INDIVIDUALISTIC SOCIAL THOUGHT
At the dawn of the Renaissance, tradition and dogmatism were ruling
mankind. Here and there, however, individuals were perceiving the
nature of the bondage. Occasionally a cry for individual freedom was
uttered. Petrarch dared to say that the world was made for man’s
enjoyment. The early Teutons crudely developed the idea of personal
liberty. In France a movement arose which culminated in the doctrines
of natural rights and “Back to Nature.” The stress upon individualism
in England became so deeply ingrained that it exists today as a
powerful form of traditionalism. The United States was founded, in
part, upon a doctrine of natural rights.
Absolutely unlike Sir Thomas More in many ways, Niccolo Machiavelli
(1469–1527), an Italian contemporary, broke with tradition and received
the sobriquet, the Galileo of social science. Unfortunately, many
people think of the Italian writer in terms of the adjective which
bears his name, Machiavellism, or political intrigue. While he deserves
this reputation, he also should be considered in another light. He cut
loose from the customary ways of thinking of his time and asserted
that it is not necessary to take all things on fiat or alleged
divine decree. Although this may be dangerous doctrine, it serves a
useful and constructive purpose when people are ruled by political
and ecclesiastical autocrats. Machiavelli was no idealist in the
accepted sense of the term, but a man who mixed with people, traveled
extensively, and studied actual conditions. He declared that people
should be considered as they are, and not according to false teachings
about them.
A century before the time of Sir Francis Bacon, the inaugurator of the
so-called inductive or scientific method of study, Machiavelli was
observing human conditions and upon the basis of these observations
was drawing conclusions. He believed that it does not pay to be guided
in one’s conduct by abstract ethics or impracticable ideals--and said
so, in an age when imprisonment, exile, or death awaited anyone who
opposed the autocratic authorities. From abstract ethics, Machiavelli
swung to the extreme of concrete expediency. He lived and thought in
the exigencies of the moment. He is an example of one who reacts so
strongly against the stress and strain of the hour that he cannot
get the larger vision that is necessary for balanced thinking on
fundamental issues.
Machiavelli wrote on the subject of leadership and government.
He advocated either an autocratic or democratic form of
government--according to the conditions of the time and place. In the
_Prince_ he described with noteworthy accuracy the traits and methods
of a leader whose constituents must be treated with absolute authority.
In the _Discourses_ he dealt with a democratic-republican type of
leadership and control.
The succesful prince, or leader, in the selfish sense, makes himself
both beloved and feared by his people.[XI-1] On occasion he uses
force and even fraud. Sometimes he must either exterminate or be
exterminated. He must repeal or suppress old laws and make new ones to
fit the social situation. He seeks to be considered merciful rather
than cruel. He exercises universal pity in order to prevent social
disorders from occurring and producing rapine and murder.[XI-2] He
does not allow his mercy to be taken advantage of by ungrateful and
hypocritical persons. He is strong-minded; he is either a sincere
friend or a generous foe. He is paternalistic, urging that his
subjects be well-fed and have a good livelihood,[XI-3] thus gaining
and maintaining the affection of the people. In international affairs
he acts with a strong hand, fortifying well his city or nation, and
providing good laws for internal growth.[XI-4] He errs grossly,
however, in his fundamental philosophy that any plan or action that is
for the welfare of the state, or nation, considered as a supreme unit
of authority in itself, is morally sound.
Sir Francis Bacon, whose contribution to utopian social thought
has been indicated in the foregoing chapter, placed all social and
sociological thinkers under deep obligations by his emphasis upon
inductive reasoning. He helped to free the individual from control by
dogma and superstition. He provided the individual with a technique
for securing a new sense of individual freedom. In freeing himself
the individual discards his irrational pre-judgments, whether
socially inherited or individually developed. He protects himself
from anthropomorphic judgments, i. e., from judgments which he makes
because he looks upon life and the universe through human eyes. These
pre-judgments are common to all mankind--they are “the idols of the
tribe.” On the other hand, the individual avoids purely personal
preferences, which he is likely to hold because of his own peculiar
experiences, and which thus place him outside the pale of common
experience--these are “the idols of the cave.”
