recurring then to the literal or elementary sense of liberty,
as the absence of constraint exercised by one upon others, we may
admit that, in going beyond it, we are more or less making use of a
metaphor. [1] We are passing from the idea of non-constraint pure
and simple to the idea of more or less moulding and selection within
the powers and activities of the self. It is true, indeed, and must
be maintained as a fundamental principle, that the “higher” liberty
is also in fact the “larger” liberty, presenting the greater area
to activity and the more extensive choice to self-determination.
[2] But this larger development remains within a positive general
character, and if more alternatives are open, there are also, by
that very fact, more which are closed. We cannot wholly exhaust the
new meaning of liberty as applied to the law-abiding and moral life
of a {138} conscientious citizen even by changing the negative into
the positive, and saying that, whereas mere juristic freedom was
only freedom _from_ constraint, political freedom means freedom _to_
act. The higher sense of liberty, like the lower, involves freedom
_from_ some things as well as freedom _to_ others. And that which we
are freed from is, in this case, not the constraint of those whom we
commonly regard as others, but the constraint of what we commonly
regard as a part of ourself. Here is the reason for saying that, when
we speak of liberty in the higher sense, we must be admitted to be
speaking metaphorically. [3]

[1] In this and the following section I have made great use of
Green’s discussion in the first chapter of the _Principles of
Political Obligation_.

[2] Perhaps I may refer on this head to “Liberty and Legislation” in
my _Civilisation of Christendom_ (Sonnenschein).

[3] But see below, p. 145.

In the straightforward sense of the word, we saw, I am free when
I am not made the instrument of another person’s will through
physical violence or the threat of it. The subtle questions which
may arise with regard to due or undue degrees of influence, by which
I may become the instrument of another’s mind, with more or less
willingness on the part of my own, are here disregarded. I am assumed
to be acting freely so long as I follow the inclination of my mind,
apart from any painful conflict forced upon it by the prospect of
physical interference with its belongings.

But from the earliest ages of ethical reflection, a further sense
has been ascribed to the term liberty. It has been pointed out
by moralists and philosophers--first, perhaps by Socrates and
Plato--that the condition of man as to being himself is fundamentally
affected not only by the power to do what he likes without
constraint, but by the nature of that which he likes to do. The human
{139} mind, it is explained, is never wholly at one with itself,
and the common phrases “self-mastery” or “self-control” are adduced
by way of presenting what we spoke of above as the ethical paradox
of self-government. [1] The mind, then, is treated by a metaphor as
if it were two or more persons; and the term liberty, which applies
_prima facie_ to the non-constraint of one person by another, is
applied to the non-constraint of something within an individual mind
by something else within it. Now, apart from further scrutiny, it
does not appear why the term liberty, when thus applied, should mean
anything of ethical value. As Plato observed, in a passage [2] from
which the current use of all these phrases is probably derived, it
seems absurd at first sight to speak of self-control as a distinctive
predicate of certain states of mind. For surely, within the mind,
that which is controlled must be of the nature of self no less than
that which controls it, so that, in saying that I have self-control,
I am saying that I am self-indulgent; in saying that my mind is free,
I am at the same time saying that it is a slave. Within certain
limits this paradox represents a truth, and the ethical rank of
the elements which coerce and are coerced may be quite oppositely
estimated. We may think fit to call ourselves free either when love
conquers reason or when reason triumphs over love. Still, as Plato
proceeds to point out, the general adoption of the metaphor, the
fact that we think and call ourselves “free” or “self-controlled”
or “fully ourselves” in some cases and not in others; and that we
do not in each of {140} these cases regard the opposite attribution
“slave,” “self-indulgent,” “not ourselves” as equally true with the
former, indicates that some substantial fact is forcing itself upon
us through the metaphor in question. It is the same problem as that
which Professor James has wittily stated when he points out that
“the sluggard, the drunkard, the coward never talk of their conduct
in that way (i.e. as conquering their impulses and temptations) or
say they resist their energy, overcome their sobriety, conquer their
courage, and so forth.” [3]

[1] P. 55.

[2] _Republic_, 430 E.

[3] _Principles of Psychology_, ii. 548.

It is most important, we may venture to observe in passing, not to
understand the substantive fact, or Plato’s presentation of it, as
if it lay in an alternative between two psychological factors, say
intelligence and desire, the one of which was to be preferred and
the other to be repudiated, through some quasi-ethical conception of
rank, such as the supposed affinity of the one factor with divine or
of the other with animal life. We are speaking of the sense in which
it can be asserted that the human self is, comparatively speaking,
free in one kind of life and unfree in another, both being assumed
to be chosen, in the absence of constraint by an external will. It
is plain that the only ground on which such an assertion can really
be sustained is that the one life more than the other gives effect
to the self as a whole, or removes its contradictions and so makes
it most fully what it is able to be, or what, by the implied nature
of each and all of its wants, it may be said really to want to be.
The claims of intelligence and desire in their various phases must be
{141} criticised according to this principle, and not advocated upon
presuppositions drawn from external comparisons.

But our question at the present moment is not as to the deeper
nature of that which we call the self _par excellence_, but as to
the bearing of the metaphor by which the assertion of such a self is
identified with liberty or absence of constraint. And the point is
plainly this; [1] that in the conflict between that which stands for
the self _par excellence_ and that which, at any time, stands opposed
to it, we have the clear experience that we are capable of being
determined by a will within our minds which nevertheless we repudiate
and disown, [2] and therefore we feel ourselves to be like a slave as
compared with a freeman if we yield, but like a freeman compared with
a slave if we conquer. We may be determined by something which not
only is not ourself--for in the greatest moments of life, when our
being touches its maximum, we, in a sense, feel an impulse which is
not ourself--but it is not ourself as something which has got hold of
us by force, and operates upon us by conflict and violence, without
having the kind of power needed to carry us away and sweep our whole
self harmoniously into its current. That we can be determined by a
will in us which neither is ourself nor represents it at a higher
level, and which we loathe and disown, is the experience on which the
metaphor of freedom and slavery is {142} based, when applied to the
life of man considered apart from external constraint. [3]

[1] See Green’s _Principles of Political Obligation_, p. i.

[2] This remains substantially true, even if we agree with Socrates
that it is impossible to know the better and prefer the worse at a
given moment. Our normal self will repudiate the view we took at some
moment.

[3] There is something worthy of Dante in Rousseau’s observation
(_Contrat Social_, Bk. iv. ch. 2, note) that the convicts in the
galleys at Genoa had “Liberty” stamped on their chains. The fetters
of the bad self are the symbol of freedom. Rousseau turns his remark
to commonplace, after his fashion, by referring it to the mere
liberation of society from malefactors.

_(e)_ The metaphorical application of the term Liberty to a state of
the individual mind has both its danger and its justification. The
state of mind in question, we repeat, is that in which the impulse
towards self-satisfaction sets itself upon an object which represents
the nature of the self as a whole, as free from contradiction or as
at its maximum of being, and triumphs over the alien and partial
will, the tendency to narrower tracks of indulgence, when entangled
in which it feels itself oppressed and constrained by a foreign
influence. When the mind does what, as a whole, it wills, as Plato
implies, [1] it feels free. When it cannot be said to will anything
as a whole, but is distracted among aims which cannot satisfy it,
then there is no sense in which it can be said to do what _it_ wills,
and it feels itself under constraint and a slave.

[1] _Republic_, ix. 577 E.

The metaphor has this danger. The contrast between whole and part is
too readily transformed, in popular theory, into the contrast between
an empty generality and everything in particular. The claim to be
free then involves the separation between mind as a general faculty
of volition, and every particular object. Mind is then said to be
free as an undetermined faculty, but as filled and {143} moulded by
any object or idea, (the passive participles “filled” and “moulded”
imply a relation which is not real, but, as assumed, is the ground of
the fallacy in question) it has lost its freedom and become a slave.
But if we retain the conception that mind has reality only as a whole
of determinate character, self-determined through its power of being
a self, but not through any power of creating particulars out of
nothing, we shall avoid this caricature of the higher freedom.

But it is far more important to note the justification of the
metaphor. We saw that, from Homer downwards, the conviction has been
ineradicable that liberty is the true nature of man. And we now
observe that the metaphor, through which the deepest sense of this
quality has expressed itself, depends upon the same principle as
the literal usage from which it is drawn. In the case of Liberty,
conceived as a condition of the mind, just as in the case of Liberty,
conceived as the absence of physical menace or coercion on the
part of other persons, the root of the matter is the claim to be
determined only by ourself. But, in the literal case, what we mean by
ourself is the given self, the group of will and wishes, of feelings
and ideas, associated from time to time with my particular body;
in short, the actual uncriticised “mind,” as we experience it all
day and every day. In the metaphorical case, we have made so much
progress in self-criticism as to know at least that our “self” is
something of a problem. We know that the given self, the mind from
day to day, [1] is not satisfactory; and {144} we throw the centre
of gravity outside it, and place the true self in something which
we rather want to be than actually are; although, at the same time,
it is clear that to some extent we are this something or we should
not want to be it. We realise, indeed, that to be ourselves is a
principle at once of distinction or position among others, and of
thorough transition into and unity with the life which is at the
root of theirs. And it is for this reason that we feel so confident,
in proportion as we at all lay hold upon a life which can thus
distinguish and identify us, that we have here the grasp of what is
in its nature our true self. Here then, as in the literal case of
liberty from personal constraint, we are putting in act the principle
of “being determined only by ourself.”

[1] See, however, note on p. 125 above.

And thus Liberty as understood by “theorists of the first look,” or
by those who in all ages have resisted arbitrary tyranny, belongs
after all to the same principle with the civil or moral liberty
of the philosopher. The claim to obey only yourself is a claim
essential to humanity; and the further significance of it rests
upon what you mean by “yourself.” Now if it is true that resistance
to arbitrary aggression is a condition of obeying only ourselves,
it is more deeply true, when man is in any degree civilised, that,
in order to obey yourself as you want to be, you must obey some
thing very different from yourself as you are. And it has been
well pointed out [1] that the consciousness of civilised peoples
is deeply alive to this significance of liberty, so that any work
of self-improvement may be most effectively {145} presented to a
popular audience as an effort to attain freedom by breaking the
bondage of drink, for example, or of ignorance, or of pauperism.
In spite of the objection that Freedom as thus represented is a
mere metaphor, “the feeling [2] of oppression, which always goes
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.” We have followed the usual
course of English thought, and the example of a writer whose caution
equalled his enthusiasm, in admitting that the lower sense of the
term Liberty is the literal sense, and that the deeper meaning may
be treated as metaphorical. It is worth while to observe that the
justice of this way of looking at the matter is very doubtful. It
is because we know, however indefinitely, that our self has a reach
beyond its daily needs, that arbitrary oppression becomes a thing
to be resisted at the price of life itself. Herbert Spencer draws
attention to the struggles of an animal which we try to confine,
as a proof of the innate feeling of liberty. But the domesticated
animal is the highest animal, or at anyrate not the lowest; while the
man domesticated on similar terms is what we call a slave, because
he has sold his liberty for his life. It is therefore in truth the
sense of the higher liberty--the greatness and unity of life--that
has communicated uncontrollable force to the claim for the lower;
and if the fuller meaning is the reality and the lesser the symbol,
it would be nearer the truth to say that the reality is the liberty
of {146} a moral being whose will finds adequate expression in its
life, of which liberty the absence of external constraint is only an
elementary type or symbol. The claim of the dictionary-maker that the
earliest or the average meaning is also the truest or the “proper”
meaning of words has no foundation. [3]

[1] Green’s _Principles_ p. 18. [2] _Loc. cit._

[3] Nettleship’s _Remains_, i. 27 and 30.

4. Liberty, then, throughout, is the being ourselves, and the
fullest condition of liberty is that in which we are ourselves most
completely. The ideal thus implied may be further explained by help
of the philosophical expression, “The free will is the will that
wills itself.” We have already seen, by implication, the meaning of
this. If we are asked, “But does not our will always will itself?”
we have the answer ready, that in one sense it does, but in another
it does not. We always want what we will, but what we will is not
always what would satisfy our want. A will that willed itself would
be a will that in willing had before it an object that would satisfy
its whole want, and nothing but its want. Its desires would not
be narrow and partial desires, in the fulfilment of which a man
feels choked and oppressed like one lost in a blind alley which
grows narrower and narrower. They would not be artificial desires
stimulated and elaborated into a tyranny of the machinery of life by
the self which gropes for more and cannot find the “more” which it
needs. That is to say, the volitions of the self would have undergone
a process just such as is undergone by a casual sensuous observation
as it passes into a great scientific theory. As the observation
stands it is inadequate to itself; for it poses as a truth, and is
manifestly a false {147} connection. So it is supplemented on the
one hand and purged away on the other; conditions and qualifications
are inserted into it to harmonise it with other knowledge, until
it makes some approach to being an expression of experience fit to
occupy a permanent place in man’s conception of the world. This,
the adjustment of a partial element to unity with the whole, is the
essence of criticism. And it is just such another process by which
the experience of life fills up and purifies the objects presented
to the casual volition. That is to say, the nature of the process
may be represented by considering it as having an effect of this
kind on an unharmonised will; and relatively at any given moment
such a process is in some degree going on. But we must bear in mind
that we are not to think of the sensuous individual as totally prior
in time to the social consciousness, and as a pre-existing matter,
upon which such an effect is to be thought of as super-induced. That
would be precisely the fallacy with which Rousseau struggles so hard,
and the escape from which we are attempting to illustrate; none
the worse, perhaps, if our own language betrays how very difficult
it is to throw it off altogether. We really know the sensuous
individual as such, the will in its impure and uncriticised form,
only in our experience, constant as that is, of failure, error,
and forgetfulness, in adhering to the rational life, which, on the
whole, is inherent in the very nature of our rational being, and
which we only desert in the same way and to the same extent as we
make mistakes in intellectual matters. We go wrong by narrowness and
confusion, by erroneous abstractions out of the whole, in a way only
possible {148} for a social and intellectual being, and not prior to
our entire social and intellectual character.

Understanding then that we are dealing with narrowness and confusion
and their opposites within a social intelligence already existing and
predominant on the whole, we may note the sort of relation in which
the more adequate will is analogous to the more adequate piece of
knowledge.

Take, as we said above, the actual casual will of any individual at
any given moment, especially if it is of a nature which, within the
context of civilised life, we commonly pronounce to be wrong. Let it
be, for example, an impulse of sensual passion. It is a commonplace
that in such impulses the self can find no abiding satisfaction.
They pass and leave him empty. They bring with them no opening out
of fresh possibilities, no greater stability to the mind. Yet they
have their meaning, and belong to human nature. They imply a need for
union, and an attraction outside the immediate self. If we compare
them with the objects and affections of a happy and devoted family,
we see the difference between a less adequate and a more adequate
will. The impulse, in passing into family affection, has become
both less and more. It is both disciplined and expanded. The object
presented to the will is transformed in character. Lawlessness is
excluded; but, in place of a passing pleasure, a whole world of
affections and interests, extending beyond the individual life, is
offered as a purpose and a stimulus to the self. In short--for it
is idle to expatiate upon what everybody recognises at once--you
can make a life out of the one, and you cannot out of the other.
In the family at its best the will has an {149} object which is
real and stable, and which corresponds to a great part of its
own possibilities and capacities. In willing this object, it is,
relatively speaking, willing itself. We might compare in the same
way the mere will to earn our daily bread, with the horizon of a
great intellectual profession; or the routine of an industry or
profession vacantly and formally pursued with the very same routine
conscientiously followed in a spirit of enlightenment. In every case
we are led up to the contrast of the actual indolent or selfish will,
and the will, in as far as it comes to be what its nature implies,
namely, that which we have spoken of as the real or rational will,
embodied in objects which have power to make a life worth living for
the self that wills them.

Now, our nature as rational beings implies the imperative claim
upon us of a will which is thus real or rational. Recognised or
unrecognised, it is rooted in our own wills, as the claim to be
true is rooted in our assertions. Any system of institutions which
represents to us, on the whole, the conditions essential to affirming
such a will, in objects of action such as to constitute a tolerably
complete life, has an imperative claim upon our loyalty and obedience
as the embodiment of our liberty. The only question that can arise
is whether the system is that which it pretends to be. But even
if rebellion is a duty, it can only be so because the imperative
obligation, as we recognise it, is irreconcilable with the particular
system which claims our obedience in its name. The imperative claim
of the will that wills itself is our own inmost nature, and we cannot
throw it off. This is the ultimate root of political obligation.

5. It is such a “real” or rational will that {150} thinkers after
Rousseau have identified with the State. In this theory they are
following the principles of Plato and Aristotle, no less than the
indications which Rousseau furnished, by his theory of the general
will in connection with the work of the legislator. The State, when
thus regarded, is to the general life of the individual much as we
saw the family to be with regard to certain of his impulses. The
idea is that in it, or by its help, we find at once discipline and
expansion, the transfiguration of partial impulses, and something
to do and to care for, such as the nature of a human self demands.
If, that is to say, you start with a human being as he is in fact,
and try to devise what will furnish him with an outlet and a stable
purpose capable of doing justice to his capacities--a satisfying
object of life--you will be driven on by the necessity of the facts
at least as far as the State, and perhaps further. Two points may be
insisted on to make this conception less paradoxical to the English
mind.

_(a)_ The State, as thus conceived, is not merely the political
fabric. The term State accents indeed the political aspect of the
whole, and is opposed to the notion of an anarchical society. But
it includes the entire hierarchy of institutions by which life is
determined, from the family to the trade, and from the trade to the
Church and the University. It includes all of them, not as the mere
collection of the growths of the country; but as the structure
which gives life and meaning to the political whole, while receiving
from it mutual adjustment, and therefore expansion and a more
liberal air. The State, it might be said, is thus conceived as the
operative criticism of all {151} institutions the modification and
adjustment by which they are capable of playing a rational part in
the object of human will. And criticism, in this sense, is the life
of institutions. As exclusive objects, they are a prey to stagnation
and disease--think of the temper which lives solely for the family
or solely for the Church; it is only as taken up into the movement
and circulation of the State that they are living spiritual beings.
It follows that the State, in this sense, is, above all things,
not a number of persons, but a working conception of life. It is
the conception by the guidance of which every living member of
the commonwealth is enabled to perform his function, as Plato has
taught us. If we ask whether this means that a complete conception
of the aims and possibilities of the common life exists even in the
minds of statesmen, not to speak of ordinary citizens, the question
answers itself in the negative. And yet the State can only live
and work in as far as such a conception, in however fragmentary,
one-sided shapes, pervades the general mind. It is not there mostly
in reflective shape; and in so far as it is in reflective shape it
is according to ultimate standards contradictory and incomplete. But
everyone who has a fair judgment of what his own place demands from
him, has, at his own angle, so to speak, a working insight into the
end of the State; and, of course, practical contradictions would be
fewer if such conceptions were completer and more covered by each
other. But a complete reflective conception of the end of the State,
comprehensive and free from contradiction, would mean a complete
idea of the realisation of all human {152} capacity, without waste
or failure. Such a conception is impossible owing to the gradual
character of the process by which the end of life, the nature of the
good, is determined for man. The Real Will, as represented by the
State, is only a partial embodiment of it.

_(b)_ The State, as the operative criticism of all institutions, is
necessarily force; and in the last resort, it is the only recognised
and justified force. It seems important to observe that force is
inherent in the State, and no true ideal points in the direction of
destroying it. For the force of the State proceeds essentially from
its character of being our own mind extended, so to speak, beyond
our immediate consciousness. Not only is the conduct of life as a
whole beyond the powers of the average individual at his average
level, but it is beyond the powers of all the average individuals
in a society taken together at their average level. We make a great
mistake in thinking of the force exercised by the State as limited to
the restraint of disorderly persons by the police and the punishment
of intentional law-breakers. The State is the fly-wheel of our life.
Its system is constantly reminding us of duties, from sanitation to
the incidents of trusteeship, which we have not the least desire to
neglect, but which we are either too ignorant or too indolent to
carry out apart from instruction and authoritative suggestion. We
profit at every turn by institutions, rules, traditions, researches,
made by minds at their best, which, through State action, are now in
a form to operate as extensions of our own minds. It is not merely
the contrast {153} between the limited activity of one individual
and the greater achievement of millions put together. It is the
contrast between individuals working in the order and armed with the
laws, customs, writings, and institutions devised by ages, and the
same individuals considered as their daily average selves, with a
varying but always limited range of immediate consciousness. For at
any given moment, no judge knows all the law; no author knows all
his own books, not to mention those of others; no official of an
institution has the whole logic and meaning of the institution before
his mind. All individuals are continually reinforced and carried
on, beyond their average immediate consciousness, by the knowledge,
resources, and energy which surround them in the social order, with
its inheritance, of which the order itself is the greatest part.
And the return of this greater self, forming a system adjusted to
unity, upon their isolated minds, as an expansion and stimulus to
them, necessarily takes the shape of force, in as far as their minds
are inert. And this must always be the case, not merely so long as
wills are straightforwardly rebellious against the common good, but
so long as the knowledge and energy of the average mind are unequal
to dealing, on its own initiative and out of its own resources, with
all possible conjunctions in which necessary conditions of the common
good are to be maintained. In other words, there must be inertia to
overcome, as long as the limitations of our animal nature [1] exist
at all. The State is, as {154} Plato told us, the individual mind
writ large, or, as we have said, our mind reinforced by capacities
which are of its own nature, but which supplement its defects. And
this being so, the less complete must clearly submit to find itself
in the more complete, and be carried along with it so far as the
latter is able to advance. It is very important to note, however,
that our mind at its best is very different from our mind at its
average; and it has understood and approved, when at its best, a
great deal which in its average moments comes upon it as force or
custom from the outside. Thus, there is no abrupt division between
our conscious mind and the social system of suggestion, custom, and
force, which supports and extends and amends it. The two are related
much as the focus of consciousness is related to the sub-conscious
and automatic habits by which daily life is rendered possible. It is
no more conceivable that social life should go on without force and
authoritative custom, because the end of social life is reflected in
the varying intelligence of individuals, than that individual life
should go on without sub-consciousness and automatism, because it is
ultimately relative to the ends which appear as ideas in the shifting
focus of the mind. The inherent limitations of State action will be
dealt with in a later chapter. We have thus far been attempting to
make clear what is meant by the identification of the State with the
Real Will of the Individual in which he wills his own nature as a
rational being; in which identification we find the only true account
of political obligation.

[1] Not “of our individuality.” Individuality is not, in principle, a
limitation which makes us unequal to our part in the whole.




{155}

CHAPTER VII

PSYCHOLOGICAL ILLUSTRATION OF THE IDEA OF A REAL OR GENERAL WILL.

1. The object of the present chapter is to assist the reader in
bringing together the conception of the State or the Community on
the one hand, and that of an actual personal will, existing in an
individual mind, on the other. [1] We have seen that Self-Government
can only be explained if the centre of gravity of the self is
thrown outside what we are continually tempted to reckon as our
individuality, and, if we recognise as our real being, and therefore
as imperative upon us, a self and a good which are but slightly
represented in our explicit consciousness, at its ordinary level. We
have seen that all sound theory and all good practice are founded
on the insight or on the faith [2] that the common self or moral
person of society is more real than the apparent individual; and
we have followed Rousseau’s clue in criticising as defective and
contradictory the actual will of {156} given persons, and in looking
for its interpretation and completion in law and institutions as the
embodiment of the social spirit.

[1] Cf. ch. ii., p. 43.

[2] The faith may of course exist in minds which would absolutely
repudiate the theoretical form here propounded for it. No one could
have had a more ardent actual faith in the reality of the greater
self than Bentham and Mill.

But Society and the State present themselves at first sight as
indefinite multitudes of persons. Institutions are many-sided facts;
and an unreflective citizen could hardly say of what he takes them
to be composed. And though law and custom approach more nearly to
what we commonly understand by a “will,” yet they again are apt to
be regarded as a sort of dead external weight with which the living
volition of the ordinary man has little or nothing to do.

Our purpose, therefore, is to explain what is meant by saying that
“a will” can be embodied in the State, in society, in law and
institutions; and how it is possible for the individual, as we know
him, to be in an identity with this will, such as continually to
vary, but never wholly to disappear. How can a man’s real self lie
in a great degree outside his normal self, and be something which he
only now and then gets hold of distinctly, and never completely?

2. We will begin (1) by pointing out the analogy between the groups
or systems of which our intelligence is composed, and the groups or
systems which make up the fabric of society, and we will then go on
(2) to exhibit them as up to a certain point aspects of the same fact.

(1) We may note two degrees of connection between the members of a
whole, which we may call “Association” and “Organisation.”

(i.) When two individuals are so connected that where you find
the one you expect to find the {157} other, they may be called
associates. And any kind of habitual grouping, from a gang of
thieves to a scientific or philanthropic institution, may be called
an Association. Owing probably to the verbal force which it borrows
from the verb “to associate,” the term “association” implies the
intentional coming together of units which have been separate, and
which may become separate again. The word “Society,” on the other
hand, has not this verbal force, and although an “association” may
call itself “a society,” yet “Society” as such is not spoken of as
an “Association.” When we speak of “Society” we do not emphasise the
aspect of being put together out of elements which exist apart, and
therefore we habitually apply the word to that natural grouping,
which, at any rate, we do not normally think of as purposely put
together and liable to be dissolved again. When the State is treated
as an Association, a definite theory of its nature is implied, such
as is involved in Herbert Spencer’s comparison between it and a joint
stock company.

Now this same term “Association” is the most familiar expression for
a connection between elements of mind, analogous to that between
persons who are called associates. If two elements of mind are so
connected that, where we find the one we expect to find the other,
they are said to be “associated.” If the engine’s whistle makes me
think the train is going to start, then it would be said that the
idea “train starting” is associated in my mind with the idea “engine
whistling.” They have before entered into the same mental group or
whole, and so, where we find the one, {158} we expect to find the
other, just as, where my friend X is, his comrade Y is probably not
far off.

We may here note the analogy between these two modes of
association--that of persons and that of mental elements. In
both cases, according to the plain man’s view of the matter, we
are dealing with wholly casual conjunctions of units naturally
independent. The associates in either case need no better reason for
now being together than that they had been together before. Their
connection expresses nothing intimate or essential in their natures,
and, if they fall apart again, they will not be seriously affected by
the separation.

Now, of course, this idea of mere conjunction is not strictly true
even of the connections between the most casual associates. Every
association, whether of comrades or of ideas, is a connection between
qualities, and therefore a general connection between the natures of
the related terms. People are not really companions for no reason at
all; and ideas are not really units or atoms which stick together
by mere juxtaposition, so that when one is pulled up out of the
Hades of oblivion it drags the other with it. Both the association
of companions and the association of ideas are tendencies in which
some general connection of qualities is at work, and expresses itself
through the detail of the actual surroundings, so far as an opening
is left to it. When the association is made explicit by both members
being present together, there is an outlet or utterance of the nature
of the associates which there is not when they are separated.

{159} But though all this is true, and can be detected in cases of
association by careful analysis, it is, relatively speaking, the
fact that commonplace association depends upon qualities which are
so superficial that they may set up a tendency to connection between
any units which are members of the same world. And, therefore, as
compared with any more thorough-going kind of connection, such
association may be set down as casual, and as determined by the mere
chance of juxtaposition.

(ii.) Let us compare the kind of connection just described as
association with that which we have agreed to call organisation.

Associates, [1] we saw, were together, as might roughly be said,
simply because they found themselves together. That is to say, they
were, after their association, what they were before it, and would
not be seriously affected if they were to be separated. Connections
of this kind are essentially between unit and unit. They fall short
of the nature of a plan which determines a great range of elements,
variously but with reference to an identical operation.

[1] An “Association,” it may be urged, generally has a definite
purpose, and so far, as indeed we said above, the associates come
together, and do not merely find themselves together. But this is
only an apparent difficulty. In comparison with the whole compass
of their nature, associates who come together for some limited
purpose--Bimetallism, Philanthropy, a political cause--do merely
find themselves together. They form, as the cynic will say, an
extraordinary menagerie, and their association may break up without
any apparent effect upon their nature. Obviously, however, there are
some purposes which go deeper into men’s characters, and others which
are shallower; and this merely illustrates our point that the most
casual association is a universal connection of qualities in disguise.

Beginning, as before, with the connection between {160} persons,
we may illustrate the difference by the comparison between a crowd
and an army. The mind of a crowd has indeed been taken as the type
of a true social mind. But it is really something quite different.
It is merely the superficial connection between unit and unit on an
extended and intensified scale. As unit joins unit in the street,
each determines his immediate neighbours, and is determined by them
through the contagion of excitement, and with reference to the
most passing ideas and emotions. What acts upon them in common is
necessarily what there is in common between persons meeting, as it
were, for no reason, and not knowing what they share beyond what they
immediately see and feel. The crowd may indeed “act as one man”; but
if it does so, its level of intelligence and responsibility will,
as a rule, be extraordinarily low. It has nothing in common beyond
what unit can infect unit with in a moment. Concerted action, much
more reasoning and criticism, are out of the question. The doing or
thinking of a different thing by each unit with reference to a single
end is impossible. The crowd moves as a mere mass, because its parts
are connected merely as unit with unit. Any form of connection which
could effect an organisation in the whole would make a demand on
the nature of every unit, which, where their conjunction is merely
casual, could not possibly be met.

An army, [1] no less than a crowd, consists of a multitude of men,
who are associated, unit to unit. Influences must pass and repass
between every one {161} of the men and those men with whom he is
standing in the ranks, or with whom he passes his leisure time. We
may note, by the way, that these influences are themselves of a more
permanent nature than those which pass between members of a crowd,
and that they must necessarily be modified by that other connection
of which we are about to speak. For the links of “association”
between man and man are not the determining force in the operations
of the army as such. The army is a machine, or an organisation, which
is bound together by operative ideas embodied on the one hand in
the officers, and on the other hand in the habit of obedience and
the trained capacity which make every unit willing and able to be
determined not by the impulse of his neighbours, but by the orders
of his officers. What the army does is determined by the general’s
plan, and not by influences communicating themselves from man to man,
as in a crowd. In other words, every unit moves with reference to
the movements of a great whole, with most parts of which he is not
in direct touch at all. He is not determined by simple reference to
the movements of his immediate neighbours. The army, that is, is a
system or organised group, the nature of which, or the predominant
idea embodied in its structure, determines the movements and
relations of its parts or members. The difference of the two modes
of determination is plainly visible on a review day, if we first
watch the compact regiments marching off the ground, and then the
crowd streaming away irregularly in search of rest or refreshment. By
organisation then, as opposed to association, we mean determination
of {162} particulars by the scheme or general nature of a systematic
group to which they belong, as opposed to their determination by
immediate links uniting them with what, relatively speaking, are
other particulars in casual juxtaposition with them. [2]

[1] The illustration was suggested to me by a passage in Mr. Stout’s
_Analytic Psychology_.

[2] Ultimately, of course, the distinction is one of degree. What
operates is always a general connection between members of a whole;
the only question is what kind of whole, and, therefore, what kind of
connection.

In the working and composition of mind the same difference is
observable between association and organisation. Mere association
means that any perception or idea may suggest absolutely any mental
element whatever with which it has developed a connection by entering
into the same mental whole. A study of the purely associative mind is
sometimes said to be found in the character of Miss Bates in “Emma.”
Perhaps, as really uncontrolled association can hardly be found
in a sane intellect, we may say that the character in question is
something more subtle and more true to nature; and that is, a study
of the tendency to pure association continually breaking out, and as
continually repressed, or “herded back” to the main subject, to use
the expression which Walter Scott applies to the way in which just
such an associative talker [1] is brought back to his point by his
hearer.

[1] Claude Halcro in the _Pirate_.

In mind, as in the external world, the higher stage of association
is organisation. The characteristic of organisation is control by a
general scheme [1] as opposed to influence by juxtaposition {163}
of units. The zigzag course of thought which is represented in such
a character as Miss Bates is due to the absence of control by any
general scheme. Every idea--every significant word--has practically
innumerable connections in the mind. If the course of thought has no
general direction impressed upon it, no selective control operative
within it, it may change its line altogether at every principal word.
[2] The possibilities of the ideas at our command make them like a
complex of railways, wholly consisting of turn-tables, so that, on
any one of these component parts, the train may swing round and go
off in a wholly new direction. This is notably illustrated by the
sense of context in interpretation. For anyone who has no such sense,
possible errors are endless, beyond the hope of correction.

[1] For the psychological theory of such control see Stout, _Analytic
Psych_. ii. 3.

[2] If it has not enough control to complete a significant sentence,
of course there is insanity or idiocy.

