Chapter I: Part 1

=CRITIQUES AND ADDRESSES.=

BY

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY, LL.D., F.R.S.

1873.

PREFACE.

The "Critiques and Addresses" gathered together in this volume, like the "Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews," published three years ago, deal chiefly with educational, scientific, and philosophical subjects; and, in fact, indicate the high-water mark of the various tides of occupation by which I have been carried along since the beginning of the year 1870.

In the end of that year, a confidence in my powers of work, which, unfortunately, has not been justified by events, led me to allow myself to be brought forward as a candidate for a seat on the London School Board. Thanks to the energy of my supporters I was elected, and took my share in the work of that body during the critical first year of its existence. Then my health gave way, and I was obliged to resign my place among colleagues whose large practical knowledge of the business of primary education, and whose self-sacrificing zeal in the discharge of the onerous and thankless duties thrown upon them by the Legislature, made it a pleasure to work with them, even though my position was usually that of a member of the minority.

I mention these circumstances in order to account for (I had almost said to apologize for) the existence of the two papers which head the present series, and which are more or less political, both in the lower and in the higher senses of that word.

The question of the expediency of any form of State Education is, in fact, a question of those higher politics which lie above the region in which Tories, Whigs, and Radicals "delight to bark and bite." In discussing it in my address on "Administrative Nihilism," I found myself, to my profound regret, led to diverge very widely (though even more perhaps in seeming than in reality) from the opinions of a man of genius to whom I am bound by the twofold tie of the respect due to a profound philosopher and the affection given to a very old friend. But had I no other means of knowing the fact, the kindly geniality of Mr. Herbert Spencer's reply[1] assures me that the tie to which I refer will bear a much heavier strain than I have put, or ever intend to put, upon it, and I rather rejoice that I have been the means of calling forth so vigorous a piece of argumentative writing. Nor is this disinterested joy at an attack upon myself diminished by the circumstance, that, in all humility, but in all sincerity, I think it may be repulsed.

[Footnote 1: "Specialized Administration;" _Fortnightly Review_, December 1871.]

Mr. Spencer complains that I have first misinterpreted, and then miscalled, the doctrine of which he is so able an expositor. It would grieve me very much if I were really open to this charge. But what are the facts? I define this doctrine as follows:--

"Those who hold these views support them by two lines of
argument. They enforce them deductively by arguing from an
assumed axiom, that the State has no right to do anything but
protect its subjects from aggression. The State is simply a
policeman, and its duty, neither more nor less than to prevent
robbery and murder and enforce contracts. It is not to promote
good, nor even to do anything to prevent evil, except by the
enforcement of penalties upon those who have been guilty
of obvious and tangible assaults upon purse or person. And,
according to this view, the proper form of government is
neither a monarchy, an aristocracy, nor a democracy, but an
_astynomocracy_, or police government. On the other hand,
these views are supported _à posteriori_ by an induction from
observation, which professes to show that whatever is done by
a Government beyond these negative limits, is not only sure
to be done badly, but to be done much worse than private
enterprise would have done the same thing."

I was filled with surprised regret when I learned from the conclusion of the article on "Specialized Administration," that this statement is held by Mr. Spencer to be a misinterpretation of his views. Perhaps I ought to be still more sorry to be obliged to declare myself, even now, unable to discover where my misinterpretation lies, or in what respect my presentation of Mr. Spencer's views differs from his own most recent version of them. As the passage cited above shows I have carefully defined the sense in which I use the terms which I employ, and, therefore, I am not greatly concerned to defend the abstract appropriateness of the terms themselves. And when Mr. Spencer maintains the only proper functions of Government to be those which are comprehensible under the description of "Negatively regulative control," I may suggest that the difference between such "Negative Administration" and "Administrative Nihilism," in the sense defined by me, is not easily discernible.

Having, as I hope, relieved myself from the suspicion of having misunderstood or misrepresented Mr. Spencer's views, I might, if I could forget that I am writing a preface, proceed to the discussion of the parallel which he elaborates, with much knowledge and power, between the physiological and the social organisms. But this is not the place for a controversy involving so many technicalities, and I content myself with one remark, namely, that the whole course of modern physiological discovery tends to show, with more and more clearness, that the vascular system, or apparatus for distributing commodities in the animal organism, is eminently under the control of the cerebro-spinal nervous centres--a fact which, unless I am again mistaken, is contrary to one of Mr. Spencer's fundamental assumptions. In the animal organism, Government does meddle with trade, and even goes so far as to tamper a good deal with the currency.

In the same number of the _Fortnightly Review_ as that which contains Mr. Spencer's essay, Miss Helen Taylor assails me--though, I am bound to admit, more in sorrow than in anger--for what she terms, my "New Attack on Toleration." It is I, this time, who may complain of misinterpretation, if the greater part of Miss Taylor's article (with which I entirely sympathise) is supposed to be applicable to my "intolerance." Let us have full-toleration, by all means, upon all questions in which there is room for doubt, or which cannot be distinctly proved to affect the welfare of mankind. But when Miss Taylor has shown what basis exists for criminal legislation, except the clear right of mankind not to tolerate that which is demonstrably contrary to the welfare of society, I will admit that such demonstration ought only to be believed in by the "curates and old women" to whom she refers. Recent events have not weakened the conviction I expressed in a much-abused speech at the London School Board, that Ultramontanism is demonstrably the enemy of society; and must be met with resistance, merely passive if possible, but active if necessary, by "the whole power of the State."

