for? He will hope that ‘the masses’ of democratic countries in the
future, since they, like ourselves, must follow a small number of
leaders, will ultimately reach a level of intelligence, public spirit
and probity which will enable them to select the right leaders, will
make the demagogue repulsive, will secure their deference for those
whose characters and careers they can approve, and will so far control
the associative instinct as to cause their adhesion to party to be
governed by a moral judgement on the conduct of the party. The masses
cannot have either the leisure or the capacity for investigating the
underlying principles of policy or for mastering the details of
legislation. Yet they may—so our optimist must hope—attain to a sound
perception of the main and broad issues of national and international
policy, especially in their moral aspects, a perception sufficient to
enable them to keep the nation’s action upon right lines. For the
average man to do more than this seems scarcely more possible than that
he should examine religious truth for himself, scrutinizing the
Christian evidences and reaching independent conclusions upon the
Christian dogmas. This is what the extreme Protestant theory, which
exalted human reason in the religious sphere no less than democratic
theory did in the political sphere, has demanded, and indeed must
demand, from the average man. But how many Protestants seek to rise to
it? Many of those who grew up under the influence of that inspiriting
theory can recall the disappointment with which, between twenty and
thirty years of age, they came to perceive that the ideal was
unattainable for themselves, and that they must be content to form and
live by such views of the meaning of the Bible and of the dogmas held to
be deducible therefrom as a reliance on the opinions of the highest
critical authorities and of their own wisest friends, coupled with their
own limited knowledge of history and with the canons of evidence which
they had unconsciously adopted, enabled them to form. Even this,
however, has seemed to most of those who have passed through such an
experience to be better than a despairing surrender to ecclesiastical
authority.
So the optimist aforesaid may argue that the future for which he hopes
will represent, not indeed the ideal which democracy sets up, yet
nevertheless an advance upon any government the world has yet seen,
except perhaps in very small communities or for a brief space of time.
The doctrine that the natural instinct and passion of men was for
liberty, because every human being was a centre of independent force,
striving to assert itself; the doctrine that political freedom would
bring mental independence and a sense of responsibility; that education
would teach men, not only to prize their political rights, but also to
use them wisely—this doctrine was first promulgated by persons of
exceptional vigour, exceptional independence, exceptional hopefulness.
These were the qualities that made such men idealists and reformers: and
they attributed their own merits to the general body of mankind. It was
an admirable ideal. Let us hold to it as long as we can. The world is
still young.
Having heard the optimist, we must let the pessimist also state his
case. If he is a reasonable pessimist, he will admit that Obedience may
be expected to become more and more a product of reason rather than of
mere indolence or timidity, because every advance in popular
enlightenment or in the participation of the masses in government ought,
after the first excitement of unchastened hopes or destructive impulses
has passed away, to engender a stronger feeling of the common interest
in public order, and of the need for subordinating the demands of a
class to the general good. He will also admit that the progress of
social equality may tend to increase each man’s sense of individual
dignity. But if he is asked to admit further that governments will
become purer and better because there will come along with that habit of
rational obedience (a habit necessary to enable any government to be
efficient) a stronger interest in self-government, a more active public
spirit, a constant sense of the duty which each citizen owes to the
community to secure an honest and wise administration, he will observe
that as we have seen that Obedience rests primarily upon certain
instincts and habits woven into the texture of human nature, these
instincts and habits will be permanent factors, not necessarily less
potent in the future than they have been in the past. He will then ask
whether the events of the last seventy years, during which power has, at
least in form and semblance, passed from the few to the many, encourage
the belief that the spirit of independence, the standard of public duty,
and the sense of responsibility in each individual for the conduct of
government are really advancing.
Are the omens in this quarter of the heavens so favourable as we are apt
to assume?
