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Title: The World's Greatest Books--Volume 14--Philosophy and Economics
Author: Various
Editor: Arthur Mee
John Alexander Hammerton
Release Date: April 6, 2008 [EBook #25009]
Language: English
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[Illustration: Plato]
THE WORLD'S
GREATEST
BOOKS
JOINT EDITORS
ARTHUR MEE
Editor and Founder of the Book of Knowledge
J. A. HAMMERTON
Editor of Harmsworth's Universal Encyclopaedia
VOL. XIV
PHILOSOPHY
(CONTINUED)
ECONOMICS
WM. H. WISE & CO.
_Table of Contents_
PORTRAIT OF PLATO _Frontispiece_
PHILOSOPHY (_continued_)
HEGEL, G.W.F. PAGE
The Philosophy of History 1
HUME, DAVID
Essays, Moral and Political 13
KANT, IMMANUEL
The Critique of Pure Reason 24
The Critique of Practical Reason 34
LEWES, GEORGE HENRY
A History of Philosophy 45
LOCKE, JOHN
Concerning the Human Understanding 56
MONTAIGNE
Essays 64
PLATO
The Apology, or Defence of Socrates 75
The Republic 84
SCHOPENHAUER
The World as Will and Idea 99
SENECA, L. ANNÆUS
On Benefits 109
SPENCER, HERBERT
Education 120
Principles of Biology 133
Principles of Sociology 145
SPINOZA, BENEDICT DE
Ethics 160
ECONOMICS
BELLAMY, EDWARD
Looking Backward 173
BENTHAM, JEREMY
Principles of Morals and Legislation 186
BLOCH, JEAN
The Future of War 199
BURKE, EDMUND
Reflections on the Revolution in France 212
COMTE, AUGUSTE
A Course of Positive Philosophy 224
GEORGE, HENRY
Progress and Poverty 238
HOBBES, THOMAS
The Leviathan 249
MACHIAVELLI, NICCOLO
The Prince 261
MALTHUS, T.R.
On the Principle of Population 270
MARX, KARL
Capital: A Critical Analysis 282
MILL, JOHN STUART
Principles of Political Economy 294
MONTESQUIEU
The Spirit of Laws 306
MORE, SIR THOMAS
Utopia Nowhere Land 315
PAINE, THOMAS
The Rights of Man 324
ROUSSEAU, JEAN JACQUES
The Social Contract 337
SMITH, ADAM
Wealth of Nations 350
* * * * *
A Complete Index of THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS will be found at the end
of Volume XX.
_Acknowledgment_
Acknowledgment and thanks for permission to use the following selections
are herewith tendered to Houghton, Mifflin & Company, Boston, for
"Looking Backward," by Edward Bellamy; to Ginn & Company, Boston, for
the International School of Peace, for "The Future of War," by Jean
Bloch; and to Doubleday, Page & Company, New York, for "Progress and
Poverty," by Henry George.
_Philosophy_
HEGEL
The Philosophy of History
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born on August 27, 1770, at
Stuttgart, the capital of Würtemburg, in which state his father
occupied a humble position in government service. He was educated
at Tübingen for the ministry, and while there was, in private, a
diligent student of Kant and Rousseau. In 1805 he was Professor
Extraordinarius at the University of Jena, and in 1807 he gave the
world the first of his great works, the "Phenomenology." It was not
until 1816 that Hegel's growing fame as a writer secured for him a
professorship at Heidelberg, but, after two years, he exchanged it
for one at Berlin, where he remained until his death on November
14, 1831. On October 22, 1818, he began his famous lectures. "Our
business and vocation," he remarked to his listeners, "is to
cherish the philosophical development of the substantial foundation
which has renewed its youth and increased its strength." Although
the lectures on the "Philosophy of History" and on the "Philosophy
of Religion" (Vol. XIII) were delivered during this period, they
were not published until a year after his death, when his collected
works were issued.
_I.--In the East Began History_
Universal or world-history travels from east to west, for Europe is
absolutely the end of history, Asia the beginning. The history of the
world has an east in an absolute sense, for, although the earth forms a
sphere, history describes no orbit round it, but has, on the contrary, a
determinate orient--_viz._, Asia. Here rises the outward visible sun,
and in the west it sinks down; here also rises the sun of
self-consciousness. The history of the world is a discipline of the
uncontrolled natural will, bringing it into obedience to a universal
principle and conferring a subjective freedom. The East knew, and to
this day knows, freedom only for one; the Greek and Roman world knew
that some are free; the German world knows that all are free. The first
political form, therefore, that we see in history is despotism; the
second democracy and aristocracy; and the third monarchy.
The first phase--that with which we have to begin--is the East.
Unreflected consciousness--substantial, objective, spiritual
existence--forms the basis; to which the subjective will first sustains
a relation in the form of faith, confidence, obedience. In the political
life of the East we find realised national freedom, developing itself
without advancing to subjective freedom. It is the childhood of history.
In the gorgeous edifices of the Oriental empires we find all national
ordinances and arrangements, but in such a way that individuals remain
as mere accidents. These revolve round a centre, round the sovereign,
who as patriarch stands (not as despot, in the sense of the Roman
imperial constitution) at the head. For he has to enforce the moral and
substantial; he has to uphold those essential ordinances which are
already established; so that what among us belongs entirely to
subjective freedom, here proceeds from the entire and general body of
the state.
The glory of the Oriental conception is the one individual as the
substantial being to which all belongs, so that no other individual has
a separate existence, or mirrors himself in his subjective freedom. All
the riches of imagination and nature are appropriated to that dominant
existence in which subjective freedom is essentially merged; the latter
looks for its dignity not in itself but in the absolute object. All the
elements of a complete state--even subjectivity--may be found there, but
not yet harmonised with the grand substantial being. For outside the one
power--before which nothing can maintain an independent existence--there
is only revolting caprice, which, beyond the limits of the central
power, moves at will without purpose or result.
Accordingly we find the wild herds breaking out from the upland,
falling upon the countries in question and laying them waste, or
settling down in them and giving up their wild life; but in all cases
lost resultlessly in the central substance.
This phase of substantiality, since it has not taken up its antithesis
into itself and overcome it, directly divides itself into two elements.
On the one side we see duration, stability--empires belonging, as it
were, to mere Space (as distinguished from Time); unhistorical history,
as, for example, in China, the state based on the family relation. Yet
the states in question, without undergoing any change in themselves, or
in the principle of their existence, are constantly changing their
opinion towards each other. They are in ceaseless conflict, which brings
on rapid destruction. The opposing principle of individuality enters
into these conflicting relations; but it is itself as yet only
unconscious, merely natural universality--light which is not yet the
light of the personal soul. This history, too, is for the most part
really unhistorical, for it is only the repetition of the same majestic
ruin.
The new element which, in the shape of bravery, prowess, magnanimity,
occupies the place of the previous despotic pomp goes through the same
cycle of decline and subsidence. And this subsidence, therefore, is not
really such; for through all this restless change no advance has been
made. History passes at this point--and only outwardly, that is, without
connection with the previous phase--to Central Asia. To carry on the
comparison with the individual man, this would be the boyhood of
history, no longer manifesting the repose and trustfulness of the child,
but boisterous and turbulent.
_II.--Greece, Rome and Christianity_
The Greek world may, then, be compared to the season of adolescence, for
here we have individualities shaping themselves. This is the second
main principle in human history. Morality is, as in Asia, a principle,
but it is morality impressed on individuality, and consequently denoting
the free volition of individuals. Here, then, is the union of the moral
with the subjective will, or the kingdom of beautiful freedom, for the
idea is united with a plastic form. It is not yet regarded abstractly,
but intimately bound up with the real, as in a beautiful work of art;
the sensible bears the stamp and expression of the spiritual. The
kingdom is consequently true harmony; it is a world of the most charming
but perishable, or quickly passing, bloom; it is the natural,
unreflecting observance of what is becoming--not yet true morality. The
individual will of the subject adopts without reflection the conduct and
habit prescribed by justice and the laws. The individual is, therefore,
in unconscious unity with the idea--the social weal.
The third phase is the realm of abstract universality (in which the
social aim absorbs all individual aims); it is the Roman state, the
severe labours of the manhood of history. For true manhood acts neither
in accordance with the caprice of a despot nor in obedience to a
graceful caprice of its own. It works for a general aim, one in which
the individual perishes and realises his own private object only in that
general aim. The state begins to have an abstract existence and to
develop itself for a definite object, in accomplishing which its members
have indeed a share, but not a complete and concrete one (calling their
whole being into play). Free individuals are sacrificed to the severe
demands of the national ends, to which they must surrender themselves in
this service of abstract generalisation. The Roman state is not a
repetition of such a state of individuals as was the Athenian _polis_.
The geniality and joy of soul that existed there have given place to
harsh and rigorous toil. The interest of history is detached from
individuals.
But when, subsequently, in the historical development, individuality
gains the ascendant, and the breaking up of the community into its
component atoms can be restrained only by external compulsion, then the
subjective might of individual despotism comes forward to play its part.
The individual is led to seek consolation for the loss of his freedom in
exercising and developing his private rights. In the next place, the
pain inflicted by despotism begins to be felt, and spirit, driven back
into its utmost depths, leaves the godless world, seeks for a harmony in
itself, and begins now an inner life--a complete concrete subjectivity,
which at the same time possesses a substantiality that is not grounded
in mere external existence.
Within the soul, therefore, arises the spiritual solution of the
struggle, in the fact that the individual personality, instead of
following its own capricious choice, is purified and elevated into
universality--a subjectivity that of its own free will adopts principles
tending to the good of all, reaches, in fact, a divine personality. To
the worldly empire this spiritual one wears a predominant aspect of
opposition, as the empire of subjectivity that has attained to the
knowledge of itself--itself in its essential nature--the empire of
spirit in its full sense.
The Christian community found itself in the Roman world, but as it was
secluded from this state, and did not hold the emperor for its absolute
sovereign, it was the object of persecution. Then was manifested its
inward liberty in the steadfastness with which sufferings were borne. As
regards its relation to the truth, the fathers of the Church built up
the dogma, but a chief element was furnished by the previous development
of philosophy. Just as Philo found a deeper import shadowed forth in the
Mosaic record and idealised what he considered the bare shell of the
narrative, so also did the Christians treat their records.
It was through the Christian religion that the absolute idea of God, in
if true conception, attained consciousness. Here man, too, finds
himself comprehended in his true nature, given in the specific
conception of "the Son." Man, finite when regarded for himself, is yet
at the same time the image of God and a fountain of infinity in himself.
Consequently he has his true home in a super-sensuous world--an infinite
subjectivity, gained only by a rupture with mere natural existence and
volition. This is religious self-consciousness.
The first abstract principles are won by the instrumentality of the
Christian religion for the secular state. First, under Christianity
slavery is impossible; for man as man--in the abstract essence of his
nature--is contemplated in God; each unit of mankind is an object of the
grace of God and of the divine purpose. Utterly excluding all
speciality, therefore, man, in and for himself--in his simple quality of
man--has infinite value; and this infinite value abolishes, _ipso
facto_, all particularity attaching to birth or country.
The other, the second principle, regards the subjectivity of man in its
bearing on chance. Humanity has this sphere of free spirituality in and
for itself, and everything else must proceed from it. The place
appropriated to the abode and presence of the Divine Spirit--the sphere
in question--is spiritual subjectivity, and is constituted the place in
which all contingency is amenable. It follows, thence, that what we
observe among the Greeks as a form of customary morality cannot maintain
its position in the Christian world. For that morality is spontaneous,
unreflected wont; while the Christian principle is independent
subjectivity--the soil on which grows the True.
Now, an unreflected morality cannot continue to hold its ground against
the principle of subjective freedom. Now the principle of absolute
freedom in God makes its appearance. Man no longer sustains the relation
of dependence, but of love--in the consciousness that he is a partaker
in the Divine existence.
_III.--The Germanic World_
The German world appears at this point of development--the fourth phase
of world history. The old age of nature is weakness; but this of spirit
is its perfect maturity and strength, in which it returns to unity with
itself, but in its fully developed character as spirit.
The Greeks and Romans had reached maturity within ere they directed
their energies outwards. The Germans, on the contrary, began with
self-diffusion, deluging the world, and breaking down in their course
the hollow political fabrics of the civilised nations. Only then did
their development begin, kindled by a foreign culture, a foreign
religion, polity, and legislation. The process of culture they underwent
consisted in taking up foreign elements into their own national life.
The German world took up the Roman culture and religion in their
completed form. The Christian religion which it adopted had received
from councils and fathers of the Church--who possessed the whole
culture, and in particular the philosophy of the Greek and Roman
world--a perfected dogmatic system. The Church, too, had a completely
developed hierarchy. To the native tongue of the Germans the Church
likewise opposed one perfectly developed--the Latin. In art and
philosophy a similar alien influence predominated. The same principle
holds good in regard to the form of the secular sovereignty. Gothic and
other chiefs gave themselves the name of Roman patricians. Thus,
superficially, the German world appears to be a continuation of the
Roman. But there dwelt in it an entirely new spirit--the free spirit
which reposes on itself.
The three periods of this world will have to be treated accordingly.
The first period begins with the appearance of the German nations in the
Roman Empire. The Christian world presents itself as Christendom--one
mass of which, the spiritual and the secular, form only different
aspects. This epoch extends to Charlemagne. In the second period the
Church develops for itself a theocracy and the state a feudal monarchy.
Charlemagne had formed an alliance with the Holy See against the
Lombards and the factions of the nobles in Rome. A union thus arose
between the spiritual and the secular power, and a kingdom of heaven on
earth promised to follow in the wake of this conciliation. But just at
this time, instead of a spiritual kingdom of heaven, the inwardness of
the Christian principle wears the appearance of being altogether
directed outwards, and leaving its proper sphere.
Christian freedom is perverted to its very opposite, both in a religious
and secular respect; on the one hand to the severest bondage, on the
other to the most immoral excess--a barbarous intensity of every
passion. The first half of the sixteenth century marks the beginning of
the third period. Secularity appears now as gaining a consciousness of
its intrinsic worth; it becomes aware that it possesses a value of its
own in the morality, rectitude, probity, and activity of man. The
consciousness of independent validity is aroused through the restoration
of Christian freedom.
The Christian principle has now passed through the terrible discipline
of culture, and it first attains truth and reality through the
Reformation. This third period extends to our own times. The principle
of free spirit is here made the banner of the world, and from this
principle are evolved the universal axioms of reason. Formal
thought--the understanding--had been already developed, but thought
received its true material first with the Reformation. From that Epoch
thought began to gain a culture properly its' own; principles were
derived from it which were to be the norm for the constitution of the
state. Political life was now to be consciously regulated by reason.
Customary morality, traditional usage, lost their validity; the various
claims insisted upon must prove their legitimacy as based on rational
principles.
These epochs may be compared with the earlier empires. In the German
æon, as the realm of totality, we see the earlier epochs resumed.
Charlemagne's time may be compared with the Persian Empire; it is the
period of substantive unity, this unity having its foundation in the
inner man, the heart, and both in the spiritual and the secular still
abiding in its simplicity. To the Greek world and its merely ideal unity
the time preceding Charles V. answers; where real unity no longer
exists, because all phases of particularity have become fixed in
privileges and peculiar rights As, in the interior of the realms
themselves, the different estates of the realm, with their several
claims, are isolated, so do the various states in their foreign aspects
occupy a merely external relation one to another. A diplomatic policy
arises which, in the interest of a European balance of power, unites
them with and against each other. It is the time in which the world
becomes clear and manifest to all (discovery of America).
So, too, does consciousness gain clearness in the super-sensuous world,
and respecting it. Substantial objective religion brings itself to
sensuous clearness in the sensuous element (Christian art), and also
becomes clear to itself in the element of inmost truth. We may compare
this time with that of Pericles. The introversion of spirit begins
(Socrates--Luther), though Pericles is wanting in this epoch. Charles V.
possesses enormous possibilities in point of outward appliances, and
appears absolute in his power; but the inner spirit of Pericles, and
therefore the absolute means of establishing a free sovereignty, is not
in him. This is the epoch when spirit becomes clear to itself in
separations occurring in the realm of reality; now the distinct elements
of the German world manifest their essential nature.
The third epoch may be compared to the Roman world. The authority of
national aim is acknowledged, and privileges melt away before the common
object of the state.
_IV.--Modern Times_
Spirit at last perceives that nature--the world--must be an embodiment
of reason. An interest in the contemplation and comprehension of the
present world became universal. Thus experimental science became the
science of the world; for experimental science involves, on the one
hand, the observation of phenomena; on the other hand, also the
discovery of the law, the essential being, the hidden force, that causes
those phenomena--thus reducing the data supplied by observation to their
simple principles. Intellectual consciousness was first extricated by
Descartes from that sophistry of thought which unsettles everything. As
it was the purely German nations among whom the principle of spirit
first manifested itself, so it was by the Romanic nations that the
abstract idea was first comprehended.
Experimental science, therefore, very soon made its way among them, in
common with the Protestant English, but especially among the Italians.
It seemed to men as if God had but just created the moon and stars,
plants and animals; as if the laws of the universe were now established
for the first time; for only then did they feel a real interest in the
universe when they recognised their own reason in the reason that
pervades it. The human eye became clear, perception quick, thought
active and interpretative. The discovery of the laws of nature enabled
men to contend against the monstrous superstition of the time, as also
against all notions of mighty alien powers which magic alone could
conquer.
The independent authority of subjectivity was maintained against belief
founded on authority, and the laws of nature were recognised as the only
bond connecting phenomena with phenomena. Man is at home in nature, and
that alone passes for truth in which he finds himself at home; he is
free through the acquaintance he has gained with nature.
Nor was thought less vigorously directed to the spiritual side. Right
and social morality came to be looked upon as having their foundation in
the actual present will of man, whereas formerly it was referred only to
the command of God enjoined _ab extra_, written in the Old or New
Testament, or appearing in the form of particular right, as opposed to
that based on general principles, in old parchments as _privilegia_, or
in international compacts. Luther had secured to mankind spiritual
freedom, and the reconciliation of the objective and the subjective in
the concrete. He had triumphantly established the position that man's
eternal destiny must be wrought out in himself. But the import of that
which is to take place in him--what truth is to become vital to him--was
taken for granted by Luther, as something already given, something
revealed by religion. Now the principle was set up that this import must
be capable of actual investigation, and that to this basis of inward
demonstration every dogma must be referred.
This is the point which consciousness has attained, and these are the
principal phases of that form in which the principle of freedom has
realised itself, for the history of the world is nothing but the
development of the idea of freedom. But objective freedom--the laws of
"real" freedom--demands the subjugation of the mere contingent will, for
this is in its nature formal. If the objective is in itself rational,
human insight and conviction must correspond with the reason which it
embodies, and then we have the other essential element--subjective
freedom--also realised. We have confined ourselves to the consideration
of that progress of the idea which has led to this consummation.
Philosophy concerns itself only with the glory of the idea mirroring
itself in the history of the world, and with the development which the
idea has passed through in realising itself--_i.e._, the idea of
freedom, whose reality is the consciousness of freedom and nothing short
of it.
That the history of the world, with all the changing scenes which its
annals present, is this true process of development and the realisation
of spirit--this is the true _Theodikaia_, the justification of God in
history. The spirit of man may be reconciled with the course of
universal history only by perception of this truth--that all which has
happened, all that happens daily, is not only not without God, but is
essentially His work.
DAVID HUME
Essays, Moral and Political
David Hume, the Scottish philosopher and historian, was born at
Edinburgh, April 26, 1711, and was educated at the college there.
He tried law and business without liking either, and at the age of
23 went to France, where he wandered about for a while occupied
with dreams of philosophy. In 1739 he published the first part of
his "Treatise on Human Nature." The book set an army of
philosophers at work trying either to refute what he had said or
continue lines that he had suggested, and out of them were created
both the Scotch and German schools of metaphysicians. Hume's
"Essays, Moral and Political," appeared in 1741-42, and followed
closely upon what he described as the "dead-born" "Treatise on
Human Nature," the success of the former going a long way towards
compensating him for the failure of the latter. In the
advertisement to a posthumous edition Hume complains that
controversialists had confined their attacks to the crude, earlier
treatise, and expressed the desire that for the future the "Essays"
might alone be regarded as containing his philosophical sentiments
and principles. In the "Essays" Hume brings to bear the results of
his criticism upon the problems of current speculative discussion.
The argument against miracles is still often discussed; and the
work is well worthy of the author whom many regard as the greatest
thinker of his time. In 1751 he published his "Inquiry Into the
Principles of Morals," which is one of the clearest expositions of
the leading principles of what is termed the utilitarian system.
Hume died on August 25, 1776.
_I.--Doubts Concerning the Understanding_
All the objects of human reason or inquiry may naturally be divided into
two kinds--to wit, _relations of ideas_ and _matters of fact_. Of the
first kind are the sciences of geometry, algebra, and arithmetic, and,
in short, every affirmation which is either intuitively or
demonstratively certain. "That the square of the hypotenuse is equal to
the squares of the two sides" is a proposition which expresses a
relation between these figures. "That three times five is equal to the
half of thirty" expresses a relation between these numbers.
Propositions of this kind are discoverable by the mere operation of
thought, without dependence on what is anywhere existent in the
universe. Though there never were a circle or triangle in nature, the
truths demonstrated by Euclid would for ever retain their certainty and
evidence.
Matters of fact, which are the second objects of human reason, are not
ascertained in the same manner; nor is our evidence of their truth,
however great, of a like nature with the foregoing. The contrary of
every matter of fact is still possible, because it can never imply a
contradiction, and is conceived by the mind with the same facility and
distinctness as if ever so conformable to reality. "That the sun will
not rise to-morrow" is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies
no more contradiction, than the affirmative that "it will rise." We
should in vain, therefore, attempt to demonstrate its falsehood. Were it
demonstratively false, it would imply a contradiction, and could never
be distinctly conceived by the mind.
It may, therefore, be a subject worthy of curiosity to inquire what is
the nature of that evidence which assures us of any real existence of
matters of fact beyond the present testimony of our senses, or the
records of our memory. All reasonings concerning matter of fact seem to
be founded on the relation of _cause_ and _effect_. If we would satisfy
ourselves, therefore, concerning the nature of that evidence which
assures us of matters of fact, we must inquire how we arrive at the
knowledge of cause and effect.
I shall venture to affirm, as a general proposition which admits of no
exception, that the knowledge of this relation is not, in any instance,
attained by reasonings _a priori_, but arises entirely from experience.
To convince us that all the laws of nature, and all the operations of
bodies without exception, are known only by experience, the following
reflections may perhaps suffice. Were any object presented to us, and
were we required to pronounce concerning the effect which will result
from it, without consulting past observation, after what manner, I
beseech you, must the mind proceed in this operation? It must invent or
imagine some event, which it ascribes to the object as its effect; and
it is plain that this invention must be entirely arbitrary. The mind can
never possibly find the effect in the supposed cause by the most
accurate scrutiny and examination. For the effect is totally different
from the cause, and, consequently, can never be discovered in it.
A stone or piece of metal raised into the air and left without any
support immediately falls. But, to consider the matter _a priori_, is
there anything we discover in this situation which can beget the idea of
a downward rather than an upward, or any other motion, in the stone or
metal?
In a word, then, every effect is a distinct event from its cause. It
could not, therefore, be discovered in the cause, and the first
invention or conception of it, _a priori_, must be entirely arbitrary.
And, even after it is suggested, the conjunction of it with the cause
must appear equally arbitrary, since there are always many other effects
which to reason must seem fully as consistent and natural. In vain,
therefore, should we pretend to determine any single event, or infer any
cause or effect, without the assistance of observation and experience.
Hence, we may discover the reason why no philosopher who is rational and
modest has ever pretended to assign the ultimate cause of any natural
operation, or to show distinctly the action of that power which produces
any single effect in the universe.
I say, then, that even after we have experience of the operations of
cause and effect, our conclusions from that experience are _not_ founded
on reasoning, or any process of the understanding.
The bread which I formerly ate nourished me; that is, a body of such
sensible qualities was at that time endued with such secret powers; but
does it follow that other bread must also nourish me at another time,
and that like sensible qualities must always be attended with like
secret powers? The consequence seems nowise necessary. At least, it must
be acknowledged that there is here a consequence drawn by the mind, that
there is a certain step taken; a process of thought, and an inference
which wants to be explained.
These two propositions are far from being the same: "I have found that
such an object has always been attended with such an effect," and: "I
foresee that other objects, which are in appearance similar, will be
attended with similar effects." I shall allow, if you please, that the
one proposition may justly be inferred from the other; I know, in fact,
that it always is inferred. But you must confess that the inference is
not intuitive; neither is it demonstrative. Of what nature is it, then?
To say it is experimental is begging the question. For all inferences
from experience suppose, as their foundation, that the future will
resemble the past, and that similar powers will be conjoined with
similar sensible qualities.
If there be any suspicion that the course of nature may change, and that
the past may be no rule for the future, all experience becomes useless,
and can give rise to no inference or conclusion. It is impossible,
therefore, that any arguments from experience can prove this resemblance
of the past to the future, since all these arguments are founded on the
supposition of that resemblance. Let the course of things be allowed
hitherto ever so regular, that alone, without some new argument or
inference, proves not that for the future it will continue so. In vain
do you pretend to have learned the nature of bodies from your past
experience. Their secret nature, and consequently all their effects and
influence, may change without any change in their sensible qualities.
This happens sometimes, and with regard to some objects. Why may it not
happen always, and with regard to all objects? What logic, what process
of argument, secures you against this supposition? My practice, you say,
refutes my doubts. But you mistake the purport of my question. As an
agent, I am quite satisfied on the point; but as a philosopher, who has
some share of curiosity, I will not say scepticism, I want to learn the
foundation of this inference.
All inferences from experience are effects of custom, not of reasoning.
We have already observed that nature has established connections among
particular ideas, and that no sooner one idea occurs to our thoughts
than it introduces its correlative, and carries our attention towards it
by a gentle and insensible movement. These principles of connection or
association we have reduced to three--namely, _resemblance_,
_contiguity_, and _causation_, which are the only bonds that unite our
thoughts together and beget that regular train of reflection or
discourse which, in a greater or less degree, takes place among mankind.
Now, here arises a question on which the solution of the present
difficulty will depend. Does it happen in all these relations that when
one of the objects is presented to the senses or memory the mind is not
only carried to the conception of the correlative, but reaches a
steadier and stronger conception of it than otherwise it would have been
able to attain? This seems to be the case with that belief which arises
from the relation of cause and effect. And I shall add that it is
conformable to the ordinary wisdom of nature to secure so necessary an
act of the mind by some instinct or mechanical tendency, which may be
infallible in its operations, may discover itself at the first
appearance of life and thought, and may be independent of all the
laboured deductions of the understanding.
_II.--On Miracles_
A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence. In such conclusions
as are founded on an infallible experience he expects the event with the
last degree of assurance, and regards his past experience as a full
_proof_ of the future existence of that event.
In other cases he proceeds with more caution. He weighs the opposite
experiments. He considers which side is supported by the greatest number
of experiments; to that side he inclines with doubt and hesitation, and
when at last he fixes his judgment, the evidence exceeds not what we
properly call _probability_. All probability, then, supposes an
opposition of experiments and observations, where the one side is found
to overbalance the other, and to produce a degree of evidence
proportioned to the superiority.
When the fact attested is such a one as has seldom fallen under our
observation, here is a contest of two possible experiences, of which the
one destroys the other as far as its force goes, and the superior can
only operate on the mind by the force which remains. The very same
principle of experience which gives us a certain degree of assurance in
the testimony of witnesses gives us also, in this case, another degree
of assurance against the fact which they endeavour to establish, from
which consideration there necessarily arises a counterpoise, and mutual
destruction of belief and authority.
But in order to increase the probability against the testimony of
witnesses, let us suppose that the fact which they affirm, instead of
being only marvellous, is really miraculous; and suppose also that the
testimony, considered apart and in itself, amounts to an entire proof,
of which the strongest must prevail, but still with a diminution of its
force in proportion to that of its antagonist.
A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and
unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a
miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument
from experience can possibly be imagined. Why is it more than probable
that all men must die; that lead cannot of itself remain suspended in
the air; that fire consumes wood, and is extinguished by water; unless
it be that these events are found agreeable to the laws of nature, and
there is required a violation of these laws, or, in other words, a
miracle, to prevent them?
Nothing is esteemed a miracle if it ever happen in the common course of
nature. It is no miracle that a man seemingly in good health should die
on a sudden, because such a kind of death, though more unusual than any
other, has yet been frequently observed to happen. But it is a miracle
that a dead man should come to life, because that has never been
observed in any age or country. There must, therefore, be a uniform
experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not
merit that appellation. And as a uniform experience amounts to a proof,
there is here a direct and full _proof_, from the nature of the fact,
against the existence of any miracle; nor can such a proof be destroyed,
or the miracle rendered credible, but by an opposite proof which is
superior.
The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our
attention) "that no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle
unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more
miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish; and even in
that case there is a mutual destruction of arguments, and the superior
only gives us an assurance suitable to that degree of force which
remains after deducting the inferior."
There surely never was a greater number of miracles ascribed to one
person than those which were lately said to have been wrought in France
upon the tomb of Abbé Paris, the famous Jansenist, with whose sanctity
the people were so long deluded. The curing of the sick, giving hearing
to the deaf and sight to the blind, were everywhere talked of as the
usual effects of that holy sepulchre. But, what is more extraordinary,
many of the miracles were immediately proved upon the spot before judges
of unquestioned integrity, attested by witnesses of credit and
distinction, in a learned age, and in the most eminent theatre that is
now in the world.
Nor is this all; a relation of them was published and dispersed
everywhere; nor were the Jesuits--though a learned body, supported by
the civil magistrate and determined enemies to those opinions in whose
favour the miracles were said to have been wrought--ever able distinctly
to refute or detect them. Where shall we find such a number of
circumstances agreeing to the corroboration of one fact? And what have
we to oppose to such a cloud of witnesses but the absolute impossibility
or miraculous nature of the events which they relate? And this surely,
in the eyes of all reasonable people, will alone be regarded as a
sufficient refutation.
Suppose that all the historians who treat of England should agree that
on January 1, 1600, Queen Elizabeth died; that both before and after her
death she was seen by her physicians and the whole court, as is usual
with persons of her rank; that her successor was acknowledged and
proclaimed by the Parliament; and that, after being interred a month,
she again appeared, resumed the throne, and governed England for three
years; I must confess that I should be surprised at the concurrence of
so many odd circumstances, but should not have the least inclination to
believe so miraculous an event. I should not doubt of her pretended
death, and of those other public circumstances that followed it; I
should only assert it to have been pretended, and that it neither was,
nor possibly could be, real.
You would in vain object to me the difficulty and almost impossibility
of deceiving the world in an affair of such consequence; the wisdom and
solid judgment of that renowned queen; with the little or no advantage
which she could reap from so poor an artifice. All this might astonish
me; but I would still reply that the knavery and folly of men are such
common phenomena that I should rather believe the most extraordinary
events to arise from their concurrence than admit of so signal a
violation of the laws of nature.
Our most holy religion is founded on _faith_, not on reason; and it is a
sure method of exposing it to put it to such a trial as it is by no
means fitted to endure. To make this more evident, let us examine those
miracles related in the Pentateuch, which we shall examine as the
production of a mere human writer and historian. Here, then, we are
first to consider a book, presented to us by a barbarous and ignorant
people, written in an age when they were still more barbarous, and in
all probability long after the facts which it relates, corroborated by
no concurring testimony, and resembling those fabulous accounts which
every nation gives of its origin.
Upon reading this book we find it full of prodigies and miracles. It
gives an account of a state of the world and of human nature entirely
different from the present; of our fall from that state; of the age of
man extended to near a thousand years; of the destruction of the world
by a deluge; of the arbitrary choice of one people as the favourites of
Heaven, and that people the countrymen of the author; of their
deliverance from bondage by prodigies the most astonishing imaginable. I
desire anyone to lay his hand upon his heart, and, after a serious
consideration, declare whether he thinks that the falsehood of such a
book, supported by such a testimony, would be more extraordinary and
miraculous than the miracles it relates, which is, however, necessary to
make it be received according to the measures of probability above
established.
_III.--Of a Particular Providence and of a Future State_
I was lately engaged in conversation with a friend who loves sceptical
paradoxes. To my expression of the opinion that a wise magistrate can
justly be jealous of certain tenets of philosophy such as those of
Epicurus, which, denying a divine existence, and consequently a
Providence and a future state, seem to loosen the ties of morality, he
replied as follows.
"If Epicurus had been accused before the people he could easily have
defended his cause and proved his principles of philosophy to be as
salutary as those of his adversaries. And, if you please, I shall
suppose myself Epicurus for a moment, and make you stand for the
Athenian people."
EPICURUS: I come hither, O ye Athenians, to justify in your assembly
what I maintained in my school, and I find myself impeached by furious
antagonists instead of reasoning with calm and dispassionate inquirers.
By my accusers it is acknowledged that the chief or sole argument for a
divine existence (which I never questioned) is derived from the order of
nature; where there appear such marks of intelligence and design that
you think it extravagant to assign for its cause either chance or the
blind and unguided force of matter. You allow that this is an argument
drawn from effects to causes. From the order of the work you infer that
there must have been project and forethought in the workman. If you
cannot make out this point, you allow that your conclusion fails, and
you pretend not to establish the conclusion in a greater latitude than
the phenomena of nature will justify. These are your concessions. I
desire you to mark the consequences.
When we infer any particular cause from an effect we must proportion the
one to the other, and can never be allowed to ascribe to the cause any
qualities but what are sufficient to produce the effect. A body of ten
ounces raised in a scale may serve as a proof that the counterbalancing
weight exceeds ten ounces, but never that it exceeds a hundred.
The same rule holds whether the cause assigned be brute, unconscious
matter or a rational, intelligent being. If the cause be known only by
the effect, we never ought to ascribe to it any qualities beyond what
are precisely requisite to produce the effect. Nor can we return back
from the cause and infer other effects from it beyond those by which
alone it is known to us.
Allowing, therefore, the gods to be the authors of the existence, or
order, of the universe, it follows that they possess that precise degree
of power, intelligence, and benevolence which appears in their
workmanship; but we can never be allowed to mount up from the universe,
the effect, to Jupiter, the cause, and then descend downwards to infer
any new effect from that cause. The knowledge of the cause being derived
solely from the effect, they must be exactly adjusted to each other; and
the one can never refer to anything farther.
I deny a Providence, you say, and Supreme Governor of the world, who
guides the course of events and punishes the vicious with infamy and
disappointment, and rewards the virtuous with honour and success in all
their undertakings. But surely I deny not the course of events itself,
which lies open to everyone's inquiry and examination. I acknowledge
that, in the present order of things, virtue is attended with more peace
of mind than vice, and meets with a more favourable reception from the
world. I am sensible that, according to the past experience of mankind,
friendship is the chief joy of human life, and moderation the only
source of tranquillity and happiness. I never balance between the
virtuous and the vicious life, but am sensible that, to a well-disposed
mind, every advantage is on the side of the former. And what can you say
more, allowing all your suppositions and reasonings?
IMMANUEL KANT
The Critique of Pure Reason
Immanuel Kant, the most celebrated of German metaphysicians, was
born at Königsberg on April 22, 1724, and died on February 12,
1804. Taking his degree at Königsberg, he speedily entered on a
professional career, which he quietly and strenuously pursued for
over thirty years. Though his lectures were limited to the topics
with which he was concerned as professor of logic and philosophy,
his versatility is evidenced by the fact that he was offered the
chair of poetry, which he declined. His lasting reputation began
with the publication, in 1781, of his wonderful "Critique of Pure
Reason" ("Kritik der reinen Vernunft"). Within twelve years of its
appearance it was expounded in all the leading universities, and
even penetrated into the schools of the Church of Rome. Kant was
the first European thinker who definitely grasped the conception of
a critical philosophy, though he was doubtless aided by the
tendency of Locke's psychology. He did much to counteract the
sceptical influence of Hume. The main object of his "Critique of
Pure Reason" is to separate the necessary and universal in the
realm of knowledge from the merely experimental or empirical. This
little version of Kant's celebrated work has been prepared from the
German text.
_I.--Knowledge Transcendental: Æsthetic_
Experience is something of which we are conscious. It is the first
result of our comprehension, but it is not the limit of our
understanding, since it stimulates our faculty of reason, but does not
satisfy its desire for knowledge. While all our knowledge may begin with
sensible impressions or experience, there is an element in it which does
not rise from this source, but transcends it. That knowledge is
transcendental which is occupied not so much with mere outward objects
as with our manner of knowing those objects, that is to say, with our _a
priori_ concepts of them. All our knowledge is either _a priori_ or _a
posteriori_. That is _a posteriori_ knowledge which is derived from
sensible experience as including sensible impressions or states; while
_a priori_ knowledge is that which is not thus gained, but consists of
whatever is universal or necessary. A complete "Transcendental
Philosophy" would be a systematic exposition of all that is _a priori_
in human knowledge, or of "all the principles of pure reason." But a
"Critique of Pure Reason" cannot include all this. It can do little more
than deal with the synthetic element or quality in _a priori_ knowledge,
as distinguished from the analytic element.
We perceive objects through our sensibility which furnishes us, as our
faculty of receptivity, with those intuitions that become translated
into thought by means of the understanding. This is the origin of our
conceptions, or ideas. I denominate as _matter_ that which in a
phenomenon corresponds to sensation; while I call _form_ that quality of
matter which presents it in a perceived order. Only matter is presented
to our minds _a posteriori_; as to form, this must inevitably exist in
the mind _a priori_, and therefore it can be considered apart from all
sensation.
Pure representation, entirely apart from sensation, in a transcendental
signification, forms the pure intuition of the mind, existing in it as a
mere form of sensibility. Transcendental æsthetic is the science of all
the principles of sensibility. But transcendental logic is the science
of the principles of pure thought. In studying the former we shall find
that there are two pure forms of sensuous intuition, namely, space and
time.
Are space and time actual entities? Or are they only relations of
things? Space is simply the form of all the phenomena of external
senses; that is, it is the subjective condition of the sensibility under
which alone external intuition is possible. Thus, the form of all
phenomena may exist _a priori_ in the soul as a pure intuition previous
to all experience. So we can only speak of space and of extended
objects from the standpoint of human reason. But when we have abstracted
all the forms perceived by our sensibility, there remains a pure
intuition which we call space. Therefore our discussion teaches us the
objective validity of space with regard to all that can appear before us
externally as an object; but equally the subjective ideality of space,
with regard to things if they are considered in themselves by our
reason, that is, without taking into account the nature of our
sensibility.
Time is not empirically conceived of; that is, it is not experimentally
apprehended. Time is a necessary representation on which all intuitions
are dependent, and the representation of time to the mind is thus given
_a priori._ In it alone can phenomena be apprehended. These may vanish,
but time cannot be put aside.
Time is not something existing by itself independently, but is the
formal condition _a priori_ of all phenomena. If we deduct our own
peculiar sensibility, then the idea of time disappears indeed, because
it is not inherent in any object, but only in the subject which
perceives that object. Space and time are essential _a priori_ ideas,
and they are the necessary conditions of all particular perceptions.
From the latter and their objects we can, in imagination, without
exception, abstract; from the former we cannot.
Space and time are therefore to be regarded as the necessary _a priori_
pre-conditions of the possibility and reality of all phenomena. It is
clear that transcendental æsthetic can obtain only these two elements,
space and time, because all other concepts belong to the senses and
pre-suppose experience, and so imply something empirical. For example,
the concept of motion pre-supposes something moving, but in space
regarded alone there is nothing that moves; therefore, whatever moves
must be recognised by experience, and is a purely empirical datum.
_II.--Transcendental Logic_
Our knowledge is derived from two fundamental sources of the
consciousness. The first is the faculty of receptivity of impressions;
the second, the faculty of cognition of an object by means of these
impressions or representations, this second power being sometimes styled
spontaneity of concepts. By the first, an object is given to us; by the
second it is thought of in the mind. Thus intuition and concepts
constitute the elements of our entire knowledge, for neither intuition
without concepts, nor concepts without intuition, can yield any
knowledge whatever. Hence arise two branches of science, æsthetic and
logic, the former being the science of the rules of sensibility; the
latter, the science of the rules of the understanding.
Logic can be treated in two directions: either as logic of the general
use of the understanding, or of some particular use of it. The former
includes the rules of thought, without which there can be no use of the
understanding; but it has no regard to the objects to which the
understanding is applied. This is elementary logic. But logic of the
understanding in some particular use includes rules of correct thought
in relation to special classes of objects; and this latter logic is
generally taught in schools as preliminary to the study of sciences.
Thus, general logic takes no account of any of the contents of
knowledge, but is limited simply to the consideration of the forms of
thought. But we are constrained by anticipation to form an idea of a
logical science which has to deal not only with pure thought, but also
has to determine the origin, validity, and extent of the knowledge to
which intuitions relate, and this science might be styled transcendental
logic.
In transcendental æsthetic we isolated the faculty of sensibility. So in
transcendental logic we isolate the understanding, concentrating our
consideration on that element of thought which has its source simply in
the understanding. But transcendental logic must be divided into
transcendental analytic and transcendental dialectic. The former is a
logic of truth, and is intended to furnish a canon of criticism. When
logic is used to judge not analytically, but to judge synthetically of
objects in general, it is called transcendental dialectic, which serves
as a protection against sophistical fallacy.
ANALYTIC OF PURE CONCEPTS
The understanding may be defined as the faculty of judging. The function
of thought in a judgment can be brought under four heads, each with
three subdivisions.
1. Quantity of judgments: Universal, particular, singular.
2. Quality: Affirmative, negative, infinite.
3. Relation: Categorical, hypothetical, disjunctive.
4. Modality: Problematical, assertory, apodictic [above contradiction].
If we examine each of these forms of judgment we discover that in every
one is involved some peculiar idea which is its essential
characteristic. Thus, a singular judgment, in which the subject of
discourse is a single object, involves obviously the special idea of
oneness, or unity. A particular judgment, relating to several objects,
implies the idea of plurality, and discriminates between the several
objects. Now, the whole list of these ideas will constitute the complete
classification of the fundamental conceptions of the understanding,
regarded as the faculty which judges, and these may be called
categories.
1. Of Quantity: Unity, plurality, totality.
2. Of Quality: Reality, negation, limitation.
3. Of Relation: Substance and accident, cause and effect, action and
reaction.
4. Of Modality: Possibility--impossibility, existence--non-existence,
necessity--contingence.
These, then, are the fundamental, primary, or native conceptions of the
understanding, which flow from, or constitute the mechanism of, its
nature; are inseparable from its activity; and are hence, for human
thought, universal and necessary, or _a priori_. These categories are
"pure" conceptions of the understanding, inasmuch as they are
independent of all that is contingent in sense.
TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC
A distinction is usually made between what is immediately known and what
is only inferred. It is immediately known that in a figure bounded by
three straight lines there are three angles, but that these angles
together are equal to two right angles is only inferred. In every
syllogism is first a fundamental proposition; secondly, another deduced
from it; and, thirdly, the consequence.
In the use of pure reason its concepts, or transcendental ideas, aim at
unity of all conditions of thought. So all transcendental ideas may be
arranged in three classes; the first containing the unity of the
thinking subject; the second, the unity of the conditions of phenomena
observed; the third, the unity of the objective conditions of thought.
This classification becomes clear if we note that the thinking subject
is the object-matter of psychology; while the system of all phenomena
(the world) is the object-matter of cosmology; and the Being of all
Beings (God) is the object-matter of theology.
Hence we perceive that pure reason supplies three transcendental ideas,
namely, the idea of a transcendental science of the soul (_psychologia
rationalis_); of a transcendental science of the world (_cosmologia
rationalis_); and, lastly, of a transcendental science of God
(_theologia transcendentalis_). It is the glory of transcendental
idealism that by it the mind ascends in the series of conditions till
it reaches the unconditioned, that is, the principles. We thus progress
from our knowledge of self to a knowledge of the world, and through it
to a knowledge of the Supreme Being.
_III.--The Antinomies of Pure Reason_
Transcendental reason attempts to reconcile conflicting assertions.
There are four of these antinomies, or conflicts.
FIRST ANTINOMY. Thesis. The world has a beginning in time, and is also
limited in regard to space. Proof. Were the world without a
time-beginning we should have to ascribe a present limit to that which
can have no limit, which is absurd. Again, were the world not limited in
regard to space, it must be conceived as an infinite whole, yet it is
impossible thus to conceive it.
Antithesis. The world has neither beginning in time, nor limit in space,
but in both regards is infinite. Proof. The world must have existed from
eternity, or it could never exist at all. If we imagine it had a
beginning, we must imagine an anterior time when nothing was. But in
such time the origin of anything is impossible. At no moment could any
cause for such a beginning exist.
SECOND ANTINOMY. Thesis. Every composite substance in the world is
composed of simple parts. This thesis seems scarcely to require proof.
No one can deny that a composite substance consists of parts, and that
these parts, if themselves composite, must consist of others less
composite, till at length we come, by compulsion of thought, to the
conception of the absolutely simple as that wherein the substantial
consists.
Antithesis. No composite thing in the world consists of simple parts,
and nothing simple exists anywhere in the world. Proof. Each simple part
implied in the thesis must be in space. But this condition is a
positive disproof of their possibility. A simple substance would have
to occupy a simple portion of space; but space has no simple parts. The
supposition of such a part is the supposition, not of space, but of the
negation of space. A simple substance, in existing and occupying any
portion of space, must contain a real multiplicity of parts external to
each other, _i.e._, it must contradict its own nature, which is absurd.
THIRD ANTINOMY. Thesis. The causality of natural law is insufficient for
the explanation of all the phenomena of the universe. For this end
another kind of causality must be assumed, whose attribute is freedom.
Proof. All so-called natural causes are effects of preceding causes,
forming a regressive series of indefinite extent, with no first
beginning. So we never arrive at an adequate cause of any phenomenon.
Yet natural law has for its central demand that nothing shall happen
without such a cause.
Antithesis. All events in the universe occur under the exclusive
operation of natural laws, and there is no such thing as freedom. Proof.
The idea of a free cause is an absurdity. For it contradicts the very
law of causation itself, which demands that every event shall be in
orderly sequence with some preceding event. Now, free causation is such
an event, being the active beginning of a series of phenomena. Yet the
action of the supposed free cause must be imagined as independent of all
connection with any previous event. It is without law or reason, and
would be the blind realisation of confusion and lawlessness. Therefore
transcendental freedom is a violation of the law of causation, and is in
conflict with all experience. We must of necessity acquiesce in the
explanation of all phenomena by the operation of natural law, and thus
transcendental freedom must be pronounced a fallacy.
FOURTH ANTINOMY. Thesis. Some form of absolutely necessary existence
belongs to the world, whether as its part or as its cause. Proof.
Phenomenal existence is serial, mutable, consistent. Every event is
contingent upon a preceding condition. The conditioned pre-supposes, for
its complete explanation, the unconditioned. The whole of past time,
since it contains the whole of all past conditions, must of necessity
contain the unconditioned or also "absolutely necessary."
Antithesis. There is no absolutely necessary existence, whether in the
world as its part, or outside of it as its cause. Proof. Of
unconditionally necessary existence within the world there can be none.
The assumption of a first unconditioned link in the chain of cosmical
conditions is self-contradictory. For such link or cause, being in time,
must be subject to the law of all temporal existence, and so be
determined--contrary to the original assumption--by another link or
cause before it.
The supposition of an absolutely necessary cause of the world, existing
without the world, also destroys itself. For, being outside the world,
it is not in time. And yet, to act as a cause, it must be in time. This
supposition is therefore absurd.
The theses in these four antinomies constitute the teaching of
philosophical dogmatism. The antitheses constitute doctrines of
philosophical empiricism.
_IV.--Criticism of the Chief Arguments for the Existence of God_
The ontological argument aims at asserting the possibility of conceiving
the idea of an _ens realissimum_, of being possessed of all reality. But
the idea of existence and the fact of existence are two very different
things. Whatever I conceive, or sensibly imagine, I necessarily conceive
as though it were existing. Though my pocket be empty, I may conceive it
to contain a "hundred thalers." If I conceive them there, I can only
conceive them as actually existing there. But, alas, the fact that I am
under this necessity of so conceiving by no means carries with it a
necessity that the coins should really be in my pocket. That can only be
determined by experience.
The cosmological argument contends that if anything exists, there must
also exist an absolutely necessary being. Now, at least I myself exist.
Hence there exists an absolutely necessary being. The argument coincides
with that by which the thesis of the fourth antinomy is supposed. The
objections to it are summed up in the proof of the antithesis of the
fourth antimony. As soon as we have recognised the true conception of
causality, we have already transcended the sensible world.
The physico-theological or teleological argument is what is often styled
the argument from design. It proceeds not from general, but particular
experience. Nature discloses manifold signs of wise intention and
harmonious order, and these are held to betoken a divine designer. This
argument deserves always to be treated with respect. It is the oldest
and clearest of all proofs, and best adapted to convince the reason of
the mass of mankind. It animates us in our study of nature. And it were
not only a cheerless, but an altogether vain task to attempt to detract
from the persuasive authority of this proof. There is nought to urge
against its rationality and its utility.
All arguments, however, to prove the existence of God must, in order to
be theoretically valid, start from specifically and exclusively sensible
or phenomenal data, must employ only the conceptions of pure physical
science, and must end with demonstrating in sensible experience an
object congruous with, or corresponding to, the idea of God. But this
requirement cannot be met, for, scientifically speaking, the existence
of an absolutely necessary God cannot be either proved or disproved.
Hence room is left for faith in any moral proofs that may present
themselves to us, apart from science. With this subject ethics, the
science of practice or of practical reason, will have to deal.
The Critique of Practical Reason
Kant's "Critique of Practical Reason" ("Kritik der praktischen
Vernunft"), published in 1788, is one of the most striking
disquisitions in the whole range of German metaphysical literature.
One of its paragraphs has alone sufficed to render it famous. The
passage concerning the starry heavens and the moral law as the two
transcendently overwhelming phenomena of the universe is, perhaps,
more frequently quoted than any other written by a German author.
This is the treatise which forms the central focus of Kant's
thinking. It stands midway between the "Critique of Pure Reason"
and the "Critique of Judgment." Herein Kant takes up the position
of a vindicator of the truth of Christianity, approaching his proof
of its validity and authority by first establishing positive
affirmations of the immortality of the soul and the existence of
God. It also includes a theory of happiness, and an argument
concerning the _summum bonum_ of life, the special aim being to
demonstrate that man should not simply seek to be happy, but
should, by absolute obedience to the moral law, seek to become
worthy of that happiness which God can bestow.
_I.--Analytic of Practical Reason_
Practical principles are propositions containing a general determination
of the will. They are maxims, or subjective propositions, when
expressing the will of an individual; objective, when they are valid
expressions of the will of rational beings generally.
Practical principles which pre-suppose an object of desire are
empirical, or experimental, and supply no practical laws. Reason, in the
scope of a practical law, influences the will not by the medium of
pleasure or pain. All rational beings necessarily wish for happiness,
but they are not all agreed either as to the means to attain it, or as
to the objects of their enjoyment of it. Thus, subjective practical
principles can only be reckoned as maxims, never as law.
A rational being ought not to conceive that his individual maxims are
calculated to constitute universal laws, and to become the basis of
universal legislation. To discover any law which would bring all men
into harmony is absolutely impossible.
One of the problems of practical reason is to find the law which can
necessarily determine the will, assuming that the will is free. The
solution of this problem is to be found in action according to the moral
law. We should so act that the maxim of our will can always be valid as
a principle of universal legislation. Experience shows how the moral
consciousness determines freedom of the will.
Suppose that someone affirms of his inclination for sensual pleasure
that he cannot possibly resist temptation to indulgence. If a gallows
were erected at the place where he is tempted, on which he should be
hanged immediately after satiating his passions, would he not be able to
control his inclination? We need not long doubt what would be his
answer.
But ask him, if his sovereign commanded him to bear false witness
against an honourable man, under penalty of death, whether he would hold
it possible to conquer his love of life. He might not venture to say
what he would choose, but he would certainly admit that it is possible
to make choice. Thus, he judges that he can choose to do a thing because
he is conscious of moral obligation, and he thus recognises for himself
a freedom of will of which, but for the moral law, he would never have
been conscious.
We obtain the exact opposite of the principle of morality if we adopt
the principle of personal private happiness as the determining motive of
the will. This contradiction is not only logical, but also practical.
For morality would be totally destroyed were not the voice of reason as
clear and penetrating in relation to the will, even to the most ordinary
men.
If one of your friends, after bearing false witness against you,
attempted to justify his base conduct by enumerating the advantages
which he had thus secured for himself and the happiness he had gained,
and by declaring that thus he performed a true human duty, you would
either laugh him to scorn or turn from him in horror. And yet, if a man
acts for his own selfish ends, you have not the slightest objection to
such behaviour.
MORALITY AND HAPPINESS
The maxim of self-love simply advises; the law of morality commands.
There is a vast difference between what we are advised and what we are
obliged to do. No practical laws can be based on the principle of
happiness, even on that of universal happiness, for the knowledge of
this happiness rests on merely empirical or experimental data, every
man's ideas of it being conditioned only on his individual opinion.
Therefore, this principle of happiness cannot prescribe rules for all
rational beings.
But the moral law demands prompt obedience from everyone, and thus even
the most ordinary intelligence can discern what should be done. Everyone
has power to comply with the dictates of morality, but even with regard
to any single aim it is not easy to satisfy the vague precept of
happiness. Nothing could be more absurd than a command that everyone
should make himself happy, for one never commands anyone to do what he
inevitably wishes to do. Finally, in the idea of our practical reason,
there is something which accompanies the violation of a moral
law--namely, its demerit, with the consciousness that punishment is a
natural consequence. Therefore, punishment should be connected in the
idea of practical reason with crime, as a consequence of the crime, by
the principles of moral legislation.
ANALYSIS OF PRINCIPLES
The practical material principles of determination constituting the
basis of morality may be thus classified.
_1. Subjective_
External: Education; the civil constitution. Internal: Physical feeling;
moral feeling.
_2. Objective_
Internal: Perfection. External: Will of God.
The subjective elements are all experimental, or empirical, and cannot
supply the universal principle of morality, though they are expounded in
that sense by such writers as Montaigne, Mandeville, Epicurus, and
Hutcheson.
But the objective elements, as enunciated and expounded by Wolf and the
Stoics, and by Crusius and other theological moralists, are founded on
reason, for absolute perfection as a quality of things (that is, God
Himself) can only be thought of by rational concepts.
The conception of perfection in a practical sense is the adequacy of a
thing for various ends. As a human quality (and so internal) this is
simply talent, and what completes it is skill. But supreme perfection in
substance, that is, God Himself, and therefore external (considered
practically), is the adequacy of this being for all purposes. All these
principles above classified are material, and so can never furnish the
supreme moral law. For even the Divine will can supply a motive in the
human mind because of the expectation of happiness from it.
Therefore, the formal practical principle of the pure reason insists
that the mere form of a universal legislation must constitute the
ultimate determining principle of the will. Here is the only possible
practical principle which is sufficient to furnish categorical
imperatives, that is, practical laws which make action a duty.
It follows from this analytic that pure reason can be practical. It can
determine the will independently of all merely experimental elements.
There is a remarkable contrast between the working of the pure
speculative reason and that of the pure practical reason. In the
former--as was shown in the treatise on that subject--a pure, sensible
intuition of time and space made knowledge possible, though only of
objects of the senses.
On the contrary, the moral law brings before us a fact absolutely
inexplicable from any of the data of the world of sense. And the entire
range of our theoretical use of reason indicates a pure world of
understanding, which even positively determines it, and enables us to
know something of it--namely, a law.
We must observe the distinction between the laws of a system of nature
to which the will is subject, and of a system of nature which is subject
to the will. In the former, the objects cause the ideas which determine
the will; in the latter, the objects are caused by the will. Hence,
causality of the will has its determining principle exclusively in the
faculty of pure reason, which may, therefore, also be called a pure
practical reason.
The moral law is a law of the causality through freedom, and therefore
of the possibility of a super-sensible system of nature. It determines
the will by imposing on its maxim the condition of a universal
legislative form, and thus it is able for the first time to impart
practical reality to reason, which otherwise would continue to be
transcendent when seeking to proceed speculatively with its ideas.
Thus the moral law induces a stupendous change. It changes the
transcendent use of reason into the immanent use. And in result reason
itself becomes, by its ideas, an efficient cause in the field of
experience.
HUME AND SCEPTICISM
It may be said of David Hume that he initiated the attack on pure
reason. My own labours in the investigation of this subject were
occasioned by his sceptical teaching, for his assault made them
necessary. He argued that without experience it is impossible to know
the difference between one thing and another; that is, we can know _a
priori_, and, therefore, the notion of a cause is fictitious and
illusory, arising only from the habit of observing certain things
associated with each in succession of connections.
On such principles we can never come to any conclusion as to causes and
effects. We can never predict a consequence from any of the known
attributes of things. We can never say of any event that it must
_necessarily_ have followed from another; that is, that it must have had
an antecedent cause. And we could never lay down a rule derived even
from the greatest number of observations. Hence we must trust entirely
to blind chance, abolishing all reason, and such a surrender establishes
scepticism in an impregnable citadel.
Mathematics escaped Hume, because he considered that its propositions
were analytical, proceeding from one determination to another, by reason
of identity contained in each. But this is not really so, for, on the
contrary, they are synthetical, the results depending ultimately on the
assent of observers as witnesses to the universality of propositions. So
Hume's empiricism leads inevitably to scepticism even in this realm.
My investigations led me to the conclusion that the objects with which
we are familiar are by no means things in themselves, but are simply
phenomena, connected in a certain way with experience. So that without
contradiction they cannot be separated from that connection. Only by
that experience can they be recognised. I was able to prove the
objective reality of the concept of cause in regard to objects of
experience, and to demonstrate its origin from pure understanding,
without experimental or empirical sources.
Thus, I first destroyed the source of scepticism, and then the resulting
scepticism itself. And thus was subverted the thorough doubt as to
whatever theoretic reason claims to perceive, as well as the claim of
Hume that the concept of causality involved something absolutely
unthinkable.
GOOD AND EVIL
By a concept of practical reason, I understand the representation to the
mind of an object as an effect possible to be produced through freedom.
The only objects of practical reason are _good_ and _evil_. For by
"good" we understand an object necessarily abhorred, the principle of
reason actuating the mind in each case.
In the common use of language we uniformly distinguish between the
"good" and the "pleasant," the "evil" and the "unpleasant," good and
evil being judged by reason alone. The judgment on the relation, of
means to ends certainly belongs to reason. But "good" or "evil" always
implies only a reference to the "will," as resolved by the law of
reason, to make something its object.
Thus good and evil properly relate to actions, not to personal
sensations. So, if anything is to be reckoned simply good or evil, it
can only be so estimated by the way of acting. Hence, only the maxim of
the will, and consequently the person himself, can be called good or
evil, not the thing itself.
The Stoic was right, even though he might be laughed at, who during
violent attacks of gout exclaimed, "Pain, I will never admit that thou
art an evil!" What he felt was indeed what we call a bad thing; but he
had no reason to admit that any evil attached thereby to himself, for
the pain did not in the least detract from his personal worth, but only
from that of his condition. If a single lie had been on his conscience
it would have humiliated his soul; but pain seemed only to elevate it,
when he was not conscious of having deserved it as a punishment for any
unjust deed.
The rule of judgment subject to the laws of pure practical reason is
this: Ask yourself whether if the action you propose were to happen by a
natural system of law, of which you were yourself a part, you could
regard it as possible by your own will? In fact, everyone does decide by
this rule whether actions are morally good or evil.
_II.--Dialectic of Practical Reason_
THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL
Pure practical reason postulates the immortality of the soul, for reason
in the pure and practical sense aims at the perfect good (_summum
bonum_), and this perfect good is only possible on the supposition of
the soul's immortality. It is the moral law which determines the will,
and, in this will, the perfect harmony of the mind with the moral law,
is the supreme condition of the _summum bonum_. The principle of the
moral destination of our nature--that only by endless progress can we
come into full harmony with the moral law--is of the greatest use, not
only for fortifying the speculative reason, but also with respect to
religion. In default of this, either the moral law is degraded from its
holiness, being represented as indulging our convenience, or else men
strain after an unattainable aim, hoping to gain absolute holiness of
will, thus losing themselves in fanatical theosophic dreams utterly
contradicting self-knowledge.
For a rational, but finite, being the only possibility is an endless
progression from the lower to the higher degrees of perfection. The
Infinite Being, to whom the time-condition is nothing, sees in this
endless succession the perfect harmony with the moral law.
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
The pure practical reason must also postulate the existence of God as
the necessary condition of the attainment of the _summum bonum_. As the
perfect good can only be promoted by accordance of the will with the
moral law, so also this _summum bonum_ is possible only through the
supremacy of an Infinite Being possessed of causality harmonising with
morality. But the postulate of the highest derived good (sometimes
denominated the best world) coincides with the postulate of a highest
original good, or of the existence of God.
We now perceive why the Greeks could never solve their problem of the
possibility of the _summum bonum_, because they made the freedom of the
human will the only and all-sufficient ground of happiness, imagining
there was no need for the existence of God for that end. Christianity
alone affords an idea of the _summum bonum_ which answers fully to the
requirement of practical reason. That idea is the Kingdom of God.
The holiness which the Christian law requires makes essential an
infinite progress. But just for that very reason it justifies in man the
hope of endless existence. And it is only from an Infinite Supreme
Being, morally perfect, holy, good, and with an omnipotent will, that we
can hope, by accord with His will, to attain the _summum bonum_, which
the moral law enjoins on us as our duty to seek ever to attain.
The moral law does not enjoin on us to render ourselves happy, but
instructs us how to become worthy of happiness. Morality must never be
regarded as a doctrine of happiness, or direction how to become happy,
its province being to inculcate the rational condition of happiness, not
the means of attaining it. God's design in creating the world is not
primarily the happiness of the rational beings in it, but the _summum
bonum_, which super-adds another condition to that desire of human
beings, namely, the condition of deserving such happiness. That is to
say, the morality of rational beings is a condition which alone includes
the rule by observing which they can hope to participate in happiness at
the hand of an all-wise Creator.
The highest happiness can only be conceived as possible under conditions
harmonising with the divine holiness. Thus they are right who make the
glory of God the chief end of creation. For beyond all else that can be
conceived, that glorifies God which is the most estimable thing in the
whole world, honour for His command and obedience to His law, when to
this is added His glorious design to crown so beauteous an order of
things with happiness corresponding.
CONCLUSION
Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and
awe--the starry heavens above me, and the moral law within me. I need
not search for them, and vaguely guess concerning them, as if they were
veiled in darkness or hidden in the infinite altitude. I see them before
me, and link them immediately with the consciousness of my existence.
