=CRITIQUES AND ADDRESSES.=
BY
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY, LL.D., F.R.S.
1873.
PREFACE.
The "Critiques and Addresses" gathered together in this volume, like
the "Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews," published three years ago,
deal chiefly with educational, scientific, and philosophical subjects;
and, in fact, indicate the high-water mark of the various tides of
occupation by which I have been carried along since the beginning of
the year 1870.
In the end of that year, a confidence in my powers of work, which,
unfortunately, has not been justified by events, led me to allow
myself to be brought forward as a candidate for a seat on the London
School Board. Thanks to the energy of my supporters I was elected, and
took my share in the work of that body during the critical first year
of its existence. Then my health gave way, and I was obliged to resign
my place among colleagues whose large practical knowledge of the
business of primary education, and whose self-sacrificing zeal in the
discharge of the onerous and thankless duties thrown upon them by
the Legislature, made it a pleasure to work with them, even though my
position was usually that of a member of the minority.
I mention these circumstances in order to account for (I had almost
said to apologize for) the existence of the two papers which head
the present series, and which are more or less political, both in the
lower and in the higher senses of that word.
The question of the expediency of any form of State Education is, in
fact, a question of those higher politics which lie above the region
in which Tories, Whigs, and Radicals "delight to bark and bite." In
discussing it in my address on "Administrative Nihilism," I found
myself, to my profound regret, led to diverge very widely (though even
more perhaps in seeming than in reality) from the opinions of a man of
genius to whom I am bound by the twofold tie of the respect due to a
profound philosopher and the affection given to a very old friend. But
had I no other means of knowing the fact, the kindly geniality of Mr.
Herbert Spencer's reply[1] assures me that the tie to which I refer
will bear a much heavier strain than I have put, or ever intend to
put, upon it, and I rather rejoice that I have been the means of
calling forth so vigorous a piece of argumentative writing. Nor is
this disinterested joy at an attack upon myself diminished by the
circumstance, that, in all humility, but in all sincerity, I think it
may be repulsed.
[Footnote 1: "Specialized Administration;" _Fortnightly Review_,
December 1871.]
Mr. Spencer complains that I have first misinterpreted, and then
miscalled, the doctrine of which he is so able an expositor. It would
grieve me very much if I were really open to this charge. But what are
the facts? I define this doctrine as follows:--
"Those who hold these views support them by two lines of
argument. They enforce them deductively by arguing from an
assumed axiom, that the State has no right to do anything but
protect its subjects from aggression. The State is simply a
policeman, and its duty, neither more nor less than to prevent
robbery and murder and enforce contracts. It is not to promote
good, nor even to do anything to prevent evil, except by the
enforcement of penalties upon those who have been guilty
of obvious and tangible assaults upon purse or person. And,
according to this view, the proper form of government is
neither a monarchy, an aristocracy, nor a democracy, but an
_astynomocracy_, or police government. On the other hand,
these views are supported _à posteriori_ by an induction from
observation, which professes to show that whatever is done by
a Government beyond these negative limits, is not only sure
to be done badly, but to be done much worse than private
enterprise would have done the same thing."
I was filled with surprised regret when I learned from the conclusion
of the article on "Specialized Administration," that this statement is
held by Mr. Spencer to be a misinterpretation of his views. Perhaps
I ought to be still more sorry to be obliged to declare myself, even
now, unable to discover where my misinterpretation lies, or in what
respect my presentation of Mr. Spencer's views differs from his own
most recent version of them. As the passage cited above shows I have
carefully defined the sense in which I use the terms which I employ,
and, therefore, I am not greatly concerned to defend the abstract
appropriateness of the terms themselves. And when Mr. Spencer
maintains the only proper functions of Government to be those which
are comprehensible under the description of "Negatively regulative
control," I may suggest that the difference between such "Negative
Administration" and "Administrative Nihilism," in the sense defined by
me, is not easily discernible.
Having, as I hope, relieved myself from the suspicion of having
misunderstood or misrepresented Mr. Spencer's views, I might, if I
could forget that I am writing a preface, proceed to the discussion
of the parallel which he elaborates, with much knowledge and power,
between the physiological and the social organisms. But this is not
the place for a controversy involving so many technicalities, and
I content myself with one remark, namely, that the whole course of
modern physiological discovery tends to show, with more and more
clearness, that the vascular system, or apparatus for distributing
commodities in the animal organism, is eminently under the control of
the cerebro-spinal nervous centres--a fact which, unless I am again
mistaken, is contrary to one of Mr. Spencer's fundamental assumptions.
In the animal organism, Government does meddle with trade, and even
goes so far as to tamper a good deal with the currency.