There is less love for liberty—so our pessimist pursues—than there used
to be, perhaps less value set upon the right of a man to express
unpopular opinions. There is less sympathy in each country for the
struggles which are maintained for freedom in other countries. National
antagonisms are as strong as ever they were, and nations seem quite as
willing as in the old days of tyranny to forgo domestic progress for the
sake of strengthening their militant force against their rivals. There
is less faith in, less regard for, that which used to be called the
principle of nationality. Peoples which have achieved their own national
freedom show no more disposition than did the tyrants of old time to
respect the struggles of other peoples to maintain theirs. The sympathy
which Germans and Frenchmen used to feel for the oppressed races of the
East has disappeared. France has ceased to care about the Cretans or the
Poles. England, whose heart went out forty years ago to all who strove
for freedom and independence, feels no compunction in blotting out two
little republics whose citizens have fought with a valour and constancy
never surpassed. The United States ignore the principles of their
Declaration of Independence when they proceed to subjugate by force the
Philippine Islanders. The modern ideal is no longer liberty, but
military strength and commercial development.
If freedom is less prized, it is perhaps because free governments have
failed to bear the fruit that was expected from them fifty years ago.
The Republic in France seems, after thirty years, to have made the
country not much happier or more contentedly tranquil than it was under
Louis Napoleon or Louis Philippe. It maintains, to the eyes of foreign
observers, a precarious life from year to year, now and then threatened
by plots military, political, or ecclesiastical. A free and united Italy
has not realized the hopes of the great men to whom she owes her unity
and her freedom. The United States have at least as much corruption in
their legislatures, and worse government in their great cities, with
fewer men of commanding ability in their public life, than before the
Civil War, when it was believed that all evils would disappear with the
extinction of slavery. In particular, representative government, in
which the hopes of the apostles of progress were centred half a century
ago, has fallen into discredit. In some countries the representative is
more timid, more willing to be turned into a mere delegate, more at the
mercy of a party organization, than he was formerly. In others the
popular assembly is so much distrusted that men seek to override it by
introducing a so-called plebiscite or referendum to review its
decisions.
No result was more confidently expected from the enlightenment of the
bulk of the people than the triumph, a speedy and complete triumph, of
sound economic doctrines, such as those which prescribe the adoption of
Free Trade in commercial legislation and reliance upon self-help rather
than State-help in poor law matters and generally in social
improvements. But the United Kingdom is the only country in which Free
Trade holds the field, and in the United Kingdom the true and wholesome
principles of poor law administration, as set forth by Chalmers and by
the famous Commissioners of 1834, have rather lost than gained ground.
The doctrines of _Laissez-Faire_ and Individualism have suffered an
eclipse. The State interferes more and more with the power of the
individual to do as he pleases. Its motives are usually excellent, but
the result is to subject his life to a closer and more repressive
supervision. This means more obedience, less exercise of personal
discretion, less of that virtue which guides the self-determining will
to choose the good and reject the evil. ‘If every action,’ says John
Milton, ‘which is good or evil in man at ripe years were to be under
pittance, prescription and compulsion, what were virtue but a name—what
praise could be then due to well-doing, what gramercy to be sober, just
or continent?’
Nor is it only the State (whether through central or through local
authorities) that threatens individual freedom. Masses of working men
surrender themselves to the control of the few chiefs of their trade
organization, who are hardly the less despotic in fact because they are
elected and because they are nominally subject to a control which those
who have elected them cannot, from the nature of the case, effectively
exert[3]. Thus there is, instead of more independence, always more and
more obedience.
-----
Footnote 3:
This pessimist omits to notice that interference by the State or by
such quasi-despotic combinations of workmen may have been deemed the
only means of escaping from submission to organizations of capitalists
capable of exercising a tyranny through the forms of the law. He would
however reply that this fact did not tell against his thesis that, one
way or another, people are not becoming more fully masters of their
own lives and fates.
-----
To one who believes the principles of Free Trade and Self-Help to be
irrefragably true this means that the bulk of the people are not, as was
formerly expected, thinking for themselves, perhaps are not capable of
thinking for themselves, while those persons who are capable fear to
contend for doctrines which happen to be unpopular because opposed to
ignorant or superficial views of what is the interest of a nation or of
the most numerous class in the nation.
In the enlightenment of the people, which was to increase their
independence of spirit and their zeal for good government, the chief
part was to be played by the public press. Its influence has increased
beyond the most sanguine anticipations of the last generation of
reformers whether in Great Britain or in Continental Europe. It employs
an enormous amount of literary talent. Nothing escapes its notice. But
in some countries it has become a powerful agent for black-mailing; in
others it is largely the tool of financial speculators; in others,
again, it degrades politics by vulgarizing them, or seeks to increase
its circulation by stimulating the passion of the moment. Pecuniary
considerations cannot but affect it, because a newspaper is a commercial
concern, whose primary aim is to make a profit. Almost everywhere it
tends to embitter racial animosities and make more difficult the
preservation of international peace. When it tells each man that the
views it expresses are those of everybody else, except a few
contemptible opponents, it increases the tendency of each man to fall in
with the views of the mass, and confirms that habit of passive
acquiescence which the progress of enlightenment was once expected to
dispel.