The former begins from the spot I occupy in the outer world of sense,
and enlarges my connection with it to a boundless extent with worlds
upon worlds and systems of systems.
The second begins from my invisible self, my personality, and places me
in a truly infinite world traceable only by the understanding, with
which I perceive I am in a universal and necessary connection, as I am
also thereby with all those visible worlds.
This view infinitely elevates my value as an intelligence by my
personality, in which the moral law reveals to me a life independent of
the animal and even the whole material world, and reaching by destiny
into the infinite.
But though admiration may stimulate inquiry, it cannot compensate for
the want of it. The contemplation of the world, beginning with the most
magnificent spectacle possible, ended in astrology; and morality,
beginning with the noblest attribute of human nature, ended in
superstition. But after reason was applied to careful examination of the
phenomena of nature a clear and unchangeable insight was secured into
the system of the world. We may entertain the hope of a like good result
in treating of the moral capacities of our nature by the help of the
moral judgment of reason.
GEORGE HENRY LEWES
A History of Philosophy
George Henry Lewes, born in London on April 18, 1817, was the
grandson of a famous Covent Garden comedian. As an actor,
philosopher, novelist, critic, dramatist, journalist, man of
science, Lewes played many parts in the life of his time, and some
of them he played very well. George Eliot owed him a great deal; he
turned her genius away from pure speculation, and directed it to
its true province--fiction. Lewes was, in fact, an excellent
critic, and it is by his splendid critical work, the "Biographical
History of Philosophy," that he is now best remembered. In this
remarkable book, which appeared in 1845-46, Lewes the novelist and
the journalist collaborates with Lewes the philosopher and man of
science. He has the rare art of making an abstruse subject clear
and attractive; he does not give a dry summary of the ideas of the
great thinkers, but depicts the living man and relates his way of
life to his way of thinking. The result is that in his hands
metaphysic becomes as interesting as history did in the hands of
Macaulay.
_I.--The Early Thinkers_
It is the object of the present work to show how philosophy became a
positive science; to indicate by what methods the human mind was enabled
to conquer its present modicum of certain knowledge. The boldest and the
grandest speculations came first. Man needed the stimulus of some higher
reward than that of merely tracing the laws of phenomena. Nothing but a
solution of the mystery of the universe could content him. Astronomy was
derived from astrology: chemistry from alchemy, and physiology from
auguries. The position occupied by philosophy in the history of mankind
is that of the great initiative to positive science. It was the forlorn
hope of mankind, and though it perished in its efforts, it did not
perish without having led the way to victory.
Thales, who was born at Miletus, in Asia Minor, and flourished in 585
B.C., is justly considered the father of Greek speculation. The step he
took was small but decisive. He opened the physiological inquiry into
the constitution of the universe. Seeing around him constant
transformations--birth and death, change of shape, of size, and of mode
of being, he could not regard any one of these variable states of
existence as existence itself. He therefore asked, What is the beginning
of things? Finding that all things were nourished by moisture, he
declared that moisture was the principle of everything. He was mistaken,
of course, but he was the first man to furnish a formula from which to
reason deductively.
Anaximenes (550 B.C.) pursued the method of Thales, but he was not
convinced of the truth of his master's doctrine. He thought that the air
was the prime, universal element, from which all things were produced
and into which all things were resolved. Diogenes of Apollonia adopted
the idea of Anaximenes, but gave a deeper significance to it. The older
thinker conceived the vital air as a kind of soul; the younger man
conceived the soul as a kind of air--an invisible force, permeating and
actuating everything. This attribution of intelligence to the primal
power or matter was certainly a progress in speculation; but another
line of thought was struck out by Anaximander of Miletus, who had been a
friend of Thales. He was passionately addicted to mathematics, and a
great many inventions are ascribed to him; among others, the sun-dial
and the geographical map.
In his view, any one single thing could not be all things, and in his
famous saying, "The infinite is the origin of all things," he introduced
into metaphysics an abstract conception in place of the inadequate
concrete principles of Thales and his disciples. Pythagoras was a
contemporary of Anaximander, and, like him, one of the great founders of
mathematics. He held that the only permanent reality in the cosmos was
the principle of order and harmony, which prevented the universe from
becoming a blank, unintelligible chaos; and he expressed this idea in
his mystic doctrine: "Numbers are the cause of the material existence of
things." The movement which he spread by means of a vast, secret
confraternity ended, however, in a barren symbolism, and it is
impossible to trace what relation his strange theories of the
transmigration of souls and the music of the spheres have to his general
system of thought.
Far more influence on the progress of speculation was exercised by
Xenophanes of Colophon. Driven by the Persian invasion of 546 B.C. to
earn his living as a wandering minstrel, he developed the ideas of
Anaximander, and founded the school of great philosophic poets, to which
Parmenides, Empedocles and Lucretius belong. He is the grand monotheist,
and he has published his doctrines in his verses:
There is one God alone, the greatest of spirits and mortals,
Neither in body to mankind resembling, neither in ideas.
Shelley's line: "The One remains, the Many change and pass," sums up the
teaching of the line of thinkers which culminated in Plato. In their
view, knowledge derived from the senses was fallacious because it
touched only the diverse and changing appearances of things; absolute
knowledge of the one abiding spiritual reality could, they held, only be
obtained by the exercise of spiritual faculty of reason, which, unlike
the animal power of sense, is the same in all men. One of the
philosophers of this school, Zeno of Elea, was the inventor of the
dialectic method of logic, which Socrates and Plato used with so
tremendous an effect.
Anaxagoras, however, attempted to reconcile the evidence of the sense
with the dictates of the reason. He was the first philosopher to settle
in Athens, and Pericles, Euripides, and Socrates were among his pupils.
He was extraordinarily modern in many of his ideas. He held that the
matter of knowledge was derived through the senses, but that reason
regulated and verified it, and he carried this dualism into his
conception of the universe, which he represented as a manifestation of a
Divine intelligence, acting through invariable laws, but in no way
confused with the matter acted on.
His successor, Democritus, adopted his theory of the origin of
knowledge, and by applying it to the problem of the One and the Many,
produced the most striking of ancient anticipations of modern science.
He regarded the world as something made up of invisible particles, each
absolutely similar to the other; these formed the essential unity which
could be grasped only by the reason, but by their various combinations
and arrangements they brought about the apparent multiplicity of objects
which the senses perceived. Such was the foundation of the atomic theory
of Democritus. He conceived the atom as a centre of force, and not as a
particle having weight and material qualities. As, however, his
hypothesis was purely a metaphysical one, it did not lead to any of the
discoveries which have followed on the establishment of the modern
scientific theory, which was arrived at in a different way, and has a
different signification. Democritus also threw out in vague outline the
idea of gravitation. But this was not science: it was guess-work; it
afforded no ground on which the fabric of verified knowledge could be
erected, and no sure method of obtaining this knowledge.
_II.--The School of Socrates_
It was against the vain and premature hypotheses of the physiologists of
his day that the greatest and noblest intellect in Greece revolted.
Socrates was the knight-errant of philosophy.
It was his confessed aim and purpose to withdraw the mind from the
contemplation of the phenomena of nature, and fix it on its own
phenomena. "I have not leisure for physical speculations," he said, with
characteristic irony, "and I will tell you why: I am not yet able,
according to the Delphic inscription, to _know myself_, and it seems to
me very ridiculous, while ignorant of myself, to inquire into what I am
not concerned in." Weary of disputes about the origin of the universe,
he turned to the one field in which the current method of abstract
reasoning could be fruitfully applied--the field of ethics.
Living in an age of wild sophistry, he endeavoured to steady and
enlighten the conscience of men by establishing right principles of
conduct. His method of proceeding by definitions and analogy has been
misapplied, but in his hands it was a powerful instrument in discovering
and marking out a new field of inquiry. His religious genius, the ideal
character of his ethics, and the heroic character of his life, have been
his great titles to fame, but it is his method which gives him his high
position in the history of philosophy.
The method of Socrates was adopted and enlarged by the most famous of
all ancient writers. Aristocles, surnamed Plato (the broad-browed), was
a brilliant young Athenian aristocrat who turned from poetry to
philosophy on meeting, in his twentieth year, with Socrates. After
travelling abroad in search of knowledge, he returned to Athens and
founded his world-renowned Academy there in 387 B.C. With vast learning
and puissant method, he created an influence which is not yet extinct
Plato was the culminating point of Greek philosophy.
In his works all the various and conflicting tendencies of preceding
eras were collected under one method. This method was doubtless the
method of Socrates, but much extended and improved. Socrates relied on
definitions and analogical reasoning as the principles of investigation.
Plato used these arts, but he added to them the more scientific
processes of analysis, generalisation, and classification.
In regard to his system of thought, Plato was a realist. He believed
that ideas have a real existence, and that material things are only
copies of the realities existing in the ideal world. He held that
beauty, goodness, and wisdom are spiritual realities, from which all
things beautiful, good, and wise derive their existence.
In his philosophy the universe is divided into the celestial region of
ideas and the mundane region of material phenomena, answering to the
modern conception of heaven and earth. As the phenomena of matter are
but copies of ideas (not, as some suppose, the bodily realisation of
them), there arises a question: How do ideas become matter? Plato gives
two different explanations. In the "Republic" he says that God, instead
of perpetually creating individual things, created a distinct type
(idea) for each thing, and from this type all objects of the class are
made. But in a later work, the "Timæus," Plato takes another view of the
origin of the world. Types are conceived as having existed from all
eternity, and God, in fashioning cosmos out of chaos, fashioned it after
the model of these eternal types.
Plato's conception of heaven and earth as two distinct regions is
completed by his conception of the double nature of the soul; or,
rather, of two souls, one rational and the other sensitive. The
sensitive soul awakens the divine reminiscences of the rational soul;
and the rational soul, by detecting the One in the Many, preserves man
from the scepticism inevitably resulting from mere sense-knowledge.
Aristotle, who was born in 384 B.C., was Plato's pupil. He, however,
completely broke away from his master's theory. He maintained that
individual objects alone exist. But if only individual objects exist,
only by the senses can they be known; and if we have only
sense-knowledge, how can we arrive at the general truths on which both
philosophy and science are founded? This was the problem which had led
Plato to claim for ideas, or types of general truths, a higher origin
than the intermittent and varying data of the senses.
Aristotle held that it could be solved in a natural way without the
conception of an ideal world. In his view, ideas were obtained by
induction. Sensation is the basis of all knowledge. But we have another
faculty besides that of sensation; we have memory. Having perceived many
objects, we remember our perceptions, and this enables us to discern
wherein things differ and wherein they agree. Then, by means of the art
of induction, we arrive at ideas. Aristotle's theory of induction is
clearly explained by him: "Experience furnishes the principles of every
science. Thus astronomy is grounded on observation. For if we were to
observe properly the phenomena of the heavens, we might demonstrate the
laws which regulate them. The same applies to other sciences." Had he
always held before his eyes this conception of science, he would have
anticipated Bacon--he would have been the Father of Positive Science.
But he could not confine himself to experience, as there was not
sufficient experience accumulated in his age from which to generalise
with any effect. So he turned to logic as an instrument for
investigating the mystery of existence, and by bringing physics and
metaphysics together again, he paved the way for a new era--the era of
scepticism.
All the wisdom of the ancient world was powerless against the sceptics.
Faith in truth was extinct; faith in human nature was gone; philosophy
was impossible. And, though the influence of Socrates continued to be
felt in the field of ethics, the ethics of the Greeks were at best
narrow and egotistical. What a light was poured upon all questions of
morality by that one divine axiom, "Love your enemy." No Greek ever
attained the sublimity of such a point of view. Still, the progress made
by the Greeks was immense, and they must ever occupy in the history of
humanity an honourable place.
_III.--Philosophy and Science_
Francis Bacon is the father of experimental philosophy. He owes his
title to his method. Many philosophers, ancient and modern, had
cursorily referred to observation and experiment as furnishing the
materials of physical knowledge; but no one before him had attempted to
systematise the true method of discovery.
He begins his great work by examining into the permanent causes of
error, as these were likely to be operative even after the reformation
of science. For this reason he calls them idols, or false appearances
(from the Greek, _eidolon_), and he divides them into four classes: the
idols of the tribe, or the causes of error due to the general defects of
the human mind; the idols of the den, which spring from weaknesses
peculiar to the character of the individual student; the idols of the
forum, which arise out of the intercourse of society and the power that
words sometimes have of governing thought; and, finally, the idols of
the theatre, which men of great learning pursue when they follow the
systems of famous but mistaken thinkers.
After this preliminary discussion, Bacon goes on to describe the methods
of inductive science. The first step consists in preparing a history of
the phenomena to be explained in all their modifications and varieties.
This history must include not merely such facts as spontaneously offer
themselves, but all experiments instituted for the sake of discovery. It
must be composed with great care; the facts should be accurately related
and distinctly arranged, and their authenticity diligently examined;
those that rest on doubtful evidence should not be rejected, but noted
as uncertain, with the grounds of the judgment so formed. This last part
of the method, says Bacon, is very necessary, for facts often appear
incredible only because we are ill-informed, and they cease to seem
marvellous when our knowledge is further extended.
When this record of facts, this "natural history," is completed, an
attempt may then be made to discover, by a comparison of the various
facts, the cause of the phenomena. Here it is of the utmost importance
to bear in mind that all facts have not the same value. There are, as
Bacon points out, twenty-seven species of facts, and he concludes that
in any science where facts cannot be tested by experiment there can be
no conclusive evidence.
Thus it will be seen that Bacon's method was a system of specific rules.
He did not merely tell men to make observations and experiments; he
taught them how observations and experiments ought to be made.
As Bacon was the father of modern science, so Réne Descartes was the
father of modern philosophy. Born in 1596, and perplexed by the movement
of scepticism produced by the Renaissance, the French thinker
endeavoured to find some ground of certainty in the fact that he at
least knew of his own existence. Hence his famous saying: _Cogito, ergo
sum_--"I think, therefore I exist." Consciousness, said he, is the basis
of all knowledge. The process then is simple: examine your
consciousness, and its clear replies will be science. Hence the vital
portion of his system lies in this axiom: "All clear ideas are true."
The fallacy in his system can be briefly exposed. Consciousness is, no
doubt, the ultimate ground of certainty of existence for _me_. But
though I am conscious of all that passes within myself, I am not
conscious of what passes in anything not myself. All that I can possibly
know of anything not myself lies in its effects upon me. Any other ideas
I may have in regard to the outside world are founded only on
inferences, and directly I leave the ground of consciousness for the
region of inference my knowledge becomes questionable.
It was this defect in Cartesianism which Baruch Spinoza, the great
Jewish thinker of Amsterdam, set out to rectify. Spinoza asked himself:
What was the reality which lies beneath all appearance? We see
everywhere transformations perishable and perishing, yet there must be
something beneath which is imperishable and immutable. What is it? In
Spinoza's view, the absolute existence is God. All that exists, exists
in and by God. Taking the words of St. Paul, "In Him we live and move
and have our being," as his motto, he undertook to trace the relations
of the world to God and to man, and those of man to society.
To John Locke, born at Wrington, in Somerset, in 1632, the problem
presented itself in another way. Instead of accepting the validity of
clear ideas, as Descartes and Spinoza did, he adopted the Baconian
method, and opened the inquiry into the origin and formation of ideas.
Separating himself from the philosophers who held that the mind was
capable of arriving at knowledge independent of experience, and from the
sceptics who maintained that the senses were the only channels of
information, he showed that ideas were derived from two
sources--sensation and reflection.
He was succeeded by George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, born at Kilcrin
in Kilkenny, in 1684. He defeated the sceptics on their own ground.
There is nothing in the world, he says, except our own sensations and
ideas. In order to exist for us, things have to be perceived by the
mind; therefore, everything, in order to exist, must exist in the mind
of God. But when Berkeley had proved that matter was figment, David
Hume, born in 1711, came forward and showed that mind was also an
illusion. You know nothing of matter, said Berkeley; you have only
perceptions and the ideas based thereon. You know nothing of mind,
replied Hume; you have only a succession of sensations and ideas.
Against Hume rose up in Germany a famous school of philosophers
beginning with Immanuel Kant, who was born in Prussia in 1724. Kant
attempted to prove that the human reason was not untrustworthy, as Hume
assumed, but limited, and that, within certain bounds, it was capable
of arriving at practical truths. Kant's disciples, however, were not
content with this modest restatement. Taking it too readily for granted
that Hume's objections had been overcome, they proceeded to revive that
unbounded faith in mere speculation which had been the distemper of the
Greek mind. Fichte and Schelling were the first thinkers of note to
attempt again to solve by logic the mystery of the universe.
But their works are now obscured by the achievement of Hegel, who began
to teach at Berlin in 1818. Hegel holds that the real universe is a
universe of ideas to which his philosophy is the key, but, as ideas
realise themselves in space and time, they come within the scope of the
man of science. It is said that all bad German systems of philosophy
when they die come to England. Hegelianism has certainly been very
fashionable in this country, and its influence is still observable in
academic circles.
Auguste Comte is the Bacon of the nineteenth century. It has been his
object to construct a _positive_ philosophy; that is to say, a doctrine
capable of embracing all the sciences, and, with them, all the problems
of social life. He holds that every branch of knowledge passes through
three stages: the supernatural, or fictitious; the metaphysical or
abstract; the positive or scientific. When the positive method is
adopted, then shall we again have one general doctrine, powerful because
general.
The metaphysicians have failed to penetrate to the causes of things, but
the men of science are succeeding in the humbler but far more useful
work of tracing some of the laws that govern the phenomena of nature,
and foreseeing their operations. It is only where the philosophers
started matters capable of _positive_ treatment that any advance has
been made in metaphysics. For the rest, philosophy leaves us in the
nineteenth century at precisely the same point at which we were in the
fifth. Thus is the circle completed.
JOHN LOCKE
Concerning the Human Understanding
John Locke was born at Wrington, Somersetshire, England, Aug. 29,
1632. He was educated at Westminster and at Christ Church, Oxford;
but his temperament rebelled against the system of education still
in vogue and the public disputations of the schools, which he
thought "invented for wrangling and ostentation rather than to
discover truth." It was his study of Descartes that first "gave him
a relish of philosophical things." From 1683 to 1689 he found it
prudent to sojourn in Holland. In the latter year he returned to
England, bringing with him the manuscript of the "Essay Concerning
Human Understanding," which appeared in the spring of 1690. Few
works of philosophy have made their way more rapidly than the
"Essay." Twenty editions appeared before 1700. The design of the
book, Locke explains in the introduction, is to inquire "into the
origin, certainty, and extent of human knowledge, together with the
grounds and degrees of belief, opinion, and assent." Locke died on
October 28, 1704.
_I.--The Nature of Simple Ideas_
"Idea" being that term which, I think, serves best to stand for
whatsoever is the object of the understanding. I have used it to express
whatever is meant by phantasm, notion, species, or whatever it is the
mind can be employed about in thinking. Let us, then, suppose the mind
to be, as we say, white paper void of all characters--without any ideas.
Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of
man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? To this, I answer
in one word--Experience; in that all our knowledge is founded, and from
that it ultimately derives itself.
Let anyone examine his own thoughts and thoroughly search his
understanding, and then let him tell me whether of all the original
ideas he has there are any other than of the objects of his senses, or
of the observations of his mind considered as objects of his
reflection. Though the qualities that affect our senses are, in the
things themselves, so united and blended that there is no separation, no
distance between them, yet it is plain the ideas they produce in the
mind enter by the senses simple and unmixed. For, though the sight and
touch often take in from the same object at the same time different
ideas, yet the simple ideas thus united in the same subject are as
perfectly distinct as those that come in by different senses; the
coldness and hardness which a man feels in a piece of ice being as
distinct ideas in the mind as the smell and whiteness of a lily, and
each of them being in itself uncompounded, contains nothing but one
uniform appearance, or conception, in the mind, and is not
distinguishable into different ideas.
When the understanding is once stored with these simple ideas, it has
the power to repeat, compare, and unite them even to an almost infinite
variety, and so can make at will new complex ideas. But it is not in the
power of any most exalted wit or enlarged understanding, by any
quickness or variety of thought, to invent or frame one new simple idea
in the mind, nor to destroy those that are there. I would have anyone
try to fancy any taste which had never affected his palate, or frame the
idea of a scent he had never smelt; and when he can do this, I will also
conclude that a blind man hath ideas of colours and a deaf man true,
distinct notions of sound.
There are some ideas which have admittance only through one sense which
is peculiarly adapted to receive them. Thus, light and colours come in
only by the eye, all kinds of noises by the ear, the tastes and smells
by the nose and palate. The most considerable of those belonging to the
touch are heat, cold, and solidity--which is the idea that belongs to
the body, whereby we conceive it to fill space.
Simple ideas of divers senses are the ideas of space or extension,
figure, rest, and motion, for these make perceivable impressions both
on the eyes and touch, and we can receive and convey into our minds the
ideas of the extension, figure, motion, and rest of bodies both by
seeing and feeling.
The mind, receiving the ideas mentioned in the foregoing from without,
when it turns its view inward upon itself and observes its own actions
about those ideas it has, takes from thence other ideas which are as
capable to be the objects of its contemplation as any of those it
received from foreign things. The two great and principal actions of the
mind which are most frequently considered, and which are so frequent
that everyone that pleases may take notice of them in himself, are these
two--Perception or Thinking, and Volition or Will. The power of thinking
is called the Understanding, and the power of volition is called the
Will. And these two powers, or abilities, in the mind are denominated
Faculties. Some of the modes of these simple ideas of reflection are
remembrance, discerning, reasoning, judging, knowledge, faith.
It has, further, pleased our wise Creator to annex to several objects
and to the ideas which we receive from them, as also to several of our
thoughts, a concomitant pleasure, and that in several objects to several
degrees, that those faculties which He has endowed us with might not
remain wholly idle and unemployed by us. Pain has the same efficacy and
use to set us on work that pleasure has, we being as ready to employ our
faculties to avoid that as to pursue this.
Existence and unity are two other ideas that are suggested to the
understanding by every object without and every idea within. Power,
also, is another of those simple ideas which we receive from sensation
and reflection; and, besides these, there is succession.
Nor let anyone think these too narrow bounds for the capacious mind of
man to expatiate in, which takes its flight farther than the stars and
cannot be confined by the limits of the world, that extends its
thoughts often even beyond the utmost expansion of matter and makes
excursions into that incomprehensible inane. Nor will it be so strange
to think these few simple ideas sufficient to employ the quickest
thought or largest capacity if we consider how many words may be made
out of the various composition of twenty-four letters; or if, going one
step farther, we will but reflect on the variety of combinations that
may be made with barely one of the above-mentioned ideas, _viz._,
number, whose stock is inexhaustible. And what a large and immense field
doth extension alone afford the mathematicians!
_II.--Of Idea-Producing Qualities_
The power to produce any idea in our mind I call Quality of the subject
wherein that power is. Qualities are, first, such as are utterly
inseparable from the body in what state soever it be. These I call
original or primary qualities, which I think we may observe to produce
simple ideas in us, _viz._, solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest,
and number.
Secondly, such qualities which in truth are nothing in the objects
themselves, but powers to produce various sensations in us by their
primary qualities, _i.e._, by the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of
their insensible parts. These secondary qualities are colours, sounds,
tastes, etc. From whence I think it is easy to draw this observation:
that the ideas of primary qualities of bodies are resemblances of them,
but the ideas produced in us by the secondary qualities have no
resemblance in them at all.
If anyone will consider that the same fire that at one distance produces
in us the sensation of warmth does, at a nearer approach, produce in us
the far different sensation of pain, let him bethink himself what reason
he has to say that his idea of warmth, which was produced in him by
fire, is actually in the fire; and his idea of pain which the same fire
produced in him in the same way, is not in the fire. The particular
bulk, number, figure, and motion of the parts of fire or snow are really
in them, whether anyone's senses perceive them or not; and, therefore,
they may be called real qualities, because they really exist in those
bodies. But light, heat, whiteness, or coldness are no more really in
them than sickness or pain is in manna. Take away the sensation of them;
let not the eyes see light or colours, nor the ears hear sounds; let the
palate not taste, nor the nose smell; and all colours, tastes, odours,
and sounds, as they are such particular ideas, vanish and cease, and are
reduced to their causes, _i.e._, bulk, figure, and motion of parts.
_III.--Various Faculties of the Mind_
What perception is everyone will know better by reflecting on what he
does himself when he sees, hears, feels, etc., or thinks, than by any
discourse of mine. This is certain, that whatever alterations are made
in the body, if they reach not the mind, whatever impressions are made
on the outward parts, if they are not taken notice of within, there is
no perception.
We ought further to consider concerning perception, that the ideas we
receive by sensation are often in grown people altered by the judgment
without our taking any notice of it. When we set before our eyes a round
globe of any uniform colour--_e.g._, gold, alabaster, or jet--it is
certain that the idea thereby imprinted in our mind is of a flat circle
variously shadowed with several degrees of light and brightness coming
to our eyes. But we having by use been accustomed to perceive what kind
of appearances convex bodies are wont to make in us, what alterations
are made in the reflections of light by the difference of the sensible
figures of bodies, the judgment presently, by an habitual custom, alters
the appearances into their causes; so that from that which is truly a
variety of shadow or colour collecting the figure, it makes it pass for
a mark of figure, and frames to itself the perception of a convex figure
and a uniform colour, when the idea we receive from thence is only a
plane variously coloured, as is evident in painting. Perception, then,
is the first operation of our intellectual faculties, and the inlet of
all knowledge into our minds.
The next faculty of the mind whereby it makes a further progress towards
knowledge is that which I call Retention, or the keeping of those simple
ideas which from sensation or reflection it hath received. This is done,
first, by keeping the idea which is brought into it for some time
actually in view, which is called Contemplation. The other way of
retention is the power to revive again in our minds those ideas which
after imprinting have disappeared, or have been, as it were, laid aside
out of sight; and thus we do when we conceive heat or light, yellow or
sweet, the object being removed. This is memory, which is, as it were,
the storehouse of our ideas.
Another faculty we may take notice of in our minds is that of
Discerning, and distinguishing between the several ideas it has. It is
not enough to have a confused perception of something in general. Unless
the mind had a distinct perception of different objects and their
qualities, it would be capable of very little knowledge, though the
bodies that affect us were as busy about us as they are now, and the
mind were continually employed in thinking. On this faculty of
distinguishing one thing from another depends the evidence and certainty
of several even very general propositions which have passed for innate
truths, because men, overlooking the true cause why those propositions
find universal assent, impute it wholly to native uniform impressions;
whereas it, in truth, depends upon this clear discerning faculty of the
mind, whereby it perceives two ideas to be the same or different.
The comparing of ideas one with another is the operation of the mind
upon which depends all that large tribe of ideas comprehended under
relations. The next operation is composition, whereby the mind puts
together several simple ideas and combines them into complex ones.
The use of words being to stand as outward marks of our internal ideas,
and those ideas being taken from particular things, if every particular
idea that we take in should have a distinct name, names must be endless.
To prevent this, the mind makes the particular ideas received from
particular objects to become general, which is done by considering them
as they are in the mind, and such appearances separate from all other
existences, and from the circumstances of real existence, as time,
place, or any other concomitant ideas. This is called Abstraction,
whereby ideas taken from particular being become general representatives
of all of the same kind. Thus, the same colour being observed to-day in
chalk or snow which the mind yesterday received from milk, it considers
that that appearance alone makes it a representative of all of that
kind; and having given it the name "whiteness," it by that sound
signifies the same quality wheresoever imagined or met with; and thus
universals, whether ideas or terms, are made.
As the mind is wholly passive in the reception of all its simple ideas,
so it exerts several acts of its own, whereby, out of its simple ideas,
as the materials and foundations of the rest the others are framed. And
I believe we shall find, if we observe the originals of our notions,
that even the most abstruse ideas, how remote soever they may seem from
sense, or from any operation of our minds, are yet only such as the
understanding frames to itself, by repeating and joining together ideas
that it had either from objects of sense or from its own operations
about them; so that even those large and abstract ideas are derived from
sensation or reflection, being no other than what the mind may and does
attain by the ordinary use of its own faculties.
_IV.--Knowledge of the Existence of Other Things_
It is the actual receiving of ideas from without that gives us notice of
the existence of other things, and makes us know that something does
exist at that time without us which causes that idea in us, though
perhaps we neither know nor consider how it does it. And this, though
not so certain as our own intuitive knowledge, or as the deductions of
our reason employed about the clear abstract ideas of our own minds, yet
deserves the name of knowledge.
It is plain that those perceptions are produced by exterior causes
affecting our senses for the following reasons.
Because those that want the organs of any sense never can have the ideas
belonging to that sense produced in their minds.
Because sometimes I find I cannot avoid having those ideas produced in
my mind; for as when my eyes are shut, or the windows fast, I can at
pleasure recall to my mind the ideas of light or the sun which former
sensations have lodged in my memory; so I can at pleasure lay by that
idea and take into my view that of a rose or taste of sugar. But if I
turn my eyes at noon towards the sun, I cannot avoid the ideas which the
light or sun produces in me. There is nobody who does not perceive the
difference in himself contemplating the sun as he has an idea of it in
his memory and actually looking upon it; and, therefore, he has certain
knowledge that they are not both memory or the actions of his mind and
fancies only within him, but that actual seeing has a cause without.
Add to this that many of those ideas are produced with pain, which
afterwards we remember without the least offence.
Lastly, our senses bear witness to the truth of each other's report
concerning the existence of sensible things without us.
MONTAIGNE
Essays
Michel Eyquem, Seigneur de Montaigne, one of the greatest masters
of the essay in all literature, was born at his family's ancestral
chateau near Bordeaux, in France, Feb. 28, 1533, and died on
September 13, 1592. His life was one of much suffering from
hereditary disease, which, however, he endured so philosophically
that little trace of his trials is apparent in his writings. His
father, who is said to have been of English descent, took special
pains with his early education, having had him taught Latin by a
German tutor before he learnt French, so that before he "left his
nurse's arms" he was a master of the ancient tongue and knew not a
word of his own. The first two of the three books of his celebrated
"Essays" were published in 1581 and the third in 1588. In 1582 he
visited Italy and was made a Roman citizen, and the next year he
was chosen Mayor of Bordeaux. Always a lover of books and a student
of men, his writings are a rich mine of scholarly wit and worldly
wisdom, consummate in the naturalness that conceals literary art.
Like most works of the time, they contain passages which modern
taste does not approve, but, taken as a whole, they are among the
most interesting of books of the kind.
_I.--Of Death, and How It Findeth a Man_
I was born between eleven of the clock and noon, the last of February,
1533, according to our computation, the year beginning on January 1. It
is but a fortnight since I was thirty-nine years old. I want at least as
much more of life. If in the meantime I should trouble my thoughts with
a matter so far from me as death, it were but folly. Of those renowned
in life I will lay a wager I will find more that have died before they
came to five-and-thirty years than after.
How many means and ways has death to surprise us! Who would ever have
imagined that a Duke of Brittany should have become stifled to death in
a throng of people, as whilom was a neighbour of mine at Lyons when
Pope Clement made his entrance there? Hast thou not seen one of our late
kings slain in the midst of his sports? and one of his ancestors die
miserably by the throw of a hog? Æschylus, fore-threatened by the fall
of a house, when he was most on his guard, was struck dead by the fall
of a tortoise-shell from the talons of a flying eagle. Another was
choked by a grape-pip. An emperor died from the scratch of a comb,
Æmilius Lepidus from hitting his foot against a door-sill, Anfidius from
stumbling against the door as he was entering the council chamber. Caius
Julius, a physician, while anointing a patient's eyes had his own closed
by death. And if among these examples I may add one of a brother of
mine, Captain St. Martin, playing at tennis, received a blow with a ball
a little above the right ear, and without any appearance of bruise or
hurt, never sitting or resting, died within six hours afterwards of an
apoplexy. These so frequent and ordinary examples being ever before our
eyes, why should it not continually seem to us that death is ever at
hand ready to take us by the throat?
What matter is it, will you say unto me, how and in what manner it is,
so long as a man do not trouble and vex himself therewith? It sufficeth
me to live at my ease, and the best recreation I can have that do I ever
take. It is uncertain where death looks for us: let us look for her
everywhere. The premeditation of death is a fore-thinking of liberty. He
who has learned to die has unlearned to serve. There is no evil in life
for him who has well conceived that the privation of life is no evil. I
am now, by the mercy of God, in such a taking that, without regret or
grieving at any worldly matter, I am prepared to dislodge whensoever He
shall please to call me. No man did ever prepare himself to quit the
world more simply and fully. The deadest deaths are the best.
* * * * *
Were I a composer of books I would keep a register of divers deaths,
which, in teaching me to die, should afterwards teach them to live.
My father in his household order had this, which I can commend, though I
in no way follow. Besides the day-book of household affairs, wherein are
registered at least expenses, payments, gifts, bargains, and sales that
require not a notary's hand to them--of which book a receiver had the
keeping--he appointed another journal-book to one of his servants, who
was his clerk, wherein he should orderly set down all occurences worthy
of the noting, and day by day register the memories of the history of
his house--a thing very pleasant to read when time began to wear out the
remembrance of them, and fit for us to pass the time withal, and to
resolve some doubts: when such and such a work was begun, when ended;
what way or course was taken, what accidents happened, how long it
continued; all our voyages and journeys, where, and how long we were
away from home; our marriages; who died, and when; the receiving of good
or bad tidings; who came, who went; changing or removing of household
officers, taking of new or discharging of old servants, and such
matters. An ancient custom, and a sound one, which I would have all men
use and bring into fashion again.
_II.--In My Library_
Intercourse with books comforts me in age and solaces me in
solitariness, eases me of weariness and rids me of tedious company. To
divert importunate thoughts there is no better way than recourse to
books. And though they perceive I on occasion forsake them, they never
mutiny or murmur, but welcome me always with the self-same visage.
I never travel, whether in peace or in war, without books. It is
wonderful what repose I find in the knowledge that they are at my elbow
to delight me when time shall serve. In this human peregrination this is
the best munition I have found.
At home I betake me somewhat oftener to my library. It is in the chief
approach to my house, so that under my eyes are my garden, my
base-court, my yard, and even the best rooms of my house. There, without
order or method, I can turn over and ransack now one book and now
another. Sometimes I muse, sometimes save; and walking up and down I
indite and register these my humours, these my conceits. It is placed in
a third storey of a tower. The lowermost is my chapel, the second a
chamber, where I often lie when I would be alone. Above is a
clothes-room. In this library, formerly the least useful room in all my
house, I pass the greatest part of my life's days, and most hours of the
day--I am never there of nights. Next it is a handsome, neat study,
large enough to have a fire in winter, and very pleasantly windowed.
If I feared not trouble more than cost I might easily join a convenient
gallery of a hundred paces long and twelve broad on each side of this
room, and upon the same floor, the walls being already of a convenient
height. Each retired place requireth a walk. If I sit long my thoughts
are prone to sleep. My mind goes not alone as if legs moved it. Those
who study without books are all in the same case.
My library is circular in shape, with no flat side save that in which
stand my table and chair. Thus around me at one look it offers the full
sight of all my books, set round about upon shelves, five ranks, one
above another. It has three bay windows, of a far-extending, rich, and
unobstructed prospect. The room is sixteen paces across.
In winter I am less constantly there, for my house being on a hill, no
part is more subject to all weathers than this. But this pleases me only
the more, both for the benefit of the exercise--which is a matter to be
taken into account--and because, being remote and of troublesome
access, it enables me the better to seclude myself from company that
would encroach upon my time. There is my seat, that is my throne.
My rule therein I endeavour to make absolute, that I may sequester that
only corner from all, whether wife, children, or acquaintances. For
elsewhere I have but a verbal and qualified authority, and miserable to
my mind is he who in his own home has nowhere to be to himself.
_III.--Of Inequality_
Plutarch somewhere says that he finds no such great difference between
beast and beast as between man and man. He speaks of the mind and
internal qualities. I could find in my heart to say there is more
difference between one man and another than between such a man and such
a beast; and that there are as many degrees of spirits as steps between
earth and heaven.
But concerning the estimation of men, it is marvellous that we ourselves
are the only things not esteemed for their proper qualities. We commend
a horse for his strength and speed, not for his trappings; a greyhound
for his swiftness, not his collar; a hawk for her wing, not for her
bells. Why do we not likewise esteem a man for that which is his own? He
has a goodly train of followers, a stately palace, so much rent coming
in, so much credit among men. Alas, all that is about him, not in him.
If you buy a horse you see him bare of saddle and cloths. When you judge
of a man, why consider his wrappings only? In a sword it is the quality
of the blade, not the value of the scabbard, to which you give heed. A
man should be judged by what he is himself, not by his appurtenances.
Let him lay aside his riches and external honours and show himself in
his shirt. Has he a sound body? What mind has he? Is it fair, capable,
and unpolluted, and happily equipped in all its parts? Is it a mind to
be settled, equable, contented, and courageous in any circumstances? Is
he--
A wise man, of himself commander high,
Whom want, nor death, nor bands can terrify,
Resolved t'affront desires, honours to scorn,
All in himself, close, round, and neatly borne,
Against whose front externals idly play,
And even fortune makes a lame essay?
Such a man is five hundred degrees beyond kingdoms and principalities;
himself is a kingdom unto himself. Compare with him the vulgar
troop--stupid, base, servile, warring, floating on the sea of passions,
depending wholly on others. There is more difference than between heaven
and earth, yet in a blindness of custom we take little or no account of
it. Whereas, if we consider a cottage and a king, a noble and a workman,
a rich man and a poor, we at once recognise disparity, although, as one
might say, they differ in nothing but their clothes.
An emperor, whose pomp so dazzles us in public, view him behind the
curtain is but an ordinary man, and peradventure viler and sillier than
the least of his subjects! Cowardice, irresolution, ambition, spite,
anger, envy, move and work in him as in another man. Fear, care, and
suspicion haunt him even in the midst of his armed troops. Does the
ague, the headache, or the gout spare him more than us? When age seizes
on his shoulders, can the tall yeoman of his guard rid him of it? His
bedstead encased with gold and pearls cannot allay the pinching pangs of
colic!
The flatterers of Alexander the Great assured him he was the son of
Jupiter, but being hurt one day, and the blood gushing from the wound,
"What think you of this?" said he to them. "Is not this blood of a
lively red hue, and merely human?" If a king have the ague or the gout
what avail his titles of majesty? But if he be a man of worth, royalty
and glorious titles will add but little to good fortune.
Truly, to see our princes all alone, sitting at their meat, though
beleaguered with talkers, whisperers, and gazing beholders, I have often
rather pitied than envied them. The honour we receive from those who
fear and stand in awe of us is no true honour. "Service holds few,
though many hold service."
Every man's manners and his mind
His fortune for him frame and find.
_IV.--Of the Use of Apparel_
I was devising in this chill-cold season whether the fashion of these
late-discovered nations to go naked be a custom forced by the hot
temperature of the air, as we say of the Indians and Moors, or whether
it be an original manner of mankind. My opinion is, that even as all
plants, trees, living creatures, are naturally furnished with protection
against all weathers, even so were we. But like those who by artificial
light quench the brightness of day, so we have spoilt our proper
covering by what we have borrowed. Nations under the same heaven and
climate as our own, or even colder, have no knowledge of clothes.
Moreover, the tenderest parts of us are ever bare and naked--our eyes,
face, mouth, nose, ears; and our country swains, like their forefathers,
go bare-breasted to their middles.
Had we been born needing petticoats and breeches nature would have armed
that which she has left to the battery of the seasons with some thicker
skin or hide, as she has our finger ends and the soles of our feet.
"How many men in Turkey go naked for devotion's sake?" a certain man
demanded of one of our loitering rogues whom in the depth of winter he
saw wandering up and down with nothing but his shirt about him, yet as
blithe and lusty as another that keeps himself muffled up to the ears in
furs. "And have not you, good sir," answered he, "your fate all bare?
Imagine I am all face."
The Italians say that when the Duke of Florence asked his fool how,
being so ill-clad, he could endure the cold, he replied, "Master, use
but my receipt, and put all the clothes you have on you, as I do all
mine, and you shall feel no more cold than I do."
King Massinissa, were it never so sharp weather, always went bareheaded.
So did the Emperor Severus. In the battle of the Egyptians and Persians,
Herodotus noticed that of those slain the Egyptians had skulls much
harder than the Persians, by reason that these go ever with their heads
covered with coifs and turbans, while those are from infancy shaven and
bareheaded. King Agesilaus wore his clothes alike winter and summer.
Suetonius says Cæsar always marched at the head of his troops, and most
commonly bareheaded and on foot, whether the sun shone or whether it
rained. The like is reported of Hannibal.
Plato, for the better health and comfort of the body, earnestly
persuades that no man should ever give feet or head other cover than
nature had allotted them.
We Frenchmen are accustomed to array ourselves strangely in
parti-coloured suits (not I, for I seldom wear any but black and white,
like my father) to protect ourselves against the cold, but what should
we do in cold like that Captain Martyn du Bellay describes--frosts so
hard that the wine had to be chopped up with axes and shared to the
soldiers by weight?
_V.--Of Solitariness_
Let us leave apart the outworn comparison between a solitary and an
active life, and ask those who engage themselves "for the public good"
whether what they seek in these public charges is not, after all,
private commodity? Public or private, as I suppose, the end is the
same, to live better at ease. But a man does not always seek the best
way to come at it, and often supposes himself to have quit cares when he
has but changed them.
There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family
than in managing a state. Wheresoever the mind is buried, there lies
all. And though domestic occupations may be less important, they are not
less importunate.
Moreover, though we have freed ourselves from court or from market, we
have still the torments of ambition, avarice, irresolution, fear, and
unsatisfied desires. These follow us even into cloisters and schools of
philosophy. When Socrates was told that a certain man was none the
better for his travels, "I believe it well," said he, "for he took
himself with him."
If a man do not first get rid of what burthens his mind, moving from
place to place will not help him. It is not enough for a man to
sequester himself from people; he must seclude himself from himself. We
carry our fetters with us. Our evil is rooted in our mind, and the mind
cannot escape from itself. Therefore must it be reduced and brought into
itself, and that is the true solitariness, which may be enjoyed even in
the throng of peopled cities or kings' courts.
A man may, if he can, have wife, children, goods, health, but not so tie
himself to them that his felicity depends on them. We should reserve for
ourselves some place where we may, as it were, hoard up our true
liberty. Virtue is contented with itself, without discipline, words, or
deeds. Shake we off these violent holdfasts which engage us and estrange
us from ourselves. The greatest thing is for a man to know how to be his
own.
I esteem not Arcesilaus, the philosopher, less reformed because I know
him to have used household utensils of gold and silver, as the condition
of his fortune permitted. And knowing what slender hold accessory
comforts have, I omit not, in enjoying them, humbly to beseech God of
His mercy to make me content with myself and the goods I have in myself.
The wiser sort of men, having a strong and vigorous mind, may frame for
themselves an altogether spiritual life. But mine being common, I must
help to uphold myself by corporal comforts. And age having despoiled me
of some of these, I sharpen my appetite for those remaining. Glory,
which Pliny and Cicero propose to us, is far from my thoughts. "Glory
and rest are things that cannot squat on the same bench." Stay your mind
in assured and limited cogitations, wherein it best may please itself,
and having gained knowledge of true felicities, enjoy them, and rest
satisfied without wishing a further continuance either of life or of
name.
_VI.--Opinion in Good and Evil_
Men, saith an ancient Greek, are tormented by the opinion they have of
things, and not by things themselves. It were a great conquest of our
miserable human condition if any man could establish everywhere this
true proposition. For if evils lie only in our judgment, it is in our
power to condemn them or to turn them to good.
In death, what we principally fear is pain; as also poverty has nothing
to be feared for but what she casts upon us through hunger, thirst,
cold, and other miseries. I will willingly grant that pain is the worst
accident of our being; I hate and shun it as much as possible. But it is
in our power, if not to annul, at least to diminish it, with patience,
and though the body should be moved, yet to keep mind and reason in good
temper.
If it were not so, what has brought virtue, valour, magnanimity,
fortitude, into credit? If a man is not to lie on the hard ground, to
endure the heat of the scorching sun, to feed hungrily on a horse or an
ass, to see himself mangled and cut in pieces, to have a bullet plucked
out of his bones, to suffer incisions, his flesh to be stitched up,
cauterised, and searched--all incident to a martial man--how shall we
purchase the advantage and pre-eminence we so greedily seek over the
vulgar sort?
Moreover, this ought to comfort us, that naturally, if pain be violent
it is also short; if long, it is easier. Thou shall not feel it
over-long; if thou feel it over-much, it will either end itself or end
thee. Even as an enemy becomes more furious when we fly from him, so
does pain grow prouder if we tremble under it. It will stoop and yield
on better terms to him who makes head against it. In recoiling we draw
on the enemy. As the body is steadier and stronger to a charge if it
stand stiffly, so is the soul.
Weak-backed men, such as I am, feel a dash of a barber's razor more than
ten blows with a sword in the heat of fight. The painful throes of
childbearing, deemed by physicians and the word of God to be very great,
some nations make no account of. I omit to speak of the Lacedæmonian
women; come we to the Switzers of our infantry. Trudging and trotting
after their husbands, to-day you see them carry the child around their
neck which but yesterday they brought into the world.
How many examples have we not of contempt of pain and smart by that sex!
What can they not do, what will they not do, what fear they to do, so
they may but hope for some amendment of their beauty? To become slender
in waist, and to have a straight spagnolised body, what pinching, what
girding, what cingling will they not endure! Yea, sometimes with iron
plates, with whalebones, and other such trashy implements, that their
very skin and quick flesh is eaten in and consumed to the bones, whereby
they sometimes work their own death.
There is a certain effeminate and light opinion, and that no more in
sorrow than it is in pleasure, whereby we are so dainty tender that we
cannot abide to be stung of a bee, but must roar and cry out. This is
the total sum of all, that you be master of yourself.
PLATO
The Apology, or Defence of Socrates
Aristocles, the son of Ariston, whose birth name is almost
forgotten because the whole world knows him as Plato, was born at
Athens about the year 427 B.C. As he grew up he became a devoted
disciple of Socrates, and when the Athenian people had put the
master to death, the disciple gave up his life to expounding the
wisdom of his teacher. How much of that teaching was really
implicitly contained in the doctrines of Socrates, it is difficult
to say, since very definite developments evidently took place in
Plato's own views. Plato himself lived to the age of eighty, and
died, as he had for the most part lived, at Athens, in 347. When
Socrates was indicted for "corrupting the youth" of Athens and on
other corresponding charges, Plato was himself present at the
trial. We may believe that the "Apology" is substantially a
reproduction of the actual defence made by Socrates. The "judges"
in the Athenian court were practically the assembled body of free
Athenian citizens. When an adverse verdict was given, the accused
could propose a penalty as an alternative to that which had been
named by the accuser, and the court could choose between the two
penalties. Socrates was found guilty by a small majority of votes,
and sentence of death was passed, as set forth in the last section
of the "Apology."
_I.--The Official Indictment, and the Real Charges_
What my accusers have said, Athenians, has been most specious, but none
of it is true. The falsehood which most astonished me was that you must
beware of being beguiled by my consummate eloquence; for I am not
eloquent at all, unless speaking pure truth be eloquence. You will hear
me speak with adornments and without premeditation in my everyday
language, which many of you have heard. I am seventy years old, yet this
is my first appearance in the courts, and I have no experience of
forensic arts. All I ask is that you will take heed whether what I say
be just.
It is just that I should begin by defending myself against my accusers
from of old, in priority to Anytus and these other latter-day accusers.
For, skilful as these are, I fear those more--those who from your youth
have been untruthfully warning you against one Socrates, a wise man, who
speculates about everything in heaven and under the earth, and tries to
make the worse cause the better. Their charge is the craftier, because
you think that a man who does as they say has no thought for the gods. I
cannot name these gentlemen precisely, beyond indicating that one is a
writer of comedies; I cannot meet and refute them individually. However,
I must try to enter a brief defence. I think I know where my difficulty
will lie; but the issue will be as the gods choose.
Now, what is the basis of this charge, on which Meletus also relies?
"Socrates is an evil doer, a busybody, who pries into things in heaven
and under the earth, and teaches these same things to others." You all
saw the Socrates in the comedy of Aristophanes engaged in these
pursuits. I have nothing to say against such inquiries; but do not let
Meletus charge me with them, for I have no part nor lot in them. Many of
you have heard me talk, but never one on these subjects. Witness you
yourselves. From this you should be able to gauge the other things that
are said against me.
Equally untrue is the charge that I make a paid business of teaching my
neighbours. It is a fine thing to be able to impart knowledge, like
Gorgias, and Prodicus, and Hippias, who can go from city to city and
draw to converse with them young men who pay for the privilege instead
of enjoying their companions' society for nothing. I am told there is
one Evenus, a Parian, practising now, whose fee is five minas. It must
be delightful to possess such valuable knowledge and to impart it--if
they do possess it. I should like to do it myself, but I do not possess
the knowledge.
"Whence, then, comes the trouble, Socrates?" you will say; "if you have
been doing nothing unusual, how have these rumours and slanders arisen?"
I will tell you what I take to be the explanation. It is due to a
certain wisdom with which I seem to be endowed--not superhuman at all
like that of these gentlemen. I speak not arrogantly, but on the
evidence of the Oracle of Delphi, who told Chærephon, a man known to
you, that there was no wiser man than Socrates. Now, I am not conscious
of possessing wisdom; but the God cannot lie. What did he mean?
Well, I tried to find out, by going to a man reputed wise, thinking to
prove that there were wiser men. But I found him not wise at all, though
he fancied himself so. I sought to show him this, but he was only very
much annoyed. I concluded that, after all, I was wiser than he in one
particular, because I was under no delusion that I possessed knowledge,
as he was. I tried all the men reputed wise, one after the other, and
made myself very unpopular, for the result was always the same. It was
the same with the poets as with the politicians, and with the craftsmen
as with the poets. The last did know something about their own
particular art, and therefore imagined that they knew all about
everything.
I went on, taking every opportunity of finding out whether people
reputed wise, and thinking themselves so, were wise in reality, and
pointing out that they were not. And because of my exposing the
ignorance of others, I have got this groundless reputation of having
knowledge myself, and have been made the object of many other calumnies.
And young gentlemen of position who have heard me follow my example, and
annoy people by exposing their ignorance; and this is all visited on me;
and I am called an ill-conditioned person who corrupts youth. To prove
which my calumniators have to fall back on charging me with prying into
all things in heaven and under the earth, and the rest of it.
_II.--The Cross-Examining of Meletus_
Such is my answer to the charges which have been poured into your ears
for a long time. Now let me defend myself against these later
accusations of Meletus and the rest--the virtuous patriot Meletus. I am
an evil-doer, a corrupter of youth, who pays no reverence to the gods
who the city reveres, but to strange dæmons. Not I, but Meletus is the
evil-doer, who rashly makes accusations so frivolous, pretending much
concern for matters about which he has never troubled himself. Answer
me, Meletus. You think it of the utmost importance that our youth should
be made as excellent as possible.
MELETUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Tell us, then, who is it that makes them better; for of
course, you know. You are silent. The laws, you say? The question was,
"Who?"
MELETUS: The judges; all the judges.
SOCRATES: In other words, all the Athenian people--everyone but me? And
I alone corrupt them? Truly, I am in an ill plight! But in the case of
all other animals, horses, for instance, there are only a few people who
are able to improve them. Your answer shows that you have never bestowed
attention on the care of young people. Next, tell me is it better for a
man to dwell among good citizens or bad? The good, since the bad will
injure him. I cannot, then, set about making bad citizens designedly. My
friend, no man designedly brings injury upon himself. If I corrupt them,
it must be undesignedly--reason good for admonishing and instructing me,
which you have not done; but not for bringing me into court, which you
have done! However, I corrupt them by teaching them not to believe in
the gods in whom the city believes, but in strange deities? Do I teach
that there are some gods, or that there are no gods at all?
MELETUS: I say that you believe in no gods. You say the sun is a stone,
and the moon earth.
SOCRATES: Most excellent Meletus, everyone knows that Anaxagoras says
so; you can buy that information for a drachma! Do I really appear to
you to revere no gods?
MELETUS: No, no gods at all.
SOCRATES: Now, that is incredible! You must have manufactured this
riddle out of sheer wantonness, for in the indictment you charge me with
reverencing gods! Can anyone believe that there are human affairs, or
equine affairs, or instrumental affairs without believing that there are
men, or horses, or instruments? You say expressly that I believe in
dæmonic affairs, therefore in dæmons; but dæmons are a sort of gods or
the offspring of gods. Therefore, you cannot possibly believe that I do
not believe in gods. Really, I have sufficiently answered the
indictment. If I am condemned, it will not be on the indictment of
Meletus, but on popular calumnies; which have condemned good men before
me, and assuredly I shall not be the last.
_III.--The Defence_
It may be suggested that I ought to be ashamed of practices which have
brought you in danger of death. Risk of death is not to be taken into
account in any action which really matters at all. If it ought to be,
the heroes before Troy were bad characters! Every man should stand to
his post, come life, come death. Should I have stood to my post and
faced death when on service at Potidaca, but have failed through fear of
death when the deity imposed on me a certain course of action? Whether
to die be evil or good, I know not, though many think they know it to be
evil. But to disobey authority, human or divine, I know to be evil; and
I will not do what I know to be evil to avoid what may in fact be a
good. Insomuch that if you now offer to set me free on condition that I
should cease from these pursuits on pain of death, I should reply: "Men
of Athens, I love and honour you, but I will obey the god rather than
you; and while I breathe and have the power I will not cease from the
pursuit of philosophy, or from exhorting and warning you as I have done
hitherto, against caring much for riches and nothing for the perfecting
of your souls. This is the bidding of the god. If to speak thus be to
corrupt youth, then I corrupt youth. But he who says I speak other
things than this talks vanity; and this I will do, though the penalty
were many deaths."
Do not murmur, but listen, for you will profit. If you put me to death,
you will harm yourselves more than me, for it is worse to do wrong than
to suffer it. You will not easily find another to serve as the gadfly
which rouses a noble horse--as I have done, being commissioned thereto
by the god. For that I have made no profit for myself from this course,
my poverty proves. If it seems absurd that I should meddle thus with
each man privately, but take no part in public affairs, that is because
of the divine or dæmonic influence of which I have spoken, named also in
mockery by Meletus in the indictment. This is a voice which checks but
never urges me on. Indeed, had I meddled with politics, I should have
been dead long ago.
That I will prove by facts. When you chose to condemn the ten generals,
my phyle supplied the Prytanes, and I alone stood out against you. And
in the time of the thirty, I was ordered with four others to bring Leon
from Salamis to be executed, and I alone would not; and it may be that
my own life was saved only because that government was broken up. Judge,
then, if my life would not have been shorter, had I taken part in public
life.
But I have never posed as an instructor or taken money for giving
instruction. Anyone who chooses can question me and hear what I have to
say. People take pleasure in my society, because they like to hear those
exposed who deem themselves wise but are not. This duty the god has laid
on me by oracles and dreams and every mode of divine authority. If I am
corrupting or have corrupted youth, why do none of them bear witness
against me, or their fathers or brothers or other kinsmen? Many I see
around me who should do so if this charge were true; yet all are ready
to assist me.
This, and the like, is what I have to say in my defence. Perhaps some of
you, thinking how, in a like case with mine but less exigent, he has
sought the compassion of the court with tears and pleadings of his
children and kinsfolk, will be indignant that I do none of these things,
though I have three boys of my own. That is not out of disrespect to
you, but because I think it would be unbeseeming to me. Such displays,
as though death were something altogether terrifying, are to me
astonishing and degrading to our city in the sight of strangers, for
persons reputed to excel in anything, as in some respects I am held to
excel the generality.
But apart from credit, I count that we ought to inform and convince our
judges, not seek to sway them by entreaties; that they may judge rightly
according to the laws, and not by favor. For you are sworn. And how
should I persuade you to break your oath, who am charged by Meletus with
impiety. For by so doing, I should be persuading you to disbelief in the
gods, and making that very charge against myself. To you and to the god
I leave it, that I may be judged as shall be best for you and for me.
_IV.--After the Verdict_
Your condemnation does not grieve me for various reasons, one of which
is that I fully expected it. What surprises me is the small majority by
which it was carried. Evidently Meletus, if left to himself, would have
failed to win the few votes needed to save him from the fine. Well, the
sentence he fixes is death, and I have to propose an
alternative--presumably, the sentence I deserve. I have neglected all
the ordinary pursuits and ambitions of men--which would have been no
good either to me or to you--that I might benefit each man privately, by
persuading him to give attention to himself first--how to attain his own
best and wisest--and his mere affairs afterwards, and the city in like
manner. The proper reward is that I should be maintained in the
Prytaneum as a public benefactor.
You may think this merely a piece of insolence, but it is not so. I am
not conscious of having wronged any man. Time does not permit me to
prove my case, and I will not admit guilt by owning that I deserve
punishment by a fine. What have I to fear? The penalty fixed by Meletus,
as to which I do not know whether it is good or bad? Shall I, to escape
this, choose something which is certainly bad? Imprisonment, to be the
slave of the Eleven? A fine, to be a prisoner till I pay it?--which
comes to the same thing, as I cannot pay. Exile? If my fellow-citizens
cannot put up with me, how can I expect strangers to do so? The young
men will come to listen to me. If I repulse them, they will drive me
out; and if I do not their elders will drive me out, and I shall live
wandering from city to city.
Why cannot I go and hold my tongue, you may ask. That is the one thing
which I cannot do. That would be to disobey the god, and the life would
not be worth living, though you do not believe me. I might undertake to
pay a mina. However, as Plato and Crito and Apollodorus urge me to name
thirty minae, for which they will be security, I propose thirty minae.
* * * * *
Your enemies will reproach you, Athenians, for having put to death that
wise man Socrates. Yet you would have had but a short time to wait, for
I am old. I speak to those of you who have condemned me. I am condemned,
not for lack of argument, but because I have not chosen to plead after
the methods that would have been pleasant and flattering to you, but
degrading to me. There are things we may not do to escape death, for
baseness is worse than death, and swifter. Death has overtaken me, who
am old, but baseness my accusers, who are strong. Truth condemns them,
as you have condemned me, and each of us abides sentence, And for you
who have condemned me there will be a penalty swift and sure, and so I
take my leave of you.
But to you, my true judges, who voted for my acquittal, I would speak
while yet we may. I have to tell you that my warning dæmon has in no way
withstood the course I have taken, and the reason, assuredly, is that I
have done what is best, gaining blessing, death being no evil at all.
For death is either only to cease from sensations altogether as in a
dreamless sleep, and that is no loss; or else it is a passing to another
place where all the dead are--the heroes, the poets, the wise men of
old. How priceless were it to hold converse with them and question them!
And surely the judges there pass no death-sentences!
But be you hopeful with regard to death, for to the good man, neither in
life nor in death is there anything that can harm him. And for me, I am
confident that it is better to die than to live. Therefore the dæmon did
not check me, and I have no resentment against those who have caused my
death. And now we go, I to death and you to life; but which of us to the
better state, God knoweth alone.
The Republic
The wonderful series of dialogues in which Socrates takes the
leading part are at once the foundation and the crown of all
idealistic philosophy, and as literary masterpieces remain
unmatched. Certain of Plato's disciples would claim that his
highest achievement is "The Timæus"; there are some who set their
affections on "The Phædo"; but a general vote of all Platonists
would probably give the first position to "The Republic," and this
is undoubtedly the work which has had the widest general influence.
In "The Republic" itself Socrates is, professedly engaged in a
disputation, of which the object is to discover what Justice means;
and this leads to the description of the building up of that ideal
state or commonwealth from which the dialogue derives its title of
"The Republic."
_I.--How the Argument Arose_
I had gone with Glaucon to attend the celebration of the festival of
Bendis--the Thracian Artemis--a picturesque affair, and we were just
leaving, when Polemarchus insisted on carrying us off by main force to
the house of his father, Cephalus. There we found a small company
assembled. The old gentleman received us with hearty geniality; he is
ageing, but would not see any hardship in that, if you take age
good-humouredly. Of course, he owned that being wealthy makes a
difference, but not all the difference. The best of wealth is that you
need not do things which anger the gods and entail punishment in the
hereafter; you need not lie, or be in debt to gods or men. And this
consciousness of your own justice is a great consolation.
"But," said I, "what is justice? Is it always to speak the truth, and
always to let a man have his property? There are circumstances----"
"I must go," said he. "Polemarchus shall do the arguing."
This set us discussing the nature of justice. Glaucon took up the
cudgels, after a preliminary skirmish with Thrasymachus.
Assuming justice to be desirable--is it so for itself and by itself, or
only for its results; or both? The world at large puts it in the second
category as an inconvenient necessity. To suffer injustice is an evil,
and to protect themselves from that the weak combine to prevent
injustice from being done. But if anyone had the ring of Gyges, which
made him invisible, so that he could go his own way without let or
hindrance, he would get all the pleasures he could out of life without
troubling about the justice of it. Again, imagine on the one hand your
really consummate rogue who gets credit for all the virtues and is
surrounded by all the material factors of happiness; and, on the other
hand, a man of utter rectitude, on whom circumstances combine to fix the
stigma of iniquity. He will be rejected, scourged, crucified; while the
other is enjoying wealth, honour, everything, and can afford to make his
peace with the gods into the bargain.
Then Adeimantus took the field in support of his brother. "The poets,"
he said, "hold forth about the rewards of virtue here and hereafter. But
we see the unrighteous prospering mightily; and the religious mendicants
come to rich folks and offer to sell them indulgences on easy terms. A
keen-witted lad is bound to argue that it is only the appearance of
justice that is needed for prosperity; while the gods can be reconciled
cheaply. This dwelling on the temporal rewards of justice is fatal. What
we expect of you is to show us the inherent value of justice--justice
itself, not the appearance of it."
"Well argued," said I, "especially as you reject your own conclusion. I
can but try, though the task be hard. But my weak sight may enable me to
read large characters better than small. Justice is the virtue of the
state as well as of the individual; finding it in the state, the
greater, may help us to find it in the individual, the less."
_II.--The Socratic Utopia_
Society arises because different people are the better skilled to supply
different wants, and the wants of each are supplied by mutual
arrangement and division of labour. Wants multiply; the community grows;
it exchanges its own foreign products; merchants and markets are added
to the producers; and when folk begin to hire servants you have a
complete city or state living a life of simplicity. "A city of pigs,"
said Glaucon, "with no refinements." We will go on and develop every
luxury of civilisation. But then our city and its neighbours will be
wanting each other's lands. We must have soldiers. Our best guardians
will be a select band, those who are of the right temper and thoroughly
trained; fierce to foes but gentle to friends, like that true
philosopher, the dog, to whom knowledge is the test. The known are
friends, the unknown foes--knowledge begets gentleness.