The opposite of such a zigzag course is a train of thought such as
an argument. In a train of thought, one general idea prescribes the
direction, or forms the “subject,” or limits what has been called
the universe of discourse. Attention is wholly guided by the general
idea, and refuses to be distracted by any interest or suggestion
which does not bear upon it. Let the general idea be, for example,
the relation of wealth to the best life. Experience shows that it
is most difficult to resist the varied interests and distractions
which present themselves in the attempt to keep this relation in
view. Easy and attractive modes of acquisition, easy and attractive
modes of expenditure, force themselves upon the mind as isolated
{164} suggestions, and divert it from the question: “Shall I, or
will any one else, be the better for it, as I understand better?”
The effort of control, needed to keep in view the general nature of
our conception of what is best in life, and to attend to suggestions
which offer themselves as to acquisition and expenditure, only in
so far as they seem likely to promote that conception, means the
predominance of a scheme or general idea through all the varied
circumstances of economic possibility. It makes no difference whether
we are speaking of reasoning or of practice. The nature of the
control which insists on relevancy, and of the intellectual system
in which it exhibits itself, is the same in both cases. Every mind,
in fact, is more or less organised under the control of dominant
ideas, which belong to its habitual preoccupations and determine
the constant bias of its thoughts. There is a well-known story how
a traveller in a railway carriage undertook to detect the vocation
of each of his fellow travellers from their respective answers to
a single question. The question was: “What is that which destroys
what it has itself produced?” and a naturalist, so the story runs,
revealed himself by the answer, “vital force,” a soldier replied
“war,” a scholar “Kronos,” a journalist “revolution,” and a farmer “a
boar.” [1] Each answer was determined by the dominant bias or idea
which selected out of the possible answers to the riddle that which
would harmonise with the general mental system under its control.
Selection, it must be remembered, is at the same time creation. In
every situation, {165} theoretical or practical, the surroundings
as a whole are new, and the rule or scheme has to assert itself in
conditions which are not precisely repeated from any former case. In
so asserting itself it does not simply _reproduce_ something old,
any more than a batsman recalls a former movement when he plays a
ball, but it _produces_ that thought or deed which expresses its
nature with reference to the new surroundings in which it has to act.
[2] For it is a universal tendency, a scheme partly defined, and in
process of further defining itself by moulding the material presented
to it.

[1] Steinthal, in James’ _Psychology_, II., 108.

[2] See Mr. Stout on “Proportional Systems,” _Analytic Psychology_,
ii. 167.

There is one more essential point. A mind has its dominant nature,
but is no single system equally organised throughout. It is rather
a construction of such systems, which may be in all degrees of
alliance, indifference, and opposition to one another. Each of such
systems, or groups of ideas and experiences, has its own dominant
scheme, and its own tendency in controlling thought or action. And,
as a general rule, in proportion as one system is active, all the
others are quiescent; in proportion as we are intent or engaged upon
one train of thought or one pursuit, we are not alive to suggestions
belonging to any other. Every system, or group of this kind, is
called in psychology an “Appercipient mass,” because it is a set of
ideas, bound together by a common rule or scheme, which dictates
the point of view from which perception will take place, so far as
the system in question is active. And without some “apperception,”
some point of view in the mind which enables the {166} newcomer to
be classed, there cannot be perception at all. The eye only sees
what it brings with it the power of seeing. Hence some of the most
striking instances of apperception are drawn from elementary cases
in which a really remote system is active in default of a better,
just because the action of some system is necessary and the nearest
responds. A child calls an orange “a ball”; a Polynesian calls a
horse “a pig.” These are the nearest “heads” or rules of apperception
under which the new perception can be brought. Every scientific
idea we apply, every set of relations in which we stand, and every
pursuit with which the mind is familiar, is a case of such an
appercipient mass, or rule or scheme of attention. And we know by
common experience how entirely quiescent is one such factor of the
mind while we are absorbed in the activity of another; how utterly,
for example, we disregard the botanical character of wild flowers
when we are clearing them out of the garden as weeds, and how wholly
we neglect the question whether they are “flowers” or “weeds” when
we are occupied in studying their botanical character. And in the
action of every appercipient mass, in as far as it determines thought
by the general nature of a systematic whole, rather than through
the isolated attraction exercised by unit upon unit, we have an
example of organisation as opposed to association; or, if we like,
of systematic connection or association between whole and part, as
opposed to the same principle operating casually and superficially
between unit and unit.

The scheme or systematic connection, it must be added, may work
unconsciously. Not all ideas {167} which control our thought and
action are explicit ideas in abstract form; and perhaps the general
nature and limits of a man’s mind are something of which he can never
be reflectively conscious, though he is aware of what he takes to
be his leading ideas. It is well known that principles which are
not presented to reflection may be intellectually operative, and
embodied in a train of results. Thus our appercipient masses may
have very different degrees of explicit system. But their action is
always systematic--the nature of the whole modifying what it comes in
contact with, and being modified by it.

With this conception of psychical systems before us, let us cast
one more glance at the organisation of society and the State. We
refused to take a crowd as a true type of society, and we looked to
the example of an army for the leading features of organisation as
opposed to casual “association.” The characteristic of an army on
which we insisted was the determination of every unit in it, not by
the movements and impulses of his immediate neighbours, but by the
scheme or idea of the whole. Now, on looking closer, we see that
society as such is a vast tissue of systems of this type, each of
them a relatively, though not absolutely, closed and self-complete
organisation. There are wheels within wheels, systems within systems,
groups within groups. But, speaking generally, the business and
pleasure of society is carried on by persons arranged in groups,
which exhibit the characteristic of organisation that the capacity
of every person is determined by the general nature and principle
of the group considered as a whole, and not by his relations to the
units who happen to be next him. {168} Such groups, for example, are
the trades and professions. Their structure may be very different.
In some the workshop is again a subordinate self-organised group. In
others the professional man works alone, and to all appearances goes
his own way. It is common to all of them, however, that they form
groupings of members, within each of which groupings all members are
determined in a certain way by the common nature of the group. Within
his trade or profession, a man acts, as it is said, in a definite
“capacity.” He regards himself and is regarded from a definite point
of view, and all other points of view tend to be neglected while
and in so far as he is acting in the capacity corresponding to his
membership of a certain group. [1]

[1] The group to which he belongs, as bound together by differences,
is often rather that of his clients or customers than of his
colleagues in his vocation. But there is generally a differentiation
within the vocation-group also.

_Prima facie_, there may be, as with systems which compose the
mind, all degrees of alliance, indifference, or opposition between
these groupings of persons; and the same person, belonging to many
different groups, may find his diverse “capacities” apparently at
variance with one another. A conscientious Trade Unionist may find
his capacity as a member of the Union, interpreted as binding him
to do his utmost for the amelioration of working class conditions
in general, apparently at variance with his capacity as the head of
a family bound to provide immediately for those whom he has brought
into the world. Or a judge or magistrate, obliged to {169} enforce
what he conceives to be a bad law, may find his official capacity
apparently at variance with his duty as a conscientious citizen. It
is plain that unless, on the whole, a working harmony were maintained
between the different groups which form society, life could not go
on. And it is for this reason that the State, as the widest grouping
whose members are effectively united by a common experience, is
necessarily the one community which has absolute power to ensure, by
force, if need be, at least sufficient adjustment of the claims of
all other groupings to make life possible. Assuming, indeed, that
all the groupings are organs of a single pervading life, we find it
incredible that there should ultimately be irreconcilable opposition
between them. That they should contradict one another is not more
nor less possible than that human nature should be at variance with
itself.

Thus, we have seen that the mind, and society or the State, are
identical in the characteristic of being organisations, each composed
of a system of organisations, every superior and subordinate grouping
having its own nature and principle which determines its members as
such, and every one, consequently, tending to impose upon its members
a peculiar capacity or point of view, which, in so far as a given
system is active, tends to put all other systems out of sight. The
connection between these systems is of very different kinds, and very
unequal in degree; but in as far as the mind and the community are
actual working wholes, it is to be presumed that in each there is an
ultimate or pervading adjustment which hinders {170} contradiction
from proceeding to destructive extremes. And neither the mind nor
the community, as working organisations, can be accounted for on the
principle of mere association.

(2) After pointing out the analogy between the organised structure
of minds and the organised structure of society, we now go on to
show that minds and society are really the same fabric regarded from
different points of view. The explanation may be divided into three
parts.

(i.) Every social group is the external aspect of a set of
corresponding mental systems in individual minds.

(ii.) Every individual mind is a system of such systems corresponding
to the totality of social groups as seen from a particular position.

(iii.) The social whole, though implied in every mind, only has
reality in the totality of minds in a given community considered as
an identical working system.

(i.) Society and the State and every institution present themselves
to us at first sight as a number of persons, together, perhaps, with
certain buildings and other external apparatus, and certain kinds
of work carried on and tangible results produced--so many children
“educated,” so many workmen “employed,” so many ships built or fields
tilled.

But if we could bring before ourselves the complete reality of any
social group or institution, we should find ourselves considering
a very different order of facts. Let us think for a moment of
a rate-supported elementary school. We imagine it as a heap of
buildings and a mass of children with a percentage of teachers
scattered among {171} them. But in what does its actual working
really consist, and on what does it depend?

The actual reality of the school lies in the fact that certain living
minds are connected in a certain way. Teachers, pupils, managers,
parents, and the public must all of them have certain operative
ideas, and must be guided according to these ideas in certain
portions of their lives, if the school is to be a school. Now, the
being guided by certain operative ideas is, in other words, the
activity of certain appercipient masses dictating a certain point of
view, in so far as those particular masses are awake. And it must
be noted that the connection or identity in which the school exists
presupposes a different activity, that is, a different appercipient
system, in every mind, and more especially in every class of mind
concerned. It is the same as in our old example of the screw and the
nut. No school could be made of teachers alone or of pupils alone;
nor, again, could a school be made with teachers who were all the
same, or with pupils who were all the same.

So, if we could visualise the reality of the school--the
institution--what we should see would be an identical connection
running through a number of minds, various and variously conditioned.
But within each mind the connection would take a particular shape,
such as to play into the connections with all other minds, as a
cogwheel plays into the other cogwheels of a machine. The pupil must
be prepared to learn in his particular way and the teacher to teach
in his particular way. The parents and the public also have their
{172} own relations to the work of teaching, and whether for good
or for evil they take up some attitude to it, and their attitude
modifies it. Thus the connection, as it is within any one mind,
is useless and meaningless if you take it wholly apart from what
corresponds to it in the others. It is like a wheel without an axle
or a pump handle without a pump. And it is because of this nature of
the elements which make up the institution that it is possible for
the institution itself to be an identity, or connection, or meeting
point, by which many minds are bound together in a single system.

It may seem as if this way of analysing an institution was reducing
a solid fact into mere thoughts. But it is not really so. Taking the
ideas of all concerned as they really are, we have the facts in space
and time--buildings, appliances, hours of work and attendance, and so
on--included in them. It is impossible to state the idea fully and
correctly without including the environment on which it rests, and
the activities in which it is realised. We are not to omit the facts
in space and time from what we mean by an institution; the only thing
is that we have not known them as they really are till we have known
them as bound into unity by the mental systems of which they are the
context or the expression. The child and the teacher alike must think
of their work with reference to particular times and places, or they
would not do it at those times and places; and it is only in actually
doing it at those times and places that the idea, or point of view,
which stands for the school in each of their minds, is able to assert
itself without frustration.

{173} Thus we may fairly say that every social group, or institution,
is the aspect in space and time of a set of corresponding mental
systems in individual minds. We may draw corollaries from this
conception, both as to the nature of the individual will, or active
mind, and as to the nature of the social and political whole.

(ii.) Every individual mind, in so far as it thinks and acts in
definite schemes or contexts, is a structure of appercipient systems
or organised dispositions. Now, we do not suggest at present that
all appercipient systems can be represented as social groups, though
there are few, if any, such systems which do not involve some
relations with persons connected in time and space. But it is clear,
from the explanations of the last section, that every social group
or institution involves a system of appercipient systems, by which
the minds that take part in it are kept in correspondence. Every
individual mind, then, so far as it takes part in social groupings
or institutions, is a structure of appercipient systems, answering,
each to each, to the different capacities in which it enters into
each grouping respectively. We have already remarked on the way in
which the distinction between different “capacities” answers to the
psychological tendency for the activity of one appercipient system to
obstruct the activity of all others. It is hardly necessary to point
out that, partly for this reason, though the mind must be an actual
structure of systems, it is very far from being a rational system of
systems. The fact that, when one system is active, all others, as a
rule, are inert, conceals the contradictions which {174} underlie the
entire fabric, and protects them from criticism and correction.

But though the mind is thus implicitly self-contradictory in various
degrees, this does not alter the fact that its general nature is to
be a unity of organised ideas answering to the actual set of parts
which the individual plays in the world of space and time. Thus each
individual mind, if we consider it as a whole, is an expression
or reflection of society as a whole from a point of view which is
distinctive and unique. Every social factor or relation, to which it
in any way corresponds, or in which it in any way plays its part,
is represented in some feature of its appercipient organism. And
probably, just as, in any man’s idea of London, there is hardly any
factor of London life which does not at least colour the background,
so, in every individual impression of the social whole, there is
no social feature that does not, in one way or another, contribute
to the total effect. In the dispositions of every mind the entire
social structure is reflected in a unique form, and it is on this
reflection in every mind, and on the uniqueness of the form in which
it is reflected, that the working of the social whole, by means of
differences which play into one another, depends. If, so to speak,
we lay a mind on the dissecting table, we find it to consist for the
most part of a fabric of organised dispositions, each disposition
corresponding to a unique point of view or special angle [1] from
which it plays a part in some human function. About the precise
relation of a human function to the fact that, as a {175} rule, it
connects together a plurality of human beings, we shall have more
to say in the following chapter. It is enough for the present that
whatever does connect a plurality of human beings depends on the
operation of appercipient systems in their minds, and therefore every
individual mind is, as Plato has told us, so far as it goes, for good
or evil, the true effective reality of the social whole. And it is
easy to see when we consider the working of organised apperception,
how it is possible actually to will more or less of our own
volitional system. There is first the contrast between appercipient
systems which are at any time active and those which are not active,
and then there is the contrast between our actual volitional nature
at its actual fullest, and the demands implied by the nature of
the whole, from which it is inseparable. These demands are always
appearing more or less in every act of willing our own will.

[1] I owe this comparison to a lecture by Prof. S. Alexander.

(iii.) The social whole, regarded from a corresponding point of
view, would be a whole consisting of psychical dispositions and
their activities, answering to one another in determinate ways. It
would therefore be of the nature of a continuous or self-identical
being, pervading a system of differences and realised only in them.
It differs from a machine, or from what is called an “organism” pure
and simple, by the presence of the whole in every part, not merely
for the inference of the observer, but, in some degree, for the
part itself, through the action of consciousness. But it would be a
mistake, we should observe at this point, to identify the presence
of {176} the whole for the part by means of consciousness, with the
consciousness of the part that the whole is present to it. The latter
is a speculative idea, the former is a fact which embodies this idea
for the observing theorist, but not necessarily or usually for the
working consciousness itself. In the shape of our minds and their
adjustment to our work, of which we are unconscious, there is an
irreducible analogy between human society and the lower organisms.
The consciousness which guides our lives is a consciousness of
something, but not as a rule a consciousness of the place of that
something in the whole of life. We live in our objects, but we do not
know how or how far our objects identify us with the whole to which
we ultimately belong.

It is plain that the social whole can, in practice, only be complete
in a plurality of individuals. We know that in the development of
human nature, which we take as the ultimate standard of life, no one
individual can cover the whole ground. As in the natural world in
space and time, so, in the world of human beings which on one side
belongs to it, differentiation implies dispersion into a plurality
of centres. The same man, according to what seems to be the limit
of physical and psychical possibility, could not be both Plato
and Aristotle, nor both Greek and Jew, not even both Spartan and
Athenian, not to say both man and woman. We are on less secure ground
when we say that he could not, effectively and as a rule, be both
statesman and shoemaker, or soldier and clergyman. It is plain that
in some cases capacities may be united which in other cases are found
apart. {177} The same man may be a good architect and a good workman,
or again, the architect and the workman may be different persons,
though suited to work together. We may reply, of course, that
whatever abilities lie within one personality, effective work demands
the division of labour. This is true, but is obviously a matter of
degree. The man who does only one thing does not always do it best,
and it is not easy to say what “one thing” means.

The point of these suggestions is to make it clear that, while
plurality of human beings is necessary to enable society to cover
the ground, as it were, which human nature is capable of covering,
yet actual individuals are not ultimate or equal embodiments of the
true particulars of the social universal. We thus see once more
that the given individual is only in making, and that his reality
may lie largely outside him. His will is not a whole, but implies
and rests upon a whole, which is therefore the true nature of his
will. We also gain some light on the unity of the social mind. For
it seems plain that one actual human being may cover the ground,
which, in other instances, it takes many men to occupy. And in
some such examples--not, or not obviously, in those where a high
intensity of genius is the essential quality--there seems little
reason to distinguish the correlation of dispositions within the one
person from the correlation of the same dispositions if dispersed
among different persons. If I am my own gardener, or my own critic,
or my own doctor, does the relation of the answering dispositions
within my being differ absolutely and altogether from what {178}
takes place when gardener and master, critic and author, patient and
doctor, are different persons? My instructions to my gardener are
conveyed in language, it will be said, while I know my own wishes
directly. And this is not the place to press the problem home either
psychologically or metaphysically. But, just to induce reflection,
it may be asked whether my instructions to myself are not as a rule
conveyed and remembered in language. If we consider my unity with
myself at different times as the limiting case, [1] we shall find it
very hard to establish a difference of principle between the unity of
what we call one mind and that of all the “minds” which enter into a
single social experience.

[1] Cp. p. 110 above.

In any case, we have said enough to suggest that Society _prima
facie_ exists in the correlated dispositions by which a plurality
of individual minds meets the need for covering the ground open to
human nature, by division of labour in the fullest sense. But we have
further pointed out that the true particularisation of the human
universal does not necessarily coincide with the distinction between
different persons, and that the correlation of differences and the
identity which they constitute remain much the same whether they
chance to fall within a single human being, or to be dispersed over
several. The stress seems, therefore, to lie on the attainment of the
true particularisation which does justice to the maximum of human
capacity, rather than on the mere relations which arise between the
members of a _de facto_ plurality. Not that the presence of human
nature in any {179} individual does not constitute a claim that it
shall be perfected in him, but that its perfecting must be judged by
a criticism addressed to determining real capacities, and not by the
accidental standard of a given plurality. We shall pursue these ideas
further in the following chapter.




{180}

CHAPTER VIII.

NATURE OF THE END OF THE STATE AND CONSEQUENT LIMIT OF STATE ACTION.

1. According to the course of thought which we have been pursuing,
the distinction between the individual on the one hand, and the
social or political whole on the other, is not relevant to the
question where the “end” of man in Society is to be sought. For the
conceptions of Society and the Individual are correlative conceptions
through and through; at whatever level, therefore, we take the one,
we are bound to construe the other as at the same level; so that,
to distinguish the one element from the other as superior from
inferior, or as means from end, becomes a contradiction in terms. If
we begin by drawing boundaries round the individual, the boundaries
which we draw reproduce themselves in society conceived as a total
of such individuals, and the question of means and end, as we saw
in Bentham’s case, [1] takes the form whether “each” is the means
to the welfare of “all,” or “all” to the welfare of “each”; the
distinction thus becoming purely verbal. While, if we set no limit
to individuality, except the limit of the nature {181} which makes
it contributory to the social universal, then we find that the
advancements of the universal and of its differences vary together,
and are indeed one and the same thing. It is idle to think of
dissociating them as means and end.

[1] Chapter III.

The only way in which the idea of means and end can be applied to
the social whole and its parts, is to take Society when at its lower
level, being dealt with under the aspect of mere plurality, as a
means to what it is at its higher level, when realised as a communion
of individualities at their best. But from this point of view we get
no distinction of means and end as between Individuals and Society.
What we get is Individuals and Society alike, as understood and
partly existing at one level (that of commonplace Individualism and
Collectivism), taken as a means to both Individuals and Society
at a higher level. As we have seen, the only true explanation of
self-government is to throw the reality of the self outside what
passes for its average nature, and in this sense the average nature
may be treated as a means to the truer or fuller self--as something,
that is to say, which is instrumental to the latter, and has no
rights against it.

2. For us, then, the ultimate end of Society and the State as of
the individual is the realisation of the best life. The difficulty
of defining the best life does not trouble us, because we rely
throughout on the fundamental logic of human nature _qua_ rational.
We think ourselves no more called upon to specify in advance what
will be the details of the life which satisfies an intelligent being
as such, than we are called upon to specify in advance {182} what
will be the details of the knowledge which satisfies an intelligent
being as such. Wherever a human being touches practice, as wherever
he touches theory, we find him driven on by his intolerance of
contradictions towards shaping his life as a whole. What we mean by
“good” and “truth” is practical and theoretical experience in so far
as the logic which underlies man’s whole nature permits him to repose
in it. And the best life is the life which has most of this general
character--the character which, so far as realised, satisfies the
fundamental logic of man’s capacities.

Now, it is plain that this best life can only be realised in
consciousness, that being the medium of all satisfaction and the
only true type of a whole in experience. And all consciousness, as
experienced by man, is on one side particular, attached to bodies,
and exclusive of consciousnesses attached to other bodies. In a
sense, it is true that no one consciousness can partake of or
actually enter into another. Thus, it is apt to be held, as we have
amply seen, that the essential danger of State interference lies in
the intrusion of something originated by “others” upon a distinct
particular consciousness, whose distinction and particularity--its
freedom--are thus impaired. It is all-important to our point of view
that this prejudice should be dispelled. Force or automatic custom
or authoritative tradition or “suggestion” are not hostile to one
individuality because they come from “others,” but because their
nature is contradictory to the nature of the highest self-assertion
of mind, because they are, so to speak, in a medium incompatible with
its medium. They {183} are just as hostile to this self-assertion,
just as alien, if they emanate, as they constantly do, from
conflicting elements in our complex private experience, as if they
come to us, as we say, “from without.” The question is of their
“nature” and tendency, not of their centre of origin. Individuals are
limited and isolated in many ways. But their true individuality does
not lie in their isolation, but in that distinctive act or service
by which they pass into unique contributions to the universal. True
individuality, as we have said, is not in the minimisation which
forbids further subdivision, but in the maximisation which includes
the greatest possible being in an inviolable unity. It is not,
therefore, the intrusion upon isolation, as such, that interferes
with individuality; it is the intrusion, upon a growing unity of
consciousness, of a medium hostile to its growth.

But we have seen that force, automatism, and suggestion, are in
some ways necessary to the support and maintenance of the human
consciousness, owing to its animal limitations. They are, indeed, as
is well known, the condition of its progress. Therefore, in promoting
the best life, these aids must be employed by society as exercising
absolute power--viz., by the State. And the problem presented
by their employment is _not_ a question of the “interference of
the State with the Individual”--an antithesis which is strictly
meaningless; but it is a question how far and in what way the use of
force and the like by the State is a hindrance to the end for which
the State itself exists. In other words, it is to be ascertained
how far the fullest self-assertion of the social {184} universal
in its differences--the best life--can be promoted or is likely to
be endangered by means which are of a different order, and so in
some circumstances opposed to it. The point is not that _I_ and
some thousands more break in by force upon _you_ in particular and
violate _your_ isolation; but that such breaking in by force, whoever
does it and whoever suffers by it, and even if through passion or
obsession _you_ do it to _your_self and _I_ to _my_self, is hostile
_prima facie_ to the living logic of the will, which alone can create
a unity and realise a best. How then, and under what reservations,
in the complicated conflict of the fuller and narrower self, can
this dangerous drug of violence be administered, so to speak, as a
counter-poison to tendencies which would otherwise give no chance
to the logical will? With this difficulty in our minds, we will
endeavour to determine the general principle on which force and
menace should be used by the State, and a routine be mechanically
maintained by it.

3. We have hitherto spoken of the State and Society as almost
convertible terms. [1] And in fact it is part of our argument that
the influences of Society differ only in degree from the powers of
the State, and that the explanation of both is ultimately the same.
But on the other hand, it is also part of our argument that the
State as such is a necessary factor in civilised life; and that no
true ideal lies in the direction of minimising its individuality or
restricting its absolute power. By the State, then, we mean Society
as a unit, recognised as rightly exercising control over its members
{185} through absolute physical power. The limits of the unit are, of
course, determined by what looks like historical accident; but there
is logic underneath the apparent accident, and the most tremendous
political questions turn upon the delimitation of political units.
A principle, so to speak, of political parsimony--_entia non sunt
multiplicanda praeter necessitatem_, “two organisations will not
survive when one can do the work”--is always tending to expand the
political unit. The limits of the common experience necessary for
effective self-government are always operating to control this
expansion. We might therefore suggest, as a principle determining
the area of states, “the widest territorial area compatible with the
unity of experience which is demanded by effective self-government.”
But the State _de facto_ (which is also _de jure_) is the Society
which is recognised as exercising compulsory power over its members,
and as presenting itself _qua_ a single independent corporation among
other independent corporations. Without such power, or where, if
anywhere, it does not exist, there can be no ultimate and effective
adjustment of the claims of individuals, and of the various social
groups in which individuals are involved. It is the need for this
ultimate effective adjustment which constitutes the need that every
individual in civilised life should belong to one state, and to one
only. Otherwise his “real” will might have no working representative
at all, but all be sheer conflict. That Society, then, is a State,
which is habitually recognised as a unit lawfully exercising force.
We saw that the characteristics of Society pass gradually into those
of the State. It would not be true that {196} Society is a State
only as actually exercising force; but it would perhaps be true to
say that State action as such, though far from being limited to
the downright exercise of force, yet consists of all that side of
social action which depends on the character of ultimate arbiter
and regulator, maintainer of mechanical routine, and source of
authoritative suggestion, a character which is one with the right to
exercise force in the last resort.

[1] See, however, p. 150 ff.

The end of the State, then, is the end of Society and of the
Individual--the best life, as determined by the fundamental logic
of the will. The means at its disposal, _qua_ State, always partake
of the nature of force, though this does not exclude their having
other aspects as well. Taxation may have the most reasonable and
even the most popular purpose, yet the generality and justice of
its incidence, and the certainty of its productiveness, can only be
secured by compulsion. No State could undertake its work on the basis
of voluntary contributions. A universal end, we might say, is indeed
not a mere general rule; but you cannot carry out a universal end in
a plurality of units--and a set of human individuals is always in one
aspect a plurality of units--without enforcing general rules.

4. Here, then, we have our problem more closely determined than in
the previous chapters. There we saw, in general, that self-government
can have no meaning unless we can “really” will something which we
do not always “actually” will. And we were led to look for a clue to
our real or implied will in the social spirit as incorporated in laws
and institutions, that is to say in Society as a {187} working whole
reflected in the full system of the consciousnesses which composed it.

We supposed ourselves prepared, then, it would seem, to do and
suffer anything which would promote the best life of the whole--that
maximisation of our being which, from the nature of our real will, we
saw to be imperative upon us--a demand implied in every volition and
from which we could never escape.

But now we are face to face with the question what we _are_ called
upon to do or to suffer, as members of a State, in promotion of
the best life. We have here to renew, from another standpoint, the
discussions of chapter iii. The governing fact of the situation is
that the means of action at our disposal as members of a State are
not, on their distinctive side, _in pari materia_ with the end. It
is true that the State, as an intelligent system, can appeal by
reasoning and persuasion to the logical will as such. It constantly
does so in various forms, and a State which did nothing of the kind
either directly or indirectly would not possess the recognition
which is necessary to its very existence. So far its work is _in
pari materia_ with the end, being a direct element in the expansion
of mind and character in their own spiritual medium of thought and
will. But this side of its work is not distinctive of the State,
and, therefore, is not that for which more particularly it exists.
Its distinctive attribute is to be ultimate arbiter and regulator
of claims, the guarantor of life as _at least_ a workable system
in the bodily world. It is in its ultimateness _de facto_ that the
differentia lies which separates it from the innumerable {188} other
groupings and associations which go to make up our complex life. This
is shown in the fact that each of us, as we have said, must belong
to a State, and can belong to one only. For an ultimate authority
must be single. Now, authority which is to be ultimate in a sphere
including the world of bodily action, must be an authority which
can use force. And it is for this reason that, as we said, force is
involved in the distinctive attributes of the State.

But force is not _in pari materia_ with the expansion of mind and
character in their spiritual medium. And, thus, there at once appears
an inadequacy of means to end as between the distinctive _modus
operandi_ of the State and the end in virtue of which it claims to
represent the “real” will.

What is the bearing of this inadequacy? What is the most that the
State, in its distinctive capacity, can do towards promoting a form
of life which it recognises as desirable? Its direct power is limited
to securing the performance of external [1] actions. This does not
mean merely the performance of outward bodily movements, such as
might be brought to pass by actual physical force. It is remarkable
that actual physical force plays a very small part in the work of any
decently ordered State. When we say that the State can do no more
than secure the performance of external actions, we do not exclude
from the action the intention to act in a certain way. With out such
an intention there is no action in the sense of human action at all,
but merely a muscular movement. It is necessary for the State to
attach {189} importance to intention, which is involved in the idea
of human action, and is the only medium through which the muscular
movements of human beings can be determined with any degree of
certainty. The State, then, through its authority, backed ultimately
by physical force, can produce, with a fair degree of certainty,
the intention to act in a certain way, and therefore the actions
themselves. Why do we call intentional actions, so produced, external
actions only?

[1] Green, _Principles of Political Obligation_, pp. 34, 35.

It is because the State is unable to determine that the action
shall be done from the ground or motive which alone would give it
immediate value or durable certainty as an element in the best life.
On the contrary, in so far as the doing of the action is due to the
distinctive mode of operation which belongs to the State, due, that
is to say, to the hope of reward or the fear of punishment, its value
as an element in the best life is _ipso facto_ destroyed, except in
so far as its ulterior effects are concerned. An action performed in
this sense under compulsion is not a true part of the will. [1] It is
an intention adopted from submissiveness or selfishness, and lacks
not only the moral value, but what is partly the same thing, the
reliable constancy of principle, displayed in an action which arises
out of the permanent purposes of a life.

[1] The theory of punishment will modify this proposition in some
degree.

The State, then, as such, can only secure the performance of external
actions. That is to say, it can only enforce as much intention [1]
as is {190} necessary to ensure, on the whole, compliance with
requirements stated in terms of movements affecting the outer world.
So far from promoting the performance of actions which enter into the
best life, its operations, where effective, must directly narrow the
area of such actions by stimulating lower motives as regards some
portion of it.

[1] On this question _vide_ Green’s very thorough discussion. It is
true, of course, that the law takes account of intention, and does
not, _e.g._, treat accidental homicide as murder, the difference
between them being a difference of intention. But it is obvious that,
in attempting to influence human action at all, so much account
as this must be taken of intention; for intention is necessary to
constitute a human action. An unintentional movement of the muscles
cannot be guarded against by laws and penalties; it is only through
the intention that deterrent or other motives can get at the action,
and a constant law-abiding disposition is the best security for
law-abiding action. On the importance of intention and disposition as
affording a certainty of action, Bentham, who wholly rejects judgment
according to moral motive, is as emphatic as possible.

5. The State, then, in its distinctive capacity, has no agency at its
command for influencing conduct, but such as may be used to produce
an external course of behaviour by the injunction or prohibition of
external acts, in enforcing which acts the State will take note of
intentions, so far as it can infer them, because it is only through
them that its influence can be exerted.

The relation of such a means to the imperative end, on which we have
seen that political obligation depends, must be in a certain sense
negative. The means is one which cannot directly promote the end,
and which even tends to narrow its sphere. What it can effect is to
remove obstacles, to destroy conditions hostile to the realisation
of the end. This brings us back to a principle laid down by Kant,
[1] and in its bare statement strongly resembling Mill’s contention.
When force is opposed to {191} freedom, a force that repels that
force is right. Here, of course, all depends upon what we mean by
freedom, and in what sense we think that force can hinder hindrances
to it. If freedom meant for us the empty hexagon [2] round each
individual, the principle would take us back to Mill’s Liberty. If,
on the other hand, we failed to grasp the discrepancy between force
of any kind and the positive nature of the common good which we take
to be freedom, the principle would lead us straight to a machine-made
Utopia. For its negative character cannot restrain it from some
degree of positive action. It is only through positive operation
that a negation or opposition can find reality in the world. And the
limits of its positive action must depend on the precise bearings of
the negation which it puts in force.

[1] W., ix. 34. Fichte remarked on the pregnancy of this principle.

[2] See p. 72, above.

Now, for us, after the explanations which have been given, the
negative nature of our principle is to be seriously pressed, although
its action has to take positive form. The State is in its right when
it forcibly hinders hindrance to the best life or common good. In
hindering such hindrances it will indeed do positive acts. It may
try to hinder illiteracy and intemperance by compelling education
and by municipalising the liquor traffic. Why not, it will be asked,
hinder also unemployment by universal employment, over-crowding by
universal house-building, and immorality by punishing immoral and
rewarding moral actions? Here comes the value of remembering that,
according to our principle, State action is negative in its immediate
bearing, though positive both in its {192} actual doings and its
ultimate purpose. On every problem the question must recur, “Is the
proposed measure _bona fide_ confined to hindering a hindrance, or
is it attempting direct promotion of the common good by force?” For
it is to be borne in mind throughout that whatever acts are enforced
are, so far as the force operates, withdrawn from the higher life.
The promotion of morality by force, for instance, is an absolute
self-contradiction. [1] No general principle will tell us how in
particular to solve this subtle question, apart from common sense
and special experience. But there is perhaps more to be learned from
this principle, if approached with _bona fides_ [2] than from most
generalities of philosophy on social or ethical topics. It is well,
I think, constantly to apply the idea of removing hindrances, in
criticism of our efforts to promote the best life by means involving
compulsion. We ought, as a rule, when we propose action involving
compulsion, to be able to show a definite tendency to growth, or
a definite reserve of capacity, which is frustrated by a known
impediment, the removal of which is a small matter compared to the
capacities to be set free. [3] For it should be remarked that {193}
every act done by the public power has one aspect of encroachment,
however slight, on the sphere of character and intelligence, if only
by using funds raised by taxation, or by introducing an automatic
arrangement into life. It can, therefore, only be justified if it
liberates resources of character and intelligence greater beyond all
question than the encroachment which it involves. This relation is
altogether perversely presented, as we saw above, if it is treated as
an encroachment of society upon individuals. All this is beside the
mark. The serious point is, that it is an interference, _so far as
compulsion operates in it_, of one type of action with another and
higher type of action; of automatism, so to speak, with intelligent
volition. The higher type of action, the embodiment of the common
good in logical growth, is so far from being merely individual as
opposed to social, that it is the whole end and purpose in the name
of which allegiance to society can be demanded from any individual.
As in the private so in the general life, every encroachment of
automatism must be justified by opening new possibilities to
self-conscious development, if it is not to mean degeneration and
senility.