In the same number of the _Fortnightly Review_ as that which contains
Mr. Spencer's essay, Miss Helen Taylor assails me--though, I am bound
to admit, more in sorrow than in anger--for what she terms, my
"New Attack on Toleration." It is I, this time, who may complain of
misinterpretation, if the greater part of Miss Taylor's article
(with which I entirely sympathise) is supposed to be applicable to
my "intolerance." Let us have full-toleration, by all means, upon
all questions in which there is room for doubt, or which cannot be
distinctly proved to affect the welfare of mankind. But when Miss
Taylor has shown what basis exists for criminal legislation, except
the clear right of mankind not to tolerate that which is demonstrably
contrary to the welfare of society, I will admit that such
demonstration ought only to be believed in by the "curates and
old women" to whom she refers. Recent events have not weakened the
conviction I expressed in a much-abused speech at the London School
Board, that Ultramontanism is demonstrably the enemy of society; and
must be met with resistance, merely passive if possible, but active if
necessary, by "the whole power of the State."
Next in order, it seems proper that I should briefly refer to my
friend Mr. Mivart's onslaught upon my criticism of Mr. Darwin's
critics, himself among the number, which will be found in this
volume. In "Evolution and its Consequences"[1] I am accused of
misrepresentation, misquotation, misunderstanding, and numerous other
negative and positive literary and scientific sins; and much subtle
ingenuity is expended by Mr. Mivart in attempting to extricate himself
from the position in which my exposition of the real opinions of
Father Suarez has placed him. So much more, in fact, has Mr. Mivart's
ingenuity impressed me than any other feature of his reply, that I
shall take the liberty of re-stating the main issue between us; and,
for the present, leaving that issue alone to the judgment of the
public.
[Footnote 1: _Contemporary Review_, January 1872.]
In his book on the "Genesis of Species" Mr. Mivart, after discussing
the opinions of sundry Catholic writers of authority, among whom he
especially includes St. Augustin, St. Thomas Aquinas, and the Jesuit
Suarez, proceeds to say: "It is then evident that ancient and most
venerable theological authorities distinctly assert _derivative_
creation, and thus their teachings harmonize with all that modern
science can possibly require."[1] By the "derivative creation" of
organic forms, Mr. Mivart understands, "that God created them by
conferring on the material world the power to evolve them under
suitable conditions."
[Footnote 1: Bunsen's "Outlines of the Philosophy of Universal
History," vol. i.p. 349. 1854.]
On the contrary, I proved by evidence, which Mr. Mivart does not
venture to impugn, that Suarez, in his "Tractatus de Opere sex
Dierum," expressly rejects St. Augustin's and St. Thomas' views; that
he vehemently advocates the literal interpretation of the account of
the creation given in the Book of Genesis; and that he treats with
utter scorn the notion that the Almighty could have used the language
of that Book, unless He meant it to be taken literally.
Mr. Mivart, therefore, either has read Suarez and has totally
misrepresented him--a hypothesis which, I hope I need hardly say, I do
not for a moment entertain: or, he has got his information at second
hand, and has himself been deceived. But in that case, it is surely
an imprudence on his part, to reproach me with having "read Suarez _ad
hoc_, and evidently without the guidance of anyone familiar with
that author." No doubt, in the matter of guidance, Mr. Mivart has the
advantage of me. Nevertheless, the guides who supplied him with his
references to Suarez' "Metaphysica," while they left him in ignorance
of the existence of the "Tractatus," are guides with whose services
it might be better to dispense; leaders who wilfully shut their eyes,
being even more liable to lodge one in a ditch, than blind leaders.
At the time when the essay on "Methods and Results of Ethnology" was
written, I had not met with a passage in Professor Max Müller's "Last
Results of Turanian Researches"[1] which shows so appositely, that
the profoundest study of philology leads to conclusions respecting the
relation of Ethnology with Philology, similar to those at which I had
arrived in approaching the question from the Anatomist's side, that I
cannot refrain from quoting it:
[Footnote 1: LONDON, _April_ 1873.]
"Nor should we, in our phonological studies, either expect or
desire more than general hints from physical ethnology. The
proper and rational connection between the two sciences is
that of mutual advice and suggestion, but nothing more. Much
of the confusion of terms and indistinctness of principles,
both in Ethnology and Phonology, are due to the combined
study of these heterogeneous sciences. Ethnological race
and phonological race are not commensurate, except in
ante-historical times, or perhaps at the very dawn of history.
With the migration of tribes, their wars, their colonies,
their conquests and alliances, which, if we may judge from
their effects, must have been much more violent in the
ethnic, than even in the political, period of history, it is
impossible to imagine that race and language should continue
to run parallel. The physiologist should pursue his own
science unconcerned about language."
It is further desirable to remark that the statements in this Essay
respecting the forms of Native American crania need rectification. On
this point, I refer the reader who is interested in the subject to
my paper "On the Form of the Cranium among the Patagonians and the
Fuegians" published in the _Journal of Anatomy and Physiology_ for
1868.