Next in order, it seems proper that I should briefly refer to my friend Mr. Mivart's onslaught upon my criticism of Mr. Darwin's critics, himself among the number, which will be found in this volume. In "Evolution and its Consequences"[1] I am accused of misrepresentation, misquotation, misunderstanding, and numerous other negative and positive literary and scientific sins; and much subtle ingenuity is expended by Mr. Mivart in attempting to extricate himself from the position in which my exposition of the real opinions of Father Suarez has placed him. So much more, in fact, has Mr. Mivart's ingenuity impressed me than any other feature of his reply, that I shall take the liberty of re-stating the main issue between us; and, for the present, leaving that issue alone to the judgment of the public.

[Footnote 1: _Contemporary Review_, January 1872.]

In his book on the "Genesis of Species" Mr. Mivart, after discussing the opinions of sundry Catholic writers of authority, among whom he especially includes St. Augustin, St. Thomas Aquinas, and the Jesuit Suarez, proceeds to say: "It is then evident that ancient and most venerable theological authorities distinctly assert _derivative_ creation, and thus their teachings harmonize with all that modern science can possibly require."[1] By the "derivative creation" of organic forms, Mr. Mivart understands, "that God created them by conferring on the material world the power to evolve them under suitable conditions."

[Footnote 1: Bunsen's "Outlines of the Philosophy of Universal History," vol. i.p. 349. 1854.]

On the contrary, I proved by evidence, which Mr. Mivart does not venture to impugn, that Suarez, in his "Tractatus de Opere sex Dierum," expressly rejects St. Augustin's and St. Thomas' views; that he vehemently advocates the literal interpretation of the account of the creation given in the Book of Genesis; and that he treats with utter scorn the notion that the Almighty could have used the language of that Book, unless He meant it to be taken literally.

Mr. Mivart, therefore, either has read Suarez and has totally misrepresented him--a hypothesis which, I hope I need hardly say, I do not for a moment entertain: or, he has got his information at second hand, and has himself been deceived. But in that case, it is surely an imprudence on his part, to reproach me with having "read Suarez _ad hoc_, and evidently without the guidance of anyone familiar with that author." No doubt, in the matter of guidance, Mr. Mivart has the advantage of me. Nevertheless, the guides who supplied him with his references to Suarez' "Metaphysica," while they left him in ignorance of the existence of the "Tractatus," are guides with whose services it might be better to dispense; leaders who wilfully shut their eyes, being even more liable to lodge one in a ditch, than blind leaders.

At the time when the essay on "Methods and Results of Ethnology" was written, I had not met with a passage in Professor Max Müller's "Last Results of Turanian Researches"[1] which shows so appositely, that the profoundest study of philology leads to conclusions respecting the relation of Ethnology with Philology, similar to those at which I had arrived in approaching the question from the Anatomist's side, that I cannot refrain from quoting it:

[Footnote 1: LONDON, _April_ 1873.]

"Nor should we, in our phonological studies, either expect or
desire more than general hints from physical ethnology. The
proper and rational connection between the two sciences is
that of mutual advice and suggestion, but nothing more. Much
of the confusion of terms and indistinctness of principles,
both in Ethnology and Phonology, are due to the combined
study of these heterogeneous sciences. Ethnological race
and phonological race are not commensurate, except in
ante-historical times, or perhaps at the very dawn of history.
With the migration of tribes, their wars, their colonies,
their conquests and alliances, which, if we may judge from
their effects, must have been much more violent in the
ethnic, than even in the political, period of history, it is
impossible to imagine that race and language should continue
to run parallel. The physiologist should pursue his own
science unconcerned about language."

It is further desirable to remark that the statements in this Essay respecting the forms of Native American crania need rectification. On this point, I refer the reader who is interested in the subject to my paper "On the Form of the Cranium among the Patagonians and the Fuegians" published in the _Journal of Anatomy and Physiology_ for 1868.

If the problem discussed in my address to the British Association in 1870 has not yet received its solution, it is not because the champions of Abiogenesis have been idle, or wanting in confidence. But every new assertion on their side has been met by a counter assertion; and though the public may have been led to believe that so much noise must indicate rapid progress, one way or the other, an impartial critic will admit, with sorrow, that the question has been "marking time" rather than marching. In mere sound, these two processes are not so very different.

CONTENTS.

I.

ADMINISTRATIVE NIHILISM. (An Address delivered to the Members of the Midland Institute, on the 9th of October, 1871, and subsequently published in the _Fortnightly Review_)

II.

THE SCHOOL BOARDS: WHAT THEY CAN DO, AND WHAT THEY MAY DO. (The _Contemporary Review_, 1870)

III.

ON MEDICAL EDUCATION. (An Address to the Students of the Faculty of Medicine in University College, London, 1870)

IV.

YEAST. (The _Contemporary Review_, 1871)

V.