[1] “You will admit,” it was once said, “that compulsory religion is
better than no religion.” “I fail to see the distinction” was the
reply.

[2] Among true students _bona fides_ is presupposed. The range opened
to sophistry by a principle of this kind, which commends positive
action with a negative bearing for a positive end, is, of course,
immeasurable. Practically, I believe that _bona fides_ is about the
first and last necessity for the application of political ideas.

[3] Perhaps I may adduce an instance of real interest. It has been
argued that ship-masters should be induced by a premium to ship
boys as apprentices to the trade of seamanship, and that training
for this trade should be fostered by local authorities like any
other form of technical education. The argument which really told
in the discussion, consisted of statistics which seemed to prove a
wide-spread eagerness on the part of boys and their parents that they
should enter a maritime life, and the existence of a hindrance simply
in the absence of adequate training for a few years during boyhood.

It is the same principle in other words which Green lays down when
he says in effect [1] that only such acts (or omissions) should be
enforced by the public power as it is better should take place {194}
from any motive whatever than not take place at all. When, that is,
we enforce an act (or omission) by law, we should be prepared to
say, “granting that this act, which might conceivably have come to
be done from a sense of duty, now may come to be done for the most
part from a fear of punishment, or from a mechanical tendency to
submit to external rules (attended by the practical inconveniences of
insensibility, half-heartedness, and evasion which attach to acts so
enforced), still so much depends, for the higher life of the people,
upon the external conditions at stake, that we think it worth while
to enforce the act (or omission) though our eyes are fully open to
the risk of extended automatism.”

[1] _Principles of Political Obligation_, p. 38.

Here we may have to meet our own arguments against Mill. “You said
it was a contradiction,” we shall be told, “to admit coercion as a
means to liberty. But here you are advocating coercion as a means to
something as incompatible with it, in so far as it is operative, as
our ‘liberty,’ viz., a certain state of mind and will. If the area of
coercion is necessarily subtracted from the area of liberty, as you
argued above, is not the area of coercion necessarily subtracted from
that to be occupied by the desired growth of will and character?”

The answer depends, as we indicated in ch. iii., on the difference
between bare liberty and a determinate growth. If your liberty is
wholly indeterminate, then every restraint is a reduction of it. You
cannot increase a quantity which is all of one kind by taking away
a part of it. And, in fact, the idea that there was or could have
{195} been a previous general liberty, of which a part was given up
in exchange for more, is a mere illusion. Liberty has grown up within
the positive determinations of life, as they have expanded and come
to fit mankind better.

But if the quantity to be increased is a determinate growth, of a
type whose general character is known, the problem is transformed.
It is the commonest of experiences that hindrances can be removed
and favourable conditions maintained, if this has to be done, not
with a view to every conceivable and inconceivable development,
but for a growth the general line of which is known. In this case,
as the whole expands, the restraints and the liberty, the room for
action, may even increase together. [1] This is not only true in
universal theory, but much more important than is always remembered
in special theory or practice. The possibility of promoting freedom
or well-being by compulsion depends very greatly indeed on the unity
of habit and experience which binds together a single community.
The more the life has in common, the more definite and automatic
arrangements you may safely make in promotion of it. The rules of my
household, which inconvenience its members no more than their clothes
do, would produce a rebellion if they were enforced by law even
throughout our village.

[1] See the author’s essay, “Liberty and Legislation,” in
_Civilisation of Christendom_ (Sonnenschein).

Thus, then, we may maintain our principle of the limits of
distinctive State action. The peculiarity of it is that it allows
of positive acts and interferences, motived by an ultimate positive
{196} purpose, but with a bearing on that purpose which is primarily
negative or indirect. However positive, as actual facts, are the
conditions which it may become advisable to maintain, they may
always, on the side which is distinctively due to State compulsion,
be regarded as the hindrance of hindrances. And the _bona-fide_
application of this principle will really be, when aided by special
experience, in some degree a valuable clue to what ought to be done.
It is only putting in other words the rule of action followed by all
practical men in matters of which they have genuine experience. We
may think, for instance, of the problem involved in State maintenance
of universities. It is easy to vote money, to build buildings, and
to pass statutes. But none of these things will secure the objects
of a university. Money and buildings and statutes may throw open an
arena, so to speak, for the work of willing minds in learning and
education. But the work itself is in a different medium from anything
which can be produced by compulsion, and is so far less vital as it
is conditioned by the operation of force upon minds which demand no
work of the kind.

But here we meet a difficulty of principle. Do we say that no
external conditions are more than hindrances of hindrances to the
best life? Do we deny that the best life can be positively promoted
by external conditions; or if we admit this, do we still deny that it
can be positively promoted by the work of the State? The answer has
already been implied, but may be explicitly restated. We refused [1]
to separate mind from its embodiment in {197} material things, and
so to be drawn into a purely inward theory of morality, It would be
exaggeration to call such external conditions as, _e.g_., first-rate
educational apparatus, [2] mere negative conditions of the best life.
But then, we are now asked, cannot the State supply such external
conditions by expenditure compulsorily provided for, and if so, is
not our principle destroyed, viz., the limitation of State action to
the hindrance of hindrances?

[1] Page 31.

[2] See Thring on the importance of this, in Parkin’s life of him.
Note, however, also the modification of his view by the adventure of
Uppingham on the Sea.

The difficulty springs from the fact, that the State, as using
compulsion, is only one side of Society, and its action is only
one side of social action. If first-rate educational apparatus is
called into existence by a State endowment, the first-rateness of the
apparatus is not due to the compulsion applied to taxpayers, which
rather, so far, negatives the action of intelligent will as such. But
it must be due, in one way or another, to the fact that first-rate
ability in the way of devising apparatus was somewhere pressing for
an outlet, which, by a stroke of the pickaxe, so to speak, the public
power was able to provide for it. We must not confuse the element of
compulsion, which is the side of social action distinctly belonging
to State interference, with the whole of the material results which
liberated intelligence produces. When we say, then, that the State as
such can do nothing for the best life but hinder hindrances to it,
the principle applies in the strictest sense only to the compulsory
or automatic side of State action, which {198} must, so to speak, be
reckoned against it [1] in comparing its products with those which
are spontaneous social growths throughout.

[1] Subject to what will be said on the theory of rights and
punishment.

But it is further true that material conditions which come close to
life, such as houses, wages, educational apparatus, do not wholly
escape our principle. They occupy a very interesting middle region
between mere hindrances of hindrances and the actual stimulation
of mind and will. On the one side they are charged with mind and
character, and so far are actual elements in the best life. On the
other side they depend on external actions, and therefore seem
accessible to State compulsion, which extends to all external
doings and omissions. But what we have to observe is, and it is in
practice most important, that, _as charged with mind and will_,
these material facts may not be accessible to State compulsion,
while, _as accessible to State compulsion_ pure and simple, they
may forfeit their character of being charged with mind and will.
This shows itself in two ways. First, just because they are facts
of a kind which come so close to life (in other words depend so
greatly upon being charged with mind and will), State compulsion
cannot with certainty secure even their apparent existence. They
fail bodily, like human beings, if there is no spirit to keep them
alive. The relation of wages to the standard of life illustrates this
point. Secondly, supposing that for a time, by herculean efforts of
compulsion, which must call active intelligence to its aid, such
facts are made to present a satisfactory appearance of existence,
none the less, {199} so far as they are characterised by compulsion,
they may lose their character as elements in the best life. That
is to say, they may fail to benefit those whom they are meant to
benefit. The fact may fail to be absorbed in the life.

The principle of the hindrance of hindrances is most valuable and
luminous when rightly grasped, just in these middle cases. A pretty
and healthy house, which its inhabitant is fond of, is an element in
the best life. Who could doubt it who knows what home-life is? But
in order that putting a family out of a bad house into a good one
should give rise to such an element of the best life, it is strictly
and precisely necessary that the case or policy should come under our
principle. That is to say, unless there was a better life struggling
to utter itself, and the deadlift of interference just removed an
obstacle which bound it down, the good house will not be an element
in a better life, and the encroachment on the ground of volition will
have been made with out compensation--a fact which may show itself in
many fatal ways. If, on the other hand, the struggling tendency to a
better life has power [1] to effect the change without the deadlift
from outside, then the result is certain and wholly to the good.

[1] Many forms of _social_ co-operation, it must be remembered, need
no deadlift from the _State_ as such. We are not setting self-help
against co-operation, but will against automatism.

Thus we may say that every law and institution, every external fact
maintained by the public power, must be judged by the degree in which
it sets at liberty a growth of mind and spirit. It is a {200} problem
partly of removing obstacles to growth, and partly of the division of
labour between consciousness and automatism.

It ought to occur to the reader that the ground here assigned for
the limitation of State action--that is, of social action through
the public power--is not _prima facie_ in harmony with the account
of political obligation, according to which laws and institutions
represented a real self or general will, recognised by individuals
as implied in the common good which was imperative upon them. We
spoke, for example, of being forced to be free, and of the system of
law and order as representing the higher self. And yet we are now
saying that, in as far as force is operative through compulsion and
authoritative suggestion, it is a means which can only reach its end
through a negation.

But this _prima-facie_ contradiction is really a proof of the
vitality of our principle. It follows from the fact that we
accept self-government in the full strength of both its factors,
and can deal with it on this basis. The social system under
which we live, taking it as one which does not demand immediate
revolution, represents the general will and higher self as a whole
to the community as a whole, and can only stand by virtue of that
representation being recognised. Our loyalty to it makes us men and
citizens, and is the main spiritualising force of our lives. But
something in all of us, and much in some of us, is recalcitrant
through rebellion, indolence, incompetence, or ignorance. And it
is only on these elements that the public power operates as power,
through compulsion {201} or authoritative suggestion. Thus, the
general will when it meets us as force, and authority resting on
force, and not as a social obligation which we spontaneously rise
to accept, comes to us _ex hypothesi_ as something which claims
to be ourself, but which, for the moment, we more or less fail
to recognise. And, according to the adjustment between it and
our complex and largely unintelligent self, it may abandon us to
automatism, or stir in us rebellion or recognition, and so may
hinder the fuller life in us or remove hindrances to it. It seems
worth while to distinguish two main cases of the relation between
the ordinary self and the general will. One of these cases covers
the whole of our every-day law-abiding life, in its grades of active
loyalty, acceptance of suggestion, and automatic acquiescence; and
consists of the relation of our ordinary self to the general system
of rights maintained by the State as ultimate regulator and arbiter.
The other is confined to more exceptional situations, and has to
do with collision between the particular and the general will, as
treated in the theory of punishment. The subject of reward may be
mentioned at the same time, if only to show why it is almost an empty
heading in political theory. We will end this chapter, therefore,
with a general account of the system of rights and of reward and
punishment.

6. The idea of individual rights comes down to us from the doctrine
of natural right, and has generally been discussed with reference to
it. We need not now go back upon the illusions connected with the
notion of natural right. It is enough if we bear in mind that we
inherit from it the important {202} idea of a positive law which is
what it ought to be. A right, [1] then, has both a legal and a moral
reference. It is a claim which can be enforced at law, which no moral
imperative can be; but it is also recognised to be a claim which
ought to be capable of enforcement at law, and thus it has a moral
aspect. The case in which positive enactment and the moral “ought”
appear to diverge will be considered below. But a typical “right”
unites the two sides. It both is, and ought to be, capable of being
enforced at law.

[1] This is a right in the fullest sense. The nature of a merely
legal or merely moral right will be illustrated below.

Its peculiar position follows from what we have seen to be the end
of the State, and the means at its disposal. The end of the State
is a moral purpose, imperative on its members. But its distinctive
action is restricted to removing hindrances to the end, that is,
to lending its force to overcome--both in mind and in externals
essential to mind--obstacles which otherwise would obstruct the
realisation of the end. The whole of the conditions thus enforced
is the whole of “rights” attaching to the selves, who, standing in
definite relations, constitute the community. For it is in these
selves that the end of the State is real, and it is by maintaining
and regulating their claims to the removal of obstructions that the
State is able to promote the end for which it exists. Rights then are
claims recognised by the State, _i.e._ by Society acting as ultimate
authority, to the maintenance of conditions favourable to the best
life. And if we ask in general for a definition and limitation of
State action as such, the answer is, in a simple {203} phrase, that
State action is coincident with the maintenance of rights.

The system of rights which the State maintains may be regarded from
different points of view.

First, _(a)_ from the point of view of the whole community, that is,
as the general result in the promotion of good life obtained by the
working of a free Society, as a statesman or outside critic might
regard it. Thus looked at, the system of rights may be described
as “the organic whole of the outward conditions necessary to the
rational life,” or “that which is really necessary to the maintenance
of material conditions essential to the existence and perfection of
human personality.” [1] This point of view is essential as a full
contradiction of that uncritical conception by which rights are
regarded as something with which the individual is invested in his
aspect of isolation, and independently of his relation to the end.
It forces us away from this false particularisation, and compels us
to consider the whole State-maintained order in its connectedness as
a single expression of a common good or will, in so far as such a
good can find utterance in a system of external acts and habits. And
it enables us to weigh the value which belongs to the maintenance of
any tolerable social order, simply because it is an order, and so
far enables life to be lived, and a determinate, if limited, common
good to be realised. From other points of view we are apt to neglect
this characteristic, and to forget {204} how great is the effect,
for the possibilities of life throughout, of the mere fact that a
social order exists. Hegel observes that a man thinks it a matter of
course that he goes back to his house after night-fall in security.
He does not reflect to what he owes it. Yet this very naturalness, so
to speak, of living in a social order is perhaps the most important
foundation which the State can furnish to the better life. “_Si
monumentum quaeris, circumspice_” If we ask how it affects our will,
the answer is that it forms our world. Speaking broadly, the members
of a civilised community have seen nothing but order in their lives,
and could not accommodate their action to anything else.

[1] Krause and Henrici, cit. by Green, _Principles of Political
Obligation_, p. 35. Cp. “The system of right is the realm of realised
freedom, the world of the mind produced by the mind as a second
nature” (Hegel, _Philosophie d. Rechts_, sect. 4).

It should be mentioned as a danger of this point of view that,
fascinated by the spectacle of the social fabric as a whole, we may
fail to distinguish what in it is the mere maintenance of rights,
and what is the growth which such maintenance can promote but cannot
constitute. Thus we may lose all idea of the true limits of State
action.

_(b)_ We may regard this complex of rights from the standpoint of
the selves or persons who compose the community. It is in these
selves, as we have seen, that the social good is actual, and it is
to their differentiated functions, [1] which constitute their life
and the end of the community, that the sub-groupings of rights, or
conditions of good life, have to be adjusted each to each like suits
of clothes. The rights are, from this point of view, primarily the
external incidents, so far as maintained by law--the authoritative
vesture as it were--of a {205} person’s position in the world of his
community. And we shall do well to regard the nature of rights, as
attaching to selves or persons, from this point of view of a place
or position in the order determined by law. It has been argued, I
do not know with what justice, that, in considering the relations
of particles in space, the proper course would be to regard their
positions or distances from each other as the primary fact, and to
treat attributions of attractive and repulsive forces as modes of
expressing the maintenance of the necessary positions rather than
as descriptive of real causes which bring it about. At least, it
appears to me, such a conception may well be applied to the relative
ideas of right and obligation. What comes first, we may say, is the
position, the place or places, function or functions, determined by
the nature of the best life as displayed in a certain community, and
the capacity of the individual self for a unique contribution to
that best life. Such places and functions are imperative; they are
the fuller self in the particular person, and make up the particular
person as he passes into the fuller self. His hold on this is his
true will, in other words, his apprehension of the general will. Such
a way of speaking may seem unreally simplified when we look at the
myriad relations of modern life and the sort of abstraction by which
the individual is apt to become a rolling stone with no assignable
place--indeed “gathering no moss”--and to pass through his positions
and relations as if they were stations on a railway journey. But in
truth it is only simplified and not falsified. If we look with care
we shall see that it, or nothing, is true of all lives.

[1] I do not say merely social functions, _i.e._ functions dealing
directly with “others” as such.

{206} The Position, then, is the real fact--the vocation, place or
function, which is simply one reading of the person’s actual self and
relations in the world in which he lives. Having thoroughly grasped
this primary fact, we can readily deal with the points of view which
present the position or its incidents in the partial aspects of
rights or obligations.

(i.) A right, we said, is a _claim_ recognised by society and
enforced by the State. My place or position, then, and its incidents,
so far as sanctioned by the State, constitute my rights, when thought
of as something which I claim, or regard as powers instrumental to
my purposes. A right thus regarded is not anything primary. It is
a way of looking at certain conditions, which, by reason of their
relation to the end of the whole as manifested in me, are imperative
alike for me and for others. It is, further, the particular way of
looking at these conditions which is in question when I claim them or
am presumed to claim them, as powers secured to me with a view to an
end which I accept as mine. I _have_ the rights no less in virtue of
my presumed capacity for the end, if I am in fact indifferent to the
end. But, in this case, though attributed _ab extra_ as rights, they
tend to pass into obligations.

(ii.) If rights are an imperative “position” or function, when looked
at as a group of State-secured powers claimed by a person for a
certain end, obligations are the opposite aspect of such a position
or group of powers. That is to say, the conditions of a “position”
are regarded as obligations in as far as they are thought of as {207}
requiring enforcement, and therefore, primarily, from the point of
view of persons not directly identified with the “position” or end
to which they are instrumental. Rights are claimed, obligations
are owed. And _prima-facie_ rights are claimed _by_ a person, and
obligations are owed _to_ a person, being his rights as regarded by
those against whom they are enforceable.

Thus, the distinction of self and others, which we refused to take
as the basis of society, makes itself prominent in the region of
compulsion. The reason is that compulsion is confined to hindering
or producing external acts, and is excluded from producing an act in
its relation to a moral end, that is, the exercise of a right in its
true sense; though it can enforce an act which in fact favours the
possibility of acting towards a moral end that is, an obligation.
This is the same thing as saying that normally a right is what _I_
claim, and the obligation relative to it is what _you_ owe; as an
obligation is that which can be enforced, and that is an act or
omission apart from the willing of an end; and a right involves what
cannot be enforced, viz., the relation of an act to an end in a
person’s will. But even here the distinction of self and others is
hardly ultimate. The obligation on me to maintain my parents becomes
almost a right [1] if I claim the task as {208} a privilege. And
many rights of my position may actually be erected into, or more
commonly may give rise to, obligations incumbent on me for the sake
of my position or function. If the exercise of the franchise were
made compulsory that would be a right treated also as an obligation;
but it might be urged that _qua_ obligation it was held due to the
position of others, and only _qua_ right to my own “position.” But if
the law interferes with my poisoning myself [2] either by drains or
with alcohol, that, I presume, is the enforcement of an obligation
arising out of my own position and function as a man and a citizen,
which makes reasonable care for my life imperative upon me.

[1] I do not know that I can compel my parents to be maintained by
me, and therefore it is not my legal right to maintain them; but at
least the obligation, if I claim it, ceases to depend on force. An
East-End Londoner will say, “He had a right to maintain his father,”
meaning that he was bound to do so; and Jeannie Deans says, “I have
no right to have stories told about my family without my consent,”
representing her own claim as an obligation on herself as well as
on others. She represents the thought, “I have a right that you
should not tell stories, etc.,” in a form which puts it as a case of
the thought, “You have no right to tell stories,” disregarding the
distinction between herself and others as accidental.

[2] The law used to interfere with bad sanitation only as a
“nuisance,” _i.e._ as an annoyance to “others.” It now interferes
with any state of things dangerous to life as such, which probably
means that a change of theory has unconsciously set in. Legislation
for dangerous trades almost proves the point, though here it is
possible to urge that the employer is put under obligation for the
sake of his workers, and not the workers for their own sake. But the
distinction is hardly real.

_(c)_ It is commonly said that every right implies a duty. This has
two meanings, which should be distinguished.

In the one case, (i.) for “duty” should be read “obligation,” _i.e._
a demand enforceable by law. This simply means that every “position”
may be regarded as involving either powers secured or conditions
enforced, which are one and the same thing differently looked at.
Roughly speaking, they are the same thing as differently looked at
by one person, and by other persons. My right {209} to walk along
the high road involves an obligation upon all other persons not to
obstruct me, and in the last resort the State will send horse, foot
and artillery rather than let me be causelessly obstructed in walking
along the high road.

It is also true that every position which can be the source of
obligations enforceable in favour of my rights is likewise a link
with obligations enforceable on me in favour of the rights of others.
By claiming a right in virtue of my position I recognise and testify
to the general system of law according to which I am reciprocally
under obligation to respect the rights, or rather the function
and position, of others. My rights then imply obligations both in
others, and perhaps in myself, correlative to these rights, and
in me correlative to the rights of others. But it cannot strictly
be said that the obligations are the source of the rights, or the
rights of the obligations. Both are the varied external conditions of
“positions” as regarded from different points of view.

But (ii.) there is a different sense in which every right implies a
duty. And this, the true meaning of the phrase, is involved in what
we have said of the nature of a “position.” All rights, as claims
which both are and ought to be enforceable by law, derive their
imperative authority from their relation to an end which enters into
the better life. All rights, then, are powers instrumental to making
the best of human capacities, and can only be recognised or exercised
upon this ground.

In this sense, the duty is the purpose with a view to which the
right is secured, and not merely {210} a corresponding obligation
equally derived from a common ground; and the right and duty are not
distinguished as something claimed by self and something owed to
others, but the duty as an imperative purpose, and the right as a
power secured because instrumental to it.

_(d)_ We have treated rights throughout as claims, the enforcement
of which by the State is merely the climax of their recognition by
society. Why do we thus demand recognition for rights? If we deny
that there can be unrecognised rights, do we not surrender human
freedom to despotism or to popular caprice?

(i.) In dealing with the general question why recognition is
demanded as an essential of rights, we must remember what we took
to be the nature of society and the source of obligation. We
conceived a society to be a structure of intelligences so related
as to co-operate with and to imply one another. We took the source
of obligation to lie in the fact that the logic of the whole is
operative in every part, and consequently that every part has a
reality which goes beyond its average self, and identifies it with
the whole, making demands upon it in doing so.

Now, we are said to “recognise” anything when it comes to us with a
consciousness of familiarity, as something in which we feel at home.
And this is our general attitude to the demands which the logic of
the whole, implied in our every act, is continuously making upon
us. It is involved in the interdependence of minds, which has been
explained to constitute _the mind_ of which the visible community
is the body. A teacher’s {211} behaviour towards his pupils, for
example, implies a certain special kind of interdependence between
their minds. What he can do for them is conditioned by what they
expect of him and are ready to do for him, and _vice versa_. The
relation of each to the other is a special form of “recognition.”
That is to say, the mind of each has a definite and positive attitude
towards that of the other, which is based on, or rather, so far as it
goes, simply _is_, the relation of their “positions” to each other.
Thus, social positions or vocations actually have their being in the
medium of recognition. They _are_ the attitudes of minds towards one
another, through which their several distinct characteristics are
instrumental to a common good.

Thus, then, a right, being a power secured in order to fill a
position, is simply a part of the fact that such a position is
recognised as instrumental to the common good. It is impossible to
argue that the position may exist, and not be recognised. For we
are speaking of a relation of minds, and, in so far as minds are
united into a single system by their attitudes towards each other,
their “positions” and the recognition of them are one and the same
thing. Their attitude, receptive, co-operative, tolerant, and the
like, is so far a recognition, though not necessarily a reflective
recognition. Probably this is what is intended by those who speak of
imitation or other analogous principles as the ultimate social fact.
They do not mean the repetition of another person’s conduct, though
that may enter in part into the relation of interdependence. They
mean the {212} conscious adoption [1] of an attitude towards others,
embodying the relations between the “positions” which social logic
assigns to each.

[1] To call this imitation is something like calling fine art
imitation. Really, in both cases, we find a re-arrangement and
modification of material, incident to a new expression. The process,
if we must name it, is “relative suggestion” rather than imitation.

(ii.) But then the question of page 210 presses upon us “If we deny
that there can be unrecognised rights, do we not surrender human
freedom to despotism or to popular caprice?”

The sting of this suggestion is taken out when we thoroughly grasp
the idea that recognition is a matter of logic, working on and
through experience, and not of choice or fancy. If my mind has _no_
attitude to yours, there is no interdependence and I cannot be a
party to securing you rights. You are not, for me, a sharer in a
capacity for a common good, which each of us inevitably respects.
A dog or a tree may be an instrument to the good life, and it may
therefore be right to treat it in a certain way, but it cannot be
a subject of rights. If my mind _has_ an attitude to yours, then
there is certainly a recognition between us, and the nature of
that recognition and what it involves are matters for reasoning
and for the appeal to experience. It is idle for me, for instance,
to communicate with you by language or to buy and sell with you,
perhaps even idle to go to war with you, [1] and still to say that
I recognise no capacity in you for a common good. My behaviour is
then inconsistent with itself, and the question takes the form what
rights are involved {213} in the recognition of you which experience
demonstrates. No person and no society is consistent with itself, and
the proof and amendment of their inconsistency is always possible.
And, one inconsistency being amended, the path is opened to progress
by the emergence of another. If slaves come to be recognised as free
but not as citizens, this of itself opens a road by which the new
freeman may make good his claim that it is an inconsistency not to
recognise him as a citizen.

[1] As distinct from hunting. We do not go to war with lions and
tigers.

But no right can be founded on my mere desire to do what I like. [1]
The wish for this is the sting of the claim to unrecognised rights,
and this wish is to be met, as the fear that our view might lead
to despotism was met. The matter is one of fact and logic, not of
fancies and wishes. If I desire to assert an unrecognised right, I
must show what “position” involves it, and how that position asserts
itself in the system of recognitions which is the social mind, and my
point can only be established universally with regard to a certain
type of position, and not merely for myself as a particular A or B.
In other words, I must show that the alleged right is a requirement
of the realisation of capacities for good, and, further, that it
does not demand a sacrifice of capacities now being realised, out
of proportion to the capacities which it would enable to assert
themselves. I must show, in short, that in so far as the claim in
question is not secured by the State, Society is inconsistent with
itself, and falls short of being what it professes to be, an organ
of good life. And all my showing gives no _right_, till it has
{214} modified the law. To maintain a right against the State by
force or disobedience is rebellion, and, in considering the duty of
rebellion, we have to set the whole value of the existence of social
order against the importance of the matter in which we think Society
defective. There can hardly be a duty to rebellion in a State in
which law can be altered by constitutional process.

[1] Green, _Principles of Political Obligation_, p. 149.

The State-maintained system of rights, then, in its relation to the
normal self and will of ordinary citizens with their varying moods of
enthusiasm and indolence, may be compared to the automatic action of
a human body. Automatic actions are such as we perform in walking,
eating, dressing, playing the piano or riding the bicycle. They have
been formed by consciousness, and are of a character subservient to
its purposes, and obedient to its signals. As a rule, they demand
no effort of attention, and in this way attention is economised
and enabled to devote itself to problems which demand its intenser
efforts. They are relegated to automatism because they are uniform,
necessary, and external--“external” in the sense explained above,
that the way in which they are required makes it enough if they are
done, whatever their motives, or with no motives at all.

By far the greater bulk of the system of rights is related in this
way to normal consciousness. We may pay taxes, abstain from fraud and
assault, use the roads and the post-office, and enjoy our general
security, without knowing that we are doing or enjoying anything that
demands special attention. Partly, of course, attention is being
given by other consciousnesses to maintaining the securities and
{215} facilities of our life. Even so, the arrangement is automatic
in so far as there is no reason for arousing the general attention in
respect to it; but to a varying extent it is automatic throughout,
and engrained in the system and habits of the whole people. We are
all supposed to know the whole law. Not even a judge has it all in
his knowledge at any one time; but the meaning is that it roughly
expresses our habits, and we live according to it without great
difficulty, and expect each other to do so. This automatism is not
harmful, but absolutely right and necessary, so long as we relegate
to it only “external” matters; _i.e._ such as are necessary to be
done, motive or no motive, in some way which can be generally laid
down. Thus used, it is an indispensable condition of progress. It
represents the ground won and settled by our civilisation, and leaves
us free to think and will such matters as have their value in and
through being thought and willed rightly. If we try to relegate these
to automatism, then moral and intellectual death has set in.

But if the system of rights is automatic, how can it rest on
recognition? Automatic actions, we must remember, are still of a
texture, so to speak, continuous with consciousness. “Recognition”
expresses very fairly our habitual attitude towards them in ourselves
and others. We might think, for example, of the system of habits and
expectations which forms our household routine. We go through it
for the most part automatically, while “recognising” the “position”
of those who share it with us, and respecting the life which is its
end. At points here and there in which it {216} affects the deeper
possibilities of our being, our attention becomes active, and we
assert our position with enthusiasm and conscientiousness. Our
attitude to the social system of rights is something like this. The
whole order has our habitual recognition; we are aware of and respect
more or less the imperative end on which it rests--the claim of a
common good upon us all. Within the framework of this order there is
room for all degrees of laxity and conscientiousness; but, in any
case, it is only at certain points, which either concern our special
capacity or demand readjustment in the general interest, that intense
active attention is possible or desirable.

The view here taken of automatism and attention in the social whole
impairs neither the unity of intelligence throughout society nor
the individual’s recognition of this unity as a self liable to be
opposed to his usual self. As to the former point, every individual
mind shows exactly the same phenomena, of a _continuum_ largely
automatic, and thoroughly alive only in certain regions, connected,
but not thoroughly coherent. As to the latter point, permeation of
the individual by the habits of social automatism does not prevent,
but rather gives material for, his tendency to abstract himself from
the whole, and to frame an attitude for himself inconsistent with his
true “position,” against which tendency the imperative recognition of
his true self has constantly to be exerted.

7. We have finally to deal with the actual application by the State
of its ultimate resource for the maintenance of rights, viz., force.
Superior force may be exercised upon human nature both {217} by
rewards and by punishments. In both respects its exercise by the
State would fall generally within the lines of automatism; that is
to say, it would be a case of the promotion of an end by means other
than the influence of an idea of that end upon the will. But, owing
to the subtle continuity of human nature throughout all its phases,
we shall find that there is something more than this to be said, and
that the idea of the end is operative in a peculiar way just where
the agencies that promote it appear to be most alien and mechanical.
In so far as this is the case, the general theory of the negative
character of State action has to be modified, as we foresaw, [1] by
the theory of punishment. _Prima facie_, however, it is true that
reward and punishment belong to the automatic element of social life.
They arise in no direct relation of the will to the end. They are a
reaction of the automatic system, instrumental to the end, against
a friction or obstacle which intrudes upon it, or (in the case of
rewards) upon the opposite of a friction or obstacle. There is no
object in pressing a comparison into every detail; but perhaps, as
social and individual automatism do really bear the same kind of
relation to consciousness, it may be pointed out that reward and
punishment correspond in some degree to the pleasures and pains of a
high-class secondary automatism, say of riding or of reading, _i.e._
of something specially conducive to enhanced life. Such activities
bring pleasure when unimpeded, and pain when sharply interrupted
by a start or blunder which jars upon us. Putting this latter case
in language which {218} carries out the analogy to punishment,
we might say that the formed habit of action, unconsciously or
semi-consciously relevant to the end or fuller life, is obstructed by
some partial start of mind, and their conflict is accompanied with
recognition, pain, and vexation. “What a fool I was,” we exclaim, “to
ride carelessly at that corner,” or “to let that plan for a holiday
interrupt me in my morning’s reading.”

[1] P. 189.

It may seem remarkable that reward plays a small and apparently
decreasing part in the self-management of society by the public
power. To the naïve Athenian, [1] it seemed a natural instrument for
the encouragement of public spirit, probably rather by a want of
discrimination between motives than by a real belief in political
selfishness. In European countries honours still appear to play a
considerable part, but on analysis it would be found less than it
seems. Partly they are recognitions of important functions, and
thus conditions rather than rewards. To a great extent, again, they
recognise existing facts, and are rather consequences of the respect
which society feels for certain types of life (with very curious
results in regions where the general mind is inexperienced, _e.g._ in
fine art) than means employed to regulate the conduct of citizens.
We should think a soldier mean whose aim was a peerage, still more a
poet or an artist. I hardly know that rewards adjudged by the State,
as distinct from compensations, exist {219} in the United States
of America. [2] Rewards then fill no place correlative to that of
punishments, and the reason seems plain. Punishment corresponds much
better to the negative method which alone is open to the State for
the maintenance of rights. For Punishment proclaims its negative
character, and no one can suppose it laudable simply to be deterred
from wrong-doing by fear of punishment. But though precisely the same
principle applies to meritorious actions done with a view to reward,
an illusion is almost certain to arise which will hide the principle
in this case. For, if reward is largely used as an inducement to
actions conducive to the best life, it is almost certain that it
will be used as an inducement to actions, the value and certainty of
which depend on the state of will to which they are due. And then the
distinction between getting them done, motive or no motive, which
is the true region of State action, and their being done with a
certain motive, which is necessary to give them either practical or
moral value, is pretty sure to be obliterated, and the range of the
moral will trenched upon in its higher portion and with a constant
tendency to self-deception. [3] {220} It is the same truth in other
words when we point out that taking reward and punishment, as
interferences, only to deal with exceptional cases, reward would deal
with the exceptionally good. Therefore, again, reward must either
make an impossible attempt to deal with all the normal as good, which
involves the danger of _de_-moralising the whole of normal life,
or must take the line of specially promoting what is exceptionally
conducive to good life; in which case confusion is certain to arise
from interference with the delicate middle class of external actions
analysed above. [4] And thus it is only what we should expect when
we find that States having no _damnosa hereditas_ of a craving for
personal honours are hardly acquainted with the bestowal of rewards
by the public power.