So our guardians must be trained to knowledge; we must educate them.
Music and gymnastic, our national intellectual and physical training,
must be taught. Literature comes first, and really we teach things that
are not true before we teach things that are true--fables before facts.
But over these we must exercise a rigid censorship, excluding what is
essentially false.
We must have no stories which attribute harmful doings to the gods. God
must be represented as He is--the author of good always, of evil never;
also as having in him no variableness, neither shadow of turning. God
has no need of disguises. The lie in the soul--essential falsehood--is
to Him abhorrent, and He has no need of such deceptions as may be
innocent or even laudable for men. God must be shown always as utterly
true.
Similarly, we must not have stories which inspire dread of death; no
Achilles saying in the under-world that it were better to be a slave in
the flesh than Lord of the Shades. And again, no heroes--and gods still
less--giving way to frantic lamentations and uncontrolled emotions, even
uncontrolled laughter. Truth must be inculcated; medicinal untruths, so
to speak, are the prerogative of our rulers alone, and must be permitted
to no one else. Temperance, which means self-control and obedience to
authority, is essential, and is not always characteristic of Homer's
gods and heroes! We must exclude a long list of most unedifying passages
on this score. As for pictures of the afflictions of the righteous and
the prosperity of the unjust, we must wait, as we have not yet defined
justice. We turn to the poetical forms in which the stories should be
embodied.
The possible forms are the simply descriptive, the imitative, and the
mixture of the two: narrative drama, and narrative mixed with dialogue.
Our guardians ought to eschew imitation altogether, or at least to
imitate only the good and noble. The act of imitating an evil character
is demoralising, just as no self-respecting person will imitate the
lower animals, and so on. Imitation must be restricted within the
narrowest practicable limits.
But who are to be our actual rulers? The best of the elders, whose
firmness and consistency have stood the test of temptation. To them we
transfer the title of guardians, calling the younger men auxiliaries.
And we must try to induce everyone--guardians, soldiers, citizens--to
believe in one quite magnificent lie: that they were like the men in the
Cadmus myth, fashioned in the ground, their common mother.
"I don't wonder at your blushing," said Glaucon.
That they are brothers and sisters, but of different metals--gold,
silver, brass, iron; not necessarily of the same metal as their parents
in the flesh; and must take rank according to the metal whereof they are
made. No doubt it will take a generation or two to get them to believe
it.
And now our soldiers must pitch their camp for the defence of the city.
Soldiering is their business, not money-making. They must live in
common, supported efficiently by the state, having no private property.
The gold and silver in their souls is of God. For them, though not for
the other citizens, the earthly dross called gold is the accursed thing.
Once let them possess it, and they will cease to be guardians, and
become oppressors and tyrants.
III.--_Of Justice and Communism_
But now we have to look for justice. Find the other three cardinal
virtues first, and then justice will be distinguishable. Wisdom is in
the guardians; if they be wise, the whole state will be wise. Courage we
find in the soldiers; courage is the true estimate of danger, and that
has been ingrained in them by their education. Temperance, called
mastery of self, is really the mastery of the better over the baser
qualities; as in our state the better class controls the inferior.
Temperance would seem to lie in the harmonious inter-relation of the
different classes. Obviously, the remaining virtue of the state is the
constant performance of his own particular function in the state, and
not his neighbour's, by each member of the state. Let us see how that
works out in the individual.
Shall we not find that there are three several qualities in the
individual, each of which must in like manner do its own business, the
intellectual, the passionate or spirited, and the lustful? They must be
separate, because one part of a thing cannot be doing contradictory
things at the same time; your lusts bid you do what your intelligence
forbids; and the emotional quality is distinct from both desire and
reason, though in alliance with reason. Well, here you have wisdom and
courage in the intellectual and spiritual parts, temperance in their
mastery over desire; and justice is the virtue of the soul as a whole;
of each part never failing to perform its own function and that alone.
To ask, now, whether justice or injustice is the more profitable becomes
ridiculous.
Now we shall find that virtue is one, but that vice has several forms;
as there is but one form of perfect state--ours--whether it happens to
be called a monarchy if there be but one guardian, or an aristocracy if
there be more; and, as it has four principal imperfect forms, so there
are four main vices.
Here Glaucon and Adeimantus refused to let me go on; I had shirked a
serious difficulty. What about women and children? My saying that the
soldiers were to live in common might mean anything. What kind of
communism was I demanding? Well, there are two different questions: What
is desirable? And, What is possible? First, then, our defenders are our
watch-dogs. Glaucon knows all about dogs; we don't differentiate in the
case of males and females; the latter hunt with the pack. If women are
similarly to have the same employments as men, they must have the same
education in music and gymnastic. We must not mind ribald comments. But
should they share masculine employments? Do they differ from men in such
a way that they should not? Women bear children, and men beget them; but
apart from that the differences are really only in degrees of capacity,
not essential distinctions of quality; even as men differ among
themselves. The natures being the same, the education must be the same,
and the same careers must be open.
But a second and more alarming wave threatens us: Community of wives and
children. "You must prove both the possibility and desirability of
that." Men and women must be trained together and live together, but not
in licentiousness. They must be mated with the utmost care for
procreation, the best being paired at due seasons, nominally by lot, and
for the occasion. The offspring of the selected will have a common
nursery; the mothers will not know which were their own children.
Parentage will be permissible only between twenty-five and fifty-five,
and between twenty and forty. The children begotten in the same batch of
espousals will be brothers and sisters.
The absence of "mine" and "thine" will ensure unity, because it
abolishes the primary cause of discord; common maintenance by the state
removes all temptation either to meanness or cringing. Our guardians
will be uncommonly happy. As to practicability: communism is suitable
for war. The youngsters will be taken to watch any fighting; cowards
will be degraded; valour will be honoured, and death on the field, with
other supreme services to the state, will rank the hero among demigods.
Against Greeks war must be conducted as against our own kith and kin.
But as to the possibility of all this--this third threatening wave is
the most terrific of all.
_IV.--Of Philosophy in Rulers_
It will be possible then, and only then, when kings are philosophers or
philosophers kings. "You will be mobbed and pelted for such a
proposition." Still, it is the fact. The philosopher desires all
knowledge. You know that justice, beauty, good, and so on, are single,
though their presentation is multiplex and variable. Curiosity about the
multiplex particulars is not desire of knowledge, which is of the one
constant idea--of that which is, as ignorance is of that which is not.
What neither is nor is not, that which fluctuates and changes, is the
subject matter of opinion, a state between knowledge and ignorance.
Beauty is beauty always and everywhere; the things that look beautiful
may be ugly from another point of view. Experience of beautiful things,
curiosity about them, must be distinguished from knowledge of beauty;
the philosopher is not to be confounded with the connoisseur, not
knowledge with opinion. The philosopher is he who has in his mind the
perfect pattern of justice, beauty, truth; his is the knowledge of the
eternal; he contemplates all time and all existence; no praises are too
high for his character. "No doubt; still, if that is so, why do
professed philosophers always show themselves either fools or knaves in
ordinary affairs?" A ship's crew which does not understand that the art
of navigation demands a knowledge of the stars, will stigmatise a
properly qualified pilot as a star-gazing idiot, and will prevent him
from navigating. The world assumes that the philosopher's abstractions
are folly, and rejects his guidance. The philosopher is the best kind of
man; the corrupted philosopher is the worst; and the corrupted
influences brought to bear are irresistible to all but the very
strongest natures. The professional teachers of philosophy live not by
leading popular opinion, but by pandering to it; a bastard brood trick
themselves out as philosophers, while the true philosopher withdraws
himself from so gross a world. Small wonder that philosophy gets
discredited! Not in the soil of any existing state can philosophy grow
naturally; planted in a suitable state, her divinity will be apparent.
I need no longer hesitate to say that we must make our guardians
philosophers. The necessary combination of qualities is extremely rare.
Our test must be thorough, for the soul must be trained up by the
pursuit of all kinds of knowledge to the capacity for the pursuit of the
highest--higher than justice and wisdom--the idea of the good. "But what
is the good--pleasure, knowledge?" No. To see and distinguish material
things, the faculty of sight requires the medium of light, whose source
is the sun. The good is to the intellectual faculty what the sun is to
that of vision: it is the source and cause of truth, which is the light
whereby we perceive ideas; it is not truth nor the ideas, but above
them; their cause, as the sun is the source of light and the cause of
growth.
Again, as the material things with which the eye is concerned are in two
categories--the copies, reflections or shadows of things, and actual
things--correspondingly the things perceived by the intellect are in a
secondary region--as the mathematical--where everything is derived from
hypotheses which are assumed to be first principles; or in a supreme
region, in which hypotheses are orly the steps by which we ascend to the
real ultimate first principles themselves. And it will follow further
that the mind has four faculties appropriate to these four divisions,
which we call respectively pure reason (the highest), understanding,
conviction, and perception of shadows; the first pair being concerned
with being, the field of the intellect; the second pair with becoming,
the field of opinion.
_V.--Of Shadows and Realities_
Let me speak a parable. Humanity--ourselves--are as people dwelling ever
bound and fettered in a twilit cave, with our backs to the light. Behind
us is a parapet, and beyond the parapet a fire; all that we see is the
shadows thrown on the wall that faces us by figures passing along the
parapet behind us; all we hear is the echo of their voices. Now, if some
of us are turned round to face the light and look on the real figures,
they will be dazzled at first, and much more if they are taken out into
the light, and up to face the sun himself; but presently they will see
perfectly, and have all the joy thereof. Now send them back into the
cave, and they will be apparently much blinder than the folk who have
been there all the time, and their talk of what they have seen will be
taken for the babbling of fools, or worse. Small wonder that those who
have beheld the light have but little mind to return to the twilight
cave which is the common world. But remember--everyone in the cave
possesses the faculty of sight if only his eyes be turned to the light.
Loose the fetters of carnal desires which hold him with his back to the
light, and every man _may_ be converted and live. So we must select
those who are most capable of facing the light, and see to it that they
return to the cave, to give the cave-dwellers the benefit of their
knowledge. And if this be for them a hardship, we must bear in mind as
before, that the good of the whole is what matters, not whether one or
another may suffer hardship for the sake of the whole.
How, then, shall we train them to the passage from darkness to light?
For this, our education in music and gymnastic is wholly inadequate. We
must proceed first to the science of numbers, then of geometry, then of
astronomy. And after astronomy, there is the sister science of abstract
harmonics--not of audible sounds. All of which are but the prelude to
the ultimate supreme science of dialectic, which carries the
intelligence to the contemplation of the idea of the good, the ultimate
goal. And here to attempt further explanation would be vanity. This is
the science of the pure reason, the coping-stone of knowledge.
We saw long ago that our rulers must possess every endowment of mind and
body, all cultivated to the highest degree. From the select we must
again select, at twenty, those who are most fit for the next ten years'
course of education; and from them, at thirty, we shall choose those who
can, with confidence, be taken to face the light; who have been tested
and found absolutely steadfast, not shaken by having got beyond the
conventional view of things. We will give them five or six years of
philosophy; then fifteen years of responsible office in the state; and
at fifty they shall return to philosophy, subject to the call upon them
to take up the duties of rulership and of educating their successors.
_VI.--Of State Types and Individual Types_
Before this digression we were on the point of discussing the four
vitiated forms of the state, and the corresponding individual types. The
four types of state as we know them in Hellas, are: the Spartan, where
personal ambition and honour rule, which we call timocracy; the
oligarchical, where wealth rules; the democratic; and the arbitrary rule
of the individual, which we call tyranny. The comparison of this
last--the supremely unjust--with our own--the supremely just--will show
whether justice or injustice be the more desirable.
The perfect state degenerates to timocracy when the state's numerical
law of generation [an unsolved riddle] has not been properly observed,
and inferior offspring have entered in consequence into the ruling body.
The introduction of private property will cause them to assume towards
the commonalty the attitude, not of guardians, but of masters, and to be
at odds among themselves; also, in their education gymnastic will
acquire predominance over music. Ambition and party spirit become the
characteristic features. When, in an ill-ordered state a great man
withdraws from the corruption of politics into private life, we see the
corresponding individual type in the son of such a one, egged on by his
mother and flattering companions, to win back for himself at all costs
the prestige which his father had resigned; personal ambition becomes
his dominant characteristic.
Oligarchy is the next outcome of the introduction of private property;
riches outweigh virtue, love of money the love of honour, and the rich
procure for themselves the legal monopoly of political power. Here the
state becomes divided against itself--there is one state of the rich and
another of the poor--and the poor will be divided into the merely
incompetent and the actively dangerous or predatory. And your
corresponding individual is he whose father had won honours which had
not saved him from ultimate ruin; so that the son rejects ambition and
makes money his goal, till, for the sake of money, he will compass any
baseness, though still only under a cloak of respectability.
In the oligarchy the avaricious encourage and foster extravagance in
their neighbours. Men, ruined by money-lenders, turn on their moneyed
rulers, overthrow them, and give everyone a share in the government. The
result is that the state is not one, nor two, but diverse. Folk say what
they like and do what they like, and anyone is a statesman who will wave
the national flag. That is democracy. Such is the son of your miserly
oligarch; deprived of unnecessary pleasures, he is tempted to wild
dissipation. He has no education to help him to distinguish, and the
vices of dissipation assume the aspect and titles of virtue. He
fluctuates from one point of view to another--is one thing to-day and
another to-morrow.
And last we come to tyranny and the tyrannical man. Democratic license
develops into sheer anarchy. Jack is as good as his master. The
predatory population becomes demagogues; they squeeze the decent
citizens, and drive them to adopt oligarchical methods; then the friend
of the people appears; the protector, champion, and hero, by a familiar
process becomes a military autocrat, who himself battens, as must also
his mercenary soldiery, on the citizens; and our unhappy Demos finds
that it has jumped out of the reek into the fire. Now our democratical
man was swayed by the devices and moods of the moment; his son will be
swayed by the most irrational and most bestial of his appetites; be
bully and tyrant, while slave of his own lusts. Your thorough blackguard
of every species comes of this type, and the worst of all is he who
achieves the tyranny of a state. See, then, how, even as the tyrannic
state is the most utterly enslaved, so the tyrannic man is of all men
the least free; and, beyond all others, the tyrant of a state. He is
like a slave-owner, who is at the mercy of his slaves--the passions
which he must pamper, or die, yet cannot satisfy. Surely such an one is
the veriest slave--yea, the most wretched of men. It follows that he who
is the most complete opposite of the tyrant is the happiest--the
individual who corresponds to our state. Proclaim it, then, son of
Ariston, that the most just of men is he who is master of himself, and
is of all men the most miserable, whether gods and men recognise him or
no.
_VII.--Of the Happiness of the Just_
Now for a second proof. Three kinds of pleasure correspond to the three
elements of the soul--reason, spirit, desire. In each man one of the
three is in the ascendant. One counts knowledge vain in comparison with
the advantages of riches, another with those of honour; to the
philosopher only truth counts. But he is the only one of them who makes
his choice from experience of all three kinds. And he, the only
qualified judge, places the satisfaction of the spirit second, and of
desire lowest. And yet a third proof: I fancy the only quite real
pleasures are those of the philosopher. There is an intermediate state
between pleasure and pain. To pass into this from pleasure is painful,
and from pain is pleasurable. Now, the pleasures of the body are really
nothing more than reliefs from pains of one kind or another. And, next,
the pleasures of the soul, being of the eternal order, are necessarily
more real than those of the body, which are fleeting--in fact, mere
shadows of pleasure.
Much as I love and admire Homer, I think our regulations as to poetry
were particularly sound; but we must inquire further into the meaning of
imitation. We saw before that all particular things are the
presentations of some universal idea. There is one ultimate idea of bed,
or chair, or table. What the joiner makes is a copy of that. All ideas
are the creation of the master artificer, the demiurge; of his creations
all material things are copies. We can all create things in a way by
catching reflections of them in a mirror. But these are only copies of
particular things from one point of view, partial copies of copies of
the idea. Such precisely are the creations of the painter, and in like
manner of the poet. What they know and depict is not the realities, but
mere appearances. If the poets knew the realities they would have left
us something other than imitations of copies. Moreover, what they
imitate is not the highest but the lower; not the truth of reason, but
emotions of all sorts, which it should be our business not to excite but
to control and allay. So we continue to prohibit the poetry which is
imitation, however supreme, and allow only hymns to the gods, and
praises of great men. We must no more admit the allurements of poesy
than the attractions of ambition or of riches.
Greater far are the rewards of virtue than all we have yet shown; for an
immortal soul should heed nothing that is less than eternal. "What, is
the soul then immortal? Can you prove that?" Yes, of a surety. In all
things there is good and evil; a thing perishes of its own corruption,
not of the corruption of aught external to it. If disease or injury of
the body cannot corrupt the soul, _a fortiori_ they cannot slay it; but
injustice, the corruption of the soul, is not induced by injury to the
body. If, then, the soul be not destroyed by sin, nothing else can
destroy it, and it is immortal. The number of existing souls must then
be constant; none perish, none are added, for additional immortal souls
would have to come out of what is mortal, which is absurd. Now, hitherto
we have shown only that justice is in itself best for the soul, but now
we see that its rewards, too, are unspeakably great. The gods, to whom
the just are known, will reward them hereafter, if not here; and even in
this world they have the better lot in the long run. But of this nothing
is comparable to their rewards in the hereafter, revealed to us in the
mythos of Er, called the Armenian, whose body being slain in battle, his
soul was said to have returned to it from the under-world--renewing its
life--a messenger to men of what he had there beheld. For a thousand
years the souls, being judged, enjoyed or suffered a tenfold retribution
for all they had done of good or evil in this life, and some for a
second term, or it might be for terms without end. Then for the most
part they were given again, after the thousand years, a choice of
another lot on the earth, being guided therein by their experience in
their last life; and so, having drunk of the waters of forgetfulness,
came back to earth once more, unconscious of their past.
Let us, then, believing that the soul is indeed immortal, hold fast to
knowledge and justice, that it may be well with us both here and
hereafter.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
The World as Will and Idea
Arthur Schopenhauer, who was born at Dantzig, in Germany, Feb. 22,
1788, and died September 21, 1860, came of highly intellectual
antecedents, his mother, Johanna Schopenhauer, being a noted German
authoress. As an indefatigable student he migrated, according to
the fashion of his Fatherland, from one university to another, in
order to sit at the feet of various professors, and thus he
attended courses at Gottingen, Berlin, and Jena successively,
finally graduating at Jena in 1813. The winter of that year he
spent at Weimar, revelling in the society of Goethe, and also
enjoying intercourse with Maier, the profound Orientalist, who
indoctrinated him with those views of Indian mysticism which
greatly influenced his future philosophic disquisitions. After
writing and publishing a few slight treatises Schopenhauer sent
forth his great work, "The World as Will and Idea," which has
immortalized him. It appeared in 1819. During subsequent years,
when he resided in Frankfort, he wrote his volumes on "Will in
Nature," "The Freedom of the Will," "The Basis of Morals," and
"Parerga and Paralipomena." The keynote of Schopenhauer's
philosophy is that the sole essential reality in the universe is
the will, and that all visible and tangible phenomena are merely
subjective representations, or formal manifestations of that will
which is the only thing-in-itself that actually subsists. Thus he
stands among philosophers as the uncompromising antagonist of
Hegel, Fichte, Schelling and all the champions of the theory of
consciousness and absolute reason as the essential foundation of
the faculty of thought. The defect of his system is its tendency to
a sombre pessimism, but his literary style is magnificent and his
power of reasoning is exceptional. The epitome here given has been
prepared from the original German.
_I.--The World as Idea_
"The world is my idea," is a truth valid for every living creature,
though only man can consciously contemplate it. In doing so he attains
philosophical wisdom. No truth is more absolutely certain than that all
that exists for knowledge, and therefore this whole world, is only
object in relation to subject, perception of a perceiver, in a word,
idea. The world is idea.
This truth is by no means new; it lay by implication in the reflections
of Descartes; but Berkeley first distinctly enunciated it; while Kant
erred by ignoring it. So ancient is it that it was the fundamental
principle of the Indian Vedanta, as Sir William Jones points out. In one
aspect the world is idea; in the other aspect, the world is will.
That which knows all things and is known by none is the subject; and for
this subject all exists. But the world as idea consists of two essential
and inseparable halves. One half is the object, whose form consists of
time and space, and through these of multiplicity; but the other half is
the subject, lying not in space and time, for it subsists whole and
undivided in every reflecting being. Thus any single individual endowed
with the faculty of perception of the object, constitutes the whole
world of idea as completely as the millions in existence; but let this
single individual vanish, and the whole world as idea would disappear.
Each of these halves possesses meaning and existence only in and through
the other, appearing with and vanishing with it. Where the object begins
the subject ends. One of Kant's great merits is that he discovered that
the essential and universal forms of all objects--space, time,
causality--lie _a priori_ in our consciousness, for they may be
discovered and fully known from a consideration of the subject, without
any knowledge of the object.
Ideas of perception are distinct from abstract ideas. The former
comprehend the whole world of experience; the latter are concepts, and
are possessed by man alone amongst all creatures on earth; and the
capacity for these, distinguishing him from the lower animals, is called
reason.
Time and space can each be mentally presented separately from matter,
but matter cannot be thought of apart from time and space. The
combination of time and space in connection with matter constitutes
action, that is, causation. The law of causation arises from change,
that is from the fact that at the same part of space there is now one
thing and then another, and this succession must be the result of some
law of causality, seeing that there must be a determined part of space
and a determined part of space for the change. Causality thus combines
space with time.
Much vain controversy has arisen concerning the reality of the external
universe, owing to the fallacious notion that because perception arises
through the knowledge of causality, the relation of subject and object
is that of cause and effect. For this relation only subsists between
objects, that is between the immediate object and objects known
indirectly. The object always pre-supposes the subject, and so there can
be between those two no relation of reason and consequent. Therefore the
controversy between realistic dogmatism and doctrinal scepticism is
foolish. The former seeks to separate object and idea as cause and
effect, whereas these two are really one; the latter supposes that in
the idea we have only the effect, never the cause, and never know the
real being, but merely its action. The correction of both these
fallacies is the same, that object and idea are identical.
One of the most pressing of questions is, how certainty is to be
reached, how judgments are to be established, and wherein knowledge and
science consist. Reason is feminine in nature; it can only give after it
has received. Of Itself it possesses only the empty forms of its
operation. Knowledge is the result of reason, so that we cannot
accurately say that the lower animals know anything, but only that they
apprehend through the faculty of perception.
The greatest value of knowledge is that it can be communicated and
retained. This makes it inestimably important for practice. Rational or
abstract knowledge is that knowledge which is peculiar to the reason as
distinguished from the understanding. The use of reason is that it
substitutes abstract concepts for ideas of perception, and adopts them
as the guide of action.
The many-sided view of life which man, as distinguished from the lower
animals, possesses through reason, makes him stand to them as the
captain, equipped with chart, compass and quadrant, and with a knowledge
of navigation of the ocean, stands to the ignorant sailors under his
command.
Man lives two lives. Besides his life in the concrete is his life in the
abstract. In the former he struggles, suffers, and dies as do the mere
animal creatures. But in the abstract he quietly reflects on the plan of
the universe as does a captain of a ship on the chart. He becomes in
this abstract life of calm reasoning a deliberate observer of those
elements which previously moved and agitated his emotions. Withdrawing
into this serene contemplation he is like an actor who has played a part
on the stage and then withdraws and as one of the audience quietly looks
on at other actors energetically performing.
The result of this double life is that human serenity which furnishes so
vivid a contrast to the lack of reason in the brutes. Reason has won to
a wonderful extent the mastery over the animal nature. The climacteric
stage of the mere exercise of reason is displayed in Stoicism, an
ethical system which aims primarily not at virtue but at happiness,
although this theory inculcates that happiness can be attained only
through "ataraxia" (inward quietness or peace of mind), while this can
only be gained by virtue. In other words, Zeno, the founder of the Stoic
theory, sought to lift man up above the reach of pain and misery. But
this use of pure reason involves a painful paradox, seeing that for an
ultimate way of escape Stoicism is constrained to prescribe suicide.
When compared with the Stoic, how different appear the holy conquerors
of the world in Christianity, that sublime form of life which presents
to us a picture wherein we see blended perfect virtue and supreme
suffering.
_II.--The World as Will_
We are compelled to further inquiry, because we cannot be satisfied with
knowing that we have ideas, and that these are associated with certain
laws, the general expression of which is the principle of sufficient
reason. We wish to know the significance of our ideas. We ask whether
this world is nothing more than a mere idea, not worthy of our notice if
it is to pass by us like an empty dream or an airy vision, or whether it
is something more substantial.
We can surely never arrive at the nature of things from without. No
matter how assiduous our researches may be, we can never reach anything
beyond images and names. We resemble a man going round a castle seeking
vainly for an entrance and sometimes sketching the façades. And yet this
is the method followed by all philosophers before me.
The truth about man is that he is not a pure knowing subject, not a
winged cherub without a material body, contemplating the world from
without. For he is himself rooted in that world. That is to say, he
finds himself in the world as an _individual_ whose knowledge, which is
the essential basis of the whole world as idea, is yet ever communicated
through the medium of the body, whose sensations are the starting point
of the understanding of that world. His body is for him an idea like
every other idea, an object among objects. He only knows its actions as
he knows the changes in all other objects, and but for one aid to his
understanding of himself he would find this idea and object as strange
and incomprehensible as all others. That aid is _will_, which alone
furnishes the key to the riddle of himself, solves the problem of his
own existence, reveals to him the inner structure and significance of
his being, his action, and his movements.
The body is the immediate object of will; it may be called the
_objectivity of will_. Every true act of will is also instantly a
visible act of the body, and every impression on the body is also at
once an impression on the will. When it is opposed to the will it is
called pain, and when consonant with the will it is called pleasure. The
essential identity of body and will is shown by the fact that every
violent movement of the will, that is to say, every emotion, directly
agitates the body and interferes with its vital functions. So we may
legitimately say, My body is the objectivity of my will.
It is simply owing to this special relation to one body that the knowing
subject is an individual. Our knowing, being bound to individuality,
necessitates that each of us can only be one, and yet each of us can
know all. Hence arises the need for philosophy. The double knowledge
which each of us possesses of his own body is the key to the nature of
every phenomenon in the world. Nothing is either known to us or
thinkable by us except will and idea. If we examine the reality of the
body and its actions, we discover nothing beyond the fact that it is an
idea, except the will. With this double discovery reality is exhausted.
We can ascribe no other kind of reality to the material world. If we
maintain that it is something more than merely our idea, we must say
that in its inmost nature it is that which we discover in ourselves as
_will_. But the acts of will have always a ground or reason outside
themselves in motives, which, however, never determine more than how we
shall act at any given time or place under any given conditions or
circumstances. The will must have some manifestation, and the body is
that manifestation. By the movements of the body the will becomes
visible, and thus the body may be said to be the _objectification of the
will_. The perfect adaptation of the human and animal body to the human
and animal will resembles, though it far exceeds, the correspondence
between an instrument and its maker.
_III.--The World as Idea. Second Aspect_
We have looked at the world as idea, object for a subject, and next at
the world as will. All students of Plato know that the different grades
of objectification of will which are manifested in countless
individuals, and exist as their unrealized types or as the eternal forms
of things, are the Platonic Ideas. Thus these various grades are related
to individual things as their eternal forms or prototypes.
Thus the world in which we live is in its whole nature through and
through _will_, and at the same time through and through _idea_. This
idea always pre-supposes a form, object and subject. If we take away
this form and ask what then remains, the answer must be that this can be
nothing but _will_, which, properly speaking, is the _thing in itself_.
Every human being discovers that he himself is this will, and that the
world exists only for him does so in relation to his consciousness. Thus
each human being is himself in a double aspect the whole world, the
microcosm. And that which he realizes as his own real being exhausts the
being of the whole world, the macrocosm. So, like man, the world is
through and through _will_, and through and through _idea_.
Plato would say that an animal has no true being, but merely an apparent
being, a constant becoming. The only true being is the Idea which
embodies itself in that animal. That is to say, the Idea of the animal
alone has true being, and is the object of real knowledge. Kant, with
his theory of "the thing-in-itself" as the only reality, would say that
the animal is only a phenomenon in time, space, and causality, which are
conditions of our perception, not the thing-in-itself. So the individual
as we see it at this particular moment will pass away, without any
possibility of our knowing the thing-in-itself, for the knowledge of
that is beyond our faculties, and would require another kind of
knowledge than that which is possible for us through our understanding.
Thus do these two greatest philosophers of the West differ. The
thing-in-itself must, according to Kant, be free from all forms
associated with knowing. On the contrary, the Platonic idea is
necessarily object, something known and thus different from the
thing-in-itself, which cannot be apprehended. Yet Kant and Plato tend to
agree, because the thing-in-itself is, after all, that which lays aside
all the subordinate forms of phenomena, and has retained the first and
most universal form, that of the idea in general, the form of being
object for a subject. Plato attributes actual being only to the Ideas,
and concedes only an illusive, dream-like existence to things in space
and time, the real world for the individual.
_IV.--The World as Will. Second Aspect_
The last and most serious part of our consideration relates to human
action and is of universal importance. Human nature tends to relate
everything else to action. The world as idea is the perfect mirror of
the will, in which it recognizes itself in graduating scales of
distinctness and completeness. The highest degree of this consciousness
is man, whose nature only completely expresses itself in the whole
connected series of his actions.
Will is the thing-in-itself, the essence of the world. Life is only the
mirror of the will. Life accompanies the will as the shadow the body. If
will exists, so will life. So long as we are actuated by the will to
live, we need have no fear of ceasing to live, even in the presence of
death. True, we see the individual born and passing away; but the
individual is merely phenomenal. Neither the will, nor the subject of
cognition, is at all affected by birth or death.
It is not the individual, but only the species, that Nature cares for.
She provides for the species with boundless prodigality through the
incalculable profusion of seed and the great strength of fructification.
She is ever ready to let the individual fall when it had served its end
of perpetuating the species. Thus does Nature artlessly express the
great truth that only the Ideas, not the individuals, have actual
reality and are complete objectivity of the will.
Man is Nature himself, but Nature is only the objectified will to live.
So the man who has comprehended this point of view may well console
himself when contemplating death for himself or his friends, by turning
his eyes to the immortal life of Nature, which he himself is. And thus
we see that birth and death both really belong to life and that they
take part in that constant mutation of matter which is consistent with
the permanence of the species, notwithstanding the transitoriness of the
individual.
_V.--The Will as Related to Time_
Above all, we must not forget that the form of the phenomenon of the
will, the form of life in reality, is really only the _present_, not the
future nor the past. No man ever lived in the past, no man will live in
the future. The present is the sole form of life in sure possession. The
present exists always, together with its content, and both are fixed
like the rainbow on the waterfall.
Now all object is the will so far as it has become idea, and the subject
is the necessary correlative of the object. But real objects are in the
present only. So nothing but conceptions and fancies are included in the
past, while the present is the essential form of the phenomenon of the
will, and inseparable from it. The present alone is perpetual and
immovable. The fountain and support of it is the will to live, or the
thing-in-itself, which we are.
Life is certain to the will, and the present is certain to life. Time is
like a perpetually revolving globe. The hemisphere which is sinking is
like the past, that which is rising is like the future, while the
indivisible point at the top is like the actionless present. Or, time is
like a running river and the present is a rock on which it breaks but
which it cannot remove with itself. Therefore we are not concerned to
investigate the past antecedent to life, nor to speculate on the future
subsequent to death. We should simply seek to know the present, that
being the sole form in which the will manifests itself. Therefore, if we
are satisfied with life as it is, we may confidently regard it as
endless and banish the fear of death as illusive. Our spirit is of a
totally indestructible nature, and its energy endures from eternity to
eternity. It is like the sun, which seems to set only to our earthly
eyes, but which, in reality, never sets, but shines on unceasingly.
The problem of the freedom of the will is solved by the considerations
which have been thus outlined. Since the will is not phenomenon, is not
idea or object, but thing-in-itself, is not determined as a consequent
through any reason, and knows no necessity, therefore it is _free_. But
the person is never free, although he is the phenomenon of a free will,
for this indisputable reason, that he is already the determined
phenomenon of the free volition of this will, and is constrained to
embody the direction of that volition in a multiplicity of actions.
Repentance never results from a change of will, for this is impossible,
but from a change of knowledge. The essential in what I have willed I
must continue to will, for I am identical with this will which lies
outside time and change. Therefore I cannot repent of what I have
willed, though I can repent of what I have done; because, constrained by
false notions, I was led to do what did not accord with my will.
Repentance is simply the discovery of this fuller and more correct
knowledge.
SENECA
On Benefits
The more famous son of a famous rhetorician, the Roman philosopher
L. Annæus Seneca was born at Corduba (Cordova), in Spain, about the
beginning of the Christian era. While the date of his birth is a
matter for conjecture, the circumstances of his death are
notorious. He was a victim of Nero's jealousy and ingratitude in 65
A.D., when the emperor seized upon a plot against himself as the
pretext for sentencing Seneca to enforced suicide. In the vivid
pages of the historian Tacitus, there are few more pathetic
descriptions than that recounting the slow ebbing of the old
philosopher's life after his veins had been opened. Seneca had
known many vicissitudes of fortune. He was banished from Rome in 41
A.D., but, after his recall, rose to great power and affluence as
tutor and adviser to Nero. His works, many of which are lost,
include tragedies, letters, and treatises on philosophy. The high
ethical standard maintained by Seneca favoured the legend that he
was influenced by the Apostle Paul, and a spurious correspondence
between them was long accepted as genuine. Of the moral works there
is, for insight into human nature and for generosity of impulse, no
better representative than that "On Benefits."
_I.--Benefits are to be Bestowed, Not Lent_
Among the many different mistakes made by those who take life as it
comes, and do not pause to consider, I should say that scarcely anything
is so detrimental as this, that we do not know either how to confer or
how to receive a benefit. The consequence is that benefits are bad
investments, and turn out bad debts; and in the cases where there is no
return, it is too late to complain, for they were lost when we conferred
them. I should find it hard to say whether it is meaner for a receiver
to repudiate a benefit, or for a giver to press for its repayment,
inasmuch as a benefit is a sort of loan, whose return absolutely depends
on the spontaneous action of the debtor.
We find many men ungrateful; yet we make more men so, because at one
time we are insistent and harsh in our claims for return; at another
time we are fickle enough to regret our generosity. By such conduct we
spoil the whole favour, not merely after giving, but at the very moment
of giving. No one is glad to owe what he has not so much received as
wrung out of his benefactor.
Can anyone be grateful to a man who has contemptuously tossed him a
favour, or flung it at him in vexation, or out of sheer weariness given
simply to rid himself of trouble? A benefit is felt to be a debt in the
same spirit in which it is bestowed, and it ought not, therefore, to be
bestowed recklessly, for a man thanks himself for what he obtains from
an undiscerning giver.
Let us bestow benefits, not lend them on interest. He who, in the act of
giving, has thoughts about repayment, deserves to be deceived. Well,
then, what if the benefit has turned out ill? Why, children or wives
often disappoint our expectations, but we bring children up, we marry
all the same; and so determined are we in the teeth of experience, that
when baffled we fight better, when shipwrecked we take to sea again.
How much more seemly it is to be persistent in bestowing benefits! If a
man does not give because he does not receive, he must have given in
order to receive, and that justifies ingratitude. How many are there who
are unworthy of the light of day, and nevertheless the sun rises.
This is the property of a great and good mind, to seek not the fruit of
good deeds but good deeds themselves, and to search for a good man even
after having met with bad men. If there were no cheats, what nobility
would there be in showing bounty to many? As it is, goodness lies in
giving benefits for which we are not sure of recompense, but of which
the fruit is at once enjoyed by a noble mind.
The book-keeping of benefits is simple: so much is expenditure; if
there is any return, that is clear gain; if there is no return, that is
not a loss. I gave it for the sake of giving. No one registers his
benefits in a ledger, or, like an exacting usurer, presses to the day
and hour for repayment. An honourable man never thinks of such matters,
unless reminded by someone returning a favour; otherwise they assume the
form of a debt.
Do not hesitate, then; persevere in your generous work. Assist one with
your means, another with credit, another with your favour, or your
advice, or a word in season. Is he ungrateful for one benefit? After
receiving a second, perhaps he will not be so. Has he forgotten two?
Perhaps the third kindness will bring back the recollection of those
that slipped his mind.
The subject we have to treat is that of benefits. We have to lay down an
ordered account of what is the chief bond of human society: we have to
prescribe a rule of life, such that inconsiderate open-handedness may
not commend itself under the guise of kindness, but also that our
caution, while it controls, may not strangle generosity, which ought to
be neither defective nor excessive.
People must be instructed to receive cheerfully and to repay cheerfully,
setting before themselves the high aim of not merely equalling but
surpassing those to whom they are obliged, and this both in act and in
feeling. It is necessary to point out that the first point which we have
to learn is what we owe for a kindness received. One says he owes the
money which he got, another a consulship, another a province. These,
however, are but the outward tokens of good services, not the services
themselves. A benefit is to the hand something intangible; it is a
process in the mind. There is a world of difference between the material
of a benefit and the benefit itself. Hence the reality of a benefit lies
not in gold, nor silver, but in the good will of the giver. The things
which we hold in our hands, which we look at, and on which our desire is
set, are perishable; misfortune or injustice may rob us of them; but a
kindness lasts even after the loss of what was given.
What, then, is a benefit? It is the doing of a kindness which gives
pleasure and in the giving gets pleasure, being inclined and
spontaneously ready for that which it does. Consequently, it is not the
thing done or the thing given that matters, it is the intention. The
spirit animating the act is what exalts trivial things, throws lustre on
mean things, while it can discredit great and highly valued ones. The
benefit itself does not consist in what is paid or handed over, just as
the worship of the gods lies not in the victims offered but in the
dutiful and upright feelings of the worshippers. If benefits consisted
in things, and not in the actual wish to benefit, then the more things
we got, the greater would the benefit be. But this is incorrect, for
sometimes the man who has given a little in a noble way obliges us more
deeply; the man, that is, who has forgotten his own poverty in his
regard for mine.
What comes from a willing hand is far more acceptable than what comes
from a full hand. "It was a small favour for him to do"; yes, but he
could do no more. "But it is a great thing which this other gave"; yes,
but he hesitated, delayed, grumbled in the giving, gave disdainfully, or
he made a show of it and had no mind to please the person on whom he
bestowed it. Why, such a man made a present to his own pride, not to me!
_II.--On Kinds of Benefits and the Manner of Giving_
Let us give, in the first place, what is necessary; secondly, what is
useful; next, what is pleasant, and one should add, what is likely to
last. We must begin with what is necessary; for a matter involving life
appeals to the mind differently from mere adornment and equipment.
A man may be a fastidious critic in the case of a thing which he can do
without. But necessary things are those without which we cannot live, or
without which we ought not to live, or without which we do not want to
live. Examples of the first group are, to be rescued from the hands of
the enemy, from a tyrant's anger, and the other chequered perils that
beset human life. Whichsoever of these we avert, we shall earn gratitude
proportionate to the terrible magnitude of the danger.
Next come things without which, it is true, we can live, yet only in
such plight that death were better; such things are freedom, chastity,
and good conscience. After these we shall rank things dear to us from
association, blood-ties, use, and custom; such as children, wife, home,
and all else round which affection has so entwined itself that it views
severance from them as more serious than severance from life. There is
the subsequent class of things useful, a wide and varied class,
including money, not superabundant, but suited to a sensible mode of
living; and public office, with advancement for those who look high.
Again, we ought to consider what gift will afford the greatest pleasure;
and particularly ought we to take care not to send useless presents,
such as weapons of the chase to a woman or an old man, or books to a
block-head, or hunting nets to a person engrossed in literary pursuits.
We shall be equally careful, on the other hand, while we wish to send
what will please, not to insult friends in the matter of their
individual failing; not to send wines to a toper, for instance, or drugs
to a valetudinarian. Further, if free choice in giving lies in our
power, we shall beyond everything select lasting gifts, in order that
the present may be as little perishable as possible; for few are so
grateful as to think of what they have received when they do not see it.
Even the ungrateful have flashes of recollection when a gift is before
their eyes.
In a benefit there should be common sense. One should think of time,
place, individuals; on these factors turn the welcome or unwelcome
quality of gifts. How much more acceptable it is if we give what one
does not possess, than if we give that of which he has abundance and to
spare! Or the thing of which he has been long in quest without finding
it, rather than what he is likely to see everywhere! A benefit bestowed
upon all and sundry is acceptable to none. What you wish people to feel
grateful for, do seldom. Let no one misconstrue this as an attempt to
check generosity: by all means let her go any length she will; but she
must go steady, not gad about.
So let every recipient have some special mark about his gifts which may
lead him to trust that he has been admitted to particular favour. Let
him say: "I got the same as that man, but my gift came unasked"; or, "I
got what that man did; but I secured it within a short period, whereas
he had earned it by long waiting"; or, "There are others who have the
same; but it was not given with the same words, nor the same courtesy on
the part of the giver." Yet let discretion wait on bounty; for no
delight can come of random gifts. I object to generosity becoming
extravagance.
As to this question of how to give, I think I can point out the shortest
way: let us give in the manner in which we should like to receive; above
all, let it be done willingly, promptly, without the least hesitation.
The most welcome benefits are those which are at hand for the taking,
which come to meet us, where the one delay lies in the recipient's
modesty.
The best course is to forestall a man's wishes; next best, to follow
them. He who has got after asking, has not secured the favour for
nothing; since nothing costs so much as that which is bought by prayers.
"I beg you" is a painful phrase; it is irksome, and has to be said with
humble looks. Spare your friend, spare anyone you hope to make your
friend, this necessity. However prompt, a benefactor gives too late
when he gives by request.
All philosophers counsel that some benefits be given in public (like
military decorations), others in secret (like those that succour
weakness, want, or disgrace). Sometimes the very person helped must be
deceived into taking our bounty without knowing its origin. One may
insist, "I wish him to know"; but on that principle will you refuse to
save a man's life in the dark? Why should I not abstain from showing him
that I have given him anything, when it is one of the cardinal rules
never to reproach a man with what you have done for him, and not even to
remind him of it? For this is the law of benefits as between the two
parties; the one must at once forget what he has given, the other must
never forget what he has received.
_III.--On the Receiving of Benefits_
Now, let us cross to the other side, to treat of the behaviour which
becomes men in receiving benefits. "From who are we to receive?" To
answer you briefly, I should say, "From those to whom we should have
liked to give." It is a severe torment to be indebted to anyone against,
your will; on the other hand, it is more delightful to have received a
benefit from one whom you could love even after he has done you a wrong.
The truth is that more care must be taken in the choice of a creditor
for a benefit than for money; for the latter must have back only as much
as I received, but the former must have more paid to him. And even after
repayment of the favour, we nevertheless remain bound to each other.
Thus an unworthy person is not to be admitted into that most sacred bond
of kindnesses bestowed whence friendship arises. "But," it is pleaded,
"I cannot always say 'No.'" Suppose the offer is from a cruel and
hot-tempered despot, who will interpret your rejection of his bounty as
an insult?
Well, when I say you ought to choose, I except superior force and
intimidation; for these are factors which destroy choice. But after we
have decided on acceptance, let us accept with cheerfulness, showing our
gratification, and let it be evident to the giver, so that he may have
some immediate return.
There are some who like to receive benefits only in private, for they
object to a witness and confidant. One may conclude that such persons
have no good intentions. Other men speak most offensively of their
greatest benefactors. There are some people whom it is safer to affront
than to serve, since by their dislike they seek to give the impression
of being under no obligation. One ought to accept without fastidious
affectation, and without cringing humility; for if a man shows small
care at the time of bestowal, when every newly-conferred benefit should
please, what will he do when the first glow of pleasure has cooled down?
_IV.--Ingratitude_
We must now investigate the main cause of ingratitude. It is caused by
excessive self-esteem, the fault inherent in mortality of partiality to
ourselves and all that concerns us; or it is caused by greed; or by
jealousy. Let us begin with the first of these. Everybody is a
favourable judge of his own interest; hence it comes that he believes
himself to have earned all he has received, and views a benefit as
payment for services.
Nor does greed allow anyone to be grateful, for a gift is never
sufficient for its exorbitant expectations. Of all these hindrances to
gratitude, the most violent and distressing vice is jealousy, which
torments us with comparisons of this nature: "He bestowed this on me,
but more upon _him_, and he gave it _him_ earlier." There is no
kindness so complete that malignity cannot pull it to pieces, and none
so paltry that a friendly interpreter may not enlarge it. You shall
never fail of an excuse for grumbling if you look at benefits on their
wrong side.
See how certain men--yes, even some who make a profession of their
philosophy--pass unfair censures upon the gifts of heaven. They complain
because we do not equal elephants in bulk of body, harts in swiftness,
birds in lightness, bulls in vigour. But what has been denied to mankind
could not have been given. Wherefore, whosoever thou art that
undervaluest human fortune, bethink thee what blessings our Father has
bestowed upon us, how many beasts more powerful than ourselves we have
tamed to the yoke, how many swifter creatures we overtake, and how
nothing mortal is placed beyond the reach of our weapons.
Not to return gratitude for benefits is base in itself, and is held base
in all men's opinion. Therefore, even the ungrateful men complain of the
ungrateful, and yet all the time this failing, which none commend, is
firmly planted in all; so perverse is human nature that we find some
become our deadliest enemies, not merely after benefits received, but
for those very favours. I cannot deny but that this befalls some from a
kink in their disposition; yet more act so because the interposition of
time has extinguished the remembrance. Ungrateful is the man who denies
that he has received a good turn which has been done him; ungrateful is
he who pretends he has not received it; ungrateful is he who makes no
return; but the most ungrateful of all is he who has forgotten.
There is a question raised whether so hateful a vice ought to go
unpunished. Now, with the exception of Macedonia, there is no country
where an action at law is possible for ingratitude. And this is a strong
argument that no such action should be granted. This most frequent crime
is nowhere punished, although everywhere condemned. Many reasons occur
to me whereby it must needs follow that this fault ought not to come
under the purview of law. First of all, the best part of a benefit is
lost if a lawsuit is allowable, as in the case of a definite loan.
Again, whereas it is a most honourable thing to show gratitude, it
ceases to be honourable if it be forced. By such coercion we should
spoil two of the finest things in human life--a grateful man and a
bountiful giver. "What, then? Shall the ungrateful man be left
unchastised?" My answer is: "What, then? Shall the undutiful man be left
unchastised--the malignant man, or the avaricious, or the man with no
self-control, or the cruel? Dost thou think that goes unpunished which
is loathed? Dost thou not call him unhappy who has lost his eyesight, or
whose hearing has been impaired by disease? And dost thou not call him
miserable who has lost the sense of feeling benefits?"
_V.--Divine Benefits to Man_
Who is there so wretched, so totally forlorn, who has been born under so
hard a fate and to such travail as never to have felt the vastness of
the Divine generosity? Look even at those who complain of and live
malcontent with their lot, and you will find they are not altogether
without a portion in the celestial generosity; and there is none on whom
some drops have not fallen from that most gracious fountain. God not
give benefits! Whence, then, all you possess, all you give, or refuse or
keep or seize?
Whence comes the infinity of delights for eye, ear, and understanding?
Whence that abundance that even furnishes our luxury? Think of all the
trees in their rich variety, the many wholesome herbs, and such
diversity of foods apportioned among the seasons that even the sluggard
might find sustenance from the casual bounty of earth. Whence come
living creatures of every kind, some bred on solid dry land, some in
water, others speeding through the air, to the end that every part of
nature may yield us some tribute? Those rivers, too, that, with their
pretty bends, environ the plains, or afford a passage for merchandise as
they flow down their broad, navigable channel? What of the springs of
medicinal waters? What of the bubbling forth of hot wells upon the very
seashore?
And what of thee, O mighty Larian Lake?
And thee, Benacus, whom wild waves shake?
"Nature," remarks my critic, "gives all this." Do you not realise that
in saying this you simply change the name of God? For what else is
"nature" but God and Divine Reason pervading the whole universe and all
its parts?
It is a question whether one who has done all in his power to return a
benefit has returned it. Our opponent urges that the fact that he tried
everything proves that he did not in fact succeed in returning it; and,
therefore, evidently that he could not have done a thing for which he
found no opportunity. But if a physician has done all in his power to
effect a cure, he has performed his duty.
So your friend did all in his power to repay you a good turn, only your
good fortune stood in his way. He could not give money to the wealthy,
nurse one in good health, or run to your aid when all was prosperous. On
the other hand, if he had forgotten a benefit received, if he had not
even tried to be grateful, you would say he had not shown gratitude; but
as it was, he laboured day and night, to the neglect of other claims, to
let no chance of proving his thankfulness escape him.
HERBERT SPENCER
Education
Herbert Spencer was born at Derby, in England, in 1820. He was
taught by his father who was a teacher, and by his uncle, a
clergyman. At the age of seventeen he became a civil engineer, but
about eight years later abandoned the profession because he
believed it to be overcrowded. In 1848 he was engaged on the
"Economist," and five years later he began to write for the
quarterly reviews. Spencer's little book on Education dates from
1861, and has probably been more widely read than all his other
works put together, having been translated into almost all
civilised, and several primitive languages. It is generally
recognised as having effected the greatest educational reform of
the nineteenth century. It was certainly the most powerful of
single agents in effecting the liberation of girlhood from its
unnatural trammels. It placed the whole theory of education upon a
sound biological basis in the nature of the child and the natural
course of its evolution as a living creature. Spencer struck a
fatal blow at the morbid asceticism by proxy which adults used to
practice upon their children, and so great has been the influence
of his work for the amelioration of childhood that he is certainly
to be counted with the philanthropic on this ground. The first
chapter has no equal in literature in its splendidly sober praise
of natural knowledge. The wide knowledge which Spencer's writings
display of physical science, and his constant endeavor to
illustrate and support his system by connecting its position with
scientific facts and laws have given his philosophy great currency
among men of science--more so, indeed, than among philosophical
experts. Spencer died December 8, 1903.
_I.--What Knowledge is of Most Worth?_
It has been truly remarked that in order of time decoration precedes
dress, the idea of ornament predominates over that of use. It is curious
that the like relations hold with the mind. Among mental, as among
bodily acquisitions, the ornamental comes before the useful. Alike in
the Greek schools as in our own, this is the case. Men dress their
children's minds as they do their bodies in the prevailing fashion; and
in the treatment of both mind and body, the decorative element has
continued to predominate in an even greater degree among women than
among men. The births, deaths, and marriages of kings, and other like
historic trivialities are committed to memory, not because of any direct
benefit that can possibly result from knowing them, but because society
considers them parts of a good education--because the absence of such
knowledge may bring the contempt of others. Not what knowledge is of the
most real worth is the consideration; but what will bring most applause,
honour, respect--what will be the most imposing. As throughout life not
what we are but what we shall be thought is the question, so in
education the question is not the intrinsic value of knowledge so much
as its extrinsic effect on others; and this being our dominant idea,
direct utility is scarcely more regarded than by the barbarian when
filing his teeth and staining his nails.
The comparative worths of different kinds of knowledge have been as yet
scarcely even discussed. But before there can be a curriculum, we must
determine, as Bacon would have said, the relative value of knowledges.
To this end a measure of value is the first requisite, and here there
can happily be no dispute. How to live?--that is the essential question
for us. To prepare us for complete living is the function which
education is to discharge. We must therefore classify the leading kinds
of activity which constitute human life. In order of importance they are
(1) those which directly minister to self-preservation, (2) those which
by securing the necessaries of life indirectly minister to
self-preservation, (3) those which have for their end the rearing and
discipline of offspring, (4) those which are involved in the maintenance
of proper social and political relations, (5) those miscellaneous
activities which fill up the leisure part of life, devoted to the
gratification of the tastes and feelings.
It can easily be shown that these stand in something like their true
order of subordination, and such should be the order of education. It
must give attention to all of these; greatest where the value is
greatest; less where the value is less; least where the value is least.
Happily that all-important part of education which goes to secure direct
self-preservation is in great part already provided for. Too momentous
to be left to our blundering, nature takes it into her own hands, but
there must be no such thwarting of nature as that by which stupid
school-mistresses commonly prevent the girls in their charge from the
spontaneous physical activities they would indulge in; and so render
them comparatively incapable of taking care of themselves in
circumstances of peril.
But more is needed, and it is that we should learn the laws of life and
of health. This depends upon science, yet that increasing acquaintance
with the laws of phenomena which has through successive ages enabled us
to subjugate nature to our needs, and in these days gives the common
labourer comforts which a few centuries ago kings could not purchase, is
scarcely in any degree old to the appointed means of instructing our
youth. The vital knowledge--that by which we have grown as a nation to
what we are, and which underlies our whole existence--is a knowledge
that has got itself taught in nooks and corners, while the ordained
agencies for teaching have been mumbling little else than dead formulas.
Hitherto we have made no preparation whatever for the third great
division of human activities--the care of offspring, on which no word of
instruction is ever given to those who will by and by be parents. Yet
that parents should begin the difficult task of rearing children,
without ever having given a thought to the principles, physical, moral,
or intellectual, which ought to guide them, excites neither surprise at
the actors nor pity for their victims. To tens of thousands that are
killed, and hundreds of thousands that survive with feeble
constitutions, add millions that grow up with constitutions not so
strong as they should be, and you will have some idea of the curse
inflicted on their offspring by parents ignorant of the laws of life.
Architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry may truly be called
the efflorescence of civilised life, but the production of a healthy
civilised life must be the first condition. The vice of our educational
system is that it neglects the plant for the sake of the flower. In
anxiety for elegance it forgets substance, preparing not at all for the
discharge of parental functions and for the duties of citizenship, by
imparting a mass of facts most of which are irrelevant, and the rest
without a key. But the accomplishment of all those things which
constitute the efflorescence of civilisation should be wholly
subordinate to that instruction and discipline on which civilisation
rests. As they occupy the leisure part of life, so should they occupy
the leisure part of education.
Yet in this remaining sphere of activity, also, scientific knowledge is
fundamental, and only when genius is married to science can the highest
results be produced; indeed, not only does science underlie the arts,
but science is itself poetic. The current opinion that science and
poetry are opposed is a delusion. On the contrary, science opens up
realms of poetry where to the unscientific all is blank. Think you that
the rounded rock marked with parallel scratches calls up as much poetry
in an ignorant mind as in the mind of a geologist, who knows that over
this rock a glacier slid a million years ago? The truth is that those
who have never entered upon scientific pursuits are blind to most of the
poetry by which they are surrounded. Sad indeed is it to see how many
men occupy themselves with trivialities, and are indifferent to the
grandest phenomena--care not to understand the architecture of the
heavens, but are deeply interested in some contemptible controversy
about the intrigues of Mary Queen of Scots are learnedly critical over a
Greek ode, and pass by without a glance that grand epic written by the
finger of God upon the strata of the earth!
If we examine the value of science as discipline, its priority is still
assured, whether for discipline of memory, or of judgment, or for moral
discipline. Also, the discipline of science is superior to that of our
ordinary education because of the religious culture that it gives.
Doubtless, to the superstitions that pass under the name of religion,
science is antagonistic; but not to the essential religion which these
superstitions merely hide; doubtless, too, in much of the science that
is current there is a pervading spirit of irreligion, but not in that
true science which has passed beyond the superficial into the profound.
Not science, but the neglect of science, is irreligious; devotion to
science is a tacit worship--a tacit recognition of worth in the things
studied; and by implication in their Cause. Only the genuine man of
science can truly know how utterly beyond not only human knowledge, but
human conception, is the Universal Power of which Nature and Life and
Thought are manifestations.
_II.--Intellectual Education_
While "believe and ask no questions" was the maxim of the church, it was
fitly the maxim of the schools. In that age men also believed that a
child's mind could be made to order, that its powers were to be imparted
by the schoolmaster; that it was a receptacle into which knowledge was
to be put and there built up after the teacher's idea. But now we are
learning that there is a natural process of mental evolution which is
not to be disturbed without injury; that we may not force on the
unfolding mind our artificial forms, but that psychology, like
economics, discloses to us a law of supply and demand, to which, if we
would not do harm, we must conform.
The forcing system has been by many given up, and precocity is
discouraged. People are beginning to see that the first requisite to
success in life is to be a good animal. The once universal practice of
learning by rote is daily falling into discredit. We are substituting
principles for rules, as is exemplified in the abandonment of that
intensely stupid custom, the teaching of grammar to children. But of all
the changes taking place, the most significant is the growing desire to
make the acquirement of knowledge pleasurable rather than painful--a
desire based on the more or less distinct perception that at each age
the intellectual action which a child likes is a healthy one for it; and
conversely. We are on the highway towards the doctrine long ago
enunciated by Pestalozzi that alike in its order and its methods,
education must conform to the natural process of mental evolution.
Education should be a repetition of civilisation in little. Children
should be told as little as possible and induced to discover as much as
possible. The need for perpetual telling results from our stupidity, not
from the child's. We drag it away from the facts in which it is
interested, and which it is actively assimilating of itself. We put
before it facts far too complex for it to understand, and therefore
distasteful to it. By denying the knowledge it craves, and cramming it
with knowledge it cannot digest, we produce a morbid state of its
faculties; and a consequent disgust for knowledge in general. And having
by our method induced helplessness, we make the helplessness a reason
for our method.
Education of some kind should begin from the cradle. Whoever has watched
with any discernment the wide-eyed gaze of the infant at surrounding
objects, knows very well that education _does_ begin thus early, whether
we intend it or not; and that these fingerings and suckings of
everything it can lay hold of, these open-mouthed listenings to every
sound, are first steps in the series which ends in the discovery of
unseen planets, the invention of calculating engines, the production of
great paintings, or the composition of symphonies and operas. This
activity of the faculties from the very first, being spontaneous and
inevitable, the question is whether we shall supply in due variety the
materials on which they may exercise themselves; and to the question so
put, none but an affirmative answer can be given. Here we must take the
course which psychology dictates.
What can be more manifest than the desire of children for intellectual
sympathy? Mark how the infant sitting on your knee thrusts into your
face the toy it holds, that you may look at it. See when it makes a
creak with its wet finger on the table, how it turns and looks at you;
does it again, and again looks at you; thus saying as clearly as it
can--"Hear this new sound." Watch the elder children coming into the
room exclaiming--"Mamma, see what a curious thing;" "Mamma, look at
this;" "Mamma, look at that;" a habit which they would continue did not
the silly mamma tell them not to tease her. Does not the induction lie
on the surface? Is it not clear that we must conform our course to these
intellectual instincts--that we must just systematise the natural
process--that we must listen to all the child has to tell us about each
object, and thence proceed? To tell a child this, and to show it the
other, is not to teach it how to observe, but to make it a mere
recipient of another's observations; a proceeding which weakens rather
than strengthens its power of self-instruction.
Object lessons should be arranged to extend to things far wider and
continue to a period far later than now; they should not be limited to
the contents of the house, but should include those of the fields and
hedges, the quarry and the seashore; they should not cease with early
childhood, but should be so kept up during youth as insensibly to merge
into the investigation of the naturalist and the man of science.
We are quite prepared to hear from many that all this is throwing away
time and energy; and that children would be much better occupied in
writing their copies and learning their pence tables, and so fitting
themselves for the business of life. We regret that such crude ideas of
what constitutes education, and such a narrow conception of utility,
should still be prevalent. But this gross utilitarianism which is
content to come into the world and quit it again without knowing what
kind of a world it is, or what it contains, may be met on its own
ground. It will by and by be found that a knowledge of the laws of life
is more important than any other knowledge whatever--that the laws of
life underlie not only all bodily and mental processes, but by
implication all the transactions of the house and the street, all
commerce, all politics, all morals--and that therefore without a
comprehension of them, neither personal nor social conduct can be
rightly regulated. It will eventually be seen, too, that the laws of
life are essentially the same throughout the whole organic creation.
No one can compare the faces and manners of two boys--the one made happy
by mastering interesting subjects, and the other made miserable by
disgust with his studies, by consequent inability, by cold looks, by
threats, by punishment--without seeing that the disposition of one is
being benefited and that of the other injured. Whoever has marked the
effects of success and failure upon the mind and the power of the mind
over the body, will see that in the one case both temper and health are
favourably affected, while in the other there is danger of permanent
moroseness, of permanent timidity, and even of permanent constitutional
depression.
As suggesting a final reason for making education a process of
self-instruction, and by consequence a process of pleasurable
instruction, we may advert to the fact that, in proportion as it is made
so, there is a probability that it will not cease when schooldays end.
As long as the acquisition of knowledge is rendered habitually
repugnant, so long will there be a prevailing tendency to discontinue it
when free from the coercion of parents and masters. And when the
acquisition of knowledge has been rendered habitually gratifying, then
there will be as prevailing a tendency to continue, without
superintendence, that self-culture previously carried on under
superintendence.
_III.--Moral Education_
The greatest defect in our programmes of education is entirely
overlooked. Though some care is taken to fit youths of both sexes for
society and citizenship, no care whatever is taken to fit them for the
position of parents. While it is seen that for the purpose of gaining a
livelihood, an elaborate preparation is needed, it appears to be thought
that for the bringing up of children no preparation whatever is needed.
While many years are spent by a boy in gaining knowledge of which the
chief value is that it constitutes the "education of a gentleman," and
while many years are spent by a girl in those decorative acquirements
which fit her for evening parties, not an hour is spent by either in
preparation for a family. Is it that this responsibility is but a remote
contingency? On the contrary, it is sure to devolve on nine out of ten.
Is it that the discharge of it is easy? Certainly not: of all functions
which the adult has to fulfil, this is the most difficult. Is it that
each may be trusted by self-instruction to fit himself, or herself, for
the office of parent? No: not only is the need for such self-instruction
unrecognised, but the complexity of the subject renders it the one of
all others in which self-instruction is least likely to succeed. No
rational plea can be put forward for leaving the art of education out of
our curriculum. Whether as bearing on the happiness of parents
themselves, or whether as affecting the characters and lives of their
children and remote descendants, we must admit that a knowledge of the
right method of juvenile culture, physical, intellectual and moral, is a
knowledge of extreme importance. This topic should be the final one in
the course of instruction passed through by each man and woman. As
physical maturity is marked by the ability to produce offspring, so
mental maturity is marked by the ability to train those offspring. _The
subject which involves all other subjects, and therefore the subject in
which education should culminate, is the THEORY AND PRACTICE OF
EDUCATION._
Our system of moral control must again be based upon nature, who
illustrates to us in the simplest way the true theory and practice of
moral discipline. The natural reactions which follow the child's
wrong-doings are constant, direct, unhesitating, and not to be escaped.