Then there are “the idols of the forum,” which cause the individual to
give undue dependence to words and language. “The idols of the theater”
are traditional systems of thought. Bacon’s dictum has been stated as
follows: Get as little of yourself and of other selves as possible in
the way of the thing which you wish to see.
Having eliminated human predispositions, the individual is ready to
gather facts, arrange them in groups, draw conclusions from them, and
act according to the resultant laws. Knowledge gives power.[XI-4]
Social knowledge gives power to improve human conditions and makes
possible wise social control. Thus, Bacon opened the road to individual
freedom.
Too much individual freedom, however, destroys government and the
social order. If each individual is a law unto himself, anarchy reigns
and progress is prevented. Consequently, the question arises: How can
individually free persons unite in a society without giving up their
freedom? The answer to this question took the form of a controversy on
the subject of the social contract, i. e., the contract or agreement of
individuals, as units, to form and maintain societies. This controversy
arose in the seventeenth century and was waged vigorously in the
eighteenth century.
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1678), the distinguished social philosopher of
England, introduced his analysis of society with the idea that man was
originally self-centered, egoistic, and pleasure-loving. He was an
independent center. His interest in other people was based on their
ability to cater to his own good. He and they desired the same things
in life. His hand was thus raised, in competition, against every other
man. This state of continual conflict became mutually destructive
and unbearable.[XI-5] In consequence, each individual agreed to give
over some of his precious, inalienable rights to a central authority
or sovereign, whose decrees should constitute law and serve as the
guide for conduct. The war of each against all, with the concomitant
state of fear, was thus supplanted by a mutual contract, conferring
sovereignty by popular agreement upon the ruler. In this way Hobbes met
the dilemma of supporting an absolute form of government in which he
believed and of denying the divine right of kings which he abhorred.
Hobbes performed a useful service in intellectually destroying the
idea of the divine right of kings, but urged after all an undemocratic
political absolutism. Hobbes conferred humanly derived but irrevocable
authority upon the king. He, however, traced sovereignty back to the
people rather than to a divine right.
In getting away from the conditions “of Warre of every one against
every one” in the natural state where “every man has a Right to
everything,” Hobbes swung to an undemocratic extreme. His Puritanic
training gave an undue severity to his social thought. The Puritans,
however, believed in the complete eradication of the savage human
tendencies and also in the ultimate elimination of kings. Hobbes did
not analyze deeply the instinctive bases of human nature. He built his
_Leviathan_ out of natural human qualities and tied its units together
by means of a strong, central will--this was his perfect society.
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), the Portuguese Jewish philosopher of
Holland, improved the social contract idea. He believed that man was
originally of an anti-social and a tooth-and-fang nature, possessing
only incipient social impulses. Hence, man is not naturally bad, but
naturally anti-social. Social organization was effected for purposes
of individual gain and glory; it was promulgated and furthered by
individuals in order that they might escape the miseries of unregulated
conflict. Agreements were made whereby sovereignty was embodied in a
ruler, but if the ruler abused the sovereignty entrusted to him, it
reverted immediately to the people. This democratic conception was
vastly superior to the idea of Hobbes, that sovereignty is delegated by
the people to the king as an irresponsible monarch.
John Locke (1632–1704) strengthened the social contract theory,
elaborating the idea that sovereignty reverts to the people whenever
the king becomes a tyrant. He held that the natural state of
individuals is a condition of perfect freedom to order their actions,
not asking leave of any man.[XI-6] This state of liberty is not
a state of license to individuals to destroy themselves or their
neighbors.[XI-7] The state of liberty has the law of nature to govern
it. Since all are equal, no one ought to harm another in his liberty or
possessions.
Locke affirmed that men are in a state of nature until by their own
consent they join in a political society.[XI-8] In order to meet their
needs effectively, they join in societies. One of these important needs
is the preservation of property. Locke defended private property on the
ground that it is a normal expression of individuality and necessary
to individuality.
Right and wrong are not determined by the ruler or the state; they
existed before society developed. Here the Puritanism of Locke enters.
He stressed moral values. He made the natural rights of individuals
supreme; individuals may even overturn the government and still keep
within their rights.
Locke’s justification of revolution is his most startling doctrine.