[1] “Speech of Pericles,” Thucyd., ii. 46: “Where there are the
greatest rewards of merit, there will be the best men to do the work
of the State.” Contrast Plato’s principle that there can be no sound
government while public service is done with a view to reward.

[2] The precise theory of the grants in money made to soldiers or
sailors, for distinguished service, is not easy to state. But it
seems clear that they are not intended to act as motives. They are
essentially a recognition after the act, not an inducement held out
before it.

[3] It is perhaps permissible to observe in general, what is very
well known to all who have much experience of what is called
philanthropy, that the tendency to distinguish it by public honours
is exceedingly dangerous to its quality, which depends entirely on
that energy and purity of intelligence which can only accompany the
deepest and highest motives. Mere vulgar self-seeking is not the
danger (though it does occur) so much as obfuscation of intelligence
through a mixture of aims and ideas.

[4] P. 199.

It will be sufficient, then, to complete the account of State action
in maintenance of rights by some account of the nature and principles
of punishment.

And we may profitably begin by recalling M. Durkheim’s suggestion,
which was mentioned in a former chapter. [1] Punishment, he observes,
from the simplest and most actual point of view, includes in itself
all those sides which theory has tended to regard as incompatible.
It is, in essence, simply the reaction of a strong and determinate
collective sentiment against an act which offends it. It is idle
to include such a reaction entirely under the head either of
reformation, or of retaliation, or of prevention. An aggression is
_ipso facto_ a sign of character, an injury, and a menace; and the
reaction against it is equally _ipso facto_ an attempt {221} to
affect character, a retaliation against an injury, and a deterrent
or preventive against a menace. When we fire up at aggression it is
pretty much a chance whether we say “I am going to teach him better
manners,” or “I am going to serve him out,” or “I am going to see
that he doesn’t do that again.” A consideration of each of these
aspects is necessary to do justice both to the theories and to the
facts.

[1] P. 37.

i. An obvious point of view, and the first perhaps to appear in
philosophy, though strongly opposed to early law, is that the aim of
punishment is to make the offender good. As test of the adequacy of
this doctrine by itself, the question may be put, “If pleasures would
cure the offender, ought he to be given pleasures?” The doctrine,
however, does not, by any means, altogether incline to leniency. For
it carries as a corollary the extirpation of the incurable, which
Plato proposes in a passage of singularly modern quality, when he
suggests the co-operation of judges and physicians in maintaining the
moral and physical health of society. [1]

[1] _Republic_, 409, 410.

The first comment that occurs to us is, that by a mere medical
treatment of the offender, including or consisting of pleasant
conditions, if helpful to his cure, the interest of society seems
to be disregarded. What is to become of the maintenance of rights,
if aggressors have to anticipate a pleasant or lenient “cure”? It
may be true that brutal punishments stimulate a criminal temper in
the people rather than check it; but it is a long way from this to
laying down that there is no need {222} for terror to be associated
with crime. To suppose that pleasures may simply act throughout as
pains, is playing with words and throws no light on the question.
If we leave words their meaning, we must say that punishment must
be deterrent for others as well as reformatory for the offender,
and therefore in some degree painful. It is true, however, that the
offender, as a human being, and presumably capable of a common good,
has, as Green puts it, “reversionary rights” of humanity, and these,
punishment must so far as possible respect.

But there is a deeper difficulty. If the reformation theory is to be
seriously distinguished from the other theories of punishment, it has
a meaning which is unjust to the offender himself. It implies that
his offence is a merely natural evil, like disease, and can be cured
by therapeutic treatment directed to removing its causes. But this
is to treat him not as a human being; to treat him as a “patient,”
not as an agent; to exclude him from the general recognition that
makes us men. (If the therapeutic treatment includes a recognition
and chastisement of the offender’s bad will [1]--the form of which
chastisement may, of course, be very variously modified--then
there is no longer anything to distinguish the reformatory theory
from other theories of punishment.) It has been lately pointed out
[2] what a confusion is involved in the claim that beings, who
are irresponsible and so incapable of guilt, are therefore in the
strict sense innocent. Here are the true objects {223} for a pure
reformatory theory. Here that may freely be done, as to creatures
incapable of rights, which is kindest for them and safest for
society, from quasi-medical treatment to extirpation. There is no
guilt in them to demand punishment, but there is no human will in
them to have the rights of innocence.

[1] Plato’s reformatory theory seems to involve this.

[2] Mr. Bradley, in the _International Journal of Ethics_, April,
1894.

But, applied to responsible human beings, such a theory, if really
kept to its distinctive contention, is an insult. It leads to the
notion that the State may take hold of any man, whose life or ideas
are thought capable of improvement, and set to work to ameliorate
them by forcible treatment. There is no true punishment except where
one is an offender against a system of rights which he shares, and
therefore against himself. And such an offender has a right to the
recognition of his hostile will; it is inhuman to treat him as a wild
animal or a child, whom we simply mould to our aims. Without such
a recognition, to be punished is not, according to the old Scotch
phrase, to be “justified.”

ii. The idea of retaliation or retribution, though in history the
oldest conception of punishment, [1] may be taken in theory as a
protest against the conception that punishment is only a means for
making a man better. Its strong point is its definite idea of the
offender. The offender is a responsible person, belonging to a
certain order which he recognises as entering into him and as entered
into by him, and he has made actual an intention hostile to this
order. He has, {224} as Plato’s Socrates insists in the _Crito_,
destroyed the order so far as in him lies. In other words, he has
violated the system of rights which the State exists to maintain,
and by which alone he and others are secured in the exercise of any
capacity for good, this security consisting in their reciprocal
respect for the system. His hostile will stands up and defies the
right, in so far as his personality is asserted, through a tangible
deed which embodies the wrong. It is necessary, then, that the power
which maintains the system of rights should not merely, if possible,
undo the external harm which has been done, but should strike down
the hostile will which has defied the right by doing that harm.
The end or true self is in the medium of mind and will, and is
contradicted and nullified so far as a hostile will is permitted to
triumph.

[1] We saw that, even in its earliest forms, it cannot really be
taken to exclude the other aspects.

It is obvious, however, that the means by which the hostile will can
be negatived fall _prima facie_ within the region of automatism.
The recalcitrant element of consciousness is not susceptible to the
end as an idea, or it would not be recalcitrant. The end can here
assert itself, agreeably to the general principle of State action,
only through external action the mental effects of which cannot
be precisely estimated. It might, therefore, seem that the pain
produced by the reaction of the automatic system on the aberrant
consciousness--the punishment--was simply a natural pain, which might
act as a deterrent from aberration, but had no visible connection
with the true whole or end for the mind of the offender. We shall
speak below of the sense in which {225} punishment is deterrent or
preventive. But it is to be noted at this point that a high-class
secondary automatism, with which all along we have compared the
system of rights as engrained in the habits of a people, retains
a very close connection with consciousness. We do not indeed will
every step that we walk, but we only walk while we will to walk, and
so with the whole system of routine automatism which is the method
and organ of our daily life. At any interruption, any hindrance or
failure, consciousness starts up, and the end of the whole routine
comes sharply back upon us through our aberration.

So it is with punishment. Primarily, no doubt, chastisement by pain,
and the appeal to fear and to submissiveness, is effective through
our lower nature, and, in as far as operative, substitutes selfish
motives for the will that wills the good, and so narrows its sphere.
But there is more behind. The automatic system is pulsing with the
vitality of the end to which it is instrumental; and when we kick
against the pricks, and it reacts upon us in pain, this pain has
subtle connections throughout the whole of our being. It brings us
to our senses, as we say; that is, it suggests, more or less, a
consciousness of what the habitual system means, and of what we have
committed in offending against it. When one stumbles and hurts his
foot, he may look up and see that he is off the path. If a man is
told that the way he works his factory or keeps his tenement houses
is rendering him liable to fine or imprisonment, then, if he is an
ordinary, careless, but respectable citizen, he will feel some thing
of a shock, and recognise that he was getting {226} too neglectful
of the rights of others, and that, in being pulled up, he is brought
back to himself. His citizen honour will be touched. He will not like
to be below the average which the common conscience had embodied in
law.

When we come to the actual criminal consciousness, the form which
the recognition may take in fact may vary greatly; and as an extreme
there may be a furious hostility against the whole recognised
system of law, either involving self-outlawry through a despair of
reconciliation, or arising through some sort of habitual conspiracy
in which the man finds his chosen law and order as against that
recognised by the State. [1] But after all, we are dealing with a
question of social logic and not of empirical psychology. And it must
be laid down that, in as far as any sane man fails altogether to
recognise in any form the assertion of something which he normally
respects in the law which punishes him (putting aside what he takes
to be miscarriage of justice), he is outlawed by himself and the
essentials of citizenship are not in him. Doubtless, if an uneducated
man were told, in theoretical language, that in being punished for
an assault he was realising his own will, he would think it cruel
nonsense. But this is a mere question of language, and has really
nothing to do with the essential state of his consciousness. He would
understand perfectly well that he was being served as he would say
anyone should be served, whom he saw acting as he had done, in a case
where his own {227} passions were not engaged. And this recognition,
in whatever form it is admitted, carries the consequence which we
affirm.

[1] See the account of the Mafia in Marion Crawford’s _Corleone_.
Accepting this as described, it simply is the social will in which
the population of a certain region find their substitute for the
State.

In short, then, compulsion through punishment and the fear of it,
though primarily acting on the lower self, does tend, when the
conditions of true punishment exist (_i.e._ the reaction of a system
of rights violated by one who shares in it), to a recognition of the
end by the person punished, and may so far be regarded as his own
will, implied in the maintenance of a system to which he is a party,
returning upon himself in the form of pain. And this is the theory
of punishment as retributive. The test doctrine of the theory may be
found in Kant’s saying that, even though a society were about to be
dissolved by agreement, the last murderer in prison must be executed
before it breaks up. The punishment is, so to speak, his right, of
which he must not be defrauded.

There are two natural perversions of this theory.

The first is to confuse the necessary retribution or reaction of the
general self, through the State, with personal vengeance. [1] Even in
the vulgar form, when a brutal murder evokes a general desire to have
the offender served out, [2] the general or social indignation is
not the same as the selfish desire for revenge. It is the offspring
of a rough notion of law and humanity, and of the feeling that a
striking aggression upon them demands to be strikingly put down. Such
a sentiment is a part {228} of the consciousness which maintains the
system of rights, and can hardly be absent where that consciousness
is strong.

[1] It may be noted that Durkheim, relying chiefly on early religious
sentiment, denies Maine’s view that criminal law arises out of
private feud.

[2] Green, _Principles of Political Obligation_, p. 184.

The second perversion consists in the superstition that punishment
should be “equivalent” to offence. In a sense, we have seen, it
is _identical_; _i.e._ it is a return of the offender’s act upon
himself by a connection inevitable in a moral organism. But as for
_equivalence_ of pain inflicted, either with the pain caused by the
offence or with its guilt, the State knows nothing of it and has no
means of securing it. It cannot estimate either pain or moral guilt.
Punishment cannot be adapted to factors which cannot be known. And
further, the attempt to punish for immorality has evils of its own.
[1] The graduation of punishments must depend on wholly different
principles, which we will consider in speaking of punishment as
preventive or deterrent.

[1] See above, p. 192.

iii. The graduation of punishments must be almost entirely determined
by experience of their operation as deterrents. It is to be borne in
mind, indeed, (i.) that the “reversionary rights” of humanity in the
offender are not to be needlessly sacrificed, and (ii.) that the true
essence of punishment, as punishment, the negation of the offender’s
anti-social will, is in some way to be secured. But these conditions
are included in the preventive or deterrent theory of punishment, if
completely understood; if, that is to say, it is made clear precisely
what it is that is to be prevented.

If we speak of punishment, then, as having for {229} its aim to be
deterrent or preventive, we must not understand this to mean that a
majority, or any persons in power, may rightly prevent, by the threat
of penalties, any acts that seem to them to be inconvenient.

That which is to be prevented by punishment is a violation of the
State-maintained system of rights by a person who is a party to
that system, and therefore the above-mentioned conditions, implied
in a true understanding of the reformatory and retributive aspects
of punishment, are also involved in it as deterrent. But, this
being admitted, we may add to them the distinctive principle on
which a deterrent theory insists. If a lighter punishment deter as
effectively as a heavier, it is wrong to impose the heavier. For the
precise aim of State action is the maintenance of rights; and if
rights are effectively maintained without the heavier punishment,
the aim of the State does not justify its imposition. It is well
known that success in the maintenance of rights depends not only on
the severity of punishments, but also on the true adjustment of the
rights themselves to human ends, and on that certainty of detecting
crime which is a result of efficient government. And it must always
be considered, in dealing with a relative failure of the deterrent
power of punishment in regard to certain offences, whether a better
adjustment of rights or a greater certainty of detection will not
meet the end more effectively than increased seventy of punishment.
We have seen that the equivalence of punishment and offence is really
a meaningless superstition. And there is no principle on which {230}
punishment can be rationally graduated, except its deterrent power as
learned by experience. This view corresponds to the true limits of
State action as determined by the means at its disposal compared with
the end which is its justification, and is therefore, when grasped in
its full meaning as not denying the nature of punishment, the true
theory of it.

We saw, in speaking of punishment as retributive, in what sense it
can and cannot rest upon a judgment imputing moral guilt. Of degrees
of moral guilt as manifested in the particular acts of individuals,
the State, like all of us, is necessarily ignorant. But this is
not to say that punishment is wholly divorced from a just moral
sentiment. Undoubtedly it implies and rests upon a disapproval of
that hostile attitude to the system of rights which is implied in the
realised intention constituting the violation of right. Though in
practice the distinction between civil and criminal law in England
carries out no thoroughly logical demarcation, yet it is true on
the whole to say with Hegel that, in the matter of a civil action,
there is no violation of right as such, but only a question in whom
a certain right resides; while in a matter of criminal law there is
involved an infraction of right as such, which by implication is a
denial of the whole sphere of law and order. This infraction the
general conscience disapproves, and its disapproval is embodied in
a forcible dealing with the offender, however that dealing may be
graduated by other considerations.

I may touch here on an interesting point of detail, following Green.
If punishment is essentially {231} graduated according to its
deterrent power, and not according to moral guilt, how does it come
to pass that “extenuating circumstances” are allowed to influence
sentences? That they do so really, if not nominally, even in
England, there can be no doubt. Is it not that they indicate a less
degree of wickedness in the offender than the offence in question
would normally presuppose? It would seem that judges themselves
are sometimes under this impression. But it may well be that they
act under a right instinct and assign a wrong reason. For it is
impossible to get over the fact that moral iniquity is something
which cannot be really estimated. The true reason for allowing
circumstances which change the character of the act to influence
the sentence is that, in changing its character, they may take it
out of the class of offences from which men need to be deterred by
a recognised amount of severity. If a man is starving and steals a
turnip, his offence, being so exceptionally conditioned, does not
threaten the general right of property, and does not need to be
associated with any high degree of terror in order to protect that
right. A man who steals under no extraordinary pressure of need does
what might become a common practice if not associated with as much
terror as is found by experience to deter men from theft.

It may be said, in some exceptional emergency, “but many men are
now starving; ought not the theft of food, on the principle of
prevention, to be now punished with extreme severity, as other wise
it is likely to become common?” Or in general, ought not severity to
increase with {231} temptation or provocation, as a greater deterrent
is needed to counterbalance this? The case in which the temptation or
provocation is exceptional has just been dealt with. But if abnormal
temptation or provocation becomes common, as in a famine, or in some
excited condition of public feeling, then it must be remembered that
not one right only, but the system of rights as such, is what the
State has to maintain. If starvation is common, some readjustment of
rights, or at least some temporary protection of the right to live,
is the remedy indicated, and not, or not solely, increased severity
in dealing with theft. [1] If provocation becomes common, then the
rights of those provoked must be remembered, and the provocation
itself perhaps made punishable, like the singing of faction songs in
Ireland. Punishment is to protect rights, not to encourage wrongs.

[1] Though for the sake of all parties, and to avoid temptation, a
strong policing of threatened districts may be desirable in such
circumstances.

Thus, we have seen the true nature and aims of punishment as
following from the aim of the State in maintaining the system of
rights instrumental to the fullest life. The three main aspects of
punishment which we have considered are really inseparable, and each,
if properly explained, expands so as to include the others.

We may, in conclusion, sum up the whole theory of State action in
the formula which we inherit from Rousseau--that Sovereignty is the
exercise of the General Will.

First. All State action is General in its bearing and justification,
even if particular, or rather {232} concrete, in its details. It
is embodied in a _system_ of rights, and there is no element of it
which is not determined by a bearing upon a public interest. The
verification of this truth, throughout, for example, our English
system of public and private Acts of Parliament, would run parallel
to the logical theory of the Universal Judgment as it passes into
Judgments whose subjects are proper names. But the immediate point is
that no rights are absolute, or detached from the whole, but all have
their warrant in the aim of the whole, which at the same time implies
their adjustment and regulation according to general principles. This
generality of law is practically an immense protection to individuals
against arbitrary interference. It makes every regulation strike a
class and not a single person.

And, secondly. All State action is at bottom the exercise of a Will;
the real Will, or the Will as logically implied in intelligences
as such, and more or less recognised as imperative upon them. And,
therefore, though in the form of force it acts through automatism,
that is, not directly as conscious Will, but through a system which
gives rise to acts by influences apparently alien, yet the root
and source of the whole structure is of the nature of Will, and
its end, like that of organic automatism, is to clear the road for
true volition; it is “forcing men to be free.” And in so far as by
misdirection of the automatic [1] process it {234} encroaches on
the region of living Will the region where the good realises itself
directly by its own force as a motive it is “sawing off the branch on
which it sits,” and superseding the aim by the instrument.

[1] It must not be forgotten that the State is, by its nature,
under a constant temptation to throw its weight on the side of the
automatic process. A most striking example is its adoption of the
automatic water-carriage system in drainage, with far-reaching
economic consequences. See Poore’s _Rural Hygiene_ and _The Dwelling
House_.




{235}

CHAPTER IX.

ROUSSEAU’S THEORY AS APPLIED TO THE MODERN STATE: KANT, FICHTE, HEGEL.

1. Probably no other philosophical movement has ever focussed in
itself so much human nature as the post-Kantian Idealism. It has
fallen to the present writer to show elsewhere [1] how the “finding
of Greek art,” which it owed to Winckelmann, gave it unrivalled
insight into mind as embodied in objects of sense. Here we have to
deal with another source of its ideas. As we pointed out in the
first chapter, the ethical and political theory of Kant, Fichte, and
Hegel springs from the same _Evangel of Jean Jacques_ from which
the French Revolution drew its formulae. It would not be true to
say that it springs from this alone. Great philosophers know how
to fuse the materials they work in; and particularly the modern
abstraction of “freedom” was blended, for Hegel, with the idea of
concrete life through the tradition of the Greek city, with its
affinity for autonomy on the one hand and for beauty on the other.
Nevertheless, few lines of affiliation are better established in the
history of philosophy than that between Rousseau’s {236} declaration
that liberty is the quality of man and the philosophy of Right as it
developed from Kant to Hegel.

[1] _History of Aesthetic_ (Sonnenschein).

It has been suggested that the literary intercourse of France,
England, and Germany was far closer in the eighteenth century than
it is to-day, in spite of the immense mechanical development of
communication in the interval. National self-consciousness and the
divergent growth of national minds have, it is urged, raised a
barrier between peoples, which existed in the last century to a far
smaller degree. [1] This question of literary history lies beyond my
subject; but at least it seems probable that Rousseau had a power
in Germany which no French writer of to-day could possibly exercise
outside his own country. His educational influence [2] alone forms
a considerable chapter in the history of _Pädagogik_, and touches
closely on philosophy. Our psychologists of childhood are his
spiritual descendants, and indeed the question of the development of
the human being is closely akin to the question of liberty.

[1] See M. Lévy-Bruhl, “De l’Influence de Jean Jacques Rousseau en
Allemagne,” _Annales de l’École libre des Sciences Politiques_,
Juillet, 1897.

[2] Cf. _Kant et Fichte et la Problême de l’Education_, Duproix,
Alcan., 1897; and on Rousseau’s varied initiative, see Amiel,
_Journal Intime_ E. tr. I. 202, “J.J. Rousseau is an ancestor in all
things. It was he who founded travelling on foot before Töpffer,
reverie before René, literary botany before George Sand, the worship
of nature before Bernardin de St. Pierre, the democratic theory
before the Revolution of 1797, political discussion and theological
discussion before Mirabeau and Rénan, the science of teaching before
Pestalozzi, and Alpine description before De Saussure.”

His literary influence, as the prophet of nature and feeling, and the
champion of sentimental {237} religion against the _Philosophes_,
carried everything before it. He struck into the path which had
been opened in Germany by the translation of Thomson’s _Seasons_
before 1750, and followed by the Swiss critics and the idyllic
poets, who were opponents of the dominant pseudo-classicism. [1]
Jacobi, who passed some years of his youth at Geneva, owed his
doctrine of feeling as the faculty of religious truth in part at
least to Rousseau. Klinger, whose drama, _Sturm und Drang_, gave its
name to the romantic and naturalist revolution, marked by Goethe’s
_Götz von Berlichingen_ (1773) and Schiller’s _Räuber_ (1781),
was responsible, we are told, in later years, for the surprising
judgment that Rousseau (in _Emile_) is the young man’s best guide
through life. [2] Even Schiller and Herder passed through a period of
enthusiastic admiration for Rousseau. It is exceedingly significant
that Schiller’s _Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Humanity_
are addressed expressly to the problem of reconciling the claims of
Nature [3] and of the State upon individual man. For, when Schiller
suggests that the clue to the required reconciliation between Nature
and the State lies in the union of feeling and intelligence which is
found in Beauty, we have before us in a single focus three main types
of experience, from the fusion of which a new idealism was to emerge.

[1] See author’s _History of Aesthetic_, p. 214.

[2] Lévy-Bruhl, _Loc. cit_. p. 330. The citation appears to be from a
romance, and I have not seen the context.

[3] Letter 3 contains a profound criticism of the supposed actual
“state of nature,” and it might be said with truth that the whole
subject of the letters is the problem “how man is to be free without
ceasing to be sensuous.”

{238} 2. Returning to our immediate subject, the Philosophy of
Right, we will consider for a moment the specific relation of
Rousseau’s idea of Freedom to Kantian or post-Kantian thought. It is
permissible, perhaps, to embody the chief part of what has to be said
in extracts from works of great original value and not very generally
accessible. Not only the poets and sentimentalists of Germany, but
also the great philosophers, distinctly recognised the debt of the
German genius to the ideas of Rousseau. The conception of the “Social
Contract” has an importance which surprises the modern reader in the
political philosophy of Kant and more especially of Fichte, and it
is not till we come to Hegel that the literal interpretation of the
“Social Contract” is completely discriminated from the truth conveyed
by the doctrine of the General Will. Apart from all questions about
the literal meaning of the “Social Contract,” it is simple fact that
the whole political philosophy of Kant, Hegel, and Fichte is founded
on the idea of freedom as the essence of man, first announced--such
was Hegel’s distinct judgment--by Rousseau. I begin by citing the
crucial passage from Hegel’s _History of Philosophy_, which gives in
a few lines the basis of his own theory of Right, as well as his view
of Rousseau’s position. [1]

[1] Hegel’s _Geschichte der Philosophie_, iii. 477.

After explaining that Rousseau treated the right of Government as
on one side, in its historical aspect, resting [1] on force and
compulsion, Hegel {239} continues,

  “But the principle of this justification (the absolute
  justification of the State) Rousseau makes the free
  will, and, disregarding the positive right (or law)
  of States, he answers to the above question [2] (as
  to the justification or basis of the State) that man
  has free will, seeing that ‘Freedom is the distinctive
  quality of man. [3] To renounce one’s freedom, means to
  renounce one’s humanity. Not to be free is therefore a
  renunciation of one’s human rights, and even of one’s
  duties.’ The slave has neither rights nor duties.
  Rousseau says, therefore, [4] The _fundamental problem_
  [5] is to find a form of association which shall protect
  and defend at once the person and the property of every
  member with the whole common force, and in which each
  individual, inasmuch as he attaches himself to this
  association, _obeys only himself, and remains as free
  as before_ [5] The solution is given by the _Social
  Contract_; [5] it (Rousseau says) is this combination, to
  which each belongs through his will."

  These principles, thus set up in the abstract, we cannot
  but take as correct; yet ambiguity begins at once. Man is
  free; this is no doubt the substantive nature of man; and
  in the State it is not only not abandoned, but in fact
  it is therein first established. The freedom of nature,
  the capacity of freedom, is not the actual freedom; {240}
  for nothing short of the State is the actualisation of
  freedom.

  But the misunderstanding about the “_General Will_”
  begins at the following point. The notion of Freedom must
  not be taken in the sense of the casual free-will of each
  individual, but in the sense of the reasonable will, the
  will in and for itself. [6] The general will is not to be
  regarded as compounded of the expressed individual wills,
  [7] so that these remain absolute; else the proposition
  would be true, “where the minority has to obey the
  majority, there is no freedom.” Rather the general will
  must be the rational will, even though people are not
  aware of it; the State, therefore, is no such association
  as is determined upon by individuals.

  The false apprehension of these principles does not
  matter to us. What matters to us is that by their means
  it comes as a content into consciousness, that man has
  in his mind Freedom as the downright absolute, that the
  free will is the notion of man. It is just freedom that
  is the self of thought; one who repudiates thought and
  talks of freedom knows not what he is saying. The oneness
  of thought with itself [8] is freedom, the free will.
  Thought, only taken in the form of will, is the impulse
  to break through [9] one’s mere subjectivity, is relation
  to definite being, realisation of one’s {241} self,
  inasmuch as I will to make myself as an existent adequate
  to myself as thinking. The will is free only as that
  which thinks.

  The principle of freedom dawned on the world in Rousseau,
  and gave infinite strength to man, who thus apprehended
  himself as infinite. This furnishes the transition to
  the Kantian philosophy, which, from a theoretical point
  of view, took this principle as its basis. Knowledge
  [10] was thus directed upon its own freedom, and upon
  a concrete content, [10] which it possesses in its
  consciousness.”

[1] In the place referred to, _Contrat Social_, Bk. I. chs. iii.,
iv., Rousseau points out clearly that _force_ gives _no right_. So
when Hegel describes him as saying that the right of rule rested on
force, etc., _in its historical aspect_, this is incorrect unless it
means that, this “historical” aspect giving no explanation of right,
the term “right” is a mere name so far as it is concerned.

[2] _Cont. Social_, Bk. I., iv.

[3] I retain Hegel’s paraphrastic rendering of Rousseau’s words.

[4] _Cont. Social_, Bk. I., iv., cf. p. 89 above.

[5] Hegel’s italics.

[6] Anything is “in and for itself” when it has become “_for
itself_,” _i.e._ consciously and explicitly what it is “_in itself_,”
_i.e._ in its latent or potential nature.

[7] Rousseau’s _Will of All_.

[8] _i.e._ Anything is free, in as far as it is able to be itself.
Thought, as the embodiment of the return upon oneself or being with
oneself, is for Hegel the strongest case of this.

[9] _i.e._ By going beyond it.

[10] _I.e._ Philosophy, by basing itself on the idea of freedom, is
led to scrutinise the life in which mind realises itself, before it
becomes, and on the way to becoming, reflectively philosophical;
and which is therefore “_its own_ freedom”--as one texture with
knowledge--and also a “concrete content,” _i.e._ an actual system
of living, as an object in which mind can find itself expressed--a
relation which = freedom.

Everyone is familiar, in general terms, with the part played by the
idea of freedom in Kant’s philosophy. It may, however, be of interest
to point out how definitely it comes to him in the form given it by
Rousseau. Omitting the whole subject of Kant’s educational interest,
[1] I will refer to two passages from Kant’s early notes [2] in
connection with the tract on the _Feelings of the Sublime and the
Beautiful_, and two from the _Philosophy of Right_, which first
appeared in the autumn of 1796.

[1] See Duproix, _Loc. cit_. [2] Between 1765 and 1775.

First, then, to establish the definite impulse communicated to Kant
in his earlier years by Rousseau in particular.

  “I am myself,” he writes, [1] “a student by inclination.
  I feel the whole thirst for knowledge, and the covetous
  restlessness that demands to advance in it, and again the
  satisfaction of every {242} step of progress. There was a
  time when I believed that all this might constitute the
  honour of humanity, and I despised the crowd that knows
  nothing. It was Rousseau who set me right. That dazzling
  privilege disappeared; and I should think myself far less
  useful than common artisans if I did not believe that my
  line of study might impart value to all others in the way
  of establishing the rights of humanity.”

[1] Kant’s _Werke_ (Rosenkrantz), xi., p. 240. Cf. p. 218.

Kant seems, from the context, to be foreshadowing the idea of his
critical philosophy, as putting man in his place in the order of
creation.

  “If there is any science,” he says just below, “which man
  really needs, it is that which I teach, to fill properly
  _that_ place which is assigned to man in creation; a
  science from which he can learn what one must be in order
  to be human.”

This throws light on the curious passage in the same set of notes,
[1] where, in a discussion of the idea of Providence, Kant first
refers to Newton’s discovery of order in the multiplicity of the
planetary motions, and then proceeds,

  “Rousseau first discovered, beneath the multiplicity
  of the forms assumed by man, the deeply latent nature
  of humanity, and the hidden law, according to which
  Providence is justified by his observations. Before that
  the objection of Alphonsus and of Manes [2] held the
  field. After Newton and Rousseau, God is justified, and
  henceforwards Pope’s doctrine is true.”

[1] _Ib_, p. 248.

[2] The Manichean doctrine.

“Pope’s doctrine” is no doubt his Leibnitzian optimism, founded on a
supposed insight into man’s true place in creation. [1] Rousseau’s
{243} “discovery,” which Kant here connects with this doctrine, must
be his assertion of man’s natural goodness and freedom, which he
tends to forfeit by departing in civilisation from the place assigned
him by nature. It is clear that Rousseau’s impeachment of literature
and civilisation had at this time made a considerable impression upon
Kant. It is all the more interesting to see Kant retracing, on a very
different scale, the development which Rousseau had initiated, from
natural to social and ethical freedom.

[1] See passage cited from Kant, just above.

I subjoin two passages from the _Philosophy of Right_ (1796),
which exhibit this later development, still in its connection with
Rousseau’s phraseology.

  “_The innate Right is one only_.--Freedom (independence
  of the constraining will of another), in as far as it can
  co-exist with the freedom of every other according to a
  universal law, is this unique original right, belonging
  to every human being by reason of his humanity.” [1]

[1] Kant’s _Werke_ (Rosenkrantz), ix. 42.

An indication of the embodiment of this freedom in the State may be
given as follows:

  “All those three powers in the State (Sovereignty or
  the Legislative, the Executive, and the Judicial), are
  offices; and, as essential, and necessarily proceeding
  from the idea of a State in general with reference to
  the establishment (Constitution) of one, are offices
  _of State_. They contain the relation of a universal
  supreme Power (which, considered according to laws of
  freedom, can be no other than the united people), to
  the crowd of individuals which compose it _qua_ the
  governed; that is, of the ruler (_imperans_) to the
  {244} subject (_subditus_). The act whereby the people
  constitutes itself into a State, _or strictly speaking
  only the idea of that Act, according to which idea alone
  the justice of the Act can be conceived_, [1] is _the
  original contract_, [2] according to which all (_omnes et
  singuli_) of the people surrender their external freedom,
  in order at once to receive it back again as members of a
  commonwealth, that is, of the people regarded as a State
  (_universi_). And one cannot say, The State, or man in
  the State, has sacrificed a part of its innate outward
  freedom for a certain end; but rather, he has totally
  abandoned his wild lawless freedom in order to find his
  entire freedom again undiminished in a lawful dependence,
  that is, in a condition of right or law; (undiminished),
  because this dependence springs from his own legislative
  will.” [3]

[1] The italics are mine.

[2] Kant’s italics.

[3] _Ib_., 160

It is remarkable, in face of these general views, that both Kant
and Fichte follow Rousseau, for reasons which Kant explains from
the political conditions of the time, in distrusting representative
government. [1]

[1] _Ib_., 166 (the deputies are practically dependent on the
Ministry). But cf. p. 193, which shows that in a true Republic
the representative system might, according to Kant, be a reality,
and then would be the ideal form. The whole discussion is full of
reference to Rousseau.

The passage just cited is of course a reproduction of Rousseau’s
view modified by interpretation very much in the sense in which we
interpreted it above.

3. When we pass to Fichte (whose earlier work upon _Natural Right_
was published actually before that of Kant), we observe the idea
of contract in the act of transmuting itself, though {245} by an
imperfect transition, into the idea of an organic whole. For Fichte,
the State is a necessary implication of the human self; for a self
involves a society of selves, and law or right is the relation
between selves in a bodily world. And the “contract” on which
citizenship rests, by the fact that it is general, [1] forges an
indiscernible unity of the social whole. In this connection, Fichte
makes the remarkable claim to be first to apply the simile of an
organism to the whole civic relation. I cite an important passage:

  “As far as I know, the idea of the whole of the State
  has so far only been established through the ideal
  combination of individuals, and thereby the true insight
  into the nature of this relation has been cut off.” [2]

[1] Fichte (_Werke_, iii. 203 ff.) says, “Indeterminate”; viz.
I undertake to aid in protecting whoever is injured. Now, I can
never know (he argues) who in particular is to be benefited by
this undertaking; many are invisibly benefited by it through the
suppression of the injurious will before it comes to be manifest.
Therefore the relation is really organic; every part strives to
conserve every part, because injury to any part may concern any part.
It is the general as indeterminate, really less of a unity than
Rousseau’s “moi commun”.