No threats; but a silent rigorous performance. If a child runs a pin
into its finger, pain follows; if it does it again, there is again the
same result; and so on perpetually. In all its dealings with inorganic
nature it finds this unswerving persistence, which listens to no excuse,
and from which there is no appeal; and very soon recognising this stern
though beneficent discipline, it soon becomes extremely careful not to
transgress. These general truths hold throughout adult life as well as
throughout infantile life. If further proof be needed that the natural
reaction is not only the most efficient penalty, but that no humanly
devised penalty can replace it, we have such further proof in the
notorious ill-success of our various penal systems. Out of the many
methods of criminal discipline that have been proposed and legally
enforced, none have answered the expectations of their advocates.
Artificial punishments have failed to produce reformation; and have in
many cases increased the criminality. The only successful reformatories
are those privately established ones which approximate their _régime_ to
the method of nature--which do little more than administer the natural
consequences of criminal conduct: diminishing the criminal's liberty of
action as much as is needful for the safety of society, and requiring
him to maintain himself while living under this restraint. Thus we see,
both that the discipline by which the young child is taught to regulate
its movements is the discipline by which the great mass of adults are
kept in order, and more or less improved; and that the discipline
humanly devised for the worst adults fails when it diverges from this
divinely-ordained discipline, and begins to succeed on approximating to
it. Not only is it unwise to set up a high standard of good conduct for
children, but it is even unwise to use very urgent incitements to good
conduct. Already most people recognise the detrimental results of
intellectual precocity; but there remains to be recognised the fact that
moral precocity also has detrimental results. Be sparing of commands,
but whenever you do command, command with decision and constancy.
Remember that the aid of your discipline should be to produce a
self-governing being; not to produce a being to be governed by others.
Lastly, always remember that to educate rightly is not a simple and easy
thing, but a complex and extremely difficult thing; the hardest task
which devolves on adult life. You will have to carry on your own moral
education at the same time that you are educating your children. The
last stage in the mental development of each man and woman is to be
reached only through a proper discharge of the parental duties; and when
this truth is recognised it will be seen how admirable is the
arrangement through which human beings are led by their strongest
affections to subject themselves to a discipline that they would else
elude; and we shall see that while in its injurious effects on both
parents and child a bad system is twice cursed, a good system is twice
blessed--it blesses him that trains and him that is trained.
_IV.--Physical Education_
The system of restriction in regard to food which many parents think so
necessary is based upon inadequate observation, and erroneous reasoning.
There is an over-legislation in the nursery as well as over-legislation
in the state; and one of the most injurious forms of it is this
limitation in the quantity of food. We contend that, as appetite is a
good guide to all the lower creation--as it is a good guide to the
infant--as it is a good guide to the invalid--as it is a good guide to
the differently-placed races of man--and as it is a good guide for every
adult who leads a healthful life, it may safely be inferred that it is a
good guide to childhood. It would be strange indeed were it here alone
untrustworthy.
With clothing, as with food, the usual tendency is towards an improper
scantiness. Here, too, asceticism creeps out. Yet it is not obedience to
the sensations, but disobedience to them which is the habitual cause of
bodily evils. It is not the eating when hungry, but the eating in the
absence of hunger, which is bad; it is not drinking when thirsty, but
continuing to drink when thirst has ceased, that is the vice.
Again, harm does not result from taking that active exercise which, as
every child shows us, nature strongly prompts, but from a persistent
disregard of nature's promptings; but the natural spontaneous exercise
having been forbidden, and the bad consequences of no exercise having
become conspicuous, there has been adopted a system of factitious
exercise--gymnastics. That this is better than nothing we admit; but
that it is an adequate substitute for play we deny. The truth is that
happiness is the most powerful of tonics. By accelerating the
circulation of the blood, it facilitates the performance of every
function; and so tends alike to increase health where it exists, and to
restore it when it has been lost. Hence the intrinsic superiority of
play to gymnastics. The extreme interest felt by children in their
games, and the riotous glee with which they carry on their rougher
frolics, are of as much importance as the accompanying exertion; and as
not supplying these mental stimuli gymnastics must be radically
defective, and can never serve in place of the exercises prompted by
nature. For girls as well as boys the sportive activities to which the
instincts impel are essential to bodily welfare. Whoever forbids them,
forbids the divinely-appointed means to physical development.
We suffer at present from a very potent detrimental influence, which is
excess of mental application, forgetting that nature is a strict
accountant, and if you demand of her in one direction more than she is
prepared to lay out, she balances the account by making a reduction
elsewhere. We forget that it is not knowledge which is stored up as
intellectual fat that is of value, but that which is turned into
intellectual muscle. Worse still, our system is fatal to that vigour of
physique needful to make intellectual training available in the struggle
of life. Yet a good digestion, a bounding pulse, and high spirits are
elements of happiness which no external advantages can outbalance.
Perhaps nothing will so much hasten the time when body and mind will
both be adequately cared for, as a diffusion of the belief that the
preservation of health is a duty. Few seem conscious that there is such
a thing as physical morality. Men's habitual words and acts imply the
idea that they are at liberty to treat their bodies as they please.
Disorders entailed by disobedience to nature's dictates, they regard
simply as grievances; not as the effects of a conduct more or less
flagitious. Though the evil consequences inflicted on their dependents,
and on future generations, are often as great as those caused by time,
yet they do not think themselves in any degree criminal. It is true
that, in the case of drunkenness, the viciousness of a bodily
transgression is recognised; but none appear to infer that, if this
bodily transgression is vicious, so, too, is every bodily transgression.
The fact is, that all breaches of the laws of health are _physical
sins._ When this is generally seen, then, and perhaps not till then,
will the physical training of the young receive the attention which it
deserves.
Principles of Biology
In 1860 Spencer commenced a connected series of philosophical
works, designed to unfold in their natural order the principles of
biology, psychology, sociology and morality. "Principles of
Biology" was published in 1864, and aims to set forth, the general
truths of biology as illustrative of, and as interpreted by the
laws of evolution. It was revised in 1899.
_Proximate Definition of Life_
To those who accept the general doctrine of evolution, it needs scarcely
to be pointed out that classifications are subjective conceptions which
have no absolute demarcations in nature corresponding to them.
Consequently in attempting to define anything complex we can scarcely
ever avoid including more than was intended, or leaving out something
that should be taken in. Thus it happens that on seeking a definition of
life there is great difficulty in finding one that is neither more nor
less than sufficient. As the best mode of determining the general
characteristics of vitality, let us compare its two most unlike kinds
and see in what they agree.
Choosing _assimilation_, then, for our example of bodily life, and
_reasoning_ for our example of the life known as intelligence, it is
first to be observed that they are both processes of change. Without
change food cannot be taken into the blood nor transformed into tissue:
neither can conclusions be obtained from premises. This conspicuous
manifestation of change forms the substratum of our idea of life in
general. Comparison shows this change to differ from non-vital changes
in being made up of _successive_ changes. The food must undergo
mastication, digestion, etc., while an argument necessitates a long
chain of states of consciousness, each implying a change of the
preceding state. Vital change is further made up of many _simultaneous_
changes. Assimilation and argument both include many actions going on
together. Vital changes, both visceral and cerebral, also differ from
other changes in their _heterogeneity_; neither the simultaneous nor the
serial acts of digestion or of ratiocination are at all alike. They are
again distinguished by the combination subsisting among their
constituent changes. The acts that make up digestion are mutually
dependent; as are those which compose a train of reasoning. Once more,
they differ in being characterised by definiteness. Assimilation,
respiration, and circulation, are definitely interdependent. These
characterisations not only mark off the vital from the non-vital, but
also creatures of high vitality from those of low vitality. Hence our
formula reads thus:--_Life is the definite combination of heterogeneous
changes, both simultaneous and successive._ Not _a_ definite
combination, allowing that there may be others, but _the_ definite
combination. This, however, omits its most distinctive peculiarity.
_Correspondence Between Life and Its Circumstances_
We habitually distinguish between a live object and a dead one by
observing whether a change in the surrounding conditions is or is not
followed by some perceptible and appropriate change in the object.
Adding this all-important characteristic, our conception of life
becomes--the definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both
simultaneous and successive, _in correspondence with external
coexistences and sequences_. Some illustrations may serve to show the
significance of this addition.
Every act of locomotion implies the expenditure of certain internal
mechanical forces, adapted in amounts and directions to balance or
outbalance certain external ones. The recognition of an object is
impossible without a harmony between the changes constituting perception
and particular properties coexisting in the environment. Escape from
enemies supposes motions within the organism related in kind and
rapidity to motions without it. Destruction of prey requires a
particular combination of subjective actions, fitted in degree and
succession to overcome a group of objective ones.
The difference of this correspondence in inanimate and animate bodies
may be expressed by symbols. Let A be a change in the environment; and B
some resulting change in an inorganic mass. Then A having produced B,
the action ceases. But take a sufficiently organised living body, and
let the change A impress on it some change C; then, while the
environment A is occasioning _a_, in the living body, C will be
occasioning _c_: of which _a_ and _c_ will show a certain concord in
time, place, or intensity. And while it is in the continuous production
of such concords or correspondences that life consists, it is _by_ the
continuous production of them that life is maintained.
As, in all cases, we may consider the external phenomena as simply in
relation, and the internal phenomena also as simply in relation, the
broadest and most complete definition of life will be:--_the continuous
adjustment of internal relations to external relations_. It will be
best, however, commonly to employ its more concrete equivalent--to
consider the internal relations as "definite combinations of
simultaneous and successive changes"; the external relations as
"coexistences and sequences," and the connection between them as a
"correspondence."
_The Degree of Life Varies as the Degree of Correspondence_
It is now to be remarked that the life is high in proportion as this
correspondence between internal and external relations is
well-fulfilled.
Each step upward must consist in adding to the previously adjusted
relations which the organism exhibits some further relation, parallel to
a further relation in the environment. And the greater correspondence
thus established must, other things being equal, show itself both in
greater complexity of life and greater length of life--a truth which
will be duly realised on remembering the enormous mortality which
prevails among lowly-organized creatures, and the gradual increase of
longevity and diminution of fertility which is met with in ascending to
creatures of higher and higher development. Those relations in the
environment to which relations in the organism must correspond increase
in number and intensity as the life assumes a higher form. Perfect
correspondence would be perfect life.
_Growth, or Increase of Bulk_
Perhaps the widest and most familiar induction of biology is that
organisms grow. Under appropriate conditions increase of size takes
place in inorganic aggregates as well as in organic aggregates. Crystals
grow. Growth is indeed a concomitant of evolution. The several
conditions by which the phenomena of organic growth are governed,
conspiring and conflicting in endless ways and degrees, qualify more or
less differently each others' effects. Hence the following
generalisations must be taken as true on the average, or other things
equal:--
First, that growth being an integration with the organism of such
environing matters as are of like nature with the matters composing the
organism, its growth is dependent on the available supply of such
matters. Second, that the available supply of assimilable matters being
the same, and other conditions not dissimilar, the degree of growth
varies according to the surplus of nutrition over expenditure. Third,
that in the same organism the surplus of nutrition over expenditure is a
variable quantity; and that growth is unlimited or has a definite limit
according as the surplus does or does not progressively decrease,--a
proposition exemplified by the increasing growth of organisms that do
not expend force, and by the definitely limited growth of organisms that
expend much force. Fourth, that among organisms that are large expenders
of force, the size ultimately attained is, other things equal,
determined by the initial size. Fifth, that where the likeness of other
circumstances permits a comparison, the possible degree of growth
depends upon the degree of organisation: an inference testified to by
the larger forms among the various divisions and subdivisions of
organisms.
_Why Do Organisms Cease to Grow_
Why should not all organisms, when supplied with sufficient material,
continue to grow as long as they live? We have found that organisms are
mostly built up of compounds which are stores of force. These substances
being at once the materials for organic growth and the sources of
organic force, it follows, from the persistence of force, that growth is
substantially equivalent to the absorbed nutriment minus the nutriment
used up in action. This, however, does not account for the fact that in
every domestic animal the increments of growth bear continually
decreasing ratios to the mass, and finally come to an end. Nevertheless,
it is demonstrable that the excess of absorbed over expended nutriment
must decrease as the size increases. Since in similar bodies the areas
vary as the squares of the dimensions and the masses vary as the cubes,
it follows that, however great the excess of assimilation over waste may
be during the early life of an active organism, there must be reached,
if the organism lives long enough, a point at which the surplus
assimilation is brought to nothing--a point at which expenditure
balances nutrition, a state of moving equilibrium. Obviously, this
antagonism between assimilation and expenditure must be a leading cause
of the contrast in size between allied organisms that are in many
respects similarly conditioned.
_Development, or Increase of Structure_
In each of the organic sub-kingdoms the change from an incoherent,
indefinite homogeneity to a coherent definite heterogeneity is
illustrated in a quadruple way. The originally-like units or cells
become unlike, in various ways, and in ways more numerously marked as
the development goes on. The several tissues which these several classes
or cells form by aggregation, grow little by little distinct from each
other; and little by little become structurally complex. In the shoot as
in the limb, the external form, originally very simple and having much
in common with countless simple forms, organic and inorganic, gradually
acquires an increasing complexity, and an increasing unlikeness to other
forms, and meanwhile, the remaining parts of the organism, having been
developed severally, assuming structures diverging from each other and
from that of this particular shoot or limb, there has arisen a greater
heterogeneity in the organism as a whole.
The most remarkable induction of von Baer comes next in order. It is
that in its earliest stage every organism has the greatest number of
characters in common with all other organisms in their earliest stages;
that at each subsequent stage traits are acquired which successively
distinguish the developing embryo from groups of embryos that it
previously resembled--thus step by step diminishing the group of embryos
which it still resembles; and that thus the class of similar forms is
finally narrowed to the species of which it is a member. For example,
the human germ, primarily similar to all others, first differentiates
from vegetal germs, then from invertebrate germs, and subsequently
assumes the mammalian, placental unguiculate, and lastly the human
characters.
The development of an individual organism is at the same time a
differentiation of its parts from each other and a differentiation of
the consolidated whole from the environment; and in the last as in the
first respect there is a general analogy between the progression of an
individual organism and the progression of the lowest orders of
organisms to the highest orders.
_The Laws of Multiplication_
Every living aggregate being one of which the inner actions are adjusted
to balance outer actions, it follows that the maintenance of its moving
equilibrium depends on its exposure to the right amounts of these
actions. Its moving equilibrium may be overturned if one of these
actions is either too great or too small in amount: either by excess or
defect of some inorganic or organic agency in its environment.
Our inquiry resolves itself into this:--in races that continue to exist
what laws of numerical variation result from these variable conflicting
forces?
The forces preservative of a race are two--ability in each member of the
race to preserve itself, and ability to produce other members. These
must vary inversely--one must decrease as the other increases. We have
to ask in what way this adjustment comes about as a result of evolution.
Including under individuation all those processes completing and
maintaining individual life, and under genesis all those aiding the
formation and perfecting of new individuals, the two are necessarily
antagonistic. Every higher degree of individual evolution is followed by
a lower degree of race multiplication, and _vice versâ_. Progress in
bulk, complexity or activity involves retrogress in fertility; and
progress in fertility involves retrogress in bulk, complexity, or
activity. The same quantity of matter may be divided into many small
wholes or few large wholes; but number negatives largeness, and
largeness negatives number.
It is a general physiological truth that while the building-up of the
individual is going on rapidly, the reproductive organs remain
imperfectly developed and inactive; and that the commencement of
reproduction at once indicates a declining rate of growth and becomes a
cause of arrest in growth.
It has now to be noticed how complexity of organisation is hindered by
reproductive activity and conversely. The hydra's power to produce young
ones from nearly all parts of its body is due to the comparative
homogeneity of its body, while it is not improbable that the smallness
of human fertility, compared with the fertility of large feline animals,
is due to the greater complexity of the human organisation--more
especially the organisation of the nervous system.
Of the inverse variation between activity and genesis we have examples
in the contrast between the fertility of birds and the fertility of
mammals. Comparing the large with the large and the small with the
small, we see that creatures which continually go through the muscular
exertion of sustaining themselves in the air and propelling themselves
rapidly through it are less prolific than creatures of equal weights
which go through the smaller exertion of moving about over solid
surfaces. The extreme infertility of the bat is most striking when
compared with the structurally similar but very prolific mouse; a
difference in the rate of multiplication which may fairly be ascribed to
the difference in the rate of expenditure.
_Interpretation and Qualification_
Derived as the self-sustaining and waste-sustaining forces are from a
common stock of force, it necessarily happens that, other things being
equal, increase of the one involves decrease of the other. It may
therefore be set down as a law that every higher degree of organic
evolution has for its concomitant a lower degree of the peculiar organic
dissolution which is seen in the production of new organisms.
How is the ratio between individuation and genesis established in each
case? All specialties of the reproductive process are due to the natural
selection of favourable variations. Given a certain surplus available
for race preservation, and it is clear that by indirect equilibration
only can there be established that peculiar distribution of this surplus
which is seen in each case.
Here a qualification must be made. Recognising the truth that every
increase of evolution which is appropriate to the circumstances of an
organism brings an advantage somewhat in excess of its cost, the general
law, more strictly stated, is that genesis decreases not quite so fast
as individuation increases. The result of greater individuation--whether
it takes the form of greater strength or higher speed, facilitates some
habitual movement or utilises better the absorbed aliment--is a greater
surplus of vital capital; part of which goes to the aggrandisement of
the individual and part to the formation of new individuals. Hence every
type that is best adapted to its conditions has a rate of multiplication
that insures a tendency to predominate. Survival of the fittest, acting
alone, is ever replacing inferior species by superior species. But
beyond the longer survival, and therefore greater chance of leaving
offspring, which superiority gives, we see here another way in which the
spread of the superior is insured. Though the more evolved organism is
the less fertile absolutely, it is the more fertile relatively.
_Multiplication of the Human Race_
What causes increase or decrease of genesis in other creatures causes
increase or decrease of genesis in man. It is true that, even more than
hitherto, our reasonings are here beset with difficulties. So numerous
are the inequalities in the conditions that but few unobjectionable
comparisons can be made. The human races differ not only in their sizes
and foods, and in the climates they inhabit, but also their expenditures
in bodily and mental action are extremely unequal.
The increase of fertility caused by nutrition that is greatly in excess
of expenditure is to be detected by comparing populations of the same
race or of allied races one of which obtains good and abundant
sustenance much more easily than the other. On carrying out such
comparisons it is seen that in the human race, as in all other races,
such absolute or relative abundance of nutriment as leaves a large
excess after defraying the cost of carrying on parental life, is
accompanied by a high rate of genesis.
It is also apparent that relative increase of expenditure, leaving a
diminished surplus, reduces fertility. That infertility is generally
produced in women by mental labour carried to excess is shown in the
fact that most of the flat-chested girls who survive their high-pressure
education are incompetent to bear a well-developed infant and to supply
it with the natural food for the natural period. It is a matter of
common remark how frequently men of unusual mental activity leave no
offspring.
It is likely to be urged that since the civilised races are on the
average larger than many of the uncivilised races, and since they are
also somewhat more complex as well as more active, they ought, in
accordance with the alleged general law, and other things being equal,
to be less prolific. But other things are not equal; and it is to the
inequality of the other things that this apparent anomaly is
attributable.
One more objection has to be met. Cases may be named of men conspicuous
for activity, bodily and mental, who were also noted, not for less
generative power than usual, but for more. The cases are analogous to
some before-named in which more abundant food simultaneously aggrandises
the individual and adds to the production of new individuals--the
differences between cases being that instead of a better external supply
of material there is a better internal utilisation of materials. Some
peculiarity of organic balance, some potency of the digestive juices,
gives to the system a perpetual high tide of rich blood that serves at
once to enhance the vital activities and to raise the power of
propagation. The _proportion_ between individuation and genesis remains
the same: both are increased by the increase of the common stock of
materials.
_Human Population in the Future_
Any further evolution in the most highly-evolved of terrestrial
beings--man--must be of the same nature as evolution in general. It must
be an advance towards completion of that continuous adjustment of
internal to external relations which was shown to constitute life.
Looking at the several possibilities, and asking what direction this
further evolution, this more complete moving equilibrium, this better
adjustment of inner to outer relations, this more perfect co-ordination
of action is likely to take:--the conclusion is that it must take mainly
the direction of a higher intellectual and emotional development. There
is abundant scope for development in ascertaining the conditions of
existence to which we must conform; and in acquiring a greater power of
self-regulation.
What are those changes in the environment to which, by direct or
indirect equilibration the human organism has been adjusting itself, is
adjusting itself now, and will continue to adjust itself? And how do
they necessitate a higher evolution of the organism? In all cases
pressure of population is the original cause. Were it not for the
competition this entails, so much thought and energy would not be spent
on the business of life; and growth of mental power would not take
place. Difficulty in getting a living is alike the incentive to a higher
education of children, and to a more intense and long-continued
application in adults. Nothing but necessity could make men submit to
this discipline; and nothing but this discipline could produce a
continued progression.
Excess of fertility is then the cause of man's further evolution. And
the obvious corollary is that man's further evolution itself
necessitates a decline in his fertility. The further progress of
civilisation will be accompanied by an enhanced cost of individuation:
whether it be in greater growth of the organs which subserve
self-maintenance, in their added complexity of structure, or in their
higher activity, the abstraction of the required material, implies a
diminished reserve of materials for race maintenance. This greater
emotional and intellectual development does not necessarily mean a
mentally laborious life--for, as the goal becomes organic, it will
become spontaneous and pleasurable.
The necessary antagonism of individuation and genesis not only fulfils
the _a priori_ law of maintenance of the race from the monad up to man,
but insures final attainment of the highest form of this maintenance--a
form in which the amount of life shall be the greatest possible and the
births and deaths as few as possible. From the beginning pressure of
population has been the proximate cause of progress. After having duly
stocked the globe with inhabitants; raised all its habitable parts into
the highest state of culture; brought all processes for the satisfaction
of human wants to perfection; developed the intellect into complete
competency for its work, and the feelings into complete fitness for
social life; the pressure of population as it gradually finished its
work, must gradually bring itself to an end.
Changes, numerical, social, organic, must by their mutual influences
work unceasingly towards a state of harmony--a state in which each of
the factors is just equal to its work. And this highest conceivable
result must be wrought out by the same universal process which the
simplest inorganic action illustrates.
Principles of Sociology
"Principles of Sociology" was published in four parts from 1876 to
1880. It forms part of a connected series. In "First Principles"
inorganic evolution--that of the stars and of the solar system--was
outlined; organic evolution was dealt with in "Principles of
Biology;" and in the present treatise, "Principles of Sociology,"
we approach super-organic evolution, and are introduced to the
science of society under its Comtist title "Sociology."
Super-organic evolution may be marked off from, organic by taking it to
include all those processes and products which imply the co-ordinated
action of many individuals. Commencing with the development of the
family, sociology has next to describe and explain the rise and
development of political organisation; the evolution of the
ecclesiastical structures and functions; the control embodied in
ceremonial observances; and the relations between the regulative and
operative divisions of every society.
_I.--Domestic_
That evolution decreases the sacrifice of individual life to the life of
the species, we may see on glancing upwards from the microscopic
protozoa, where the brief parental life disappears absolutely in the
lives of the progeny, to the mammalia, where the greatest conciliation
of the interests of the species, the parents and the young, is
displayed. The highest constitution of the family is reached where there
is such conciliation between the needs of the society and those of its
members, old and young, that the mortality between birth and the
reproductive age falls to a minimum, while the lives of adults have
their subordination to the rearing of children reduced to the smallest
possible. The diminution of this subordination takes place in three
ways: First, by elongation of that period which precedes reproduction;
second, by fewer offspring born, as well as by increase of the pleasure
taken in the care of them; and third, by lengthening of the life which
follows cessation of reproduction. Let us bear in mind that the domestic
relations which are ethically the highest, are also biologically and
sociologically the highest.
MARRIAGE
The propriety of setting out with the foregoing purely natural-history
view will be evident upon learning that among low savages the relations
of the sexes are substantially like those common among inferior
creatures. The effect of promiscuity, however, being to hinder social
evolution, wherever it was accompanied by unions having some duration,
the product of such unions were likely to be superior to others, and
from this primitive stage domestic evolution takes place in several
directions by increase of coherence and definiteness.
From promiscuity we pass to that form of polyandry in which the
unrelated husbands have but one wife; thence to the form in which the
husbands are related; and finally to the form in which they are brothers
only, as in the fraternal polyandry of the ancient Britons. It is almost
needless to point out that, as in passing from promiscuity to polyandry
the domestic relations become more coherent and definite, so do they in
passing from the lower forms of polyandry to the higher. That polygyny
is better than polyandry may be concluded from its effects. It conduces
in a higher degree to social self-preservation than the inferioi types
of marital relations by making possible more rapid replacement of men
lost in war, and so increases the chance of social survival. By
establishment of descent in the male line it conduces to political
stability; and, by making possible a developed form of ancestor-worship,
it consolidates society.
MONOGAMY
Societies which from generation to generation produce in due abundance
individuals who relatively to the requirements are the best physically,
morally, and intellectually, must become the predominant societies, and
must tend through the quiet process of industrial competition to replace
other societies. Consequently, marital relations which favour this
result in the highest degree must spread; while the prevailing
sentiments and ideas must become so moulded into harmony with them that
other relations will be condemned as immoral. The monogamic form of the
sexual relations is manifestly the ultimate form; and any changes to be
anticipated must be in the direction of completion and extension of it.
_II.--Political Organisation_
A society is formed only when, besides juxtaposition there is
co-operation. Co-operation is made possible by society and makes society
possible. It pre-supposes associative men; and men remain associated
only because of the benefits co-operation yields them. But there cannot
be concerted actions without agencies by which actions are adjusted in
their times, amounts, and kinds; and the actions cannot be of different
kinds without the co-operators undertaking different duties. That is to
say, the co-operators must become organised, either voluntarily or
involuntarily.
AGGREGATION
The political evolution manifested by increase of mass is political
aggregation. One of the laws of evolution at large is that integration
results when like units are subject to the same force or the like
forces; and from the first stages of political integration to the last
this law is illustrated. Likeness in the units forming a social group
being one conditioned to their integration, a further condition is their
joint reaction against external action: co-operation in war is the chief
cause of social integration. The temporary unions of savages for offence
and defence show the initiatory steps. When many tribes unite against a
common enemy, long continuance of their combined action makes them
coherent under some common control. And so it is subsequently with still
larger aggregates.
DIFFERENTIATION
The state of homogeneity in the social aggregate is an unstable one. The
primary political differentiation originates from the primary family
differentiation. Men and women very early respectively form the two
political classes of rulers and ruled. The slave class acquires
separateness only as fast as there arrives some restrictions on the
powers of the owners; slaves begin to form a division of the body
politic when their personal claims begin to be distinguished as limiting
the claims of their masters. Where men have passed into the agricultural
or settled state it becomes possible for one community to take
possession bodily of another community, along with the territory it
occupies. When this happens, there arise additional class divisions. The
class differentiation of which militancy is the actual cause is
furthered by the establishment of definite descent, especially male
descent, and by the transmission of position and property to the eldest
son of the eldest continually. Inequalities of position and wealth once
initiated tend to increase and to establish physical differences; and
beyond these there are produced by the respective habits of life mental
differences, emotional and intellectual, strengthening the general
contrast of nature. When there come conquests which produce compound
societies and doubly compound ones there result superpositions of ranks:
while the ranks of the conquering society become respectively higher
than those which have existed before, the ranks of the conquered society
become respectively lower. The political differentiations which
militancy originates and which for a long time increase in definiteness,
are at later stages and under other conditions interfered with,
traversed, and partially or wholly destroyed. While the higher political
evolution of large social aggregates tends to break down the divisions
of rank which grew up in the small component social aggregates, by
substituting other divisions, these original divisions are still more
broken down by growing industrialism. Generating a wealth that is not
connected with rank, this initiates a compelling power; and at the same
time, by establishing the equal positions of citizens before the law in
respect of trading transactions, it weakens those divisions which at the
outset expressed inequality of position before the law.
POLITICAL FORMS AND FORCES
In its primitive form political power is the feeling of the community
acting through an agency which it has either informally or formally
established; and this public feeling, while it is to some extent the
feeling spontaneously formed by those concerned, it is to a much larger
extent the accumulated and organised sentiment of the past. Everywhere
we are shown that the ruler's function as regulator is mainly that of
enforcing the inherited rules of conduct which embody ancestral
sentiments and ideas.
CHIEFS AND KINGS
At the outset the principle of efficiency was the sole principle of
organisation, but evidently supremacy which depends exclusively on
personal attributes is but transitory. Only when the chief's place is
forthwith filled by one whose claim is admitted does there begin a
differentiation which survives through successive generations. The
custom of reckoning descent through females, it may be noted, is less
favourable to the establishment of permanent political headship than is
the system of kinship through males, which conduces to a more coherent
family, to a greater culture of subordination and to a more probable
union of inherited position and inherited capacity. In sundry
semi-civilised societies distinguished by permanent political headships,
inheritance through males has been established in the ruling house while
inheritance through females survives in the society at large. Descent
through males also fosters ancestor-worship, and the consequent
reinforcing of natural authority by supernatural authority--a very
powerful factor. Development of the ghost theory, leading as it does to
special fear of the ghosts of powerful men, until, where many tribes
have been welded together by a conqueror, his ghost acquires in
tradition the pre-eminence of a god, produces two effects. In the first
place his descendant is supposed to partake of his divine nature; and in
the second place, by propitiatory sacrifices to him is supposed to
obtain his aid.
From the evolution-standpoint we are enabled to discern the relative
beneficence of institutions which, considered absolutely, are not
beneficent; and we are taught to approve as temporary that which as
permanent we abhor. The evidence shows that subjection to despots has
been largely instrumental in advancing civilised life.
COMPOUND POLITICAL HEADS
An examination of fact shows that where groups of the patriarchal type
fall into regions permitting considerable growths of population, but
having physical structures which impede the centralisation of power,
compound political heads will arise and for a time sustain themselves
through co-operation of the two factors, independence of local groups,
and need for union in war. Thus, as Mommsen says, primitive Rome was
rather an aggregate of urban settlements than a single city. Not only do
conditions determine the various forms which compound heads assume, but
conditions determine the various changes they undergo. They may be
narrowed by militancy, or they may be widened by industrialism.
CONSULTATIVE BODIES
The council of war is the germ out of which the consultative body
arises. Within the warrior class, which was of necessity the land-owning
class, war produces increasing differences of wealth, as well as
increasing differences of status; so that military leaders come to be
distinguished as large landowners and local rulers. Hence members of a
consultative body become contrasted with the freemen at large--not only
as leading warriors are contrasted with their followers, but still more
as men of wealth and authority. If the king attains or acquires the
reputation of supernatural descent or authority, and the law of
hereditary succession is so settled as to exclude election, those who
might otherwise have formed a consultative body having co-ordinate power
become simply appointed advisers. But if the king has not the prestige
of supposed sacred origin or commission the consultative body retains
power; and if the king continues to be elected it is liable to become an
oligarchy.
REPRESENTATIVE BODIES
How is the governmental influence of the people acquired? The primary
purpose for which chief men and representatives are assembled is that of
voting money. The revenues of rulers are derived at first wholly and
afterwards partly from presents. This primary obligation to render money
and service to the head of the State, often reluctantly complied with,
is resisted when the exactions are great, and resistance causes
conciliatory measures. From ability to prescribe conditions under which
money will be voted grows the ability, and finally the right, to join in
legislation.
LAWS
Law is mainly an embodiment of ancestral injunctions. The living ruler
able to legislate only in respect of matters unprovided for, is bound by
the transmitted command of the unknown and the known who have passed
away. Hence the trait common to societies in early stages that the
prescribed rules of conduct, of whatever kind, have a religious
sanction.
In societies that become large and complex, there arise forms of
activity and intercourse not provided for in the sacred code; and in
respect of these the ruler is free to make regulations. Thus there comes
into existence a body of laws of known human origin, which has not the
sacredness of the god-descended body of laws: human law differentiates
from divine law. And in proportion as the principle of voluntary
co-operation more and more characterises the social type, fulfilment of
contracts and implied assertion of equality in men's rights become the
fundamental requirements, and the consensus of individual interests the
chief source of law; such authority as law otherwise derived continues
to have being recognised as secondary, and insisted upon only because
maintenance of law for its own sake indirectly furthers the general
welfare.
The theories at present current adapted to the existing compromise
between militancy and industrialism are steps towards the ultimate
theory in conformity with which law will have no other justification
than that gained by it as maintainer of the conditions to complete life
in the associated state.
PROPERTY
The desire to appropriate lies deep in animal nature, being, indeed, a
condition to survival. The consciousness that conflict and consequent
injury may probably result from the endeavour to take that which is held
by another tends to establish the custom of leaving each in possession
of whatever he has obtained by labour. With the passage from a nomadic
to a settled state, ownership of land by the community becomes qualified
by individual ownership; but only to the extent that those who clear and
cultivate portions of the surface have undisturbed enjoyment of its
produce. Habitually the public claim survives, qualified by various
forms of private ownership mostly temporary; but war undermines communal
proprietorship of land, and partly or wholly substitutes for it either
the unqualified proprietorship of an absolute conqueror, or
proprietorship by a conqueror, qualified by the claims of vassals
holding it under certain conditions, while their claims are in turn
qualified by those of dependents attached to the soil. The
individualisation of ownership extended and made more definite by
trading transactions under contract, eventually affects the ownership of
land. Bought and sold by measure and for money, land is assimilated in
this respect to the personal property produced by labour, but there is
reason to suspect that while possession of such things will grow more
sacred, the inhabited area which cannot be produced by labour will
eventually be distinguished as something which may not be privately
possessed.
THE INDUSTRIAL TYPE OF SOCIETY
The traits of the industrial type of society are so hidden by those of
the still dominant militant type that its nature is nowhere more than
very partially exemplified. The industrial type is distinguished from
the militant type as being not both positively regulated and negatively
regulated, but as being negatively regulated only. To the member of the
industrial community authority says "Thou shalt not," and not "Thou
shalt." On turning to the civilised to observe the form of individual
character which accompanies the industrial form of society, we encounter
the difficulty that the personal traits proper to industrialism are,
like the social traits, mingled with those proper to militancy.
Nevertheless, on contrasting the characters of our ancestors during more
warlike periods with our own characters, we see that, with an increasing
ratio of industrialism to militancy, have come a growing independence, a
less marked loyalty, a smaller faith in governments, and a more
qualified patriotism; and while there has been shown a strengthening
assertion of individuality there has accompanied it a growing respect
for the individualities of others, as is implied by the diminution of
aggressions upon them, and the multiplication of efforts for their
welfare. It seems needful to explain that it is not so much that a
social life passed in peaceful occupations is positively moralising, as
that a social life passed in war is positively demoralising. The
sacrifice of others to self is in the one incidental only; while in the
other it is necessary.
POLITICAL PROSPECT
It appears to be an unavoidable inference that the ultimate executive
agency must become in some way or other elective. From such evidence as
existing society will afford us, it is to be inferred that the highest
State-office in whatever way filled will continue to decline in
importance. No speculations concerning ultimate political forms can,
however, be regarded as anything but tentative. There will probably be
considerable variety in the special forms of the political institutions
of industrial society; all of them bearing traces of past institutions
which have been brought into congruity with the representative
principle.
To turn to political functions, when corporate action is no longer
needed for preserving a society as a whole from destruction or injury by
other societies, the end which remains for it is that of preserving the
component members of society from injury by one another. With this
limitation of the state function it is probable that there will be
simultaneously carried further that trait which already characterises
the most industrially-organised society--the performance of
increasingly-numerous and increasingly-important functions by other
organisations than those which form departments of the government.
Already private enterprise, working through incorporated bodies of
citizens, achieves ends undreamed of as so achievable in primitive
societies; and in the future other ends undreamed of now as so
achievable will be achieved.
The conclusion of profoundest moment to which lines of argument converge
is that the possibility of a high social state political as well as
general, fundamentally depends on the cessation of war. Persistent
militancy, maintaining adapted institutions, must inevitably prevent, or
else neutralise, changes in the direction of more equitable institutions
and laws; while permanent peace will of necessity be followed by social
ameliorations of every kind.
_III.--Ecclesiastical Institutions_
Rightly to trace the evolution of ecclesiastical institutions, we must
know whence came the ideas and sentiments implied by them. Are these
innate or are they derived? They are derived. And here it may be
remarked that where among African savages there existed no belief in a
double which goes away during sleep, there was found to exist no belief
in a double which survived after death.
From the ordinary absence of the other self in sleep, and its
extraordinary absences in swoons, apoplexy, and so forth, the transition
is to its unlimited absence at death; when after an interval of waiting
the expectation of immediate return is given up. Commonly the spirit is
supposed to linger near the body or to revisit it. Hence the
universality of ministrations to the double of the deceased habitually
made at funerals. The habitat of the other self is variously conceived;
though everywhere there is an approach to parallelism between the life
here and the imagined life hereafter. Along with the development of
grave-heaps into altars, grave-sheds into religious edifices, and food
for the ghost into sacrifices, there goes on the development of praise
and prayer. Turning to certain more indirect results of the ghost
theory, we find that, distinguishing but confusedly between semblance
and reality, the savage thinks that the representation of a thing
partakes of the properties of a thing. Hence the effigy of a dead man
becomes a habitation for his ghost; and idols, because of the indwelling
doubles of the dead, are propitiated. Identification of the doubles of
the dead with animals--now with those which frequent houses or places
which the doubles are supposed to haunt and now with those which are
like certain of the dead in their malicious or benevolent natures--is in
other cases traceable to misinterpretation of names; this latter leading
to the identification of stars with persons and hence to star and sun
worship. In their normal forms, as in their abnormal forms, all gods
arise by apotheosis. Originally the god is the superior living man whose
power is conceived as superhuman. As in primitive thought divinity is
synonymous with superiority, and as at first a god may be either a
powerful living person or a dead person who has acquired supernatural
power as a ghost, there come two origins for semi-divine beings--the one
by unions between a conquering god race and the conquered race
distinguished as men, and the other by supposed intercourse between
living persons and spirits. Where the evidence is examined comparative
sociology discloses a common origin for each leading element of
religious belief.
MEDICINE MEN AND PRIESTS
In the primitive belief that the doubles of the dead may be induced to
yield benefits or desist from inflicting evil by bribing or cajoling or
else by threatening or coercing, we see that the modes of dealing with
ghosts broadly contrasted as antagonistic and sympathetic, initiate the
distinction between medicine man and priest.
Prompted as offerings on graves originally are by affection for the
deceased, it naturally happens that such propitiations are made more by
relatives than others. The family cult next acquires a more definite
form by the devolution of its functions on one member of the family.
Hence in ancient Egypt "it was most important that a man should have a
son established in his seat after him who should perform the due rites"
of sacrifice to his _ka_ or double. Facts also show that the devolution
of the sacrificial office accompanies devolution of property, for this
has to bear the costs of the sacrifices; and by a natural corollary the
head of the village-community combines the characters of priest and
ruler. With the increase of a chief's territory there comes an
accumulation of business which necessitates the employment of
assistants, and among the functions deputed is that of priest, at first
perhaps temporarily assumed by a brother. Such is the usual origin of
priesthood.
Many facts make it clear that, not only the genesis of polytheism but
the long survival of it are sequences of primitive ancestor-worship.
Eventually there result under favouring conditions a gravitation towards
monotheism; and with this an advance towards unification of priesthood.
The official proprietors of the deity who has come to be regarded as the
most powerful or as the possessor of all power becomes established
everywhere.
Likeness between ecclesiastical and political organisations when they
have diverged is largely due to their community of origin. There results
a hierarchy of sacerdotal functionaries analogous to the graduated
system of political functionaries; then the agencies for carrying on
celestial rule and terrestrial rule eventually begin to compete for
supremacy; and there are reasons for thinking that the change from an
original predominance of a spiritual power over the temporal power to
ultimate subjugation of it is mainly due to the development of
industrialism with the moral and intellectual changes involved.
PROSPECT
What may we infer will be the evolution of religious ideas and
sentiments throughout the future? The development of those higher
sentiments which no longer tolerate the ascription of inferior
sentiments to a divinity, and the intellectual development which causes
dissatisfaction with the crude interpretations previously accepted, must
force men hereafter to drop the higher anthropomorphic characters given
to the First Cause as they have long since dropped the lower.
Those, however, who think that science is dissipating religious beliefs
and sentiments seem unaware that whatever of mystery is taken from the
old interpretation is added to the new. Or rather we may say that
transference from one to the other is accompanied by increase; since for
an explanation which has a seeming feasibility, science substitutes an
explanation which, carrying us back only a certain distance, then leaves
us in the presence of the avowedly inexplicable. The truth must grow
ever clearer--the truth that there is an inscrutable existence
everywhere manifested to which the man of science can neither find nor
conceive either beginning or end. Amid the mysteries which become the
more mysterious the more they are thought about, there will remain the
one absolute certainty, that he is ever in the presence of _AN INFINITE
AND ETERNAL ENERGY_, from which all things proceed.
BENEDICT DE SPINOZA
Ethics
Baruch (_Lat._ Benedict) Spinoza, or de Spinoza, as he afterwards
signed himself, son of a wealthy Portuguese Jew, was born at
Amsterdam, November 24, 1632, and died at the early age of
forty-four, on February 21, 1677. He was educated to the highest
pitch of attainment in Hebrew and Talmudist learning, and through
delicacy of physical constitution devoted himself entirely to
study, cultivating assiduously philosophy as well as theology,
while not neglecting the physical sciences. Imbibing unorthodox
views he was formally excommunicated from the synagogue, and
philosophy henceforth became the sole pursuit of his mind. He was
able, however, through his great scientific accomplishments and
mechanical skill, to gain a sufficiency for his subsistence by
polishing lenses. This accomplished man was also no mean artist,
especially in designing. He was one of the finest Latinists of his
time. He was filled with the spirit of religion, and lived the
simplest life, on a few pence a day, in a period of voluptuous
epicureanism. The philosophical system of Spinoza was evolved from
that of Descartes, who had sought to inaugurate a new era in
thought. But he sought more clearly to demonstrate the existence of
God than did his great French master. No philosopher has been more
maligned on the one hand, or more adulated on the other, than this
great Jewish genius. Spinoza has been by some nicknamed Pantheist
or Atheist; while Schleiermacher and other theologians have not
hesitated to describe him as "pious, virtuous, God-intoxicated."
_I.--Concerning God_
By God I understand absolutely infinite Being, that is, substance
consisting of infinite attributes, each expressing eternal and definite
essence. If this be denied, conceive, if it be possible, that God does
not exist. Then it follows that His essence does not involve existence,
which is absurd. Therefore God necessarily exists.
God is absolutely the first cause. He acts from the laws of His own
nature only, and is compelled by no one. For outside of Himself there
can be nothing by which He may be determined to act. Therefore He acts
solely from the laws of His own nature. And therefore also God alone is
a free cause.
The omnipotence of God has been actual from eternity and will be actual
from eternity. The Divine intellect is the cause of things, both of
their essence and of their existence. Thus it is the cause both of the
essence and of the existence of the human intellect, but it differs from
our intellect both in essence and in existence. The same may be said of
the Divine will and the human will.
The will cannot be called a free cause, but can only be termed
necessary. The will is only a certain mode of thought, like the
intellect. It requires a cause to determine it to action, and therefore
cannot be called a free cause, but only a necessary cause. Hence it
follows that God does not act from freedom of the will. For the will,
like all other things, needs a cause to determine it to act in a certain
manner. Things could have been produced by God in no other manner or
order than that in which they have been. Things have been created by God
in absolute perfection, because they have necessarily followed from His
absolutely perfect nature.
_The Divine Power and Decree_
Since in eternity there is no _when_, nor _before_, nor _after_, God
cannot decree nor could He have ever decreed anything other than He has
decreed in the perfection of His nature. For if He had decreed something
else about creation, He would necessarily have had an intellect and a
will different from those He now has. Could such a supposition be
allowed, why cannot He now change His decree about creation yet remain
perfect?
All things depend on the Divine power; but God's will, because of his
perfection, cannot be other than it is, and therefore things cannot be
differently constituted. For to suppose otherwise is to subject God to
fate, an absurdity which is not worth waste of time to refute.
The sum of the matter is that God necessarily exists; that He is one
God; that He acts from the necessity of His nature; that He is the free
cause of all things; that all things depend on Him; and that all things
have been predestined by Him.
_II.--Concerning Mind_
I pass on to those things which must necessarily follow from the essence
of the eternal and infinite God.
Thought is the attribute of God. Individual thoughts are modes
expressing the nature of God in a certain and determinate manner. The
order and connection of these ideas coincides with the order and
connection of things, therefore God's power of thinking is equal to His
power of acting. The circle existing in nature and the idea of an
existing circle which is also in God, are one and the same thing,
exhibited through different attributes. God is truly the cause of things
as they are in themselves, in so far as He consists of infinite
attributes.
The first thing which forms the actual Being of the human mind is
nothing else than the idea of an individual actually existing. The
essence of man is formed by certain modes of the Divine attributes, that
is to say, modes of thought. The idea is the first thing which forms the
Being of the human mind. It must be an idea of an individual thing
actually existing. Hence the human mind is part of the infinite
intellect of God.
The knowledge of everything which happens necessarily exists in God, in
so far as He forms the nature of the human mind. Man thinks. Modes of
thought, such as love, desire, or affections of the mind under whatever
designation, do not exist, unless in the same individual exists an idea
of a thing loved, desired, etc. But the idea may exist though no other
mode of thinking exists. Therefore the essence of man does not
necessarily involve existence.
We perceive that a body is affected in certain ways. No individual
things are felt or perceived by us except bodies and modes of thought.
The object of the idea constituting the human mind is a body, or a
certain mode of actually existing extension, and nothing else. For if
the body were not the object of the human mind, the ideas of the
affections of the body would not be in God, in so far as He has created
our mind, but would be in Him in so far as He has formed the mind of
another thing.
But we have ideas of the affections of the body; therefore the object of
the idea constituting the human mind is the body actually existing. It
follows that man consists of mind and body, and that the human body
exists as we perceive it.
_Mind and Body_
Hence we perceive not only that the human mind is united to the body,
but also what is to be understood by the union of mind and body. But no
one can adequately comprehend it without previously possessing adequate
knowledge of the body. In proportion as one body is better adapted than
another to act or suffer, the mind will at the same time be better
adapted for perception. And the more independent a body may be of other
bodies, the stronger will be the understanding of the mind. Thus we can
determine the superiority of one mind over another.
All bodies are either moving or resting. Every body moves sometimes
slowly, sometimes quickly. Bodies are distinguished from each other by
degrees of motion and quiescence, not with regard to substance. All
bodies agree in some aspects. Bodies affect each other in motion and
rest. Each individual thing must necessarily be determined as to motion
or rest by some other thing.
The human body needs for its preservation many other bodies by which it
is, as it were, regenerated. The human mind increases its aptitude in
proportion to the number of ways in which the body can be disposed. The
idea constituting a formal being of the human mind is not simple, but is
highly complex. An idea of each component part of the body must
necessarily exist in God.
The human mind does not know the human body itself, nor does it know
that the human body exists, except through the ideas and affections by
which the body is affected. Indeed, the human mind is the very idea or
knowledge of the human body. These ideas are in God. Thought is an
attribute of God, and so the thought of the mind originates of necessity
in Him. All the ideas which are in God always agree with those things of
which they are ideas, and therefore they are all true.
Falsity consists in privation of knowledge, involved in confusion and
mutilation of ideas. For instance, because they think themselves to be
free, and the sole reason for this opinion is that they are conscious of
their own actions, and ignorant of the causes determining those actions.
Nobody knows what the will is and how it moves to-day. Those who pretend
otherwise and invent locations of the soul, usually excite derision and
disgust.
When we look at the sun and imagine it to be immensely nearer to us than
it really is, the error arises from the manner in which the essence of
the sun affects the body, not merely from the exercise of the
imagination.
_Mutual Influences_
The more things the body possesses in common with other bodies, the more
things will the mind be adapted to perceive. The human mind possesses
an adequate knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of God. But
the reason why men have not a knowledge of God as clear as that which
they have of common notions is that they cannot imagine God as they can
imagine bodies, and because they have attached the name of God to the
images of things they are accustomed to see. This they can hardly avoid,
because they are constantly affected by external bodies. And, indeed
most errors arise from our application to the wrong names of things.
For if some one says that the lines drawn from the centre to the
circumference of a circle are unequal, it is because he understands by a
circle something different from what we understand by the
mathematicians. I did not reckon a man to be in error whom I recently
heard complaining that his court has flown into one of his neighbour's
fowls for I understand what he meant.
In the mind there is no absolutely free will. The mind is determined to
this or that volition by a cause, which is determined by another cause,
and so on _ad infinitum_. The will and intellect are one and the same.
We are partakers of the divine nature in proportion as we more and more
understand God and conform our actions to his will. Our highest
happiness consists in this conformity, by which alone the soul finds
repose. Those greatly err from the true estimate of virtue who expect to
be rewarded for it, as though virtue and the service of God were our
felicity itself and the highest liberty.
_III.--Concerning Mental Affections_
The actions of the mind arise from adequate ideas alone; but the
passions depend on those alone which are inadequate. The essence of the
mind is composed of adequate and inadequate ideas. Joy is a passion by
which the mind passes to a greater degree of perfection; sorrow is a
passion by which it passes to a lesser degree.
Accidentally anything may be the cause of joy, sorrow, or desire. We
love or hate certain things not from any known cause, but merely from
sympathy or antipathy. If we hate a thing, we seek to affirm concerning
it everything that we think can affect it with sorrow, while we deny
everything that we think can affect it with joy. From this we see how
easily a man may think too much of himself, and of the object which he
loves, and on the other hand, may think too little of what he hates.
When a man thinks too much of himself this imagination is termed pride,
and is a species of delirium, because he dreams with his eyes open, that
he can do all those things to which he attains in imagination alone,
regarding them thus as realities, and rejoicing in them so long as he
cannot imagine anything to exclude their existence and limit his power
of action.
If we imagine that a person loves, desires, or hates a thing which we
love, desire, or hate, we shall on that account love, desire, or hate
the thing more intensely. If, on the other hand, we imagine that he is
averse to the thing we love, or loves the thing to which we are averse,
then we shall suffer vacillation of mind. Hence every one strives to the
utmost to induce others to love what he loves and to hate what he hates.
This effort is called ambition, which prompts each person to desire that
others should live according to his way of thinking. But if all thus
act, then all hinder each other. And if all wish to be praised or loved
by all, then all hate one another.
Joy is a man's passage from a less to a greater perfection; sorrow is a
man's passage from a greater to a less perfection. I say passage, for
joy is not perfection itself. If a man were born with the perfection to
which he passes, he would possess it without the affection of joy--a
truth the more vividly apparent from the affection of sorrow which is
the contrary of joy.
For, that sorrow consists in the passage to a less perfection, but not
in the less perfection itself, no one can deny, since in so far as a
man partakes of any perfection, he cannot be sad.
Nor can we say that sorrow consists in the passage to a less perfection,
for privation is nothing. But the affection of sorrow is actual, and so
can be nothing else than the passage to a lesser perfection, that is,
the reality by which the power of acting is limited or diminished. As
for the definitions of cheerfulness, pleasurable excitement, melancholy,
or grief, I omit these, because they are related rather to the body than
to the mind, and are merely different species of joy and sorrow.
Love is joy with the accompanying idea of an external cause. Hatred is
sorrow with the accompanying idea of an external cause. Devotion is love
towards an object which we admire and wonder at. Derision is joy arising
from the imagination that something we despise is present in the object
we hate. Hope is a joy not constant, arising from the idea of something
future or past, about the issue of which we are doubtful. Fear is sorrow
not constant, arising in like manner.
Confidence is joy arising from the idea of a past or future object from
which the cause for doubting has been removed. Despair is sorrow arising
from a like cause. Confidence springs from hope, despair from fear.
Pride is thinking too highly of ourselves from self-love. Despondency is
thinking too little of ourselves through sorrow.
_IV.--Concerning Human Bondage and Human Liberty_
Good is that which is useful to us; evil, that which impedes the
possession of good. But the terms good and evil are not positive, but
are only modes of thought, by which we compare one thing with another.
Thus, music is good to a melancholy mind, bad to a mourning mind, but
neither bad nor good to a deaf man. We suffer because we form a part of
nature. The power by which we preserve our being is the power of God,
that is part of His essence. But man is subject to passions because he
follows the order of nature.
An affection can only be overcome by a stronger affection. That which
tends to conserve our existence we denominate good. That which hinders
this conservation we style evil. Desire springing from the knowledge of
good and evil can be restrained by desires originating in the affections
by which we are agitated. Thus the effect of external causes on the mind
may be far greater than that of the knowledge of good and evil. The
desire springing from a knowledge of good and evil may be easily
restrained by the desire of present objects. Opinion exercises a more
potent influence than reason. Hence the saying of the poet, "I approve
the better, but follow the worse." And hence also the preacher says "He
that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." We ought to know both the
strength and the weakness of our nature, that we may judge what reason
can and cannot do in controlling our affections.
Desire springing from joy preponderates over that springing from sorrow.
Man is useful to man because two individuals of the same nature when in
sympathy are stronger than one. Nothing could be so good for men as that
all should so agree in everything as to form as it were a single body
and mind, all seeking the good of all. Hence, men acting in accord with
the dictates of reason desire nothing for themselves but what they
desire for all. This renders them just, faithful, and honourable.
The knowledge of God is the supreme mental good, and to know God is the
supreme mental virtue. For God is the supreme subject of the
understanding, and therefore to know or understand God is the supreme
virtue of the mind. But to us nothing can be either good or evil unless
it has something in common with us. An object whose nature is absolutely
foreign to our own cannot be either good or evil to us, for this
reason, that we only call a thing good or evil when it is the cause of
joy or sorrow, this is to say, when it increases or diminishes our power
to act.
Nothing can be reckoned good except that which is in harmony with our
nature, and nothing can be reckoned evil expect what is contrary to our
nature, but men cannot be said to agree in nature when they are subject
to passion. We only act in harmony with the dictates of reason when we
agree in nature with others. Men are most useful to each other who are
mutually ruled by the laws of reason. But rarely do men live thus in
harmony with reason, and thus it comes to pass that they are commonly
envious of each other.
Yet men are seldom disposed to solitude, but answer generally to the
familiar description of man as a social animal, for they know that the
advantages preponderate over the advantages of social life. They find by
experience that by mutual aid and co-operation they can, on the one hand
the more easily secure what they need, and on the other hand the better
defend themselves from danger.
A man who seeks after virtue will desire others to do so, and this
desire will increase in proportion to this increase of his knowledge of
God. The good that a man seeks by the quest of virtue he will wish
others to obtain also. This is in accordance with reason, which is the
operation of the mind according to the essence of the mind, that essence
of the mind being knowledge, which involves the knowledge of God. The
greater the knowledge of God involved in the essence of the mind, the
greater will be the desire that others may seek after the same virtue
which the man seeks for himself.
_Economics_
EDWARD BELLAMY
Looking Backward
Edward Bellamy, American social reformer, who sprang into fame in
the last decade of the nineteenth century by his book, "Looking
Backward," was born in Massachusetts, on March 25, 1850. Trained
for the Bar, he became a journalist, and devoted his pen to the
propaganda of socialism. After the unprecedented success of his
socialist novel, in which he describes a suppositious twentieth
century revolution from the standpoint of a hypnotised sleeper
awakened in 2000 A.D., his modest home at Chicopee Falls became a
recognised centre of the socialist movement in the United States.
"Looking Backward" was published in 1888, and was followed by
"Equality," in which he expounded his political doctrines in
dialogue form, the story being treated merely as a sequel to the
earlier book, and entirely subordinated to the more serious aim. We
have here preferred to classify "Looking Backward" as a work of
philosophy, and not as fiction. Bellamy's championship of the
rights of the disinherited, and his enlightened ideas, conveyed in
a by no means unimaginative style, gained him many friends and
sympathisers. Bellamy died on May 22, 1898.
_I.--The Great Change_
I first saw the light in the city of Boston, in the year 1857. "What!"
you say, "eighteen-fifty-seven? That is an odd slip. He means
nineteen-fifty-seven, of course." I beg pardon, but there is no mistake.
It was about four in the afternoon of December 26, one day after
Christmas, in the year 1857, not 1957, that I, Julian West, first
breathed the east wind of Boston, which, I assure the reader, was at
that remote period marked by the same penetrating quality characterising
it in the present year of grace, 2000.
Living in luxury, and occupied only with the pursuit of the pleasures
and refinements of life, I derived the means of my support from the
labour of others, rendering no sort of service in return. Why, you ask,
should the world have supported in utter idleness one who was able to
render service? The answer is, that my great-grandfather had accumulated
a sum of money, on the yield of which his descendants had ever since
lived. "Interest on investments" was a species of tax on industry which
a person possessing or inheriting money was then able to levy, in spite
of all the efforts to put down usury.
I cannot do better than compare society as it then was to a prodigious
coach to which the masses were harnessed and dragged toilsomely along a
very hilly and sandy road, with Hunger for driver. The passengers
comfortably seated on the top would call down encouragingly to the
toilers at the rope, exhorting them to patience; but always expected to
be drawn and not to pull, because, as they thought, they were not like
their brothers who pulled at the rope, but of finer clay, in some way
belonging to a higher order of beings.
In 1887, I was engaged to wed Edith Bartlett. She, like myself, rode on
the top of the coach. Our marriage only awaited the completion of a
house, which, however, was delayed by a series of strikes. I remember
Mr. Bartlett saying: "The working classes all over the world seem to be
going crazy at once. In Europe it is far worse even than here."
The family mansion, in which I lived alone with a faithful coloured
servant by the name of Sawyer, was not a house to which I could think of
bringing a bride, much less so dainty a one as Edith Bartlett. Being a
sufferer from insomnia, I had caused a secret sleeping chamber to be
built of stone beneath the foundation, and when even the silence of this
retreat failed to bring slumber, I sometimes called in a professional
mesmeriser to put me into a hypnotic sleep, from which Sawyer knew how
to arouse me at a given time.
On the night of May 30, 1887, I was put to sleep as usual. That night
the house was wholly destroyed by fire; and it was not until a hundred
and thirteen years later, in September 2000 A.D., that the subterranean
chamber was discovered, and myself, the sleeper, aroused by Dr. Leete, a
physician of Boston on the retired list. My companion, Dr. Leete, led
the way to a belvedere on the house-top. "Be pleased to look around
you," he said, "and tell me whether this is the Boston of the nineteenth
century."
At my feet lay a great city. Miles of broad streets, shaded by trees,
and lined with fine buildings, for the most part not in continuous
blocks, but set in larger or smaller enclosures, stretched in every
direction. Every quarter contained large open squares filled with trees,
among which statues glistened and fountains flashed in the late
afternoon sun. Public buildings of a colossal size and an architectural
grandeur unparalleled in my day raised their stately piles on every
side. Surely, I had never before seen this city, nor one comparable to
it. Raising my eyes at last towards the horizon, I looked westward. That
blue ribbon winding away to the sunset, was it not the sinuous Charles?
I looked east: Boston harbour stretched before me with its headlands,
not one of its green islets missing.
"If you had told me," I said, profoundly awed, "that a thousand years
instead of a hundred had elapsed since I last looked on this city, I
should now believe you."
"Only a century has passed," he answered; "but many a millennium in the
world's history has seen changes less extraordinary."
_II.--How the Great Change Came About_
After Dr. Leete had responded to numerous questions on my part, he asked
in what point the contrast between the new and the old city struck me
most forcibly.
"To speak of small things before great," I replied, "I really think
that the complete absence of chimneys and their smoke is the detail that
first impressed me."
"Ah!" ejaculated my companion. "I had forgotten the chimneys, it is so
long since they went out of use. It is nearly a century since the crude
method of combustion, on which you depended for heat, became obsolete."
"In general," I said, "what impresses me most about the city is the
material prosperity on the part of the people which its magnificence
implies."
"I would give a great deal for just one glimpse of the Boston of your
day," replied Dr. Leete. "No doubt the cities of that period were rather
shabby affairs. If you had the taste to make them splendid, which I
would not be so rude as to question, the general poverty resulting from
your extraordinary industrial system would not have given you the means.
Moreover, the excessive individualism was inconsistent with much public
spirit. Nowadays, there is no destination of the surplus wealth so
popular as the adornment of the city, which all enjoy in equal degree.
It is growing dark," he added. "Let us descend into the house; I want to
introduce my wife and daughter to you."
The apartment in which we found the ladies, as well as the entire
interior of the house, was filled with a mellow light, which I knew must
be artificial, although I could not discover the source from which it
was diffused. Mrs. Leete was an exceptionally fine-looking and
well-preserved woman, while her daughter, in the first blush of
womanhood, was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. In this lovely
creature feminine softness and delicacy were deliciously combined with
an appearance of health and abounding physical vitality too often
lacking in the maidens with whom alone I could compare her. The evening
which followed was certainly unique in the history of social
intercourse.
When the ladies retired, Dr. Leete sounded me as to my disposition for
sleep, but gladly bore me company when I confessed I was afraid of it. I
was curious, too, as to the changes.
"To make a beginning somewhere," said I, "what solution, if any, have
you found for the labour question? It was the Sphinx's riddle of the
nineteenth century, and when I dropped out the Sphinx was threatening to
devour society because the answer was not forthcoming."
"The riddle may be said to have solved itself," replied Dr. Leete. "The
solution came as the result of a process of industrial evolution which
could not have terminated otherwise. The movement toward the conduct of
business by larger and larger aggregations of capital--the tendency
toward monopolies, which had been desperately and vainly resisted--was
recognised at last as a process to a golden future.
"Early in the last century the evolution was completed by the final
consolidation of the entire capital of the nation. The industry and
commerce of the country, ceasing to be conducted by a set of
irresponsible corporations and syndicates of private persons at their
caprice and for their profit, were entrusted to a single syndicate
representing the people, to be conducted for the common profit. That is
to say, the nation organised itself as one great business corporation in
which all other corporations were absorbed. It became the one
capitalist, the sole employer, the final monopoly, in the profits and
economies of which all citizens shared. The epoch of trusts ended in the
Great Trust. In a word, the people of the United States concluded to
assume the conduct of their own business, just as a hundred odd years
earlier they had assumed the conduct of their own government. Strangely
late in the world's history, the obvious fact was perceived that no
business is so essentially the public business as the industry and
commerce on which the people's livelihood depends, and that to entrust
it to private persons to be managed for private profit is a folly
similar in kind, though vastly greater in magnitude, to that of
surrendering the functions of political government to kings and nobles
to be conducted for their personal glorification."
"So stupendous a change," said I, "did not, of course, take place
without bloodshed and terrible convulsions?"
