ON THE NATURAL INEQUALITY OF MEN. THE political speculations set forth in welcomed Rousseau's brilliant developments of plausible first principles by the help of that à priori method which saves so much troublesome investigation.* It just suited the "philosophes," male and female, interchanging their airy epigrams in salons, which had about as much likeness to the Academy or to the Stoa, as the philosophes'' had to the philosophers of antiquity. 66 I do not forget the existence of men of the type of Montesquieu or D'Argenson in the France of the eighteenth century, when I take this as a fair representation of the enlightened public of that day. The unenlightened public, on the other hand, the people who were morally and physically debased by sheer hunger; or those, not so far dulled or infuriated by absolute want, who yet were maddened by the wrongs of every description inflicted upon them by a political system, which so far as its proper object, the welfare of the people, was concerned was effete and powerless; the subjects of a government smitten with paralysis for everything but the working of iniquity and the generation of scandals; these naturally hailed with rapture the appearance of the teacher who clothed passion in the garb of philosophy; and preached the sweeping away of injustice by the perpetration of further injustice, as if it were nothing but the conversion of sound theory into practice. It is true that any one who has looked Missionaries, whether of philosophy or of religion, rarely make rapid way, unless their preachings fall in with the prepossessions of the multitude of shallow thinkers, or can be made to serve as a stalkinghorse for the promotion of the practical aims of the still larger multitude, who do not profess to think much, but are quite certain they want a great deal. Rous seau's writings are so admirably adapted to touch both these classes that the effect they produced, especially in France, is easily intelligible. For, in the middle of the eighteenth century, French society (not perhaps so different as may be imagined from other societies before and since) presented two large groups of people who troubled themselves about politics-in any sense other than that of personal or party intrigue. There was an upper stratum of luxurious idlers, jealously excluded from political action and consequently ignorant of practical affairs, with no solid knowledge or firm principles of any sort; but, on the other hand, open-minded to every novelty which could be apprehended without too much trouble, and exquisitely appreciative of close deductive reasoning and clear exposition. Such a public naturally pacity for either learning or forgetting. *In his famous work on Ancient Law the still late Sir Henry Maine has remarked, with great possesses singular fascination for the looser justice, that Rousseau's philosophy thinkers of every country;" that " it helped most powerfully to bring about the grosser disappointments of which the first French birth, or intense stimulus, to the vices of Revolution was fertile,' " and that " 'it gave mental habit all but universal at the time, disdain of positive law, impatience of experience, and the preference of a priori to all other reasoning" (pp. 89-92). I shall often have to quote Ancient Law. The first edition of this admirable book was published in 1861, but now, after eighteen years of growing influence on thoughtful men, it seems to be forgotten, or wilfully ignored, by the ruck of political speculators. It is enough to make one despair of the future that Demos and the Bourbons seem to be much alike in their want of ca "" * below the surface will hardly be disposed to join in the cry which is so often raised again the "philosophes" that their "infidel and levelling" principles brought about the French Revolution. People, like the Marquis d'Argenson, with political eyes in their heads, saw that the Revolution was inevitable before Rousseau wrote a line. In truth, the Bull "Unigenitus," the interested restiveness of the Parliainents and the extravagancies and profligacy of the Court had a great deal more influence in generating the castastrophe than all the philosophes" that ever put pen to paper. But, undoubtedly, Rousseau's extremely attractive and widely read writings did a great deal to give a color of rationality to those principles of '89 f which, even after the lapse of a century, are considered by a good many people to be the Magna Charta of the human race. "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," is still the war cry of those, and they are many, who think, with Rousseau, that human sufferings must needs be the consequence of the artificial arrangements of society and can all be alleviated or removed by political changes. The intellectual impulse which may thus be fairly enough connected with the name of the Genevese dreamer has by no means spent itself in the century and a half which has elapsed since it was given. On the contrary, after a period of comparative obscurity (at least outside France), Rousseauism has gradually come to the front . † Sir H. Maine observes that the "strictly juridical axiom" of the lawyers of the Antonine era ( omnes homines naturâ æquales sunt "), after passing through the hands of Rousseau, and being adopted by the founders of the Constitution of the United States, returned to France endowed with vastly greater energy and dignity, and that" of all the principles of 1789' it is the one which has been least strenuously assailed, which has most thoroughly leavened modern opinion, and which promises to modify most deeply the constitution of societies, and the politics of States" (Ancient Law, p. 96). again, and at present promises to exert once more a very grave influence on