Imagine the heart-throb of the common people who heard Locke’s
contention that the end of government is the good of mankind, that
people should not submit to tyranny, that whoever uses his force
without right and law puts himself in a state of war with those against
whom he uses it, and that in such a state the people have a right to
resist and defend themselves.[XI-9] Further, the people have a right to
act as the supreme social force and to put legislation into new forms
and into the hands of new executives. By these bold declarations Locke
created a new public opinion, and aroused new moral power in the minds
and hearts of the common people.
By the middle of the eighteenth century the concept of individual
freedom became crystallized in the doctrines of the natural rights
of the individual, the contractual societary relationships between
independent individuals, and the _laissez faire_ principle in
governmental science. The physiocrats, who took up the ideas of natural
liberty and economic freedom, exercised a tremendous influence in
France during the three decades following 1750. Their leaders were
Quesnay, de Gournay, Condorcet, and Turgot. They believed that there
was a natural law ruling human lives, just as there is a natural law
ruling the physical world. They chafed under social restraints. Under
the natural law, every individual has natural rights, chief of which is
the right to the free exercise of all his faculties so long as he does
not infringe on the similar right of other individuals. Unlike John
Locke and other English thinkers who accepted the idea of individual
liberty, the physiocrats argued that this natural liberty could not be
abridged by a social contract.
According to the physiocrats the chief function of governmental control
is to preserve the natural liberty of individuals. Industry and
commerce must not be governmentally regulated, for by such regulation
the rights of some men, chiefly employers, will be infringed upon.
Employees, on the other hand, who are being treated unjustly will
freely quit a harsh employer and obtain employment with considerate
masters. Thus, an unjust employer will be unable to secure workers
and be forced to discontinue his unjust practices--without government
regulation. Likewise, a dishonest merchant will lose his customers and
be forced to become honest or to close his shop--and again without
government regulation. The physiocrats became known by their famous
phrase, _laissez faire, laissez passer_.
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), an able but baffling character,
is the best known champion of the social contract idea. Although he
advocated the family as a social institution and praised fatherhood,
he reports that he carried his own children to a foundling asylum.
He deprecated the disintegrating elements in civilization and urged
a return to nature’s simple ways. In his chief works, the _Contrat
social_ and _Emile_, he attacked civilization vigorously. He asserted
that civilization had almost destroyed the natural rights of man. His
dictum was: Trust nature.
According to Rousseau the early life of mankind was nearly ideal in
its simplicity and pleasantness. War and conflict were relatively
unknown. In his later writings, Rousseau modified his belief and
asserted that primitive confusion made necessary some kind of social
organization. On the other hand, it became the belief of Rousseau
that civilization generates social evils and results sooner or later
in social deterioration. Corruption in society has become notorious.
Social inequality is rampant and unbearable. “Man is born free, and
is everywhere in chains.” People have become so engrossed in the
artificialities of social life and so bewildered by its complexities
that happiness has been lost.
Leave the individual free to carry out his own plans, untrammelled
by complex social rules, restrictions, and duties. There is no
social sanction at all; there is no authority except nature, which is
necessity. In _Emile_, Rousseau takes his two leading characters to an
island, where they live alone--happily! Liberty not authority reigns.
But Emile, who has declared for liberty as opposed to authority,
insists in his discussions of domestic relationships that “woman is
made to please man.” The “unselfish, unsocial life” of Emile and Sophie
turns out to be more than purely individualistic--it is anarchic
and sensual. Emile fails to demonstrate the merit of Rousseau’s own
theories, such as “Man is good naturally but by institutions he is made
bad,” and “Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Author
of Nature; everything degenerates in the hands of man.”
Slavery is wrong, according to Rousseau.[XI-11] It is a contract or
agreement, at the expense of the slave and for the profit of the
slaveholder, in which the slaveholder asserts: I’ll observe the
agreement and you will observe it--as long as it pleases me.