"On the contrary, there was absolutely no violence. The great
corporations had taught an entirely new set of ideas. The people had
seen syndicates handling revenues; greater than those of states, and
directing the labours of hundreds of thousands of men with an efficiency
unattainable in smaller operations. It had come to be recognised as an
axiom that the larger the business the simpler the principles that can
be applied to it; that, as the machine is truer than the hand, so the
system, which in a great concern does the work of the master's eye, in a
small business turns out more accurate results. Thus, thanks to the
corporations themselves, when it was proposed that the nation should
assume their functions, the suggestion implied nothing that seemed
impracticable."
"In my day," said I, "it was considered that the proper functions of
government, strictly speaking, were limited to keeping the peace and
defending the people against the public enemy."
"And, in heaven's name, who are the public enemies?" exclaimed Dr.
Leete. "Are they France, England, Germany? or Hunger, Cold, Nakedness?
In your day governments were accustomed, on the slightest international
misunderstanding, to seize upon the bodies of citizens and deliver them
over by hundreds of thousands to death and mutilation, wasting their
treasures the while like water; and all this oftenest for no imaginable
profit to the victims. We have no wars now, and our governments no war
powers; but in order to protect every citizen against hunger, cold, and
nakedness, and provide for all his physical and mental needs, the
function is assumed of directing his industry for a term of years. Not
even for the best ends would men now allow their governments such
powers as were then used for the most maleficent."
"Leaving comparisons aside," I said, "the demagoguery and corruption of
our public men would have been considered, in my day, insuperable
objections to government assuming charge of the national industries."
"No doubt you were right," rejoined Dr. Leete; "but all that is changed.
We have no parties or politicians."
"Human nature itself must have changed very much."
"Not at all; but the conditions of human life have changed, and with
them the motives of human action. The organisation of society with you
was such that officials were under a constant temptation to misuse their
power for the private profit of themselves or others. Now society is so
constituted that there is absolutely no way in which an official could
possibly make any profit for himself or anyone else by a misuse of his
power."
_III.--Labour's New Régime_
"But you have not yet told me how you have settled the labour problem."
"When the nation became the sole employer," said Dr. Leete, "all the
citizens became employees, to be distributed according to the needs of
industry."
"That is, you have simply applied the principle of universal military
service, as understood in our day, to the labour question."
"Yes. Nevertheless, to speak of service being compulsory would be a weak
way to state its absolute inevitableness. If it were conceivable that a
man could escape it, he would be left with no possible way to provide
for his existence. The period of industrial service is twenty-four
years, beginning at the close of the course of education at twenty-one,
and terminating at forty-five. After forty-five, the citizen is liable
to special calls for labour emergencies till fifty-five."
"But what administrative talent can be equal to determining wisely what
trade or business every individual in a great nation shall pursue?"
"The administration has nothing to do with determining that point. Every
man determines it for himself in accordance with his natural aptitude,
the utmost pains being taken to enable him to find out what his natural
aptitude really is. Usually, long before he is mustered into service, a
young man has found out the pursuit he wants to follow, has acquired a
great deal of knowledge about it, and is awaiting impatiently the time
when he can enlist in its ranks."
"Surely, it can hardly be that the number of volunteers for any trade is
exactly the number needed?"
"The supply is always expected to equal fully the demand. The rate of
volunteering is closely watched. It is the business of the
administration to equalise the attractions of the trades, so that the
lightest trades have the longest hours, while an arduous trade, such as
mining, has very short hours."
"How is the class of common labourers recruited?"
"It is the grade to which all new recruits belong for the first three
years. If a man were so stupid as to have no choice as to occupation, he
would simply remain a common labourer."
"Having once elected and entered on a trade or occupation, I suppose he
has to stick to it the rest of his life?"
"Not necessarily," replied Dr. Leete; "while frequent and merely
capricious changes of occupation are net permitted, every worker is
allowed, of course under regulations and in accordance with the
exigencies of the service, to volunteer for another industry which he
thinks would suit him better than his first choice. It is only the
poorer sort of workmen who desire to change. Of course, transfers or
discharges are always given when health demands them."
"How are the brain-workers selected? That must require a very delicate
sort of sifting process?"
"So it does, the most delicate possible test; so we leave the question
whether a man shall be a brain or handworker entirely to him to settle.
At the end of the three years of common labour, if a man feels he can do
better work with his brain than his muscles, the schools of technology,
medicine, art, music, histrionics, and higher liberal learning are open
to him without condition. But anyone without the special aptitude would
find it easier to do double hours at his trade than try to keep up with
the classes. This opportunity for a professional training remains open
to every man till the age of thirty."
_IV.--The New Plan_
Dr. and Mrs. Leete were startled to learn I had been all over the city
alone. "You must have seen a good many new things," said Mrs. Leete, as
we sat down to table.
"I think what surprised me as much as anything was not to find any
stores in Washington Street, or any banks of State. What have you done
with the merchants and bankers?"
"Their functions are obsolete in the modern world. There is neither
selling nor buying, and we have no money. As soon as the nation became
the producer of all sorts of commodities, there was no need of exchanges
between individuals. Everything was procurable from one source, and that
only. A system of direct distribution from the national storehouses took
the place of trade, and for this money was unnecessary."
"How is this distribution managed?"
"A credit, corresponding to his share of the annual product of the
nation, is given to every citizen on the public books at the beginning
of each year, and a credit-card issued him, with which he procures at
the public stores, found in every community, whatever he desires,
whenever he desires it.
"You observe," he pursued, as I was curiously examining the piece of
pasteboard he gave me, "that this credit-card is issued for a certain
number of dollars. We keep the old term dollars as an algebraical symbol
for comparing the values of products with one another. All are priced in
dollars and cents, just as in your day. The value of what I procure on
this card is checked off by the clerk, who pricks out of these tiers of
squares the price of what I order."
"If you wanted to buy something of your neighbour, could you transfer
part of your credit to him?"
"Our neighbours have nothing to sell us; but, in any event, one's credit
would not be transferable, being strictly personal. Before the nation
could even think of honouring any such transfer, it would be bound to
inquire into its equity. It would have been reason enough, had there
been no other, for abolishing money, that its possession was no
indication of rightful title to it. In the hands of the man who had
stolen it, it was as good as if earned by industry.
"People nowadays interchange gifts, but buying and selling is considered
absolutely inconsistent with the mutual benevolence and
disinterestedness which should prevail between citizens. According to
our ideas, the practice of buying and selling is essentially anti-social
in all its tendencies. It is an education in self-seeking at the expense
of others, and no society whose citizens are trained in such a school
can possibly rise above a very low grade of civilisation."
"What if you have to spend more than your card allows in any one year?"
"If extraordinary expenses should exhaust it we can obtain a limited
advance on next year's credit at a heavy discount. If a man showed
himself a reckless spendthrift he would receive his allowance monthly or
weekly instead of yearly, or, if necessary, not be permitted to handle
it at all."
"If you don't spend your allowance, I suppose it accumulates?"
"That is also permitted to a certain extent when a special outlay is
anticipated. But unless notice is given, it is presumed that the citizen
who does not fully expend his credit did not have occasion to do so, and
the balance is turned into the general surplus."
"Such a system does not encourage saving habits."
"It is not intended to. No man has care for the morrow, either for
himself or his children, for the nation guarantees the nurture,
education, and maintenance of every citizen from the cradle to the
grave."
"But what inducement can a man have to put forth his best endeavours
when, however much or little he accomplishes, his income remains the
same?"
"Does it then really seem to you that human nature is insensible to any
motives save fear of want and love of luxury, that you expect security
and equality of livelihood to leave men without incentives to effort?
Your contemporaries did not really think so. When it was a question of
the grandest class of efforts, the most absolute self-devotion, they
depended on quite other motives. Not higher wages, but honour and the
hope of men's gratitude, patriotism, and the inspiration of duty were
the motives they set before their soldiers. Now that industry of
whatever sort is no longer self-service, but service of the nation,
patriotism--passion for humanity--impels the worker as in your day it
did the soldier."
During the next few days I investigated many other of the social and
domestic arrangements of Bostonians of the twenty-first century, and
from what I saw myself and heard from my hosts, I gained some tolerably
clear ideas of modern organisation, and the system of distribution. But
it seemed to me that the system of production and the direction of the
industrial army must be wonderfully complex and difficult.
"I assure you that it is nothing of the kind," said Dr. Leete. "The
entire field of production and constructive industry is divided into ten
great departments, each representing a group of allied industries, each
industry being in turn represented by a subordinate bureau, which has a
complete record of the plant and force under its control, of the present
output, and means of increasing it. The estimates of the distributive
department, after adoption by the administration, are sent as mandates
to the ten great departments, which allot them to the subordinate
bureaus representing the particular industries, and these set the men at
work. Each bureau is responsible for the task given it. Even if in the
hands of the consumer an article turns out unfit, the system enables the
fault to be traced back to the original workman. After the necessary
contingents of labour have been detailed for the various industries, the
amount of labour left for other employment is expended in creating fixed
capital, such as buildings, machinery, engineering works, and so forth."
That evening and the next following I sat up late talking with Dr. Leete
of the changes of the last hundred and thirteen years; but on the
Sunday, my first in the twenty-first century, I fell into a state of
profound depression, accentuated by consideration of the vast moral gap
between the century to which I belonged and that in which I found
myself. There was no place anywhere for me. I was neither dead nor
properly alive. Now I realised the mingled pity, curiosity, and aversion
which I, as a representative of an abhorred epoch, must excite in all
around me; but that Edith Leete must share their feelings was more than
I could bear.
Towards nightfall I entered the subterranean chamber and sat down there,
feeling utterly alone. Presently Edith stood in the door.
"Has it never occurred to you," I said, "that my position is more
utterly alone than any human being's ever was before?"
"Oh, you must not talk in that way. You don't know how it makes me feel
to see you so forlorn," she exclaimed.
I caught her hands in my own. "Are you so blind as not to see why such
kindness as you have all shown me is not enough to make me happy?"
"Are you sure it is not you who are blind?" she said.
That was all; but it was enough, for it told me that this radiant
daughter of a golden age had bestowed upon me not alone her pity, but
her love. And now I first knew what was perhaps the strangest feature of
my strange experience: Edith was the great grand-daughter of no other
than my lost love Edith Bartlett.
JEREMY BENTHAM
Principles of Morals and Legislation
Jeremy Bentham, the son and grandson of attorneys, was born in
London on February 15, 1748. He was called to the Bar, but did not
practise. His fame rests on his work in the fields of
jurisprudence, political science, and ethics. He is accounted the
founder of the "utilitarian" school of philosophy, of which the
theory is that the production of the "greatest happiness of the
greatest number" is the criterion of morals and the aim of
politics. Dying on June 6, 1832, his body, in accordance with his
own wishes, was dissected, and his skeleton dressed in his
customary garb and preserved in the University College, London.
Bentham's failure at the Bar caused him no small disappointment,
and it was not until the publication of a "Fragment on Government"
in 1776 that he felt himself redeemed with public opinion. The
"Principles of Morals and Legislation" was first published in 1789,
but was actually in print nine years earlier. It was primarily
intended as the introductory volume of a complete work designed to
cover the whole field of the principles of legislation--principles
which, as we have seen, were based on that doctrine of utility
which the author regarded as equally the basis of ethics.
_I.--Calculation of Pleasures and Pains_
Mankind is governed by pain and pleasure. Utility is that property in
anything which tends to produce happiness in the party concerned,
whether an individual or a community. The principle of utility makes
utility the criterion for approval or disapproval of every kind of
action. An act which conforms to this principle is one which ought to be
done, or is not one which ought not to be done; is right, or, at least,
not wrong. There is no other criterion possible which cannot ultimately
be reduced to the personal sentiment of the individual.
The sources or sanctions of pleasure and pain are four--the physical, in
the ordinary course of nature; political, officially imposed; moral or
popular, imposed by public opinion; and religion. Pains under the first
head are calamities; under the other three are punishments. Under the
first three heads, they concern the present life only. The second,
third, and the fourth, as concerns this life, operate through the first;
but the first operates independently of the others.
Pleasures and pains, then, are the instruments with which the legislator
has to work; he must, therefore, be able to gauge their relative values.
These depend primarily and simply on four things--intensity, duration,
certainty or uncertainty, propinquity or remoteness. Secondarily, on
fecundity, the consequent probable multiplication of the like
sensations; and purity, the improbability of consequent contrary
sensations. Finally, on extent--the number of persons pleasurably or
painfully affected. All these being weighed together, if the pleasurable
tendency predominates, the act is good; if the painful, bad.
Pleasures and pains are either simple or complex--_i.e._, resolvable
into several simple pleasures, and may be enumerated; as those of the
senses, of wealth, of piety, of benevolence, of malevolence, of
association, of imagination. Different persons are sensible to the same
pleasure in different degrees, and the sensibility of the individual
varies under different circumstances. Circumstances affecting
sensibility are various--such as health, strength, sex, age, education;
they may be circumstances of the body, of the mind, of the inclinations.
Their influence can be reckoned approximately, but should be taken into
consideration so far as is practicable.
The legislator and the judge are concerned with the existing causes of
pleasure and pain, but of pain rather than pleasure--the mischiefs which
it is desired to prevent, and the punishments by which it is sought to
prevent them--and for the due apportionment of the latter they should
have before them the complete list of punishments and of circumstances
affecting sensibility. By taking the two together--with one list or the
other for basis, preferably the punishment list--a classification of
appropriate penalties is attainable.
An analytical summary of the circumstances affecting sensibility will
distinguish as secondary--_i.e._, as acting not immediately but
mediately through the primary--sex, age, station in life, education,
climate, religion. The others, all primary, are connate--_viz._, radical
frame of mind and body--or adventitious. The adventitious are personal
or exterior. The personal concern a man's disposition of body or mind,
or his actions; the exterior the things or the persons he is concerned
with.
_II.--Human Actions Analysed_
The business of government is to promote the happiness of society by
rewarding and punishing, especially by punishing acts tending to
diminish happiness. An act demands punishment in proportion to its
tendency to diminish happiness--_i.e._, as the sum of its consequences
does so. Only such consequences are referred to as influence the
production of pain or pleasure. The intention, as involving other
consequences, must also be taken into consideration. And the intention
depends on the state both of the will and of the understanding as to the
circumstances--consciousness, unconsciousness, or false consciousness
regarding them. Hence with regard to each action we have to consider (1)
the act itself, (2) the circumstances, (3) the intentionality, (4) the
attendant consciousness, and also (5) the motive, and (6) the general
disposition indicated.
Acts are positive and negative--_i.e._, of commission and omission, or
forbearance; external or corporal, and internal or mental; transitive,
affecting some body other than the agent's, or intransitive; transient
or continued (mere repetition is not the same as habit). Circumstances
are material when visibly related to the consequences in point of
casuality, directly or indirectly. They may be criminative, or
exculpative, or aggravative, or evidential.
The intention may regard the act itself only, or its consequences
also--for instance, you may touch a man intentionally, and by doing so
cause his death unintentionally. But you cannot intend the
consequences--though you may have desired them--without intending the
action. The consequences may be intended directly or indirectly, and may
or may not be the only thing intended. The intention is good or bad as
the consequences intended are good or bad.
But these actually depend on the circumstances which are independent of
the intention; here the important point is the man's consciousness of
the circumstances, which are objects not of the will, but of the
understanding. If he is conscious of the circumstances and of their
materiality, the act is advised; if not, unadvised. Unadvisedness may be
due either to heedlessness or to misapprehension. And here we may remark
that we may speak of a bad intention, though the motive was good, if the
consequences intended were bad, and _vice versâ_. In this sense also,
the intention may be innocent--that is, not bad, without being
positively good.
Of motives, we are concerned with practical motives only, not those
which are purely speculative. These are either internal or external;
either events _in esse_, or events in prospect. The immediate motive is
an internal motive _in esse_--an awakened pleasure or pain at the
prospect of pleasure or pain. All others are comparatively remote.
Now, since the motive is always primarily to produce some pleasure or
prevent some pain, and since pleasure is identical with good, and pain
with evil, it follows that no motive is in itself bad. The motive is
good if it tends to produce a balance of pleasure; bad, if a balance of
pain. Thus any and every motive may produce actions good, indifferent,
or bad. Hence, in cataloguing motives, we must employ only neutral
terms, _i.e._, not such as are associated with goodness as--piety,
honour--or with badness--as lust, avarice.
The motives, of course, correspond to the various pleasures as
previously enumerated. They may be classified as good, bad, or
indifferent, according as their consequences are more commonly good,
bad, or indifferent; but the dangers of such classification are obvious.
In fact, we cannot affirm goodness, badness, or indifference of motive,
except in the particular instance. A better classification is into the
social--including goodwill, love of reputation, desire of amity,
religion; dissocial--displeasure; self-regarding--physical desire,
pecuniary interest, love of power, self-preservation.
Of all these, the dictates of goodwill are the surest of coinciding with
utility, since utility corresponds precisely to the widest and
best-advised goodwill. Even here, however, there may be failure, since
benevolence towards one group may clash with benevolence towards
another. Next stands love of reputation, which is less secure, since it
may lead to asceticism and hypocrisy. Third comes the desire of amity,
valuable as the sphere in which amity is sought is extended, but also
liable to breed insincerity. Religion would stand first of all if we all
had a correct perception of the divine goodness; but not when we
conceive of God as malevolent or capricious; and, as a matter of fact,
our conception of the Deity is controlled by our personal biases.
The self-regarding motives are, _ex hypothesi_, not so closely related
to utility as the social motives, and the dissocial motives manifestly
stand at the bottom of the scale. In respect to any particular action
there may be a conflict of motives, some impelling towards it, others
restraining from it; and any motive may come in conflict with any other
motive. It will be found hereafter that in the case of some offences the
motive is material in the highest degree, and in others wholly
immaterial; in some cases easy, and in others impossible to gauge.
_III.--The Principles of Punishment_
Goodness or badness, then, cannot be predicated of the motive. What is
good or bad in the man when actuated by one motive or another is his
disposition, or permanent attitude of mind, which is good or bad as
tending to produce effects beneficial to the community. It is to be
considered in regard to its influence on (1) his own happiness; (2)
other people's. The legislator is concerned with it so far as it is
mischievous to others. A man is held to be of a mischievous disposition
when it is presumed--for it is a mere presumption--that he inclines to
acts which appear to him mischievous. Here it is that "intentionality"
and "consciousness" come in.
Where the tendency of the act is good, and the motive is a social one, a
good disposition is indicated; where the tendency is bad, and the motive
is self-regarding, a bad disposition is indicated. Otherwise, the
indication of good or bad disposition may be very dubious or
non-existent; as may easily be seen by constructing examples. Now, our
problem is to measure the depravity of a man's disposition, which may be
defined as the sum of his intentions. The causes of intentions are
motives. The social motives may be called tutelary, as tending to
restrain from mischievous intentions; but any motive may become tutelary
on occasion. Love of ease, and desire of self-preservation, in the form
of fear of punishment, are apt to be tutelary motives.
Now we can see that the strength of a temptation equals the sum of the
impelling motives, minus the sum of the tutelary motives. Hence, the
more susceptible a man is to the standing tutelary motives, the less
likely is he to yield to temptation; in other words, the less depraved
is his disposition. Hence, given the strength of the temptation, the
mischievousness of the disposition is as the apparent mischievousness of
the act. Given the apparent mischievousness of the act, the less the
temptation yielded to, the greater the depravity of disposition; but the
stronger the temptation, the less conclusive is the evidence of
depravity. It follows that the penalty should be increased--_i.e._, the
fear of punishment should be artificially intensified, in proportion as,
apart from that fear, the temptation is stronger.
We now come to consequences. The mischief of the act is the sum of its
mischievous consequences, primary and secondary. The primary mischief
subdivides into original, _i.e._, to the sufferer in the first instance;
and derivative, to the definite persons who suffer as a direct
consequence, whether through their interest, or merely through sympathy.
The secondary mischiefs, affecting not specific persons but the
community, are actual danger, or alarm--the apprehension of pain. For
the occurrence of the act points to the possibility of its repetition;
weakening the influence both of the political and of the moral sanction.
An act of which the primary consequences are mischievous may have
secondary beneficial consequences, which altogether outweigh the primary
mischief--_e.g._, the legal punishment of crime. The circumstances
influencing the secondary mischiefs of alarm and danger are the
intentionality, the consciousness, the motive, and the disposition;
danger depending on the real, and alarm on the apparent, state of mind,
though the real and the apparent coincide more commonly than not.
Between the completely intentional and completely unintentional act
there are various stages, depending on the degree of consciousness, as
explained above. The excellence of the motive does not obliterate the
mischievousness of the act; nor _vice versâ_; but the mischief may be
aggravated by a bad motive, as pointing to greater likelihood of
repetition. This is less the case, however, when the motive is
dissocial, such motives being generally less constant, as having
reference to a particular, not a general, object; the religious motive,
as being more constant, is more pernicious when it has a mischievous
issue.
Punishment, being primarily mischievous, is out of place when
groundless, inefficacious, unprofitable, or needless. Punishment is
inefficious when it is _ex post facto_, or extra-legal, or secret; or in
the case of irresponsible (including intoxicated) persons; and also so
far as the intention of the act was incomplete, or where the act was
actually or practically under compulsion. It is unprofitable when under
ordinary circumstances the evils of the punishment outweigh those of the
offence; this subject, however, will be more fully dealt with later. It
is needless when the end in view can be as well or better attained
otherwise.
Now, the aim of the legislator is (1) to prevent mischief altogether;
(2) to minimise the inclination to do mischief; (3) to make the
prevention cheap. Hence, (1) the punishment must outweigh the profit of
the offence to the doer; (2) the greater the mischief, the greater the
expense worth incurring to prevent it; (3) alternative offences which
are not equally mischievous, as robbery and robbery with murder, must
not be equally punished; (4) the punishment must not be excessive, and
therefore should take into account the circumstances influencing
sensibility; (5) so also must the weakness of the punishment due to its
remoteness, and the impelling force of habit.
The properties of punishment necessary to its adjustment to a particular
offence are these: (1) variability in point of quantity, so that it
shall be neither excessive nor deficient; (2) equality, so that when
applied in equal degree, it shall cause equal pain--_e.g._, banishment
may mean much to one man, little to another; (3) commensurability with
other punishments; (4) characteristicalness, or appropriateness; (5)
exemplarity--it must not seem less than it is in fact; (6)
frugality--none of the pain it causes is to be wasted. Minor desirable
qualities are (7) subserviency to reformation of character; (8)
efficiency in disabling from mischief; (9) subserviency to compensation;
(10) popularity, _i.e._, accordant to common approbation; (11)
remissibility.
_IV.--Division of Offences_
An offence--a punishable act--is constituted such by the community;
though it ought not to be an offense unless contrary to utility, it may
be so. It is assumed to be a detrimental act; detrimental therefore to
some person or persons, whether the offender himself or other assignable
persons, or to persons not assignable.
Offences against assignable persons other than the offender form the
first class; offences against individuals, or private offences, or
private extra-regarding offences. The second class is formed by
semi-public offences, _i.e._, not against assignable individuals, nor
the community at large, but a separable group in the community, _e.g._,
a class or a locality. The third class are those which are simply
self-regarding; the fourth, against the community at large; the fifth,
multiform or heterogeneous, comprising falsehood and breaches of trust.
The first class may be subdivided into offences against (1) the person,
(2) reputation, (3) property, (4) condition--_i.e._, the serviceableness
to the individual of other persons, (5) person and property together,
(6) person and reputation together.
The second, "semi-public," class, being acts which endanger a portion of
the community, are those operating through calamity, or of mere
delinquency. The latter are subdivided on the same lines as private
offences. So with the third or self-regarding class.
In class four, public offences fall under eleven divisions: (1)
offences against external security--_i.e._, from foreign foes; (2)
against justice--_i.e._, the execution of justice; (3) against the
preventive branch of police; (4) against the public force--_i.e._,
military control; (5) against increase of national felicity; (6) against
public wealth--_i.e._, the exchequer; (7) against population; (8)
against national wealth--_i.e._, enrichment of the population; (9)
against sovereignty; (10) against religion; (11) against national
interests in general.
In class five, falsehood comprises simple falsehoods, forgery,
personation, and perjury; again distributable like the private offences.
In the case of trusts, there are two parties--the trustee and the
beneficiary. Offences under this head cannot, for various reasons, be
conveniently referred to offences against property or condition, which
also must be kept separate from each other. As regards the existence of
a trust: as against the trustee, offences are (1) wrongful
non-investment of trust, and wrongful interception of trust, where the
trusteeship is to his benefit; or (2) where it is troublesome, wrongful
imposition of trust. Both may similarly be offences against the
beneficiary. As regards the exercise of the trust, we have negative
breach of trust, positive breach of trust, abuse of trust, disturbance
of trust, and bribery.
We may now distribute class one--offences against the individual--into
_genera_; to do so with the other classes would be superfluous. Simple
offences against the person are actions referring to his actual person,
body or mind, or external objects affecting his happiness. These must
take effect either through his will, or not. In the former case, either
by constraint, or restraint, confinement, or banishment.
In any case the effect will be mortal or not mortal; if not mortal,
reparable or irreparable injury when corporal, actual, or apprehended,
sufferance when mental. So the list stands--simple and irreparable
corporal injuries, simple injurious restraint or constraint, wrongful
confinement or banishment, homicide or menacement, actual or apprehended
mental injuries. Against reputation the _genera_ of offences are (i)
defamation, (2) vilification. Of offences against property, simple in
their effects, whether by breach of trust or otherwise, the _genera_
are: wrongful non-investment, interception, divestment, usurpation,
investment, of property; wrongful withholding of services, destruction,
occupation, or detainment, embezzlement, theft, defraudment, extortion.
Of complex offences against person and reputation together: corporal
insults, insulting menacement, seduction, and forcible seduction, simple
lascivious injuries. Against person and property together: forcible
interception, divestment, usurpation, investment, or destruction of
property, forcible occupation or detainment of movables, forcible entry,
forcible detainment of immovables, robbery.
As to offences against condition: conditions are either domestic or
civil; domestic relations are either purely natural, purely instituted,
or mixed. Of the first, we are concerned only with the marital,
parental, and filial relations. Under the second head are the relations
of master and servant, guardian and ward. In the case of master and
servants, the headings of offences are much like those against property.
Guardianship is required in the cases of infancy and insanity; again the
list of offences is similar. The parental and filial relations, so far
as they are affected by institutions, comprise those both of master and
servant, and of guardian and ward; so that the offences are
correspondent.
The relation of husband and wife also comprises those of master and
guardian to servant and ward. But there are further certain reciprocal
services which are the subject of the marital contract, by which
polygamy and adultery are constituted offences in Christian countries,
and also the refusal of conjugal rights.
From domestic conditions we pass to civil. Eliminating all those which
can be brought under the categories of trusts and domestic conditions,
there remain conditions, constituted by beneficial powers over things,
beneficial rights to things, rights to services, and by corresponding
duties; and between these and property there is no clear line of
demarcation, yet we can hit upon some such conditions as separable. Such
are rank and profession which entail specific obligations and
rights--these are not property but conditions; as distinguished from
other exclusive rights bestowed by the law, concerned with saleable
articles (_e.g._, copyright), which convey not conditions, but property.
So, naturalisation conveys the conditions of a natural born subject.
Public offences are to be catalogued in a manner similar to private
offences.
My object has been to combine intelligibility with precision; technical
terms lack the former quality, popular terms the latter. Hence the plan
of the foregoing analysis has been to take the logical whole constituted
by the sum of possible offences, dissect it in as many directions as
were necessary, and carry the process down to the point where each idea
could be expressed in current phraseology. Thus it becomes equally
applicable to the legal concerns of all countries or systems.
The advantages of this method are: it is convenient for the memory,
gives room for general propositions, points out the reason of the law,
and is applicable to the laws of all nations. Hence we are able to
characterise the five classes of offences. Thus, of private offences, we
note that they are primarily against assignable individuals, admit of
compensation and retaliation, and so on; of semi-public offences, that
they are not against assignable individuals, and, with self-regarding
offences, admit of neither compensation nor retaliation; to which a
series of generalisations respecting each class can be added.
The relation between penal jurisprudence and private ethics must be
clarified. Both are concerned with the production of happiness. A man's
private ethics are concerned with his duty to himself and to his
neighbour; prudence, probity, and beneficence. Those cases described as
unmeet for punishment are all within the ethical, but outside the
legislative, sphere, except the "groundless" cases, which are outside
both. The special field of private ethics is among the cases where
punishment is "unprofitable" or "inefficacious," notably those which are
the concern of prudence. So with the rules of beneficence; but
beneficence might well be made compulsory in a greater degree than it
is. The special sphere of legislation, however, lies in the field of
probity.
A work of jurisprudence is either expository of what the law is, or
censorial, showing what it should be. It may relate to either local or
universal jurisprudence; but if expository can hardly be more than
local. It may be internal, or international, though there is very little
law in international procedure; if internal, it may be national or
provincial, it may be historical or living; it may be divided into
statutory and customary, into civil and penal or criminal.
JEAN BLOCH
The Future of War
The son of humble Polish Jews, Jean Bloch, who was born in 1836,
amassed a large fortune out of Russian railways. At the age of
fifty he retired from business, and devoted himself to an
exhaustive study of the conditions and possibilities of modern
warfare. To this labour he gave eight years, and, in 1898, the
fruits of it were published in a work of six volumes, in which he
sought to prove that, owing to the immensity of modern armies, the
deadliness of modern weapons, and the economic conditions that
prevailed in the larger states, a great European war was rapidly
becoming a physical impossibility. M. Bloch died on January 7,
1902, not before several of his theories had been tested by actual
campaigning. His main argument, however, concerns a war on European
frontiers between European powers, and such a war he did not live
to witness.
_I.--The Problem Stated_
In the public and private life of modern Europe a presentiment is felt
that the present incessant growth of armaments must either call forth a
war, ruinous both for conqueror and for conquered, and ending perhaps in
general anarchy; or must reduce the people to the most lamentable
condition. Is this unique state of mind justified by possible
contingencies?
It is true that the ruinousness of war under modern conditions is
apparent to all. But this gives no sufficient guarantee that war will
not break forth suddenly, even in opposition to the wishes of those who
take part in it. Involuntarily we call to mind the words of the great
Bacon, that "in the vanity of the world a greater field of action is
open for folly than for reason, and frivolity always enjoys more
influence than judgment."
War, it would appear from an analysis of the history of mankind, has in
the past been a normal attribute of human life. The position now has
changed in much, but still the new continues to contend with the old.
With the innumerable voices which are now bound up in our public
opinion, and the many different representatives of its interests,
naturally appear very different views on militarism and its object--war.
The propertied classes are inclined to confuse even the intellectual
movement against militarism with aspirations for the subversion of
social order; on the other hand, agitators, seeking influence on the
minds of the masses, deny all existing rights, and promise to the masses
more than the most perfect institutions could give them. And although
the masses are slow to surrender themselves to abstract reasoning, and
act usually only under the influence of passion, there can be no doubt
that this agitation penetrates the people more and more deeply.
With such a position of affairs, it is necessary that influential and
educated men should seriously attempt to give themselves a clear account
of the effect of war under modern conditions; whether it will be
possible to realise the aims of war, and whether the extermination of
millions of men will not be wholly without result.
If, after consideration of all circumstances, we answer ourselves: "War
with such conditions is impossible; armies could not sustain those
cataclysms which a future war would call forth; the civil population
could not bear the famine and interruption of industry"; then we might
ask the general question: "Why do the peoples more and more exhaust
their strength in accumulating means of destruction which are valueless
even to accomplish the ends for which they are prepared?"
In recent times war has become even more terrible than before in
consequence of perfected weapons of destruction and systems of equipment
and training utterly unknown in the past. Infantry and artillery fire
will have unprecedented force; smoke will no longer conceal from the
survivors the terrible consequences of the battle. From this, and from
the fact that the mass of soldiers will have but recently been called
from the field, the factory, and the workshop, it will appear that even
the psychical conditions of war have changed.
The thought of the convulsions which will be called forth by a war, and
of the terrible means prepared for it, will hinder military enterprise.
But, on the other hand, the present conditions cannot continue to exist
for ever. The peoples groan under the burdens of militarism. We are
compelled to ask: Can the present incessant demands for money for
armaments continue for ever without social outbreaks? The position of
the European world, the organic strength of which is wasted, on the one
hand, in the sacrifice of millions on preparations for war, and, on the
other, in a destructive agitation, which finds in militarism its apology
and a fit instrument for acting on the minds of the people, must be
admitted to be abnormal and even sickly. Is it possible that there can
be no recovery from this? We are deeply persuaded that a means of
recovery exists if the European states would but set themselves the
question--in what will result these armaments and this exhaustion? What
will be the nature of a future war? Can recourse be had to war even now
for the decision of questions in dispute, and is it possible to conceive
the settlement of such questions by means of the cataclysm which, with
modern means of destruction, a war between five great powers with ten
millions of soldiers would cause?
That war will become impossible in time is indicated by all. The more
apposite question is--when will the recognition of this inevitable truth
be spread among European governments and peoples? When the impossibility
of resorting to war for the decision of international quarrels is
evident to all, other means will be devised.
_II.--How War Will Be Waged on Land_
The bullet of the present day can kill at a vastly greater distance than
the bullets fired during the Franco-German and Russo-Turkish campaigns.
The powder now in use has not only far more explosive force than the
old-fashioned powder, but is almost smokeless. The introduction of the
magazine rifle has immensely increased the speed of firing. Moreover,
the rifle is undergoing constant improvement, and becoming a more and
more deadly weapon. It is easy, then, to see the following consequences
from these changes: (1) The opening of battles from much greater
distances than formerly; (2) the necessity of loose formation in attack;
(3) the strengthening of the defence; (4) the increase in the area of
the battlefield; and (5) the increase in casualties.
If we take rifle shooting alone into account, the length of range, the
speed of fire, the better training of troops in the use of the rifle,
and the invention of contrivances to aid markmanship, cause such
effectiveness of fire that it would be quite possible for rival armies
totally to annihilate each other. But a similar improvement has taken
place in artillery. The introduction of the quick-firing gun has
multiplied the speed of artillery fire many times over. The range has
been increased by the perfecting of the structure of the guns, the use
of nickel steel in the manufacture of projectiles, and the employment of
smokeless powder of immense explosive force.
Artillery fire will now not only be employed against attacking troops,
but even more against supporting bodies, which must necessarily advance
in closer order, and among whom, therefore, the action of artillery will
be even more deadly. We may well ask the question whether the nerves of
short-service soldiers will stand the terrible destructiveness of
artillery fire.
As a necessary consequence of the increase in the power of fire, we
find the more frequent and more extended adoption of defences, and of
cover for protection in attack and hampering the enemy. In addition,
every body of men appointed for defence, and even for attack--if it is
not to attack at once--must immediately entrench itself. The defenders,
thus sheltered, and only requiring to expose their heads and hands, have
an enormous advantage over the attacking party, which is exposed to an
uninterrupted fire to which it can hardly reply.
In the opinion of competent military writers, the war of the future will
consist primarily of a series of battles for the possession of fortified
positions, which will further be protected by wire obstructions,
pitfalls, etc., to overcome which great sacrifices must be made.
As infantry, even if weak in numbers, cannot be driven from an
entrenched position without artillery fire, armies in future must find
themselves mainly dependent upon artillery. If the defending artillery
be equal in strength to that of the attackers, then the attacking
artillery will be wiped out. If it be not equal in strength, then both
may be wiped out. The losses will be so great that the artillery of both
armies will be paralysed, or it might be that the artillery would
inflict such heavy losses on the troops that the war would become
impossible. Owing to smokeless powder, batteries of artillery are more
exposed to the fire both of the enemy's artillery and of sharpshooters.
A hundred sharpshooters at a distance of half a mile can, it is
estimated, put a battery out of action in less than two minutes and a
half. Let it be added that the high explosives used by modern artillery
are extremely liable to explode, owing to being struck by the enemy, or
owing to concussion caused by an enemy's shell, or to mishandling.
For these reasons, the prospect before an artillery battery entering
into a modern European battle is a prospect of demolition.
The European infantry of the future will be composed largely of
imperfectly trained short-service soldiers and of reserves who have
forgotten their training. Infantry soldiers are liable to be killed by
bullets from enemies whom they cannot see, whose rifles, owing to the
distance, they may not even be able to hear. Their officers will be
picked off in great numbers by sharpshooters, and they will be left
without leaders. It is calculated that an average army is composed
one-third of brave men, one-third of cowards, and one-third of men who
will be brave if properly led. The loss of the officers must tend to
cause this latter section to join the cowards.
Furthermore, the enormous area of modern battlefields involves great
demands upon the endurance of the foot soldiers, and troops mainly drawn
from industrial centres can hardly be expected to meet such demands.
Unless the attacking artillery is overwhelmingly stronger than the
defending artillery, defensive infantry in an entrenched position cannot
be ousted from its position unless the attackers outnumber their
opponents by six or seven to one, and are prepared to lose heavily. The
murderous zone of a thousand yards lying between the armies cannot be
crossed save at fearful sacrifice, and the bayonet as a weapon of attack
is now altogether obsolete.
Can any commander be found who will possess the extraordinary qualities
needed for the control of a modern European army--a whole people
possessed of weapons of tremendous power and deadliness, spread over an
area of vast extent, engaged upon battles that will necessarily last for
days, subjected to a nervous strain such as has never been experienced
in warfare? The responsibility of subordinate officers must, under such
circumstances, be far greater than it used to be; the commander cannot
keep everything under his eye. And, as already said, the officers will
be especially picked out for death. Under all these conditions, it is
likely that after battles with enormous slaughter, victory will be
claimed by both sides.
We must further take into account the influence of a modern war upon
populations. What will be the effect on the temper of modern armies if
war should be prolonged? How will the civil population receive the news
from the front? What convulsions must we expect when, after the
conclusion of peace, the soldiers return to their destroyed and
desolated homes?
A great European war of the future will, it may be assumed, be fought on
one or the other frontier of Germany--in the Franco-German area on the
western side; or the German-Austro-Russian area on the eastern--or on
both. Since it would be impossible under modern conditions for Germany,
with or without Austrian co-operation, to invade both France and Russia,
she would be obliged to defend one frontier while crossing the other. An
attack upon France would involve the traversing of a difficult stretch
of country in which elaborate arrangements have been made for defence;
and although the French army is not so strong as that of Germany, it
would have the enormous advantage of standing on the defensive. Even if
Germany were to gain initial successes through her superior swiftness in
mobilization, the difficulties of modern warfare are such that she could
not hope, even under abnormally favourable circumstances, to capture
Paris in less than two years, and long before then she would be reduced
to a state of entire economic exhaustion. It is to be borne in mind that
the invading army would constantly grow weaker, while the defenders
would be able to enforce the superiority now belonging to defence by
bringing up all their reserves.
Difficulties which would be, if possible, even harder to surmount would
attend a French attempt to invade Germany.
The elaborate plans that have been drawn up for an Austro-German
invasion of Russia would, in all probability, be doomed to failure. The
defensive system of Russian Poland is regarded as almost perfect. Even
if the German and Austrian forces could evade the Polish defences, they
would waste their strength against the second Russian fortified line;
and even if that were broken through, St. Petersburg and Moscow would
still be far distant, and Russia's immense resources in men would enable
her to bring up body after body of reserves against the dwindling
invading force.
A Russian invasion of Prussia would have to encounter an elaborately
scientific defensive system, and would be liable to all the other
difficulties to which an invasion is exposed--particularly, in this
case, the difficulty of feeding a vast host of men on hostile territory.
The weakness of Austria's Galician frontier seems tempting; but Russia
would have to strike at Germany--an invasion of Austria which left
Germany untouched would be mere waste of energy.
The general conclusion is that invasion of an enemy's country, in a
great European struggle, would, in all probability, lead to the
destruction of the invaders and the entire exhaustion of both
combatants.
_III.--Modern War at Sea_
The modern warship is a floating fortress equipped with complex
machinery, and the rivalry in naval invention has led to a terrible
expenditure upon which the powers have embarked in utter heedlessness of
the warnings of economists. So prodigious is the destructive power of
modern naval weapons that, in the opinion of most specialists, vessels
which take part in great battles will issue from them damaged to such an
extent that, during the rest of the war, they will not need to be taken
into account.
In war the strongest nation will be that which possesses the greatest
number of arsenals and ready stores of ammunition, and coal at points
selected in times of peace; and, in addition to these, a fleet in
reserve, even a fleet of old type, but equipped with modern artillery.
With such a fleet it will be possible to strike deadly blows at the
enemy when the fleets of the first line have been incapacitated.
To cruisers and torpedo-boats will be allotted the ferocious duty of
pursuing merchant ships, falling upon them at night, and sinking them,
with the object of cutting the communications and paralysing the trade
of the enemy. The effect of naval wars on trade will in future be
incomparably more disastrous than it has ever been before.
Calculations show that England alone in a prolonged war could gain the
mastery of the sea, forcing the other naval powers to give way
everywhere. But the interruption of communications at sea would cause
the English such losses that a prolonged war would be impossible for
them.
Thus, in continuing to increase their fleets and to perfect their
armaments at immense cost, the European powers are striving at aims
undefined and unattainable. But the financial and social difficulties
which yearly increase may result in such dangers that governments must
be compelled after immense sacrifices to do what it would be wiser to do
to-day--namely, to abandon a fruitless competition.
Such is a brief picture of what Europe may expect from a future war. But
over and above the direct sacrifices and material losses by slaughter,
fire, hunger, and disease, a war will cause to humanity a great moral
evil in consequence of the forms which a struggle on sea will assume,
and of the examples of savagery which it will present at a moment when
the civil order will be threatened by new theories of social revolution.
What wearisome labour will be needed to repair the losses, to cure the
wounds which a war of a single year will cause! How many flourishing
countries will be turned into wildernesses and rich cities into ruins!
How many tears will be shed, how many will be left in beggary! How long
will it be before the voices of the best men, after such a terrible
example, will preach to humanity a higher principle than "might is
right"?
_IV.--The Warnings of the Economists_
The conditions of modern war are bound to be the cause of huge
expenditure. First of all, military stores must be drawn by every
country from its own resources. Artillery, rifles, and ammunition are
all far more costly than they used to be, and the amount of ammunition
consumed in a modern European campaign will be prodigious. The vastness
of armies, and the deadliness of modern weapons, will add immensely to
the requirements of the sick and wounded. The demand for provisions must
vastly increase, and the increase will be followed by a great rise in
prices. That an immense army cannot exist on the resources of an enemy's
territory is plain, especially when the slowness of advance in a
struggle for fortified positions is taken into account. Communications
by sea will be interrupted at the very outbreak of war. In this respect
England is in incomparably the worst position.
There are serious reasons for doubting the proposition that a future war
would be short. Thanks to railways, the period of preparatory operations
would be considerably shortened; but in marches, manoeuvres, and
battles railways can be employed only in very rare cases, and as lines
of operation they cannot serve.
The question naturally arises: Will it be possible to raise for war
purposes revenues vastly exceeding the normal revenues of European
states? And what results must we expect from such extraordinary tension?
A careful and thorough inquiry shows that no great power is economically
capable of bearing the strain of a great war. Russia has in this
respect an important advantage in that her workers, who are her
fighters, are mostly agricultural; the members of their families can
continue their labours when the summons to war is issued. But, on the
other hand, the Russian rural population is extremely poor, and her
resources would quickly be exhausted.
As for England, the interruption of maritime communications would affect
disastrously, if not fatally, the industries of the country and the
feeding of her population. England depends to so great an extent upon
imported wheat that a war would threaten the whole population with
famine.
The very large industrial portion of the German community would be hit
most severely. The stoppage of work and the rise in prices would cause
intense suffering and violent discontent.
Although France survived the economic strain of the war of 1870, it does
not follow that she could endure the far greater strain of a campaign
under the new conditions. Her industrial population, like that of
Germany, would be ruined, and the resulting misery might well lead to
revolution.
A great European war, then, would bring about the economic prostration
of every nation engaged in it, and would be a cause of violent danger to
the fabric of society.
Another problem of modern war remains to be considered--the condition
and care of the wounded. Modern weapons of precision can not only kill
or wound more accurately and at greater distances than the older
weapons, but have more penetrative power. A rifle bullet of to-day will
pass through three or four bodies, shattering and splintering any bones
it may encounter in its course. Hence wounds will be more numerous than
they have ever been; and, owing to the unwieldly size of armies and the
poor physical condition of many of the men, sickness will be more common
as well.
Nevertheless, the assistance of the wounded and sick will be much more
difficult than it has been in the past. While the fighting organisation
of armies has been improved, their healing organisation has been
neglected. It will, besides, be almost impossible to give aid to the
wounded. Their removal will have to be conducted under fire, and both
the wounded man and his rescuer will run a constant risk of death. Many
wounded will have to lie on the field, exposed to a hail of bullets and
fragments of shells, until the end of the battle--and the battle may
last for days. This cannot but have an evil effect on the morale of an
army. If a soldier were convinced that he had a good chance of being
taken care of if wounded, he would fight with a better spirit than if he
feared that, if he fell, he would be left to prolonged hunger and agony.
It is evident that a vast difference exists between war as it has been
in the past and war as it will be in the future. Wars formerly were
carried on by standing armies consisting mainly of long-service
soldiers. Armies in future wars will be composed mainly of soldiers
taken direct from peaceful occupations; many of the older ones will be
heads of families torn from their homes, their families, and their work.
The economic life of whole peoples will stand still, communications will
be cut, and if war be prolonged over the greater part of a year, general
bankruptcy, with famine and all its worst consequences, will ensue. It
is to be expected, therefore, that popular discontent with militarism
will continue to grow. The immense expenditure on military aims, and the
consequent growth of taxation, are the favourite arguments of agitators,
who declare that the institutions of the Middle Ages were less
burdensome than modern preparations for war.
The question is naturally asked: What will be given to the people after
war as compensation for their immense losses? The conquered certainly
will be too exhausted to pay any money indemnity, and compensation must
be taken by the retention of frontier territories, which will be so
impoverished by war that their acquisition will be a loss rather than a
gain.
With such conditions, can we hope for good sense among millions of men
when but a handful of their officers remain? Will the armies of Western
Europe, where the socialist propaganda has already spread among the
masses, allow themselves to be disarmed; and, if not, must we not expect
even greater disasters than those which marked the short-lived triumph
of the Paris Commune? The longer the present position of affairs
continues, the greater is the probability of such convulsions after the
close of a great war. Thus, with the growth of military burdens rise
waves of popular discontent, threatening a social revolution.
Such are the consequences of the armed peace of Europe--slow destruction
in consequence of expenditure on preparations for war, or swift
destruction in the event of war--in both events convulsions in the
social order.
EDMUND BURKE
Reflections on the Revolution in France
Edmund Burke, born on Jan. 12, 1729, at Dublin, Ireland, was
educated at Trinity College there, and proceeded in 1750 to the
Middle Temple, London, but forsook law for the pursuit of
literature and politics. His earliest serious work was the essay on
"The Sublime and Beautiful," published in 1756, of which the full
title is "A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of
the Sublime and Beautiful." In 1761 he became private secretary to
Hamilton, the Secretary of Ireland, and four years later to the
Premier, the Marquis of Rockingham, when he also became M.P. for
Wendover, and, in 1774, for Bristol. He died on July 9, 1797.
Burke's magnificent treatise on the French Revolution, of which the
full title is "Reflections on the Revolution in France, and on the
Proceedings of Certain Societies in London relative to that Event;
In a Letter Intended to Have Been Sent to a Gentleman in Paris,"
was published in 1790, and was read all over Europe, powerfully
encouraging strenuous resistance to the Revolution. It is, perhaps,
in all literature, the noblest expression of all that is noble in
conservatism. His treatise is as profound in its penetration into
political principles as it is magnificent in conception and in
language. As Burke had stood for a true liberty in America, so he
took his stand against a false liberty in Europe. But history has
not justified him so completely in the latter case as in the
former. Revolutionism was not only, or chiefly, libertinism; and
the wonderful modern France has largely disappointed his
predictions.
_I.--The Meaning of Freedom_
Dear Sir, You are pleased to call again, and with some earnestness, for
my thoughts on the late proceedings in France. You will see, sir, that
though I do most heartily wish that France may be animated by a spirit
of rational liberty, it is my misfortune to entertain great doubts
concerning several material points in your late transactions. I love a
manly, moral, regulated liberty as well as anyone; but I cannot stand
forward and give praise or blame to anything which relates to human
actions and human concerns, on a simple view of the subject, as it
stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of
metaphysical abstraction.
I should, therefore, suspend my congratulations on the new liberty of
France until I was informed how it had been combined with government;
with public force; with the discipline and obedience of armies; with the
collection of an effective and well-distributed revenue; with morality
and religion; with the solidity of property; with peace and order; with
civil and social manners.
All these, in their way, are good things, too; and, without them,
liberty is not a benefit while it lasts, and is not likely to continue
long. The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they
please; we ought to see what it will please them to do before we risk
congratulations. It appears to me as if I were in a great crisis, not of
the affairs of France alone, but of all Europe, perhaps of more than
Europe.
All circumstances taken together, the French Revolution is the most
astonishing that has hitherto happened in the world. Everything seems
out of nature in this chaos of levity and ferocity, and of all sorts of
crimes jumbled together with all sorts of follies. In viewing this
monstrous tragi-comic scene, the most opposite passions succeed, and
sometimes mix with each other in the mind; alternate contempt and
indignation; laughter and tears; scorn and horror.
You will observe that from Magna Charta to the Declaration of Right it
has been the uniform policy of our constitution to claim and assert our
liberties as an entailed inheritance derived to us from our forefathers
and to be transmitted to our posterity.
Our political system is placed in a just symmetry with the order of the
world; wherein, by the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding
together the great, mysterious incorporation of the human race, the
whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young, but, in a
condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenor
of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression. We have given to
our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood; binding up the
constitution of our country with our dearest domesticities; keeping
inseparable, and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and
mutually reflected charities, our state, our hearths, our sepulchres,
and our altars. Always acting as if in the presence of canonised
forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and
excess, is tempered with an awful gravity.
All your sophisters cannot produce anything better adapted to preserve a
manly freedom than the course that we have pursued, who have chosen our
nature rather than our speculations for the great conservatories and
magazines of our rights and privileges.
_II.--A Lost Opportunity_
You might, if you pleased, have profited of our example, and have given
to your recovered freedom a correspondent dignity. You possessed in some
parts the walls, and, in all, the foundations, of a noble and venerable
castle. You might have repaired those walls, you might have built on
those old foundations. But you began ill, because you began by despising
everything that belonged to you. Respecting your forefathers, you would
have been taught to respect yourselves. By following wise examples you
would have shamed despotism from the earth by showing that freedom is
not only reconcilable, but auxiliary to law. You would have had a free
constitution. You would have had a protected, satisfied, laborious, and
obedient people, taught to seek the happiness that is to be found by
virtue in all conditions; in which consists the true moral equality of
mankind, and not in that monstrous fiction which, by inspiring false
ideas and vain expectations into men destined to travel in the obscure
walk of laborious life, serves only to aggravate and embitter that real
inequality which it never can remove, and which the order of civil life
establishes as much for the benefit of those whom it must leave in an
humble state as those whom it is able to exalt to a condition more
splendid but not more happy.
Compute your gains; see what is got by those extravagant and
presumptuous speculations which have taught your leaders to despise all
their predecessors and all their contemporaries, and even to despise
themselves, until the moment in which they became truly despicable. By
following those false lights, France has bought undisguised calamities
at a higher price than any nation has purchased the most unequivocal
blessings. She has abandoned her interest that she might prostitute her
virtue.
All other nations have begun the fabric of a new government, or the
reformation of an old, by establishing, or by enforcing with greater
exactness, some rites or other of religion. All other people have laid
the foundations of civil freedom in severer manners, and a system of a
more austere and masculine morality. France, when she let loose the
reins of regal authority, doubled the license of a ferocious
dissoluteness in manners, and of an insolent irreligion in opinions and
practices; and has extended through all ranks of life, as if she were
communicating some privilege, or laying open some secluded benefit, all
the unhappy corruptions that usually were the disease of wealth and
power. This is one of the new principles of equality in France.
France, by the perfidy of her leaders, has utterly disgraced the tone of
lenient counsel in the cabinets of princes, and has taught kings to
tremble at what will hereafter be called the delusive plausibilities of
moral politicians. Sovereigns will consider those who advise them to
place an unlimited confidence in their people as subverters of their
thrones. This alone is an irreparable calamity to you and to mankind.
The French have rebelled against a mild and lawful monarch with more
fury, outrage, and insult than ever any people has been known to rise
against the most illegal usurper or the most sanguinary tyrant. Their
resistance was made to concession; their revolt was from protection;
their blow was aimed at a hand holding out graces, favours, and
immunities. They have found their punishment in their success. Laws
overturned; tribunals subverted; industry without vigour; commerce
expiring; the revenue unpaid, yet the people impoverished; a Church
pillaged and a state unrelieved; everything human and divine sacrificed
to the idol of public credit, and national bankruptcy the consequence.
_III.--The Men in Power_
This unforced choice, this fond election of evil, would appear perfectly
unaccountable if we did not consider the composition of the national
assembly. If we were to know nothing of this assembly but its title and
function, no colours could paint to the imagination anything more
venerable. But no artificial institution whatever can make the men of
whom any system of authority is composed any other than God, and nature,
and education, and their habits of life have made them. Capacities
beyond these the people have not to give. Virtue and wisdom may be the
objects of their choice; but their choice confers neither the one nor
the other on those upon whom they lay their ordaining hands. They have
not the engagement of nature, they have not the promise of revelation,
for any such powers. Judge, sir, of my surprise when I found that a very
great proportion of the assembly was composed of practitioners in the
law. It was composed, not of distinguished magistrates, not of leading
advocates, not of renowned professors; the general composition was of
obscure provincial advocates, of stewards of petty local jurisdictions,
country attorneys, notaries, and the whole train of the ministers of
municipal litigation, the fomenters and conductors of the petty war of
village vexation.
From the moment I read the list I saw distinctly, and very nearly as it
happened, all that was to follow. Who could but conceive that men who
are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active, of litigious
dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into their old
condition of low and unprofitable chicane? Who could doubt but that, at
any expense to the state, of which they understood nothing, they must
pursue their private interests, which they understood but too well? It
was inevitable; it was planted in the nature of things.
Other revolutions have been conducted by persons who, whilst they
attempted changes in the commonwealth, sanctified their ambition by
advancing the dignity of the people whose peace they troubled. Such was
our Cromwell, one of the great bad men of the old stamp. Such were your
whole race of Guises, Condés, Colignys, and Richelieus. These men, among
all their massacres, did not slay the _mind_ in their country. A
conscious dignity, a noble pride, a generous sense of glory and
emulation, was not extinguished. But your present confusion, like a
palsy, has attacked the fountain of life itself. Every person in your
country in a situation to be actuated by principles of honour is
disgraced and degraded. Property is destroyed, and rational liberty has
no existence. If this be your actual situation, as compared to the
situation to which you were called, as it were by the voice of God and
man, I cannot find it in my heart to congratulate you on the choice you
have made, or the success which has attended your endeavours.
Far am I from denying in theory, full as far as my heart from
withholding in practice, the _real_ rights of man. Government is not
made in virtue of natural rights, which may and do exist in total
independence of it, and exist in much greater clearness, and in a much
greater degree of abstract perfection; but their abstract perfection is
their practical defect. Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to
provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be
provided for by this wisdom. Among these wants is to be reckoned the
want, out of civil society, of a sufficient restraint upon their
passions. In this sense the restraints on men, as well as their
liberties, are to be reckoned among their rights.
But as the liberties and the restrictions vary with times and
circumstances, and admit of infinite modifications, they cannot be
settled upon any abstract rule; and nothing is so foolish as to discuss
them upon that principle. The moment you abate anything from the full
rights of men, each to govern himself, and suffer any artificial,
positive limitation upon those rights, from that moment the whole
organisation of government becomes a consideration of convenience. This
it is which makes the constitution of a state, and the due distribution
of powers, a matter of the most delicate and complicated skill.
When I hear the simplicity of contrivance aimed at and boasted of in any
new political constitutions, I am at no loss to decide that the
artificers are grossly ignorant of their trade, or negligent of their
duty. The pretended rights of these theorists are all extremes, and in
proportion as they are metaphysically true they are morally and
politically false. The rights of men are in a sort of _middle_,
incapable of definition, but not impossible to be discerned. But this
sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of
man that they have totally forgotten his nature. Without opening one new
avenue to the understanding, they have stopped up those that lead to the
heart.
_IV.--The Death of Chivalry_
As for the National Assembly, a majority, sometimes real, sometimes
pretended, captive itself, compels a captive king to issue as royal
edicts, at third hand, the polluted nonsense of their most licentious
and giddy coffee-houses. It is notorious that all their measures are
decided before they are debated. Amidst assassination, massacre, and
confiscation, perpetrated or meditated, they are forming plans for the
good order of future society. Who is it that admires, and from the heart
is attached to, national representative assemblies, but must turn with
horror and disgust from such a profane burlesque and abominable
perversion of that sacred institute? Miserable king, miserable assembly!
History, who exercises her awful censure over the proceedings of all
sorts of sovereigns, will not forget how the king, and his queen, and
their infant children, who once would have been the pride and hope of a
great and generous people, were forced to abandon the sanctuary of the
most splendid palace in the world, which they left polluted by massacre
and strewn with mutilated carcases, and were made to taste, drop by
drop, more than the bitterness of death. Is this a triumph to be
consecrated at altars?
I rejoice to hear that the great lady, an object of that triumph, has
borne that day--one is interested that beings made for suffering should
suffer well--and that she bears the whole weight of her accumulated
wrongs with a serene patience, in a manner suited to her rank and race;
that she feels with the dignity of a Roman matron; that in the last
extremity she will save herself from the last disgrace; and that, if she
must fall, she will fall by no ignoble hand. It is now sixteen years
since I saw the Queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles, and
surely never lighted on this orb a more delightful vision. I saw her
glittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendour, and joy.
Oh! what a revolution!
Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen
upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour, and
of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their
scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the
age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators
has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never,
never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that
proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the
heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an
exalted freedom. It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that
chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired
courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it
touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil by losing all
its grossness.
If the king and queen of France and their children were to fall into our
hands by the chance of war, they would be treated with another sort of
triumphal entry into London. We formerly have had a king of France in
that situation; you have read how he was received in England. Four
hundred years have gone over us; but I believe we are not materially
changed since that period. We have not lost the generosity and dignity
of thinking of the fourteenth century; nor as yet have we subtilised
ourselves into savages.
We have not been drawn and trussed, in order that we may be filled, like
stuffed birds in a museum, with chaff and rags and paltry blurred shreds
of paper about the rights of man. We have real hearts of flesh and blood
beating in our bosoms. We fear God; we look up with awe to kings, with
affection to parliaments, with duty to magistrates, with reverence to
priests, and with respect to nobility. Why? Because when such ideas are
brought before our minds it is natural to be so affected; because all
other feelings are false and spurious, and tend to corrupt our minds, to
vitiate our primary morals, to render us unfit for rational liberty; and
by teaching us a servile insolence, to be our low sport for a few
holidays, to make us perfectly fit for, and justly deserving of, slavery
through the whole course of our lives.
_V.--Principles of Statesmanship_
One of the first principles on which the commonwealth and the laws are
consecrated is lest the temporary possessors and life-renters in it
should act as it they were the entire masters, hazarding to leave to
those who come after them a ruin instead of an habitation. By this
unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and in as many
ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole continuity of
the commonwealth would be broken. Men would become little better than
the flies in summer.
First of all, the science of jurisprudence, the pride of the human
intellect, which, with all its defects, redundances, and errors, is the
collected reason of ages, combining the principles of original justice
with the infinite variety of human concerns, would be no longer studied.
No certain laws, establishing invariable grounds of hope and fear, would
keep the actions of men in a certain course.
No principles would be early worked into the habits. Who would ensure a
tender and delicate sense of honour, to beat almost with the first
pulses of the heart, when no man could know what would be the test of
honour in a nation continually varying the standard of its coin? To
avoid, therefore, the evils of inconstancy and versatility, ten thousand
times worse than those of obstinacy and the blindest prejudice, we have
consecrated the state, that no man should approach to look into its
defects or corruptions but with due caution; that he should never dream
of beginning its reformation by its subversion; that he should approach
to the faults of the state as to the wounds of a father, with pious awe
and trembling solicitude. Society is indeed a contract. But it is not a
partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of
a temporary and perishable nature.
It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art, a
partnership in every virtue and in all perfection. As the ends of such a
partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a
partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who
are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. Each
contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primeval
contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures,
connecting the visible and invisible world, according to a fixed compact
sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral
natures, each in their appointed place.
These, my dear sir, are, were, and, I think, long will be, the
sentiments of not the least learned and reflecting part of this kingdom.
They conceive that He Who gave our nature to be perfected by our virtue
willed also the necessary means of its perfection. He willed, therefore,
the state--He willed its connection with the source and original
archetype of all perfection. They who are convinced of His will, which
is the law of laws, and the sovereign of sovereigns, cannot think it
reprehensible that this, our corporate realty and homage, that this our
recognition of a signiory paramount--I had almost said this oblation of
the state itself--as a worthy offering on the high altar of universal
praise, should be performed with modest splendour and unassuming state.
For those purposes they think some part of the wealth of the country is
as usefully employed as it can be in fomenting the luxury of
individuals.
It is on some such principles that the majority of the people of
England, far from thinking a religious national establishment unlawful,
hardly think it lawful to be without one. The commons of Great Britain,
in the national emergencies, will never seek their resource from the
confiscation of the estates of the church and poor. Sacrilege and
proscription are not among the ways and means of our committee of
supply. There is not one public man in this kingdom, of any party or
description, who does not reprobate the dishonest, perfidious, and cruel
confiscation which the national assembly have been compelled to make of
that property which it was their first duty to protect.
But to what end should we discuss all these things? How shall we discuss
the limitations of royal power? Your king is in prison. Why speculate on
the measure and standard of liberty? I doubt very much indeed whether
France is at all ripe for liberty on any standard. Society cannot exist
unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere,
and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It
is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of
intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
AUGUSTE COMTE
A Course of Positive Philosophy
Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte, the founder of the
Positive philosophy, was born at Montpellier, in France, Jan. 19,
1798. Entering the Ecole Polytechnique at Paris in his seventeenth
year, he showed mathematical talent, but was expelled for
insubordination. In 1818 he met St. Simon, and for six years he
remained under the influence of that philosopher; but in 1824 he
broke away and entered on an independent philosophical career. In
1826 he expounded to a distinguished audience his system of
Positive philosophy, but during the course had an attack of
insanity which lasted for a few months. Between 1830 and 1842 he
published his "Cours de Philosophie Positive." From 1835 to 1845 he
acted as examiner at the Ecole Polytechnique, but after 1845 he was
supported by a "subsidy" from his admirers. Comte married in 1825,
but his marriage was not happy, and ended in a separation in 1842.
