Critiques and Addresses by Thomas Henry Huxley

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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," Sec. 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 _a 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 weltbuergerlichen
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.)]

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