Strength does not make right. Strength and moral force are not
necessarily the same. Strength may often be ironically accepted in
appearance and established in principle. By a social contract man
loses his natural liberty and gains civil and moral liberty.[XI-12]
In this connection Rousseau was simply the spokesman of a point of
view which found frequent expression in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. For example, in 1635, John Winthrop, the first governor of
the Massachusetts colony, made a clear-cut distinction between natural
liberties, and civil and moral liberties. Natural liberty is liberty to
do what one lists, to do evil as well as good. Civil, or moral, liberty
is liberty under the covenant between God and man, under the political
covenants between men and men, and under the moral law. It is a liberty
to do only that which is good, just, and honest.[XI-13]
It was Rousseau who contended that life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness are man’s inalienable rights. It was this doctrine which
profoundly influenced Thomas Jefferson, as evidenced in the Declaration
of Independence. Sovereignty rests not in a ruler or monarch but in the
community of people--this was perhaps Rousseau’s main contribution to
social thought.
Before Rousseau, however, wrote the _Contrat social_, the social
contract theory had been overthrown. The writings of Montesquieu
(1689–1755) offer an elaborate analysis of social and political
processes. These analyses are similar, in some ways, to Aristotle’s
analyses of 158 constitutions. Montesquieu discussed the doctrine of
natural rights, but did not believe that the natural state of mankind
was one of conflict, in which social organization was forced as a
means of meeting the needs of individual protection. He asserted that
there was a natural, innate tendency in man toward association. In the
support of this belief, Montesquieu drew facts from the lives of the
individual members of the primitive tribes which were extant in his
day. The influence of Montesquieu was clearly inimical to the social
contract doctrine.
In the _Esprit des lois_, Montesquieu dissected the laws of many
nations and tried to show the relations between these laws and social
and political conditions. The general implication is that laws are a
natural outgrowth of life conditions rather than of formal contractual
agreements. Hence, society is a natural evolution rather than a
contract.
Perhaps the chief antagonist in the eighteenth century of the social
contract theory was David Hume (1711–1776), the father of social
psychology. According to Hume, the origin of society was not in a
contract arrived at by intellectual processes; it was instinctive.
Man is a social animal. At the basis of this sociability lies the sex
instinct, which resulted in the establishment of the family. The sex
instinct is strongly supported by the sentiment of sympathy, which
also is innate, and which may develop into intelligent co-operation.
Man is not entirely self-centered; he takes pleasure in other people’s
pleasures and suffers when others are in pain, or the victims of
disease, or are dying.
Sympathy, like the sex instinct, is a genuinely fundamental element in
human nature and in society. However, the combination of sympathy and
the sex instinct is not strong enough to support the family in either
its simple or complex stages from the attacks upon it that are made by
inherent human selfishness. Hence, social and political organizations
are necessary to hold the selfish impulses and interests of mankind
in check. Intellectual control of society thus becomes necessary and
consciously recognized. Environment alone does not cause people in
a given community to act alike. It is imitation, primarily, which
operates to bring about group conformity.[XI-14]
Man in a large measure is governed by interest. It is impossible for
men to consult their interests “in so effective a manner as by a
universal and inflexible observance of the rules of justice, by which
alone they can preserve society, and keep themselves from falling into
that wretched and savage condition, which is commonly represented as
the state of nature.”[XI-15]
According to the contract theory, people expect protection and
security. If they meet with tyranny and oppression, they are freed from
their promises and return to that state of liberty which proceeded the
institution of government. But Hume maintained that if people entered
into no contract and made no promises, government would still be
necessary in all civilized societies. The obligation of submission to
government is not derived from any promise of the subjects.[XI-16]
Adam Ferguson (1723–1816) wrote an _Essay on the History of Civil
Society_ and _The History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman
Republic_. He argued that social institutions and social convenience
lead to inherent sociability, and pointed out that competition and
conflict are vital to social development. Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
asserted that man is inherently social and that social organization is
a natural development.
The natural rights theory and the resultant individualism not only
repudiated their false derivative, the social contract concept, but
also wrestled with considerable success with the socio-economic concept
of mercantilism. Mercantilism was a system of regulating industrial
enterprise by governments in order to build up strong nation-states.
Mercantilism reached its strictest form in France in the writings of
Colbert (1619–1683). It prevailed in Europe during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, and the first four decades of the eighteenth
century. It was a system which grew out of feudalism and the city-state
type of society. It operated to bring together towns and cities into
national unities. Under feudalism, the town had regulated industry for
its own advancement and against the welfare, perchance, of neighboring
towns. Mercantilism served to unite towns and to create in townspeople
a national loyalty.