ON THE FORMATION OF COAL. (A Lecture delivered before the Members of the Bradford Philosophical Institution, and subsequently published in the _Contemporary Review_)

VI.

ON CORAL AND CORAL REEFS. (_Good Words_, 1870)

VII.

ON THE METHODS AND RESULTS OF ETHNOLOGY. (The _Fortnightly Review_, 1865)

VIII.

ON SOME FIXED POINTS IN BRITISH ETHNOLOGY. (The _Contemporary Review_, 1871)

IX.

PALAEONTOLOGY AND THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION. (The Presidential Address to the Geological Society, 1870)

X.

MR. DARWIN'S CRITICS. (The _Contemporary Review_, 1871)

XI.

THE GENEALOGY OF ANIMALS. (A Review of Haeckel's "Natürliche Schöpfungs-Geschichte." The _Academy_, 1869)

XII.

BISHOP BERKELEY ON THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION. _(Macmillan's Magazine_, 1871)

CRITIQUES AND ADDRESSES.

I.

ADMINISTRATIVE NIHILISM.

(AN ADDRESS TO THE MEMBERS OF THE MIDLAND INSTITUTE, OCTOBER 9TH, 1871.)

To me, and, as I trust, to the great majority of those whom I address, the great attempt to educate the people of England which has just been set afoot, is one of the most satisfactory and hopeful events in our modern history. But it is impossible, even if it were desirable, to shut our eyes to the fact, that there is a minority, not inconsiderable in numbers, nor deficient in supporters of weight and authority, in whose judgment all this legislation is a step in the wrong direction, false in principle, and consequently sure to produce evil in practice.

The arguments employed by these objectors are of two kinds. The first is what I will venture to term the caste argument; for, if logically carried out, it would end in the separation of the people of this country into castes, as permanent and as sharply defined, if not as numerous, as those of India. It is maintained that the whole fabric of society will be destroyed if the poor, as well as the rich, are educated; that anything like sound and good education will only make them discontented with their station and raise hopes which, in the great majority of cases, will be bitterly disappointed. It is said: There must be hewers of wood and drawers of water, scavengers and coalheavers, day labourers and domestic servants, or the work of society will come to a standstill. But, if you educate and refine everybody, nobody will be content to assume these functions, and all the world will want to be gentlemen and ladies.

One hears this argument most frequently from the representatives of the well-to-do middle class; and, coming from them, it strikes me as peculiarly inconsistent, as the one thing they admire, strive after, and advise their own children to do, is to get on in the world, and, if possible, rise out of the class in which they were born into that above them. Society needs grocers and merchants as much as it needs coalheavers; but if a merchant accumulates wealth and works his way to a baronetcy, or if the son of a greengrocer becomes a lord chancellor, or an archbishop, or, as a successful soldier, wins a peerage, all the world admires them; and looks with pride upon the social system which renders such achievements possible. Nobody suggests that there is anything wrong in _their_ being discontented with _their_ station; or that, in _their_ cases society suffers by men of ability reaching the positions for which nature has fitted them.

But there are better replies than those of the _tu quoque_ sort to the caste argument. In the first place, it is not true that education, as such, unfits men for rough and laborious, or even disgusting, occupations. The life of a sailor is rougher and harder than that of nine landsmen out of ten, and yet, as every ship's captain knows, no sailor was ever the worse for possessing a trained intelligence. The life of a medical practitioner, especially in the country, is harder and more laborious than that of most artisans, and he is constantly obliged to do things which, in point of pleasantness, cannot be ranked above scavengering--yet he always ought to be, and he frequently is, a highly educated man. In the second place, though it may be granted that the words of the catechism, which require a man to do his duty in the station to which it has pleased God to call him, give an admirable definition of our obligation to ourselves and to society; yet the question remains, how is any given person to find out what is the particular station to which it has pleased God to call him? A new-born infant does not come into the world labelled scavenger, shopkeeper, bishop, or duke. One mass of red pulp is just like another to all outward appearance. And it is only by finding out what his faculties are good for, and seeking, not for the sake of gratifying a paltry vanity, but as the highest duty to himself and to his fellow-men, to put himself into the position in which they can attain their full development, that the man discovers his true station. That which is to be lamented, I fancy, is not that society should do its utmost to help capacity to ascend from the lower strata to the higher, but that it has no machinery by which to facilitate the descent of incapacity from the higher strata to the lower. In that noble romance, the "Republic" (which is now, thanks to the Master of Balliol, as intelligible to us all, as if it had been written in our mother tongue), Plato makes Socrates say that he should like to inculcate upon the citizens of his ideal state just one "royal lie."

"'Citizens,' we shall say to them in our tale--'You are
brothers, yet God has framed you differently. Some of you
have the power of command, and these he has composed of
gold, wherefore also they have the greatest honour; others
of silver, to be auxiliaries; others again, who are to be
husbandmen and craftsmen, he has made of brass and iron; and
the species will generally be preserved in the children. But
as you are of the same original family, a golden parent will
sometimes have a silver son, or a silver parent a golden son.
And God proclaims to the rulers, as a first principle, that
before all they should watch over their offspring, and see
what elements mingle with their nature; for if the son of a
golden or silver parent has an admixture of brass and iron,
then nature orders a transposition of ranks, and the eye of
the ruler must not be pitiful towards his child because he has
to descend in the scale and become a husbandman or artisan;
just as there may be others sprung from the artisan class, who
are raised to honour, and become guardians and auxiliaries.
For an oracle says that when a man of brass or iron guards the
State, it will then be destroyed.'"[1]

[Footnote 1: "The Dialogues of Plato." Translated into English, with Analysis and Introduction, by B. Jowett, M.A. Vol. ii. p. 243.]