If the problem discussed in my address to the British Association
in 1870 has not yet received its solution, it is not because the
champions of Abiogenesis have been idle, or wanting in confidence. But
every new assertion on their side has been met by a counter assertion;
and though the public may have been led to believe that so much noise
must indicate rapid progress, one way or the other, an impartial
critic will admit, with sorrow, that the question has been "marking
time" rather than marching. In mere sound, these two processes are not
so very different.
CONTENTS.
I.
ADMINISTRATIVE NIHILISM. (An Address delivered to the Members of
the Midland Institute, on the 9th of October, 1871, and subsequently
published in the _Fortnightly Review_)
II.
THE SCHOOL BOARDS: WHAT THEY CAN DO, AND WHAT THEY MAY DO. (The
_Contemporary Review_, 1870)
III.
ON MEDICAL EDUCATION. (An Address to the Students of the Faculty of
Medicine in University College, London, 1870)
IV.
YEAST. (The _Contemporary Review_, 1871)
V.
ON THE FORMATION OF COAL. (A Lecture delivered before the Members of
the Bradford Philosophical Institution, and subsequently published in
the _Contemporary Review_)
VI.
ON CORAL AND CORAL REEFS. (_Good Words_, 1870)
VII.
ON THE METHODS AND RESULTS OF ETHNOLOGY. (The _Fortnightly Review_,
1865)
VIII.
ON SOME FIXED POINTS IN BRITISH ETHNOLOGY. (The _Contemporary Review_,
1871)
IX.
PALAEONTOLOGY AND THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION. (The Presidential Address
to the Geological Society, 1870)
X.
MR. DARWIN'S CRITICS. (The _Contemporary Review_, 1871)
XI.
THE GENEALOGY OF ANIMALS. (A Review of Haeckel's "Natürliche
Schöpfungs-Geschichte." The _Academy_, 1869)
XII.
BISHOP BERKELEY ON THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION. _(Macmillan's
Magazine_, 1871)
CRITIQUES AND ADDRESSES.
I.
ADMINISTRATIVE NIHILISM.
(AN ADDRESS TO THE MEMBERS OF THE MIDLAND INSTITUTE, OCTOBER 9TH,
1871.)
To me, and, as I trust, to the great majority of those whom I address,
the great attempt to educate the people of England which has just been
set afoot, is one of the most satisfactory and hopeful events in our
modern history. But it is impossible, even if it were desirable,
to shut our eyes to the fact, that there is a minority, not
inconsiderable in numbers, nor deficient in supporters of weight and
authority, in whose judgment all this legislation is a step in the
wrong direction, false in principle, and consequently sure to produce
evil in practice.
The arguments employed by these objectors are of two kinds. The first
is what I will venture to term the caste argument; for, if logically
carried out, it would end in the separation of the people of this
country into castes, as permanent and as sharply defined, if not as
numerous, as those of India. It is maintained that the whole fabric
of society will be destroyed if the poor, as well as the rich, are
educated; that anything like sound and good education will only make
them discontented with their station and raise hopes which, in the
great majority of cases, will be bitterly disappointed. It is said:
There must be hewers of wood and drawers of water, scavengers and
coalheavers, day labourers and domestic servants, or the work of
society will come to a standstill. But, if you educate and refine
everybody, nobody will be content to assume these functions, and all
the world will want to be gentlemen and ladies.
One hears this argument most frequently from the representatives of
the well-to-do middle class; and, coming from them, it strikes me as
peculiarly inconsistent, as the one thing they admire, strive after,
and advise their own children to do, is to get on in the world, and,
if possible, rise out of the class in which they were born into that
above them. Society needs grocers and merchants as much as it needs
coalheavers; but if a merchant accumulates wealth and works his way to
a baronetcy, or if the son of a greengrocer becomes a lord chancellor,
or an archbishop, or, as a successful soldier, wins a peerage, all the
world admires them; and looks with pride upon the social system which
renders such achievements possible. Nobody suggests that there is
anything wrong in _their_ being discontented with _their_ station; or
that, in _their_ cases society suffers by men of ability reaching the
positions for which nature has fitted them.