He died on September 5, 1857. His other important works are "The
System of Positive Politics" and the "Positivist Catechism."
_I.--Positive Classification of the Sciences_
On studying the development of human intelligence, it is found that it
passes through three stages: (1) The theological, (2) the metaphysical,
(3) the scientific or positive. In the theological stage it seeks to
account for the world by supernatural beings. In the metaphysical stage
it seeks an explanation in abstract forces. In the scientific, or
positive, stage it applies itself to the study of the relation of
phenomena to each other.
Different sciences have passed through these stages at different rates.
Astronomy reached the positive stage first, then terrestrial physics,
then chemistry, then physiology, while sociology has not even yet
reached it. To put social phenomena upon a positive basis is the main
object of this work; its secondary object is to show that all branches
of knowledge spring from the same trunk. An integration of the sciences
on a positive basis should lead to the discovery of the laws which rule
the intellect in the investigation of facts, should regenerate science
and reorganise society. At present the theological, the metaphysical,
and the positive conflict, and cause intellectual disorder and
confusion.
The first step to be taken in forming a positive philosophy is to
classify the sciences. The first great division we notice in natural
phenomena is the division into inorganic and organic phenomena. Under
the inorganic we may include the sciences astronomy, physics, chemistry;
and under the organic we include the sciences physiology and sociology.
These five sciences, astronomy, physics, chemistry, physiology, and
sociology, we may consider the five fundamental sciences. This
classification follows the order of the development of the sciences, and
indicates their social relation and relative perfection. In order to
reach effective knowledge, the sciences must be studied in the order
named; sociology cannot be understood without knowledge of the anterior
sciences.
Behind and before all these sciences, however, lies the great science of
mathematics--the most powerful instrument the mind can employ in the
investigation of natural law--and the science of mathematics must be
divided into abstract mathematics or the calculus, and concrete
mathematics embracing general geometry and rational mechanics. We have
thus really six great sciences.
MATHEMATICS. Mathematics may be defined briefly as the indirect
measurement of magnitudes and the determination of magnitudes by each
other. It is the business of concrete mathematics to discover the
_equations_ of phenomena; it is the business of abstract mathematics to
educe results from the equations. Thus concrete mathematics discovers by
actual experiment the acceleration which takes place per second in a
falling body, and abstract mathematics educes results from the
equations so discovered, and obtains unknown quantities from known.
ASTRONOMY. Astronomy may be defined as the science by which we discover
the laws of the geometrical and mechanical phenomena presented by
heavenly bodies. To discover these laws we can use only our sense of
sight and our reasoning power, and reasoning bears a greater proportion
to observation here than in any other science. Sight alone would never
teach us the figure of the earth or the path of a planet, and only by
the measurement of angles and computation of times can we discover
astronomical laws. The observation of these invariable laws frees man
from servitude to the theological and metaphysical conceptions of the
universe.
PHYSICS. Physics may be defined briefly as the study of the laws which
regulate the general properties of bodies regarded _en masse_, their
molecules remaining unaltered and usually in a state of aggregation. In
the observations of physics all the senses are employed, and
mathematical analysis and experiment assist observation. In the
phenomena of astronomy human intervention was impossible; in the
phenomena of physics man begins to modify natural phenomena.
Physics includes the subdivisions statics, dynamics, thermology,
acoustics, optics, and electrology. Physics is still handicapped by
metaphysical conceptions of the primary causes of phenomena.
CHEMISTRY. Chemistry may be briefly defined as the study of the laws of
the phenomena of composition and decomposition, which result from the
molecular and specific mutual action of different substances, natural or
artificial. In the observations of chemistry the senses are still more
employed, and experiment is of still more utility. Even in chemistry
metaphysical conceptions, such as "affinity," linger.
PHYSIOLOGY. Physiology may be defined as the study of the laws of
organic dynamics in relation to structure and environment. Placed in a
given environment, a definite organism must always act in a definite
way, and physiology investigates the reciprocal relations between
organism, environment, and function. In physiology observation and
experiment are of the greatest value, and apparatus of all kinds is used
to assist both observation and experiment. Physiology is most closely
connected with chemistry, since all the phenomena of life are associated
with compositions and decompositions of a chemical character.
_II.--Social Physics_
To place social physics on a scientific basis is a task of great
difficulty, since social theories are still perverted by theological and
metaphysical doctrines. All I can hope to do is to point out general
principles which may serve to correct the intellectual anarchy which is
the cause of the moral and political anarchy of the present day. I
propose to state first how the institution of a science of social
physics bears upon the principal needs and grievances of society, so
that men worthy of the name of statesmen may realise that such labours
are of real utility. So far, positive philosophy has worked timidly and
tentatively, and has not been bold and broad and general enough to cope
with intellectual anarchy in social questions; but it is necessary now
that it play a more dominant part in life, and lead society out of the
turmoil in which it has tossed for three centuries.
At present, society is distracted by two conflicting influences, which
may be called the theological polity and the metaphysical polity.
The theological polity at one time exercised a beneficent influence on
society; but for three centuries past its influence has been essentially
retrograde, and has gradually, but radically, decayed. The causes of its
decline are various; but the chief present-day antagonist to the
theological polity is the scientific spirit, and the scientific spirit
can now never be repressed.
The metaphysical polity is progressive, but progressive mainly in a
negative way. So far, it has made for progress; but it has made for
progress chiefly by removing impediments to progress, by destroying the
theological conceptions which retarded the development of human
intelligence and human society. Though dangerous and revolutionary, it
has been necessary; for much required to be demolished to permit
permanent reconstruction.
The metaphysical polity was required to combat the theological; but now
it has served its destructive purpose, and tends to become obstructive,
for, having destroyed the old, it will not permit the new. Its chief
dogma has always been liberty of conscience with the liberty of press
and speech which that implies; but liberty of conscience really means
little more than absence of intellectual regulation; and even as liberty
of conscience is out of the question in astronomy and chemistry, so it
is out of the question in social physics. Liberty of conscience and
inquiry can only be temporary and transitional, and must be followed by
positive decision on the part of those qualified to decide. It cannot be
held that every man is competent to form opinions in social and
political questions; it cannot be maintained that intellects of weak
capacity can judge obscure and complex questions, and that all opinions
are equally valuable. All society is based on faith in the opinion of
others and in reciprocal confidence. Continual discussion of the
foundations of society must render it impossible to lay sure foundations
firm, and the disorder produced by free opinions on all points by all
people is seen in the fierce and feeble sectarianism of Protestantism.
What are the limits of free inquiry we shall see later; meantime, we may
note that fine motto of the Catholic Church: "In necessary things,
unity; in doubtful things, liberty; and in all things, charity."
The second dogma of the metaphysical polity is equality, and, like the
other dogma, it must be considered the temporary expression of a
temporary need. It is indeed a corollary of the dogma of liberty of
conscience; for to assume liberty of conscience without equality of
intelligence would be to stultify the assumption. Having achieved its
purpose, it also became an obstacle in the path of progress. Equality
sufficient to permit a man to use his faculties aright is allowed by
all; but men cannot be made equal physically, and much less can they be
made equal intellectually and morally.
The dogma of liberty of conscience and equality resulted naturally in a
third dogma, the sovereignty of the people. This also was provisionally
useful, in that it permitted a series of political experiments; but it
is in essence revolutionary, condemning the superior to be ruled by the
inferior. A fourth dogma, the dogma of national independence, has also
been serviceable in separating the nations in preparation for a new
union.
The metaphysical polity fails utterly in constructive capacity. During
the first French revolution it successfully destroyed the old social
system; but its attempts to reorganise society were retrogressive.
Instead of Catholicism it proposed polytheism; and in the name of virtue
and simplicity it condemned industry and art. Even science was condemned
as aristocracy of knowledge. Nor can these blunders be considered
accidental; they were inherent in the polity. It is evident that a
polity that admits on the one hand the need for a theological
foundation, and on the other hand destroys the foundations of theology
must end in intellectual anarchy.
Satisfied with neither the theological nor the metaphysical polities,
society has wavered between them, and the one tendency has served
chiefly to counteract the other. Out of these oscillations a third
school of political opinion, which we may call the "stationary school,"
has arisen.
This school would fix society in a contradictory position between
retrogression and progress, such as is seen in the parliamentary
monarchy of England. This is a last phase of the metaphysical polity,
and is only a kind of _placebo_.
The result of all this is to produce a most unfortunate position. The
theological polity would revert to old, worn-out principles; the
metaphysical polity has no definite principles at all; and the
stationary school merely offers temporary compromises. Everywhere there
is intellectual anarchy, and in Protestant countries the disorder is
increased by sectarian discord. So complex are all social questions that
few are able to see them steadily, and see them whole, and where
individual opinion is unhampered, individual prejudice and individual
ignorance must be rampant.
Intellectual anarchy and unsettled convictions, moreover, tend to
political corruption. If there are no convictions and no principles to
which to appeal, appeal must be made to self-interest or to fear.
A growing tendency to take a shortsighted and material view of political
questions is also a disturbing sign of the times. This is due to the
fact that when, three centuries ago, spiritual power was abolished, all
social questions were given over to men occupied with practical affairs
and influenced chiefly by material considerations.
Material views of political questions not only impede progress, but are
also dangerous to order, for the view that disorders have a material
cause leads to constant interference with institutions and with
property. Granted there are abuses in connection both with property and
institutions, what is required is not material changes but general moral
and intellectual reform.
An inadequate and material view of social physics naturally favours
mediocrity, attracts political charlatans, while the most eminent minds
devote their attention to science.
The theological and metaphysical philosophies having failed, what
remains? Nothing remains but the positive philosophy, which is the only
agent able to reorganise society. The positive philosophy will regard
social phenomena as it regards other phenomena, and will apply to the
renovation of society the same scientific spirit found effective in
other departments of human knowledge. It will bring to politics the
conception of natural laws, and deal with delicate social questions on
impartial scientific principles. It will show that certain wrongs are
inevitable, and others curable; and that it is as foolish to try to cure
the incurable in social as in biological and chemical matters. A spirit
of this kind will encourage reform, and yet obviate vain attempts to
redress necessary evils.
It will thus make for intellectual order. It will likewise make for
progress and for true liberty by substituting genuine convictions
founded on scientific principles for constitutional artifices and the
laws of arbitrary wills; it will reconcile the antagonism of class
interests by moral and scientific considerations. Revolutionary
outbursts there still will be, but they will merely clear the ground for
positive reconstruction on a moral and intellectual basis.
Strangely enough, the scientific class are not likely to assist in the
positive reconstruction of society. They shrink from the irrational
methods of modern polities, and, further, they are so restricted in
their narrow horizons that they are unable to grasp the wide
generalisations of positive philosophy.
_III.--Social Statics_
There can be no doubt that society originated in social instincts, and
was not merely the result of utilitarian considerations. Indeed, the
social state could manifest its ability only when well developed, and in
the early ages of humanity the advantages to the individual of
association would not be obvious.
What, then, are the human instincts and requirements which give society
its fundamental characters? In the first place, it must be noted that in
man the intellectual is subordinate to the affective. In most men the
intellectual faculties are easily fatigued, and require a strong and
constant stimulus to keep them at work. In the majority of cases the
stimulus is derived from the needs of organic life; but in more highly
endowed individuals the incitement may proceed from higher affective
impulses. This subordination of the intellectual to the affective
faculties is beneficent in that it gives a permanent end and aim to the
intellectual activity.
In the second place it must be noted that the personal affections are
stronger than the social affections, and that personal affections give
aim and direction to our social actions. This is necessary, for all
ideas of public good must be inferred from the ideas of private
advantage, and if it were possible to repress our personal affections,
our social affections, deprived of necessary inspiration and direction,
would become vague and ineffective. In the precept that bids us love our
neighbours as ourselves the personal instinct is suggested as the
pattern for the social. The only thing to be regretted is that the
personal affections are apt to override, instead of stimulating, the
social affections.
Increase of intelligence must mean greater capacity for social
affection, because of the discipline it imposes on the personal
affections; and for the same reason increase of the social instinct is
favourable to intelligence. To strengthen this reciprocal action of the
intellect and the social affections is the first task of universal
morals. And the double opposition between man's moral and material need
of intellectual toil and his dislike of it, and again between man's
moral and material need of the social affections, and the subjection of
these to his personal instincts, discloses the scientific germ of the
struggle which we shall have to review, between the conservative and the
reforming spirit; the first of which is animated by purely personal
instincts, and the other by the spontaneous combination of intellectual
activity with the various social instincts.
Society, however, cannot be regarded as composed of individuals. The
true social unit is the _family_; it is essentially on the plan of the
family that society is constructed. In a family the social and the
personal instincts are blended and reconciled; in a family, too, the
principle of subordination and mutual co-operation is exemplified. The
domestic is the basis of all social life. The modern tendency,
therefore, to attack the institution of the family is an alarming
symptom of social disorganisation.
The sociological basis of the family depends on subordination of sexes
and of ages.
Marriage at once satisfies, disciplines, and harmonises the strongest
and most disorderly instinct of our animal nature; and though it may be
attacked by the revolutionary spirit because of its theological
implications, yet the institution is based on true principles, and must
survive. No doubt marriage has been modified, but to modify is not to
overthrow, and its fundamental principle remains intact.
The fundamental principle of the institution of marriage is the natural
subordination of the woman--a principle which has reappeared under all
forms of marriage. Biology teaches that radical differences, physical
and moral, distinguish the sexes, and sociology will prove that the
much-advertised equality of sexes is a fiction, and that equality of the
sexes would be incompatible with all social existence. Each sex has
special functions it must perform in the family, and the necessary
subordination of one sex is in no wise injurious, since the happiness of
every being depends on the wise development of its proper nature.
Our social system depends on intellectual activity under affective
stimulus, and in power of mental labour the woman is incontestably
inferior to the man, either because her mental powers are weaker, or
because her lively moral and physical sensibility is unfavourable to
mental concentration.
Besides the bond of marriage, which holds together society, there is the
bond between parents and children. Here again we find the principle of
subordination in force, and even as we find wild revolutionaries who
challenge the principle of subordination in women, so there are some who
would challenge the same principle in the case of children. Fortunately,
popular good sense and the primary instincts resist such absurdities.
The spontaneous subordination in the human family is the best model for
society. On the other hand, we see obedience and due subordination
allied to gratitude, and unassociated with shame; and, on the other
hand, we see absolute authority combined with affection and geniality.
There are those who would take children from their parents' care, and
hand them over to society, and there are those who would prevent the
transmission of property from parents to children; but such
extravagances need not be examined here.
Coming now to the consideration of society as constructed out of the
family units, we see unity of aim associated with diversity of
functions. It is a marvellous spectacle to see how in a society the
individuals pursuing each their own end yet unconsciously co-operate;
and this co-operation is the mainspring of society. In the family,
co-operation is much less marked; for the family is founded chiefly on
affection, and in affection finds its justification, quite apart from
co-operation towards any end. In society the instinct of co-operation
preponderates, and the instinct of affection plays only a secondary
part. There are exceptional men in whom the affective side of the social
instinct is dominant; but such men in most cases give their affection
to the race at large simply from lack of domestic sympathy.
The principle of co-operation, spontaneous or concerted, is the basis of
society, and the object of society must ever be to find the right place
for its individual members in its great co-operative scheme. There is,
however, a danger of exaggerated specialism; it concentrates the
attention of individuals on small parts of the social machine, and thus
narrows their sense of the social community, and produces an
indifference to the larger interests of humanity. It is lamentable to
find an artisan spending his life making pin-heads, and it is equally
lamentable to find a man with mind employing his mind only in the
solution of equations.
To guard against such social and intellectual disintegration must be the
duty of government. It must foster the feeling of interconnection
between individuals; and such a bond of feeling must be intellectual and
moral rather than material, and will always imply subordination. The
social instinct of man spontaneously produces government, and there is a
much stronger instinct of obedience in man than is commonly supposed.
Who has not felt it good to resign the responsibility of conduct to wise
and trustworthy guidance? Even in revolutionary times the people feel
the need of preponderant authority, and political subordination is as
inevitable as it is indispensable.
_IV.--Social Dynamics_
Human progress consists essentially in the evolution of the moral and
intellectual qualities proper to man. Most of the occupations of
civilisation which deal with material things relieve man from material
cares and discomforts, and permit him to use his higher faculties.
Death, too, may be considered a promoter of human progress. Youth is
essentially progressive, age essentially conservative and opposed to
progress, and death it is that prevents old age from too seriously
impeding the progress of the world. If life were ten times as long,
progress would be greatly retarded. On the other hand, death interferes
with continuity of work, and by interrupting a man's work often delays
its fruition. It is probable that if life were twice or thrice as long,
progress would be more rapid.
Human progress is directed by the reason, and the history of the
progress of society is largely the history of the human mind in its
progress through its three stages--the theological, metaphysical, and
positive. The necessity of these stages can be shown.
At first man knows nothing but himself, and it was inevitable that he
should explain things as produced by a being like himself. The
theological philosophy gave a basis for observation by its hypotheses
that phenomena were products of actions like human acts, and that all
bodies had life like human life, and that there was an invisible world
with invisible agents. These hypotheses were not only intellectually
necessary; they were also morally necessary, for they gave man
confidence to act, and hope that he could modify anything unsatisfactory
in the universe by appeals to its maker. Not only did the theological
philosophy sustain man's courage, and kindle his hope, and increase his
sense of power, but it gave an intellectual unanimity of great social
and political value; and, producing a special speculative class, made
the first effective division between things of matter and things of
mind. Except for the theological speculative class, man might have
remained merely a superior monkey.
Still, the theological philosophy was obviously only temporary, and
could not satisfy the needs of more highly developed intelligence, and
it soon came into conflict with positive philosophy. Indeed, at all
times there had been glimmerings of positive belief, for at all times
the simplest phenomena had been considered subject to natural laws, and
all had been compelled to act in everyday affairs on the assumption of
the invariability of natural law. The positive philosophy, therefore,
was inevitable from the first, and its open antagonism to the
theological philosophy was merely a question of time.
Between the theological and positive philosophy naturally and
necessarily has intervened the metaphysical, which has substituted
entities for a deity. This philosophy has never had the social power or
the consistency of the theological philosophy; its entities have been
mere abstractions. It has and has had such political power simply
because so elusive.
Material progress has gone through similar stages. The primitive
tendency of mankind was to a military life. At first the military life
afforded man, apart from cannibalism, the easy means of making a living;
and in no other school in these days could order have been taught, and
in no other way could political consolidation be so quickly effected.
Necessary as the military stage was, it was merely provisional, it must
be succeeded by the industrial stage. Meantime, we are in the
transitional stage between the two, for we have defensive instead of
offensive military organisation, which is becoming more and more
subordinate to industrial production.
The military stage corresponded with the theological stage, belonged to
the same _régime_, had common antipathies and sympathies as well as
general interests, and could not have worked without the aid of
theological convictions to give blind confidence in military superiors.
The industrial stage corresponds with the positive stage; it is akin in
spirit, in origin, and in destination. The transitional stage, again,
corresponds with the metaphysical stage. Only on these three dualisms
which I have established can a sound historical philosophy be based.
HENRY GEORGE
Progress and Poverty
Henry George was born at Philadelphia on September 2, 1839. After
spending some years at sea, he reached California in 1858, became a
printer, and later a journalist and director of the public library
in San Francisco. In 1871 he published "Our Land Policy," and this
was afterwards developed into "Progress and Poverty: an Inquiry
into the Causes of Industrial Depressions, and of Increase of Want
with Increase of Wealth," issued in 1879. The book soon acquired a
world-wide reputation, not only from the eloquence and beauty of
its diction, but from the author's novel theory of land taxation.
In 1880 George removed to New York, published a book on the Irish
land question, and for some years afterwards undertook a succession
of missionary journeys to Great Britain, Australia, and New
Zealand, the result of which was the foundation of the English Land
Reform Union, the Scottish Land Restoration League, and the
legislative adoption by the different Australasian colonies of his
scheme of the taxation of land values. Among other economic works
he issued were "Protection or Free Trade," "The Condition of
Labour," and "A Perplexed Philosopher." George died on October 29,
1897.
_I.--Wages, Capital, and Wealth-Distribution_
The past century has been marked by a prodigious increase in
wealth-producing power. It was naturally expected that labour-saving
inventions would make real poverty a thing of the past. Disappointment,
however, after disappointment has followed. Discovery upon discovery,
invention after invention, have neither lessened the toil of those who
most need respite nor brought plenty to the poor. The association of
poverty with progress is the great enigma of our time.
I propose to attempt to solve by the methods of political economy the
great problem; to seek the law which associates poverty with progress
and increases want with advancing wealth.
The inquiry is--why, in spite of increase in productive power, do wages
tend to a minimum which will give but a bare living? The answer of
current political economy is that wages are fixed by the ratio between
the number of labourers and the amount of capital devoted to the
employment of labour, and constantly tend to the lowest amount on which
labourers will consent to live and reproduce; because the increase in
the number of labourers tends naturally to follow and overtake any
increase in capital. This argument is inconsistent with the general fact
that wages and interest do not rise inversely, but conjointly. My
proposition is that wages, instead of being drawn from capital, are in
reality drawn from the product of the labour for which they are paid.
The three agents or factors in production are land, labour and capital,
and that part of the produce which goes to the second of these factors
is wages. Land embraces all natural materials, forces, and
opportunities, and therefore nothing that is freely supplied by nature
can be properly classed as capital. Labour includes all human exertion,
and hence human powers, whether natural or acquired, can never be
properly classed as capital.
We exclude from the category of capital everything which must be
included either as land or labour, and therefore capital consists of
those things which are neither land nor labour, but which have resulted
from the union of these two original factors of production. Nothing can
be capital which is not wealth; only such things can be wealth the
production of which increases, the destruction of which decreases, the
aggregate of wealth. Increase in land values does not represent any
increase in the common wealth, for what landowners gain by higher prices
the tenants or purchasers will lose.
All wealth is not capital. Capital is only that part of wealth which is
devoted to the aid of production. It is wealth in the course of
exchange, for production includes not merely the making of things, but
the bringing of them to the consumer. Wherever we analyse the facts we
find that without production wages would not, and could not, be. As the
rendering of labour precedes the payment of wages, and as the rendering
of labour in production implies the creation of value, the employer
receives value before he pays out value--he but exchanges capital of one
form for capital of another form. Hence the payment of wages in
production never involves the advance of capital or ever temporarily
lessens capital.
Nor is it true that the maintenance of labour is drawn from capital, and
that therefore population regulates itself by the funds which are to
employ it, for that would involve the idea that labour cannot be exerted
until the products of labour are saved, thus putting the product before
the producer, which is absurd. Capital, therefore, does not limit
industry, the only limit to industry being the access to natural
material. Capital may limit the form of industry, and the productiveness
of industry, by limiting the use of tools and the division of labour.
The functions of capital are to assist labour in production with tools,
seeds, etc., and with the wealth required to carry on exchanges. All
remedies, whether proposed by professors of political economy or working
men, which look to the alleviation of poverty either by the increase of
capital, or the restriction of the number of labourers, or the
efficiency of their work, must be condemned.
The argument that wages are determined by the ratio between capital and
labour finds its strongest support in the Malthusian doctrine, and on
both is based the theory that past a certain point the application of
capital and labour yields a diminishing return. The Malthusian doctrine
is that the tendency to increase in the number of labourers must always
tend to reduce wages to the minimum on which labourers can reproduce.
When this theory is subjected to the test of straightforward analysis,
it is utterly untenable. In the first place, the facts marshalled in
support of it do not prove it, and the analogies drawn from the animal
and vegetable world do not countenance it; and, in the second place,
there are facts which conclusively disprove it.
There are on every hand the most striking and conclusive evidences that
the production and consumption of wealth have increased with even
greater rapidity than the increase of population, and that if any class
obtains less than its due share, it is solely because of the greater
inequality of distribution. The denser the population, the more minute
becomes the subdivision of labour, the greater economies of production
and distribution, and hence, the very reverse of the Malthusian doctrine
is true.
_II.--The Law of Wages_
To discover the cause which, as population increases, and the productive
arts advance, deepens the poverty of the lowest class, we must find the
law which determines what part of the produce is distributed to labour
as wages, what part to capital as interest, and what part to landowners
as rent.
Rent is the price of monopoly arising from the reduction to individual
ownership of natural elements which human exertion can neither produce
nor increase. Interest is not properly a payment made for the use of
capital. It springs from the power of increase which the reproductive
forces of nature and the (in effect) analogous capacity for exchange
give to capital. The principle that men will seek to gratify their
desires with the least exertion operates to establish an equilibrium
between wages and interest.
This relation fixed, it is evident that interest cannot be increased
without increasing wages nor wages lowered without depressing interest.
The law of interest is that the relation between wages and interest is
determined by the average power of increase which attaches to capital
from its use in its reproductive modes. The law of wages is that they
depend upon the margin of production, or upon the produce which labour
can obtain at the highest point of natural productiveness open to it
without the payment of rent. This law of wages accords with and explains
universal facts, and shows that where land is free, and labour is
unassisted by capital, the whole produce will go to labour as wages.
Where land is free, and labour is assisted by capital, wages will
consist of the whole produce, less that part necessary to induce the
storing up of labour as capital. Where land is subject to ownership and
rent arises, wages will be fixed by what labour can secure from the
highest natural opportunities open to it without the payment of rent.
Where natural opportunities are all monopolised, wages must be forced by
the competition among labourers to the minimum at which labourers will
consent to reproduce. Nothing can be clearer than the proposition that
the failure of wages to increase with increasing productive power is due
to the increase of rent.
The value of land depending wholly upon the power which its ownership
gives of appropriating wealth created by labour, the increase of land
values is always at the expense of the value of labour. And, hence, that
the increase of productive power does not increase wages is because it
does increase the value of land. It is the universal fact that where the
value of the land is highest civilisation exhibits the greatest luxury
side by side with the most piteous destitution.
The changes which constitute or contribute to material progress are
three: increase in population, improvement in the arts of production and
exchange, and improvement in knowledge, government, and morals. The
effect of increase of population upon the distribution of wealth is to
increase rent, and consequently to diminish the proportion of the
produce which goes to capital and labour in two ways. First, by
lowering the margin of cultivation; and second, and more important, by
bringing out in land special capabilities otherwise latent, and by
attaching special capabilities to particular land. The effect of
inventions and improvements in the productive arts, including division
of labour between individuals, is to save labour--that is, to enable the
same result to be secured with less labour, or a greater result with the
same labour, and hence to the production of wealth.
Without any increase in population, the progress of invention constantly
tends to give a larger and larger proportion of the produce to the
owners of land, and a smaller proportion to labour and capital; and,
therefore, to decrease wages and interest. And, as we can assign no
limit to the progress of invention, neither can we assign any limits to
the increase of rent short of the whole produce. Another cause of the
influence of material progress upon the distribution of wealth is the
confident expectation of the future enhancement of land values which
arises in all progressive countries from the steady increase of rent.
This leads to speculation, or the holding of land for a higher price
than it would otherwise bring. It is a force which constantly tends to
increase rent in a greater ratio than progress increases production, and
tends to reduce wages, not merely relatively but absolutely.
_III.--The Common Right to Land_
The fact that the speculative advance in land values cuts down the
earnings of labour and capital, and checks production, leads
irresistibly to the conclusion that this is the main cause of those
periodical industrial depressions to which every civilised country seems
increasingly liable.
Robbed of all the benefits of the increase of productive power, labour
is exposed to certain effects of advancing civilisation which, without
the advantages that naturally accompany them, are positive evils, and of
themselves tend to reduce the free labourer to the helpless and degraded
condition of the slave. As land is necessary to the exertion of labour
in the production of wealth, to command the land is to command all the
fruits of labour save enough to enable labour to exist. But there is
also an active, energetic power--a power that in every country, be its
political form what it may, writes laws and moulds thought--the power of
a vast and dominant pecuniary interest. The great cause in the
inequality of the distribution of wealth is the inequality in the
ownership of land. The ownership of land is the great fundamental fact
which ultimately determines the social and political, and consequently,
the intellectual and moral condition of a people. The tendencies and
measures at present relied on or advocated as calculated to relieve
poverty and distress among the masses are insufficient. The true remedy
is to substitute for individual the common ownership of land.
As man belongs to himself, so his labour when put in concrete form
belongs to him. As nature gives only to labour, the exertion of labour
in production is the only title to exclusive possession. When
non-producers can claim as rent a portion of the wealth created by
producers, the right of the producers to the fruits of their labour is
to that extent denied.
The equal right of all men to the use of land is as clear as their equal
right to breathe the air--it is a right proclaimed by the fact of their
existence. The right of individual proprietorship of land is the denial
of the natural rights of other individuals--it is a wrong which must
show itself in the inequitable division of wealth. Again, the ownership
of land will always give the ownership of men, to a degree measured by
the necessity, real or artificial, for the use of land. And when that
necessity is absolute, when starvation is the alternative to the use of
land, then does the ownership of men involved in the ownership of land
become absolute. Private ownership of land is the nether millstone.
Material progress is the upper millstone. Between them, with an
increasing pressure, the working classes are being ground. Historically,
as ethically, private property in land is robbery. It has everywhere had
its birth in war and conquest, and in the selfish use which the cunning
have made of superstition and law.
_IV.--The Remedy for Social Ills_
Private property in land is inconsistent with the best use of land. What
is necessary for that is security for improvements. Where land is
treated as public property it will be used and improved as soon as there
is need for its use and improvement, but, being treated as private
property, the individual owner is permitted to prevent others from
using, or improving, what he cannot, or will not, use or improve
himself. I do not propose to purchase or to confiscate private property
in land. The first would be needless, the second unjust. It is only
necessary to confiscate rent.
The sovereign remedy which will raise wages, increase the earnings of
capital, extirpate pauperism, abolish poverty, give remunerative
employment to whoever wishes it, afford free scope to human powers,
lessen crime, elevate morals and taste and intelligence, purify
government, and carry civilisation to yet nobler heights, is to
appropriate rent by taxation, and to abolish all taxation save that upon
land values. The great class of taxes from which revenue may be derived
without interference with production are those upon monopolies,
temporary or onerous. But all other monopolies are trivial in extent as
compared with the monopoly of land. Taxes on the value of land not only
do not check production but tend to increase it by destroying
speculative rent.
The whole value of land may be taken in taxation, and the only effect
will be to stimulate industry, to open new opportunities to capital, and
to increase the production of wealth. A tax on land values does not add
to prices, and is thus paid directly by the persons on whom it falls.
Land is not a thing of human production, and taxes upon rent cannot
check supply. On the contrary, by compelling those who hold land on
speculation to sell or let for what they can get, a tax on land values
tends to increase the competition between owners, and thus to reduce the
price of land.
A tax on land values, while the least arbitrary of taxes, possesses in
the highest degree the element of certainty. It may be assessed and
collected with a definiteness that partakes of the immovable and
unconcealable character of the land itself. It is the most just and
equal of all taxes, because it falls only on those who receive from
society a peculiar and valuable benefit, and upon them in proportion to
the benefit they receive. The division of land now held on speculation
would much increase the number of landowners. A single tax on the value
of land would so equalise the distribution of wealth as to raise even
the poorest above that abject poverty in which public considerations
have no weight, while it would at the same time cut down those overgrown
fortunes which raise their possessors above concern in government.
_V.--Effects of the Remedy_
The effects of the remedy would be to lift the whole enormous weight of
taxation from productive industry. It would open new opportunities, for
no one would care to hold land unless to use it, and land now withheld
from use would everywhere be thrown open to improvement. The selling
price of not merely agricultural, but all land, would fall. The bonus
that wherever labour is most productive must not be paid before labour
can be exerted would disappear. Competition in the labour market would
no longer be one-sided. Rent, instead of causing inequality, would
promote equality. Labour and capital would receive the whole produce,
minus that portion taken by the state in the taxation of land values,
which, being applied to public purposes, would be equally distributed in
public benefits. The equalisation in the distribution of wealth would
react upon production, everywhere preventing waste, everywhere
increasing power.
Simplicity in the legislative and executive functions of government
would become possible. It would at the same time and in the same degree
become possible for it to realise the dream of socialism, not through
governmental repression, but because government would become the
administration of a great co-operative society, merely the agency by
which the common property was administered for the common benefit. Give
labour a free field and its full earnings, take for the benefit of the
whole community that fund which the growth of the community creates, and
want, and the fear of want, would be gone.
If the conclusions at which we have arrived are correct, they will fall
under a larger generalisation. However man may have originated, man, as
man, no matter how low in the scale of humanity, has never yet been
found destitute of the power of improvement. Everywhere and at all times
he has made some use of this power. The varying degrees in which the
faculty is used cannot be ascribed to differences in original capacity.
These are evidently connected with social development. A survey of
history shows diversities in improvement, halts, and retrogression; and
the law which will explain all these is that men tend to progress just
as they come closer together, and by co-operation with each other,
increase the mental power that may be devoted to improvement.
But just as conflict is provoked, or association develops inequality of
condition and power, this tendency to progression is lessened, checked,
and finally reversed. As society develops there arise tendencies which
check development. The process of integration, of the specialisation of
functions and powers, is accompanied by a constant liability to
inequality, and to lodge collective power and wealth in the hands of a
few, which tends to produce greater inequality, since aggression grows
on what it feeds.
The reform I have proposed accords with all that is politically,
socially, or morally desirable. It has the qualities of a true reform,
for it will make all other reforms easier.
Behind the problems of social life lies the problem of individual life.
Properly understood, the laws which govern the production and
distribution of wealth show that the want and injustice of the present
social state are not necessary, but that, on the contrary, a social
state is possible in which poverty is unknown, and all the better
qualities and higher powers of human nature would have opportunity for
full development. Further than this, when we see that social development
is governed neither by a special providence, nor by a merciless fate,
but by law at once unchangeable and beneficent, a flood of light breaks
in upon the problem of individual life. If we look merely at individual
life we cannot see that the laws of the universe have the slightest
relation to good or bad, to right or wrong, to just or unjust. By a
fundamental law of our minds we cannot conceive of a means without an
end. But unless man himself may rise to, or bring forth something
higher, his existence is unintelligible. For it is as certain that the
race must die as it is that the individual must die. What, then, is the
meaning of life absolutely and inevitably bounded by death? To me it
only seems intelligible as the avenue and vestibule to another life.
THOMAS HOBBES
The Leviathan
Thomas Hobbes was born at Malmesbury, Wiltshire, England, April 5,
1588, and died at Hardwick Dec. 4, 1679. When comparatively a young
man he was secretary to Francis Bacon. He spent many years abroad,
met Galileo, and corresponded with Descartes. But he did not begin
to produce until in advanced middle age. "Leviathan, or the Matter,
Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil,"
appeared in 1651. His special impulse to the construction of a
science of politics came from the Great Rebellion, his detestation
of the principles on which it was based, and his dissatisfaction
with the theory of "divine right" as a bafis for the absolutism
which he counted a necessity. The "Leviathan" is the commonwealth,
or state, conceived as an "artificial man," and this gives the
title to this famous work. But this essay towards a science of
politics was only a fragment of that complete and all-inclusive
structure which he contemplated. Although in this sense only a
fragment, it has largely influenced all political theorising since
his day: and it contains the most definite enunciation of the
doctrine of the social contract, which took so different and so
revolutionary a shape in the hands of Rousseau.
_I.--Of Man_
Nature, the art whereby God hath made and governs the world, is by the
art of man so imitated that he can make an artificial animal. For by art
is created that great leviathan called a commonwealth or state, which is
but an artificial man; in which the sovereignty is an artificial soul,
as giving life and motion; the magistrates and other officers the
joints; reward and punishment the nerves; concord, health; discord,
sickness; lastly, the pacts or covenants by which the parts were first
set together resemble the "fiat" of God at the Creation.
To describe this artificial man, I will consider: First, the matter and
the artificer, both which is man; secondly, how it is made; thirdly,
what is a Christian commonwealth; lastly, what is the kingdom of
darkness.
And first, of man. The thoughts of man are, singly, every one a
representation of some quality or accident of a body without us, called
an object. There is no conception in the mind which has not first been
begotten upon the organs of sense. The cause of sense is the eternal
object which presseth upon the proper organ; not that, as hath been
taught in the schools, the thing, "sendeth forth a visible or audible
species."
Imagination is the continuity of an image after the object is removed.
When we would express that the image is decaying, we call it memory; in
sleep, we call it dreams. A train of thought is the succession in the
mind of images which have succeeded each other in experience.
Of all inventions the most notable is that of speech, names, the
register of thoughts; which are notes for remembrance, or signs, for
transference. Truth consisteth in the right ordering of names in our
affirmations. Words are wise men's counters, but the money of fools.
Reasoning is the reckoning, the addition and subtraction of the
sequences of words, the sum being the conclusion. Which conclusions may
be absurd, because men do not start--except in geometry--from the
definitions of the words. Reason, therefore, implies speech.
In animals there are two sorts of motions--vital and voluntary. The
beginnings of motion within man are called "endeavour." Appetite is a
motion towards; aversion a motion fromwards. Some are born in us, some
are products of experience. The object of a man's appetite he calls
"good"; of his aversion, "evil"; whether in promise (beautiful and
ugly), in effect (pleasant, painful), or as means (useful, hurtful).
Pleasures and pains arise from an object present, of the senses; or in
expectation, of the mind. Thus "pity" is the imagining of a like
calamity befalling oneself.
"Deliberation" is the sum of the successive appetites or aversions
which are concluded by the doing or not doing of the particular thing.
"Will" is the last appetite in deliberating. So, in the inquiry of the
truth, opinions correspond to appetites, and the final judgment, the
last opinion, to the will.
There are two kinds of knowledge; of "fact," and of "the consequence of
one affirmation to another." The former is nothing else but sense and
memory, and is absolute; the latter is called science, and is
conditional. The register of the first is called history, natural or
civil; that of the second is contained in books of philosophy, in
corresponding groups--natural philosophy, and civil philosophy, or
politics. Natural philosophy breaks up into a number of groups,
including mental and moral science.
Power is present means, whencesoever derived, to attain some future
apparent good. Value is the price that will be given for the use of a
man's power. To honour a man is to acknowledge his power; to dishonour
him is to depreciate it. The public worth of a man is the value set on
him by the commonwealth.
By manners, I mean those qualities of mankind which are concerned with
their living together in peace and unity. Desire of power tends to
produce strife; other desires, as for ease, or for knowledge, incline
men to obey a common power. To receive benefits, or to do injuries,
greater than can be repaid or expiated, tends to make us hate the
benefactor or the injured party.
_II.--Of Contract and Sovereignty_
Nature hath made men so equal, in the faculties of body and mind that
are born in them, that one man cannot in respect of these claim to
himself any benefit to which another may not pretend. From this equality
ariseth equality of hope in the attaining of our ends. Therefore, if
two men desire the same thing which they cannot both enjoy they become
enemies, and seek each the destruction of the other, each mistrusting
the other. So men invade each other, first for gain, second for safety,
and third for reputation.
Hence, while men live without a common power to keep them all in awe,
they are in a state of war, every man against every man. In this state,
notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have no place.
Probably there never was actually such a universal condition; but we see
it now among savage races and in the mutual relations of sovereigns. In
this state of war, reason suggesteth articles of peace upon which men
may agree; which articles are otherwise called the laws of nature.
The "right of nature" is the right of self-preservation. "Liberty" is
the absence of impediments to the exercise of power. A "law of nature"
is a precept of reason forbidding a man to do what is destructive of his
own life. In the state of nature every man has a "right" to everything.
Thus security comes only of the first fundamental law: "To seek peace
and follow it," and "by all means we can to defend ourselves."
The second law follows: "To lay down the right to everything, claiming
only so much against others as we concede to others against ourselves."
This right being renounced or transferred, injustice is the revocation
of that act. But since the object of a voluntary act is good to oneself,
such renunciation is not valid if not good for oneself; hence a man
cannot renounce the right of self-preservation.
The transferring of right, if not mutual, is free gift; if mutual, it is
contract. When this is not simultaneous there is a covenant or pact. The
covenant can become void only through some new fact arising after it was
made. A covenant not to defend oneself against force by force is void
_per se_.
The third law is: "That men perform their covenants made," without
which covenants are vain, and the state of war continues. The definition
of injustice is "the not-performance of a covenant." No covenant is
valid until there exists some power that can enforce the performance of
it by penalties; that is, until there is a commonwealth. What is done to
a man conformable to his own will signified to the doer is no injury to
him.
The fourth law is that of "gratitude"; that a man receiving a free gift
endeavour that the giver may not suffer thereby. A fifth is
"complaisance"--that every man strive to accommodate himself to the
rest. Others are pardon on repentance, and non-vindictiveness of
punishment; and the common enjoyment--or, failing that, distribution by
lot--of what cannot be equally divided. Observance of these laws is
virtue.
Persons are either natural and actual, or fictitious and artificial,
_i.e._, representing someone else, or even something else: as a church,
a hospital, a bridge. When the representative has authority from the
represented, we call the former the "actor," and the latter the
"author." One person may artificially represent a multitude.
Now, men being in the state of nature may agree together; but there is
no security, unless there be a power to enforce the covenant. Such a
power can be created only if they agree together to confer all their own
power on one man or one assembly; so that all the acts of such person or
assembly have authority as from each one of them, and each one of them
submits his individual will to that of such person or assembly. The
multitude so united in one person is a commonwealth. This is the
generation of that leviathan or mortal god to which, under the Immortal
God, we owe our peace and defence.
He that carrieth this person is called "sovereign," and everyone beside
is his "subject." This sovereign power may be attained either by natural
force, "acquisition," or by voluntary transference, "institution." And
first of a commonwealth by institution.
They that have instituted a commonwealth by covenant cannot make a new
covenant contrary thereto without permission of the sovereign, since
this is a breaking of their covenant with each other. On his part there
is no covenant, so that breach of covenant by him cannot be pleaded as
warranting abrogation of the covenant made. The sovereign cannot do the
subjects injustice because, since he has their authority, what he does
to them is done by their own will; so also they cannot punish him.
Since the sovereign was instituted for peace and defence, he controls
the means to war and peace, and judges of opinions as conducing to peace
or endangering it. He prescribes the rules of property, since in the
state of nature there is no property; he has the right of judicature; of
making war and peace with other commonwealths; of choosing all
counsellors in peace and war; of rewarding and punishing, according to
the law he has made, and of bestowing honour. Nay, if he grants away any
of these powers the grant is null.
The sovereignty may be in one man, or in a limited assembly, or in an
assembly of all--monarchy, aristocracy, democracy; these three forms
only, though when they are misliked they are called other names. In any
case, the power of the sovereign is absolute, whether a monarch or an
assembly. He is the representative of the commonwealth, not deputies who
may be chosen to tender petitions.
The three forms differ not in the power of the sovereign, but in their
advantageousness. In monarchy, the private interest of the sovereign
must coincide with that of the commonwealth as a whole; much more so
than in aristocracy or democracy. An assembly cannot receive counsel
secretly; a monarchy has the benefit of a single will instead of
conflicting wills. There is no government by a mixture of the types,
_e.g._, an elective "king" is not sovereign, but a minister; and within
his province a Roman pro-consul was an absolute monarch. Men submit
themselves to an instituted sovereign, for fear of each other; to an
acquired sovereignty, for fear of the sovereign. Acquired sovereignty or
dominion is either by generation (paternal) or by conquest. A family,
however, does not amount to a commonwealth, unless it be so great that
it may not be subdued but by war. Acquired sovereignty is absolute, for
the same reasons as instituted sovereignty.
_III.--The Natural Commonwealth_
Liberty is absence of impediments to motion. It is consistent with fear,
also with necessity; for a voluntary act is yet necessary as having a
cause which is a link in a chain of causes up to the First Cause, which
is God. But men have created artificial impediments or bonds called
laws. The liberty of the subject lies only in such things as the
sovereign has pretermitted, for he hath power to regulate all, even life
and death, at his own will. The liberty praised in Rome and Athens was
the liberty of the commonwealth as against other commonwealths.
The subject has liberty to disobey the sovereign's command if it
contravene the law that the right of self-preservation cannot be
abrogated, unless it be to endanger himself for the preservation of the
commonwealth, as with soldiers. The subjects' obligation of obedience
lasts so long as the sovereign's power of defending them, that being the
purpose of his being made sovereign. By systems I mean numbers of men
joined in one interest. These are political, constituted by law; and
private, permitted or forbidden by law. All, except a commonwealth, are
subordinate to the commonwealth, and have not the character of
sovereignty. The rights of governing bodies are only those expressly
conceded by law, either generally or to them specifically. Systems in
the commonwealth correspond to muscles in the natural body.
The nourishment of the commonwealth is its commodities or products, the
distribution of which must be lit the will of the sovereign, whether of
land or of commodities, exchanged internally or trafficked abroad. The
procreation, or children, of a commonwealth are its "plantations," or
"colonies," which may either be commonwealths themselves, as children
emancipated, or remain parts of the commonwealth.
By civil laws I mean those laws that men are bound to obey as members of
any commonwealth. The sovereign is the sole legislator, and is not
subject to the laws which he can repeal at pleasure. The civil laws are
the laws of nature expressed as commands of the commonwealth, or the
will of the sovereign so expressed; whatever is not the law of nature
must be expressly made known and published. Both the law of nature and
written law require interpretation, which is by sentence of the judge
constituted by sovereign authority.
An intention of breaking the law is a sin; issuing in a breach of the
law it is crime. Violation of the laws of nature is always and
everywhere sin; it is crime only when a violation of the laws of a
commonwealth. Unavoidable ignorance of a law is a complete excuse for
breaking it, but ignorance due to lack of diligence is not unavoidable.
Terror of present death, or the order of the sovereign, are a complete
excuse. And many circumstances may serve as extenuation.
A punishment is an evil inflicted by public authority on him that hath
done or omitted that which is said to be by the same authority a
transgression of the law, to the end that the will of men may thereby be
the better disposed to obedience. Now, this right of punishment is not
transferred by the subjects to the sovereign since they cannot
surrender their right of self-defence against violence. But as all
before had the natural right of hurting others, that right is left by
the covenant to the sovereign alone, strengthened by the resignation
thereof by the rest.
Punishments inflicted by man are "corporal," or "pecuniary," or
"ignominy," or "imprisonment," or "exile," or mixed of these. Corporal
are capital, with or without torment, and less than capital. Pecuniary
includes deprivation not only of money, but also of lands or other
salable goods; but such deprivation, if it is by way of compensation to
the person injured, is not really punishment. Imprisonment, when it is
only for the custody of a person accused, is not punishment. Exile is
not so much a punishment as a command or permission to escape
punishment, except when accompanied by deprivation of goods.
Infirmities of a commonwealth arise--from the first institution, when
the sovereign has not assumed sufficient power; from such doctrines as
that each man privately is the judge of good or evil actions, or sins if
he obey the commonwealth against his "conscience"; that the sovereign is
subject to the civil laws; that private property excludes sovereign
rights; that sovereign power may be divided, which is the worst of all;
and from other causes, as of money grudged for wars, monopolies,
over-potent subjects or corporations, insatiable desire of dominion. But
when a country is conquered, that is the dissolution of the
commonwealth.
Of the sovereign's duties the first is to surrender none of his powers,
and the second to see that they be known, to which end, and the
understanding of it, the people must be rightly instructed. Further,
that he administer justice equally to all people, and impose equal
taxes, and make good laws (I say good, not just, since no law can be
unjust), and choose good counsellors.
Subjects owe simple obedience to the sovereign in all things
whatsoever, except what is contrary to the laws of God. Therefore, it
remains here to speak of the kingdom of God, Whose subjects are they
that believe in Him. God declareth His laws either by natural reason, or
by revelation, or by the voice of prophets. He is necessarily sovereign,
for the one reason that He is omnipotent.
_IV.--Of a Christian Commonwealth and the Kingdom of Darkness_
Of God speaking by the voice of a prophet are two signs: that the
prophet worketh miracles, and that he teacheth no other religion than
that established. These two must go together. And since miracles have
ceased, it is clear that God no longer speaks by prophets. But He hath
revealed Himself in Scripture--that is, in those books which are in the
canon ordained. But whether their authority be derived from the civil
sovereignty or is of a universal church to which all sovereigns are
subordinate is another question. It may be seen, however, from Scripture
that the kingdom of God therein spoken of is a civil kingdom, for the
restoration whereof we pray daily, which is that kingdom of God by
Christ which was interrupted by the revolt of the Israelites and the
election of Saul.
A church is a term used in many senses, but in one only can it be
treated as a person having power to will, command, or do any action
whatever. And according to this sense I define a church to be "a company
of men professing Christian religion, united in the person of one
sovereign, at whose command they ought to assemble, and without whose
authority they ought not to assemble." It follows that a church that is
assembled in any commonwealth that hath forbidden them to assemble is an
unlawful assembly. There are Christians in the dominions of several
princes and states; but every one of them is subject to that
commonwealth of which he is himself a member, and consequently cannot be
subject to the commands of any other person. There is therefore no such
universal church as all are bound to obey.
The original covenant with Abraham gave him the sole right, which is the
inheritance of every sovereign, to punish any subject who should pretend
to a private vision for the countenancing of any doctrine which Abraham
should forbid. This covenant established that kingdom of God which was
interrupted by the secular kingdom of Saul. The coming of Christ was to
restore that kingdom by a new covenant; which kingdom was to be in
another world after the Resurrection. The power ecclesiastical was left
by Him to the apostles, but this is manifestly not a coercive power on
earth, as Christ's own power on earth was not.
Christ, therefore, by His coming did not withdraw any of the power from
civil sovereigns, and if they do commit the government of their subjects
in matter of religion to the Pope, he holdeth that charge not as being
above the civil sovereign, but by his authority. But as for disagreement
between the laws of God and the civil laws of the sovereign, the laws of
God, which must in no wise be disobeyed, are those which are necessary
to salvation; and these are summed up in the will to obey the law of God
and the belief that Jesus is the Christ. But the private man may not set
up to judge whether the ordinance of the sovereign be against the law of
God, or whether the doctrine which he imposeth consist with the belief
that Jesus is the Christ.
But in the Scripture there is mention also of another power, the kingdom
of Satan, "the prince of the powers of the air," which is a "confederacy
of deceivers that, to obtain dominion over men in this present world,
endeavours by dark and erroneous doctrines to extinguish in them the
light both of nature and of the Gospel, and so to disprepare them for
the kingdom of God to come." And such darkness is wrought first by
abusing the light of the Scriptures so that we know them not; secondly
by introducing the demonology of the heathen poets; thirdly, by mixing
with the Scripture divers relics of the religion and much of the vain
and erroneous philosophy of the Greeks, especially of Aristotle; and,
fourthly, by mingling with these false or uncertain traditions and
feigned or uncertain history.
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
The Prince
Niccolo di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was born at Florence, in Italy,
May 3, 1469, and died June 22, 1527. At any early age he took an
active part in Florentine politics, and was employed on numerous
diplomatic missions. A keen student of the politics of his time, he
was also an ardent patriot. The exigencies of party warfare drove
him into temporary retirement, during which he produced a number of
brilliant plays and historical studies; but the most notable of his
achievements is "The Prince." "The Prince" may be regarded as the
first modern work treating of politics as a science. The one
question to which the author devotes himself is: How a prince may
establish and maintain the strongest possible government. Moral
principles, therefore, must yield entirely to the dictates of pure
expediency. It follows that the ruler who acts on the doctrines
laid down will pay no respect to right and wrong as such. Hence the
book has been mercilessly condemned. It was written probably about
1514, and not published till 1532.
_I.--Of Princedoms Won by Merit_
All states and governments are either republics or princedoms.
Princedoms are either hereditary or new. Hereditary states are
maintained with far less difficulty than new states, but in new
princedoms difficulties abound.
And first if the princedom be joined on to ancient dominions of the
prince, so as to form a mixed princedom, rebellion is a danger; for men
are always ready to change masters. When a state rebels and is again got
under it will not afterwards be lost so easily; for the prince will use
the rebellion as a pretext to make himself more secure.
Such new states when they are of the same province and tongue as the
ancient dominions of the prince are easily retained. It is enough to
have rooted out the line of the reigning prince. But where the language
and usages differ the difficulty is multiplied. One expedient is for the
prince himself to dwell in the new state, as the Turk has done in
Greece. Another is to send colonies into one or two places which may
become keys to the province; for the cost of troops is far greater. In
such provinces, moreover, the prince should always make himself the
protector of his weaker neighbours, without adding to their strength;
but should humble the great, and never suffer a formidable stranger to
acquire influence, as was the rule with the Romans. Whereas King Louis
of France has in Italy done the direct opposite in every single respect.
In especial we may draw from the French king's actions the general
axiom, which never or rarely errs, that "he who is the cause of
another's greatness is himself undone."
Now, all princedoms are governed in one or two ways: either by a sole
prince served by ministers, or by a prince with barons who hold their
rank not by favour but by right of descent. The Turk is an example of
the first, the French king of the second. A state of the first kind is
difficult to win, but when won is easily held, since the prince's family
may be easily rooted out; but in such a state as France you may gain an
entry, but to hold your ground afterwards is difficult, since you cannot
root out the barons.
Hence we need not wonder at the ease wherewith Alexander was able to lay
a firm hold on Asia, albeit he died before he had well entered on
possession; since the dominion of Darius was of the same character as
that of the Turk.
When the newly acquired state has hitherto lived under its own laws and
in freedom there are three ways of holding it. The first is to destroy
it; the second to reside in it; the third to leave it under its own
laws, choosing for its governors from the inhabitants such as will be
friendly to you. But the safest course is either to destroy it or to go
and live in it.
Where the prince himself is new, either merit or good fortune is
implied, and if we consider the most excellent examples, such as Moses,
Cyrus, Romulus, and the like, we shall see that they owed to fortune
nothing beyond the opportunity which they seized. Those who, like these,
come to the princedom by virtuous paths acquire with difficulty, but
keep with ease. Their difficulties arise because they are of necessity
innovators. If, then, they have force of their own to employ they seldom
fail. Hence it comes that all armed prophets have been victorious and
all unarmed prophets have been destroyed; as was the case with
Savonarola.
_II.--Of Princedoms Won Otherwise than by Merit_
Those who rise to princedom by mere good fortune have much trouble to
maintain themselves; some lack both the knowledge and the power to do
so. Yet even if such a one be of great parts, he may lose what he has
won, like Cesare Borgia.
It was impossible for the duke to aggrandise himself unless the states
of Italy were thrown into confusion so that he might safely make himself
master of some part of them. This was made easy for him as concerned
Romagna by the conduct of the French and Venetians. The next step was to
weaken the factions of the Orsini and the Colonnesi. Having scattered
the Colonnesi, the Orsini were so won over as to be drawn in their
simplicity into his hands at Sinigaglia. Having thus disposed of the
leaders, he set about ingratiating himself with the population of
Romagna and Urbino. He first set over the country a stern ruler to
restore order. This end being accomplished, that stern but unpopular
ruler was beheaded.
Next, as a new pope might be dangerous, he set himself to exterminate
the kindred of those lords whom he had despoiled of their possessions,
to win over the Roman nobility, and to secure a majority among the
cardinals. But before the duke had completely consolidated his power his
father, Pope Alexander VI., died. Even so, the skill with which he had
laid the foundations of his power must have resulted in success had he
not himself been almost at death's door at that critical moment. The one
mistake he made was in the choice of the new pope, Julius II., and this
error was the cause of his ultimate downfall.
A man may rise, however, to a princedom by paths of wickedness and
crime; that is, not precisely by either merit or fortune. We may take as
example first Agathocles the Sicilian. To slaughter fellow citizens, to
betray friends, to be devoid of honour, pity, and religion cannot be
counted as merit. But the achievements of Agathocles can certainly not
be ascribed to fortune. We cannot, therefore, attribute either to
fortune or to merit what he accomplished without either. For a modern
instance we may consider Oliverotto of Fermo, who seized upon that town
by a piece of monstrous treachery and merciless butchery; yet he
established himself so firmly and so formidably that he could not have
been unseated had he not let himself be over-reached by Cesare Borgia.
Our lesson from these examples is that on seizing a state the usurper
should make haste to inflict what injuries he must at one stroke, and
afterwards win men over by benefits.
Next is the case of those who are made princes by the favour of their
countrymen, which they owe to what may be termed a fortunate astuteness.
If he be established by the favour of the people, to secure them against
the oppression of the nobles his position is stronger than if he owe it
to the nobles; but in either case it is the people whom he must
conciliate, and this I affirm in spite of the old saw, "He who builds
on the people builds on mire."
A prince who cannot get together an army fit to take the field against
any assailant should keep his city strongly fortified, taking no heed of
the country outside, for then he will not be readily attacked, and if he
be it will be difficult to maintain a siege longer than it may be
resisted.
Merit, or good fortune, are needed to acquire ecclesiastical princedoms,
but not to maintain them, for they are upheld by the authority of
religion. It is due to the policy of the Popes Alexander VI. and Julius
II. that the temporal power of the pope has become so great; and from
his holiness Pope Leo we may hope that as his predecessors made the
papacy great with arms he will render it still greater and more
venerable by his benignity and other countless virtues.
_III.--Of Maintaining a Princedom_
A prince must defend his state with either his own subjects or
mercenaries, or auxiliaries. Mercenaries are utterly untrustworthy; if
their captain be not an able man the prince will probably be ruined,
whereas if he be an able man he will be seeking a goal of his own. This
has been perpetually exemplified among the cities and states of Italy
which have sought to maintain themselves by taking foreigners into their
pay.
But he who would deprive himself of every chance of success should have
recourse to auxiliaries; that is, to the troops of a foreign potentate.
For these are far more dangerous than mercenary arms, bringing ruin with
them ready made. The better such troops are the more dangerous they are.
From Hiero of Syracuse to Cesare Borgia, princes have become powerful in
proportion as they could dispense with such aid and place their
dependence upon national troops.
A prince, then, who would be powerful should have no care or thought
but for war, lest he lose his dominions If he be ignorant of military
affairs he can neither be respected by the soldiers nor trust them.
Therefore, he must both practise and study this art. For the practise,
the chase in many respects provides an excellent training both in
knowledge of the country and in vigour of the body. As to study, a
prince should read histories, note the actions of great men, and examine
the causes of their victories and defeats; seeking to imitate those who
have been renowned.
Anyone who would act up to a perfect standard of goodness in everything
must be ruined among so many who are not good. It is essential therefore
for a prince to have learnt how to be other than good, and to use, or
not to use, his goodness as necessity requires.
It may be a good thing to be reputed liberal, but liberality without the
reputation of it is hurtful. Display necessitates the imposition of
taxes, whereby the prince becomes hateful; whereas through parsimony his
revenue will be sufficient. Hence we have seen no princes accomplish
great results save those who have been accounted miserly.
Every prince should desire to be accounted merciful, not cruel; but a
new prince cannot escape a name for cruelty, for he who quells disorder
by a few signal examples will, in the end, be the more merciful.
Men are less careful how they offend him who makes himself loved than
him who makes himself feared; yet should a prince inspire fear in such a
fashion that, if he do not win love, he may escape hate; remembering
that men will sooner forget the slaying of their father than the loss of
their patrimony.
Princes who set little store by their word, but have known how to
overreach men by their cunning, have accomplished great things, and in
the end got the better of those who trusted to honest dealing. The
prince must be a lion, but he must also know how to play the fox. He
who wishes to deceive will never fail to find willing dupes. The prince,
in short, ought not to quit good courses if he can help it, but should
know how to follow evil courses if he must.
A prince must avoid being despised as well as being hated; therefore
courage, wisdom, and strength must be apparent in all his actions.
Against such a one conspiracy is difficult. That prince is wise who
devolves on others those matters that entail responsibility, and may
therefore make him odious either to the nobles or to the commons, but
reserves to himself the matters that relate to grace and favour.
What I have said is not contradicted by the history of the Roman
emperors; for they had to choose between satisfying the soldiers and
satisfying the people. It was imperative that at any cost they should
maintain control of the soldiery, which scarce any of them could do
without injustice to the people. If we examine their histories in detail
we shall find that they fully bear out the principles I have laid down.
But in our time the standing armies of princes have not the same power
as the armies of the Roman empire, and except under the Turk and the
Soldan it is more needful to satisfy the people than the soldiery.
_IV.--Of Artifices_
A new prince will never disarm his subjects, but will rather arm them,
at least in part. For thus they become his partisans, whereas without
them he must depend on mercenaries.
But a prince who adds a new state to his old possessions should disarm
its inhabitants, relying on the soldiers of his own ancient dominions.
Some have fostered feuds among their new subjects in order to keep them
weak, but such a policy rarely proves useful in the end. The prince who
acquires a new state will gain more strength by winning over and
trusting those who were at first opposed to him than by relying on those
who were at first his friends. The prince who is more afraid of his
subjects than of strangers ought to build fortresses, while he who is
more afraid of strangers than of his subjects should leave them alone.
On the whole, the best fortress you can have is in not being hated by
your subjects.
Nothing makes a prince so well thought of as to undertake great
enterprises and give striking proofs of his capacity. Ferdinand of
Aragon, in our own time, has become the foremost king in Christendom. If
you consider his achievements, you will find them all great and some
extraordinary. First he made war on Grenada, and this was the foundation
of his power. Under the cloak of religion, with what may be called pious
cruelty, he cleared his kingdom of the Moors; under the same pretext he
made war on Africa, invaded Italy, and finally attacked France; while
his subjects, occupied with these great actions, had neither time nor
opportunity to oppose them.
The prince whose ministers are at once capable and faithful may always
be accounted wise, since he must be one who can discern the merits and
demerits of his servant. For which discernment this unfailing rule may
be laid down: When you see a minister thinking more of himself than of
you, and in all his actions seeking his own ends, that man can never be
a minister you can trust. To retain a good minister the prince will bind
him to himself by benefits. Above all, he will avoid being deceived by
flatterers, and while he consults his counsellors should reflect and
judge for himself. A prince who is not wise himself cannot be well
advised by others.
The Italian princes who in our own times have lost their dominions have
either been deficient in respect of arms, or have had the people against
them, or have not known how to secure themselves against the nobles. As
to the influence of fortune, it may be the case that she is the mistress
of one half of our actions, but leaves the control of the other half to
ourselves. That prince will prosper most whose mode of acting best
adapts itself to the character of the times; so that at one time a
cautious temperament, and at another an impetuous temperament, will be
the more successful.
Now, at this time the whole land of Italy is without a head, without
order, beaten, spoiled, torn in pieces, overrun, and abandoned to
destruction in every shape. She prays God to send someone to rescue her
from these barbarous cruelties; she is eager to follow anyone who could
undertake the part of a deliverer; nor does this seem too hard a task
for you, the Magnificent Lorenzo of the illustrious house of Medici. The
cause is just; we have before us unexampled proofs of Divine favour.
Everything has concurred to promote your greatness. What remains to be
done must be done by you, for God will not do everything Himself.
T.R. MALTHUS
On the Principle of Population
Thomas Robert Malthus was born near Dorking, Surrey, England, Feb.