Time, whose tooth gnaws away everything else, is powerless against truth; and the lapse of more than two thousand years has not weakened the force of these wise words. Nor is it necessary that, as Plato suggests, society should provide functionaries expressly charged with the performance of the difficult duty of picking out the men of brass from those of silver and gold. Educate, and the latter will certainly rise to the top; remove all those artificial props by which the brass and iron folk are kept at the top, and, by a law as sure as that of gravitation, they will gradually sink to the bottom. We have all known noble lords who would have been coachmen, or gamekeepers, or billiard-markers, if they had not been kept afloat by our social corks; we have all known men among the lowest ranks, of whom everyone has said, "What might not that man have become, if he had only had a little education?"

And who that attends, even in the most superficial way, to the conditions upon which the stability of modern society--and especially of a society like ours, in which recent legislation has placed sovereign authority in the hands of the masses, whenever they are united enough to wield their power--can doubt that every man of high natural ability, who is both ignorant and miserable, is as great a danger to society as a rocket without a stick is to the people who fire it? Misery is a match that never goes out; genius, as an explosive power, beats gunpowder hollow; and if knowledge, which should give that power guidance, is wanting, the chances are not small that the rocket will simply run a-muck among friends and foes. What gives force to the socialistic movement which is now stirring European society to its depths, but a determination on the part of the naturally able men among the proletariat, to put an end, somehow or other, to the misery and degradation in which a large proportion of their fellows are steeped? The question, whether the means by which they purpose to achieve this end are adequate or not, is at this moment the most important of all political questions--and it is beside my present purpose to discuss it. All I desire to point out is, that if the chance of the controversy being decided calmly and rationally, and not by passion and force, looks miserably small to an impartial bystander, the reason is that not one in ten thousand of those who constitute the ultimate court of appeal, by which questions of the utmost difficulty, as well as of the most momentous gravity, will have to be decided, is prepared by education to comprehend the real nature of the suit brought before their tribunal.

Finally, as to the ladies and gentlemen question, all I can say is, would that every woman-child born into this world were trained to be a lady, and every man-child a gentleman! But then I do not use those much-abused words by way of distinguishing people who wear fine clothes, and live in fine houses, and talk aristocratic slang, from those who go about in fustian, and live in back slums, and talk gutter slang. Some inborn plebeian blindness, in fact, prevents me from understanding what advantage the former have over the latter. I have never even been able to understand why pigeon-shooting at Hurlingham should be refined and polite, while a rat-killing match in Whitechapel is low; or why "What a lark" should be coarse, when one hears "How awfully jolly" drop from the most refined lips twenty times in an evening.

Thoughtfulness for others, generosity, modesty, and self-respect, are the qualities which make a real gentleman, or lady, as distinguished from the veneered article which commonly goes by that name. I by no means wish to express any sentimental preference for Lazarus against Dives, but, on the face of the matter, one does not see why the practice of these virtues should be more difficult in one state of life than another; and any one who has had a wide experience among all sorts and conditions of men, will, I think, agree with me that they are as common in the lower ranks of life as in the higher.

Leaving the caste argument aside then, as inconsistent with the practice of those who employ it, as devoid of any justification in theory, and as utterly mischievous if its logical consequences were carried out, let us turn to the other class of objectors. To these opponents, the Education Act is only one of a number of pieces of legislation to which they object on principle; and they include under like condemnation the Vaccination Act, the Contagious Diseases Act, and all other sanitary Acts; all attempts on the part of the State to prevent adulteration, or to regulate injurious trades; all legislative interference with anything that bears directly or indirectly on commerce, such as shipping, harbours, railways, roads, cab-fares, and the carriage of letters; and all attempts to promote the spread of knowledge by the establishment of teaching bodies, examining bodies, libraries, or museums, or by the sending out of scientific expeditions; all endeavours to advance art by the establishment of schools of design, or picture galleries; or by spending money upon an architectural public building when a brick box would answer the purpose. According to their views, not a shilling of public money must be bestowed upon a public park or pleasure-ground; not sixpence upon the relief of starvation, or the cure of disease. Those who hold these views support them by two lines of argument. They enforce them deductively by arguing from an assumed axiom, that the State has no right to do anything but protect its subjects from aggression. The State is simply a policeman, and its duty is neither more nor less than to prevent robbery and murder and enforce contracts. It is not to promote good, nor even to do anything to prevent evil, except by the enforcement of penalties upon those who have been guilty of obvious and tangible assaults upon purses or persons. And, according to this view, the proper form of government is neither a monarchy, an aristocracy, nor a democracy, but an _astynomocracy_, or police government. On the other hand, these views are supported _à posteriori_, by an induction from observation, which professes to show that whatever is done by a Government beyond these negative limits, is not only sure to be done badly, but to be done much worse than private enterprise would have done the same thing.