practical life. The two essays to which I have referred are, to all appearance, very little known to the present generation of those who have followed in Rousseau's track. None the less is it true that his teachings, filtered through innumerable channels and passing under other names, are still regarded as the foundations of political science by the existing representatives of the classes who were so much attracted by them when they were put forth. My friend, Mr. John Morley, who probably knows more about Rousseau and his school than anybody else,* must have been entertained (so far as amusement is possible to the subject of the process of "heckling") when Rousseau's plats, the indigestibility of which he exposed so many years ago, were set before him as a wholesome British dish; the situation had a certain piquancy, which no one would appreciate more keenly. I happened to be very much occupied upon subjects of a totally different character, and had no mind to leave them, when the narrative of this occurrence and some letters to which it gave rise, appeared in the Times. But I have very long entertained the conviction that the revived Rousseauism of our day is working sad mischief, leading astray those who have not the time, even when they possess the ability, to go to the root of the superficially plausible doctrines which are disseminated among them. And I thought it was my duty to see whether some thirty years' training in the art of making difficult questions intelligible to audiences without much learning, but with that abundance of keen practical sense which characterizes English workmen of the better class, would enable me to do something toward the counteraction of the fallacious guidance which is offered to them. Perhaps I may be permmitted to add that the subject was by no means new to me. Very curious cases of communal organization and difficult questions involving the whole subject of the *If I had not reason to think that Mr. Morley's Rousseau, and Sir Henry Maine's Ancient Law, especially the admirable chapters 3 and 4, must be unknown to many political writers and speakers, and a fortiori to the general public, there would be no excuse for the present essay, which simply restates the case which they have so exhaustively treated. rights of property come before those whose duty it is to acquaint themselves with the condition of either sea or freshwater fisheries, or with the administration of Fishery Laws. For a number of years it was my fate to discharge such duties to the best of my ability; and, in doing so, I was brought face to face with the problem of landownership and the difficulties which arise out of the conflicting claims of commoners and owners in severalty. And I had good reason to know that mistaken theories on these subjects are very liable to be translated into illegal actions. I cannot say whether the letters which I wrote in any degree attained the object (of vastly greater importance, to my mind, than any personal question) which I had in view. But I was quite aware, whatever their other results, they would probably involve me in disagreeable consequences: and, among the rest, in the necessity of proving a variety of statements, which I could only adumbrate within the compass of the space that the Times could afford me, liberal as the editor showed himself to be in that respect. What I purpose to do in the course of the present article, then, is to make good these shortcomings; to show what Rousseau's doctrines were; and to inquire into their scientific valuewith, I hope, that impartiality which it beseems us to exhibit in inquiries into ancient history. Having done this I propose to leave the application of the conclusions at which I arrive to the intelligence of any readers, as I shall thus escape collision with several of my respected contemporaries.* I have indicated two sources from which From Mr. Herbert Spencer's letter in the Times of the 27th of November, 1889, I gather that he altogether repudiates the doctrines which I am about to criticise. I rejoice to hear it; in the first place, because they thus lose the shelter of his high authority; secondly, because, after this repudiation, anything I may say in the course of the following pages against Rousseauism cannot be disagreeable to him; and, thirdly, because I desire to express my great regret that, in however good company, I should have lacked the intelligence to perceive that Mr. Spencer had previously repudiated the views attributed to him by the land socialists. May I take this opportunity of informing the many correspondents who usually favor me with comments (mostly adverse, I am sorry to say) on what I venture to write, that I have no other answer to give them but Pilate's: "What I have written I have written"? I have no energy to waste on replies to irresponsible criticism. our knowledge of Rousseau's system may be derived, and it is not worth while to go any further. But it is needful to observe that the dicta of the author of the Contrat Social, published in 1762, are not unfrequently very hard-indeed I might say impossible-to reconcile with those of the author of the Discours, which appeared eight years earlier; and that, if any one should maintain that the older essay was not meant to be taken seriously, or that it has been, in some respects, more or less set aside by the later, he might find strong grounds for his opinion. It is enough for me that the same à priori method and the same fallacious assumptions pervade both. The thesis of the earlier work is that man, in the "state of nature," was a very excellent creature indeed, strong, healthy, good and contented; and that all the evils which have befallen him, such as feebleness, sickness, wickedness, and misery, result