[2] Werke, iii. 207. The “ideal combination” = the imaginary contract.

You must, he urges, not merely have an idea of combination; you must
show a bond of union beyond the idea, or making the idea necessary.

  “In our account this has been achieved. In the notion
  of that which is to be protected, in accordance with
  the necessary uncertainty _which_ individual will need
  the visible protection, and still further, _which_ it
  will have advantaged invisibly in the case of a wrongful
  will suppressed by the law before its outbreak, all
  individuals are forced into unity.

  {246} “The most fitting simile to elucidate this notion
  is that of an organised natural product, which has
  often been employed in modern times to describe the
  different branches of the public power as a unity, but
  not, so far as I know, to throw light on the whole civic
  relation. Just as, in the natural product, every part
  can be what it is only in _this_ combination, and out
  of this combination simply would not be this (indeed
  outside all organic combination there would simply be
  nothing ...): just so it is only in the combination of
  the State that man attains a definite position in the
  series of things, a point of rest in nature; and each
  attains _this determinate_ position towards others, and
  towards Nature, only through the fact that he is in
  _this determinate_ combination. ... In the organic body
  every part continually maintains the whole, and while it
  maintains it, is itself maintained thereby; just such is
  the citizen’s relation to the State.”

Here we seem to be back with Plato and Aristotle. We are in fact
too near to Plato; for the distinction between maintenance of the
citizen’s determinate activity, and maintenance of the general
conditions of such activity, being destroyed by Fichte in his desire
to make State action positive and not negative, the conclusion
necessarily arises that the citizen must be secured and maintained in
his definite activity or occupation, and from this springs the notion
of the closed commercial State; “closed” against foreign trade in
order that the government may be able to determine prices and assign
occupations. In other words, the basis of the State is still the Ego
conceived as the individual self; it is not the social good operating
by its own {247} power on intelligent will. And, arising from this
individualism, the precautions which seem necessary to protect and
sustain the individual in his fixed relation to the whole, make
Fichte’s “Closed Commercial State” perhaps the earliest document of
a rigorous State Socialism. Freedom, as he himself recognises to be
_prima facie_ the case, is annihilated by the provisions for its
protection. [1] It is curious to see Rousseau’s phrase “forced to be
free,” [2] which refers in him to the supremacy of law, reappearing
as a defence of the enforcement of leisure time, [3] as though
freedom were not realised in labour and in loyalty. Here is Hegel’s
judgment of the transition we have just been considering.

  “Kant began to found right on freedom, and Fichte too
  in his _Natural Right_ made freedom his principle; but
  it is, as in Rousseau, the freedom of the particular
  individual. This is a great beginning; but in order to
  get to particular results they were obliged to accept
  presuppositions. The universal (for them) is not the
  spirit, the substance of the whole, but the external
  mechanical negative power against individuals. ... The
  individuals remain always hard and negative against one
  another; the prison-house, the bonds, become ever more
  oppressive, instead of the State being apprehended as the
  realisation of freedom.” [4]

[1] Fichte, _Nachgelassene Werke_, ii. 535.

[2] _Ibid_., 537.

[3] Of course such enforcement may have justification.

[4] Hegel, _Geschichte der Philosophie_, iii. 576. The idea of
organism was thus mechanically apprehended.

4. To apprehend the State as the realisation of freedom was the aim
of Hegel’s _Philosophy of Right_, which has perhaps been more grossly
misrepresented {247} than any work of a great political philosopher,
excepting Plato’s _Republic_.

Popular criticism will tell us that Hegel found his ideal in the
Prussian bureaucracy, and will further hint that his doing so was
to his advantage. Such suggestions imply two misapprehensions,
for one of which Hegel’s tactlessness was responsible, while the
other depends on a genuine difficulty attending any philosophical
analysis of society. I will try to throw light on each of these
misapprehensions.

_(a)_ If Hegel had wished to have a partisan tendency attributed to
his book, he could not have timed it better nor written a preface
more certain to mislead. In 1820, when the book was published, the
minds both of governments and of peoples were full of irritation.
The anti-constitutional reaction had recently declared itself. [1]
The demonstration at the Wartburg, celebrating the anniversary
of the Reformation, and of the Battle of Leipzig, took place in
October, 1817. The unaccountable change in the ideas of the Czar from
Liberalism to reaction took place, we are assured, [2] in June, 1818.
The murder of Kotzebue, a Russian agent, reactionary journalist, and
decayed dramatist, took place in March, 1819. Kotzebue seems to have
been popularly credited with perverting the views of the Czar. His
assassination had an effect in no way related to his real importance.
Hardenberg, the Prussian minister, exclaimed on hearing of it that
a Prussian constitution had now become impossible. Innocent persons
{249} were arrested in Prussia at Metternich’s instigation, and
private papers were seized and published in a garbled form. The
publication of Hegel’s book with a preface attacking Fries for some
expressions used by him at the Wartburg festival, took place, as we
said, in 1820, and Hegel had moved from Heidelberg to Berlin, having
obtained the honour of a Berlin professorship, in 1818. Small wonder
that “it was pointed out that the new professor was a favourite of
the leading minister, that his influence was dominant in scholastic
appointments, and that occasional gratuities from the Crown proved
his acceptability,” or that Fries remarked that Hegel’s theory of the
State had grown, “not in the garden of science, but on the dunghill
of servility.” [3] Hegel himself “was aware that he had planted a
blow in the face of a shallow and pretentious sect, and that his book
had given great offence to the demagogic folk.” [4]

[1] See Fyffe’s _History of Modern Europe_, vol. II., ch. ii.

[2] Fyffe, _Loc. cit_.

[3] Wallace, _Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind_, p. clxxix.

[4] Wallace, _Loc. cit_.

And yet, so far as the essence of Hegel’s political philosophy is
concerned, there is nothing in all this. The first sketch of the
_Philosophy of Right_ was published in the _Encyclopaedia of the
Philosophical Sciences_ in 1817, before Hegel left Heidelberg. His
political interest, in its gradual development, can be traced back
in unpublished writings to 1802. [1] He started from the conception
of the Greek State, on which his early sketch of the ethical system
(1802, unpublished in his lifetime) was founded. And his subsequent
development consisted in enlarging this conception by drawing out
its framework to include the more {250} accented freedom of modern
life, as he divined it from the attentive study both of English and
of German politics. His substantive political theory never changed,
except by development, in accordance with his general attitude
towards the differences between Greek and modern life.

[1] See Wallace, _Op. cit_., clxxx. and clxxxvii.

_(b)_ “But,” popular criticism will rejoin, “here we have Hegel’s
ideal State, depicted by his own hand, and it is pretty much the
Prussian State of his time, tempered by a few references to English
politics. Is not this a narrow horizon and a low ideal?” This
criticism is of value, because it leads up to an important feature of
true political theory.

To depict what most people call “an ideal State” is no more the
object of political philosophy than it is the object, say, of
Carpenter’s _Human Physiology_ to depict an “ideal” man or an angel.
The object of political philosophy is to understand what a State is,
and it is not necessary for this purpose that the State which is
analysed should be “ideal,” but only that it should be a State; just
as the nature of life is represented pretty nearly as well by one
living man as by another.

  “Every State,” [1] Hegel says, “even if your principles
  lead you to pronounce it bad, even if you detect this
  or that deficiency in it, always has (especially if
  it belongs to the more developed States of our time)
  the essential moments of its existence in it. But
  because it is easier to discover defects than to grasp
  the affirmative, people easily fall into the error of
  allowing particular aspects to lead them to forget the
  inner organism {251} of the State. The State is no work
  of art, it stands in the world, that is, in the sphere
  of caprice, accident, and error; evil behaviour is able
  to mar it in many respects. But the ugliest human being,
  a criminal, a sick man, or a cripple, is all the same a
  living human being; the affirmative, his life, persists
  in spite of the defect, and this affirmative is what we
  are concerned with here.”

[1] _Phil. d. Rechts_, p. 313.

Of course, no comparison is quite precise, and it may be urged that
the State is more artificial than a human body. However this may
be, [1] we shall at least understand Hegel’s attitude better, and,
as I venture to think, adopt by far the most fruitful standpoint
for ourselves, if we look at political philosophy like one who is
trying to ascertain what is the nature of human life as he observes
it in any or every human body. If the life is there, its essentials
are there, and his aim is to understand them. No doubt a door is
here opened to argument with regard to what logicians call a “pure
case.” In understanding life “as such,” you must, it would seem,
purge out its mere defects, in regard to which it is not “life,” and
the remainder, what you pledge yourself to as essential, must be _ex
hypothesi_ your “ideal” of life. And perhaps there is no reason to
reject this responsibility if confined to the emphasis of elements
and interconnection of facts. It cannot apply to more.

[1] The comment will probably betray the type of pessimism indicated
by Rousseau. See p. 95 above.

We cannot construct an ideal body by reducing life, nor an ideal
polity by reducing mind, to its pure case or essentials, since we
cannot construct {252} organisms [1] or history at all. And it is
because this is always being forgotten that the duty of understanding
rather than constructing has to be insisted upon. It is true that in
understanding, as in constructing, we imply essential relations, and
so incur responsibility, and are liable to betray a bias; but still,
life can be understood by help of any creature that is alive, and
therefore it is not the example with which the student works, but the
insight which he shows, that is the decisive point.

[1] “No human mind has ever conceived a new animal.” Ruskin, _Modern
Painters_, ii. 148.

4. We have to begin by realising what is involved in the fact that
we are about to treat the analysis of a Modern State as a chapter
in the _Philosophy of Mind_. For Hegel’s _Philosophy of Right_
(or of _Law_), though published by him as an independent work, is
essentially an expansion of paragraphs which form one sub-division of
his _Philosophy of Mind_, itself the third and concluding portion of
the _Encyclopaedia of Philosophy_, of which the two earlier portions
are the _Logic_ and the _Philosophy of Nature_.

We saw in the second chapter of the present work that the mere
force of facts has driven modern sociologists to handle their
science in a more or less intimate connection with Psychology. The
differentia of society, we saw, has been stated in various formulae
of a psychological character. But it seemed to us that, owing to a
neglect of the logic of identity, the nature of mind was broken up
by such unreal distinctions as that between invention and imitation,
varied by the unreal {253} reduction of the one to the other, [1]
and also that an unexplained separation and parallelism survived as
between the individual and the social mind, bearing witness to the
vitality of the superstition which Rousseau’s insight picked out for
condemnation. [2] We do not deny that mind may be more than social;
but in as far as it is social it is still real mind, and that means
that it is not something other than what we know as individual lives,
[3] a pale and unreal reflection of them, but it is a characteristic
which belongs to their most intimate constitution. This was Plato’s
analysis of moral autonomy, and his work remains classically valid,
needing only expansion and interpretation in applying it to modern
free intelligence and social self-government.

[1] Prof. Baldwin, _Social and Ethical Interpretation_, p. 105, at
least suggests this unreal reduction.

[2] See p. 95 above.

[3] “Lives,” and not merely “consciousnesses,” as objective mind is
largely in the form of habit.

The position of the analysis of a State in the _Philosophy of Mind_
may be briefly indicated as follows. When we embark on the study of
ordinary Psychology, we take the individual human being as we find
him to-day. We accept him as a formed individual, distinguishing
himself from external things, and possessing what we call a will--a
capacity of seeking his own satisfaction, which he represents to
himself in general ideas by the help of language. We analyse the
self and will with their aspects of memory, attention, association,
impulse, and emotion. But all modern psychologists are aware that
this formed self and will has much history behind it, and presupposes
a long genesis connecting it with simpler forms of {254} soul-life.
Hegel, indeed, was among the first in modern times to see how far
back the story of mind must be taken. The human intelligence, as the
psychologist assumes it, is for him a middle phase in the romance of
which mind is the hero. Before it come the chapters of Anthropology,
which treat of the fixation of a soul in the disciplined powers and
habits of a human body, and then the account [1] of a consciousness
which gradually rises from a struggling perception of objects around
it to a moral and scientific certainty of being at home in the world.

[1] For this account, to which he has devoted perhaps the greatest
of his works, Hegel has coined the term “Phenomenology of the Mind.”
It is the history of the emergence of the free or modern spirit from
the undeveloped consciousness of the ancient world, to which, for
instance, slavery seemed a natural thing.

The story of mind, then, begins long before the free mind, the object
of Psychology to-day, has appeared on the scene. And as to this there
would be no great difference of opinion. The peculiarity of Hegel’s
treatment is that his romance of the intelligence not only begins
long before the phase of free mind is reached, but continues long
after. Investigation can no more stop at the individual of to-day
than it can begin with him. His “mind” is not a separable entity,
and throughout the story no such entity has appeared. It has been
convenient for Hegel to treat the earlier division of the _Philosophy
of Mind_, comprising the Anthropology, Phenomenology, [1] and
Psychology, as dealing _par excellence_ with Mind Subjective. This is
because its main purpose was to trace the growth of “subjectivity,”
the emergence of the man of full mental {255} stature, aware
of himself, of his ideas and purposes, and confident in his
“subjectivity” his self-hood against all comers.

[1] See previous note.

But the following division of the work, under the title of Mind
Objective, deals with a necessary implication which might have been
noted at any point of the entire history of consciousness, though at
any earlier point it could have been treated as referring to mind
only by anticipation.

Here, however, the problem can no longer be deferred. The “free
mind” does not explain itself and cannot stand alone. Its impulses
cannot be ordered, or, in other words, its purposes cannot be
made determinate, except in an actual system of selves. Except by
expressing itself in relation to an ordered life, which implies
others, it cannot exist. And, therefore, not something additional and
parallel to it, which might or might not exist, but a necessary form
of its own action as real and determinate, is the actual fabric in
which it utters itself as Society and the State. This is what Hegel
treats in the second division of the _Philosophy of Mind_ under the
name of Mind Objective. It is not for him ultimate. A particular
society stands in time, and is open to criticism and to destruction.
Beyond it lies the reality, continuous with mind as known in the
State, but eternal as the former is perishable, which as Absolute
Mind is open to human experience in Art, Religion, and Philosophy.

We will pursue in the following chapter Hegel’s analysis of the
modern State as Mind Objective, a magnified edition, so to speak,
of Plato’s _Republic_, bringing before the eye in full detail
distinctions and articulations which were there invisible.




{256}

CHAPTER X.

THE ANALYSIS OF A MODERN STATE. HEGEL’S “PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT.”

1. We are about to analyse a modern State into groups of facts which
are also ways of thinking. And a question may arise in what sense the
connection is to be understood which will be alleged to bind together
these groups of facts or points of view. When it is urged that group
_b_ or view _b_ is suggested and made necessary by the shortcomings
of group _a_ or view _a_, does this imply that group a or its idea
came into existence first, and group _b_ or the notion of it sprang
up subsequently or as an effect of the former? And could such a
relation be reasonably maintained as between the component parts of a
unity like the State?

An answer may be indicated as follows. We are dealing, in society
and in the State, with an _ideal fact_. As a fact, a form of life,
society has always been a many-sided creature, meeting the varied
needs of human nature by functions no less varied. As an ideal fact,
however, its advance has partaken of the nature of theoretical
progress. In the continuous attempt to deal satisfactorily {257} with
the needs of intelligent beings, the mind, the intelligent will, has
thrown itself with predominant interest now into one of its functions
and now into another. And this has not been a chance order of march.
Obviously, what it has emphasised and modified in the second place
has depended both positively and negatively on what it had emphasised
and modified in the first place. Positively, because when one step is
thoroughly secured the next may be definitely attempted. Negatively,
because the definite attainment of one step exposes the limitations
of what has been achieved, and the need for another. At every stage
the will is dissatisfied with the expression of itself which it has
created. Till some public order has been established, morality can
hardly find expression; but when a legal system is thoroughly in
force it becomes apparent how far the letter may fall short of the
spirit. We see the same action of intelligence in pure theory. Every
conquest of science leads to a new departure. It suggests it by its
success, and demands it by its failure.

Now, in science it may or may not be the case that the connection
which has led to a discovery enters permanently as a discernible
factor into the structure of knowledge. The re-organisation of
experience may sweep away the steps which led to it. But in the
living fact of society this is not so. Its many sides are actual and
persist, and the emphasis laid from time to time on the principle
of each--_e.g._ on positive law, on family ties, on economic
bonds--merely serves to accent an element which has its permanent
place in the whole. Thus, there must always be family ties and
economic bonds. But at one time everything tends to be construed
{258} in terms of kinship, at another time in terms of exchange.
And the tendency means a difference of actual balance between the
functions as well as a different theory. The positive and negative
connection of elements like these, the true place and limit of each,
is permanently rooted in human nature, but may be elucidated by the
explicit logic of their attempt and failure to give the tone to the
whole social fabric. It follows that the social whole grows, like
a great theory, in adequacy to the needs which are its facts; and
the dissatisfaction of the will with its own expression, in other
words, the contradictions which practical intelligence is continually
attempting to remove, becomes more like suggestion than flat
contradiction--or change, as we say, becomes less revolutionary. It
may seem to be a difference between the social whole and a scientific
theory that the former, as it grows, creates new difficulties, by
creating new and freshly contradictory matter, as in the social
problems of civilisation; while the latter, as we imagine, deals with
an unchanging experience. But this distinction is less true than it
appears, and the comparison with the growth of a theory will always
throw light on the true nature of the will and its continuous effort
to satisfy itself.

2. Right or Law may be taken in the widest sense as including the
whole manifestation of Will in an actual world--“the actual body of
all the conditions of freedom,” [1] “the realm of realised freedom,
the world of mind produced out of itself, as a second nature.” [2] It
is a merit of the German {259} term “_Recht_” [3] that it maintains
the connection between the law and the spirit of law, [4] and almost
of itself prohibits the separation between positive law, and will,
custom or sentiment, which underlies such a theory as Austin’s.

[1] Hegel, _Philos. of Mind_ (E. Tr.), p. 104. Cf. defs. quoted from
Green, p. 203 above.

[2] _Rechtsphil_., sect. 4.

[3] Cf. the Greek’s idea of “_nomos_.”

[4] See ch. ii. above on Montesquieu and Rousseau.

This whole sphere of Right or Law, the mind as actualised in Society
and the State, naturally divides itself on the principle which has
just been explained, into three connected groups of ideal facts
or points of view. The first, or simplest and most inevitable, of
these, may be called the “letter of the law” as we come upon it most
especially in the law of property--Shylock’s law--the sheer fact, as
it seems, that the world is appropriated by legal “persons.”

The second, obviously conditioned by the first both positively and
negatively, may be described as the morality of conscience; the
revolt of the will against the letter of the law, though this was
its own direct expression of itself (_e.g._ in taking things as
property); and its demand to recognise as right nothing but what
springs from itself as the good will.

And thirdly, there is the reality or concrete experience in which
the two former sets of facts, or ideas, find their true place and
justification--the completed theory, so to speak, which adjusts and
explains the narrower views founded on one-sided contact with life.
This is indicated to consist in “social observance,” or “ethical use
and wont”; the system of working mind where the true will appears as
incarnate in a way of living. This, {260} like the others, it must
be remembered, is a fact, though akin to a theory. Not only does it
explain and justify the other factors, but its existence has enabled
them to exist, as theirs has also been essential to it. And yet each
of the three, as one aspect of society which under certain influences
may catch the eye, has at times claimed--is, indeed, constantly
claiming--predominance, and has thus brought into relief its own
defects and the need of the complementary ideas. We will speak of
these moods of mind or kinds of experience in their order, expecting
a further sub-division when we come to treat of the third.

3. “Law,” then, in the directest possible sense--the minimum sense,
so to speak--is the hard literal fact that it is a rule of the
world we live in for things to be appropriated by persons. This is
the first or minimum change of the world from mere matter into the
instruments of mind, and it is a necessary change. Things have no
will of their own, and it is by having a will asserted upon them that
they become organs of life. In the same way, it is by assertion in
external things that the will first becomes a fact in the material
world. Property is “the first reality of freedom.” [1] It is not
the mere provision for wants, but the material counterpart of will.
Contract belongs to this sphere, the sphere of property. It is an
agreement of persons about an external thing--a “common will,” but
not one “general” or “universal” in its own nature like that involved
in the State.

[1] _Rechtsphil_., sect. 41. Not, in its developed form, the first
in time. Hegel lays stress on the fact that true, free, property was
hardly realised even in his own day.

{261} Thus, it is a confusion of spheres to apply the idea of
contract to the State, for the State is an imperative necessity of
man’s nature as rational, while contract is a mere agreement of
certain free persons about certain external things. The idea of the
social contract is a confusion of the same type as that by which
public rights and functions were treated as private property in the
middle age. The attributes of private property are nothing more than
the conditions of “personal” existence, and absurdity results if they
are transferred to functions of the State.

This phase or view of law as, in its letter, an ultimate and absolute
rule, may be illustrated, Hegel says, by the Stoic notion that there
is only one virtue and one vice; by the Draconic conception that
every offence demands the extreme penalty; and by “the barbarity
of the formal code of honour, which found in every injury an
unpardonable insult.” It might also be illustrated by Austin’s theory
of law as a command enforced by a penalty; or by the theories which
account for property simply by the fact of occupancy or of labour
mixed with the thing. The common point of all these views is that
they treat the law, not as a part of a living system, [1] ultimately
resting on the will to maintain a certain type of life, but as
something absolute in its separateness, and equally sacred in all its
accidents and inequalities.

[1] See _e.g._ above, p. 232, how the idea of a system of rights may
modify punishment.

Now, this emphasis and idea of law, being the exaggeration of a
single and direct necessity, the {262} necessity of order and
property, may be called “primitive” or barbarous, but it cannot of
course be identified with the earliest state of social authority
known to history or to anthropology. There we should probably find
law undifferentiated from custom and from religious sentiment,
and consequently, though rigid enough, not in any such one-sided
absoluteness as we have been describing. All we can say is that
this is the way in which law must come to be regarded whenever its
living spirit is forgotten, and an unreal absoluteness is assigned
to it; and this connection of principle verifies itself as a fact in
recurrent historical phenomena, and in fallacies which perpetually
reappear.

4. Within the whole fabric of right or realised will, the element
which naturally asserts itself by antagonism to the letter of the
law is the morality of conscience, conscientiousness, or the idea of
the Good Will. It is connected with the letter of the law, as Hegel
puts it, by the various degrees of wrong. The will, that is to say,
finds itself at variance in or with [1] the order of law and property
which it has created as its direct and necessary step to freedom. Its
realised theory, so to speak, is found to break down at a certain
point, by being in contradiction with the needs which it was created
to meet. “_Summum jus, summa injuria_”. We may object that the
anti-legal will is simply wrong. This may be so, and again it may
not be so. What the will has awakened to, whether right or wrong, is
{263} that it can acquiesce in nothing which does not come home to it
as fulfilling its own principle. What so comes home to it is what it
calls “good,” and it cannot accept any order or necessity which it
cannot will as good, _i.e._ as satisfying its own idea.

[1] “In it,” when my will does not conflict with right as such, but
claims the right in an object A to be mine and not yours--a civil
dispute. “With it,” when my will rebels, and by its act, so far as
in it lies, denies and destroys the whole fabric of right, _e.g._
takes the object A, without alleging a right to it--theft, a criminal
offence, cf. p. 230.

When this phase of reaction is pushed to its logical extreme, we
have the modern doctrine of my conscience and my pure will. It is
the conflict of the inner self with the outer world, expressed in
history through the Stoic and through some forms of the Christian
consciousness (especially the Protestant consciousness), and in
philosophy through the Kantian doctrine of the good will, uttered in
the famous sentence, “Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world
or out of it which can be called good without qualification except
a good will.” [1] Nothing is worth doing but _what_ one ought, and
_because_ one ought.

[1] Kant, _Grundlegung zur Metaphysik d. Sitten_, sect. I.

The criticism to which this principle has been subjected is familiar
to students of ethics. Its point is, in brief, that there is no way
of connecting any particular action with the mere idea of a pure
will. The forms assumed by evasions of this difficulty, which we fall
into when we desire wholly to separate the inner from the outer, or
the “ought” from the “is,” are treated by Hegel with unsurpassable
vigour and subtlety, as indeed the annihilating criticism of this
conception is primarily due to him. The essence of the matter is
that the pure will directed towards good for the sake of good,
having no real connection with any detailed conduct, may be alleged
by self-deception in support of any behaviour whatever, and out of
this may spring the {264} whole sophistry and hypocrisy of “pure
intention.” He makes the shrewd observation, [1] which is still of
interest, that the extreme Protestant doctrine of conscience may take
the form of ethical vacuity or instability, and that this had in his
time been the cause of many Protestants going over to Rome, to secure
some sort of moorings, if not precisely the stability of thought.

[1] _Rechtsphil_., sect. 141.

Still, out of all this one-sidedness, there survives the permanent
necessity that an intelligent being can acquiesce only in what
enters into the object of his will. It is his will which affirms the
aim to which his nature draws him, and he is absolutely debarred
from reposing in anything which does not appeal to his will. The
subjective will is the only soil on which freedom can be a reality.

So, within the general organism of Right or realised Free-will, we
have found two opposite groups of facts--for the aspirations of
intelligent beings are facts--or tendencies or theories, which are
connected by opposition, and yet are necessary to the expression of
the same underlying need--the letter of the law, and the freedom of
conscience.

5. Hegel’s name for the third term, which, as he puts it, expresses
the “truth” of these extremes, may be rendered “the Ethical System,”
or “the Moral Life,” or “Social Ethics.” It expresses “the truth” of
the extremes, as a good theory may express the truth of two one-sided
views. Only, as we have said, it is a fact as well as a theory, and
therefore is something which actually contains what these two views
demand, and does the work which they, and the facts they rely on,
{265} exhibit as necessary to be done. This relation is not obscure
or unprecedented. Every institution, every life, works as a theory,
and either masters its facts or fails to master them; though not
every theory is a life or an institution.

The German word which the above-mentioned phrases attempt to render
is “_Sittlichkeit_” The word takes its meaning from “_Sitte_” which
in common usage is equivalent to “custom.” Hegel’s use of the
term, in his later writings, as opposed to “_Moralität_” and as
indicating, in comparison with it, a fuller and truer phase of life,
is an intentional declaration of war against the Kantian principle
of the pure good will, and is the gist of Hegel’s ethico-political
view in a nutshell. The word would most naturally apply to the
life of a community in which law, custom, and sentiment were not
yet very sharply distinguished. According to accepted views, the
communities of ancient Greece, before they were stirred by the
reflective movement which is associated with the names of Socrates
and the Sophists, would be examples of a disposition and order of
life which the word “_Sittlichkeit_” might denote. And it was in
the Greek communities, as is shown by the work which he sketched
as early as 1802, [1] that Hegel found this suggestion of a whole
in which law and custom, duty and disposition, were absolutely at
one. He subsequently modified the conception in accordance with the
modern idea of freedom, by allowing a greater emphasis and relief to
its {266} component parts, and insisting (against Plato’s _Republic_
for instance,) on the principle of individual choice, initiative,
and property, as necessary to the complete communion of intelligent
beings. As we have just seen, indeed, he introduces reflective
morality or conscientiousness into the sphere of Right, to represent
the full nature of mind, which is only exhibited in a consciousness
which pursues its aims of its own choice and for their own sake.

[1] The _System d. Sittlichkeit_. The _Rechtsphil_. was not published
till 1817, in its earliest form. See Wallace, _Hegel’s Philosophy of
Mind_, p. 187.

The Ethical System, then, or Social Ethics, is put forward as the
ideal fact which includes, and does the work of both the literal law
and the moral will, alike in practice and as a theory. It is the idea
of freedom developed (i.) into a present world, and (ii.) into the
nature of self-consciousness.

For (i.), in the first place, the ethical system, or the ways of
acting which make up social ethics, constitute a present and actual
world. So far it partakes of the nature of the literal law and order,
the system of property-holding, which, as we have seen, is all but
a natural fact. Social Ethic, we might say, _is_ a physical fact.
The bodily habits and external actions of a people incorporate it.
It transforms the face of a country, “domesticating the untamed
earth.” [1] Each individual has his own bodily existence in a
determinate mode as a part of the ethical life of society. The rules
and traditions of ethical living are, as has been said, “the nature
of things.” They are as hard, as “objective” an order as “sun,
moon, mountains, rivers, and all objects of nature.” [2] Man lives
according to them before he knows that he {267} does so, and always,
in a great degree, independently of knowing that he does so. As this
group of facts, or considered from this point of view, the ethical
system is the body of the moral world.

[1] Aeschylus, _Eumenides_, I. 14. [2] _Rechtsphil_., sect. 146.

(ii.) But it is also and no less the very nature of
self-consciousness. It is as much a demand of man’s intelligence
or an inner and universal law as the “pure will” itself. [1] The
difference between them is that the Ethical System is a _system_,
a world, though from the point of view of will regarded as inner,
that is to say, as something which is the motive and fulfills the
demand of consciousness. Thus, it bears the character of a thoroughly
systematised theory, as contrasted with the idea of a good will,
which is a mere general point of view. And it is because of this
systematic character that it is enabled to connect the individual
or particular will with the universal spirit of the community. It
is only in a system that a particular fact can be connected with
a universal law, as the planetary motions are with the law of
gravitation. The particular will, as we have explained above, is
universalised by its relation to a systematic purpose which it partly
implies and partly realises. A man wishes for this thing or that
thing, but not at any price. The reservations to which his wish is
subject, by reason of other purposes and postulates of life, are
known to him only in part; but if they could be stated in full, they
would constitute the system of his life as realised in the universal
life of the community. It is precisely {268} analogous to the process
which a common judgment of perception has to go through in becoming a
scientific truth--the implications have to be stated in full, and the
perception modified in accordance with them. And when this is done,
we have no longer a fact, but a science.

[1] On all this portion of the subject, see Mr. Bradley’s Essay, “My
Station and its Duties,” in _Ethical Studies_.

Regarded from this point of view, as the substance of the individual
Will, the Ethical System is the Soul of the moral world.

In analysing the Ethical System, we shall say nothing of “duties”
or “virtues.” Duty is in each case what the relation requires--the
attachment of the universal system of will to the individual life.
Virtue is a habit of such action, considered as embodied in the
nature of an individual. The idea of virtue and virtuousness is not,
in Hegel’s view, altogether suitable to the members of an ethical
commonwealth. It belongs rather to a time of undeveloped social life,
when ethical principles and the realisation of them are ascribed to
the nature of peculiarly gifted individuals. Virtue or excellence, to
the Greek moralist, for instance, suggested doing something better
than the average, or being in some way specially gifted, and it is
still apt to indicate the desire to be some thing exceptional, and
not simply to find yourself in genuine service. The meaning of the
words to-day tends to narrow itself to certain special relations, and
does not indicate that life of the member in the whole, which is the
essence of what we really value.

The Ethical System, or the Order of Social Ethics, then--the mind and
conduct of the citizen in Christendom--may be regarded as affirming
freedom {269} in three principal aspects, necessarily connected, and
supplementing one another. Outwardly these aspects are different
groups of facts--different institutions; inwardly they are different
moods or dispositions of the one and indivisible human mind.

Thus, Hegel’s analysis regards the social whole or system of social
ethics from three points of view. First, in respect of the Family;
secondly, in respect of what he has entitled Bourgeois Society; and
thirdly, in respect of the Political Organism, or the State in the
strict sense.

It is to be borne in mind that, like the three principal divisions in
the sphere of Right, these headings represent explicit theories of
society, as well as groups of facts.

6. Beginning once more, within an ordered social sphere, at the
ethical factor which stands nearest to the natural world, and has
taken, so to speak, the minimum step into the realm of purpose and
consciousness, we start from the family. As the family exists in a
modern civilised community, it is something necessary to society and
the State, but absolutely distinct from both.

It first _(a)_ represents the _fact_ of the natural basis of social
relations, being the embodiment of natural feeling in the form of
love, both as between the parents, and as embodied for them in the
children. It is in accordance with Hegel’s general views of the
meaning of a system that he sees this element of mind primarily
represented by the family, as an organ preserved and differentiated
_ad hoc_, and not, or not merely, distributed indefinitely throughout
the community. Thus, the modern family represents for him a higher
stage {270} of civilisation--an organ to a fuller embodiment of
mind--than the clan or tribe, or, in short, than any form of
community in which the _whole_ bond of union rests on merely natural
feeling, kindness, generosity, or affection. In the nation, indeed,
a tinge of natural affection, a colouring of unity by kinship,
survives, just as feeling runs through the experience of the
individual mind. But the distinctive character of the State is clear
intelligence, explicit law and system, and so the natural basis of
feeling, though necessary to be preserved and spiritualised, achieves
these needs in the family as a special organ, and not in the State as
such.

All those theories, therefore, which tend to assimilate the State to
a family by a sort of levelling down of the former or levelling up of
the latter (Plato’s _Republic_, the phalanstery, paternal government,
and the like) involve for Hegel a mere confusion of relations. They
recognise an element which is essential to society, and may truly
be said to be even its foundation. But they do not see its right
place in the whole, and do not understand that in order to attain a
stronger and deeper unity (which is, in short, a stronger and deeper
mind) the different elements must be allowed a greater emphasis and
relief, and their respective characteristics must not be slurred or
scamped.