I am by no means clear as to the truth of the latter proposition. It is generally supported by statements which prove clearly enough that the State does a great many things very badly. But this is really beside the question. The State lives in a glass house; we see what it tries to do, and all its failures, partial or total, are made the most of. But private enterprise is sheltered under good opaque bricks and mortar. The public rarely knows what it tries to do, and only hears of failures when they are gross and patent to all the world. Who is to say how private enterprise would come out if it tried its hand at State work? Those who have had most experience of joint-stock companies and their management, will probably be least inclined to believe in the innate superiority of private enterprise over State management. If continental bureaucracy and centralization be fraught with multitudinous evils, surely English beadleocracy and parochial obstruction are not altogether lovely. If it be said that, as a matter of political experience, it is found to be for the best interests, including the healthy and free development, of a people, that the State should restrict itself to what is absolutely necessary, and should leave to the voluntary efforts of individuals as much as voluntary effort can be got to do, nothing can be more just. But, on the other hand, it seems to me that nothing can be less justifiable than the dogmatic assertion that State interference, beyond the limits of home and foreign police, must, under all circumstances, do harm.

Suppose, however, for the sake of argument, that we accept the proposition that the functions of the State may be properly summed up in the one great negative commandment,--"Thou shalt not allow any man to interfere with the liberty of any other man,"--I am unable to see that the logical consequence is any such restriction of the power of Government, as its supporters imply. If my next-door neighbour chooses to have his drains in such a state as to create a poisonous atmosphere, which I breathe at the risk of typhus and diphtheria, he restricts my just freedom to live just as much as if he went about with a pistol, threatening my life; if he is to be allowed to let his children go unvaccinated, he might as well be allowed to leave strychnine lozenges about in the way of mine; and if he brings them up untaught and untrained, to earn their living, he is doing his best to restrict my freedom, by increasing the burden of taxation for the support of gaols and workhouses, which I have to pay.

The higher the state of civilization, the more completely do the actions of one member of the social body influence all the rest, and the less possible is it for any one man to do a wrong thing without interfering, more or less, with the freedom of all his fellow-citizens. So that, even upon the narrowest view of the functions of the State, it must be admitted to have wider powers than the advocates of the police theory are disposed to admit.

It is urged, I am aware, that if the right of the State to step beyond the assigned limits is admitted at all, there is no stopping; and that the principle which justifies the State in enforcing vaccination or education, will also justify it in prescribing my religious belief, or my mode of carrying on my trade or profession; in determining the number of courses I have for dinner, or the pattern of my waistcoat.

But surely the answer is obvious that, on similar grounds, the right of a man to eat when he is hungry might be disputed, because if you once allow that he may eat at all, there is no stopping him until he gorges himself, and suffers all the ills of a surfeit. In practice, the man leaves off when reason tells him he has had enough; and, in a properly organized State, the Government, being nothing but the corporate reason of the community, will soon find out when State interference has been carried far enough. And, so far as my acquaintance with those who carry on the business of Government goes, I must say that I find them far less eager to interfere with the people, than the people are to be interfered with. And the reason is obvious. The people are keenly sensible of particular evils, and, like a man suffering from pain, desire an immediate remedy. The statesman, on the other hand, is like the physician, who knows that he can stop the pain at once by an opiate; but who also knows that the opiate may do more harm than good in the long run. In three cases out of four the wisest thing he can do is to wait, and leave the case to nature. But in the fourth case, in which the symptoms are unmistakable, and the cause of the disease distinctly known, prompt remedy saves a life. Is the fact that a wise physician will give as little medicine as possible any argument for his abstaining from giving any at all?

But the argument may be met directly. It may be granted that the State, or corporate authority of the people, might with perfect propriety order my religion, or my waistcoat, if as good grounds could be assigned for such an order as for the command to educate my children. And this leads us to the question which lies at the root of the whole discussion--the question, namely, upon what foundation does the authority of the State rest, and how are the limits of that authority to be determined?

One of the oldest and profoundest of English philosophers, Hobbes of Malmesbury, writes thus:--

"The office of the sovereign, be it monarch or an assembly,
consisteth in the end for which he was entrusted with the
sovereign power, namely, the procuration of _the safety_ of
the people: to which he is obliged by the law of nature, and
to render an account thereof to God, the author of that law,
and to none but Him. But by safety, here, is not meant a bare
preservation, but also all other contentments of life, which
every man by lawful industry, without danger or hurt to the
commonwealth, shall acquire to himself."

At first sight this may appear to be a statement of the police-theory of government, pure and simple; but it is not so. For Hobbes goes on to say:--

"And this is intended should be done, not by care applied to
individuals, further than their protection from injuries, when
they shall complain; but by a general providence contained in
public instruction both of doctrine and example; and in the
making and executing of good laws to which individual persons
may apply their own cases."[1]

[Footnote 1: "Leviathan," Molesworth's ed. p. 322.]