from his having forsaken the " state of nature" for the "state of civilization." And the first step in this downward progress was the setting up of rights of several property. It might seem to a plain man that the argument here turns on a matter of fact; if it is not historically true that men were once in this "state of nature" -what becomes of it all? However, Rousseau tells us, in the preface to the Discours, not only that the "state of nature" is something which no longer exists, but that " perhaps it never existed, and probably never will exist." Yet it is something of which it is nevertheless necessary to have accurate notions in order to judge our present condition rightly." After making this singular statement, Rousmême plus de philosophie qu'on ne pense seau goes on to observe: "Il faudrait à celui qui entreprendrait de déterminer exactement les précautions à prendre pour faite sur ce sujet de solides observations." And, certainly, the amount of philosophy required to base an argument on that which does not exist, has not existed, and, perhaps, never will exist, may well seem unattainable-at any rate, at first sight. Yet, apart from analogies which might be drawn from the mathematical sciences-where, for example, a straight line is a thing which has not existed, does not exist, and probably never will exist, and yet forms a good ground for reasoning; and the value of which I need not stop to discuss-I take it that Rousseau has a very comprehensible idea at the bottom of this troublesome statement. What I conceive him to mean is that it is possible to form an ideal conception of what ought to be the condition of mankind; * and that, having done so, we are bound to judge the existing state of things by that ideal. That assumption puts us on the "high priori road" at once. I do not suppose that any one is inclined to doubt the usefulness of a political ideal as a goal toward which social conduct should strive, whether it can ever be completely realized or not; any more than any one will doubt that it is useful to have a moral ideal toward which personal conduct should tend, even though one may never reach it. Certainly, I am the last person to question this, or to doubt that politics is as susceptible of treatment by scientific method as any other field of natural knowledget But it will be admitted that, great as are the advantages of having a political ideal, fashioned by an absolute. rule of political conduct, it is perhaps better to do without one, rather than to adopt the first phantasm, bred of fallacious reasonings and born of the unscientific imagination, which presents itself. The benighted traveller, lost on a moor, who refuses to follow a man with a lantern is surely not to be commended. But sup * Compare Ancient Law:-" The Law of Nature confused the Past and the Present. Logically, it implied a state of Nature which had once been regulated by Natural Law; yet the jurisconsults do not speak clearly or confidently of the existence of such a state" (p. 73). "There are some writers on the subject who attempt to evade the fundamental difficulty by contending that the code of Nature exists in the future and is the goal to which all civil laws are moving" (p. 74). The juisconsults conceived of Natural Law "as a system which ought gradually to absorb Civil Laws" (p. 76). "Its functions were, in short, remedial, not revolutionary or anarchical. And this unfortunately is the exact point at which the modern view of a Law of Nature has often ceased to resemble the ancient" (p. 77). In the course of the correspondence in the Times to which I have referred, I was earnestly exhorted to believe that the world of politics does not lie outside of the province of science. My impression is that I was trying to teach the public that great truth, which I had learned from Mill and Comte, thirty-five years ago; when, if I mistake not, my well meaning monitor was more occupied with peg-tops than with politics. See a lecture on the "Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences" delivered in 1854 (Lay Sermons, p. 97). pose his hesitation arises from a wellgrounded doubt as to whether the seeming luminary is anything but a will o' the wisp? And, unless I fail egregiously in attaining my purpose, those who read this paper to the end will, I think, have no doubt that the political lantern of Rousseauism is a mere corpse candle and will plunge those who follow it in the deepest of anarchic bogs. There is another point which must be carefully borne in mind in any discussion of Rousseau's doctrines; and that is the meaning which he attaches to the word "inequality." "inequality." A hundred and fifty years ago, as now, political and biological philosophers found they were natural allies.* Rousseau is not intelligible without Buffon, with whose earlier works he was evidently acquainted, and whose influence in the following passage is obvious :— It is easy to see that we must seek the primary cause of the differences by which men are distinguished in these successive changes of the human constitution; since it is univer sally admitted that they are, naturally, as equal among themselves as were the animals of each species before various physical causes had produced, in some of them, the varieties which we observe. In fact, it is not conceiv able that these first changes, by whatever means they were brought about, altered, at once and in the same way, all the individuals of a species; but some having become improved or deteriorated, and having acquired different qualities, good or bad, which were not inherent in their nature, the others re. mained longer in their original state; and such was the first source of inequality among men, which is more easy to prove thus, in a general