Under mercantilism, the nation entered upon the task of regulating
industry and finance so as to build a strong state. A favorable balance
of trade was sought in order to add to the bullion within the state.
High tariffs were enacted, which sometimes defeated the intended
purposes. A dense population was favored as a means of securing cheap
labor, and hence of furthering manufacture, which in turn would develop
foreign trade and bring in the coveted bullion--the heralded strength
of a nation.
In the eighteenth century, mercantilism in France and England met
defeat in the contest with the _laissez faire_ theory, with which the
names of the physiocrats and of Adam Smith are inseparably connected.
It often fathered too stringent regulations. Instead of supporting
national ends, mercantilistic measures frequently furthered private
interests. Mercantilism, however, played a strong part in building up
the concepts of national unity and loyalty.
In the German states and Austria, cameralism represented the ideas for
which mercantilism stood in England, France, and elsewhere in Western
and Southern Europe. Among the leading cameralists were Seckendorf,
Horing, Justi, and Sonnenfels. Cameralism obtained a far deeper hold
upon the German states than mercantilism did, for example, in England.
The _laissez faire_ philosophy was never able to make a deep inroad
upon cameralism. In fact, the _laissez faire_ philosophy did not
receive serious consideration in the German states before 1800, and
did not strike deep. National self-sufficiency, paternalistic control,
minute regulation of internal affairs, rearing of large families, and
subordination of the welfare of the state--these are the concepts which
ruled in Germany.
Adam Smith (1723–1790), primarily an economist and often referred
to as the father of political economy, exerted a profound influence
upon social thought. He coupled a modified natural rights theory
with a doctrine of sympathy; he spoke for the natural rights of the
individual, of the poorer classes in society, and of the smaller
nations. He vigorously attacked mercantilism with its system of
minute regulation of individuals. He objected to promoting unduly
the interests of one class of men in a country, for by so doing, the
interests of all other classes in that country and of all persons in
all other countries are harmed.[XI-17] He pointed out the fallacy of
building a nation of shopkeepers, for in so doing the government of
such a nation will be unduly influenced and controlled by the interests
of shopkeepers. The interests of other classes will be more or less
ignored. Adam Smith protested against Great Britain’s methods of
regulating the American colonies. To prohibit the American colonies
from making all they could of every part of their own produce or from
employing their stock and industry in the way that they judged most
advantageous to themselves, was “a manifest violation of the most
sacred rights of mankind.”[XI-18]
Mercantilism made use of monopoly of one kind or another, and hence
is objectionable, according to Smith. Mercantilism is regulation,
and regulation is often carried on for the benefit of the rich and
powerful, thus neglecting and oppressing the poor.[XI-19] Smith failed
to note, however, that the _laissez faire_ policy likewise favored the
rich and powerful and neglected the poor. Mercantilism, according to
Smith, considers production and not consumption as the end of industry
and commerce, and thus favors one class at the expense of other classes.
“Wherever there is great property,” said Smith, “there is great
inequality.” For every very rich man there must be at least 500 poor
men, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the
many.[XI-20] But no society can be flourishing and happy wherein the
greater part of the members are poor and miserable.[XI-21] The laboring
men should have “such a share of the produce of their own labor as to
be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.” Poverty does
not prevent the procreation of children, but is on the other hand
extremely unfavorable to the rearing of children.[XI-22]
Smith pointed out four causes of social inequality:[XI-23] (1)
Superiority in personal qualifications, such as strength, beauty,
agility of body; or wisdom, virtue, prudence, justice, fortitude,
moderation of mind. (2) Superiority of age and experience. (3)
Superiority of fortune. Riches give social authority; riches possess
power to buy. (4) Superiority of birth, based on family prestige.
Smith extolled the merits of division of labor in industry with the
resultant increase in the quantity of work. There are three sets of
causal circumstances:[XI-24] (1) the increase of dexterity; (2) the
saving of time in passing from one kind of work to another; and (3)
the invention of a large number of machines. Smith, however, deplored
the deadening effect upon the individual of repeating over and over
a simple process, hundreds or thousands of times daily. In summary,
Adam Smith (1) applied the concept of natural rights to industrial
conditions; (2) developed Hume’s concept of sympathy into a theory of
mutual aid between individuals, classes, and nations; and (3) supported
the necessity of division of labor.