But _(b)_ in the second place, the family is a factor in the rational
whole, the State, though its function _par excellence_ is that of
the natural basis of society. Hence its nature and sanction is
ethical--it rests neither on mere feeling on {271} the one hand,
nor on mere contract on the other. It has a public side, and the
acceptance of a universal obligation by a declaration in explicit
language (language being the stamp of the universal), in face of the
community, is an essential part of marriage, and not a mere accident
or accessory, as the votaries of feeling have urged. This view is
aimed against the confusion which finds the sole essence of marriage
in feeling. This is a perpetually recurring contention, represented
in Hegel’s day by Friedrich von Schlegel’s _Lucinde_, which argues
that the form of marriage destroys the value of passion. Hegel’s
analyses are everywhere directed against this inability to grasp the
distinct sides of a many-sided fact.

_(c)_ The ethical aspect of the family [1] shows itself in the nature
and organisation of the household, as an institution embodying
permanent interests and relations of the two persons who are its
head, and as an organ of public duties in the bodily and spiritual
nurture of the children. The permanent and equal relation of the
heads of the household, involved in its nature as the ethical aspect
of the family, implies monogamy, and it is the monogamous family
alone which can count as a true element of the ethical order.

[1] Cf. Green’s _Principles of Political Obligation_, p. 235.

_(d)_ The household, being the true and operative ethical organ
which makes parentage into family, is the unit which demands to be
respected and protected by the State against the less differentiated
forms of consanguinity, such as the clan. The true family starts
from marriage and the foundation of a household, and in the early
{272} development of law we find the State, with a just instinct,
protecting the household against the clan, _e.g._ by conferring the
power of bequest. This power, though now it may imply a discretion
mainly hostile to the family, presented itself in early law rather
as a means of perpetuating the separate household as against the
pretensions of the clan to interfere with its property.

Thus, the monogamous family is naturally and necessarily, to some
extent, a unit in respect of property; the children, at least, being
inevitably under tutelage and incapable of self-support, even if
economic equality asserts itself as between husband and wife. This
peculiar relation in respect of property is rooted in the unique
nature of the household, as an organ for the guardianship of immature
lives, and as a unity of feeling rather than of explicit thought. It
is noticeable that progress tends to introduce the distinctions of
property within its unity [1] (though for children this can never go
very far), and very slightly to introduce the relations of the family
into the outside world. In as far as such distinctions come to be
made, the nature and functions of the household being undisturbed, a
somewhat higher intensity of ethical union is rendered necessary, and
will no doubt assert itself.

[1] Married Women’s Property, Protection of Earnings of Children,
Property assigned by understanding within household to young children.

7. When the man (or woman [1]) arrives at maturity and leaves the
safe harbour of the family, he finds himself, _prima facie_, isolated
in a world {273} of conflicting self-interests. He has his living
to make, or his property to administer. He is tied to others, in
appearance, only by the system of wants and work, with the elementary
function which is necessary to it, viz. its police functions and the
administration of justice.

[1] Hegel would say only or chiefly the man, who is for him the
natural earner and chief of the household.

It is this phase of social life, and the temper or disposition
corresponding to it, which Hegel indicates by the expression
Bourgeois Society. [1] It presents itself to him as the opposite
extreme of life and mind to that embodied in the family. It is an
aggregate of families--for the units of the Bourgeois Society are
heads of households--as seen from the outside, in the great system
of industry and business, where a man has to find his work and do
it. It is, in mind, the presence of definite though limited aims,
calculation and self-interest. [2]

[1] _Bürgerliche Gesellschaft_. “Society,” Wallace points out, is
here opposed to “community,” and indicates a looser phase of union.

[2] Cf. the merchant in Wilhelm Meister’s _Lehrjahre_, viii. 2. “I
can assure you that I never reflected on the State in my life. My
tolls, charges, and dues I have paid for no other reason than that it
was established usage” (cited from Wallace, _Hegel’s Philosophy of
Mind_, p. cci.).

Bourgeois Society is the aspect of the social whole insisted on by
the classical political economy, by which, as an achievement in
the way of reducing complex appearances to principles, Hegel was
much impressed. It is, again, the view of society embodied in the
conception of the purely police State, and its principle is confused
with that of the State proper by one set of theorists, as that of the
family is by another.

It is the peculiarity of Hegel’s view--probably {274} the most
definitely original, as it is the most famous, of all his political
ideas--to contend that this aspect of society, with the form of
consciousness belonging to it, is necessary to a modern State.
According to his logic, indeed, it is inevitable that every true
whole shall have an aspect of “difference,” of breaking up into
particulars.

The principle of the ancient State, as concentratedly expressed in
Plato’s _Republic_, was weak and undeveloped, and fell short of the
true claims of intelligence, [1] just because it dared not really let
the individual go--let him assert himself as himself. “Subjectivity”
was a principle fatal to it. Not that there was an iron oppression
in the States of antiquity. The individual was, for an onlooker,
magnificently developed. His limitations were in him, and did not
oppress him; but for all that, free choice and the career open to
talents were not for him.

[1] “Was not ideal enough” (Hegel, _Geschichte der Philosophie_,
ii. 254). The “notion” for him necessarily involves identity,
differentiation, and re-integration; and in this respect the ancient
State falls short of a true notion, while the modern realises it.

The modern demand--such is Hegel’s conception--is harder and higher.
The individual’s life is not predetermined by his birth, but he is
thrown face to face with economic necessity, which is a form of the
universal end. He has to strip off his crudeness and vanity, and, of
himself, mould himself into something which fulfils a want. This is
a step without which there can be no true freedom--the giving one’s
self by one’s own act a definite place in the region of external
necessity, the “becoming _something_” or attaching oneself to {275}
a definite class of service renderers. Thus, we are startled to
find culture or education treated in general, and in respect of
its indispensableness, under the head of the Bourgeois Society.
For culture is the liberation from one’s own caprices, and the
acceptance of a universal task. It is a severe process, and therefore
unpopular, but it is a necessary one if we are to have true freedom.
The criticism that such a world and temper is the world and temper
of self-interest does not appeal strongly to Hegel. We shall have to
treat of it more fully below. [1]

[1] See p. 291.

It may be noted in passing that the insecurity of life, which may
seem to attach to dependence on the vast system of wants and work,
is more and more seen, as modern economic relations develop, not to
be insecurity at all, except in as far as “culture” in the form of
industrial training is absent. There is, indeed, in modern life,
nowhere any absolute and oyster-like stability. The highest stability
to be anywhere attained is that due to fitness for service in the
interdependent system of needs. [1]

[1] I may refer to _The Standard of Life_, by H. Bosanquet, essay on
“_Klassenkampf_”.

Therefore, as Hegel saw, but in more ways than he saw, the system
of Bourgeois Society--the economic and industrial world--is not a
separate reality, but only an appearance within a larger system.
The member of it is not so detached as he may seem, or think. He is
within, and sustained by, the general life of the State, as the aims
which are his motives in “business” or industry are within {276} and
inseparable from the whole structure of his intelligence.

Thus, the world of Bourgeois Society--a world, on the whole, of cash
nexus and mere protection by the State--has a structure or tendency
of its own which brings it back by necessary steps to connection with
the State proper or explicit and determinate social unity. It is,
we must observe, posterior to the State in time. It is only within
the State proper, and resting on its solid power, that such a world
as that of Bourgeois Society could arise or be conceivable. Its
priority to the State is, like that of the family, the priority of
comparative narrowness or simplicity, of dealing with fewer factors,
and of representing human nature in a more special, though necessary,
aspect. And for this very reason it could not exist by itself. It has
not the many-sided vitality indispensable to anything which is to
hold its own in the actual world.

The working of the Bourgeois Society, then, exhibits an inevitable
connection with the State proper, and, so to speak, leads up to it.

In the first place, the economic world implies the administration
of justice. In this, as involving a developed system of civilised
law, there is an advance on the “letter of the law” in its crudest
and most barbarous acceptation. The system of law of a modern
State is, and still more ought to be, [1] a fairly reasonable and
intelligible definition of the rights and relations of persons.
By this determination the economic system of particular wants and
services enters upon a first {277} approximation, as it were, to a
unity of principle. The law only professes, indeed, to _protect_
property and exchange, but in doing so it unavoidably recognises
that the particular want has a general bearing; for the developed
system of law only comes into existence to enable wants to be
supplied, and takes its definite shape according to the system of
wants. We may illustrate this first approximation to universality,
which law confers upon the particulars of private interest, by a
suggestive view which M. Durkheim has propounded. [2] He has pointed
out that the current formula for social change, “from status to
contract,” has a subtler significance than is apt to be recognised.
For contract is not really indeterminate, as if it arose _in vacuo_
without a precedent. It runs in forms determined by social experience
through law and custom; and thus the law, which professedly aims at
protecting property and exchange, necessarily regulates them by the
modes in which it chooses to protect them.

[1] Hegel pleads strongly for codification.

[2] _De la Division du Travail Social,_ 225 ff.

A more intimate relation to the State proper--to a definite
principle, as we might say, of common good--grows out of the
interests of Bourgeois Society which take the shape of what a German
calls “Police and Corporation,” _i.e._ State regulation and Trade
Societies.

The basis of State regulation is the emergence of aspects of common
interest in the system of particular interests. The region of
particular interests (supply and demand) has an accidental side,
and the State has a right and a duty to protect the general good
against accidental {278} hindrances. On the whole, no doubt, the
right relation between producer and consumer arises of itself, but
miscarriages may occur which call for interference on behalf of the
explicit [1] principle of the general good. The _general_ possibility
of the individual’s obtaining what he wants is a public interest, and
the State has a right to intervene with this end in view, both by
execution of necessary public works, by sanitary inspection and the
like, and by inspection and control of fraud in the case of necessary
commodities offered for sale to the general public. For the public
offer of goods in daily use is not a purely private concern, but a
matter of the general interest. If indeed there was complete official
regulation, there would be a risk of getting work like the Pyramids,
that represented no private want at all; but yet, in the system of
private wants, there is a public interest that demands vigilance.

[1] The _explicit_ idea of common good always belongs in Hegel to the
State proper.

A similar approximation of Bourgeois Society to the State is
constituted by the “Corporation,” which rests on the facts of class.
Every member of the Bourgeois Society belongs by his vocation to a
class, and this breaking up into classes is a consequence of the
division of labour which prevails in the economic sphere, disguising
the common good as private interest or necessity. But in the
formation of classes society begins as it were to recover from the
dispersion which private interest has occasioned. As a member of his
class [1] or {279} “estate,” the citizen acquires solidarity with his
fellows, and his particular interest becomes _ipso facto_ a common
one. As a member of the class, again, he is, or ought to be, a member
of his “trade society” or “corporation.” In this he finds his honour
or recognition, [2] a definite standard of life (apart from which
he is apt to assert himself by aimless extravagance, for want of a
recognised respectability), a standard of work, insurance against
misfortune, and (as a candidate for admission) the means of technical
education.

[1] The term “_Stände_” it must be remembered, has for a German the
association of elements of the representative assembly; “états”,
estates of the realm.

[2] Cf. the English workman’s phrase, “a good tradesman,” _i.e._ a
competent member of his trade.

If the family is the first basis of the State, the classes or estates
are the second. The Corporation or Trade Society is a second family
to its members. It is the very root of ethical connection between the
private and the general [1] interest, and the State should see to it
that this root holds as strongly as possible. [2]

[1] “We can only say that these men, if they leave us, will bitterly
regret it. ... The man who is so unselfish as to care nothing for
himself or his fellow-men will soon find himself, as years creep over
him, and grey hairs and glasses, completely cut out.”--“Branch Trade
Report (Birmingham) to National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives,
January, 1896.”

[2] Sects. 201 and 255. I omit Hegel’s characterisation of the
classes, which has a good deal in common with theories which
represent occupations as determining character. The contrast between
agricultural and industrial or commercial life, between country and
town, is of great importance in his view. He almost seems to confine
Bourgeois industrialism as such to the life of town-dwellers; though,
again, ultimately the whole division into classes is characteristic
of Bourgeois Society (cf. sects. 256 and 305).

  “If,” Hegel writes, [1] “in recent days the “Corporation
  has been abolished, this has the significance {280}
  that the individual ought to provide for himself. This
  may be admitted; but the corporation did not alter the
  individual’s obligation to earn his livelihood. In our
  modern States the citizens have only a limited share in
  the universal business of the State; but it is necessary
  to permit the ethical human being a universal activity
  over and above his private end. This universal, which the
  modern State does not always provide for him, he finds
  in the Corporation. We saw before that the individual
  providing for himself in the Bourgeois Society also acts
  for others. But this unconscious necessity is not enough;
  it needs the Corporation to bring it to a conscious and
  thoughtful social ethics. Of course the Corporation needs
  the higher superintendence of the State, or it would
  ossify, shrink into its shell, and be degraded into a
  wretched guild. But in and for itself the Corporation is
  no closed guild; it is rather the bringing of an isolated
  trade into an ethical connection, and its admission into
  a sphere in which it wins strength and honour.” [2]

[1] Sect. 255.

[2] It is obvious that this treatment of associations arising
among classes in industry and commerce does not apply in principle
exclusively to trade or professional societies. It would include,
_e.g._, Friendly Societies and Co-operative Societies, by which
members of the economic world bind themselves together for help,
recognition, and the assertion of their general interests.

8. The State proper, or political constitution, presents itself to
Hegel as the system in which the family and the Bourgeois Society
find their completion and their security. He was early impressed,
as we have seen, with the beautiful unity of the ancient Greek
commonwealths. And the first and last idea which governs his
representations of the modern State is that of the Greek commonwealth
enlarged as it was from a sun to a solar {281} system. The family
feeling and the individual interest are in the modern State let go,
accented, intensified to their uttermost power; and it is out of
and because of this immense orbit of its elements that the modern
State has its “enormous strength and depth.” It is the typical mind,
the very essence of reason, whose completeness is directly as the
completeness of each of its terms or sides or factors; and secure
in the logical confidence that feeling and self-consciousness, the
more they attain their fulness, must return the more certainly to
their place in the reasonable system which is their very nature.
As ultimate power, the State maintains on one side the attitude of
an external necessity towards the spheres of private life, of the
family, and of the economic world. It may intervene by force to
remove hindrances in the path of the common good, which accident and
immaturity may have placed there. But, in its essence, the State is
the indwelling and explicit end of these modes of living, and is
strong in its union of the universal purpose with the particular
interests of mankind. It is, in short, the incarnation of the general
or Real Will. It has the ethical habit and temper of the family as a
pervading basis, combined with the explicit consciousness and purpose
of the business world. In the organism of the State, _i.e._ in as
far as we feel and think as citizens, feeling becomes affectionate
loyalty, and explicit consciousness becomes political insight. As
citizens we both feel and see that the State includes and secures
the objects of our affections and our interests; not as separate
items, thrown together by chance, but as purposes transformed by
their relation to the common good, into {282} which, as we are more
or less aware, they necessarily pass. This feeling and insight are
the true essence of patriotism. It is easier to be magnanimous than
to be merely right, and people prefer to think of patriotism as a
readiness to make great sacrifices which are never demanded. But true
patriotism is the every-day habit of looking on the commonwealth as
our substantive purpose and the foundation of our lives.

The division of functions in the State is a necessary condition of
its rational organisation. But, as Rousseau had insisted, it is
altogether false to regard these separate functions as independent,
or as checks on one another. There could be no living unity, if the
functions of the State were ultimately independent and negative
towards each other. Their differentiation is simply the rational
division of labour. The State is an image of a rational conception;
it is “a hieroglyph of reason.”

Sovereignty, therefore, resides in no one element. It is,
essentially, the relation in which each factor of the constitution
stands to the whole. That is to say, it resides only in the organised
whole acting _qua_ organised whole. If, for example, we speak of the
“Sovereignty of the People” in a sense opposed to the Sovereignty of
the State--as if there were such a thing as “the people” over and
above the organised means of expressing and adjusting the will of the
community--we are saying what is, strictly speaking, meaningless.
It is just the point of difference between Rousseau’s two views. We
saw that Rousseau clearly explained the impossibility of expressing
the general {283} will except by a determinate system of law.
But what he seemed to suggest, and was taken to mean, by popular
Sovereignty, was no doubt just the view which Hegel condemns. It is
essentially the same question as how a constitution can be made.
Strictly, a constitution cannot be made except by modification of
an existing constitution. If, to put a case, you have a multitude
new to each other in some extra-political colony, they must assume
a constitution, so to speak, before they can make one. Law and
constitution are utterances of the spirit of a nation.

The form of State which Hegel analyses is a modern constitutional
monarchy, with an executive (ministers sitting in the chambers, as
he is careful to urge) and Chambers or Estates representing the
classes developed in the civic community. Representation, he urges,
is of bodies or interests rather than of masses of individuals, and
the Corporations or Trade Societies have also an important place
directly, by their touch with the departments of the executive
government. [1] The general principle is, as indicated above, that
the problems of connection between considerable particular interests
and the universal interests of the community are, so to speak,
prepared on the ground of the Corporation and Bourgeois Society for
a solution in the interest of the common good by the Legislative and
the Executive Government.

[1] Much as through inspectors and commissions the opinion of Trade
Unions, Friendly Societies, and Co-operators is elicited by our
Government Departments with a view to legislation, independently of
the House of Commons.

The logical division of power, in his language, {284} is that the
Legislature has to establish universal principles, the executive has
to apply these principles to particular cases, and the prince has to
bring to a point the acts of the State by giving them, “like the dot
on the i,” the final shape of individual volition.

The distinction of States into Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Democracy,
Hegel refuses to regard as applicable to the modern world. At best,
it could only apply to the undeveloped communities of antiquity. The
modern State is a concrete, and, according to its principle, all the
elements of a people’s life are represented in it as an indivisible
unity.

A curious point is Hegel’s insistence on the function of the personal
Head of the State. By a junction of the extremes, he connects it with
the recognition of free individuality, which is usually regarded as
the democratic principle of the modern world. There is no act, we may
say in illustration, according to the modern idea of an act, if it is
not done in the end by an individual, though in a developed political
system the monarch’s action may only consist in signing his name.
It is at least remarkable to compare this view with the tendency to
one-man government in the administration of the United States of
America.

The State, then, is on one side the external force and automatic
machinery implied in the maintenance and adjustment of the rights and
purposes of the family and the Bourgeois Society as an actual life.
On the other side, and most essentially, it is that connection of
feeling and insight, working throughout the consciousnesses of {285}
individuals as parts in a connected structure, which unite in willing
a certain type of life as a common good in which they find their
own. It has the same content as that of Religion; but in an explicit
and rationalised form as contrasted with the form of feeling. Only
the separation of Church and State, and the division of the Churches
against one another, have made it possible for the State to exhibit
its own free and ethical character in true fulness, apart from both
dogmatic authority and anarchic fanaticism.

9. Publicity of discussion in the assembly of the classes or estates
is the great means of civic education. It is not in the least true
that every one knows what is for the good of the State, and has only
to go down to the House and utter it. It is in the work of expression
[1] and discussion that the good takes form by adjustment of private
views to facts and needs brought to bear by criticism. “The views a
man plumes himself on when he is at home with his wife and friends
are one thing; it is quite another thing what happens in a great
assembly, where one shrewd idea devours the other.” [2]

[1] It is a remarkable point in English politics to-day that
legislation is practically in the hands of the Government
departments. Bills are rejected or “knocked about in Committee”; but
the mass of organised knowledge necessary to initiate legislation in
a complex society can hardly be found outside the gathered experience
of an office which has continuity in dealing with the same problems.
This tendency more than justifies Hegel’s point of view. An act of
the “General Will” has not only, as he said, to be moulded by running
the gauntlet of public and critical discussion, but has even to be
first drafted by the help of immense piles of experience, which the
general mind does not possess, and could not deal with, but which,
nevertheless, enable its typical wish and intention to be embodied in
effective form.

[2] _Rechtsphil._, sect. 315.

{286} The free judgment of individuals based on the publicity of
political discussion is “public opinion.” In public opinion we
have an actual existent contradiction. As public, it is sound and
true, and contains the ethical spirit of the State. As expressed
by individuals in their particular judgments, on which they plume
themselves, it is full of falsehood and vanity. It is the bad which
is peculiar, and which people pride themselves on; the rational
is universal in its nature, though not necessarily common. Public
opinion is a contradictory appearance, in which the true exists as
false. It is no accident, but inevitable insight, that leads both of
these characters to be proverbially expressed, as in “Vox populi, vox
Dei,” contrasted with Ariosto’s

    “Che’l Volgare ignorante ogn’un’ riprenda
    E parli plu di qual che meno intenda”; [1]

or Goethe’s

    “Zuschlagen kann die Masse
    Da ist sie respektabel;
    Urtheilen gelingt ihr miserabel.” [2]

or the “mostly fools” of Carlyle.

[1] “That the ignorant vulgar reproves everyone, and talks most of
what it understands least.”

[2] “The masses are respectable hands at fighting, but miserable
hands at judging.”

Now, as public opinion thus combines truth and falsehood, the public
cannot be in earnest with both, _i.e._ both cannot be its real will.
But if we restrict ourselves to its express utterance, we cannot
possibly tell what it is in earnest with--_because it does not know_.
Therefore, the degree of passion {287} with which a given opinion
is maintained throws no light on the question, on what points the
public is really in earnest, in the sense of the “real will.” This
can only be known from the substantive reality, which is the “true
inwardness” of public opinion. This substantive reality, the true
merits of any case, is not to be got by the study of mere public
opinion as expressed, but when it is successfully divined and
asserted, public opinion will always come round to it. If we ask how
it is to be divined or known, we must go back to the analogy of a
theory. The solution must be constructed so as to satisfy the real
facts or needs, and the real facts or needs only become known in
proportion as it is constructed, just as in scientific discovery.
The man who can see and do what his age wills and demands is the
great man of the age. Public opinion, then, demands to be at once
esteemed and contemned; esteemed in its essential basis, contemned
in its conscious expression. It is, however, the principle of the
modern world that every one is allowed to contribute his opinion.
When he has contributed it, and so far satisfied the impulse of
self-assertion, he is likely to acquiesce in what is done, to which,
he can feel, he has thrown in some element of suggestion or criticism.

10. In concluding this chapter, we will attempt to estimate the
nearness of such an analysis of the State to the actual facts of
life, admitting certain appearances against it, but rejecting
pessimistic views which rest on false abstractions.

I will state the difficulties as they appeared to T.H. Green, a
cautious and practical Englishman, {288} well experienced in local
politics, and acquainted with different classes of men. [1]

  “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 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.”

  “It is true that the necessity which the State lays on
  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
  his preserved streams, to pay his 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?”

  “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?”

  “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 of obedience to
  these requirements is determined by fear, to {289} 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?”

[1] _Principles of Political Obligation_, p. 8; cf. p. 127 ff.

I have quoted these passages--the whole section should be carefully
read--in order to state plainly a paradox which affects the theory
of society from beginning to end. It continually shows itself in the
pessimistic criticism of economic motive, political motive, and of
every-day social motive.

The whole question really depends on our understanding of the
relation of abstract and concrete. It is plain, as Green says, that
the idea of a common good has never been the sole influence operative
in the formation or maintenance of States. And, in as far as it has
operated at all, it has only done so in very imperfect forms. Green
goes so far as to say that 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, no doubt, there is a work of moral liberation,
which society, through its various agencies, is constantly carrying
on for the individual.

Now, the truth of these criticisms may be granted in the same sense
in which we grant the imperfection of knowledge (as currently
conceived) or of morality--imperfections not accidental, but
inherent in each particular form of human experience. The conflict
of interests, the failure to reconcile rights, and the weight and
opaqueness, so to speak, of law and custom to the individual mind,
are contradictions of the same type and {290} due to causes of
the same kind as those which arise in the world of ethics and of
theory. And, though the new relations which spring up in society
are perpetually resulting in new contradictions, there is no reason
to compare the State unfavourably, in this respect, with Morality
or with Science. The contradictions, in fact, are the material of
organisation. [1]

[1] Take, for instance, the chaos of the medical charities of London.
It consists of endeavours to adjust help to needs, which endeavours
are themselves unadjusted to each other. Thus, precisely as in the
theoretical progress, the unadjustment of adjustments brings out ever
new contradictions which demand readjustment.

Without differing profoundly from Green in theory, therefore, we
venture to assign a greatly diminished importance to his criticisms.
This is due in part to the growth of a more intimate experience,
owing in some measure to his initiative, which seems to show the
essentials of life to be far more identical throughout the so-called
classes of society than is admitted by such a passage as that cited
above about the dweller in a London yard. [1] It is due, further,
and in connection with such experience, to the psychological
conceptions developed in previous chapters, according to which the
place of actual fear of punishment in maintaining the social system
is really very small, while {291} the place of a habituation, which
is essentially ethical, is comparatively large. These suggestions,
which lead us to lay decreasing stress on Green’s criticism of Hegel,
point wholly in the general direction of his own convictions, and
we may finally meet the general difficulty, which expresses itself
in pessimism, by considerations such as Green himself alleges in
mitigation of his own criticism.

[1] Not much stress should be laid on an isolated expression of this
kind, used in making clear the difficulties of a theory which on
the whole he supported, and putting these difficulties, as was his
custom, as high as possible. But it is worth noting that no one,
who really knows the class thus rhetorically alluded to, fails to
experience in them the same great relations and recognitions which
make life worth living for more fortunate persons, and, as they feel
very keenly, the experience is often more emphatic there than in the
richer class. Probably, in fundamental matters, there is as large a
proportion of persons untaught and bred up between temptations among
the rich as among the poor.

We may approach the matter in this way. The paradox is, that if you
scrutinise the acts which have made States, and which carry them on,
or which go on under and within them, you will every where be able
to urge that they spring from self-interest and ambition--not from a
desire for the common good. How then can we say that the State exists
for a common good? Hegel’s large conception of a social fabric and
the temper of mind which maintains it should have done some thing to
meet this problem. But we may come a little closer to the precise
difficulty.

Nothing is so fallacious as mere psychological analysis applied
to the estimation of the purposes which rule a mind. In every act
there is necessarily an aspect of the agent’s particular self.
One way or another he is satisfied in it. So the pessimistic or
superficial psychologist can always--not in some acts merely, but
in all--discover a form of self-seeking. Life is a whole made up
of particulars, and the universal is a connection within them, not
another particular outside them; it is a mistake of principle to
suppose that any act can be outside the tissue of aims, impulses, and
emotions which affect the sensitive self. Great purposes work through
these affections and transform them, but {292} cannot obliterate
them without obliterating life. “There is nothing degrading in
being alive.” [1] But there is a kind of eye which sees all these
particulars apart from the substantive aims which give them their
character, and treats them as if they were the sole determining
motives of the agent. Hegel calls such a critic--he is thinking
especially of historians--“the psychological valet, for whom there
are no heroes, not because they are no heroes, but because he is
only a valet.” On the whole, a man is what he does. If his series
of actions has the root of the matter in it, it is wrong either for
him to be deterred, or for a critic to carp, because they bring him
gain or glory, or gratify him by activity and excitement. To shrink
from particular occasions of action because one’s self may find
satisfaction in them is to fall back into the mere general willing of
the abstract good. And “the laurels of mere willing are dry leaves
that never have been green.”

[1] _Rechtsphil._, sect. 123.

We may illustrate these ideas from the life of the ordinary members
of States, and from the career of a great ruler or conqueror. [1]

[1] Green, _Principles of Political Obligation_, sects. 121 and 128.

The life of an English labourer, for example, may concern itself with
no such abstract ideas [1] as are expressed by the words “State” or
“common good.” But, to begin with, he is a law-abiding citizen. He
keeps his hands off others and their belongings by the same rule
by which he expects others to keep their hands off him and his
belongings. {293} [2] He recognises fairness of bargaining, and is
prepared to treat others fairly, as he expects them to treat him. He
is aware of his claims, that is to say, as depending on something in
common between himself and others; and if he does not practically
admit any such community, “he is one of the dangerous classes,
virtually outlawed by himself.” [3]

[1] Although the literary class are liable very seriously to
under-rate the significance of forms of thought unfamiliar to them.

[2] Habits, such as our habit of relying on security of life and
property, are secondarily automatic, _i.e._ are very intimately
connected with ideas. See chap. viii.

[3] Green, _Loc. cit_.

So far he is a loyal subject only. If he is to have a fuller sense
of a social good, he must either take part in the work of the State,
or at least be familiar with such work, through interest in his
fellows share of it, and in the organisations which connect his class
interests with the public good. His mind must not merely work in
its place in the social mind, but must be in some degree aware of
the connection between its place and the whole--of the appercipient
structure to which it belongs. He must, in short, have touch with
the connection which Hegel represents as that between the Bourgeois
Society and the State proper. And this, in modern States, is in
principle open to him.

And, further, he must have the feeling for his State, which is
connected with the idea of home and fatherland. In a modern nation
the atmosphere of the family is not confined to the actual family.
The common dwelling-place, history, and tradition, the common
language and common literature, give a colour of affection to the
every-day citizen-consciousness, which is to the nation what family
affection is in the home circle.

{294} Thus, it is not true that either the feeling or the insight
which constitute a consciousness of a common good are wanting to the
every-day life of an average citizen in a modern State. It may seem
full of selfish care, but this is only a narrow view. If we look at
the spirit of the whole life we shall see that it is substantially
dependent on the recognition of a good, and feels that dependence in
concrete form.

And, secondly, to take the paradox in its extreme shape, in which the
order of the State appears to arise out of the selfish ambition of
the most unscrupulous of men. The contradiction may be stated in the
form that the actions of bad men are “over-ruled” for good. But this
would mean that the “psychological” critic or historian had first
misstated the cause, and then had rectified his mis-statement by a
meaningless phrase. The great ideas and causes which were advanced,
for example, by the career of Napoleon, owed neither their nature nor
their existence to his selfish ambition. They did not, however, owe
them to any non-human cause; to any operation of ideas otherwise than
in the minds of men. They came into existence through the working of
innumerable minds towards objective ends by the inherent logic of
social growth, with various degrees of moral insight, and they were
promoted by Napoleon’s career in virtue of the common character which
united his aims, in so far as they had a reasonable side, with the
movement shaped by the ideal forces of the age. There is no reason
to doubt, if we do not wilfully narrow our view of the situation,
that a conception of good was as much operative in the cause as it is
present in {295} the effect--say, in the unity of Italy. We cannot
attempt to deal with the problem of the existence of evil, on the
ground of ethical and political philosophy; and we are not concerned
to deny or to minimise the presence of greed and selfishness as
distorting forces in the minds of men, or in the organisation of
States. All that we needed to show, was that what makes and maintains
[1] States as States is will and not force, the idea of a common
good, and not greed or ambition; and that this principle cannot be
overthrown by the facts of self-interest in ordinary citizens, or of
selfishness in those who mould the destinies of nations.

[1] Aristotle’s saying of the State, that it “_comes to be_ for the
sake of life, but _is_ for the sake of good life,” expresses in the
first instance an apparent contrast between origin and purpose of
States. But its real point is that the purpose is implied in the
origin, for the State is natural, and in every “natural” genesis its
purpose is implied; and the origin is implied in the purpose, for
the State, in the processes which maintain it, “originates,” _i.e._
renews its material basis, daily, and must do so in order to “be.”




{296}

CHAPTER XI.

INSTITUTIONS CONSIDERED AS ETHICAL IDEAS.

1. We have been guided throughout our argument by the idea that the
relation of a given mind to the mind of society [1] is comparable to
the relation between our apprehension of a single object and our view
of nature as a whole. The former term, in each case, we cannot but
suppose to be an individualised case of the latter. The latter seems
inevitably to imply a universal principle corresponding to every
feature of the former. We can never see through the connections, and
the connections of the connections--_e.g._ of gravitation and of
colour--in every part. But our ideal as theorists would be to analyse
the physical object into features, every one of which should be a
case of a natural law, and the whole taken together a case of the
whole system of natural law, which would be our scientific view of
the world.

[1] I neglect, for the moment, the difference between the mind
of society and mind at its best. The difference is practically
considerable, but I shall attempt to make it appear, in the course
of the present chapter, to be a difference of progress but not of
direction.

In treating of a human mind in its relation to {297} Society and
the State, our ideal is comparable to this. We should like to
analyse any given mind into features each of which should be an
individual case of a universal principle, and the whole of which,
taken together, should be a case of the whole system of principles
incarnate in the world, and proximately in the social world. Plato,
simplifying for the sake of elucidation the City-state, which to our
minds was already simple, represented a community, in diagrammatic
form, as consisting in a threefold structure of classes, in which
were incarnate the three main features which he discriminated in
the individual soul--the desires necessary to living, the spirit of
action, and the power of seeing things as a whole.

2. The principles which constitute a society are facts as well as
ideas, and purposes as well as facts. This threefold character is
united in what we describe by the general term “institutions,” a term
which would apply perfectly well to Plato’s “classes” in virtue of
the definite relations with which he invests them.

It is unnecessary to insist on the external aspect of institutions as
facts in the material world; but it will be worth while to gather up
the leading conceptions of our analysis by tracing the nature of some
prominent “institutions,” as ideas, constituent elements of the mind,
which are also purposes; that is, as ethical ideas. An institution
may have grown up without special ordinance, or may have been called
into existence by an act of public will. But it has always the
character of being recognised _as if_ it had been “instituted” or
established to fulfil some public or quasi-public {298} purpose. [1]
An old servant is sometimes said to be “quite an institution”--he
is characterised by the function of keeping alive certain common
traditions of a school, perhaps, or a family--an annual custom may
be an institution in virtue of the same kind of recognition; Sunday
is an institution; the word is indeed very vaguely applied, for
obviously almost every object or event can have a significance of
this kind attached to it in jest or earnest. But for all that, we can
see pretty plainly what usage is driving at. An institution implies
a purpose or sentiment of more minds than one, and a more or less
permanent embodiment of it. “Of more minds than one,” because it is
to fix the meeting points of minds that the external embodiment is
necessary.