To a witness of the civil war between Charles I. and the Parliament, it is not wonderful that the dissolution of the bonds of society which is involved in such strife should appear to be "the greatest evil that can happen in this life;" and all who have read the "Leviathan" know to what length Hobbes's anxiety for the preservation of the authority of the representative of the sovereign power, whatever its shape, leads him. But the justice of his conception of the duties of the sovereign power does not seem to me to be invalidated by his monstrous doctrines respecting the sacredness of that power.

To Hobbes, who lived during the break-up of the sovereign power by popular force, society appeared to be threatened by everything which weakened that power: but, to John Locke, who witnessed the evils which flow from the attempt of the sovereign power to destroy the rights of the people by fraud and violence, the danger lay in the other direction.

The safety of the representative of the sovereign power itself is to Locke a matter of very small moment, and he contemplates its abolition when it ceases to do its duty, and its replacement by another, as a matter of course. The great champion of the revolution of 1688 could do no less. Nor is it otherwise than natural that he should seek to limit, rather than to enlarge, the powers of the State, though in substance he entirely agrees with Hobbes's view of its duties:--

"But though men," says he, "when they enter into society, give
up the equality, liberty, and executive power they had in the
state of nature, into the hands of the society, to be so far
disposed of by the Legislature as the good of society shall
require; yet it being only with an intention in every one the
better to preserve himself, his liberty and property (for no
rational creature can be supposed to change his condition
with an intention to be worse), the power of the society,
or legislation, constituted by them can never be supposed to
extend further than the common good, but is obliged to secure
every one's property by providing against those three defects
above mentioned, that made the state of nature so unsafe and
uneasy. And so, whoever has the legislative or supreme
power of any commonwealth, is bound to govern by established
standing laws, promulgated and known to the people, and not
by extemporary decrees; by indifferent and upright judges, who
are to decide controversies by those laws: and to employ the
force of the community at home only in the execution of such
laws; or abroad, to prevent or redress foreign injuries, and
secure the community from inroads and invasion. And all this
to be directed to no other end than the peace, safety, and
public good of the people."[1]

[Footnote 1: Locke's Essay, "Of Civil Government," § 131.]

Just as in the case of Hobbes, so in that of Locke, it may at first sight appear from this passage that the latter philosopher's views of the functions of Government incline to the negative, rather than the positive, side. But a further study of Locke's writings will at once remove this misconception. In the famous "Letter concerning Toleration," Locke says:--

"The commonwealth seems to me to be a society of men
constituted only for the procuring, preserving, and
_advancing_ their own civil interests.

"Civil interests I call life, liberty, health, and indolency
of body; and the possession of outward things, such as money,
lands, houses, furniture, and the like.

"It is the duty of the civil magistrate, by the impartial
execution of equal laws, to secure unto all the people in
general, and to every one of his subjects in particular, the
just possession of those things belonging to this life.

"... The whole jurisdiction of the magistrate reaches only
to these civil concernments.... All civil power, right,
and dominion, is bounded and confined to the only care of
promoting these things."

Elsewhere in the same "Letter," Locke lays down the proposition that if the magistrate understand washing a child "to be profitable to the curing or preventing any disease that children are subject unto, and esteem the matter weighty enough to be taken care of by a law, in that case he may order it to be done."

Locke seems to differ most widely from Hobbes by his strong advocacy of a certain measure of toleration in religious matters. But the reason why the civil magistrate ought to leave religion alone is, according to Locke, simply this, that "true and saving religion consists in the inward persuasion of the mind." And since "such is the nature of the understanding that it cannot be compelled to the belief of anything by outward force," it is absurd to attempt to make men religious by compulsion. I cannot discover that Locke fathers the pet doctrine of modern Liberalism, that the toleration of error is a good thing in itself, and to be reckoned among the cardinal virtues; on the contrary, in this very "Letter on Toleration" he states in the clearest language that "No opinion contrary to human society, or to those moral rules which are necessary to the preservation of civil society, are to be tolerated by the magistrate." And the practical corollary which he draws from this proposition is that there ought to be no toleration for either Papists or Atheists.

After Locke's time the negative view of the functions of Government gradually grew in strength, until it obtained systematic and able expression in Wilhelm von Humboldt's "Ideen,"[1] the essence of which is the denial that the State has a right to be anything more than chief policeman. And, of late years, the belief in the efficacy of doing nothing, thus formulated, has acquired considerable popularity for several reasons. In the first place, men's speculative convictions have become less and less real; their tolerance is large because their belief is small; they know that the State had better leave things alone unless it has a clear knowledge about them; and, with reason, they suspect that the knowledge of the governing power may stand no higher than the very low watermark of their own.

[Footnote 1: An English translation has been published under the title of "Essay on the Sphere and Duties of Government."]

In the second place, men have become largely absorbed in the mere accumulation of wealth; and as this is a matter in which the plainest and strongest form of self-interest is intensely concerned, science (in the shape of Political Economy) has readily demonstrated that self-interest may be safely left to find the best way of attaining its ends. Rapidity and certainty of intercourse between different countries, the enormous development of the powers of machinery, and general peace (however interrupted by brief periods of warfare), have changed the face of commerce as completely as modern artillery has changed that of war. The merchant found himself as much burdened by ancient protective measures as the soldier by his armour--and negative legislation has been of as much use to the one as the stripping off of breast-plates, greaves, and buff-coat to the other. But because the soldier is better without his armour it does not exactly follow that it is desirable that our defenders should strip themselves stark naked; and it is not more apparent why _laissez-faire_--great and beneficial as it may be in all that relates to the accumulation of wealth--should be the one great commandment which the State is to obey in all other matters; and especially in those in which the justification of _laissez-faire_, namely, the keen insight given by the strong stimulus of direct personal interest, in matters clearly understood, is entirely absent.