The natural rights and social contract theories affected in one way
or another the thinking not only of the men who have already been
considered in this chapter, but also of many other individuals.
Blackstone (1723–1780) held that man’s weakness in isolation led to
association. The primary group was the patriarchal family. Blackstone
was not an advocate of social regulation. His exposition of English law
in the _Commentaries_ stood for law itself, and became the bulwark at
once of the doctrines of individual rights and property rights in both
England and the American colonies. In the United States, its influence
remained dominant for more than a century after the founding of the
republic.
Although Edmund Burke (1729–1797) believed in a corporate unity of
society, he became in his century the chief spokesman of humanity for
humanity’s sake. He pleaded for justice for and conciliation with the
American colonies; he spoke for the benighted Hindus who were being
plundered by English stockholders; and he championed the rights of
slaves. He failed, on the other hand, to appreciate the struggles of
the French people which culminated in the French Revolution.
Immanuel Kant (1724–1817) declared man in a natural state is both
social and unsocial and referred to the “unsocial sociableness” of man.
“Man cannot get on with fellows and he cannot do without them.” Man has
an inclination to associate with others and also a great propensity
to isolate himself from others. He wishes to direct things according
to his own ideas and thus courts resistance and conflict. It is this
conflict, however, which leads to individual advancement.
Kant laid great stress upon a good will.[XI-25] The individual may have
intelligence and sagacity, power and wealth, but he may still be a
pernicious and hurtful member of society. He is not even worthy to be
happy unless he possesses a good will. A man’s will is good not because
of the end he seeks nor because of the results of his activities but
because he inherently wills the good. It is this “good will” of Kant
which is in conflict with the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, and
also with modern behavioristic psychology and objective sociology. To
Kant, morality is subjective. Social laws may regulate and control
man’s conduct but they cannot control his motives.
Johann Fichte (1762–1814) joined with Kant in the interpretation of a
good will. He held that property is essential to the development of
freedom. However, he pushed the social contract idea to an extreme and
developed a doctrine of an idealistic state socialism, including the
superiority of Germany among the nations of the world.
Hegel (1770–1831) supported cameralism by developing the State idea,
with the implication that Germany would become the supreme State in the
world. Hegel even asserted that man has his existence and his ethical
status “only in being a member of the State.”[XI-26] Morality is not a
matter of striving independently to realize one’s inner self, but of
living in accord with the traditions of one’s State.
Perhaps the individual rights theory never manifested a greater
aberration than in the mind of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). Power
is supreme. The individual or the nation with the greatest power has
the greatest right to live. Against this idea or the expressions of
this idea, the weaker individuals tend to combine and to extol their
weaknesses as virtues, even building a religion out of these glorified
weaknesses, for example, Christianity. Nietzsche’s doctrine of the
superman and the superstate will be discussed in Chapter XXI.
Closely related to the discussions concerning natural rights and the
social contract is the doctrine of utilitarianism, a modified form
of individualism with certain objective standards. Jeremy Bentham
(1748–1832) made utilitarianism well-known, and particularly the
standard: The greatest good of the greatest number. In accordance with
a formal idea of social change, Bentham urged that social improvements
be made by legislation. He demanded objective standards as opposed to
Kant’s emphasis on the inner motive. Where Kant accented the “how” of
conduct, Bentham insisted on the “what” of conduct. He pointed out
the need for improved forms of government, apparently ignoring or at
least greatly underestimating the fact that real progress comes chiefly
through modifying organic processes. However, Bentham may be rated a
virile social reformer, for he strongly advocated such measures as the
secret ballot, woman suffrage, trained statesmancraft. He made social
welfare a main goal.
The doctrine of utilitarianism was carried forward by James Mill
(1773–1836) and was brought to its highest fruition by the son, John
Stuart Mill (1806–1873). The elder Mill contended that utility is
morality. Like Bentham the elder Mill urged many social reforms.
John Stuart Mill adopted a modified form of the natural rights theory.