[1] Why is not a memorial statue or building, which expresses a
public idea, an “institution” apart from its uses? Apparently because
it has not the notion of bringing persons together or inducing
persons to act in some definite way. An “institution,” then, belongs
to the level of society, as such, conceived as a number of persons.
Thus, a work of art is hardly an institution, though it expresses the
“universal” of many minds; but a weekly concert is an institution,
because many persons act together in giving and attending it.

In institutions, then, we have that meeting point of the individual
minds which is the social mind. But “meeting point” is an unhappy
term, suggesting objects in space that touch at certain spots. Rather
let us say, we have here the ideal substance, which, as a universal
structure, is the social, but in its differentiated cases is the
individual mind. And it is necessary to observe that the material of
this fabric has determinate sources. Mind is not an empty point. It
is the world as experienced. The institutions, which as ethical {299}
ideas constitute mind, are, like a theory, attempts at unity in face
of needs, pressures, facts, and suggestions which arise in what we
call our surroundings, and to each of which mind reveals a different
quality; as every tone of a landscape elicits its peculiar shade of
feeling, which but for it might have remained latent for ever. It
takes the whole world to call out the whole mind. But it will be
enough if we can trace, in some prominent examples, the nature of an
institution as at once a dealing with surroundings, [1] an ethical
idea, and a social principle.

[1] There are, of course, no absolute surroundings. At every point
experience rests on mind. But at any point at which we are observing,
we must take some facts as, comparatively speaking, given.

3. The family starts from the universal physical fact of parentage,
but takes its ethical value mainly from the special phase of parental
relation which leads to the formation of a household. The association
of parents and children in a household, which is permanent until
broken up into other households, is due to economic conditions.
Calling to mind the original meaning of words, we see that we are
asserting the formation of a house hold to be due to “household”
[1] conditions. And this is something more than a pun. Whatever the
surroundings may be which favour the formation of households, whether
the difficulty of procuring livelihood, which makes the father’s
continued care essential, [2] or the chances offered by agriculture
to a stable group, they operate as elements in a human world, in a
world which is constituted by {300} the focussing of “surroundings”
(circumstances) in a whole. Conditions which have become “economic”
have ceased to be material. They are motives, interests, means to
ends. They bring the world into the mind, but in doing so they become
factors in the purposiveness and re-adjustment, which the mind, as
unity asserting itself throughout varied suggestions, is busied in
bringing to pass. By demanding permanence, for instance, economic
conditions elicit in the relation of parent and child the simplest
form of universality necessary to an ethical idea.

[1] “Economy” = household management.

[2] It is said that the household does not readily form itself in
very easy conditions of life.

We will not venture upon the history of phases of the family life,
but will attempt at once to sketch its position and value in the
typical civilisation of a modern State. Only it must be insisted on
once more, [1] that the family or household as an ethical structure
is not anterior to the State, but is rather a growth dependent on the
spirit and protection of the State, and intentionally fostered by
it as against forms of kinship which do less justice to the ethical
possibilities of parentage.

[1] Cf. p. 272.

As an ethical idea, then, the monogamous family, which is in the
normal case also a household, has a unique place in the structure of
the citizen mind.

Its peculiarity is in being a natural union of feeling with ideal
purpose. That is to say, the ideal purpose, a permanent interest
in a comparatively permanent and external life, attaches itself
by imperceptible links to the most universal incident of animal
existence. The mere remaining together of the units, a demand of
their physical needs, is almost enough of itself to transform their
inevitable {301} mutual dependence into a relation of intentional
service, rooted in affection, and tinged with some degree of
forethought.

And, being thus “natural,” the idea of the family has a hold like no
other upon the whole man. In this respect it anticipates the powers
which have been claimed for the love of beauty. The very animal
roots of life, and every detail of man’s appetitive being, are made,
without conscious effort or moralising interference, factors in a
round of social service. The meal of a lonely individual [1] is
perhaps, at best, a refined and lawful pleasure. But the family meal,
quite apart from over-strained religionism, has in it, as a plain
matter of fact, the fundamental elements of a sacrament, none the
less effective that they are not thought of by that name. And both
through maintaining the fitness of the parents for their life work,
and through the training of the children to the same end, the natural
ethics of the family have an indispensable logical hold upon the more
explicit common good known to the social will.

[1] Note, however, what is said below of the secondary or transferred
idea of the family. The solitary may partake of the family sacrament,
so to speak, “by faith.”

And, in the last place, it should be noted that a feeling and
atmosphere of this kind is not confined to members actually living in
households formed by families. There is no race, it has been said,
that parts with its children so readily, or retains their affections
so permanently, as the Anglo-Saxon race. When the type and spirit are
once formed, they are contagious and persistent; they {302} affect
all who have seen or known them, and even those who have never formed
part of a household bound by kinship.

If we contrast the idea of the household with monasticism as its
repudiation, and with the tribal state or phalanstery as its
exaggeration, we shall see its uniqueness in the strongest light. The
naturalness of its foundation, and the completeness of the reciprocal
interest (involving monogamy) on which its idea rests, distinguish
it from all other forms of union or disunion in which the sexes are
concerned. It may be added that the family, and it alone, has the
right adjustment of population in its power. The fully trained and
equipped human being can never be superfluous in the world. And the
production of the fully trained and equipped human being depends on
the capacity of forming a true family and meeting its requirements,
and when this capacity and idea regulate the union of the sexes no
growth nor apparent decrease of population need cause anxiety.

It seems as idle to discuss whether civilisation is conceivable
without the family as whether human nature can change. All that
we can attempt, as philosophers, is to ascertain the distinctive
part which its idea plays in human life as such. There must be,
we can see, some such idea--an ethical idea covering some such
sides of life--while man is a spiritual animal. But by what
precise “institution” such an idea might come to be represented in
circumstances which we do not know, it would be beyond the modesty of
philosophy to predict.

The institution of Property may be mentioned {303} as a corollary to
the household-family. Its natural basis and ethical value are very
markedly correlative to those of the latter. The outlook upon life
which it essentially implies is co-extensive with that demanded by
the household, although in the relations of acquisition and exchange
many further rights and duties may attach to it. It depends on the
fact that, in order to express a will in an individual life (which
is incomplete except as the life of a household), there must be a
power of moulding the material world in the service of ideas, which
is conditioned by free acquisition and utilisation. The institution
of property, then, as an ethical idea, consists in the conception
of individual (properly speaking, household) life as a unity in
respect to its dealings with the material instruments of living.
It is not merely the idea of provision for the future; still less
the certainty of satisfying wants as they arise from day to day. It
is the idea that all dealings with the material conditions of life
form part of a connected system, in which our conceptions and our
abilities express themselves. It binds together the necessary care
for food and clothing with ideas of making the most of our life and
of the lives dependent upon us. A being which has no will has so far
no property--a child has in practice, and a slave had by Roman law,
property in a secondary sense--and a being which has no property
has so far no actual will. The “person,” or responsible head (or
heads), of a household, is the true unit to whom the idea of property
attaches, because he is the unit to which we normally ascribe an
individualised will, a single {304} distinctive shape of the social
mind. A child has not yet such a will; a group of mature persons has
more than one. The change which is passing over the household in
consequence of the recognition of married women as individual wills
is highly instructive on this point. They can hold and manage their
own property, because it is admitted that they can have their own
view of life. It is not proposed that young children should hold and
manage property, because every one knows that they have no mature
individualised view of life. The corporate person of the household
is so far dissolved by legal recognition of its more individual
components; and it is most important, theoretically, to note that its
unity is not diminished by the recognition, but is raised to a higher
power.

4. It might seem fanciful to say that our district is to our family
as space to time; but it would suggest something of the point of
view from which it is well to look at the structure of our ethical
ideas. It is desirable to realise how the simplest characters of our
surroundings and their necessary connections are ethically important,
not because they impose anything upon us, but because they respond
to something within us, or rather, to a possibility which is to be
realised by the world, as in us its variety strives towards unity.
Parentage, we saw, was a universal animal fact, and from it, in
an experience capable of unity and permanence, springs the family
household and all that it implies for our lives. One’s district, as
an element of life, implies, of course, some stability--a home, not
merely permanent as a {305} home, like the Scythian’s waggon, but
located on some spot of earth. The nomad, we must suppose, to a great
extent carries his neighbourhood--his tribe--along with him, and for
that very reason the fact of neighbourhood has not its full effect on
him.

But when a permanent home is fixed on some spot of earth, presumably
with the beginnings of agriculture, a new condition begins to
operate--the “indifference” of space. Perhaps we are surprised that
“indifference” should be an ethical stimulus. But nothing is more
instructive than to note how qualities of our surroundings, which by
themselves seem negative or the barest natural necessities, spring
into significance when taken up into the unity of life. Locality
means a potential neighbourhood. It may be long before any one comes
near you except your own cousinhood, your tribe or clan. But the
indifference of space is a standing invitation, and it is pretty
certain that some day strangers will become your neighbours, and
that you will have to take up some mental attitude towards them.
Historians and jurists have described to us the struggle between the
principle of kinship and the principle of neighbourhood. When we read
that a plebeian, in the eyes of a Roman patrician, simply could not
make a real marriage any more than the beasts of the field, this is
not, as it may have become by survival, intentional arrogance on the
patrician’s part. It was rather the state of mind of Mrs. Transome
towards Rufus Lyon, “sheer inability to consider him.” A proof of
what a struggle it involved to reach a new attitude of mind as
regarded the resident alien is given by {306} the half-way house at
which it was found necessary to pause in the process. The recognition
of kinship on the ground of residence was the fiction, we are told,
by which the mind assisted itself to a positive attitude towards
those whom the indifference of space insisted on bringing within its
range. And the positive attitude towards which it was groping its way
was of course the recognition of humanity, the equality of man in the
truest sense which that ambiguous phrase will bear.

In modern States, in which this struggle is on the whole behind
us, our district or locality asserts its full indifference. Its
“negative” here becomes a “positive.” That is to say, on the whole,
[1] and under some reasonable reservations as to evidence of
intention to accept duties, and to renounce incompatible ones, men
are full members of the district to which they choose to belong. The
challenge thrown down by the indifference of space has resulted in a
recognition of universal humanity. Our district is our neighbourhood.
We will look a little more closely at the ethical idea implied. We
notice at once, at least in English experience, that each of us
belongs to a variety of districts which are concentric as regards
him. Each of these districts represents a different purpose, and we
are told that for practical purposes great confusion results. But
it is a useful training to be made aware of the distinct purpose of
each {307} organised locality which surrounds us--to have the care
of our health, of public order, of education, of the relief of the
destitute, and of religion according to our view of it, represented
by different, or possibly different, boundary lines on the map. Each
of these boundaries indicates some common element of thought and
feeling--some common interest--in the mind of the neighbourhood, and
the difference of the boundaries, where they differ--the difference,
_e.g._, between the civil and ecclesiastical parish--may have a
long growth of ideas behind it. At any rate, all these are moral or
physical needs, which, like our household necessities, draw us out of
ourselves, and reveal us to ourselves as cases of a larger mind.

[1] Settlement, scholarships, fellowships, and charities generally,
“close” to localities, and perhaps domicile, maintain qualifications
in contradiction with actual residence, and in case of allegiance
even depending in part on birth. But some fixity is, of course,
convenient; and I believe that intention plus residence will cancel
almost any opposing qualification.

Every locality, then, is, however imperfectly and unconsciously, a
body which has a mind. It is, as an idea which enters into us, the
spiritual reflection of our adjacent surroundings, both human and
natural, as the family is of our animal parentage. The neighbourhood
is for the mind its immediate picture of the world, the frame into
which its further vista of society as a whole must be fitted, or, in
other words, its sphere of direct relations. The family is a group
of natural relations; but the neighbourhood consists of relations
which are as natural in a different way, not through blood, but
through contact. It is not a selection, but rather a specimen of
life as a whole, for it must include as a rule _all_ the necessary
elements of the social fabric. It includes all that comes to us by
direct sense-perception from day to day; all our chance meetings and
dealings with those outside our household, and probably the nearer
{308} and more reliable illustrations of all social and political
problems. For it is a context of life which we know and feel in its
total working, which is impossible with what we only gather from
writings or from hearsay.

As such a reflection of our direct surroundings, it colours our whole
basis of feeling, A peculiar tinge of happiness, anxiety, depression,
or resolution attaches to the streets or fields which we pass through
day by day, and the faces which we meet. How far these feelings are
true interpretations of what we see, and how far they spring from
superficial or sentimental associations, is one of the greatest tests
of the mind and heart. Do we see the body of a soul, the symbols of
character and happiness, in the houses, the streets, the tillage, the
workshops, or the gardens?

No other element of mind can be the substitute for the neighbourhood.
It is the faith in which we live, so far as embodied in our contact
with a sensuous world. It is a microcosm of humanity, in which, by
the very indifference of space, we are liable to the direct impact of
all possible factors. It is particularly the sphere of charity and
courtesy, of the right behaviour in immediate human relations of all
possible kinds.

The District or Neighbourhood, in short, as an ethical idea, is the
unity of the region with which we are in sensuous contact, as the
family is that of the world bound to us by blood or daily needs.
Local self-government, for example, acquires a peculiar character
from the possibilities of intimate knowledge of each other among
those who carry it on. A man’s whole way of living {309} is in
question when he sets up to be locally prominent, and though the
result may often be corruption or vulgarity, [1] these are only the
failure of what, at its best, is a true type of the relation of
fellow-citizens.

[1] The recriminations or interested intimacies of a vestry or parish
council rest at bottom on the personal knowledge which, rightly used,
gives security to local life.

As with the family, we may illustrate the significance of
Neighbourhood by the case in which it fails to be duly recognised,
and that in which nothing else is recognised.

To a great extent, in the life of modern cities, especially when
supplemented by suburban residence, the principle is disregarded.
In a great city, the actual neighbourhood is more than can be dealt
with, and has often no distinctive physical character--at least no
attractiveness--and the idea of a special relation to it falls away.
The fact, indeed, is less universal than is often asserted, and
nearness in space, together with local government, retain and will
retain a certain predominance over the mind. The total disregard
of an ethical purpose connecting us with the surroundings nearest
to us in bodily presence, tends to deprive the general life of its
vitality, its sensuous health, strength, and beauty. In many ways,
circuitous perhaps, but ultimately effective, it may be that this
factor of immediacy will regain a proper place in the national mind.
We may observe that in as far as electoral districts are treated as
mere circumscriptions of such and such numbers of electors, the life
of a neighbourhood is disregarded. To make the constituency a mere
{310} number (Hare’s scheme) would be the climax of this tendency.

In the ancient City-state, on the other hand, the district was all
powerful. The State was almost a sensuous fact. The members of the
State were essentially friends and neighbours, who for business or
pleasure were meeting all day long. When the district thus absorbs
the State, there is a want of what we call freedom, though there
may be enough of sensuous unconstraint. The State and its ideal
purposes are not clearly set above all flesh and blood. A great legal
system is not created till the State ceases to be a neighbourhood.
Individual intimacy [1] and the “hard case” obscure the idea of
universal law. The possibility of representative government, of a
political faith which does not work by sight, is not conceived.
The district, as a natural fact, was at first only a degree more
liberating than the natural fact of kinship. [2] It was not conceived
that man, as man, belonged “neither to this place nor to Jerusalem.”
With the ideal unity of a modern nation such conceptions harmonise
much more readily, and the neighbourhood can lend them flesh and
blood without hiding them.

[1] Imagine a Roman or English judge being addressed as Demosthenes,
in his speech against Pantaenetus, addressed (in his client’s name)
the Athenian jury: “I know I have a hurried gait and a loud voice,
and it annoys people; but I am as I was made, and I have a right
to justice all the same.” It sounds like a speech to a jury of
schoolboys.

[2] P. 300 above.

5. “Class” is in democratic countries no longer a political
institution. A man’s vote is secured to him on a minimum
qualification, and his practical influence and acceptance depend
neither on {311} birth nor on occupation, but on the power which
he can exercise by his qualities or his possessions. This is a
consequence of the recognition of humanity as such, and has its bad
side and its good side according to the baseness and nobility of the
influences which tell _de facto_ upon human nature. It is horrible,
we may say, that influence should belong to wealth without any
security whatever for a discharge of social function. But this, given
human nature as it is to-day, is a result of the same causes which
enable us to boast, with some truth, that a man ranks in the general
world by his powers, character, and behaviour, and that we do not
know or care whether his livelihood comes to him as a miner or as a
duke. Wealth has weight because people give it weight; but no one
need give weight to wealth in politics or social intercourse unless
he likes. It is a consequence, then, of the recognition of free
humanity that “class” no longer is an institution in political right
as such, while in social intercourse, though it practically exists as
an institution, it claims to be an expression of what people are in
character and behaviour, and its differences are not annexed by any
iron bond to differences of occupation. [1]

[1] It may be taken as proved that a “gentleman” can make his living
as a labourer or mechanic--at least in the U.S.A., where irrational
tradition is weaker than in England--and remain a gentleman in the
drawing-room sense of the term as well as in essentials. This being
so, there can be no inherent impossibility in men born and bred
as labourers or mechanics realising the same qualities. It would
be cant, I think, to say that full equality of social class, full
pleasantness and freedom of intercourse, could be attained without
those qualities.

But though occupation no longer determines either social or political
class, in the sense of {312} gradation by any formal bond, yet it
remains and must always remain a determinant of class in a narrower
sense, and one of the main ideas which constitute the ethical
structure of the mind.

The necessities which we compared roughly to time and space--the
proximate permanent group and the adjacent locality--give a value to
man’s animal routine, and a significance to the area of his every-day
perceptions. It is when the division of labour, the requital of
one service by a different one, becomes prominent in a community,
that a further grasp is laid upon the distinctive capacities of the
individual consciousness, in which must be reckoned the surroundings
which constitute its horizon of possibilities. We still answer
the general question, “What is he?” by naming a man’s industry or
profession. The family and the neighbourhood sustain and colour the
individual life, but the vocation stamps and moulds it. The more
definite and articulate summons of the organising world--in which of
course intelligence is active, ever discerning new purposes in old
routine--elicits a deeper response from, or takes a more concrete
shape in, the particular centre of consciousness. The individual has
his own nature communicated to him as he is summoned to fit himself
for rendering a distinctive service to the common good. He becomes
“something”; an incarnation of a factor in the social idea.

The Roman word “class,” which the English language has adopted, not
for every separate employment, but for the character and position
roughly connected with a whole group of employments, has an origin
worth recalling. Plato’s classes {313} were “_genera_” = clans,
extended families. The German classes were “Stände” = statuses,
positions, estates (compare the French “état,” which practically =
trade). But the Roman “classis” was “a summoning” to public service;
the first and second classes were the first and second summonings;
[1] then indeed to military service in an order based on wealth. But
the idea may survive. Our “class” may be thought of as the group or
body in which we are called out for distinctive service.

[1] _Mommsen Rom. Hist_., i. 101, E. tr. The “_classicus_” was the
trumpet.

One’s class, then, in the sense in which it indicates the type
of position and service involved in one’s occupation, approaches
very near the centre of one’s individuality. In principle, as an
ethical idea, it takes the man or woman beyond the family and the
neighbourhood; and for the same reason takes him deeper into himself.
He acquires in it a complex of qualities and capacities which put
a special point upon the general need of making a livelihood for
the support of his household. In principle, his individual service
_is_ the social mind, as it takes, in his consciousness, the shape
demanded by the logic of the social whole. He is “a public worker”
[1] by doing the service which society demands of him. And just
because the service is in principle something particular, unique, and
distinctive, he feels himself in it to be a member of a unity held
together by differences. And in this sense the bond of social union
is not in similarity, but in the highest degree of individuality
or specialisation, the ultimate point of which would be to feel
that I am rendering {314} to society a service which is necessary,
and which no one but me can render--the closest conceivable tie,
and yet one, which in a sense, really exists in every case. Your
special powers and functions supply my need, and my special powers
and functions supply your need, and each of us recognises this and
rejoices in it. This ethical idea of unique service, or the service
of a unique class, involves of course a more or less conscious
identity in difference. That is to say, the individual’s mind is not
reduced to his special service, or he would be a machine. Rather,
the whole social consciousness is present in him, but present in
a modified form, according to the point of view from which it is
looking. The problem is simply put by Plato’s diagrammatic scheme of
classes. The statesman’s function is to be wise for the community;
the carpenter’s to carpenter for the community. But plainly the
community for which the statesman knows that he has to be wise, must
include the carpenter’s life and the conditions of his work, and the
community for which the carpenter knows that he has to work must
include some of the order and organisation which belong to it in the
statesman’s vision. The individual, in short, is unique, or belongs
to a unique class, not as an atom, but as a case of a law, or term
of a connection. This is what is meant by individuality in the true
sense; the character of a unit which has a great deal that, being his
very self, cannot be divided from him; not one which has so little
that there is nothing by subtraction of which he can be imagined
less. Such individuality is in a sense the whole ethical idea, but
more particularly is embodied in {315} the idea of a vocation. Our
vocation, like our neighbourhood, and usually of course in connection
with it, stamps both mind and body; and what we consider most
intimately ourself is really the structure of ethical ideas which
we are describing, with the feelings and habits in which they are
rooted, but none of which are unmodified by them.

[1] Greek δημιοῦργος [demiourgos], “artisan.” Homer speaks of
“those who are public workers--the soothsayer, the doctor, and the
carpenter.”

Like the other ideas of which we have spoken, the idea of class
or specialised function may be illustrated both by the extreme in
which it is nothing, and the extreme in which it is everything.
The less a society is differentiated--the less that, considered as
a mind, it has developed intense and determinate capacities--the
more its structure repeats itself from household to household, [1]
and fails to exhibit lines of formation pervading the community as
a whole. Dicey’s _The Peasant State_ [2] gives an idea of a social
mind thus undifferentiated, without classes, without ambitions, and
without interests. Both in this case and in that of the Boers of the
Transvaal it would be rash for an outsider to pronounce dogmatically
on the value of the life which is achieved. But as cases of social
formation and of social minds, they illustrate our present theme. To
say that there is no specialised function, is the same as to say that
there is no developed intelligence.

[1] Durkheim’s “Segmentary Structure,” _De la Division_, p. 190.

[2] See also H. Bosanquet, _Standard of Life_, p. 8.

“Class” appears to be everything, an absolute and inflexible rule
of precedence and privilege, when it has lost or has not gained the
power of accommodating itself to function, and function to social
logic. Such denials of free adjustment, of {316} the career open to
talents, may take the form of a confusion of the principle of class
with that of birth, or even with that of private property. In the
former case function and position are inherited, in the latter they
are bought and sold. The two confusions may even be combined, as when
public functions are inherited like or with a house or an estate. [1]
Such a “class” system may be an oppression to its members, [2] or
to the community, or to both. But the essence of the evil is that a
function of mind is divorced from its characteristic of free logical
adaptation within the social system. The institution has become
ossified; and instead of moulding itself, like a theory or a living
organism, to the facts and needs which it is there to meet, it nails
itself to an alien principle, and becomes a fallacy in social logic,
or a dead organ in the social body.

[1] As in the judicial privileges of the Baron of Bradwardine and his
likes.

[2] The hereditary executioner in Maurus Jokai’s novel, _Die schöne
Michal_.

In both of these extreme cases individuality is minimised. In the
former the individual does not pretend to any high capacity. In
the latter he pretends to a considerable capacity, but this being
cut apart from the principle of the whole, and pretending to be
everything in itself to exist absolutely or for its own sake has lost
the connection which gave it value, and becomes a mere pretension.

There is a strange and sad institution in which, it may be suggested,
the two extremes of error are combined. This is the institution of
“the {317} poor” as a class, representing, as an ethical idea in the
modern mind, a permanent object of compassion and self-sacrifice.
“Poverty,” it has been said, “has become a status.” The “déclassés”
have become a social class, with the passive social function of
stimulating the goodness of others. [1] Let any one consider
carefully, from the point of view which regards ethical ideas as
an embodiment of human or social purposes, the offertory sentences
of the Church of England. It is needless to press the criticism,
for no one would be likely to deny that here we have ideas gathered
from other soils and climates, and rightly applicable only in the
spirit, but not in the letter. “Give alms of thy goods, and never
turn thy face from any poor man; and then the face of the Lord
shall not be turned away from thee.” “He that hath pity upon the
poor lendeth unto the Lord, and look, what he layeth out it shall
be paid him again.” The victims of misfortune in a small community,
under strict regulations, as were the Jews, for the promotion of
industry, are one thing. The recognition of a class marked by _the
function of dependence_--to use a contradictory expression--in a
vast community whose industrial organisation rests on the individual
will, is another thing. The idea of pity and self-denial, inherited,
I presume, largely from the Jewish scriptures as also from the New
Testament, has tended, in the modern world, to become mechanical,
and combine with a false class-conception. All who know the inner
life of evangelical Christians a {318} generation ago will admit
that, among earnest persons of this type, the notion of the
tithe--the devotion of one tenth or more of the income to purposes
of religion or benevolence--had been inherited as a guiding idea,
representing an end valuable _per se_, almost according to the
letter of the offertory. I am not suggesting any vulgar charge of
other-worldliness, but recalling a genuine conviction that the
surrender of a portion of income to a less fortunate class of the
community was in itself desirable and a religious duty.

[1] The incurably sick and helpless in all ranks of society do, no
doubt, rightly fulfil such a passive function.

It would not be difficult to show that the true and highest idea
of Christian charity is remote from this conception of a dependent
status as inherent in a certain portion of society. What seems to be
needed here, as in so many aspects of morality and religion, is to
combine the inspiration and _abandon_ of the modern mind with the
definiteness of purpose and lucidity of plan that characterised the
ancient City-state.

Socialism, at its best, [1] unites with recent political economy
and with those who try to “organise” or rationalise charity, in
challenging the preconception that poverty must be recognised as a
permanent class-function. And this brave denial may remain written to
its credit when the controversies of immediate method are forgotten.

[1] I cannot think that in detail its advocates are consistent with
their principles on this point. But controversy is not my object here.

We may attempt to indicate in a few words the direction in which
the ethical idea incarnate in the institution of the “poor” is
tending to supplement and modify itself as clearer notions of a
commonwealth arise. It may be observed, by {319} way of introduction,
that we cruelly misconceive the Greek mind when we ascribe to it
a want of love and compassion, because we miss in its utterances
the religious note of devotion to the poor. [1] To a great extent
the truest idea of charity was presupposed in the very axioms of a
Greek commonwealth. The Greek spoke little of “the poor,” because
he recognised no such status. [2] It would have meant to him a
functionless class, a dislocation of the body politic. This, in
fact, is what it did mean when pauperism began to press upon the
Greeks, and the philosopher [3] at once diagnoses the evil, and uses
the term, “people without means,” _i.e._ without ways of supporting
themselves, instead of the older word, which rather suggests the
“object of ‘charity’”. To get them back into a function, “a means,”
is the course which _ipso facto_ rises before him; not to create a
new ethical idea for their sake _qua déclassés_.

[1] Not altogether true, of course. In Homer “all strangers and poor
men come from Zeus.”

[2] It is a mistake to treat all these problems as automatically
solved for the ancients by slavery. The citizen population had
enough dependence on industrial life to be liable to disaster from
its dislocation, and that this happened so little was a true success
while it lasted.

[3] Aristotle, _Politics_, 1320, d. 29. The older word is πτωχός
[ptochos], “one who crouches or cringes, a beggar”; it always had a
bad sense till it was ennobled in the _Gospels_ (Liddell and Scott).
Aristotle’s word is ἄπορος [aporos], “without ways and means.”
Different from both is πένης [penes], for which we have no proper
word, having spoilt “poor” by the idea of dependence. It means a
poor man in the sense of one who is not rich enough to live without
working. The speeches in which Poverty πενία [penia] defends her
merits against Wealth, and in distinction from Beggary πτώχεια
[ptocheia], in Aristophanes’ _Plutus_, are fine, though mixed with
fallacies.

The full modern conception of the “poor” as {320} an institution, if
they must be an institution, ought at least to avoid the pitfall of
acquiescence. Granting the fire and love of the Christian mind to be
a gain, yet its object must be brought into relation with the true
meaning of a mind or a commonwealth. Devotion to man at his weakest
must not be separated from devotion to the possibilities of man at
his strongest--possibilities either existent or at least symbolised
in the most unhappy of the functionless poor. Self-sacrifice for
the poor should not mean a tribute to the maintenance of a vicious
status, but an abiding and pervading sense of the claims which the
weaker humanity has to be made strong.

6. The Nation-State, we have already suggested, is the widest
organisation which has the common experience necessary to found
a common life. This is why it is recognised as absolute in power
over the individual, and as his representative and champion in the
affairs of the world outside. It is obvious that there can be but
one such absolute power in relation to any one person; and that, so
far as the world is organised, there must be one; and, in fact, his
discharge from one allegiance can only be effected by his acceptance
of another. The analysis of the previous chapter releases us from the
task of setting out the elements which combine in the Nation-State,
as the conception of sovereign and ultimate adjustment between the
spheres which realise the elements of our ethical life. It should be
noted, however, that the principles of the family, the district, and
the class, not only enter into the nation in these definite shapes,
but affect the general fabric of {321} the national State through the
sense of race, of country, and of a pervading standard of life and
culture. The reaction of ideal unity on the natural conditions of a
state is exemplified by the tendency to substitute ideal frontiers--a
meridian or a parallel [1]--for frontiers determined by natural
boundaries.

[1] See, _e.g._, the map of North America.

The Nation-State as an ethical idea is, then, a faith or a
purpose--we might say a mission, were not the word too narrow and
too aggressive. It seems to be less to its inhabitant than the
City-state to its citizens; but that is greatly because, as happens
with the higher achievements of mind, it includes too much to be
readily apprehended. The modern nation is a history and a religion
rather than a clear cut idea. Its power as an idea-force is not known
till it is tried. How little the outsider, and even members of the
community concerned, were able to gauge beforehand the strength of
the sentiment and conception that pervaded the United States through
the war of secession. [1] The place of the idea of the Nation-State
in the whole of ethical ideas may be illustrated by the Greek
conception of Happiness, as that organisation of aims, whatever it
may be which permits the fullest harmony to life. The State, as
such, we saw, is limited to the office of maintaining the external
conditions of a good life; but the conditions cannot be conceived
without reference to the life for which they exist, and {322} it
is true, therefore, to say that the conception of the Nation-State
involves at least an outline of the life to which, as a power, it is
instrumental. The State, in short, cannot be understood apart from
the nation, nor the conditions from the life, although in exerting
political force it is important to distinguish them. As an ethical
idea, the idea of a purpose, it is essential to hold the two sides
together, if we are not to walk blindly.

[2] The dangers besetting the French Republic to-day (December, 1898)
are, in essence, tests applied to the strength of a national idea. If
the idea cannot maintain itself, we must reluctantly suppose that it
ought not--that the common life has not the necessary depth.

7. Our analysis of the Nation-State suggests a point of view which
may be applied to the vexed question of whether State action is to be
judged by the same moral tests as private action.

The first step is to get a clear idea of the nature of State action.
It must be confined, one would think, to what is done in the name of
the State, and by something approaching to an act of will on its part
as a State. We only pass moral judgment on individuals in respect
of their acts of will, and we ought to extend the same justice to
a State. The question is complicated by the fact that a State has,
as its accredited agents, individuals whose acts it must normally
avow. But it can hardly be saddled with moral responsibility for
their personal misdoings, except under circumstances which are barely
conceivable. [1] The State, as such, can have no ends but public
ends; and in practice it has none but what its organs conceive to
be public ends. If an agent, even under the order of his executive
superior, commits a breach of morality, _bona fide_ in order to what
he conceives to be a public end desired by the State, he and his
superior are certainly {323} blamable, but the immorality can hardly
be laid at the door of the public will.

[1] _i.e._ That it should actually order a theft, murder, or the like.

Indeed, a strict definition of State action might raise a difficulty
like that of defining the General Will--if the act was immoral,
can the State, _as such_, really have willed it? And waiving this
as a mere refinement, it still seems clear that the selfishness or
sensuality, which has at least a good deal to do with the immorality
of private actions, can hardly be present in an act of the public
will, in the same sense as in a private volition. The State, as such,
certainly cannot be guilty of personal immorality, and it is hard to
see how it can commit theft or murder in the sense in which these
are moral offences. To speak of the question as if it concerned the
conduct of statesmen and their agents, instead of the volition of a
State as such, seems to introduce confusion. We are discussing the
parallel between public and private acts, and we are asked to begin
by treating the public acts as private.

It may be said that this distinction between public and private acts
leads to the casuistry of pure intention. We are saying, it will be
urged, that the State remains pure, because its will is on the whole
towards a public interest, whatever crimes its agents may commit.
And, no doubt, this line is often taken in practice. A successful
agent finds his evil deeds are winked at; an unsuccessful one is
disavowed. In either case the State pleads innocence. But this danger
cannot alter the conditions of a moral action, and we cannot impute
that as an action to the State, of which it knew no particulars,
which it never {324} willed, and which can hardly indeed be the
object of a public will. It has a duty to see to the character of its
agents and punish their excesses; but the conditions under which it
is true that _qui facit per alium facit per se_, can seldom apply to
a public body with regard to actions of its agent which are not of a
nature to embody public ends.