But there are better replies than those of the _tu quoque_ sort to the
caste argument. In the first place, it is not true that education,
as such, unfits men for rough and laborious, or even disgusting,
occupations. The life of a sailor is rougher and harder than that of
nine landsmen out of ten, and yet, as every ship's captain knows, no
sailor was ever the worse for possessing a trained intelligence. The
life of a medical practitioner, especially in the country, is harder
and more laborious than that of most artisans, and he is constantly
obliged to do things which, in point of pleasantness, cannot be ranked
above scavengering--yet he always ought to be, and he frequently is,
a highly educated man. In the second place, though it may be granted
that the words of the catechism, which require a man to do his duty in
the station to which it has pleased God to call him, give an admirable
definition of our obligation to ourselves and to society; yet the
question remains, how is any given person to find out what is the
particular station to which it has pleased God to call him? A new-born
infant does not come into the world labelled scavenger, shopkeeper,
bishop, or duke. One mass of red pulp is just like another to all
outward appearance. And it is only by finding out what his faculties
are good for, and seeking, not for the sake of gratifying a paltry
vanity, but as the highest duty to himself and to his fellow-men,
to put himself into the position in which they can attain their full
development, that the man discovers his true station. That which is to
be lamented, I fancy, is not that society should do its utmost to help
capacity to ascend from the lower strata to the higher, but that it
has no machinery by which to facilitate the descent of incapacity from
the higher strata to the lower. In that noble romance, the "Republic"
(which is now, thanks to the Master of Balliol, as intelligible to
us all, as if it had been written in our mother tongue), Plato makes
Socrates say that he should like to inculcate upon the citizens of his
ideal state just one "royal lie."
"'Citizens,' we shall say to them in our tale--'You are
brothers, yet God has framed you differently. Some of you
have the power of command, and these he has composed of
gold, wherefore also they have the greatest honour; others
of silver, to be auxiliaries; others again, who are to be
husbandmen and craftsmen, he has made of brass and iron; and
the species will generally be preserved in the children. But
as you are of the same original family, a golden parent will
sometimes have a silver son, or a silver parent a golden son.
And God proclaims to the rulers, as a first principle, that
before all they should watch over their offspring, and see
what elements mingle with their nature; for if the son of a
golden or silver parent has an admixture of brass and iron,
then nature orders a transposition of ranks, and the eye of
the ruler must not be pitiful towards his child because he has
to descend in the scale and become a husbandman or artisan;
just as there may be others sprung from the artisan class, who
are raised to honour, and become guardians and auxiliaries.
For an oracle says that when a man of brass or iron guards the
State, it will then be destroyed.'"[1]
[Footnote 1: "The Dialogues of Plato." Translated into English, with
Analysis and Introduction, by B. Jowett, M.A. Vol. ii. p. 243.]
Time, whose tooth gnaws away everything else, is powerless against
truth; and the lapse of more than two thousand years has not weakened
the force of these wise words. Nor is it necessary that, as Plato
suggests, society should provide functionaries expressly charged with
the performance of the difficult duty of picking out the men of brass
from those of silver and gold. Educate, and the latter will certainly
rise to the top; remove all those artificial props by which the brass
and iron folk are kept at the top, and, by a law as sure as that of
gravitation, they will gradually sink to the bottom. We have all
known noble lords who would have been coachmen, or gamekeepers, or
billiard-markers, if they had not been kept afloat by our social
corks; we have all known men among the lowest ranks, of whom everyone
has said, "What might not that man have become, if he had only had a
little education?"
And who that attends, even in the most superficial way, to the
conditions upon which the stability of modern society--and especially
of a society like ours, in which recent legislation has placed
sovereign authority in the hands of the masses, whenever they are
united enough to wield their power--can doubt that every man of high
natural ability, who is both ignorant and miserable, is as great a
danger to society as a rocket without a stick is to the people
who fire it? Misery is a match that never goes out; genius, as an
explosive power, beats gunpowder hollow; and if knowledge, which
should give that power guidance, is wanting, the chances are not small
that the rocket will simply run a-muck among friends and foes. What
gives force to the socialistic movement which is now stirring
European society to its depths, but a determination on the part of the
naturally able men among the proletariat, to put an end, somehow or
other, to the misery and degradation in which a large proportion of
their fellows are steeped? The question, whether the means by which
they purpose to achieve this end are adequate or not, is at this
moment the most important of all political questions--and it is beside
my present purpose to discuss it. All I desire to point out is, that
if the chance of the controversy being decided calmly and rationally,
and not by passion and force, looks miserably small to an impartial
bystander, the reason is that not one in ten thousand of those who
constitute the ultimate court of appeal, by which questions of the
utmost difficulty, as well as of the most momentous gravity, will have
to be decided, is prepared by education to comprehend the real nature
of the suit brought before their tribunal.
Finally, as to the ladies and gentlemen question, all I can say is,
would that every woman-child born into this world were trained to be
a lady, and every man-child a gentleman! But then I do not use those
much-abused words by way of distinguishing people who wear fine
clothes, and live in fine houses, and talk aristocratic slang, from
those who go about in fustian, and live in back slums, and talk gutter
slang. Some inborn plebeian blindness, in fact, prevents me from
understanding what advantage the former have over the latter. I have
never even been able to understand why pigeon-shooting at Hurlingham
should be refined and polite, while a rat-killing match in Whitechapel
is low; or why "What a lark" should be coarse, when one hears "How
awfully jolly" drop from the most refined lips twenty times in an
evening.