The growth in population of the great industrial nations, such as
Germany, England, and the United States, may tend to dwarf the sense in
each man of his own significance to the whole body politic, and dispose
him to make less strenuous efforts than he would have put forth had he
thought his own exertions more likely to tell upon the community. The
vaster the people the more trivial must the individual appear to
himself, and the more readily will he fall in with what the majority
think or determine.
The rise of wages among the poorer classes and the bettering of material
conditions in all classes were expected to give the bulk of the people
more leisure, and it was assumed that this would induce them to bestow
more attention upon public affairs and so stimulate them in the
discharge of civic duties. Wages have risen everywhere, notably in
England and the United States, and material conditions have improved.
But new interests have therewith been awakened, and pleasures formerly
unattainable have been brought within the reach of every class except
the very poorest. Whatever other benefits this change brings, it has not
tended to make civic duty more prominent in the mind of the average man.
With some, material enjoyments, with others physical exercise, or what
is called sport (including the gambling that accompanies many kinds of
sport), with others the more refined pleasures of art or literature,
have come in to occupy the greatest part of such time and thought as can
be spared from daily work; and public affairs receive no more, perhaps
even less, of their attention than was formerly given.
May it not even be that material comfort and the surrender of one’s self
to enjoyment, whether directed towards the coarser or towards the
worthier pleasures, tend in softening the character, to relax its
tension, or at least to indispose it to rough work? To a fine taste
things in which taste cannot be indulged become distasteful. Thus high
civilization may end by increasing the sum of human indolence, at least
so far as politics are concerned, and indolence is, after all, the prime
source of Obedience. Some things no doubt men will continue to value and
(if need be) to defend, because they will have come to deem them
essential. Freedom of Thought and Speech is probably one of these
things, though the multitude occasionally shows how intolerant it can be
when excited. Civil Equality is another; the respect for private civil
rights, with a tolerably fair administration of justice for enforcing
those rights, is a third. These have rooted themselves in Germany and
England, for instance, and (with some few local exceptions) in the
United States, as necessaries to existence. But can the same thing be
said of political freedom, that is, of the right to control, by
constitutional machinery, the government of the State? Is it not
possible that the disposition to acquiesce and submit without the
application of compulsive force may be as strong under these new
conditions as it ever was before? possible that an educated and
intelligent people might, if material comfort and scope for intellectual
development were secured, grow weary of political contention, and submit
to the despotism, perhaps of a regular monarch, perhaps of a succession
of adventurers, which, tempered in some degree by public opinion, should
secure peace, order and commercial prosperity? The thing has happened
before. For five centuries the people who had been the most politically
active and who remained the most intelligent and most civilized in the
world made no effort to recover the political freedom they had lost,
having indeed, within a generation or two, ceased even to think of it.
So far our pessimist. He has obviously omitted, not only some facts
which make against the gloom of his picture, but also other facts
incidental to the phenomena on which he dwells, which qualify their
import or indicate that they may be merely transient. The most serious
part of the case which he endeavours to make against the old theory that
democratic government fosters the attachment to freedom, stimulates
civic zeal, and intensifies the independent spirit of the citizen, is
the suggestion that the vast size of modern nations, and the
insignificance of the individual man as compared to the multitude around
him, tend to dwarf his personal sense of responsibility and to depress
his hopes of withstanding whatever sentiment or opinion may be for the
time predominant. The rule of the majority, if it induces the belief
that the majority must be right, or at any rate that the majority is
irresistible[4], brings back the old dangers of submission. So the
familiar tendency to follow and obey, rather than to think and act for
one’s self, may be even stronger in a democracy than it was under the
monarchies of earlier days.
-----
Footnote 4:
Some remarks upon this feature of the United States may be found in
the author’s _American Commonwealth_, vol. ii. chap. lxxxv, ‘The
Fatalism of the Multitude.’