Promises and treaties, however, are acts which embody public ends.
And here the State, on its side, is bound to maintain good faith; but
still its agent is likely to go wrong if he mixes up the obligations
of the State with his private honour. The question for him, if he
has to keep or break a public undertaking, is, to what is the State
substantially bound, not to what extent would he be bound if he had
made the promise or engagement in question in his private capacity?
He, or the power which is to act, must consider the obligations and
aims of the State, as a whole, and work for the best fulfilment of
them as a whole. The question may be _parallel to_ that of a private
case of honour, but it is not _his_ honour nor _his_ promise that is
in question. Just so, if he introduces his private conscience about
religion or morality into his public acts on behalf of the State,
he may cause frightful persecutions or disasters. The religious
persecutions, and our position in India, supply examples.

The State, then, exists to promote good life, and what it does cannot
be morally indifferent; but its actions cannot be identified with
the deeds of its agents, or morally judged as private volitions
are judged. Its acts proper are always public acts, {325} and it
cannot, as a State, act within the relations of private life in which
organised morality exists. It has no determinate function in a larger
community, but is itself the supreme community; the guardian of a
whole moral world, but not a factor within an organised moral world.
Moral relations presuppose an organised life; but such a life is
only within the State, not in relations between the State and other
communities.

But all this, it may be urged, is beside the question. The question
is not, can a State be a moral individual (though this is certainly
one question)? but, does an interest of State justify what would
otherwise be immorality or wrong-doing on the part of an officer of
State?

Again, I think, we must distinguish between acts essentially private
and acts essentially public. To steal or murder, to lie, or to commit
personal immorality, for instance, as we said, cannot be a public
act. Such acts cannot embody a general interest willed by the public
will. A State agent who commits them in pursuit of information or
to secure a diplomatic result cannot be justified on the ground
that they are not his acts but the State’s; and they are as immoral
in him as in anyone else. Ultimately, indeed, it may be true that
there is no act which is incapable of justification, supposing some
extreme alternative; and in this sense, but in this sense only, it
might be that, treating the interest of a commonwealth like any other
ethically imperative interest, such acts might be relatively capable
of justification. But this justification would only mean that some
supreme interest was subserved by them, and would have {326} no
special relation to the supposed public character of the interest.
It is then a case of the conflict of duties. And the commoner
occurrence, which results in doubtful acts, probably is that an
agent, charged with some public service, finds it easiest to promote
it by some act of rascality, and acts on his idea. But over readiness
to make capital out of an apparent conflict of duties is neither made
worse nor better by the fact that one of the duties is the service of
the State. [1]

[1] Cruelty, it has been said, is a good deal owing to laziness.
It is more comfortable to sit in the shade rubbing red pepper into
a man’s eyes to make him confess than to run about in the sun
collecting evidence. I quote from memory, from a lecture, I think, by
Mr. Leslie Stephen.

A public act which inflicts loss, such as war, confiscation, the
repudiation of a debt, is wholly different from murder or theft. It
is not the act of a private person. It is not a violation of law.
[1] It can hardly be motived by private malice or cupidity in the
strict sense, and it is not a breach of an established moral order
by a being within it and dependent upon it for the organisation and
protection of his daily life. It is the act of a supreme power,
which has ultimate responsibility for protecting the form of life of
which it is the guardian, and which is not itself protected by any
scheme of functions or relations, such as prescribes a course for the
reconciliation of rights and secures its effectiveness. The means
adopted by such a supreme power to discharge its responsibilities
as a whole, are of course subject to criticism as respects the
conception of good which they {327} imply and their appropriateness
to the task of realising it. But it is mere confusion to apply
to them names borrowed from analogous acts of individuals within
communities, to impute them, as it were, to individuals under
dyslogistic predicates and to pass moral judgment upon them in the
same sense as on private acts. The nearest approach which we can
imagine to public immorality would be when the organs which act for
the State, as such, exhibit in their public action, on its behalf, a
narrow, selfish or brutal [2] conception of the interest of the State
as a whole, in which, so far as can be judged, public opinion at the
time agrees. In such a case the State, as such, may really be said
to be acting immorally, _i.e._ in contravention of its main duty to
sustain the conditions of as much good life as possible. This case
must be distinguished, if I am right, from the case in which the
individuals, acting as the public authority, are corrupted in their
own private interests [3] not shared with the public. For then the
case would rather be that the State, the organ of the public good,
had not been given a chance to speak, but had simply been defrauded
by those who spoke in its name.

[1] An act which violates its own law is not an act of the State. And
the State is not subject to the law of any other State.

[2] _e.g._ If, with the knowledge of Parliament, and without a
protest from it, a price were offered for the killing of a hostile
statesman or general.

[3] _e.g._ Bribed by a foreign potentate, or pursuing Stock Exchange
interests.

We do not suggest, then, that the action of States is beyond moral
criticism, nor that action of individuals in their interest is
above or below morality, except in the sense in which one moral
claim has constantly to be postponed to another. But we {328} deny
that States can be treated as the actors in private immoralities
which their agents permit themselves in the alleged interest of the
State; or, again, can be bound by the private honour and conscience
of such agents; and we deny, moreover, that the avowed public acts
of sovereign powers, which cause loss or injury, can be imputed to
individuals under the names of private offences; that someone is
guilty of murder when a country carries on war, or of theft when it
adopts the policy of repudiation, confiscation, or annexation.

8. It is obvious that the idea of humanity, of the world of
intelligent beings on the surface of our earth, conceived as a unity,
must hold such a place in any tolerably complete philosophical
thinking, as in some way to control the idea of particular States,
and to sum up the purposes and possibilities of human life. The idea
of humanity is universal, and whatever limits we have tacitly in
mind--whatever limits the Greek thinker had in mind while he based
his ethics on the distinction between man and beast--yet, when we
rely on the idea of man as man, we are committed to treat in some way
of the world of mankind.

_(a)_ The first point which forces itself upon our attention is,
that the idea which we tacitly entertain when we refer to humanity,
is not true of the greater part of mankind. No doubt, we are quite
aware of imperfection and inconsistency in the family and the State.
But here, in the case of mankind, the problem reaches an acuter form.
According to the current ideas of our civilisation, a great part of
the lives which {329} are being lived and have been lived by mankind
are not lives worth living, in the sense of embodying qualities for
which life seems valuable to us. [1] It is true that, in all to whom
we give the name of man, we suppose a possibility of such living, in
the sense that they have an intelligence distinguishable from that of
animals. But it is a possibility which, for the most part, has been
very slightly realised, and which involves no conscious connection,
so far as we can see, with any realisation. Our idea of man is not
formed by simple enumeration, but by framing a law which explains the
less perfect and consistent facts with reference to the more perfect
and more consistent facts.

[1] This idea is embodied in the doctrine of Salvation confined to
the few, and contains perhaps a similar error. But it has a _prima
facie_ truth.

_(b)_ This being so, it seems to follow that the object of our
ethical idea of humanity is not really mankind as a single community.
Putting aside the impossibilities arising from succession in time,
we see that no such identical experience can be presupposed in all
mankind as is necessary to effective membership of a common society
and exercise of a general will. It does not follow from this that
there can be no general recognition of the rights arising from
the capacities for good life which belong to man as man. Though
insufficient, as variously and imperfectly realised, to be the basis
of an effective community, they may, as far as realised, be a common
element or tissue of connection, running through the more concrete
experience on which effective communities {330} rest. Such a relation
as that of England and India brings the matter home. Englishmen
cannot make one effective self-governed community with the Indian
populations. It would be misery and inefficiency to both sides. But
our State can recognise the primary rights of humanity as determined
in the life of its Indian subjects, and enforce or respect these
rights, whether India be a dependency or an independent community.
The problem is not unlike that raised by the idea of a universal
language. As a substitute for national languages, it would mean a
dead level of intelligence unsuited to every actual national mind,
the destruction of literature and poetry. As an addition to existing
languages, or more simply, if it became customary for every people
to be acquainted with the tongues of other nations, there would be a
common understanding no less firm, and a vast gain of appreciation
and enjoyment, a levelling up instead of levelling down. The
recognition of human rights through communities founded on organic
unity of experience may be compared in just these terms to the idea
of a universal society including the entire human race.

_(c)_ The contrast between humanity and mankind has always uttered
itself through a dichotomous mode of expression--Jew and Gentile,
Greek [1] and barbarian, Mussulman and infidel, Christian {331} and
heathen, white civilisations and the black and yellow races. It will
be noted at once that some of these divisions contradict each other,
and this fact may suggest the probability that to every people its
own life has seemed the crown of things, and the remainder of mankind
only the remainder. Such a suggestion may have a real bearing on our
problem, and we will return to it. In the meantime, however, it is
plain that humanity [2] as an ethical idea is a type or a problem
rather than a fact. It means certain qualities, at once realised in
what we take to be the crown of the race, and including a sensibility
to the claims of the race as such. Sensibility to the claims of the
race as such, is least of all qualities common to the race as such.
The respect of States and individuals for humanity is then, after
all, in its essence, a duty to maintain a type of life, not general,
but the best we know, which we call the most human, and in accordance
with it to recognise and deal with the rights of alien individuals
and communities. This conception is opposed to the treatment of all
individual human beings as members of an identical community having
identical capacities and rights. It follows our general conviction
that not numbers but qualities determine the value of life. But
qualities, of course, become self-contradictory if they fail to meet
the demands imposed on them by numbers.

And thus we recur to a suggestion noted {332} above. Every people,
as a rule, seems to find contentment in its own type of life. This
cannot contradict, for us, the imperativeness of our own sense of
the best. But it may make us cautious as to the general theory of
progress, and ready to admit that one type of humanity cannot cover
the whole ground of the possibilities of human nature. Our action
must, no doubt, be guided by what we can understand of human needs,
and this must depend ultimately on our own type of life. But it
makes a difference whether we start from the hypothesis that our
civilisation as such stands for the goal of progress, or admit that
there is a necessity for covering the whole ground of human nature.
And it may be that, as the ground is covered, our States may go the
way which others have gone, without, however, leaving things as they
are. If the State, moreover, is not ultimate nor above criticism, no
more is any given idea of humanity; and reference to “the interests
of mankind” only names the problem, which is to find out what those
interests are, in terms of human qualities to be realised.

[1] It is remarkable that a limitation of the earth’s surface,
raising an idea of unity, has always, I believe, been presupposed.
For the Greeks, Delphi was the centre of the earth; for us, the earth
being a sphere and returning into itself, gives a certainty that it
does not stretch away to infinity, so making unity of its inhabitants
inconceivable. The remark, I think, is Kant’s.

[2] “Humanity” = “humaneness.” Scotch “Humanities” = Greek and
Latin. Oxford “Literae humaniores” = classics and philosophy. Greek
φιλάνθρωπον [philanthropon], a sense of what is due to man, _e.g._ of
poetical justice.

_(d)_ Neither the State, however, nor the idea of humanity, nor
the interests of mankind, are the last word of theory. And even
political theory must so far point ahead as to show that it knows
where to look for its continuation. We have taken Society and the
State throughout to have their value in the human capacities which
they are the means of realising, in which realisation their social
aspect is an inevitable condition (for human nature is not complete
in solitude), but is not by itself, in its form of multitudes, the
end. {333} There is, therefore, no breach of continuity when the
immediate participation of numbers, the direct moulding of life by
the claims and relations of selves, falls away, and the human mind,
consolidated and sustained by society, goes further on its path in
removing contradictions and shaping its world and itself into unity.
Art, philosophy, and religion, though in a sense the very life-blood
of society, are not and could not be directly fashioned to meet the
needs and uses of the multitude, and their aim is not _in that sense_
“social.” They should rather be regarded as a continuation, within
and founded upon the commonwealth, of the work which the commonwealth
begins in realising human nature; as fuller utterances of the same
universal self which the “general will” reveals in more precarious
forms; and as in the same sense implicit in the consciousness of
all, being an inheritance which is theirs so far as they can take
possession of it.

We have thus attempted to trace in outline the content of the self,
implied, but imperfectly and variously reached, in the actual
individual consciousness. It is because of this implication, carrying
the sense that something more than we are is imperative upon us, that
self-government has a meaning, and that freedom--the non-obstruction
of capacities--is to be found in a system which lays burdens on the
untamed self and “forces us to be free.” What we feel as mere force
cannot as such be freedom; but in our subtle and complex natures the
recognition of a force may, as we have tried to explain, sustain,
regularise, and reawaken the operation of {334} a consciousness
of good, which we rejoice to see maintained, if our intelligence
fails of itself to maintain it, against indolence, incompetence,
and rebellion, even if they are our own. This is the root of
self-government, and true political government is self-government.




INDEX.

A.

Absolutism, Administrative, 63.
Actual Will, contrast Real Will, 118.
Albion, Launch of, 96 note.
Alexander, Prof., 174 n.
All and each, as Society and Individual, 81, 180.
    Will of All dist. General Will, 111.
Allness, Judgment of, 112.
Altruism in H. Spencer, 24.
    and Egoism, 47, 81, 83.
Amiel, cit, 236 note.
Analysis of motive, fallacy of, 291 ff.
Anglo-Saxon race, 301.
Anthropology in Hegel, 254.
Appercipient masses, 165 ff.
    cpd. social groups, 169.
Aristocracy, Monarchy and Democracy, 284.
Aristotle, 5 ff., 32, 129 ff., 295 note.
    on the poor, 319 note.
Army, opp. crowd, 160 ff.
Art, how far a social good, 333.
Artisan or public worker, 313 note.
Association, of persons and of ideas, 156 ff.
    _see_ ORGANISATION.
Athens, 115.
Attention, 216, _see_ AUTOMATISM, APPERCIPIENT.
Austin, theory of Law, 261.
Authority of Society over Individual in Mill, 62.
Automatism in society, 183, ch. viii.
Autonomy, in Greece, 4.
    moral, in Plato, 253.

B.

Bagehot, _Physics and Politics_, 19.
Baldwin, Prof., _Social and Ethical Interpretations_, 44, 253.
Baron of Bradwardine, 316.
Beauty, reconciliation of Nature and State (Schiller), 237.
Beccaria, 56.
Bentham, 56 ff., 82, 180.
Bequest, power of, 272.
Biology and Sociology, 21 ff.
    double influence on Sociology, 23 ff.
Birth, surviving as qualification, 306 note.
Boeckh, 33 note.
_Bona fides_, in political theory, 192.
Bourgeois Society (in Hegel), 27, 269, 273 ff.
Boot and Shoe Operatives, Trade Report, 279 note.
Bradley, F.H., _Principles of Logic_, 49 note.
    on Punishment, 222.
    _Ethical Studies_, 267 note.
Büchsenschütz, 33 note.
Buckle, 28,
Burlamaqui, 132.
Butcher, Prof, (on Nature), _Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine
    Art_ 131.

C.

Calvin at Geneva, 61.
Capacities, social, distinction of, 168, 173.
Cash nexus, 276.
Causation, physical, in human life, 31.
Cause, idea of, in Sociology, 21.
Charity Organisers, 318.
Christian consciousness, 263.
Church of England, offertory, 317.
Church and State, 285.
Cicero, 10.
Citizen of the World, 8.
City and town, distinguished in, Rousseau, 92 note.
City-State, 36, 116.
    as a district, 310.
Civil condition, in Rousseau, 97, 100.
Civil Dispute, 262 note.
_Civil Government_ Locke, 101.
Civil Liberty, in Rousseau, 97.
_Civilisation of Christendom_, 137, 195.
Class, 278, 310 ff.
    derivation, 312.
    its absence, 315.
Classes in community, 7, 30.
Clan v. Family, 272.
Closed Commercial State, Fichte, 246.
Codification, 276 note.
Collectivism, uncritical, 70, 181.
Commonwealth and Soul, 6.
Comparative Politics, 41.
Competition and Co-operation, 24 ff.
Compulsion ch. viii.,
   in elementary education, 67.
Comte, 18 ff., 41.
Conditions and purpose, in Greek thinkers, 32.
    which come close to life, 198.
Conditions, man and his, 31.
Conscience, morality of, 259.
    in public acts, 324.
Consciousness of Kind, 43.
Consent, in Locke, 101.
Constituencies, of mere numbers, 309.
Constraint and self-assertion, 58.
Continuity, idea of, 23.
Contract, true province of, 260, _see_ STATUS.
_Contrat Social_, _see_ ROUSSEAU.
    in Kant, 244.
    in Fichte, 245.
    in Hegel, 239, 261.
Convention, Law treated as, 8.
Co-operative Societies, 280 note.
Corporation, or Trade Society, 278.,
Cosmopolitanism, 9.
Crawford, Marion, _Corleone_, 226 note.
Crime, sociological analysis of, 37.
Criminal offence, 262 note.
Crowd, 160 ff.
    mind of a, 43.
Culture, 275.
Curtius, E., on Peloponnese, 33 note.
Czar, the (in 1818), 248.

D.

Dante, 31.
Decadence in Rousseau, 85.
_Déclassés_ as a class, 317.
De Coulanges, _La Cité Antique_, 44.
Demarcation between self-regarding and other regarding action, 64, 68, 76.
Democracy, _see_ ARISTOCRACY.
Democratic principle, 74, 284.
    true d. passion, 98.
De Morgan, Prof., _Budget of Paradoxes_, 20.
Despotic Government, 53.
Deterrent, _see_ PUNISHMENT.
Dicey, _The Peasant State_, 315.
Difference and Identity compared with Invention and Imitation, 46.
Dijon, Academy of, 85.
District, the, as Ethical Idea, 304 ff.,
Division of Labour, 278.
Dress, 8.
Dreyfus-Brisac, M., editor of _Contrat Social_, 101.
Duncker, 33 note.
Duproix, _Kant et Fichte_, 236 ff.
Durkheim, E., _Annee Sociologique_, 30
    _De la Division du Travail Social_, 34, 37 ff., 43, 220 ff., 227 note, 315.
Duty, dist. right and obligation, 208 ff.

E.

Each, _see_ ALL.
Economic view of History, 28.
    facts, pressure of, 30.
    world, the, 275.
Egoism, _see_ ALTRUISM.
_Émile_, Rousseau’s, 98 note.
_Emma_, Jane Austen’s, 162.
End and means in society, 81, 180 ff.
    of Society and the State, 181.
English people, the, 116.
Epicureanism, 9.
Epiphenomena, 29.
Equality and Inequality, natural in Rousseau, 87.
Equivalence of punishment and offence, 228.
États, 278 note.
Eternal Relations, in Montesquieu, 59.
Ethical purpose of Philosophy, 50.
    obligation, paradox of, 55, 139.
    aspect negative in Spencer and Huxley, 72-3, cp. 124.
    use and wont, 259.
    ideas, ch. xi.
_Être de raison_, State is not, 95.
“Evangel of a _Contrat Social_” 14.
Examination in Elementary Education, 67.
Extenuating circumstances, 231.
External aspect of action, 64, 188 ff.

F.

Family meal, the, 301.
Family, monogamous, in Mill, 66, 269 ff., ch. xi.
_Faust_, 97 note.
Fichte, on Kant, 190 note, ch. ix.
Fiction, historical of contract in Rousseau, 91 ff., 98.
Force, in relation to end of State, ch. viii.
Foreigners Court at Rome, 10.
Form and Matter, in life of peoples, 32.
Freedom, _see_ ROUSSEAU.
    Rousseau’s idea of, 237 ff.
    and thought (Hegel), 240.
    as understood by Kant and Fichte (Hegel), 247.
Freeman, _Comparative Politics_, 42.
French Republic, 321 note.
Friendly Societies, 280 note.
Fries, 249.
Frontiers, ideal, 321.
Fyffe, _History of Modern Europe_, 248.

G.

Geddes, Prof. Patrick, “Parasitism,” 26.
    “Regional Survey,” 48 note.
General Will, 59, 93, ch. v.
    “always right,” 121.
    _see_ SOVEREIGNTY.
    misunderstanding about (Hegel), 240.
Geneva, Calvin at, 61.
Geneva and Rousseau, 86.
Genevese, Rousseau’s father a, 98.
Giddings, Prof., _Principles of Sociology_, 18, 51.
Goethe, 41.
Götz, 237.
Golden Age, the, 129.
Good, meaning of, 182.
Good Will, _see_ CONSCIENCE, MORALITY.
Government Departments, legislation by, 285.
Graduation of Punishment, 228.
Gravitation, 19.
Green, T.H., _Principles of Political Obligation_, 93, 110, 137,
    141, 144, 188 ff., 203, 213, 227.
    principle of State interference, 193.
    criticism of Hegel, 288 ff.
Greeks, poor among, 319.
Grotius, 59.

H.

Happiness, Greek idea of, 321.
Hardenberg, 248.
Hare’s scheme, 310.
Hegel, 13, 27, 203, chs. ix. and x.
Henrici cit. by Green, 203.
Herder, 237.
Herodotus, 136.
Hesiod, 129.
Hindrance of hindrances, in State action, 192 ff., 199.
_History of Aesthetic_, 235.
Hobbes, 13, 59, 77, 93, 104 ff.
Holland, Prof., 56.
Homer, 31, 135.
Honour, private, in public acts, 324.
Household, 271.
Housing of poor, 198-9.
Howard, “the Philanthropist,” 56.
Humanity, and man, 328 ff.
    compared with idea of universal language, 330.
    dichotomous appellations for, 330.
Huxley, Prof., _Evolution and Ethics_, 26 ff., 73.

I.

Ideal, 274.
Ideas, influence of, in economic sphere, 30.
    and community, 7.
Identity, _see_ DIFFERENCE.
Imitation and Invention, 43, 211, 252 ff.
Immorality, prevention of, by law, 65.
Indifference of space, 305.
Individual, fuller and narrower meaning of term, 79.
    independent existence of, 95.
Individualism, 70, 79, 80, 181.
Individuality, in Mill, 61, cp. 79, 125.
    limits of, 176.
    highest point of, 313 ff.
Individual Mind, _see_ MIND.
Industrial world, the, 275.
Inequality, _see_ EQUALITY.
Influence, Rousseau’s double, 16.
Insanity, as loss of systematic control, 163.
Institutions, ch. xi., real nature of, 170 ff.
Intention, in theory of State coercion, 188 ff.
Interference by State, ch. viii.
Irreligion, prevention of, by law, 65.
Isonomy, in Greece, 4.

J.

Jacobi, at Geneva, 237.
James, Prof. W., 140, 164.
Joint-stock company and community compared, 76.
Jokai, Maurus, _Die Schöne Michal_, 316.
Jurisprudence, 34 ff.
Juristic meaning of liberty, 135.
Justice, administration of, 276.

K.

Kant, 13, 59, 190, ch. ix., 263.
_Klassenkampf_, 275 note.
Klinger, _Sturm und Drang_, 237.
Kinship and Neighbourhood, struggle of principles, 305.
Kotzebue, murder of, 248.
Krause cit. by Green, 203.

L.

Labourer, an English, and the State, 292.
Law of Nature (and of Nations), 10.
Law, sociological analysis of, 37.
    and sentiment, 38.
Law, province of, in Mill, 63.
Le Bon G., _Psychologie des Foules_, 43.
Legislation, idea of, in Rousseau, 117 ff.
Le Play, 28.
Letter of the Law, 259, 276.
Lévy, Bruhl M., 236 ff.
Liberty, ch. vi.
    in Bentham, 57 ff.
    Mill’s _Liberty_, 60 ff.
    “real”, in Mill, 69.
    in Spencer and Seeley, 71, 133.
    _see_ NATURAL, CIVIL, MORAL, JURISTIC.
    “the quality of man,” 99, 118, 126.
    in Locke, 101.
    on convicts chains, 142 note.
    bare and determinate Liberty contrasted, 194 ff.
Life, human, some of its elements, 31.
Limitation of earth’s surface, Kant on, 330 note.
Locality, mind of, 307.
Loch, C.S., 142 note.
Locke, 13, 101, 104 ff.
Logic of social progress, 258.
_Lucinde_, Schlegel’s, 271.

M.

Mafia, the, 226.
Maine, origin of penal law, 227 note.
Majority, will of, 4, 5.
    “tyranny of,” 75, 240.
Marriage, prohibition suggested by Mill, 68, 271.
Married Women’s Property, 272.
Marx, 28, 29 note.
Materialism, 28 ff.
Matter and form, in life of peoples, 32.
Maximisation, 187.
Means, _see_ END.
Medical Charities of London, 290 note.
_Merrie England_, 129 note.
Metternich, 249.
Mill, J.S., 60 ff., 82, 118, 190, 194.
Mind and body of community, 7.
    as a structure of systems, 173.
    as a reflection of society, 174.
    _see_ ASSOCIATION, ORGANISATION, APPERCIPIENT MASSES.
    subjective and objective, 254-5.
    absolute, 255.
    of Society, 296.
Minority, _see_ MAJORITY.
Mommsen, 313 note.
Monarchy, 284.
    _see_ ARISTOCRACY.
Monasticism, 302.
Montesquieu, 13, 40, 59.
Moral freedom in Rousseau, 98, 100.
Morality, province of, in Mill, 63.
    of conscience, 259.
    of State action, 322.
_Moralität_, 265.

N.

Napoleon, 294.
Nation-State, 3, n, 116, 321 ff.
Natural Law, 133 note.
Natural Liberty in Rousseau, 97.
Natural Right, 10 ff., 59.
    on biological basis, 70.
Nature, 128 ff.
    in Aristotle, 130 ff.
    as self-assertion, 27.
    State of, in Rousseau, 86.
    in Burlamaqui, 132.
Neighbourhood, _see_ KINSHIP, 308.
Nettleship, R.L., 79 note, 146.
Newman, W.L., edition of Aristotle’s _Politics_, 33 note.
New Testament, 10.
Newton, Sir Isaac, 20.
Nihilism, Administrative, _see_ ABSOLUTISM.

O.

Obligation, ethical and political, 55.
    enforcement of moral, 67 ff.
    dist. right, 206.
Offer for Sale, a public matter, 278.
Organisation of ideas or persons opp. Association, 156 ff., 162.
Organism, comparison of society to, in Fichte, 245.
Origin of Inequality (Rousseau’s Discourse), 86.
“Others,” in Society, 58, 66, 83, 113, 182, 207.
    _see_ INTERFERENCE.

P.

Parsimony, political, 185.
Paternal Government, 270.
Pattison, Rev. Mark, on Calvin, 60.
Person or Persona in Law and Politics, 12, 93, 104.
Phenomenology, 254 note.
Philanthropy and public honours, 219 note.
Philosopher, ancient, compared with Sociologist, 18.
Philosophical Theory described, 1.
Philosophy, purpose of, 50.
    relation to social good, 333.
    of Right (or Law) of Kant, 243.
    of Hegel, 247 ff.
    its position in _Philosophy of Mind_, 522 ff.
    of Fichte, 244.
_Pirate, the_ (Scott), 162.
Plato, 5 ff., 20, 27, 32, 55, 74 note, 131, 139, 142, 218 note, 221, 253, 297.
Police State, 273.
Political Economy, 27, 273.
Political Obligation, paradox of, 55.
Political Speculation, in 17th century,
Politics and Science, relations of, 5.
Poor, the, as a class, 316, 320.
Poore, G.V., _Rural Hygiene_, 34 note.
    _Dwelling House_, 233 note.
Position in society, dist. Right and Obligation, 205.
Property, 260, 302.
Proportional systems, Stout on, 165.
Protection, mere, as function of the State, 276.
    of children’s earnings, 272.
Protestant consciousness, 263.
Psychology, a natural science, 49.
    two tendencies in, 51.
Public or State action, dist. private, 322.
Public opinion, 287.
Publicity of discussion, 285.
Punishment, ch. viii., 37 ff., 220 ff.
    right of capital, in Rousseau, 90.
Purposes and conditions in Greek philosophers, 32.
Pyramids, 278.

R.

“Real” Will, ch. v., and Actual, contrasted, 118.
Rebellion, duty of, 213-4.
Re-establishment of Sciences and Arts (Rousseau’s Discourse), 85.
Referendum, 105 note.
Reformation of offenders, _see_ PUNISHMENT.
Religion and State, 285, 333.
Repetition, 44.
Representation of the People, 104.
Representative Government, 115, 244.
Republic of Plato criticised, 274.
Republic of San Marino, 106.
Retribution, _see_ PUNISHMENT.
Return to Nature, 8, 23.
Returns in Social Science, 42 note.
Revolution, French, 14.
Reward, 217 ff.
_Richard the Second_, Shakespeare’s, 12.
Right, science of, 34 ff.
    _see_ PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT.
    of first occupant, 99.
    dist. obligation, 206.
    unrecognized, 210.
Rights, natural, 35 ff.
    in Bentham and Spencer, 70 ff.
    in Rousseau, 99.
    system of, 127, 201 ff.
    negative basis of, 191.
    sphere of, 258-9.
Ritchie, Prof., _Natural Rights_, 12, 14
    note, 88.
Rogers, J.D., 17 note.
Roman Jurisprudence, 10.
Roman Rule, 10.
Rousseau, 13 40, 59, 70 note, 74, chs. iv. and v., 142 note.
    his idea of freedom, 237-8.
    on force and right, 238 n., 282.
Ruskin (quoted) 252 n.

S.

St. Paul, 29.
Salamis, 115.
Scheme, general, in thought and in society, 162 ff.
    unconscious operation of, 166.
Schiller, _Rauber_ and _Letters on Aesthetic Education_, 237.
Scott, Sir Walter, 162.
Seamanship, Technical training in, 192 note.
Seeley, J., 42 note, 133.
Self, the given, 143.
Self-assertion and self-restraint, 27, 72.
Self-government, ch. iii., 101, 139, 155, 134, 334
Self-improvement as freedom, 144 ff.
Self-mastery, Plato’s account of, 139.
Self-regarding conduct, 62 ff.
Shakespeare, 31.
Sidgwick, Prof., 44, 88.
Similarities, etc., in social consciousness, 43.
_Sittlichkeit_, _see_ _Moralität_.
Slavery, 8, 69.
Social contract, 59, ch. vi.
    _see_ “_Contrat Social_“
    groups compared with appercipient masses, 169.
    Logic, 43.
    observance = ethical use and wont, 259.
    Physics, 20.
    Spirit, 40, 122.
    Science, ch. ii.
Socialism, 318.
Society as self-restraint, 27, 73.
    for Greeks implies self-assertion, 73 note.
    as a psychical whole, 175, 178.
    and Individual, demarcation between, 62, 64.
    relation to plurality of individuals, 176.
    dist. State, 184.
    as restraint, 27.
    compared with animal species, 23.
    compared with individual organism, 24.
    as viewed by Philosophy, 50.
Sociologists, criticism of, 21 ff.
Sociology, ch. ii.
Socrates, 5 ff., 265.
Sophists, 265.
Soul and Commonwealth, 6, _see_ MIND.
Sources in Sociology, 47.
Sovereign, fallacy respecting, in Rousseau, 94 ff.
    nature of, 103, 108.
Sovereignty, as exercise of General Will, 232 ff.
    of people, 282.
Spencer, Herbert, 24 ff., 69 ff., 82, 145.
Spinoza, 14 ff.
Standard of Life, 30.
Stände, 278 note.
State, _see_ CITY-STATE AND NATION-STATE.
    dist. Bourgeois Society, 27, 93, 273.
    not an abstraction, 95.
    inclusive notion of, 150 ff.
    interference by, ch. viii.
    analysis of, ch. x.
    dist. Society, 184.
    v. Nature, 237.
    actual and ideal, 250.
    political organism, 269, 280 ff.
    and Religion, 285.
    Regulation, 277.
Statistics, 42.
Status to Contract, Durkheim, 277.
Steinthal, 164.
Stephen, Mr. Leslie, on cruelty, 326 note.
Stoicism, 9, 263.
Stout, G.F., _Analytic Psychology_, 49, 162 note, 165 note.
Struggle for life, 23.
Subjectivity, 274.
Successes in social research, not due to Sociology, 22.
Suggestion in Society, 45, 183.
Super-organic, 26.
Supply and Demand, 277 ff.
Survival of fittest, _see_ STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.
Sutherland, A., _Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct_, 27 note.

T.

Tacitus, _Annals_ and _Germania_, 129.
Tarde, G., 43 note, 44 ff.
Teleological character of Philosophy, 52.
Themistocles, 114.
Theories of the first look, 80, 82, 96, 144.
Theory, society compared to, 258.
Thomson’s _Seasons_, 237.
Thring, Life of, 197 note.
Thucydides, 218 note.
Tithe, the, 318.
Trade Societies, 277, 279 ff., 283.
Traffic returns, French, 43.
Training for Seamanship, 192 note.
Transvaal, 315.
Truth, meaning of, 182.

U.

Uniqueness of service, 25, 314.
United States of America, 284, 321.
Units, Delimitation of political, 185.
Unity of Social Mind, 177.
Universal good and common good, 110.
    Judgment dist. Judgment of Allness, 112 ff.
    Self, realised not solely in State, 332 ff.
Universe of Discourse, 163.
Unlawful Games, Statutes respecting, 66.

V.

Valet, the psychological, 292.
Vegetarianism, 8.
Vengeance dist. retribution, 227.
Vico, _New Science_, 13, 17, 40.
Virtue, 268.

W.

Wallace, Prof. W., _Lectures and Essays_, 85.
    _Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind_, 249, 265.
War, dist. hunting, 212.
Wartburg, demonstration at, 248.
Water-drinking, 8.
Webb, Mr. and Mrs., 22 note.
_Wilhelm Meister’s Lehrjahre cit_., 273 note.
Will, Real or General, 96, ch. v.
    in Hobbes and Locke contrasted, 106.
    of All contrasted with General, 111.
    Real with Actual, 118.
    that wills itself, 146.
    implies a whole, 177.
    particular, how universalised, 267.
    _see_ SOVEREIGNTY, SOCIAL OBSERVANCE.
Wycliffite cry, 12.