way, than to assign exactly to its true Causes. (Discours, Preface.) In accordance with this conception of the origin of inequality among men, Rousseau distinguishes, at the outset of the Discours, two kinds of inequality: the one which I term natural, or physical, because it is established by nature, and which consists in the differences of age, health, bodily strength, and intellectual or spiritual qualities; the other, which may be called moral, or political, because it depends on a sort of *The publication of Buffon's Histoire Naturelle began in 1749. Thus Rousseau was indebted to the naturalists; on the other hand, in the case of the elder Darwin, who started what is now usually known as Lamarck's hypothesis, the naturalist was set speculating by the ideas of the philosopher Hartley, transmitted through Priestley. See Zoonomia, I. sect. xxxix. p. 483 (ed. 1796). I hope some day to deal at length with this curious fact in scientific history. convention, and is established, or at least authorized, by the consent of mankind. This last inequality consists in the different privileges which some enjoy, to the prejudice of others, as being richer, more honored, more powerful than they, or by making themselves obeyed by others. Of course the question readily suggests itself: Before drawing this sharp line of demarcation between natural and political inequality, might it not be as well to inquire whether they are not intimately connected, in such a manner that the latter is essentially a consequence of the former? This question is indeed put by Rousseau himself. And, as the only answer he has to give is a piece of silly and insincere rhetoric about its being a question fit only for slaves to discuss in presence of their masters, we may fairly conclude that he knew well enough he dare not grapple with it. The only safe course for him was to go by on the other side and as far as the breadth of the road would permit; and, in the rest of his writings, to play fast and loose with the two senses of inequality, as convenience might dictate. With these preliminary remarks kept well in view, we may proceed to the discussion of those fundamental theses of the Discourse" and of the "Social Contract" which Rousseau calls the "principes du droit politique." Rousseau de fines his object thus: Je veux chercher si dans l'ordre civil il peut y avoir quelque règle d'administration légitime et sûre, en prenant les hommes tels qu'ils sont et les lois tels qu'elles peuvent être. Je tâcherai d'allier toujours dans cette recherche ce que le droit permet avec ce que l'intérêt prescrit, afin que la justice et l'utilité ne se trouvent point divisées.* They who have written of justice and policy in general, do all invade each other and themselves with contradictions. To reduce this doctrine to the rules and infallibility of reason there is no way, but, first, put such principles down for a foundation, as passion, not mistrusting, may not seek to displace; and afterward to build thereon the truth of cases in the law of nature (which hitherto have been built in the air) by degrees, till the whole have been inexpugnable.' However, it must be recollected that Hobbes does not start from à priori principles of ethics, but from the practical necessities of men in society. It Le politically, sufficient rules of conduct, and that I understand to be the precise object of all who have followed in his track. was said of the Genevese theorist, genre humain avait perdu ses titres; JeanJacques les a retrouvés ;" just as his intellectual progeny declare that the nation ought to resume" the landed property of which it has, unfortunately, lost the title-deeds. We are now in a position to consider what the chief of these principles of the gospel according to Jean Jacques are :-- 1. All men are born free, politically equal, and good, and in the "state of nature" remain so; consequently it is their natural right to be free, equal, and (presumably, their duty to be) good.* 2. All men being equal by natural right, none can have any right to encroach on another's equal right. Hence no man can appropriate any part of the common means of subsistence that is to say, the land or anything which the land produces-without the unanimous consent of all other men. Under any other circumstances, property is usurpation, or, in plain terms, robbery.† 3. Political rights, therefore, are based upon contract; the so-called right of conquest is no right, and property which has been acquired by force may rightly be taken away by force.‡ I am bound to confess, at the outset, that, while quite open to conviction, I in * Contrat Social, v. pp. 98, 99. The references here given are to the volumes and pages of Mussay Pathay's edition (1826). Discours, passim; see especially p. 268. Discours, pp. 257, 258-276. How many wild sermons have been preached on this text:-"Ignorez-vous qu'une multitude de vos frères périt ou souffre du besoin de ce que vous avez de trop, et qu'il vous fallait un consentement exprès et unanime du genre humain pour vous approprier sur la subsistance commune tout ce qui alloit au delà de la vôtre ?'' Discours, pp. 276, 280; Contrat, chap. iii.: Telle fut ou dut être" (charming alternative!) "l'origine de la société et des lois, qui donnèrent de nouvelles entraves au foible et de nouvelles forces au riche, détruisirent sans retour la liberté naturelle, fixèrent pour jamais la loi de la propriété et de l'inégalité, d'une adroite usurpation firent un droit irrévocable, et, pour le profit de quelques ambitieux, as. sujettirent désormais tout le genre humain au travail, à la servitude et à la misère" (Discours, p. 278). Behold the quintessence of Rousseauism-method and results-with practical application, legible by the swiftest runner! |