17, 1766, and after passing through the University of Cambridge was
ordained, and travelled on the Continent. His great work, "An Essay
on the Principle of Population as it Affects the Future Improvement
of Society," was first published Anonymously in 1798, and five
years later it appeared, under the title of "An Essay on the
Principle of Population, or a View of its Past and Present Effect
on Human Happiness, with an Enquiry into our Prospects Respecting
the Future Removal or Mitigation of the Evils which it Occasions,"
under the author's name. Malthus is one of the most persistently
misrepresented of great thinkers, his central doctrine being
nothing less moral than that young men should postpone marriage
until they have the means of supporting a family. It is of the
first interest in the history of thought that the reading of this
great essay of Malthus should have independently suggested, first
to Charles Darwin, and later to Alfred Russel Wallace, the idea of
natural selection as a necessary consequence of that struggle for
life so splendidly demonstrated by Malthus in the case of mankind.
It is to be wondered that Malthus, having provided himself with the
key to the great problem of organic evolution, should have left its
use to others. One explanation is, doubtless, that his survey was
not comparative, covering the whole range of life, but was
practically confined to one living form. Malthus died on December
23, 1834.
_I.--General Survey of the Checks to Population_
Since population is capable of doubling itself at least once in every
twenty-five years, and since the supply of food can increase in only
arithmetical ratio, it follows that increase of population must always
be checked by lack of food. But, except in cases of famine, this check
is never operative, and the chief checks to increase of population are
moral restraint, vice, and misery.
In spite of these checks, which are always more or less in operation,
there is a constant tendency for the population to increase beyond the
means of subsistence. Such increase is followed by lowered wages, dearer
food, and thus a lowered marriage-rate and birth-rate; and the lowered
wages, in turn, induce more agricultural enterprise, and thus means of
subsistence become more abundant again.
More abundant and cheaper food, in turn, promotes marriage, and
increases the population, until again there is a shortage of food; and
this oscillation, though irregular, will always be found, and there will
always be a tendency for the population to oscillate around the food
limit.
Even among savages, where the degradation of women, infanticide, vice,
famine, war, and disease are active instruments of decimation, it will
be found that the average population, generally speaking, presses hard
against the limits of the average food.
Among modern pastoral nations the principal checks which keep the
population down to the level of the means of subsistence are: restraint
from inability to obtain a wife, vicious habits with respect to women,
epidemics, war, famine, and the diseases arising from extreme poverty.
In modern Europe we find similar preventive and positive checks, in
varying proportions, to undue increase of population. In England and
Scotland the preventive check to population prevails in a considerable
degree.
A man of liberal education, with an income only just sufficient to
enable him to associate in the rank of gentlemen, must feel absolutely
certain that if he marry and have a family he shall be obliged to give
up all his former connections. The woman whom a man of education would
naturally choose is one brought up in similar refined surroundings. Can
a man easily consent to place the object of his affections on a lower
social plane?
Such considerations certainly prevent many of the better classes from
early marriage; and those who marry in the face of such considerations
too frequently justify the forebodings of the prudent.
The sons of tradesmen and farmers are exhorted not to marry till they
have a sufficient sure income to support a family, and often accordingly
postpone marriage till they are far advanced in life. The labourer who
earns eighteenpence or two shillings a day, as a single man, will
hesitate to divide that pittance among four or five, seeing the risks
such poverty involves. The servants who live in the families of the rich
have yet stronger inducements to forego matrimony. They live in
comparative comfort and luxury, which as married men they could not
enjoy.
The prolific power of nature is very far from being called fully into
action in Great Britain. And yet, when we contemplate the insufficiency
of the price of labour to maintain a large family, and the amount of
mortality which arises directly and indirectly from poverty, and add to
this the crowds of children prematurely cut off in large towns, we shall
be compelled to acknowledge that, if the number born annually were not
greatly thinned by this premature mortality, the funds for the
maintenance of labour must increase with much greater rapidity than they
have ever hitherto done in order to find work and food for the
additional numbers that would then grow up to manhood.
Those, therefore, who live single, or marry late, do not by such conduct
contribute in any degree to diminish the actual population, but merely
to diminish the proportion of premature mortality, which would otherwise
be excessive; and consequently, from this point of view, do not seem to
deserve any very severe reprobation or punishment.
It has been usual to consider a great proportion of births as the surest
sign of a vigorous and flourishing state. But this is erroneous. Only
after great mortality, or under very especial social conditions, is a
large proportion of births a favourable symptom. In the average state of
a well-peopled territory there cannot be a worse sign than a large
proportion of births, nor a better sign than a small proportion. A small
proportion of births is a decided proof of a very small mortality, since
the supply always equals the demand for population. In despotic,
miserable, or naturally unhealthy countries, the proportion of births to
the whole population will generally be found very great.
In Scotland emigration is a potent cause of depopulation, but any
thinning out from this cause is quickly neutralised by an increased
proportion of births.
In Ireland the details of population fluctuations are little known; but
the cheapness of potatoes, and the ignorance and depressed, indifferent
state of the people, have encouraged marriage to such a degree that the
population is pushed much beyond the resources of the country, and the
consequence, naturally, is that the lower classes of the people are in
the most impoverished and miserable state. The checks to the population
are, of course, chiefly of the positive kind, and arise from the
diseases caused by squalid poverty. To these positive checks have of
late years been added the vice and misery of civil war, and of martial
law.
_II.--Population and the Subsistence Level_
That the checks which have been mentioned are the immediate causes of
the slow increase of population, and that these checks result
principally from an insufficiency of subsistence will be evident from
the comparative rapid increase which has invariably taken place
whenever, by some sudden enlargement in the means of subsistence, these
checks have been in any considerable degree removed. Plenty of rich land
to be had for little or nothing is so powerful a cause of population as
generally to overcome all obstacles. The abundance of cheap and
profitable land obtained by the colonists in English North America
resulted in a rapid increase of population almost without parallel in
history. Such an increase does not occur in Britain, and the reason to
be assigned is want of food. Want of food is certainly the most
efficient of the three immediate checks to population. Population soon
increases after war and disease and convulsions of nature, because the
food supply is more than adequate for the diminished numbers; but where
food is deficient no increase of population can occur.
Since the world began the causes of population and depopulation have
been probably as constant as any of the laws of nature with which we are
acquainted.
The passion between the sexes has appeared in every age to be so nearly
the same that it may always be considered in algebraic language as a
given quantity. The great law of necessity, which prevents population
from increasing in any country beyond the food which it can either
produce or acquire, is a law so obvious and evident to our
understandings that we cannot doubt it. The different modes which nature
takes to repress a redundant population do not, indeed, appear to us so
certain and regular; but though we cannot always predict the mode, we
may with certainty predict the fact. If the proportion of the births to
the deaths for a few years indicates an increase of numbers much beyond
the proportional increased or acquired food of the country, we may be
perfectly certain that, unless an emigration takes place, the deaths
will shortly exceed the births, and that the increase which has been
observed for a few years cannot be the real average increase of the
population of the country. If there were no other depopulating causes,
and if the preventive check did not operate very strongly, every country
would, without doubt, be subject to periodical plagues and famines.
The only true criterion of a real and permanent increase in the
population of any country is the increase of the means of subsistence,
and even this criterion is subject to some slight variations.
Other circumstances being the same, it may be affirmed that countries
are populous according to the quantity of human food which they produce
or can acquire; and happy according to the liberality with which this
food is divided, or the quantity which a day's labour will purchase.
This happiness does not depend either upon their being thinly or fully
inhabited, upon their poverty or their riches, their youth or age, but
on the proportion which the population and the food bear to each other.
In modern Europe the positive checks to population prevail less, and the
preventive checks more, than in past times, and in the more uncivilised
parts of the world, since wars, plagues, acute diseases, and famines
have become less frequent.
With regard to the preventive checks to population, though it must be
acknowledged that the preventive check of moral restraint does not, at
present, largely prevail, yet it is becoming more prevalent, and if we
consider only the general term, which implies principally a delay of
marriage from prudential considerations, it may be considered as the
most potent of the checks which in modern Europe keep down the
population to the level of the means of subsistence.
_III.--Remedies other than Moral Restraint for Evils of Over-population_
All systems of equality which have been proposed are bound to fail,
because the motive to the preventive check of moral restraint is
destroyed by equality and community of goods. As all would be equal and
in similar circumstances, there would be no reason why one person should
think himself obliged to practise the duty of restraint more than
another. And how could a man be compelled to such restraint? The
operation of this natural check of moral restraint depends exclusively
upon the existence of the laws of property and succession; and in a
state of equality and community of property could only be replaced by
some artificial regulation of a very different stamp, and a much more
unnatural character.
No scheme of equality, then, can overcome the population difficulty;
emigration is only a palliative, and poor-law relief only a nostrum
which eventually aggravates the evils of over-population.
The poor laws of England tend to depress the general condition of the
poor in two ways. Their first obnoxious tendency is to increase
population without increasing the food for its support. A poor man may
marry with little or no prospect of being able to support a family
without parish assistance. The poor laws may be said, therefore, to
create the poor which they maintain, and as the provisions must be
distributed to the greater numbers in smaller proportions, the labours
of those who are not supported by parish assistance will purchase a
smaller quantity of provisions than before, and consequently more of
them will require assistance. Secondly, the quantity of provisions
consumed in workhouses by the least worthy members of the community
diminishes the food of the more worthy members, who are thus driven to
obtain relief.
Fortunately for England a spirit of independence still remains among the
peasantry. The poor laws, though calculated to eradicate this spirit,
have only partially succeeded. Hard as it may appear in individual
instances, dependent poverty ought to be deemed disgraceful. Such a
stigma seems necessary to promote the general happiness of mankind. If
men be induced to marry from the mere prospect of parish provision, they
are not only unjustly tempted to bring unhappiness and dependence upon
themselves and their children, but they are tempted unwittingly to
injure all in the same class as themselves. Further, the poor laws
discourage frugality, and diminish the power and the will of the common
people to save, and they live from hand to mouth without thought of the
future. A man who might not be deterred from going to the ale-house by
the knowledge that his death and sickness must throw his wife and family
upon the parish, might fear to waste his earnings if the only provisions
for his family were casual charity.
The mass of unhappiness among common people must be diminished when one
of the strongest checks to idleness and dissipation is thus removed; and
when institutions which render dependent poverty so lessen the disgrace
which should be attached to it. I feel persuaded that if the poor-laws
had never existed in this country, though there might have been a few
more instances of very severe distress, the aggregate mass of happiness
among the common people would have been much greater than it is at
present.
In view of all these facts I do not propose a law to prevent the poor
from marrying, but I propose a very gradual abolition of the poor laws.
By means of an extending commerce a country may be able to purchase an
increasing quantity of food, and to support an increasing population;
but extension of commerce cannot continue indefinitely; it must be
checked by competition and other economic interference; and as soon as
funds for the maintenance of labour become stationary, or begin to
decline, there will be no means of obtaining food for an increasing
population.
It is the union of the agricultural and commercial systems, and not
either of them taken separately, that is calculated to produce the
greatest national prosperity. A country with an extensive and rich
territory, the cultivation of which is stimulated by improvements in
agriculture, manufactures, and foreign commerce, has such various and
abundant resources that it is extremely difficult to say when they will
reach their limits. There are, however, limits to the capital population
of a country--limits which they must ultimately reach and cannot pass.
To secure a more abundant, and, at the same time, a steadier supply of
grain, a system of corn laws has been recommended, the object of which
is to discourage, by duties or prohibitions, the importation of foreign
corn, and to encourage by bounties the exportation of corn of home
growth.
Laws which prohibit the importation of foreign grain, though by no means
unobjectionable, are not open to the same objections as bounties, and
must be allowed to be adequate to the object they have in view, the
maintenance of an independent supply. Moreover, it is obviously
possible, by restrictions upon the importation of foreign corn, to
maintain a balance between the agricultural and commercial classes. The
question is not a question of the efficiency or inefficiency of the
measure proposed, but of its policy or impolicy. In certain cases there
can be no doubt of the impolicy of attempting to maintain an unnatural
balance between the agricultural and commercial classes; but in other
cases the impolicy is by no means so clear. Restrictions upon the
importation of foreign corn in a country which has great landed
resources tend not only to spread every commercial and manufacturing
advantage possessed, whether permanent or temporary, on the soil, but
tend also to prevent these great oscillations in the progress of
agriculture and commerce which are seldom unattended with evil.
_IV.--Moral Restraint and Discriminate Charity_
As it appears that in the actual state of every society which has come
within our view the natural progress of population has been constantly
and powerfully checked, and as it seems evident that no improved form of
government, no plans of emigration, no direction of natural industry
can prevent the continued action of a great check to population in some
form or other, it follows that we must submit to it as an inevitable law
of nature, and the only inquiry that remains is how it may take place
with the least possible prejudice to the virtue and happiness of human
society.
All the immediate checks to population which have been observed to
prevail in the same and different countries seem to be resolvable into
moral restraint, vice, and misery; and if our choice be confined to
those three, we cannot long hesitate in our decision. It seems certain
that moral restraint is the only virtuous and satisfactory mode of
escape from the evils of over-population. Without such moral restraint,
and if it were the custom to marry at the age of puberty, no virtue,
however great, could rescue society from a most wretched and desperate
state of want, with its concomitant diseases and famines.
Prudential restraint, if it were generally adopted, would soon raise the
price of labour by narrowing its supply, and those practising it would
save money and acquire habits of sobriety, industry, and economy such as
should ensure happy married life. Further, postponement of marriage
would give both sexes a better opportunity to choose life-partners
wisely and well; and the passion, instead of being extinguished by early
sensuality, would burn the more brightly because repressed for a time,
and attained as the prize of industry and virtue, and as the reward of a
genuine attachment.
Moral restraint in this matter is a Christian duty. There are, perhaps,
few actions that tend so directly to diminish the general happiness as
to marry without the means of supporting children. He who commits this
act clearly offends against the will of God, for he violates his duty to
his neighbours and to himself, and listens to the voice of passion
rather than fulfils his higher obligations. The duty is intelligible to
the meanest capacity.
It is simply that he must not bring beings into the world whom he cannot
support. When once this subject is cleared from the obscurity thrown
over it by parochial laws and private benevolence, every man must see
his obligation. If he cannot support his children they must starve; and
if he marry in the face of a fair probability that he shall not be able
to support his children, he is guilty of all the evils which he thus
brings upon himself, his wife, and his offspring.
When the wages of labour are barely sufficient to support two children,
a man marries and has five or six, and finds himself in distress. He
blames the low price of labour. He blames the parish and the rich and
social institutions; but he never blames himself. He may wish he had
never married; but it never enters into his head that he has done
anything wrong. Indeed, he has always been told that to raise up
children for his king and country is a very meritorious act.
The common people must be taught that they themselves in such a case are
to blame, and that no one has power to help them if they act thus
contrary to the will of God. Those who wish to help the poor must try to
raise the relative proportion between the price of labour and the price
of provisions, instead of encouraging the poor to marry and overstock
the labour market. A market overstocked with labour and an ample
remuneration to each labourer are objects perfectly incompatible with
each other.
It is not enough, however, to abolish all the positive institutions
which encourage population, but we must endeavour at the same time to
correct the prevailing opinions which have the same effect. The public
must be made to understand that they have no _right_ to assistance, and
that it is the duty of man not only to propagate his species but to
propagate virtue and happiness.
Our private charity must also be discriminate. If we insist that a man
shall eat even if he do not work, and that his family shall be supported
even if he marry without prospect of supporting a family, we merely
encourage worthless poverty. We must not put a premium on idleness and
reckless marriages, and we must on no account do anything which tends to
remove in any regular manner that inequality of circumstances which
ought always to exist between the single man and the man with a family.
KARL MARX
Capital: A Critical Analysis
Heinrich Karl Marx was born at Trèves, in Rhenish Prussia, May 5,
1818, and died in London, March 14, 1883. One of the most advanced
leaders of the modern socialist movement in Germany, he was a
brilliant university graduate both at Berlin and Bonn. Going at
once into journalism, Marx from the outset of his career was known
as a pronounced socialist. He became celebrated as collaborator
with Heine in conducting the journal which has since become the
most influential organ in the world of socialism, "Vorwärts." He
was expelled successively from Germany, France, and Belgium, but
found a refuge in England, where he lived from 1849 till the close
of his life. The keynote of Marxist economy is the advocacy of the
claims of labour against those of capitalism. Marx was a skilled
linguist, and his philological talent enabled him to propagate his
views with special facility, so that he was the real founder of
international socialism. His famous social work, "Capital: A
Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production" ("Das Kapital"), which
was originally entitled "A Criticism of Political Economy,"
appeared in 1867, and has influenced the labour movement more than
any other composition in literature. A keen historical survey of
capital and also a vivid forecast, Marx's analysis of the economic
development of modern society has been justified in many respects
by subsequent events.
_I.--The Genesis of Capitalist Production_
Money and commodities are not capital, any more than are the means of
production and of subsistence. They need to be transformed into capital.
This transformation can only take place under conditions that separate
labourers from all property, and from the means by which they can
realise the profits of their labour; that is to say, from the possession
of their means of production. The process of this separation clears the
way for the capitalist system.
The economic structure of capitalistic society has developed from the
economic structure of feudal society. The dissolution of the latter set
free the elements of the former. The immediate producer, the labourer,
could only dispose of his own person after he had ceased to be attached
as a serf to the soil. Then, to be able to sell his labour wherever he
could find a market, he must further have escaped from the mediæval
guilds and their rules and regulations, as from so many fetters on
labour. But these new freedmen, on the other hand, only thus made
merchandise of their labour after they had been deprived of their own
means of production, and of all the guarantees of existence furnished
under the old feudalism. And the history of this, their expropriation,
is written in history in characters of blood and fire.
The industrial capitalists, the new potentates, had to displace not only
the guild-masters of handicrafts, but also the feudal lords, who were in
possession of the sources of wealth. But though the conquerors thus
triumphed, they have risen by means as opprobrious as those by which,
long before, the Roman freedman overcame his _patronus_. The servitude
of the labourer was the starting point of the development which involved
the rise of the labourer and the genesis of the capitalist. The form of
this servitude was changed by the transformation of feudal exploitation
into capitalist exploitation.
The inauguration of the capitalist era dates from the sixteenth century.
The process consisted in the tearing of masses of men from their means
of subsistence, to be hurled as free proletarians on the labour market.
The basis of the whole process is the expropriation of the peasant from
the soil. The history of this expropriation, differing in various
countries, has the classic form only in England.
The prelude of the revolution which founded the capitalist mode of
production was played at the beginning of the sixteenth century by the
breaking up of the bands of feudal retainers, who, as Sir James Steuart
well says, "everywhere uselessly filled house and castle." The old
nobility had been devoured by the great feudal wars; the new was a child
of its time, for which money was the power of all powers. Transformation
of arable land into sheepwalks was therefore its cry, and an
expropriation of small peasants was initiated which threatened the ruin
of the country. Thornton declares that the English working-class was
precipitated without any transition from its golden into its iron age.
To the evictions a direct impulse had been given by the rapid increase
of the Flemish wool manufacturers and the corresponding rise in the
price of wool in England. At length such a deterioration ensued in the
condition of the common people that Queen Elizabeth, on a journey
through the land, exclaimed, "_Pauper ubique jacet_," and in the
forty-third year of her reign the nation was constrained to acknowledge
the terrible pauperism that had arisen by the introduction of the
poor-rate.
Even in the last decade of the seventeenth century, the yeomanry, or
independent peasants, outnumbered the farmers, and they formed the main
strength of Cromwell's army. About 1750 the yeomen had vanished, and not
long afterwards was lost the common land of the agricultural labourer.
Communal property was an old institution which had lived on under the
ægis of feudalism. Under the "glorious revolution" which brought William
of Orange to England, the landlord and capitalist appropriators of
surplus value inaugurated the new era by thefts of land on a colossal
scale. Thus was formed the foundation of the princely domains of the
English oligarchy. In the eighteenth century the law itself became the
instrument of the theft of the people's land, and the transformation of
communal land into private property had for its sequel the parliamentary
form of robbery in shape of the Acts for the Enclosure of Commons.
Immense numbers of the agricultural population were by this
transformation "set free" as proletarians for the manufacturing
industry.
After the foregoing consideration of the forcible creation of a class of
outlawed proletarians, converted into wage-labourers, the question
remains,--Whence came the capitalists originally? The capitalist farmer
developed very gradually, first as a bailiff, somewhat corresponding to
the old Roman _villicus_; then as a _métaver_, or semi-farmer, dividing
stock and product with the landowner; next as the farmer proper, making
his own capital increase by employing wage-labourers, and paying part of
the profit to the landlord as rent. The agricultural revolution of the
sixteenth century enriched the farmer in proportion as it impoverished
the mass of the agricultural people. The continuous rise in the price of
commodities swelled the money capital of the farmer automatically, and
he grew rich at the expense both of landlord and labourer. It is thus
not surprising that at the close of the sixteenth century England had a
class of capitalist farmers who were wealthy, considering the conditions
of the age.
_II.--The Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist_
By degrees the agricultural population was transformed into material
elements of variable capital. For the peasants were constrained, now
that they had been expropriated and cast adrift, to purchase their value
in the form of wages from their new masters, the industrial capitalists.
So they were transformed into an element of constant capital.
Consider the case of Westphalian peasants who, in the time of Frederic
II., were all spinners of flax, and were forcibly expropriated from the
soil they had owned under feudal tenure. Some, however, remained and
were converted into day-labourers for large farmers. At the same time
arose large flax-spinning and weaving factories in which would work men
who had been "set free" from the soil. The flax looks just the same as
before, but a new social soul has entered its body, for it now forms a
part of the constant capital of the master manufacturer.
The flax which was formerly produced by a number of families, who also
spun it in retail fashion after growing it, is now concentrated in the
establishment of a single capitalist, who employs others to spin and
weave it for him. So the extra labour which formerly realised extra
income to many peasant families now brings profit to a few capitalists.
The spindles and the looms formerly scattered over the country are now
crowded into great labour barracks. The machines and raw material are
now transformed from means of independent livelihood for the peasant
spinners and weavers into means for mastering them and extracting out of
them badly-paid labour.
The genesis of the industrial capitalist did not proceed in such a
gradual way as that of the farmer, for it was accelerated by the
commercial demands of the new world-market created by the great
discoveries of the end of the fifteenth century. The Middle Ages had
handed down two distinct forms of capital--the usurer's capital and the
merchant's capital. For a time the money capital formed by means of
usury and commerce was prevented from conversion into industrial
capital, in the country by feudalism, in the towns by the guilds. These
hindrances vanished with the disappearance of feudal society and the
expropriation and partial eviction of the rural population. The new
manufactures were established at seaports, or at inland points beyond
the control of the old municipalities and their guilds. Hence, in
England arose an embittered struggle of the corporate towns against
these new industrial nurseries.
The power of the state, concentrating and organising the force of
society, hastened the transition, shortening the process of
transformation of the feudal mode of production into the capitalist
mode.
The next development of the capitalist era was the rise of the stock
exchange and the great banks. The latter were at first merely
associations of private speculators, who, in exchange for privileges
bestowed on them, advanced money to help the governments. The Bank of
England, founded in 1684, began by lending money to the government at
eight per cent. At the same time it was empowered by parliament to coin
money out of the same capital, by lending it again to the public in the
form of bank-notes.
By degrees the Bank of England became the eternal creditor of the
nation, and so arose the national debt, together with an international
credit system, which has often concealed one or other of the sources of
primitive accumulation of this or that people. One of the main lines of
international business is the lending out of enormous amounts of capital
by one country to another. Much capital which to-day appears in America
without any certificate of birth, was yesterday in England, the
capitalised blood of her children.
Terrible cruelty characterised much of the development of industrial
capitalism, both on the Continent and in England. The birth of modern
industry is heralded by a great slaughter of the innocents. Like the
royal navy, the factories were recruited by the press-gang. Cottages and
workhouses were ransacked for poor children to recruit the factory
staffs, and these were forced to work by turns during the greater part
of the night. As Lancashire was thinly populated and great numbers of
hands were suddenly wanted, thousands of little hapless creatures, whose
nimble little fingers were especially wanted, were sent down to the
north from the workhouses of London, Birmingham, and other towns. These
apprentices were flogged, tortured, and fettered. The profits of
manufacturers were enormous. At length Sir Robert Peel brought in his
bill for the protection of children.
With the growth of capitalist production during the manufacturing period
the public conscience of Europe had lost the last remnant of shame, and
the nations cynically boasted of every infamy that reinforced
capitalistic accumulation. Liverpool waxed fat on the slave trade. The
child-slavery in the European manufactories needed for its pedestal the
slavery, pure and simple, of the negroes imported into America. If
money, according to Marie Augier, "comes into the world with a
congenital bloodstain on one cheek," capital comes dripping from head to
foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.
_III.--Commodities, Exchange and Capital_
A commodity is an object, external to ourselves, which by its properties
in some way satisfies human wants. The utility of a thing constitutes
its use-value. Use-values of commodities form the substance of all
wealth, and also become the material repositories of exchange-value. The
magnitude of the value of any article is determined by the labour-time
socially necessary for its production. So the value of a commodity would
remain constant if the labour-time required for its production also
remained constant. But the latter varies with every variation in the
productiveness of labour.
An article may have use-value, and yet be without value, if its utility
is not due to labour, as in the case of air, or virgin soil, or natural
meadows. If a thing be useless, so is the labour contained in it, for,
as the labour does not count as such, it therefore creates no value. A
coat is worth twice as much as ten yards of linen, because the linen
contains only half as much labour as the coat. All labour is the
expenditure of human labour-power in a special form and with a definite
aim, and in this, its character of concrete useful labour, it produces
use-values.
Everyone knows, if he knows nothing else, that commodities have a value
form common to them all, and presenting a marked contrast with the
varied bodily forms of their use-values. I mean their money form.
Every owner of a commodity wishes to part with it in exchange for other
commodities, but only those whose use-value satisfies some want of his.
To the owner of a commodity, every other commodity is, in regard to his
own, a particular equivalent. Consequently his own commodity is the
universal equivalent for all others. But, since this applies to every
owner, there is, in fact, no commodity acting as a universal equivalent.
It was soon seen that a particular commodity would not become the
universal equivalent except by a social act. The social action,
therefore, has set apart the particular commodity in which all values
are represented, and the bodily form of this commodity has become the
form of the socially recognised universal equivalent--money.
The first chief function of money is to supply commodities with the
material for the expression of their values. It thus serves as a
universal measure of value, and only by virtue of this function does
gold, the commodity _par excellence_, become money. But money itself has
no price. As the measure of value and the standard of price, money has
two distinct functions to perform. It is the measure of value inasmuch
as it is the socially recognised incarnation, of human labour; it is the
standard of price inasmuch as it is a fixed weight of metal. As the
measure of value it serves to convert the values of all the various
commodities into prices or imaginary quantities of gold. As the standard
of price it measures those quantities of gold.
The word pound was the money-name given to an actual pound weight of
silver. When, as a measure of value, gold superseded silver, the word
pound became, as a money-name, differentiated from the same word as a
weight-name. The prices, or quantities of gold, into which the values of
commodities are ideally changed are now expressed in the names of coins,
or in the legally valid names of the subdivisions of the gold standard.
Hence, instead of saying, "A quarter of wheat is worth an ounce of
gold," the English would say, "It is worth £3 17s. 10-1/2d." In this
fashion commodities express by their prices how much they are worth, and
money serves as _money of account_ whenever it is a question of fixing
the value of an article in its money-form. When Anarcharsis was asked
for what purpose the Greeks used money, he replied, "For reckoning."
Every labourer in adding new labour also adds new value. In what way?
Evidently, only by labouring productively in a particular way: the
spinner by his spinning, the weaver by his weaving, the smith by his
forging. Each use-value disappears, only to reappear under a new form in
some new use-value. By virtue of its general character, as being
expenditure of human labour-power in the abstract, spinning adds a new
value to the values of cotton and spindle. On the other hand, by virtue
of its special character, as being a concrete, useful process, the same
labour of spinning both transfers the values of the means of production
to the product and preserves them in the product. Hence at one and the
same time there is produced a twofold result.
By the simple addition of a certain quantity of labour, new value is
added, and by the quality of this added labour the original values of
the means of production are preserved in the product. That part of
capital which is represented by means of production, by the raw
material, auxiliary material, and the instruments of labour, does not,
in the process of production, undergo any quantitative alteration of
value. I therefore call it the constant part of capital, or, more
briefly, _constant capital_.
On the other hand, that part of capital represented by labour-power
does, in the process of production, undergo an alteration of value. It
both reproduces the equivalent of its own value, and also produces an
excess, a surplus value, which may itself vary. This part of capital is
continually being transformed from a constant into a variable magnitude.
I therefore call it the variable part of capital, or, shortly, _variable
capital_.
_IV.--Accumulation of Capital_
The first condition of the accumulation of capital is that the
capitalist must have contrived to sell his commodities, and to
re-convert the greater portion of the money thus received into capital.
Whatever be the proportion of surplus-value which the industrial
capitalist retains for himself or yields up to others, he is the one
who, in the first instance, appropriates it.
The process of production incessantly converts material wealth into
capital, into means of creating more wealth and means of enjoyment for
the capitalist. On the other hand, the labourer, on quitting the
process, is nothing more than he was when he began it. He is a source of
wealth, but has not the slightest means of making wealth his own. The
product of the labourer is incessantly converted not only into
commodities, but into capital, into means of subsistence that buy the
labourer, and into means of production that command the producers.
The capitalist as constantly produces labour-power; in short, he
produces the labourer, but as a wage-labourer. This incessant
reproduction, this perpetuation of the labourer, is the _sine qua non_
of capitalist production.
From a social point of view, the working-class is just as much an
appendage of capital as the ordinary instruments of labour. The
appearance of independence is kept up by means of a constant change of
employers, and by the legal fiction of a contract. In former times
capital legislatively enforced its proprietary rights over the free
labourer.
Capitalist production reproduces and perpetuates the condition for
exploiting the labourer. The economical bondage of the labourer is both
caused and hidden by the periodic sale of himself to changing masters.
Capitalist production, under its aspect of a continuous connected
process, produces not only commodities, not only surplus value, but it
also produces and reproduces the capitalist relation; on the one side
the capitalist, on the other the wage-labourer.
Capital pre-supposes wage-labour, and wage-labour pre-supposes capital.
One is a necessary condition to the existence of the other. The two
mutually call each other into existence. Does an operative in a
cotton-factory produce nothing but cotton goods? No, he produces
capital. He produces values that give fresh command over his labour, and
that, by means of such command, create fresh values.
Every individual capital is a larger or smaller concentration of means
of production, with a corresponding command over a larger or smaller
labour-army. Every accumulation becomes the means of new accumulation.
The growth of social capital is affected by the growth of many
individual capitals.
With the accumulation of capital, therefore, the number of capitalists
grows to a greater or less extent. Two points characterise this kind of
concentration which grows directly out of, or rather is identical with,
accumulation. First, the increasing concentration of the social means of
production in the hands of individual capitalists is, other things
remaining equal, limited by the degree of increase of social wealth.
Secondly, the part of social capital domiciled in each particular sphere
of production is divided among many capitalists who face one another as
independent commodity-producers competing with each other.
Accumulation and the concentration accompanying it are, therefore, not
only scattered, but the increase of each functioning capital is thwarted
by the formation of new and the subdivision of old capitals.
Accumulation, therefore, presents itself on the one hand as increasing
concentration of the means of production and of the command over labour;
on the other, as repulsion of many individual capitalists one from
another.
JOHN STUART MILL
Principles of Political Economy
John Stuart Mill, the eldest son of the philosopher, James Mill,
was born in London on May 20, 1806. His early education was
remarkable. At the age of fourteen he had an extensive knowledge of
Greek, Latin, and mathematics, and had begun to study logic and
political economy. In 1823 he received an appointment at the India
Office, and in the same year he became a member of a small
Utilitarian society which met at Jeremy Bentham's house, and soon
became the leader of the Utilitarian school. Mill's great work on
the "Principles of Political Economy," with some of their
"Applications to Social Philosophy," embodies the results of many
years of study, disputation and thought. It is built upon
foundations laid by Ricardo and Malthus, and has itself formed the
basis of all subsequent work in England. Throughout, it manifests a
belief in the possibility of great social improvement to be
achieved upon individualistic lines. It was begun late in 1845, and
superseded a contemplated work to be called "Ethnology." Mill's
extensive familiarity with the problems of political economy
enabled him to compose the work with rapidity unusual in his
production. Thus, before the end of 1847, the last sheet of the
manuscript was in the hands of the printer, and early in the
following year the treatise was published. Mill died at Avignon on
May 8, 1873.
_I.--The Production of Wealth_
In every department of human affairs, practice long precedes science.
The conception, accordingly, of political economy as a branch of science
is extremely modern; but the subject with which its inquiries are
conversant--wealth--has, in all ages, constituted one of the chief
practical interests of mankind. Everyone has a notion, sufficiently
correct for common purposes, of what is meant by "wealth." Money, being
the instrument of an important public and private purpose, is rightly
regarded as wealth; but everything else which serves any human purpose,
and which nature does not supply gratuitously, is wealth also. Wealth
may be defined as all useful or agreeable things which possess
exchangeable value.
The production of wealth--the extraction of the instruments of human
subsistence and enjoyment from the materials of the globe--is evidently
not an arbitrary thing. It has its necessary conditions.
The requisites of production are two--labour and appropriate natural
objects. Labour is either bodily or mental. Of the other requisite it is
to be remarked that the objects supplied by nature are, except in a few
unimportant cases, only instrumental to human wants after having
undergone some transformations by human exertion.
Nature does more, however, than supply materials; she also supplies
powers. Of natural powers, some are practically unlimited, others
limited in quantity, and much of the economy of society depends on the
limited quantity in which some of the most important natural agents
exist, and more particularly land. As soon as there is not so much of a
natural agent to be had as would be used if it could be obtained for the
asking, the ownership or use of it acquires an exchangeable value. Where
there is more land wanted for cultivation than a place possesses of a
certain quality and advantages of situation, land of that quality and
situation may be sold for a price, or let for an annual rent.
Labour employed on external nature in modes subservient to production is
employed either directly, or indirectly, in previous or concomitant
operations designed to facilitate, perhaps essential to the
possibilities of, the actual production. One of the modes in which
labour is employed indirectly requires particular notice, namely, when
it is employed in producing subsistence to maintain the labourers while
they are engaged in the production. This previous employment of labour
is an indispensable condition to every productive operation. In order to
raise any product there are needed labour, tools, and materials, and
food to feed the labourers. But the tools and materials can be
remunerated only from the product when obtained. The food, on the
contrary, is intrinsically useful, and the labour expended in producing
it, and recompensed by it, needs not to be remunerated over again from
the produce of the subsequent labour which it has fed.
The claim to remuneration founded on the possession of food is
remuneration for abstinence, not for labour. If a person has a store of
food, he has it in his power to consume it himself in idleness. If,
instead, he gives it to productive labourers to support them during
their work, he can claim a remuneration from the produce. He will, in
fact, expect his advance of food to come back to him with an increase,
called, in the language of business, a profit.
Thus, there is necessary to productive operations, besides labour and
natural agents, a stock, previously accumulated, of the products of
labour. This accumulated stock is termed capital. Capital is frequently
supposed to be synonymous with money, but money can afford no assistance
to production. To do this it must be exchanged for other things capable
of contributing to production. What capital does for production is to
afford the shelter, tools, and materials which the work requires, and to
feed and otherwise maintain the labourers during the process. Whatever
things are destined for this use are capital. That industry is limited
by capital is self-evident. There can be no more industry than is
supplied with materials to work up and food to eat. Nevertheless, it is
often forgotten that the people of a country are maintained and have
their wants supplied, not by the produce of present labour, but of past,
and it long continued to be believed that laws and governments, without
creating capital, could create industry.
All capital is the result of saving. Somebody must have produced it, and
forborne to consume it, or it is the result of an excess of production
over consumption. Although saved, and the result of saving, it is
nevertheless consumed--exchanged partly for tools which are worn out by
use, partly for materials destroyed in the using, and by consumption of
the ultimate product; and, finally, paid in wages to productive
labourers who consume it for their daily wants. The greater part, in
value, of the wealth now existing in England has been produced by human
hands within the last twelve months. A very small proportion, indeed,
was in existence ten years ago. The land subsists, and is almost the
only thing that subsists. Capital is kept in existence, not by
preservation, but by perpetual reproduction.
_II.--The Distribution of Wealth_
The laws and conditions of the production of wealth partake of the
character of physical truths. There is nothing optional or arbitrary
about them. It is not so with the distribution of wealth. That is a
matter of human institution solely.
Among the different modes of distributing the produce of land and labour
which have been adopted, attention is first claimed by the primary
institution on which the economical arrangements of society have always
rested--private property.
The institution of property consists in the recognition, in each person,
of a right to the exclusive disposal of the fruits of their own labour
and abstinence, and implies the right of the possessor of the fruits of
previous labour to what has been produced by others by the co-operation
between present labour and those fruits of past labour--that is, the
freedom of acquiring by contract.
We now proceed to the hypothesis of a threefold division of the produce,
among labourers, landlords, and capitalists, beginning with the subject
of wages.
Wages depend mainly upon the demand and supply of labour, or, roughly,
on the proportion between population and capital. It is a common saying
that wages are high when trade is good. Capital which was lying idle is
brought into complete efficiency, and wages, in the particular
occupation concerned, rise. But this is but a temporary fluctuation, and
nothing can permanently alter _general_ wages except an increase or
diminution of capital itself compared with the quantity of labour
offering itself to be hired.
Again, high prices can only raise wages if the producers and dealers,
receiving more, are induced to add to their capital or, at least, to
their purchases of labour. But high prices of this sort, if they benefit
one class of labourers, can only do so at the expense of others, since
all other people, by paying those high prices, have their purchasing
power reduced by an equal degree.
Another common opinion, which is only partially true, is that wages vary
with the price of food, rising when it rises and falling when it falls.
In times of scarcity, people generally compete more violently for
employment, and lower the labour market against themselves. But dearness
or cheapness of food, when of a permanent character, may affect wages.
If food grows permanently dearer without a rise of wages, a greater
number of children will prematurely die, and thus wages will ultimately
be higher; but only because the number of people will be smaller than if
food had remained cheap. Certain rare circumstances excepted, high wages
imply restraints on population.
As the wages of the labourer are the remuneration of labour, so the
profits of the capitalist are properly the remuneration of abstinence.
They are what he gains by forbearing to consume his capital for his own
uses and allowing it to be consumed by productive labourers for their
uses. Of these gains, however, a part only is properly an equivalent for
the use of the capital itself; namely, so much as a solvent person would
be willing to pay for the loan of it. This, as everybody knows, is
called interest. What a person expects to gain who superintends the
employment of his own capital is always more than this. The rate of
profit greatly exceeds the rate of interest. The surplus is partly
compensation for risk and partly remuneration for the devotion of his
time and labour. Thus, the three parts into which profit may be regarded
as resolving itself, may be described, respectively, as interest,
insurance, and wages of superintendence.
The requisites of production being labour, capital, and natural agents,
the only person besides the labourer and the capitalist whose consent is
necessary to production is he who possesses exclusive power over some
natural agent. The land is the principal natural agent capable of being
so appropriated, and the consideration paid for its use is called rent.
It is at once evident that rent is the effect of a monopoly. If all the
land of the country belonged to one person he could fix the rent at his
pleasure. The whole people would be dependent on his will for the
necessaries of life. But even when monopolised--in the sense of being
limited in quantity--land will command a price only if it exists in less
quantity than the demand, and no land ever pays rent unless, in point of
fertility and situation, it belongs to those superior kinds which exist
in less quantity than the demand.
Any land yields just so much more than the ordinary profits of stock as
it yields more than what is returned by the worst land in cultivation.
The surplus is what is paid as rent to the landlord. The standard of
rent, therefore, is the excess of the produce of any land beyond what
would be returned to the same capital if employed on the worst land in
cultivation, or, generally, in the least advantageous circumstances.
_III.--Of Exchange and Value_
Of the two great departments of political economy, the production of
wealth and its distribution, value has to do with the latter alone. The
conditions and laws of production would be unaltered if the arrangements
of society did not depend on, or admit of, exchange.
Value always means in political economy value in exchange, the command
which its possession gives over purchasable commodities in general;
whereas, by the price of a thing is understood its value in money.
That a thing may have value in exchange two conditions are necessary. It
must be of some use--that is, it must conduce to some purpose, and
secondly, there must be some difficulty in its attainment. This
difficulty is of three kinds. It may consist in an absolute limitation
of supply, as in the case of wines which can be grown only in peculiar
circumstances of soil, climate, and exposure; in the labour and expense
requisite to produce the commodity; or, thirdly, the limitation of the
quantity which can be produced at a given cost, to which class
agricultural produce belongs, increased production beyond a certain
limit entailing increased cost.
When the production of a commodity is the effect of labour and
expenditure, there is a minimum value, which is the essential condition
of its permanent production, and must be sufficient to repay the cost of
production, and, besides, the ordinary expectation of profit. This may
be called the _necessary_ value. When the commodity can be made in
indefinite quantity, this necessary value is also the maximum which the
producers can expect. If it is such that it brings a rate of profit
higher than is customary, capital rushes in to share in this extra gain,
and, by increasing the supply, reduces the value. Accordingly, by the
operation of supply and demand the values of things are made to conform
in the long run to the cost of production.
The introduction of money does not interfere with the operation of any
of the laws of value. Things which by barter would exchange for one
another will, if sold for money, sell for an equal amount of it, and so
will exchange for one another, still through the process of exchanging
them will consist of two operations instead of one. Money is a
commodity, and its value is determined like that of other commodities,
temporarily by demand and supply and permanently by cost of production.
Credit, as a substitute for money, is but a transfer of capital from
hand to hand, generally from persons unable to employ it to hands more
competent to employ it efficiently in production. Credit is not a
productive power in itself, though without it the productive powers
already existing could not be brought into complete employment.
In international trade we find that the law that permanent value is
proportioned to cost of production does not hold good between
commodities produced in distant places as it does in those produced in
adjacent places.
Between distant places, and especially between different countries,
profits may continue different, because persons do not usually remove
themselves or their capital to a distant place without a very strong
motive. If capital removed to remote parts of the world as readily, and
for as small an inducement, as it moves to another quarter of the same
town, profits would be equivalent all over the world, and all things
would be produced in the places where the same labour and capital would
produce them in greatest quantity and of best quality. A tendency may
even now be observed towards such a state of things; capital is becoming
more and more cosmopolitan.
It is not a difference in the _absolute_ cost of production which
determines the interchange between distant places, but a difference in
the _comparative_ cost. We may often by trading with foreigners obtain
their commodities at a smaller expense of labour and capital than they
cost to the foreigners themselves. The bargain is advantageous to the
foreigner because the commodity which he receives in exchange, though it
has cost us less, would probably have cost him more.
The value of a commodity brought from a distant place does not depend on
the cost of production in the place from whence it comes, but on the
cost of its acquisition in that place; which in the case of an imported
article means the cost of production of the thing which is exported to
pay for it. In other words, the values of foreign commodities depend on
the terms of international exchange, which, in turn, depend on supply
and demand.
It may be established that when two countries trade together in two
commodities the exchange value of these commodities relatively to each
other will adjust itself to the inclinations and circumstances of the
consumers on both sides in such manner that the quantities required by
each country of the article which it imports from its neighbour shall be
exactly sufficient to pay for one another, a law which holds of any
greater number of commodities. International values depend also on the
means of production available in each country for the supply of foreign
markets, but the practical result is little affected thereby.
_IV.--On the Influence of Government_
One of the most disputed questions in political science and in practical
statesmanship relates to the proper limits of the functions and agency
of governments. It may be agreed that they fall into two classes:
functions which are either inseparable from the idea of government or
are exercised habitually by all governments; and those respecting which
it has been considered questionable whether governments should exercise
them or not. The former may be termed the _necessary_, the latter the
_optional_, functions of government.
It may readily be shown that the admitted functions of government
embrace a much wider field than can easily be included within the
ring-fence of any restrictive definition, and that it is hardly possible
to find any ground of justification common to them all, except the
comprehensive one of general expediency; nor to limit the interference
of government by any universal rule, save the simple and vague one that
it should never be admitted but when the case of expediency is strong.
A most important consideration in viewing the economical effects arising
from performance of necessary government functions is the means adopted
by government to raise the revenue which is the condition of their
existence.
The qualities desirable in a system of taxation have been embodied by
Adam Smith in four maxims or principles, which may be said to have
become classical:
(1) The subjects of every state ought to contribute to the support of
the government as nearly as possible in proportion to their respective
abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively
enjoy under the protection of the state.
(2) The tax which each individual has to pay ought to be certain, and
not arbitrary. A great degree of inequality is not nearly so great an
evil as a small degree of uncertainty.
(3) Every tax ought to be levied at the time or in the manner in which
it is most likely to be convenient for the contributor to pay it. Taxes
upon such consumable goods as are articles of luxury are all finally
paid by the consumer, and generally in a manner that is very convenient
to him.
(4) Every tax ought to be so contrived as to take out and keep out of
the pockets of the people as little as possible over and above what it
brings into the public treasury.
Taxes on commodities may be considered in the following way. Suppose
that a commodity is capable of being made by two different processes.
It is the interest of the community that of the two methods producers
should adopt that which produces the best article at the lowest price.
Suppose, however, that a tax is laid on one of the processes, and no tax
at all, or one of lesser amount, on the other. If the tax falls, as it
is, of course, intended to do, upon the process which the producers
would have adopted, it creates an artificial motive for preferring the
untaxed process though the inferior of the two. If, therefore, it has
any effect at all it causes the commodity to be produced of worse
quality, or at a greater expense of labour; it causes so much of the
labour of the community to be wasted, and the capital employed in
supporting and remunerating the labour to be expended as uselessly as if
it were spent in hiring men to dig holes and fill them up again. The
loss falls on the consumers, though the capital of the country is also
eventually diminished by the diminution of their means of saving, and in
some degree of their inducements to save.
Taxes on foreign trade are of two kinds: taxes on imports and on
exports. On the first aspect of the matter it would seem that both these
taxes are paid by the consumers of the commodity. The true state of the
case, however, is much more complicated.
By taxing exports we may draw into our coffers, at the expense of
foreigners, not only the whole tax, but more than the tax; in other
cases we shall gain exactly the tax; in others less than the tax. In
this last case, a part of the tax is borne by ourselves, possibly the
whole, even more than the whole.
If the imposition of the tax does not diminish the demand it will leave
the trade exactly as it was before. We shall import as much and export
as much; the whole of the tax will be paid out of our own pockets.
But the imposition of a tax almost always diminishes the demand more or
less. It may therefore be laid down as a principle that a tax on
imported commodities, when it really operates as a tax, and not as a
prohibition, either total or partial, almost always falls in part upon
the foreigners who consume our goods. It is not, however, on the person
from whom we buy, but on those who buy from us that a portion of our
custom duties spontaneously falls. It is the foreign consumer of our
exported commodities who is obliged to pay a higher price for them
because we maintain revenue duties on foreign goods.
* * * * *
We now reach the consideration of the grounds and limits of the
principle of _laisser-faire,_ or non-interference by government.
Whatever theory we adopt respecting the foundation of the social union
there is a circle round every human being which no government ought to
be permitted to overstep; there is a part of the life of every person of
years of discretion within which the individuality of that person ought
to reign uncontrolled either by any other individual or by the public
collectively. Scarcely any degree of utility short of absolute necessity
will justify prohibitory regulation, unless it can also be made to
recommend itself to the general conscience.
A general objection to government agency is that every increase of the
functions devolving on the government is an increase of its power both
in the form of authority and, still more, in the indirect form of
influence. Though a better organisation of governments would greatly
diminish the force of the objection to the mere multiplication of their
duties, it would still remain true that in all the advanced communities
the great majority of things are worse done by the intervention of
government than the individuals most interested in the matter would do
them if left to themselves.
Letting alone, in short, should be the practice; every departure from
it, unless required by some great good, is a certain evil.
MONTESQUIEU
The Spirit of Laws
Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brede et de Montesquieu, was
born near Bordeaux, in France, Jan. 18, 1689. For ten years he was
president of the Bordeaux court of justice, but it was the
philosophy of laws that interested him rather than the
administration of them. He travelled over Europe and studied the
political systems of the various countries, and found at last in
England the form of free government which, it seemed to him, ought
to be introduced into France. For twenty years he worked at his
masterpiece, "The Spirit of Laws" ("De l'Esprit des Lois"), which
was published anonymously in 1748, and in which he surveys every
political system, ancient and modern, and after examining their
principles and defects, proposes the English constitution as a
model for the universe. It may be doubted if any book has produced
such far-reaching effects. Not only did it help on the movement
that ended in the French Revolution, but it induced those nations
who sought for some mean between despotism and mob-rule to adopt
the English system of parliamentary government. "The Spirit of
Laws" is rather hard reading, but it still remains the finest and
the soundest introduction to the philosophical study of history.
Montesquieu died on February 10, 1755.
_I.--On a Republic_
There are three kinds of governments: the republican, the monarchical,
and the despotic. Under a republic, the people, or a part of the people,
has the sovereign power; under a monarchy, one man alone rules, but by
fixed and established laws; under a despotism, a single man, without law
or regulation, impels everything according to his will or his caprice.
When, in a republic, the whole people possesses sovereign power, it is a
democracy. When this power is in the hands of only a part of the people
it is an aristocracy. In a democracy the people is in certain respects
the monarch, in others it is the subject. It cannot reign except by its
votes, and the laws which establish the right of voting are thus
fundamental in this form of government. A people possessing sovereign
power ought to do itself everything that it can do well; what it cannot
do well it must leave to its ministers. Its ministers, however, are not
its own unless it nominates them; it is, therefore, a fundamental maxim
of this government that the people should nominate its ministers. The
people is admirably fitted to choose those whom it must entrust with
some part of its authority. It knows very well that a man has often been
to war, and that he has gained such and such victories, and it is
therefore very capable of electing a general. It knows if a judge is
hardworking and if the generality of suitors are content with his
decisions, and it knows if he has not been condemned for corruption;
this is sufficient to enable a people to elect its prætors.
All these things are facts about which a people can learn more in a
market-place than a monarch can in a palace. But does a people know how
to conduct an affair of state, to study situations, opportunities, and
profit by them? No. The generality of citizens have sufficient ability
to be electors, but not enough to be elected, and the people, though it
is capable of forming a judgment on the administration of others, is not
competent to undertake the administration itself. The people have always
too much action or too little. Sometimes with a hundred thousand arms it
overtakes everything; sometimes with a hundred thousand feet it moves as
slowly as a centipede.
In a popular state the people are divided into certain classes, and on
the way in which this division is carried out depend the duration of a
democracy and its prosperity. Election by lot is the democratic method;
election by choice the aristocratic method. Determination by lot allows
every citizen a reasonable hope of serving his country; but it is a
defective measure, and it is by regulating and correcting it that great
legislators have distinguished themselves. Solon, for instance,
established at Athens the method of nominating by choice all the
military posts, and of electing by lot the senators and the judges;
moreover, he ordained that the candidates for election by lot should
first be examined, and that those who were adjudged unworthy should be
excluded; in that manner he combined the method of chance and the method
of choice.
It does not require much probity for a monarchy or a despotism to
maintain itself. The force of the laws in one, and the uplifted sword of
the tyrant in the other, regulates and curbs everything. In a democracy,
however, everything depends upon the political virtues of the people.
When a democracy loses its patriotism, its frugality, and its passion
for equality, it is soon destroyed by avarice and ambition.
The principle of democracy grows corrupt, not only when a people loses
its spirit of equality, but when this spirit of equality becomes
excessive, and each man wishes to be the equal of those whom he has
chosen to rule over him. Great successes, and especially those to which
the people have largely contributed, give it so much pride that it is no
longer possible to direct it. Thus it was that the victory over the
Persians corrupted the republic of Athens; thus it was that the victory
over the Athenians ruined the republic of Syracuse. There are two
excesses which a democracy must avoid: the spirit of inequality, which
leads to an aristocracy or to the government by one man; and the spirit
of excessive equality, which ends in despotism.
_II.--On an Aristocracy_
In an aristocracy the sovereign power is in the hands of a group of
persons. It is they who make the laws and see that they are carried out,
and the rest of the people are the subjects of the nobility. When there
is a great number of nobles, a senate is necessary to regulate the
affairs which the nobles themselves are too numerous to deal with, and
to prepare those which they are able to decide on. In this case the
aristocracy exists in the senate, the democracy in the noble class, and
the people count for nothing.
The best aristocracy is that in which the popular party, which has no
share of the power, is so small and so poor that the governing class has
no reason for oppressing it. Thus when Antipater made a law at Athens
that those who had not two thousand drachmas should be excluded from
voting, he formed the best aristocracy possible--for this qualification
was so slight that it excluded very few people, and no one who had any
consideration in the city. Aristocratic families should belong to the
people as much as possible. The more an aristocracy resembles a
democracy, the more perfect it is. The most imperfect of all is that in
which the lower classes are ground down by the upper classes.
An aristocracy has by itself more force than a democracy. The nobles
form a corporation which, by its prerogative and for its particular
interest, restrains the people; but it is very difficult for this
corporation to restrain its own members as easily as it restrains the
populace. Public crimes can, no doubt, be punished, as it is in the
general interests of an aristocracy that this should be done; but, as a
rule, private misdeeds in the nobility will be overlooked. A corporation
of this sort can only curb itself in two ways--either by a great
political virtue, which leads the nobles to regard the people as their
equals and makes for the formation of large republic, or by the lesser
virtue of moderation, which enables them to conserve their power.
An aristocracy grows corrupt when the power of the nobles becomes
arbitrary. When the governing families observe the laws they form a
monarchy which has several monarchies; this is a very good thing in its
nature, because all these monarchies are bound together by the laws.
But when they no longer observe them, they form a despotic state which
has many despots.
The extreme corruption comes about when the nobility becomes hereditary;
it can no longer be moderate in the exercise of its powers. If the
nobles are small in number their power increases, but their surety
diminishes; if they are great in number, their power is less, but their
surety more certain, for power goes on increasing, and surety goes on
diminishing up to the despot whose power is as excessive as his peril. A
multitude of nobles in an hereditary aristocracy thus makes the
government less violent; but as they will have but little political
virtue, they will grow nonchalant, idle, and irresponsible, so that the
state at last will have no longer any force or resilience.
An aristocracy is able to maintain its force if its laws are such that
they make the nobility feel more the dangers and fatigues of government
than the pleasures of it, and if the state is in such a situation that
it has something to dread, and that its surety comes from within, and
its danger threatens from without. A certain confidence forms the glory
and the safety of a monarchy, but a republic lives on its perils. The
fear of the Persians kept the Greek states in strict obedience to
republican laws. Carthage and Rome intimidated and strengthened each
other. It is a strange thing, but democracies and aristocracies are like
water, which grows corrupt only when it is too long unmoved and
untroubled.
_III.--On the Monarchy_
Intermediary, subordinate, and dependent powers constitute the nature of
a monarchical government, in which a single man governs by means of
fundamental laws. The most natural of intermediary, subordinate powers
is that of a nobility. This is indeed an essential part of a monarchy,
of which the maxim is: "No king, no nobility; no nobility, no king."
There are some persons in certain countries of Europe who wish to
abolish all the rights of the nobility. They do not see that they want
to do what the English parliament did in the seventeenth century.
Abolish in a monarchy the prerogatives of the lords, of the clergy, of
the gentry, and of the towns, and you will soon have either a purely
popular government or a despotism.
I am not greatly prepossessed in favour of the privileges of the clergy,
but I should like to see their jurisdiction clearly fixed once for all.
It is not a question of discussing if it be right to establish it, but
of seeing if it is established, and if it forms part of the laws of the
country, and of deciding if a loyal subject is not within his rights in
upholding both the powers of his king and the limits which have from
time immemorial been set to that power. The power of the clergy is
dangerous in a republic, but convenient in a monarchy, and especially in
a monarchy tending to despotism. Where would Spain and Portugal be,
since they have lost their laws, without this power which alone arrests
the arbitrary force of their kings?
In order to advance liberty, the English have destroyed all the
intermediary powers that form their monarchy. They have good reason to
guard and cherish this liberty. If ever they lose it, they will be one
of the most enslaved races on earth.
It is not sufficient that there should be intermediary ranks in the
monarchy; there must also be a depository of laws. This depository
cannot be found anywhere save in political corporations, which announce
laws when they are made, and recall them when they are forgotten. The
ignorance natural to nobility, its inattention, its contempt for civil
government, require that there should be a corporation which unceasingly
recovers laws from the dust in which they are buried.
As democracies are ruined by the populace stripping the senate, the
magistrates, and the judges of their functions, so monarchies decay when
the prerogatives of the higher classes and the privileges of towns are
little by little destroyed. In the first case, things end in a despotism
of the multitude; in the other, in the despotism of a single man.
The people of the ancient world had no knowledge of a monarchy founded
on a nobility, and still less knowledge of a monarchy founded on a
legislative corporation formed, as in England, by the representatives of
the people. On reading the admirable work of Tacitus on the ancient
Germans, one sees that it is from them that the English have derived the
idea of their political system. This fine form of government was
discovered in the forests. It is based on a separation of the three
powers found in every state--the legislative power, the executive power,
and the judicial power. The first is in the hands of the parliament, the
second is in the hands of the monarch, and the third in the hands of the
magistracy. The English people would lose their liberty if the same man,
or the same corporation, or the lords, or the people themselves, were
possessed of these three powers.
By their representative system the English have avoided the great defect
of the ancient republics, in which the populace were allowed to take an
active part in the government.
There is in every state a number of persons distinguished by birth,
wealth, or honour. If they were confounded among the people, and had
there only one vote like the rest, the common liberty would be to them a
slavery, and they would have no interest in defending it, because most
of the laws would be directed against them. The part they play in
legislation should, therefore, be proportionate to the other advantages
which they have in the state. In England they rightly form a legislative
body, which has the power of arresting the enterprises of the people,
in the same way as the people have the power of arresting theirs. A
house of lords must be hereditary. It is so naturally, and, besides,
this gives it a very great interest in the preservation of its
prerogatives, which, in a free country, must always be in danger. But as
an hereditary power might be tempted to follow its private interests to
the neglect of the public welfare, it is necessary that in matters in
which corruption can easily arise, such as matters relating to money
bills, the House of Lords should have neither any initiating nor any
correcting faculty; it should have only a power of veto and a power of
approving, like the tribunes of ancient Rome.
The cabinet should not wield the executive power as well as the
legislative power. Unless the monarch himself retains the executive
power, there is no liberty, for liberty depends upon each of the three
powers being kept entirely separate. It is in this way that the balance
of the constitution is preserved. As all human things have an end,
England will one day lose its liberty, and perish. Rome, Sparta, and
Carthage have not been able to last. England will perish when the
legislative power grows more corrupt than the executive power.
_IV.--On Despotism_
From the nature of despotism it follows that a despot gives the
government into the hands of another man. A creature whose five senses
are always telling him that he is everything and that other men are
nothing is naturally idle, ignorant, and pleasure-seeking. He therefore
abandons the control of affairs. But if he entrusted them to several
persons there would be disputes among them, and the despot would be put
to the trouble of interfering in their intrigues. The easier way,
therefore, is for him to surrender all administration to a vizier, and
give him full power. The establishment of a vizier is a fundamental law
of despotism. The more people a despot has to govern, the less he thinks
of governing them; the greater the business of the state becomes, the
less trouble he takes to deliberate upon it.
A despotic state continually grows corrupt because it is corrupt in its
nature. Other forms of government perish through particular accidents; a
despotism perishes inwardly, even when several accidental causes seem to
support it.
It is only maintained when certain circumstances derived from the
climate, the religion, the situation, or the genius of a people compel
it to observe some order and submit to some regulation. These things
compel it, but do not change its nature; its ferocity remains, though
for a time it is tamed.
SIR THOMAS MORE
Utopia: Nowhere Land
Thomas More was born in London on February 7, 1478; his father, Sir
John, was a magistrate. The boy was placed in the household of the
Chancellor, Cardinal Morton, and went to Oxford. The young man had
thoughts of entering the religious life, but finally chose the law.
His most intimate friend was the great Dean Colet, and his
relations with Erasmus, the chief of the Humanists, were of the
most affectionate kind. He stood with these two in the forefront of
the great effort for the intellectual and moral reform of the
Church, which was soon to be overwhelmed in the political and
theological Reformation. Drawn into public life by Henry VIII., he
became Chancellor after the fall of Wolsey, later resigned on a
point of conscience, and was finally beheaded on a charge of
treason on July 7, 1535, with Bishop Fisher, virtually for refusing
to acknowledge the secular supremacy over the Church. In 1886 he
was beatified. The "Utopia: Nowhere Land," was written in 1516, in
Latin. The English version is the rendering of Ralphe Robynson,
published in 1551. The three factors in its production were, the
discoveries in the New World, Plato's "Republic," and More's
observation of European affairs.
_I.--How Master More Met Master Raphael Hythloday_
The most victorious and triumphant king of England, Henry VIII., of that
time, for the debatement of certain weighty matters sent me ambassador
into Flanders, joined in commission with Cuthbert Tunstall, whose virtue
and learning be of more excellency than that I am able to praise them.
And whiles I was abiding at Antwerp, oftentimes among other did visit me
one Peter Gyles, a citizen thereof, whom one day I chanced to espy
talking with a stranger, with whom he brought me to speech. Which
Raphael Hythloday had voyaged with Master Amerigo Vespucci, but parting
from him had seen many lands, and so returned home by way of Taprobane
and Calicut.
Now, as he told us, he had found great and wide deserts and
wildernesses inhabited with wild beasts and serpents, but also towns and
cities and weal-publiques full of people governed by good and wholesome
laws, beside many other that were fond and foolish. Then I urging him
that, both by learning and experience, he might be any king's counsellor
for the weal-publique----
"You be deceived," quoth he. "For the most part all princes have more
delights in warlike matters and feats of chivalry than in the good feats
of peace." Then he speaking of England, "Have you been in our country,
sir?" quoth I. "Yea, forsooth," quoth he, "and there was I much bound
and beholden to John Norton, at that time cardinal, archbishop, and Lord
Chancellor, in whose counsel the king put much trust.
"Now," quoth he, "one day as I sat at his table, there was a layman
cunning in the law who began to praise the rigorous justice that was
done upon felons, and to marvel how thieves were nevertheless so rife."
"'Nay, sir,' said I; 'but the punishment passeth the limits of justice.
For simple theft is not so great an offence that it ought to be punished
with death, nor doth that refrain them, since they cannot live but by
thieving. There be many servitors of idle gentlemen, who, when their
master is dead, and they be thrust forth, have no craft whereby to earn
their bread, nor can find other service, who must either starve for
hunger or manfully play the thieves.