Thoughtfulness for others, generosity, modesty, and self-respect, are
the qualities which make a real gentleman, or lady, as distinguished
from the veneered article which commonly goes by that name. I by no
means wish to express any sentimental preference for Lazarus against
Dives, but, on the face of the matter, one does not see why the
practice of these virtues should be more difficult in one state of
life than another; and any one who has had a wide experience among all
sorts and conditions of men, will, I think, agree with me that they
are as common in the lower ranks of life as in the higher.
Leaving the caste argument aside then, as inconsistent with the
practice of those who employ it, as devoid of any justification in
theory, and as utterly mischievous if its logical consequences were
carried out, let us turn to the other class of objectors. To these
opponents, the Education Act is only one of a number of pieces of
legislation to which they object on principle; and they include under
like condemnation the Vaccination Act, the Contagious Diseases Act,
and all other sanitary Acts; all attempts on the part of the State to
prevent adulteration, or to regulate injurious trades; all legislative
interference with anything that bears directly or indirectly on
commerce, such as shipping, harbours, railways, roads, cab-fares, and
the carriage of letters; and all attempts to promote the spread of
knowledge by the establishment of teaching bodies, examining
bodies, libraries, or museums, or by the sending out of scientific
expeditions; all endeavours to advance art by the establishment of
schools of design, or picture galleries; or by spending money upon
an architectural public building when a brick box would answer the
purpose. According to their views, not a shilling of public money must
be bestowed upon a public park or pleasure-ground; not sixpence upon
the relief of starvation, or the cure of disease. Those who hold
these views support them by two lines of argument. They enforce them
deductively by arguing from an assumed axiom, that the State has no
right to do anything but protect its subjects from aggression. The
State is simply a policeman, and its duty is neither more nor less
than to prevent robbery and murder and enforce contracts. It is not to
promote good, nor even to do anything to prevent evil, except by the
enforcement of penalties upon those who have been guilty of obvious
and tangible assaults upon purses or persons. And, according to
this view, the proper form of government is neither a monarchy,
an aristocracy, nor a democracy, but an _astynomocracy_, or
police government. On the other hand, these views are supported _à
posteriori_, by an induction from observation, which professes to show
that whatever is done by a Government beyond these negative limits, is
not only sure to be done badly, but to be done much worse than private
enterprise would have done the same thing.
I am by no means clear as to the truth of the latter proposition. It
is generally supported by statements which prove clearly enough that
the State does a great many things very badly. But this is really
beside the question. The State lives in a glass house; we see what it
tries to do, and all its failures, partial or total, are made the most
of. But private enterprise is sheltered under good opaque bricks and
mortar. The public rarely knows what it tries to do, and only hears
of failures when they are gross and patent to all the world. Who is
to say how private enterprise would come out if it tried its hand
at State work? Those who have had most experience of joint-stock
companies and their management, will probably be least inclined to
believe in the innate superiority of private enterprise over State
management. If continental bureaucracy and centralization be fraught
with multitudinous evils, surely English beadleocracy and parochial
obstruction are not altogether lovely. If it be said that, as a matter
of political experience, it is found to be for the best interests,
including the healthy and free development, of a people, that the
State should restrict itself to what is absolutely necessary, and
should leave to the voluntary efforts of individuals as much as
voluntary effort can be got to do, nothing can be more just. But, on
the other hand, it seems to me that nothing can be less justifiable
than the dogmatic assertion that State interference, beyond the limits
of home and foreign police, must, under all circumstances, do harm.
Suppose, however, for the sake of argument, that we accept the
proposition that the functions of the State may be properly summed up
in the one great negative commandment,--"Thou shalt not allow any man
to interfere with the liberty of any other man,"--I am unable to see
that the logical consequence is any such restriction of the power of
Government, as its supporters imply. If my next-door neighbour
chooses to have his drains in such a state as to create a poisonous
atmosphere, which I breathe at the risk of typhus and diphtheria, he
restricts my just freedom to live just as much as if he went about
with a pistol, threatening my life; if he is to be allowed to let
his children go unvaccinated, he might as well be allowed to leave
strychnine lozenges about in the way of mine; and if he brings them up
untaught and untrained, to earn their living, he is doing his best
to restrict my freedom, by increasing the burden of taxation for the
support of gaols and workhouses, which I have to pay.
The higher the state of civilization, the more completely do the
actions of one member of the social body influence all the rest, and
the less possible is it for any one man to do a wrong thing
without interfering, more or less, with the freedom of all his
fellow-citizens. So that, even upon the narrowest view of the
functions of the State, it must be admitted to have wider powers than
the advocates of the police theory are disposed to admit.
It is urged, I am aware, that if the right of the State to step beyond
the assigned limits is admitted at all, there is no stopping; and that
the principle which justifies the State in enforcing vaccination or
education, will also justify it in prescribing my religious belief,
or my mode of carrying on my trade or profession; in determining the
number of courses I have for dinner, or the pattern of my waistcoat.