Thirdly, to the indifference generated by the absence of fixed beliefs, and to the confidence in the efficacy of _laissez-faire_, apparently justified by experience of the value of that principle when applied to the pursuit of wealth, there must be added that nobler and better reason for a profound distrust of legislative interference, which animates Von Humboldt and shines forth in the pages of Mr. Mill's famous Essay on Liberty--I mean the just fear lest the end should be sacrificed to the means; lest freedom and variety should be drilled and disciplined out of human life in order that the great mill of the State should grind smoothly.

One of the profoundest of living English philosophers, who is at the same time the most thoroughgoing and consistent of the champions of astynomocracy, has devoted a very able and ingenious essay[1] to the drawing out of a comparison between the process by which men have advanced from the savage state to the highest civilization, and that by which an animal passes from the condition of an almost shapeless and structureless germ, to that in which it exhibits a highly complicated structure and a corresponding diversity of powers. Mr. Spencer says with great justice--

[Footnote 1: "The Social Organism:" Essays. Second Series.]

"That they gradually increase in mass; that they become,
little by little, more complex; that, at the same time, their
parts grow more mutually dependent; and that they continue to
live and grow as wholes, while successive generations of their
units appear and disappear,--are broad peculiarities which
bodies politic display, in common with all living bodies, and
in which they and living bodies differ from everything else."

In a very striking passage of this essay Mr. Spencer shows with what singular closeness a parallel between the development of a nervous system, which is the governing power of the body in the series of animal organisms, and that of government, in the series of social organisms, can be drawn:--

"Strange as the assertion, will be thought," says Mr. Spencer,
"our Houses of Parliament discharge in the social economy
functions that are, in sundry respects, comparable to those
discharged by the cerebral masses in a vertebrate animal....
The cerebrum co-ordinates the countless heterogeneous
considerations which affect the present and future welfare of
the individual as a whole; and the Legislature co-ordinates
the countless heterogeneous considerations which affect the
immediate and remote welfare of the whole community. We may
describe the office of the brain as that of _averaging_ the
interests of life, physical, intellectual, moral, social; and
a good brain is one in which the desires answering to their
respective interests are so balanced, that the conduct they
jointly dictate sacrifice none of them. Similarly we may
describe the office of Parliament as that of _averaging_ the
interests of the various classes in a community; and a good
Parliament is one in which the parties answering to these
respective interests are so balanced, that their united
legislation concedes to each class as much as consists with
the claims of the rest."

All this appears to be very just. But if the resemblances between the body physiological and the body politic are any indication, not only of what the latter is, and how it has become what it is, but of what it ought to be, and what it is tending to become, I cannot but think that the real force of the analogy is totally opposed to the negative view of State function.

Suppose that, in accordance with this view, each muscle were to maintain that the nervous system had no right to interfere with its contraction, except to prevent it from hindering the contraction of another muscle; or each gland, that it had a right to secrete, so long as its secretion interfered with no other; suppose every separate cell left free to follow its own "interests," and _laissez-faire_ lord of all, what would become of the body physiological?

The fact is that the sovereign power of the body thinks for the physiological organism, acts for it, and rules the individual components with a rod of iron. Even the blood-corpuscles can't hold a public meeting without being accused of "congestion"--and the brain, like other despots whom we have known, calls out at once for the use of sharp steel against them. As in Hobbes's "Leviathan," the representative of the sovereign authority in the living organism, though he derives all his powers from the mass which he rules, is above the law. The questioning of his authority involves death, or that partial death which we call paralysis. Hence, if the analogy of the body politic with the body physiological counts for anything, it seems to me to be in favour of a much larger amount of governmental interference than exists at present, or than I, for one, at all desire to see. But, tempting as the opportunity is, I am not disposed to build up any argument in favour of my own case upon this analogy, curious, interesting, and in many respects close, as it is, for it takes no cognizance of certain profound and essential differences between the physiological and the political bodies.

Much as the notion of a "social contract" has been ridiculed, it nevertheless seems to be clear enough, that all social organization whatever depends upon what is substantially a contract, whether expressed or implied, between the members of the society. No society ever was, or ever can be, really held together by force. It may seem a paradox to say that a slaveholder does not make his slaves work by force, but by agreement. And yet it is true. There is a contract between the two which, if it were written out, would run in these terms:--"I undertake to feed, clothe, house, and not to kill, flog, or otherwise maltreat you, Quashie, if you perform a certain amount of work." Quashie, seeing no better terms to be had, accepts the bargain, and goes to work accordingly. A highwayman who garottes me, and then clears out my pockets, robs me by force in the strict sense of the words; but if he puts a pistol to my head and demands my money or my life, and I, preferring the latter, hand over my purse, we have virtually made a contract, and I perform one of the terms of that contract. If, nevertheless, the highwayman subsequently shoots me, everybody will see that, in addition to the crimes of murder and theft, he has been guilty of a breach of contract.