If, now that both sides have been heard, we are to attempt to answer the
question propounded some pages back, our answer must be that despite the
changes which have passed upon the modern world, the tendencies of human
nature which make for obedience have not become, and are not likely to
become, less powerful than they were. That they should disappear is not
to be desired, for they are useful tendencies, without which society
would not hold together. But they have not been reduced even so far as
the reasonable friends of progress might wish. In the sphere of religion
the compulsion once exercised, not merely by force, but also by public
opinion, has doubtless in most countries declined. There is also a
larger and freer play of thought and taste in all matters not
appertaining to collective action, that is to say, in matters involving
no collision of wills. But where this collision arises, as in the
spheres of politics and industry, the disposition of the average man to
defer and fall into line, the tendency of the stronger will to prevail
because it is the stronger, are as great as ever they were before.
Physical force plays a smaller part than it did in the ruder ages. But
Indolence, Deference, and Sympathy, rather than Reason and the pride of
personal independence, have filled the void which the less frequent
appeal to physical force has left.
So far as the question touches England, it may be that the friends of
progress and freedom of the last generation, the generation of Mazzini
and Garrison and Cobden and Gladstone, assumed too hastily that the
reforming ardour and other civic virtues which had been evoked by the
long battle of Englishmen against monarchy and oligarchy and class
legislation would remain unabated, after the battle had been won, in
days which see popular self-government an ordinary part of daily life.
When the grosser abuses in administration have been removed, when
everybody’s rights have been recognized, when new questions, far more
intricate and difficult, but less exciting, have arisen, when it is not
destruction—a thing everybody can clamour for—but constructive
legislation that is needed, public interest may flag and politics cease
to stir emotion as they formerly did. Just as in Italy the struggle for
national unity and freedom called to the front in the first half of the
nineteenth century a brilliant and lofty group of men, who have left few
successors, so it may be that the normal attitude of a people towards
its public life, and the normal attraction which public life has for
fine characters and high talents, will fall short of that which has
marked the periods of conflict over great principles. The standard will
not therefore, even should it now be sinking, rest at a point lower than
that at which average humanity has stood through past ages, though it
will be lower than that to which exceptional needs, rousing strong
emotions and inspiring golden hopes, had uplifted men during the days of
conflict.
There is, however, a further reply to be made to our pessimist before we
part from him. Even supposing that the ideals which democratic theory
sets up have not advanced towards realization, that the love of freedom
and justice has declined, and that the tendency to indifference, to
acquiescence in a dominant opinion, or to unthinking adherence to some
organization, is stronger than was expected some forty years ago, these
may be only transitory phenomena. In a striking passage of his
_Constitutional History of England_ (vol. ii. chap. 17), Bishop Stubbs
comments on the moral and political decline of the men of the fourteenth
century from the level of the thirteenth, but observes that unseen
causes were already at work which after no long interval restored the
tone and spirit of England. It has often been so in history, though no
generation can foretell how long a period of intellectual or moral
depression will endure.
NOTE TO THE ABOVE ESSAY
ON THE APPLICATION OF THE THEORY OF OBEDIENCE TO THE FUNDAMENTAL
DEFINITIONS OF JURISPRUDENCE.
The school of jurisprudence which follows Bentham defines a Law as a
Command of the State, represents every law as resting solely upon the
physical force of the State, through the threat of punishment to those
who transgress the law, and finds in the fear of punishment the sole
motive of the obedience rendered by the citizens.
There are three objections to this doctrine and definition. The first is
that if it is meant, as the generality of language used by its
propounders implies, to apply to all political communities, it is untrue
as matter of history, because it suggests a false view of the origin of
law, and is inapplicable to the laws of many communities. There have
been peoples among whom there was a law but no State capable of
enforcing obedience. In all communities there have been laws which were
in fact obeyed, but which were not deemed by the people to have emanated
from the State. The great bulk of the rules which determine the
relations of individuals or groups to one another have in most
countries, until comparatively recent times, rested upon Custom—that is
to say, upon long-settled practice which everybody understands and in
which everybody acquiesces. In such countries customs were or are laws,
and do not need to be formally enounced in order to secure their
observance by the people. Custom is simply the result of the disposition
to do again what has been done before. What Habit is to the individual,
Custom is to the community.