government and people, is the childishness of the people who entertain the analogy.1

3

Liberty contends with Evolution for priority in Spencer's affections; 2 and Liberty wins. He thinks that as war decreases, the control of the individual by the state loses most of its excuse; and in a condition of permanent peace the state would be reduced within Jeffersonian bounds, acting only to prevent breaches of equal freedom. Such justice should be administered without cost, so that wrong-doers might know that the poverty of their victims would not shield them from punishment; and all the expenses of the state should be met by direct taxation, lest the invisibility of taxation should divert public attention from governmental extravagance. But “beyond maintaining justice, the state cannot do anything else without transgressing justice"; 5 for it would then be protecting inferior individuals from that natural apportionment of reward and capacity, penalty and incapacity, on which the survival and improvement of the group depend.

4

The principle of justice would require common ownership of land, if we could separate the land from its improvements. In his first book, Spencer had advocated nationalization of the soil, to equalize economic opportunity; but he withdrew his contention later (much to the disgust of Henry George, who called him "the perplexed philosopher"), on the ground that land is carefully husbanded only by the family that owns it, and that can rely on transmitting to its own descendants the effects of the labor put into it. As for private property, it derives immediately from the law of justice, for each man should be equally free to retain the products of his thrift. The justice of bequests is not so obvious; but the "right to bequeath is included in the right of ownership, since otherwise

1 II, 4, 217.

2 Elliott, Herbert Spencer, p. 81.

3 I, 148, 420.

4 II, 200.

5 II, 222.

6 II, 81.

the ownership is not complete." 1 Trade should be as free among nations as among individuals; the law of justice should be no merely tribal code, but an inviolable maxim of international relations.

These are, in outline, the real "rights of man"-the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness on equal terms with all. Besides these economic rights, political rights are unimportant unrealities.1 Changes in the form of government amount to nothing where economic life is not free; and a laissez-faire monarchy is much better than a socialistic de

mocracy.

Voting being simply a method of creating an appliance for the preservation of rights, the question is whether universality of votes conduces to creation of the best appliance for the preservation of rights. We have seen that it does not effectually secure this end. Experience makes obvious that which should have been obvious without experience, that with a universal distribution of votes the larger class will inevitably profit at the expense of the smaller class. Evidently the constitution of the state appropriate to that industrial type of society in which equity is fully realized, must be one in which there is not a representation of individuals but a representation of interests. may be that the industrial type, perhaps by the development of coöperative organizations, which theoretically, though not at present practically, obliterate the distinction between employer and employed, may produce social arrangements under which antagonistic class-interests will either not exist, or will be so far mitigated as not seriously to complicate matters. . . . But with such humanity as now exists, and must for a long time exist, the possession of what are called equal rights will not insure the maintenance of equal rights properly so-called.2

It

Since political rights are a delusion, and only economic rights avail, women are misled when they spend so much time

1 II, 120.

2 II, 192-3.

seeking the franchise. Spencer fears that the maternal instinct for helping the helpless may lead women to favor a paternalistic state.1 There is some confusion in his mind on this point; he argues that political rights are of no importance, and then that it is very important that women should not have them; he denounces war, and then contends that women should not vote because they do not risk their lives in battle 2—a shameful argument for any man to use who has been born of a woman's suffering. He is afraid of women because they may be too altruistic; and yet the culminating conception of his book is that industry and peace will develop altruism to the point where it will balance egoism and so evolve the spontaneous order of a philosophic anarchism.