A despotic Government, therefore, though often a mere combination of slaveholding and highway robbery, nevertheless implies a contract between governor and governed, with voluntary submission on the part of the latter; and _à fortiori_, all other forms of government are in like case.

Now a contract between any two men implies a restriction of the freedom of each in certain particulars. The highwayman gives up his freedom to shoot me, on condition of my giving up my freedom to do as I like with my money: I give up my freedom to kill Quashie, on condition of Quashie's giving up his freedom to be idle. And the essence and foundation of every social organization, whether simple or complex, is the fact that each member of the society voluntarily renounces his freedom in certain directions, in return for the advantages which he expects from association with the other members of that society. Nor are constitutions, laws, or manners, in ultimate analysis, anything but so many expressed or implied contracts between the members of a society to do this, or abstain from that.

It appears to me that this feature constitutes the difference between the social and the physiological organism. Among the higher physiological organisms, there is none which is developed by the conjunction of a number of primitively independent existences into a complex whole. The process of social organization appears to be comparable, not so much to the process of organic development, as to the synthesis of the chemist, by which independent elements are gradually built up into complex aggregations--in which each element retains an independent individuality, though held in subordination to the whole. The atoms of carbon and hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, which enter into a complex molecule, do not lose the powers originally inherent in them, when they unite to form that molecule, the properties of which express those forces of the whole aggregation which are not neutralized and balanced by one another. Each atom has given up something, in order that the atomic society, or molecule, may subsist. And as soon as any one or more of the atoms thus associated resumes the freedom which it has renounced, and follows some external attraction, the molecule is broken up, and all the peculiar properties which depended upon its constitution vanish.

Every society, great or small, resembles such a complex molecule, in which the atoms are represented by men, possessed of all those multifarious attractions and repulsions which are manifested in their desires and volitions, the unlimited power of satisfying which, we call freedom. The social molecule exists in virtue of the renunciation of more or less of this freedom by every individual. It is decomposed, when the attraction of desire leads to the resumption of that freedom, the suppression of which is essential to the existence of the social molecule. And the great problem of that social chemistry we call politics, is to discover what desires of mankind may be gratified, and what must be suppressed, if the highly complex compound, society, is to avoid decomposition. That the gratification of some of men's desires shall be renounced is essential to order; that the satisfaction of others shall be permitted is no less essential to progress; and the business of the sovereign authority--which is, or ought-to be, simply a delegation of the people appointed to act for its good--appears to me to be, not only to enforce the renunciation of the anti-social desires, but, wherever it may be necessary, to promote the satisfaction of those which are conducive to progress.

The great metaphysician, Immanuel Kant, who is at his greatest when he discusses questions which are not metaphysical, wrote, nearly a century ago, a wonderfully instructive essay entitled "A Conception of Universal History in relation to Universal Citizenship,"[1] from which I will borrow a few pregnant sentences:--

[Footnote 1: "Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlichen Absicht," 1784. This paper has been translated by De Quincey, and attention has been recently drawn to its "signal merits" by the Editor of the _Fortnightly Review_ in his Essay on Condorcet. (_Fortnightly Review_, No. xxxviii. N.S. pp. 136, 137.)]

"The means of which Nature has availed herself, in order to
bring about the development of all the capacities of man, is
the antagonism of those capacities to social organization,
so far as the latter does in the long run necessitate their
definite correlation. By antagonism, I here mean the unsocial
sociability of mankind--that is, the combination in them of
an impulse to enter into society, with a thorough spirit
of opposition which constantly threatens to break up this
society. The ground of this lies in human nature. Man has an
inclination to enter into society, because in that state he
feels that he becomes more a man, or, in other words, that his
natural faculties develop. But he has also a great tendency to
isolate himself, because he is, at the same time, aware of the
unsocial peculiarity of desiring to have everything his own
way; and thus, being conscious of an inclination to oppose
others, he is naturally led to expect opposition from them.

"Now it is this opposition which awakens all the dormant
powers of men, stimulates them to overcome their inclination
to be idle, and, spurred by the love of honour, or power, or
wealth, to make themselves a place among their fellows, whom
they can neither do with, nor do without.

"Thus they make the first steps from brutishness towards
culture, of which the social value of man is the measure. Thus
all talents become gradually developed, taste is formed,
and by continual enlightenment the foundations of a way of
thinking are laid, which gradually changes the mere rude
capacity of moral perception into determinate practical
principles; and thus society, which is originated by a sort
of pathological compulsion, becomes metamorphosed into a moral
unity." (_Loc. cit_. p. 147.)

"All the culture and art which adorn humanity, the most
refined social order, are produced by that unsociability which
is compelled by its own existence to discipline itself, and
so by enforced art to bring the seeds implanted by nature into
full flower." (_Loc. cit_. p. 148.)

In these passages, as in others of this remarkable tract, Kant anticipates the application of the "struggle for existence" to politics, and indicates the manner in which the evolution of society has resulted from the constant attempt of individuals to strain its bonds. If individuality has no play, society does not advance; if individuality breaks out of all bounds, society perishes.