But surely the answer is obvious that, on similar grounds, the right
of a man to eat when he is hungry might be disputed, because if you
once allow that he may eat at all, there is no stopping him until he
gorges himself, and suffers all the ills of a surfeit. In practice,
the man leaves off when reason tells him he has had enough; and, in
a properly organized State, the Government, being nothing but the
corporate reason of the community, will soon find out when State
interference has been carried far enough. And, so far as my
acquaintance with those who carry on the business of Government goes,
I must say that I find them far less eager to interfere with the
people, than the people are to be interfered with. And the reason is
obvious. The people are keenly sensible of particular evils, and, like
a man suffering from pain, desire an immediate remedy. The statesman,
on the other hand, is like the physician, who knows that he can stop
the pain at once by an opiate; but who also knows that the opiate may
do more harm than good in the long run. In three cases out of four the
wisest thing he can do is to wait, and leave the case to nature. But
in the fourth case, in which the symptoms are unmistakable, and the
cause of the disease distinctly known, prompt remedy saves a life.
Is the fact that a wise physician will give as little medicine as
possible any argument for his abstaining from giving any at all?
But the argument may be met directly. It may be granted that the
State, or corporate authority of the people, might with perfect
propriety order my religion, or my waistcoat, if as good grounds
could be assigned for such an order as for the command to educate my
children. And this leads us to the question which lies at the root of
the whole discussion--the question, namely, upon what foundation
does the authority of the State rest, and how are the limits of that
authority to be determined?
One of the oldest and profoundest of English philosophers, Hobbes of
Malmesbury, writes thus:--
"The office of the sovereign, be it monarch or an assembly,
consisteth in the end for which he was entrusted with the
sovereign power, namely, the procuration of _the safety_ of
the people: to which he is obliged by the law of nature, and
to render an account thereof to God, the author of that law,
and to none but Him. But by safety, here, is not meant a bare
preservation, but also all other contentments of life, which
every man by lawful industry, without danger or hurt to the
commonwealth, shall acquire to himself."
At first sight this may appear to be a statement of the police-theory
of government, pure and simple; but it is not so. For Hobbes goes on
to say:--
"And this is intended should be done, not by care applied to
individuals, further than their protection from injuries, when
they shall complain; but by a general providence contained in
public instruction both of doctrine and example; and in the
making and executing of good laws to which individual persons
may apply their own cases."[1]
[Footnote 1: "Leviathan," Molesworth's ed. p. 322.]
To a witness of the civil war between Charles I. and the Parliament,
it is not wonderful that the dissolution of the bonds of society which
is involved in such strife should appear to be "the greatest evil that
can happen in this life;" and all who have read the "Leviathan" know
to what length Hobbes's anxiety for the preservation of the authority
of the representative of the sovereign power, whatever its shape,
leads him. But the justice of his conception of the duties of the
sovereign power does not seem to me to be invalidated by his monstrous
doctrines respecting the sacredness of that power.
To Hobbes, who lived during the break-up of the sovereign power by
popular force, society appeared to be threatened by everything which
weakened that power: but, to John Locke, who witnessed the evils which
flow from the attempt of the sovereign power to destroy the rights
of the people by fraud and violence, the danger lay in the other
direction.
The safety of the representative of the sovereign power itself is to
Locke a matter of very small moment, and he contemplates its abolition
when it ceases to do its duty, and its replacement by another, as a
matter of course. The great champion of the revolution of 1688 could
do no less. Nor is it otherwise than natural that he should seek to
limit, rather than to enlarge, the powers of the State, though in
substance he entirely agrees with Hobbes's view of its duties:--
"But though men," says he, "when they enter into society, give
up the equality, liberty, and executive power they had in the
state of nature, into the hands of the society, to be so far
disposed of by the Legislature as the good of society shall
require; yet it being only with an intention in every one the
better to preserve himself, his liberty and property (for no
rational creature can be supposed to change his condition
with an intention to be worse), the power of the society,
or legislation, constituted by them can never be supposed to
extend further than the common good, but is obliged to secure
every one's property by providing against those three defects
above mentioned, that made the state of nature so unsafe and
uneasy. And so, whoever has the legislative or supreme
power of any commonwealth, is bound to govern by established
standing laws, promulgated and known to the people, and not
by extemporary decrees; by indifferent and upright judges, who
are to decide controversies by those laws: and to employ the
force of the community at home only in the execution of such
laws; or abroad, to prevent or redress foreign injuries, and
secure the community from inroads and invasion. And all this
to be directed to no other end than the peace, safety, and
public good of the people."[1]
[Footnote 1: Locke's Essay, "Of Civil Government," § 131.]