The conflict of egoism and altruism (this word, and something of this line of thought, Spencer takes, more or less unconsciously, from Comte) results from the conflict of the individual with his family, his group, and his race. Presumably egoism will remain dominant; but perhaps that is desirable. If everybody thought more of the interests of others than of his own we should have a chaos of curtsies and retreats; and probably "the pursuit of individual happiness within the limits prescribed by social conditions is the first requisite to the attainment of the greatest general happiness." 3 What we may expect, however, is a great enlargement of the sphere of sympathy, a great development of the impulses to altruism. Even now the sacrifices entailed by parentage are gladly made; "the wish for children among the childless, and the occasional adoption of children, show how needful for the attainment of certain egoistic satisfactions are these altruistic activities." 4 The intensity of patriotism is another instance of the passionate preference of larger interests to one's immediate concerns. Every generation of social living deepens the impulses to mu

1 II, 196-7.

2 II, 166.

3 I, 196, 190.

4 I, 242-3.

ual aid. 1 "Unceasing social discipline will so mould human nature that eventually, sympathetic pleasures will be spontaneously pursued to the fullest extent advantageous to all." 2 The sense of duty which is the echo of generations of compulsion to social behavior, will then disappear; altruistic actions, having become instinctive through their natural selection for social utility, will, like every instinctive operation, be performed without compulsion, and with joy. The natural evolution of human society brings us ever nearer to the perfect state.

VIII. CRITICISM

The intelligent reader, in the course of this brief analysis,3 will have perceived certain difficulties in the argument, and will need no more than some scattered reminders as to where the imperfections lie. Negative criticism is always unpleasant, and most so in the face of a great achievement; but it is part of our task to see what time has done to Spencer's synthesis.

1. First Principles

The first obstacle, of course, is the Unknowable. We may cordially recognize the probable limitations of human knowledge; we cannot quite fathom that great sea of existence of which we are merely a transient wave. But we must not dogmatize on the subject, since in strict logic the assertion that anything is unknowable already implies some knowledge of the thing. Indeed, as Spencer proceeds through his ten volumes, he shows "a prodigious knowledge of the unknowable.” 4

1 I, 466.

2 I, 250.

3 The analysis, of course, is incomplete. "Space forbids" (the author has often smiled at this cloak for laziness, but must offer it here), a discussion of the Education, the Essays, and large sections of the Sociology. The lesson of the Education has been too well learned; and we require today some corrective of Spencer's victorious assertion of the claims of science as against letters and the arts. Of the essays, the best are those on style, laughter, and music. Hugh Elliott's Herbert Spencer is an admirable exposition.

4 Bowne: Kant and Spencer, p. 253.

As Hegel put it: to limit reason by reasoning is like trying to swim without entering the water. And all this logic-chopping about "inconceivability"-how far away that seems to us now, how like those sophomoric days when to be alive was to debate! And for that matter, an unguided machine is not much more conceivable than a First Cause, particularly if, by this latter phrase, we mean the sum total of all causes and forces in the world. Spencer, living in a world of machines, took mechanism for granted; just as Darwin, living in an age of ruthless individual competition, saw only the struggle for existence.

What shall we say of that tremendous definition of evolution? Does it explain anything? "To say, 'first there was the simple, and then the complex was evolved out of it,' and so on, is not to explain nature." 1 Spencer, says Bergson, repieces, he does not explain; 2 he misses, as he at last perceives, the vital element in the world. The critics, evidently, have been irritated by the definition; its Latinized English is especially arresting in a man who denounced the study of Latin, and defined a good style as that which requires the least effort of understanding. Something must be conceded to Spencer, however; no doubt he chose to sacrifice immediate clarity to the need of concentrating in a brief statement the flow of all existence. But in truth he is a little too fond of his definition; he rolls it over his tongue like a choice morsel, and takes it apart and puts it together again interminably. The weak point of the definition lies in the supposed "instability of the homogeneous." Is a whole composed of like parts more unstable, more subject to change, than a whole composed of unlike parts? The heterogeneous, as more complex, would presumably be more unstable than the homogeneously simple. In ethnology and politics it is taken for granted that heterogeneity makes for instability, and that the fusion of immigrant stocks into one national type would strengthen a society. 1 Ritchie: Darwin and Hegel, p. 60,

2 Creative Evolution, p. 64,