He asserted that the individual should have all the rights that he
can exercise without infringing upon the equal rights of other
individuals. Mill recognized a gradation in the pleasures which satisfy
individuals. He declared that it is better to be a man dissatisfied
than a pig satisfied; he objected to the prevailing classification of
people on the basis of poverty and wealth, and urged the substitution
of standards of personal worth, honor, and true leadership as bases for
social classification.
Sir Henry Maine (1832–1888) invented the phrase: From status to
contract. He applied this phrase to a program of social welfare. There
are many illustrations, he pointed out, in business and industrial
life, and even in political and fraternal activities where people
make social contracts. The marriage contract also has many of the
characteristics of a genuine social contract. Maine pushed the social
contract idea to its furthest practical point; but deprecated the
possibility that the masses might come into power. His individualism
deprived him of a faith in the possible social development of the
uneducated.
Herbert Spencer, whose ideas will be discussed more extensively in a
subsequent chapter, became one of the chief exponents of the doctrine
of _laissez faire_ in governmental matters. He brought a vast reading
knowledge and able arguments to the support of individualistic
doctrines. He added very little that was new to individualistic and
_laissez faire_ theories although he was at one time perhaps their
leading exponent. One of his chief contributions to social thought
was indirect and unintentional, namely, the way in which his writings
challenged the attention of an American paleontologist, Lester F.
Ward, and led him to point out the psychical nature and hence telic
possibilities of civilization. In consequence of this challenge Spencer
fell, and Ward rose to the rank of dean of American sociologists. An
entire chapter will be devoted to the sociology of Lester F. Ward.
William G. Sumner (1840–1910) was the last noted champion of a
governmental _laissez faire_ doctrine. He held that the State owes
nothing to anybody except peace, order, and the guarantee of rights.
It is not true that the poor ought to care for each other, and that
the churches ought to collect capital and spend it for the poor; it is
not true that if you get wealth you should support others; and that
if you do not get wealth others ought to support you. In a society
based on contract there is no place for sentiment in public or common
affairs.[XI-28] Every individual will develop the self-reliance of
a free person, if he is not taught that others will care for him in
case he fails to care for himself. Sumner spoke vigorously as well as
harshly in support of liberty, contract, and private property. Although
he took an extreme and untenable position his ideas will bear careful,
unbiased study, for they contain a large amount of common sense. His
ethnological work will be indicated at some length in another chapter.
A noteworthy statement which has come from a current American school
of legal thinkers concerning individualistic social thought, is found
in the writings of Professor Roscoe Pound of Harvard Law School. In
“A Theory of Social Interests” he has summed up the new point of
view.[XI-29] In the last century all interests were thought of in terms
of individual interests, all were reduced to their purely individual
elements and considered as rights.
In this century, Dean Pound indicates that law, for example, aims
primarily to conserve some general social interest. It conserves the
social interest in the general security, that is, in public health and
in peace. It conserves the social interest in institutions,--domestic,
religious, political. It conserves the social interest in natural
resources, preventing the waste of oil and gas and protecting water
rights. It conserves the social interest in general progress, in
economic, political, cultural progress, although its main contribution
in other fields, such as promoting the esthetic interests, are yet to
be made. It conserves the social interests in individual life and in
seeing that people live humanly and that the will of the individual
is not trodden upon. Legal processes have thus become types of social
engineering.
The doctrine of natural rights reached its largest degree of acceptance
in England, France, and the United States. It was not only reflected
in the thought of Thomas Jefferson but in the fundamental principles
upon which the United States was established. It suffered an aberration
in the form of the social contract theory which in its extreme forms
was later repudiated. Its greatest weakness was the exaggerated form
which it assumed, especially in England and the United States. In the
latter country it became greatly magnified through contact with the
spirit of discovery, invention, and pioneering which prevailed for over
a century. Consequently, it dominated the thought life of the United
States throughout the nineteenth century. It permitted captains of
industry to exploit the helpless masses, and encouraged politicians
to pursue selfish practices until governments became honeycombed with
graft. It nearly capsized the good Ship of State--Democracy.
Theories of natural rights have been supplanted by considerations
of natural needs, both individual and social. Human needs are now
considered the only imperatives, but even they are relative and
changing.