"'Moreover, look how your sheep do consume and devour whole fields,
houses, and cities. For noblemen and gentlemen, yea, and certain abbots,
holy men, God wot, where groweth the finest wool, do enclose all in
pastures, pluck down towns, and leave nought standing but only the
church, to make it a sheep-house. Whereby the husbandmen are thrust out
of their own! and then what can they do else but steal, and then justly,
God wot, be hanged? Furthermore, victuals and other matters are dearer,
seeing rich men buy up all, and with their monopoly keep the market as
it please them. Unless you find a remedy for these enormities, you shall
in vain vaunt yourselves of executing justice upon felons.
"'Beside, it is a pernicious thing that a thief and a murderer should
suffer the like punishment, seeing that thereby the thief is rather
provoked to kill. But among the polylerytes in Persia there is a custom
that they which be convict of felony are condemned to be common
labourers, yet not harshly entreated, but condemned to death if they
seek to run away. For they are also apparelled all alike, and to aid
them is servitude for a free man.'
"Now the cardinal pronounced that this were a good order to take with
vagabonds. But a certain parasite sayeth in jest that this were then an
excellent order to take with the friars, seeing that they were the
veriest vagabonds that be; a friar thereupon took the jest in very ill
part, and could not refrain himself from calling the fellow ribald,
villain, and the son of perdition; whereat the jester became a scoffer
indeed, for he could play a part in that play, no man better, making the
friar more foolishly wrath than before.
"Now, none of them would have harkened to my counsel until the cardinal
did approve it. So that if I were sitting in counsel with the French
king, whose counsellors were all urging him to war; and should I counsel
him not to meddle with Italy, but rather to tarry still at home; and
should propose to him the decrees of the Achoricus which dwell over
against the Island of Utopia, who having by war conquered a new kingdom
for their prince, constrained him to be content with his old kingdom,
and give over the new one to one of his friends; this, mine advice,
Master More, how think you it would be heard and taken?"
"So God help me, not very thankfully," quoth I.
"Howbeit, Master More," quoth he, "doubtless wheresoever possessions be
private, where money beareth all the stroke, it is almost impossible
that the weal-publique may be justly governed and prosperously flourish.
And when I consider the wise and goodly ordinances of the Utopians,
among whom all things being in common, every man hath abundance of
everything, yet are there very few laws; I do fully persuade myself that
until this property be exiled and banished, perfect wealth shall never
be among men. Which if you had lived with me in Utopia, you would
doubtless grant."
"Therefore, Master Raphael," quoth I, "pray you describe unto us this
land."
_II.--Of the Island of Utopia, and the Customs of Its People_
The Island of Utopia is shaped like a new moon, in breadth at the middle
200 miles, narrowing to the tips, which fetch about a compass of 500
miles, and are sundered by eleven miles, having in the space between
them a high rock; so that that whole coast is a great haven, but the way
into it is securely guarded by hidden rocks, of which only the Utopians
have the secret. It hath fifty-four large and fair cities, all built in
one fashion, and having like manners, institutions and laws. The chief
and head is Amaurote, being the midmost. Every city hath an equal shire,
with farms thereon; and of the husbandmen, half return each year to the
city, their place being taken by a like number.
The city Amaurote standeth four square, upon the River Anyder, and
another lesser river floweth through it. The houses be fair and
gorgeous, and the streets twenty foot broad; and at the back of each
house a garden, whereby they set great store.
Each thirty families choose an officer, called a Siphogrant, and over
every tenth Siphogrant is a Tranibore. The prince is chosen for life by
the Siphogrants. All other offices are yearly, but the Tranibores are
not lightly changed. The prince and the Tranibores hold council every
third day, each day with two different Siphogrants. They discuss no
matter on the day that it is first brought forward. All the people are
expert in husbandry, but each hath thereto his own proper craft of
masonry or cloth-working, or some other; and, for the most part, that of
his father. They work only six hours, which is enough--yea, and more for
the store and abundance of things requisite, because all do work. There
be none that are idle or busied about unprofitable occupations. In all
that city and shire there be scarce 500 persons that be licensed from
labour, that be neither too old nor too weak to work. Such be they that
have license to learning in place of work. Out of which learned order be
chosen ambassadors, priests, tranibores, and the prince.
For their clothing, they wear garments of skins for work, and woollen
cloaks of one fashion and of the natural colour; and for the linen, they
care only for the whiteness, and not the fineness; wherefore their
apparel is of small cost.
The city consisteth of families; and for each family the law is there be
not fewer than ten children, nor more than sixteen of about thirteen
years. Which numbers they maintain by taking from one family and adding
to another, or one city and another, or by their foreign cities which
they have in the waste places of neighbour lands. The eldest citizen
ruleth the family. In each quarter of the city is a market-place,
whither is brought the work of each family, and each taketh away that he
needeth, without money or exchange.
To every thirty families there is a hall, whither cometh the whole
Siphogranty at the set hour of dinner or supper; and a nursery thereto.
But in the country they dine and sup in their own houses. If any desire
to visit another city, the prince giveth letters of licence. But
wherever he goeth he must work the allotted task. All be partners, so
that none may be poor or needy; and all the cities do send to the common
council at Amaurote, so that what one lacketh another maketh good out of
its abundance.
Their superfluities they exchange with other lands for what they
themselves lack, which is little but iron; or for money, which they use
but seldom, and that for the hiring of soldiers. Of gold and silver they
make not rich vessels, but mean utensils, fetters, and gyves; and jewels
and precious stones they make toys for children.
Although there be not many that are appointed only to learning, yet all
in childhood be instructed therein; and the more part do bestow in
learning their spare hours. In the course of the stars and movings of
the heavenly sphere they be expert, but for the deceitful divination
thereof they never dreamed of it.
They dispute of the qualities of the soul and reason of virtue, and of
pleasure wherein they think the felicity of man to rest; but that the
soul is immortal, and by the bountiful goodness of God ordained to
felicity, and to our virtues and good deeds rewards be appointed
hereafter, and to evil deeds punishments. Which principles, if they were
disannulled, there is no man but would diligently pursue pleasure by
right or wrong. But now felicity resteth only in that pleasure that is
good and honest. Virtue they define to be life according to nature,
which prescribeth us a joyful life.
But of what they call counterfeit pleasures they make naught; as of
pride in apparel and gems, or in vain honours; or of dicing; or hunting,
which they deem the most abject kind of butchery. But of true pleasures
they give to the soul intelligence and that pleasure that cometh of
contemplation of the truth, and the pleasant remembrance of the good
life past. Of pleasures of the body they count first those that be
sensibly felt and perceived, and thereto the body's health, which
lacking, there is no place for any pleasure. But chiefest they hold the
pleasures of the mind, the consciousness of virtue and the good life.
Making little of the pleasures of appetite, they yet count it madness to
reject the same for a vain shadow of virtue.
For bondmen, they have malefactors of their own people, criminals
condemned to death in other lands, or poor labourers of other lands who,
of their own free will, choose rather to be in bondage with them. The
sick they tend with great affection; but, if the disease be not only
incurable but full of anguish, the priests exhort them that they should
willingly die, but cause him not to die against his will. The women
marry not before eighteen years, and the men four years later. But if
one have offended before marriage, he or she whether it be, is sharply
punished. And before marriage the man and the woman are showed each to
the other by discreet persons. To mock a man for his deformity is
counted great dishonesty and reproach.
They do not only fear their people from doing evil by punishments, but
also allure them to virtue with rewards of honour. They have but few
laws, reproving other nations that innumerable books of laws and
expositions upon the same be not sufficient. Furthermore, they banish
all such as do craftily handle the laws, but think it meet that every
man should plead his own matter.
_III.--Of the Wars and the Religion of the Utopians_
As touching leagues they never make one with any nation, putting no
trust therein; seeing the more and holier ceremonies the league is knit
up with, the sooner it is broken. Who perchance would change their minds
if they lived here? But they be of opinion that no man should be
counted an enemy who hath done no injury, and that the fellowship of
nature is a strong league.
They count nothing so much against glory as glory gotten in war. And
though they do daily practise themselves in the discipline of war, they
go not to battle but in defence of their own country or their friends,
or to right some assured wrong. They are ashamed to win the victory with
much bloodshed, but rejoice if they vanquish their enemies by craft.
They set a great price upon the life or person of the enemy's prince and
of other chief adversaries, counting that they thereby save the lives of
many of both parts that had otherwise been slain; and stir up neighbour
peoples against them. They lure soldiers out of all countries to do
battle with them, and especially savage and fierce people called the
Zapoletes, giving them greater wages than any other nation will. But of
their own people they thrust not forth to battle any against his will;
yet if women be willing, they do in set field stand every one by her
husband's side, and each man is compassed about by his own kinsfolk; and
they be themselves stout and hardy and disdainful to be conquered. It is
hard to say whether they be craftier in laying ambush, or wittier in
avoiding the same. Their weapons be arrows, and at handstrokes not
swords but pole-axes; and engines for war they devise and invent
wondrous wittily.
There be divers kinds of religion. Some worship for God the sun, some
the moon; there be that give worship to a man that was once of the most
excellent virtue; some believe that there is a certain godly power
unknown, everlasting, incomprehensible; but all believe that there is
one God, Maker and Ruler of the whole world. But after they heard us
speak of Christ, with glad minds they agreed unto the same. And this is
one of their ancientest laws, that no man shall be blamed for reasoning
in the maintenance of his own religion, giving to every man free liberty
to believe what he would. Saving that none should conceive so base and
vile an opinion as to think that souls do perish with the body, or that
the world runneth at all adventures, governed by no divine providence.
They have priests of exceeding holiness, and therefore very few. Both
childhood and youth are instructed of them, not more in learning than in
good manners.
"This is that order of the commonwealth which, in my judgment, is not
only the best, but also that which alone of good right may claim and
take upon it the name of a commonwealth or weal-publique," quoth he.
But, in the meantime, I, Thomas More, as I cannot agree and consent to
all things that he said, so must I needs confess and grant that many
things be in the Utopian weal-publique which in our cities I may rather
wish for than hope after.
THOMAS PAINE
The Rights of Man
"The Rights of Man" by Thomas Paine (see RELIGION, Vol. XIII) was
an answer to Burke's attack on the French Revolution. It was
published in two parts in 1790 and 1792, and is an earnest and
courageous exposition of Paine's revolutionary opinions, and from
that day to this has played no small part in moulding public
thought. The extreme candour of his observations on monarchy led to
a prosecution, and he had to fly to France. There he pleaded for
the life of Louis XVI., and was imprisoned for ten months during
the Terror. He left France bitterly disappointed with the failure
of the republic, and passed the rest of his days in America.
"Paine's ignorance," says Sir Leslie Stephen, "was vast, and his
language brutal; but he had the gift of a true demagogue--the power
of wielding a fine, vigorous English."
_I.--Natural and Civil Rights_
Among the incivilities by which nations or individuals provoke or
irritate each other, Mr. Burke's pamphlet in the French revolution is an
extraordinary instance. There is scarcely an epithet of abuse in the
English language with which he has not loaded the French nation and the
National Assembly. Considered as an attempt at political argument, his
work is a pathless wilderness of rhapsodies, in which he asserts
whatever he pleases without offering either evidence or reasons for so
doing.
With his usual outrage, he abuses the Declaration of the Rights of Man
published by the National Assembly as the basis of the French
constitution. But does he mean to deny that _man_ has any rights? If he
does, then he must mean that there are no such things as rights
anywhere; for who is there in the world but man? But if Mr. Burke means
to admit that man has rights, the question then will be: What are those
rights and how came man by them originally?
The error of those who reason by precedents drawn from antiquity
respecting the rights of man is that they do not go far enough into
antiquity; they stop in some of the intermediate stages, and produce
what was then done as a rule for the present day. Mr. Burke, for
example, would have the English nation submit themselves to their
monarchs for ever, because an English Parliament did make such a
submission to William and Mary, not only on behalf of the people then
living, but on behalf of their heirs and posterities--as if any
parliament had the right of binding and controlling posterity, or of
commanding for ever how the world should be governed. If antiquity is to
be authority, a thousand such authorities may be produced, successively
contradicting each other; but if we proceed on, we shall at last come
out right; we shall come to the time when man came from the hand of his
Maker. What was he then? Man! Man was his high and only title, and a
higher cannot be given him.
All histories of creation agree in establishing one point, the unity of
man, by which I mean that men are all of one degree, and that all men
are born equal, and with equal natural rights. These natural rights are
the foundation of all their civil rights.
A few words will explain this: Natural rights are those which appertain
to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are the rights of the
mind, and also those rights of acting as an individual for his own
happiness, which are not injurious to the natural rights of others.
Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a
member of society. Every civil right has for its foundation some natural
right pre-existing in the individual, but to the enjoyment of which his
individual power is not, in all cases, sufficiently competent. Of this
kind are all those which relate to security and protection.
It follows, then, that the power produced from the aggregate of natural
rights, imperfect in power in the individual, cannot be applied to
invade the natural rights which are retained in the individual, and in
which the power to execute is as perfect as the right itself.
Let us now apply these principles to governments. These may all be
comprehended under three heads: First, superstition; secondly, power;
thirdly, the common interest of society and the common rights of man.
When a set of artful men pretended to hold intercourse with the Deity,
as familiarly as they now march up the back stairs in European courts,
the world was completely under the government of superstition. This sort
of government lasted as long as this sort of superstition lasted.
After these, a race of conquerors arose, whose government, like that of
William the Conqueror, was founded in power. Governments thus
established last as long as the power to support them lasts; but, that
they might avail themselves of every engine in their favour, they united
fraud to force, and set up an idol which they called _Divine Right_, and
which twisted itself afterwards into an idol of another shape, called
_Church and State_. The key of St. Peter and the key of the treasury
became quartered on one another, and the wondering cheated multitude
worshipped the invention.
We have now to review the governments which arise out of society. If we
trace government to its origin, we discover that governments must have
arisen either _out_ of the people or over the people. In those which
have arisen out of the people, the individuals themselves, each in his
own personal and sovereign right, have entered into a compact with each
other to produce a government; and this is the only mode in which
governments have a right to arise.
This compact is the constitution, and a constitution is not a thing in
name only, but in fact. Wherever it cannot be produced in a visible
form, there is none. A constitution is a thing antecedent to government,
and a government is only its creature. The constitution of a country is
not the act of its government, but of the people constituting its
government.
Can, then, Mr. Burke produce the English constitution? He cannot, for no
such thing exists, nor ever did exist. The English government is one of
those which arose out of a conquest, and not out of society, and
consequently it arose over the people; and though it has been much
modified since the time of William the Conqueror, the country has never
yet regenerated itself, and is therefore without a constitution.
_II.--France and England Compared_
I now proceed to draw some comparisons between the French constitution
and the governmental usages in England.
The French constitution says that every man who pays a tax of sixty sous
per annum (2s. 6d., English) is an elector. What will Mr. Burke place
against this? Can anything be more limited, and at the same time more
capricious, than the qualifications of electors are in England?
The French constitution says that the National Assembly shall be elected
every two years. What will Mr. Burke place against this? Why, that the
nation has no right at all in the case, and that the government is
perfectly arbitrary with respect to this point.
The French constitution says there shall be no game laws, and no
monopolies of any kind. What will Mr. Burke say to this? In England,
game is made the property of those at whose expense it is not fed; and
with respect to monopolies, every chartered town is an aristocratical
monopoly in itself, and the qualification of electors proceeds out of
these monopolies. Is this freedom? Is this what Mr. Burke means by a
constitution?
The French constitution says that to preserve the national
representation from being corrupt no member of the National Assembly
shall be an officer of the government, a placeman, or a pensioner. What
will Mr. Burke place against this? I will whisper his answer: "Loaves
and Fishes." Ah! this government of loaves and fishes has more mischief
in it than people have yet reflected on. The English Parliament is
supposed to hold the national purse in trust for the nation. But if
those who vote the supplies are the same persons who receive the
supplies when voted, and are to account for the expenditure of those
supplies to those who voted them, it is themselves accountable to
themselves, and the comedy of errors concludes with the pantomime of
hush. Neither the ministerial party nor the opposition will touch upon
this case. The national purse is the common hack which each mounts upon.
They order these things better in France.
The French constitution says that the right of war and peace is in the
nation. Where else should it reside but in those who are to pay the
expense? In England this right is said to reside in a metaphor shown at
the Tower for sixpence or a shilling a head.
It may with reason be said that in the manner the English nation is
represented it signifies not where the right resides, whether in the
crown or in the parliament. War is the common harvest of all those who
participate in the division and expenditure of public money in all
countries. In reviewing the history of the English Government, an
impartial bystander would declare that taxes were not raised to carry on
wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.
The French constitution says, "There shall be no titles"; and, of
consequence, "nobility" is done away, and the peer is exalted into man.
Titles are but nicknames, and every nickname is a title. The thing is
perfectly harmless in itself, but it marks a sort of foppery in the
human character which degrades it. If no mischief had annexed itself to
the folly of titles, they would not have been worth a serious and
formal destruction. Let us, then, examine the grounds upon which the
French constitution has resolved against having a house of peers in
France.
Because, in the first place, aristocracy is kept up by family tyranny
and injustice, due to the unnatural and iniquitous law of primogeniture.
Secondly, because the idea of hereditary legislators is as inconsistent
as that of hereditary judges or hereditary juries; and as absurd as an
hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man; and as ridiculous
as an hereditary poet-laureate.
Thirdly, because a body of men, holding themselves accountable to
nobody, ought not to be trusted by anybody.
Fourthly, because it is continuing the uncivilised principle of
government founded in conquest, and the base idea of man having property
in man, and governing him by personal right.
The French constitution hath abolished or renounced toleration and
intolerance also, and hath established universal right of conscience.
Toleration is not the opposite of intolerance, but is the counterfeit of
it. Both are despotisms. The one assumes to itself the right of
withholding liberty of conscience, and the other of granting it. Who art
thou, vain dust and ashes! by whatever name thou art called, whether a
king, a bishop, a church, or a state, a parliament, or anything else,
that obtrudest thine insignificance between the soul of man and its
Maker? Mind thine own concerns. If he believes not as thou believest, it
is a proof that thou believest not as he believes, and there is no
earthly power can determine between you.
The opinions of men with respect to government are changing fast in all
countries. The revolutions of America and France have thrown a beam of
light over the world, which reaches into men. Ignorance is of a
peculiar nature; once dispelled, it is impossible to re-establish it.
It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of
knowledge; and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made
ignorant.
When we survey the wretched condition of man, under the monarchical and
hereditary systems of government, dragged from his home by one power, or
driven by another, and impoverished by taxes more than by enemies, it
becomes evident that these systems are bad, and that a general
revolution in the principle and construction of governments is
necessary.
And it is not difficult to perceive, from the enlightened state of
mankind, that hereditary governments are verging to their decline, and
that revolutions on the broad basis of national sovereignty and
government by representation are making their way in Europe; it would be
an act of wisdom to anticipate their approach and produce revolutions by
reason and accommodation, rather than commit them to the issue of
convulsions.
_III.--The Old and New Systems_
The danger to which the success of revolutions is most exposed is in
attempting them before the principles on which they proceed, and the
advantages to result from them are sufficiently understood. Almost
everything appertaining to the circumstances of a nation has been
absorbed and confounded under the general and mysterious word
government. It may, therefore, be of use in this day of revolutions to
discriminate between those things which are the effect of government,
and those which are not.
Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of
government. It has its origin in the principles of society and the
natural constitution of man. The mutual dependence and reciprocal
interest which man has upon man, and all the parts of civilised
community upon each other, create that great chain of connection which
holds it together. In fine, society performs for itself almost
everything which is ascribed to government, which is no farther
necessary than to supply the few cases to which society and civilisation
are not conveniently competent.
The more perfect civilisation is, the less occasion has it for
government, because the more does it regulate its own affairs, and
govern itself. All the great laws of society are laws of nature. They
are followed and obeyed because it is the interest of the parties to do
so, and not on account of any formal laws their governments may impose.
But how often is the natural propensity to society disturbed or
destroyed by the operations of government! When the latter, instead of
being ingrafted on the principles of the former, assumes to exist for
itself, and acts by partialities of favour and oppression, it becomes
the cause of the mischiefs it ought to prevent.
It is impossible that such governments as have hitherto existed in the
world would have commenced by any other means than a total violation of
every principle, sacred and moral. The obscurity in which the origin of
all the present old governments is buried implies the iniquity and
disgrace with which they began. What scenes of horror present themselves
in contemplating the character and reviewing the history of such
governments! If we would delineate human nature with a baseness of heart
and hypocrisy of countenance that reflection would shudder at and
humanity disown, they are kings, courts, and cabinets that must sit for
the portrait. Man, naturally as he is, with all his faults about him, is
not up to the character.
Government on the old system is an assumption of power, for the
aggrandisement of itself; on the new a delegation of power for the
common benefit of society. The one now called the old is hereditary,
either in whole or in part, and the new is entirely representative. It
rejects all hereditary government:
First, as being an imposition on mankind.
Secondly, as inadequate to the purposes for which government is
necessary.
All hereditary government is in its nature tyranny. To inherit a
government is to inherit the people, as if they were flocks and herds.
Kings succeed each other, not as rationals, but as animals. It signifies
not what their mental or moral characters are. Monarchical government
appears under all the various characters of childhood, decrepitude,
dotage; a thing at nurse, in leading-strings, or in crutches. In short,
we cannot conceive a more ridiculous figure of government than
hereditary succession. By continuing this absurdity, man is perpetually
in contradiction with himself; he may accept for a king, or a chief
magistrate, or a legislator a person whom he would not elect for a
constable.
The representative system takes society and civilisation for its basis;
nature, reason, and experience for its guide. The original simple
democracy was society governing itself without the aid of secondary
means. By ingrafting representation upon democracy we arrive at a system
of government capable of embracing and confederating all the various
interests and every extent of territory and population; and that also
with advantages as much inferior to hereditary government, as the
republic of letters is to hereditary literature.
Considering government in the only light in which it should be
considered, that of a national association, it ought to be constructed
as not to be disordered by any accident happening among the parts, and,
therefore, no extraordinary power should be lodged in the hands of any
individual. Monarchy would not have continued so many ages in the world
had it not been for the abuses it protects. It is the master-fraud which
shelters all others. By admitting a participation of the spoil, it makes
itself friends; and when it ceases to do this it will cease to be the
idol of courtiers.
One of the greatest improvements that have been made for the perpetual
security and progress of constitutional liberty, is the provision which
the new constitutions make for occasionally revising, altering, and
amending them. The best constitutions that could now be devised
consistently with the condition of the present moment, may be far short
of that excellence which a few years may afford. There is a morning of
reason rising upon man on the subject of governments that has not
appeared before. Just emerging from such a barbarous condition, it is
too soon to determine to what extent of improvement government may yet
be carried. For what we can foresee, all Europe may form but one great
republic, and man be free of the whole.
_IV.--The Reform of England_
As it is necessary to include England in the prospect of general
reformation, it is proper to inquire into the defects of its government.
It is only by each nation reforming its own, that the whole can be
improved and the full benefit of reformation enjoyed.
When in countries that are called civilised we see age going to the
workhouse and youth to the gallows something must be wrong in the system
of government. Why is it that scarcely any are executed but the poor?
The fact is a proof, among other things, of a wretchedness in their
condition. Bred up without morals, and cast upon the world without a
prospect, they are the exposed sacrifice of vice and legal barbarity.
The first defect of English government I shall mention is the evil of
those Gothic institutions, the corporation towns. As one of the houses
of the English Parliament is, in a great measure, made up of elections
from these corporations, and as it is unnatural that a pure stream
should flow from a foul fountain, its vices are but a continuation of
the vices of its origin. A man of moral honour and good political
principles cannot submit to the mean drudgery and disgraceful arts by
which such elections are carried.
I proceed in the next place to the aristocracy. The house of peers is
simply a combination of persons in one common interest. No better reason
can be given why a house of legislation should be composed entirely of
men whose occupation consists in letting landed property, than why it
should be composed of brewers, of bakers, or any other separate class of
men. What right has the landed interest to a distinct representation
from the general interest of the nation? The only use to be made of its
power is to ward off the taxes from itself, and to throw the burden upon
such articles of consumption by which itself would be least affected.
I proceed to what is called the crown. It signifies a nominal office of
a million sterling a year, the business of which consists in receiving
the money. Whether the person be wise or foolish, sane or insane, a
native or a foreigner, matters not. The hazard to which this office is
exposed in all countries is not from anything that can happen to the
man, but from what may happen to the nation--the danger of its coming to
its senses.
I shall now turn to the matter of lessening the burden of taxes. The
amount of taxation now levied may be taken in round numbers at
£17,000,000, nine millions of which are appropriated to the payment of
interest on the national debt, and eight millions to the current
expenses of each year.
All circumstances taken together, arising from the French revolution,
from the approaching harmony of the two nations, the abolition of court
intrigue on both sides, and the progress of knowledge in the science of
governing, the annual expenditure might be put back to one million and a
half--half a million each for Navy, Army, and expenses of government.
Three hundred representatives fairly elected are sufficient for all the
purposes to which legislation can apply. They may be divided into two
or three houses, or meet in one, as in France. If an allowance of £500
per annum were made to each representative, the yearly cost would be
£15,000. The expense of the official departments could not reasonably
exceed £425,000. All revenue officers are paid out of the monies they
collect, and therefore are not in this estimation.
Taking one million and a half as a sufficient peace establishment for
all the honest purposes of government, there will remain a surplus of
upwards of six millions out of the present current expenses. How is this
surplus to be disposed of?
The first step would be to abolish the poor rates entirely, and in lieu
thereof to make a remission of taxes to the poor of double the amount of
the present poor rates--_viz._, four millions annually out of the
surplus taxes. This money could be distributed so as to provide £4
annually per head for the support of children of poor families, and to
provide also for the cost of education of over a million children; to
give annuities of £10 each for the aged poor over sixty, and of £6 each
for the poor over fifty; to give donations of £1 each on occasions of
births in poor families, and marriages of the poor; to make allowances
for funeral expenses of persons travelling for work, and dying at a
distance from their friends; and to furnish employment for the casual
poor of the metropolis, where modes of relief are necessary that are not
required in the country.
Of the sum remaining after these deductions, half a million should be
spent in pensioning disbanded soldiers and in increasing the pay of the
soldiers who shall remain. The burdensome house and window tax,
amounting to over half a million annually, should be taken off. There
yet remains over a million surplus, which might be used for special
purposes, or applied to relief of taxation as circumstances require.
For the commutation tax there should be substituted an estate tax
rising from 3d. in the pound on the first £500 to 20s. in the pound on
the twenty-third £1,000. Every thousand beyond the twenty-third would
thus produce no profit but by dividing the estate, and thereby would be
extirpated the overgrown influence arising from the unnatural law of
primogeniture.
Of all nations in Europe there is none so much interested in the French
revolution as England. Enemies for ages, the opportunity now presents
itself of amicably closing the scene and joining their efforts to reform
the rest of Europe. Such an alliance, together with that of Holland,
could propose with effect a general dismantling of all the navies in
Europe, to a certain proportion to be agreed upon. This will save to
France and England at least two million sterling annually to each, and
their relative force would be in the same proportion as it is now.
Peace, which costs nothing, is attended with infinitely more advantage
than any victory with all its expense.
Never did so great an opportunity offer itself to England, and to all
Europe, as is produced by the two revolutions of America and France. By
the former, freedom has a national champion in the western world, and by
the latter in Europe. When another nation shall join France, despotism
and bad government will scarcely dare to appear. The present age will
hereafter merit to be called the Age of Reason, and the present
generation will appear to the future as the Adam of a new world.
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
The Social Contract
Rousseau's "Social Contract" (Contrat Social) is the most
influential treatise on politics written in modern times. As its
title implies, the work is an endeavour to place all government on
the consent, direct or implied, of the governed; how, through the
rearrangement of society, man may, in a sense, return to the law of
nature. "Man is born free, and yet is everywhere in chains."
Logically, the "Social Contract" is full of gaping flaws. Like its
author's other books (see vol. vii, p. 176), it is an outpouring of
the heart very imperfectly regulated by a brilliant but eccentric
brain. As a political essay it is a tissue of fantastic arguments,
based on unreal hypotheses. But it set men's minds on fire; it was
the literary inspiration of one of the most tremendous events in
history, and those who would comprehend the French Revolution can
unravel many of its perplexities by studying the "Social Contract."
After its publication Rousseau had to fly to England, where he
showed marked symptoms of insanity.
_The Terms of the Contract_
My object is to discover whether, in civil polity, there is any
legitimate and definite canon of government, taking men as they are, and
laws as they might be. In this enquiry I shall uniformly try to
reconcile that which is permitted by right with that which is prescribed
by interest so as to avoid the clash of justice with utility.
Man is born free, and yet is everywhere in fetters. He is governed,
obliged to obey laws. What is it that legitimises the subjection of men
to government? I think I can solve the problem.
It is not merely a matter of force; force is only the power of the
strongest, and must yield when a greater strength arises; there is here
no question of right, but simply of might. But social order is a sacred
right that serves as a base for all others. This right, however, does
not arise from nature; it is founded, therefore, upon conventions. It is
necessary, then, to know what these conventions are.
The explanation of social order is not to be found in the family tie,
since, when a child grows up it escapes from tutelage; the parents'
right to exercise authority is only temporary. Nor can government be
based on servitude. An individual man may sell his liberty to another
for sustenance; but a nation cannot sell its liberty--it does not
receive sustenance from its ruler, but on the contrary sustains him. A
bargain in which one party gains everything and the other loses
everything is plainly no bargain at all, and no claim of right can be
founded on it. But even supposing that a people could thus give up its
liberty to a ruler, it must be a people before it does so. The gift is a
civil act, which pre-supposes a public deliberation. Before, then, we
examine the act by which a people chooses a king, it would be well to
examine the act by which a people becomes a people; for this act, which
necessarily precedes the other, must be the true foundation of society.
Let it be assumed that the obstacles which prejudice the conservation of
man in a state of nature have prevailed by their resistance over the
forces which each individual is able to employ to keep himself in that
state. The primitive condition can then no longer exist; mankind must
change it or perish.
The problem with which men are confronted under these circumstances may
be stated as follows--"To find a form of association that defends and
protects with all the common force the person and property of each
partner, and by which each partner, uniting himself with all the rest,
nevertheless obeys only himself, and remains as free as heretofore."
This is the fundamental problem to which the Social Contract affords a
solution.
The clauses of this contract are determined by the nature of the act in
such a manner that the least modification renders them of no effect; so
that, even when they have not been formally stated, they are everywhere
the same, everywhere tacitly acknowledged; and if the compact is
violated, everyone returns forthwith to his natural liberty.
The essence of the pact is the total and unreserved alienation by each
partner of all his rights to the community as a whole. No individual can
retain any rights that are not possessed equally by all other
individuals without the contract being thereby violated. Again, each
partner, by yielding his rights to the community, yields them to no
individual, and thus in his relations with individuals he regains all
the rights he has sacrificed.
The compact, therefore, may be reduced to the following terms--"each of
us places in common his person and all his power under the supreme
direction of the general will; and we receive each member as an
indivisible part of the whole."
By this act is created a moral and collective body, composed of as many
members as the society has voices, receiving from this same act its
unity, its common "I," its life, and its will. This body is the
Republic, called by its members the state, the state when passive, the
sovereign when active, a power in its relations with similar bodies. The
partners are collectively called the people; they are citizens, as
participants in the sovereign authority, and subjects as under
obligation to the laws of the state.
The sovereign, then, is the general will; and each individual finds
himself engaged in a double relationship--as a member of the sovereign.
To the general will each partner must, by the terms of the contract,
submit himself, without respect to his private inclinations. If he
refuses to submit, the sovereign will compel him to do so; which is as
much as to say, that it will force him to be free; for in the supremacy
of the general will lies the only guarantee to each citizen of freedom
from personal dependence.
By passing, through the compact, from the state of nature to the civil
state, man substitutes justice for instinct in his conduct, and gives to
his actions a morality of which they were formerly devoid. What man
loses by the contract is his natural liberty, and an illimitable right
to all that tempts him and that he can obtain; what he gains is civil
liberty, and a right of secure property in all that he possesses.
I shall conclude this chapter with a remark which should serve as a
basis for the whole social system; it is that in place of destroying
natural liberty, the fundamental pact substitutes a moral and legitimate
equality for the natural physical inequality between men, and that,
while men may be unequal in strength and talent, they are all made equal
by convention and right.
_The Sovereign and the Laws_
The first and most important consequence of the principles above
established is that only the general will can direct the forces of the
state towards the aim of its institutions, which is the common good; for
if the antagonism of particular interests has rendered necessary the
establishment of political societies, it is the accord of these
interests that has rendered such societies possible.
I maintain, then, that sovereignty, being the exercise of the general
will, cannot be alienated, and that the sovereign, which is simply a
collective being, cannot be represented save by itself; it may transfer
its power, but not its will.
For the same reason that sovereignty is inalienable, it is indivisible.
For the will is either general or it is not. If it is general, it is,
when declared, an act of the people, and becomes law; if it is not
general, it is, when declared, merely an act of a particular person or
persons, not of the sovereign.
The general will is infallible; but the deliberations of the people are
not necessarily so. The people may be, and often are, deceived.
Particular interests may gain an advantage over general interests, and
in that case the rival particular interests should be allowed to destroy
each other, so that the true general interest may prevail. In order to
secure the clear expression of the general will, there should be no
parties or groups within the state; if such groups exist, they should be
multiplied in number, so that no one party should get the upper hand.
While, under the contract, each person alienates his power, his goods,
and his liberty, he only alienates so much of these as are of concern to
the community; but it belongs to the sovereign to determine what is of
concern to the community and what is not.
Whatsoever services a citizen owes to the state, he owes them directly
the sovereign demands them; but the sovereign, on its part, must not
charge its citizens with any obligations useless to the community; for,
under the law of reason, nothing is done without cause, any more than
under the law of nature. The general will, let it be repeated, tends
always to public utility, and is intrinsically incapable of demanding
services not useful to the public.
A law is an expression of a general will, and must be general in its
terms and import. The sovereign cannot legislate for part of the
individuals composing the state, for if it did so the general will would
enter into a particular relation with particular people, and that is
contrary to its nature. The law may thus confer privileges, but must not
name the persons to whom the privileges are to belong. It may establish
a royal government, but must not nominate a king. Any function relating
to an individual object does not appertain to the legislative power. As
a popular assembly is not always enlightened, though the general will
when properly ascertained, must be right--the service of a wise
legislator is necessary to draw up laws with the sovereign's approval.
The legislator, if he be truly wise, will not begin by writing down
laws very good in the abstract, but will first look about to see whether
the people for whom he intends them is capable of upholding them. He
must bear in mind many considerations--the situation of the country--the
nature of the soil--the density of the population--the national history,
occupations, and aptitudes.
Among these considerations one of the most important is the area of the
state. As nature has given limits to the stature of a normal man, beyond
she makes only giants or dwarfs, there are also limits beyond which a
state is, in the one direction, too large to be well-governed, and, in
the other, too small to maintain itself. There is in every body politic
a maximum of force which cannot be exceeded, and from which the state
often falls away by the process of enlarging itself. The further the
social bond is extended, the slacker it becomes; and, in general, a
small state is proportionately stronger than a large one.
It is true that a state must have a certain breadth of base for the sake
of solidity, and in order to resist violent shocks from without. But, on
the other hand, administration becomes more troublesome with distance.
It increases in burdensomeness, moreover, with the multiplication of
degrees. Each town, district, and province, has its administration, for
which the people must pay. Finally, overwhelming everything, is the
remote central administration. Again the government in a large state has
less vigour and swiftness than in a smaller one; the people have less
affection for their chiefs, their country, and for each other--since
they are, for the most part, strangers to each other. Uniform laws are
not suitable for diverse provinces. Yet diverse laws among people
belonging to the same state, breed weakness and confusion, for a healthy
and well-knit constitution, in brief, it is wiser to count upon the
vigour that is born of good government than upon the resources supplied
by greatness of territory.
The greatest good of all, which should be the aim of every system of
legislation, may, on investigation, be reduced to two main objects,
_liberty_ and _equality_: liberty, because all dependence of individuals
on other individuals is so much force taken away from the body of the
state; equality, because without it liberty cannot exist.
But these general objects of every good institution should be regulated
in every country in accord with its situation and the character of its
inhabitants. Nations with rich territories, for example, should be led
to devote themselves to agriculture; manufacturing industry should be
left to sterile lands. That which renders the constitution of the state
genuinely solid and endurable is the judicious adaptation of laws to
natural conditions. A conflict between the two tends to destruction; but
when the laws are in sympathy with the natural conditions, when they
keep in touch with them, and improve them, the state should prosper.
_The Government_
Every free action has two causes which concur to produce it: one of them
the will that determines upon the act, the other the power that performs
it. In the political body, one must distinguish between these two--the
legislative power and the executive power. The executive power cannot
belong to the sovereign, inasmuch as executive acts are particular acts,
aimed at individuals, and therefore, as already explained, outside the
sovereign's sphere. Public force, then, requires an agent to apply it,
according to the direction of the general will. This is the government,
erroneously confounded with the sovereign, of which it is only the
minister. It is an intermediary body, established between subject and
sovereign for their mutual correspondence, charged with the execution of
the laws and the maintenance of civil and political liberty.
The magistrates who form the government may be numerous, or may be few;
and, generally speaking, the fewer the magistrates the stronger the
government. A magistrate has three wills: his personal will, his will as
one of the governors, and his will as a member of the sovereign. The
last named is the weakest, the first named the most powerful. If there
is only one governor, the two stronger wills are concentrated in one
man; with a few governors, they are concentrated in few men; when the
government is in the hands of all the citizens, the second will is
obliterated, and the first widely distributed, and the government is
consequently weak. On the other hand, where there are many governors,
the government will be more readily kept in correspondence with the
general will. The duty of the legislator is to hit the happy medium at
which the government, while not failing in strength, is yet properly
submissive to the sovereign.
The sovereign may, in the first place, entrust the government to the
whole people, or the greater part of them; this form is called
democracy. Or it may be placed in the hands of a minority, in which case
it is called the aristocracy. Or it may be concentrated in the hands of
a single magistrate, from whom all the others derive their power; this
is called monarchy.
It may be urged, on behalf of democracy, that those who make the laws
know better than anybody how they should be interpreted and
administered. But it is not right that the makers of the laws should
execute them, nor that the main body of the people should turn its
attention from general views to particular objects. Nothing is more
dangerous than the influence of private interests on public affairs. A
true democracy, in the rigorous sense of the term, never has existed and
never will. A people composed of gods would govern itself
democratically. A government so perfect is unsuited to men.
There are three forms of aristocracy: natural, elective, and hereditary.
The first is only adapted to simple people; the third is the worst of
all governments; the second is the best of all. By the elective method,
probity, sagacity, experience, and all other sources of preference and
public esteem afford guarantees that the community will be wisely
governed.
The first defect of monarchy is that it is to the interests of the
monarch to keep the people in a state of misery and weakness, so that
they may be unable to resist his power. Another is that under a monarchy
the posts of honour are occupied by bunglers and rascals who win their
promotion by petty court intrigue. Again, an elective monarchy is a
cause of disorder whenever a king dies; and a hereditary monarchy leaves
the character of the king to chance, which, as everything tends to
deprive of justice and reason a man trained to supreme rule, generally
goes astray.
The question as to whether there is any sign by which we can tell
whether a people is well or ill governed readily admits of a solution.
What is the surest token of the preservation and prosperity of a
political community? It is to be found in the population. Other things
being equal, the government under which, without extrinsic devices,
without naturalisation, without colonies, the citizens increase and
multiply, is infallibly the best. Calculators, it is therefore your
affair; count, measure, compare.
As particular wills strive unceasingly against the general will, so the
government makes a continual attack upon the sovereign. If the
government is able, by its efforts, to usurp the sovereignty, then the
social contract is broken; the citizens, who have by right been thereby
restored to their natural liberty, may be forced to obey the usurper,
but are under no other obligation to do so.
Since the sovereign has no power except its legislative authority, it
only acts by laws; and since the laws are simply the authentic acts of
the general will, the sovereign cannot act save when the people are
assembled. It is essential that there should be definitely fixed
periodic assemblies of the people that cannot be abolished or delayed,
so that on the appointed day the people would be legitimately convoked
by the law, without need of any formal summons.
I may be asked, how are the citizens of a large state, composed of many
communities, to hold frequent meetings? I reply that it is useless to
quote the disadvantages of large states to one who considers that all
states ought to be small. But how are small states to defend themselves
against large ones? By confederation, after the manner of the Greek and
ancient times, and the Dutch and Swiss in times more modern.
But between the sovereign authority and arbitrary government there is
sometimes introduced a middle power of which I ought to speak. As soon
as the public service ceases to be the main interest of the citizens, as
soon as they prefer to serve their purses rather than themselves, the
state is nearing its ruin. The weakening of patriotism, the activity of
private interests, the immensity of states, conquests, and the abuse of
government, have led to the device of deputies or representatives of the
people in the national assemblies. But sovereignty cannot be
represented, even as it cannot be alienated; it consists essentially in
the general will, and the will is not ascertainable by representation;
it is either itself, or something else; there is no middle course. A law
not ratified by the people in person is no law at all. The English
people believes itself free, but it greatly deceives itself; it is not
so, except during the election of members of parliament. As soon as they
are elected, it is enslaved, it is nothing.
How are we to conceive the act by which the government is instituted?
The first process is the determination of the sovereign, that the
government shall assume such and such a form; this is the establishment
of a law. The second process is the nomination by the people of those to
whom the government is to be entrusted; this is not a law, but a
particular act, a function of government.
How, then, can we have an act of government before the government
exists? How can the people, who are only sovereigns or subjects, become
magistrates under certain circumstances? Here we discover one of those
astonishing properties of the body politic, by which it reconciles
operations apparently contradictory; for the process is accomplished by
a sudden conversion from sovereignty to democracy, so that, with no
sensible change, and simply by a new relation of all to all, the
citizens become magistrates, pass from general to partiacts, and from
the law to its execution. In this manner the English House of Commons
resolves itself into committee, and thus becomes a simple commission of
the sovereign court which it was a moment before; afterwards reporting
to itself, as House of Commons, as to its proceedings in the form of a
committee.
It is a logical sequence of the Social Contract that in the assemblies
of the people the voice of the majority prevails. The only law requiring
unanimity is the contract itself. But how can a man be free and at the
same time compelled to submit to laws to which he has not consented? I
reply that when a law is proposed in the popular assembly, the question
put is not precisely whether the citizens approve or disapprove of it,
but whether it conforms or not to the general will. The minority, then,
simply have it proved to them that they estimated the general will
wrongly. Once it is declared, they are as citizens participants in it,
and as subjects they must obey it.
_Civil Religion_
Religion, in its relation to society, can be divided into two kinds--the
religion of the man, and that of the citizen. The first, without
temples, without altars, without rites, limited to the inner and private
worship of the Supreme God, and to the eternal duties of morality, is
the pure and simple religion of the Evangel, the true theism. The other,
established in one country only, gives that country its own gods, its
own tutelary patrons; it has its own dogmas and ritual, and all
foreigners are deemed to be infidels. Such were all the religions of the
primitive peoples.
There is a third and more eccentric kind of religion, which, giving men
two legislations, two chiefs, two countries, imposes upon them
contradictory duties, and forbids them from being at the same time
devotees and patriots. Such is the religion of the Llamas; such is the
religion of the Japanese; such is Roman Christianity.
Politically considered, all these kinds have their defects. The third is
so manifestly bad that one need waste no time upon it. That which breaks
social unity is worthless. The second is good, in that it inculcates
patriotism, makes it a religious duty to serve the state. But it is
founded on error and falsehood, and renders its adherents superstitious,
intolerant, and cruel. The first, the religion of man, or Christianity,
is a sublime and true religion by which men, children of one god,
acknowledge each other as brethren, and the society that unites them
does not dissolve even with death. But Christianity of itself is not
calculated to strengthen a nation; it teaches submissiveness, and
discourages patriotic pride.
Now it is of prime importance to the state that each citizen should have
a religion which teaches him to love his duty; but the state is only
concerned with religion so far as it teaches morality and the duty of
man towards his neighbour. Beyond that, the sovereign has nothing to do
with a man's religious opinions.
There should, therefore, be a purely civil profession of faith, the
articles of which are to be fixed by the sovereign, not precisely as
religious dogmas, but as sentiments of sociability, without which it is
impossible for a man to be a good citizen or a faithful subject. Without
being able to compel anybody to believe the articles, the sovereign
could banish from the state anybody who did not believe them; it can
banish him, not as impious, but as unsociable, as incapable of sincerely
loving laws and justice. If anyone, having publicly accepted these
dogmas, should act as if he did not believe them, he should be punished
with death; he would have committed the greatest of crimes, that of
lying against the laws.
The dogmas of the civil religion should be simple, few, precise, without
explanations or commentaries. The existence of a powerful, wise,
benevolent, provident, and bountiful Deity, the life to come, the
happiness of the just, the punishment of the wicked, the sanctity of the
social contract, and the laws; these are the positive dogmas. As for
negative dogmas, I limit them to one; I would have every good citizen
forswear intolerance in religion.
After having laid down the true principles of political rights, and
sought to place the state upon its proper basis, it should remain to
support it by its external relations--international law, commerce, and
so on. But this forms a new aim too vast for my limited view; I have had
to fix my eyes on objects nearer at hand.
ADAM SMITH
Wealth of Nations
Adam Smith, greatest of discoverers in the science of Political
Economy, was born at Kirkcaldy, Scotland, on June 5, 1723, after
the death of his father, who had been Comptroller of Customs at
that port. He was educated at Kirkcaldy Grammar School, then at
Glasgow University, and finally at Balliol College, Oxford, where
he studied for seven years. From 1748 he resided in Edinburgh,
where he made a close friendship with David Hume, and gave a course
of lectures on literature; in 1751 he became professor of Logic in
Glasgow University, and in the following year professor of Moral
Philosophy. A philosophical treatise entitled "A Theory of Moral
Sentiments," published in 1759, has no longer any interest; but it
was during his thirteen years' residence in Glasgow that Smith
arrived at the principles formulated in his immortal "Inquiry into
the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations." He left Glasgow in
1763 to become the tutor of the youthful Duke of Buccleuch, with
whom he lived at Toulouse, Geneva and Paris, studying the politics
and economics of France on the eve of the Revolution. In 1766 Adam
Smith retired to Kirkcaldy, with an annuity from the Buccleuch
family; devoted himself to his life's work; and in 1776 published
the "Wealth of Nations," which at once achieved a permanent
reputation. The author was appointed, in 1778, Commissioner of
Customs for Scotland, and died on July 17, 1790. Adam Smith was a
man of vast learning and of great simplicity and kindliness of
character. His reasonings have had vast influence not only on the
science of Economics but also on practical politics; his powerful
defence of free trade, and his indictment of the East India Company
have especially modified the history of his country.
_I.--Labour and Its Produce_
The division of labour has been the chief cause of improvement in the
productiveness of labour. For instance, the making of a single pin
involves eighteen separate operations, which are entrusted to eighteen
separate workmen; and the result is, that whereas one man working alone
could only make perhaps twenty pins in a day, several men working
together, on the principle of division of labour, can make several
thousands of pins per man in one day. Division of labour, in a highly
developed state of society, is carried into almost every practical art;
and its great benefits depend upon the increase of dexterity in each
workman, upon the saving of time otherwise lost in passing from one kind
of work to another, and finally, upon the use of many labour-saving
machines, which is made possible by the division of labour.
This division of labour, from which so many advantages are derived, is
not originally the effect of any human wisdom which foresees and intends
the opulence to which it gives rise; it is rather the gradual result of
the propensity, in human nature, to barter and exchange one thing for
another. The power of exchanging their respective produce makes it
possible for one man to produce only bread, and for another to produce
only clothing. The extent to which the division of labour can be carried
is therefore limited by the extent of the market. There are some sorts
of industry, even of the lowest kind, which can be carried on nowhere
but in a great town; a porter, for example, cannot find employment and
subsistence in a village. In the highlands of Scotland every farmer must
be butcher, baker, and brewer for his own family.
As water-carriage opens a more extensive market to every kind of
industry than is afforded by land-carriage, it is on the sea coast and
on the banks of navigable rivers, that industry begins to subdivide and
improve itself, and it is riot till long afterwards that these
improvements extend to the inland parts. It was thus that the earliest
civilised nations were grouped round the coasts of the Mediterranean
Sea; and the extent and easiness of its inland navigation was probably
the chief cause of the early improvement of Egypt.
As soon as the division of labour is well established, every man
becomes in some measure a merchant, and the society becomes a commercial
society; and the continual process of exchange leads inevitably to the
origin of money. In the absence of money or a general medium of
exchange, society would be restricted to the cumbersome method of
barter. Every man therefore would early endeavour to keep by him,
besides the produce of his own industry, a certain quantity of some
commodity such as other people will be likely to take in exchange for
the produce of their particular industries. Cattle, for example, have
been widely used for this purpose in primitive societies, and Homer
speaks of a suit of armour costing a hundred oxen.
But the durability of metals, as well as the facility with which they
can be subdivided, has led to their employment, in all countries, as the
means of exchange; and in order to obviate the necessity of weighing
portions of the metals at every purchase, as well as to prevent fraud,
it has been found necessary to affix a public stamp upon certain
quantities of the metals commonly used to purchase goods. The value of
commodities thus comes to be expressed in terms of coinage.
But labour is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all
commodities; the value of any commodity to the person who possesses it
is equal to the quantity of labour which it enables him to purchase or
to command. What is bought with money or with goods is purchased by
labour as much as what we acquire by the toil of our own body. "Labour
alone, never varying in its own value, is alone the ultimate and real
standard by which the value of all commodities can at all times and in
all places be estimated and compared. It is their real price; money is
their nominal price only. Equal quantities of labour will at distant
times be purchased more nearly with equal quantities of corn, the
subsistence of the labourer, than with equal quantities of gold, or of
any other commodity."
Several elements enter into the price of commodities. In a nation of
hunters, if it costs twice the labour to kill a beaver which it costs to
kill a deer, one beaver will be worth two deer. But if the one kind of
labour be more severe than the other, some allowance will naturally be
made for this superior hardship; and thirdly, if one kind of labour
requires an uncommon degree of dexterity and ingenuity, it will command
a higher value than that which would be due to the time employed in it.
So far, the whole produce of labour belongs to the labourer.
But as soon as stock has accumulated in the hands of particular persons,
some of them will employ it in setting to work industrious workmen, whom
they will supply with materials and subsistence, in order to make a
profit by the sale of their work. The profits of stock are not to be
regarded as the wages of a particular sort of labour, the labour of
inspection and direction; for they are regulated altogether by the value
of the stock employed, and are greater or smaller in proportion to the
extent of this stock.
There is in every society or neighbourhood an ordinary or average rate
both of wages and profit in every different employment of labour and
stock; and this rate is regulated partly by the general circumstances of
the society, its richness or poverty, and partly by the peculiar nature
of each employment. There is also in every society or neighbourhood an
ordinary or average rate of rent, which is regulated too by the general
circumstances of the society or neighbourhood in which the land is
situated, and partly by the natural or improved fertility of the land.
What we may call the natural price of any commodity depends upon these
natural rates of wages, profit and rent, at the place where it is
produced. But its market price may be above, below, or identical with
its natural price, and depends upon the proportion between the supply
and the demand.
_II.--Nature, Accumulation, and Employment of Stock_
When the stock which a man possesses is no more than sufficient to
maintain him for a few days or weeks, he seldom thinks of deriving any
revenue from it; but when he possesses enough to maintain him for months
or years, he endeavours to derive a revenue from the greater part of it.
The part of his stock from which he expects to derive revenue is called
his capital.
There are two ways in which capital may be employed so as to yield a
profit to its employer. First, it may be employed in raising,
manufacturing, or purchasing goods, and selling them again with a
profit; this is circulating capital. Secondly, it may be employed in the
improvement of land, or in the purchase of machines and instruments; and
this capital, which yields a profit from objects which do not change
masters, is called fixed capital.
The general stock of any country or society is the same as that of all
its inhabitants or members, and is therefore divided into the same three
portions, each of which has a different function. The first is the
portion which is reserved for immediate consumption, and so affords no
revenue or profit. The second is the fixed capital, which consists of
(_a_) all useful machines and instruments of trade which
facilitate and abridge labour;
(_b_) all profitable buildings, which procure a revenue,
not only to their owner, but also to the person
who rents them, such as shops, warehouses,
farmhouses, factories, &c.;
(_c_) the improvements of land, and all that has been
laid out in clearing, draining, enclosing, manuring,
and reducing it into the condition most proper for
culture; and
(_d_) the acquired and useful abilities of all the inhabitants
or members of the society, for the acquisition
of such talents, by the maintenance of the
learner during his education or apprenticeship,
costs a real expense, which is a capital fixed in
his person.
The third and last of the three portions into which the general stock of
the society naturally divides itself is the circulating capital, which
affords a revenue only by changing masters. It includes
(_a_) all the money by means of which all the other three
are circulated and distributed to their proper consumers;
(_b_) all the stock of provisions which are in the possession
of the butcher, farmer, corn-merchant, &c.,
and from the sale of which they expect to derive
a profit;
(_c_) all the materials, whether altogether rude, or more
or less manufactured, for clothes, furniture and
building, which are not yet made up into any of
these shapes, but remain in the hands of the growers,
manufacturers and merchants; and
(_d_) all the work which is made up and completed, but
is not yet disposed of to the proper consumers.
The substitution of paper in the place of gold and silver money replaces
a very expensive instrument of commerce by one much less costly, and
sometimes equally convenient. Circulation comes to be carried on by a
new wheel, which it costs less both to erect and to maintain than the
old one. The effect of the issue of large quantities of bank-notes in
any country is to send abroad the gold, which is no longer needed at
home, in order that it may seek profitable employment. It is not sent
abroad for nothing, but is exchanged for foreign goods of various kinds
in such a way as to add to the revenue and profits of the country from
which it is sent; unless, indeed, it is spent abroad on such goods as
are likely to be consumed by idle people who produce nothing.
_III.--The Progress of Opulence in Different Nations_
The greatest commerce of every civilised society is that carried on
between the inhabitants of the town and those of the country. It
consists in the exchange of rude for manufactured produce, either
immediately, or by the intervention of money, or of some sort of paper
which represents money. The country supplies the town with the means of
subsistence, and the materials for manufacture. The town repays this
supply by sending back a part of the manufactured produce to the
inhabitants of the country. The town, in which there neither is nor can
be any reproduction of substances, may very properly be said to gain its
whole subsistence from the country. And in how great a degree the
country is benefited by the commerce of the town may be seen from a
comparison of the cultivation of the lands in the neighbourhood of any
considerable town with that of those which He at some distance from it.
As subsistence is, in the nature of things, prior to conveniency and
luxury, so the rural industries which procure the former must be prior
to the urban industries which minister to the latter. The greater part
of the capital of every growing society is therefore first directed to
agriculture, afterwards to manufactures, and last of all to foreign
commerce. But this natural order of things has, in all the modern states
of Europe, been in many respects entirely inverted. The foreign commerce
of some of their cities has given rise to their finer manufactures, and
manufactures and foreign commerce together have given birth to the
principal improvements of agriculture. The manners and customs which the
nature of their original government introduced, and which remained after
that government was greatly altered, necessarily forced them into this
unnatural and retrograde order.
In the ancient state of Europe, after the fall of the Roman Empire,
agriculture was greatly discouraged by several causes. The rapine and
violence which the barbarians exercised against the ancient inhabitants
interrupted the commerce between the towns and the country; the towns
were deserted and the country was left uncultivated. The western
provinces of Europe sank into the lowest state of poverty, and the land,
which was mostly uncultivated, was engrossed by a few great proprietors.
These lands might in the natural course of events have been soon divided
again, and broken into small parcels by succession or by alienation; but
the law of primogeniture hindered their division by succession, and the
introduction of entails prevented their being divided by alienation.
These hindrances to the division and consequently to the cultivation of
the land were due to the fact that land was considered as the means not
of subsistence merely, but of power and protection. In those disorderly
times, every great landlord was a sort of petty prince.
Unfortunately these laws of primogeniture and entail have continued long
after the circumstances which gave rise to them have disappeared.
Unfortunately, because it seldom happens that a great landlord is a
great improver. To improve land with profit requires an exact attention
to small savings and small gains, of which a man born to a great fortune
is seldom capable. And if little improvement was to be expected from the
great proprietors, still less was to be hoped for from those who
occupied the land under them. In the ancient state of Europe, the
occupiers of land were all tenants at will, and practically slaves. To
these succeeded a kind of farmers known at present in France by the name
of "metayers," whose produce was divided equally between the proprietor
and the farmer, after setting aside what was judged necessary for
keeping up the stock, which still belonged to the landlord. To these, in
turn, succeeded, though by very slow degrees, farmers properly so
called, who cultivated the land with their own stock, paying a fixed
rent to the landlord, and enjoying a certain degree of security of
tenure. And every improvement in the position of the actual cultivation
of the soil is attended by a corresponding improvement of the land and
of its cultivation.
After the fall of the Roman empire the inhabitants of cities and towns
were not more favoured than those of the country. The towns were
inhabited chiefly by tradesmen and mechanics, who were in those days of
servile, or nearly servile condition. Yet the townsmen arrived at
liberty and independence much earlier than the country population; their
towns became "free burghs," and were erected into commonalities or
corporations, with the privilege of having magistrates and a town
council of their own, of making by-laws for their own government and of
building walls for their own defence. Order and good government, and the
liberty and security of individuals, were thus established in cities at
a time when the occupiers of land in the country were exposed to every
sort of violence.
The increase and riches of commercial and manufacturing towns
thenceforward contributed to the improvement and cultivation of the
countries to which they belonged, in three different ways. First, by
affording a great and ready market for the rude produce of the country.
Secondly, the wealth acquired by the inhabitants of cities was employed
in purchasing uncultivated lands and in bringing them under cultivation;
for merchants are ambitious of becoming country gentlemen, and when they
do so, are generally the best of all improvers. And lastly, commerce and
manufactures gradually introduced order and good government, and with
them the liberty and security of individuals, among the inhabitants of
the country.
_IV.--The Mercantile System_
From the mistaken theory that wealth consists in money, or in gold and
silver, there has arisen an erroneous and harmful system of political
economy and of legislation in the supposed interests of manufacture, of
commerce, and of the wealth of nations. A rich country is supposed to be
a country abounding in money; and all the nations of Europe have
consequently studied, though to little purpose, every possible means of
accumulating gold and silver in their respective countries. For example,
they have at times forbidden, or hindered by heavy duties, the export of
these metals. But all these attempts are vain; for on the one hand, when
the quantity of gold and silver imported into any country exceeds the
effectual demand, no vigilance can prevent their exportation; and on the
other hand, if gold and silver should fall short in a country, there are
more expedients for supplying their place than that of any other
commodity. The real inconvenience which is commonly called "scarcity of
money" is not a shortness in the medium of exchange, but is a weakening
and diminution of credit, due to over-trading. Money is part of the
national capital, but only a small part and always the most unprofitable
part of it.
The principle of the "commercial system" or "mercantile system" is, that
wealth consists in money, or in gold and silver. It is an utterly untrue
principle. But once it had been established in general belief that
wealth consists in gold and silver, and that these metals can be brought
into a country which has no mines only by the "balance of trade," that
is to say, by exporting to a greater value than it imports, it
necessarily became the great object of political economy to diminish as
much as possible the importation of foreign goods for home consumption,
and to increase as much as possible the exportation of the produce of
domestic industry. Its two great engines for enriching the country,
therefore, were restraints upon importation and encouragements to
exportation.
The restraints upon importation were of two kinds: first, restraints
upon the importation of such foreign goods for home consumption as could
be produced at home, from whatever country they were imported; and
secondly, restraints upon the importation of goods of almost all kinds
from those particular countries with which the balance of trade was
supposed to be disadvantageous. These different restraints consisted
sometimes in high duties, and sometimes in absolute prohibitions.
Exportation was encouraged sometimes by drawbacks, sometimes by
bounties, sometimes by advantageous treaties of commerce with sovereign
states, and sometimes by the establishment of colonies in distant
countries. The above two restraints, and these four encouragements to
exportation, constitute the six principal means by which the commercial
or mercantile system proposes to increase the quantity of gold and
silver in any country by turning the balance of trade in its favour.
The entire system, in all its developments, is a fallacious and an evil
one. It is not difficult to determine who have been the contrivers of
this whole mercantile system: not the consumers, whose interest has been
entirely neglected; but the producers, and especially the merchants and
manufacturers, whose interest has been so carefully attended to. It
remains to be said, also, that the "agricultural system," which
represents the produce of land as the sole source of the revenue and
wealth of every country, and as therefore justifying a special
protection of it, is as fallacious and as harmful as the other.
_V.--The Revenue of the Sovereign or Commonwealth_
The first duty of the sovereign, that of protecting the society from the
violence and invasion of other independent societies, can be performed
only by means of a military force. This may be effected either by
obliging all the citizens of the military age, or a certain number of
them, to join in some measure the trade of a soldier to whatever other
trade or profession they may happen to carry on; or by maintaining a
certain number of citizens in the constant practice of military
exercises, thus rendering the trade of a soldier a particular trade,
separate from all others. In the former case a militia is formed, in the
latter a standing army; and of the two, the second is by far the more
powerful, as it is also the more expensive.
The second duty of the sovereign, that of protecting, as far as
possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression
of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact
administration of justice, requires an increasing expenditure
corresponding to the advance and development of the society.
Public works and public institutions are a third cause of expenditure on
the part of sovereign or commonwealth; and have two principal
objects--that of facilitating the commerce of the society and that of
promoting the instruction of the people. Roads, bridges, canals, are
examples of the former; schools, universities, established Churches are
examples of the latter. And among other expenses of the sovereign or
commonwealth we must include the expenses of supporting the dignity of
the sovereign.
The funds or sources of revenue which peculiarly belong to the sovereign
or commonwealth consist either in stock or in land; but being quite
insufficient to meet the public expenditure they are supplemented by
taxation. Every tax is finally paid from rent, profit or wages, or from
all of them indifferently; and the chief principle to be observed in
taxation is, that the subjects of the State ought to contribute towards
the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to
their respective abilities--that is, in proportion to the revenue which
they respectively enjoy under the protection of the State. The tax which
each individual is bound to pay ought to be certain and not arbitrary;
every tax ought to be levied at the time or in the manner in which it is
most likely to be convenient for the contributor to pay it; and finally,
every tax ought to be so contrived as to take out and to keep out of the
pockets of the people as little as possible over and above what it
brings into the public treasury of the State.
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