Just as in the case of Hobbes, so in that of Locke, it may at first
sight appear from this passage that the latter philosopher's views of
the functions of Government incline to the negative, rather than the
positive, side. But a further study of Locke's writings will at
once remove this misconception. In the famous "Letter concerning
Toleration," Locke says:--
"The commonwealth seems to me to be a society of men
constituted only for the procuring, preserving, and
_advancing_ their own civil interests.
"Civil interests I call life, liberty, health, and indolency
of body; and the possession of outward things, such as money,
lands, houses, furniture, and the like.
"It is the duty of the civil magistrate, by the impartial
execution of equal laws, to secure unto all the people in
general, and to every one of his subjects in particular, the
just possession of those things belonging to this life.
"... The whole jurisdiction of the magistrate reaches only
to these civil concernments.... All civil power, right,
and dominion, is bounded and confined to the only care of
promoting these things."
Elsewhere in the same "Letter," Locke lays down the proposition that
if the magistrate understand washing a child "to be profitable to the
curing or preventing any disease that children are subject unto, and
esteem the matter weighty enough to be taken care of by a law, in that
case he may order it to be done."
Locke seems to differ most widely from Hobbes by his strong advocacy
of a certain measure of toleration in religious matters. But the
reason why the civil magistrate ought to leave religion alone is,
according to Locke, simply this, that "true and saving religion
consists in the inward persuasion of the mind." And since "such is the
nature of the understanding that it cannot be compelled to the belief
of anything by outward force," it is absurd to attempt to make men
religious by compulsion. I cannot discover that Locke fathers the pet
doctrine of modern Liberalism, that the toleration of error is a good
thing in itself, and to be reckoned among the cardinal virtues; on
the contrary, in this very "Letter on Toleration" he states in the
clearest language that "No opinion contrary to human society, or to
those moral rules which are necessary to the preservation of civil
society, are to be tolerated by the magistrate." And the practical
corollary which he draws from this proposition is that there ought to
be no toleration for either Papists or Atheists.
After Locke's time the negative view of the functions of Government
gradually grew in strength, until it obtained systematic and able
expression in Wilhelm von Humboldt's "Ideen,"[1] the essence of which
is the denial that the State has a right to be anything more than
chief policeman. And, of late years, the belief in the efficacy of
doing nothing, thus formulated, has acquired considerable popularity
for several reasons. In the first place, men's speculative convictions
have become less and less real; their tolerance is large because their
belief is small; they know that the State had better leave things
alone unless it has a clear knowledge about them; and, with reason,
they suspect that the knowledge of the governing power may stand no
higher than the very low watermark of their own.
[Footnote 1: An English translation has been published under the title
of "Essay on the Sphere and Duties of Government."]
In the second place, men have become largely absorbed in the mere
accumulation of wealth; and as this is a matter in which the plainest
and strongest form of self-interest is intensely concerned, science
(in the shape of Political Economy) has readily demonstrated that
self-interest may be safely left to find the best way of attaining
its ends. Rapidity and certainty of intercourse between different
countries, the enormous development of the powers of machinery, and
general peace (however interrupted by brief periods of warfare), have
changed the face of commerce as completely as modern artillery has
changed that of war. The merchant found himself as much burdened by
ancient protective measures as the soldier by his armour--and negative
legislation has been of as much use to the one as the stripping off
of breast-plates, greaves, and buff-coat to the other. But because the
soldier is better without his armour it does not exactly follow that
it is desirable that our defenders should strip themselves stark
naked; and it is not more apparent why _laissez-faire_--great and
beneficial as it may be in all that relates to the accumulation of
wealth--should be the one great commandment which the State is to
obey in all other matters; and especially in those in which the
justification of _laissez-faire_, namely, the keen insight given by
the strong stimulus of direct personal interest, in matters clearly
understood, is entirely absent.
Thirdly, to the indifference generated by the absence of fixed
beliefs, and to the confidence in the efficacy of _laissez-faire_,
apparently justified by experience of the value of that principle when
applied to the pursuit of wealth, there must be added that nobler and
better reason for a profound distrust of legislative interference,
which animates Von Humboldt and shines forth in the pages of Mr.
Mill's famous Essay on Liberty--I mean the just fear lest the end
should be sacrificed to the means; lest freedom and variety should be
drilled and disciplined out of human life in order that the great mill
of the State should grind smoothly.
One of the profoundest of living English philosophers, who is at the
same time the most thoroughgoing and consistent of the champions of
astynomocracy, has devoted a very able and ingenious essay[1] to the
drawing out of a comparison between the process by which men have
advanced from the savage state to the highest civilization, and that
by which an animal passes from the condition of an almost shapeless
and structureless germ, to that in which it exhibits a highly
complicated structure and a corresponding diversity of powers. Mr.
Spencer says with great justice--
[Footnote 1: "The Social Organism:" Essays. Second Series.]
"That they gradually increase in mass; that they become,
little by little, more complex; that, at the same time, their
parts grow more mutually dependent; and that they continue to
live and grow as wholes, while successive generations of their
units appear and disappear,--are broad peculiarities which
bodies politic display, in common with all living bodies, and
in which they and living bodies differ from everything else."
In a very striking passage of this essay Mr. Spencer shows with what
singular closeness a parallel between the development of a nervous
system, which is the governing power of the body in the series of
animal organisms, and that of government, in the series of social
organisms, can be drawn:--
"Strange as the assertion, will be thought," says Mr. Spencer,
"our Houses of Parliament discharge in the social economy
functions that are, in sundry respects, comparable to those
discharged by the cerebral masses in a vertebrate animal....
The cerebrum co-ordinates the countless heterogeneous
considerations which affect the present and future welfare of
the individual as a whole; and the Legislature co-ordinates
the countless heterogeneous considerations which affect the
immediate and remote welfare of the whole community. We may
describe the office of the brain as that of _averaging_ the
interests of life, physical, intellectual, moral, social; and
a good brain is one in which the desires answering to their
respective interests are so balanced, that the conduct they
jointly dictate sacrifice none of them. Similarly we may
describe the office of Parliament as that of _averaging_ the
interests of the various classes in a community; and a good
Parliament is one in which the parties answering to these
respective interests are so balanced, that their united
legislation concedes to each class as much as consists with
the claims of the rest."
All this appears to be very just. But if the resemblances between the
body physiological and the body politic are any indication, not only
of what the latter is, and how it has become what it is, but of what
it ought to be, and what it is tending to become, I cannot but think
that the real force of the analogy is totally opposed to the negative
view of State function.
Suppose that, in accordance with this view, each muscle were to
maintain that the nervous system had no right to interfere with its
contraction, except to prevent it from hindering the contraction of
another muscle; or each gland, that it had a right to secrete, so long
as its secretion interfered with no other; suppose every separate cell
left free to follow its own "interests," and _laissez-faire_ lord of
all, what would become of the body physiological?
The fact is that the sovereign power of the body thinks for the
physiological organism, acts for it, and rules the individual
components with a rod of iron. Even the blood-corpuscles can't hold a
public meeting without being accused of "congestion"--and the brain,
like other despots whom we have known, calls out at once for the
use of sharp steel against them. As in Hobbes's "Leviathan," the
representative of the sovereign authority in the living organism,
though he derives all his powers from the mass which he rules, is
above the law. The questioning of his authority involves death, or
that partial death which we call paralysis. Hence, if the analogy of
the body politic with the body physiological counts for anything, it
seems to me to be in favour of a much larger amount of governmental
interference than exists at present, or than I, for one, at all desire
to see. But, tempting as the opportunity is, I am not disposed to
build up any argument in favour of my own case upon this analogy,
curious, interesting, and in many respects close, as it is, for it
takes no cognizance of certain profound and essential differences
between the physiological and the political bodies.
Much as the notion of a "social contract" has been ridiculed, it
nevertheless seems to be clear enough, that all social organization
whatever depends upon what is substantially a contract, whether
expressed or implied, between the members of the society. No society
ever was, or ever can be, really held together by force. It may seem
a paradox to say that a slaveholder does not make his slaves work
by force, but by agreement. And yet it is true. There is a contract
between the two which, if it were written out, would run in these
terms:--"I undertake to feed, clothe, house, and not to kill, flog,
or otherwise maltreat you, Quashie, if you perform a certain amount of
work." Quashie, seeing no better terms to be had, accepts the bargain,
and goes to work accordingly. A highwayman who garottes me, and then
clears out my pockets, robs me by force in the strict sense of the
words; but if he puts a pistol to my head and demands my money or
my life, and I, preferring the latter, hand over my purse, we have
virtually made a contract, and I perform one of the terms of that
contract. If, nevertheless, the highwayman subsequently shoots me,
everybody will see that, in addition to the crimes of murder and
theft, he has been guilty of a breach of contract.
A despotic Government, therefore, though often a mere combination
of slaveholding and highway robbery, nevertheless implies a contract
between governor and governed, with voluntary submission on the part
of the latter; and _à fortiori_, all other forms of government are in
like case.
Now a contract between any two men implies a restriction of the
freedom of each in certain particulars. The highwayman gives up his
freedom to shoot me, on condition of my giving up my freedom to do
as I like with my money: I give up my freedom to kill Quashie, on
condition of Quashie's giving up his freedom to be idle. And the
essence and foundation of every social organization, whether simple
or complex, is the fact that each member of the society voluntarily
renounces his freedom in certain directions, in return for the
advantages which he expects from association with the other members
of that society. Nor are constitutions, laws, or manners, in ultimate
analysis, anything but so many expressed or implied contracts between
the members of a society to do this, or abstain from that.