Henry George — A Perplexed
Philosopher
Part III—Recantation
(continued)
Chapter IV — The Idea Of Justice In The Synthetic Philosophy
As the culminating development of his evolutionary or Synthetic Philosophy,
Mr. Spencer now comes to treat of those social-economic questions that involve
the idea of justice, in a book which he entitles Justice.
But what is justice?
It is the rendering to each his due. It presupposes a moral law, and its
corollaries, natural rights which are self-evident. But where in a philosophy
that denies spirit, that ignores will, that derives all the qualities and attributes
of man from the integration of matter and the dissipation of motion, can we
find any basis for the idea of justice?
"Justice," says Montesquieu, "is a relation of congruity which
really subsists between two things. This relation is always the same, whatever
being considers it, whether it be God, or an angel, or lastly a man." This,
too, in Social Statics, was Mr. Spencer's conception. Justice he tells us there
means equalness — that is to say, a relation of congruity or equality
which is always the same, and always apprehensible by men, no matter what be
their
condition of development or degree of knowledge. As the basis of all his reasoning
he postulates an inherent moral sense, which "none but those committed
to a preconceived theory can fail to recognize" — a perception that
bears to morality the same relationship that the perception of the primary
laws of quantity bears to mathematics; and which enables us to recognize an "eternal
law of things," a "Divine order," in which, and not in any notions
of what is expedient either for the individual or for all individuals, we may
find a sure guide of conduct, the apprehension of right and wrong. And this
it seems to me is necessarily and universally involved in the idea of Justice,
so that when a man, whatever be his theories, thinks of right or wrong, just
or unjust, he thinks of a relation, like that of odd and even, or more and
less, which is always and everywhere to be seen by whoever will look.
But this self-evidence of natural rights the Synthetic Philosophy denies.
It admits the existence of natural rights — that is to say, rights which
pertain to the individual man as man, and are consequently equal; but it derives
the genesis of these rights, or at least their apprehension by man, from this
process of his gradual evolution, by virtue of which they evolve, or he becomes
conscious of them, after a certain amount of "social discipline," and
not before. If such rights exist before, it must be potentially, or in some
such way as the Platonic ideas. But as this would involve an appointed order;
and hence intelligent will, to which we must attribute equity; and hence God;
it seems inconsistent with Mr. Spencer's present view—not necessarily
with that part which derives our physical constitutions from lower animals
and primarily from the integrations of matter and motion for this is a mere
matter of external form, and that our bodies come, somehow, "from the
dust of the earth" as the Scriptures put it, is as clear as that ice comes
from water but with that part which gives to the ego the same genesis, and
accounts for our mental and moral qualities by variation, survival of the fittest,
the pressure of conditions, social discipline and heredity of acquired characteristics.
Mr. Spencer realizes this inconsistency, for, abandoning altogether his original
derivation and explanation of justice, he proceeds in Justice to make another
derivation and explanation in accordance with his new philosophy, devoting
to this the first eight chapters, or something more than a fifth of the book.
With its validity or invalidity, its coherency or incoherency, I am not here
concerned; my object being merely to show how he arrives at the conception
of justice and what it is, so that we may judge the teachings of Justice from
its own avowed standpoint.
To present Mr. Spencer's argument as intelligibly as I can, I will make a
synopsis of the first eight chapters of Justice, as far as possible in his
own words, but without quotationmarks, employing smaller type where the exact
words can be used at some length.
These chapters are
1.—Animal Ethics.
During immaturity, benefits received must be inversely proportioned to capacities
possessed. After maturity, benefits must vary directly as worth, measured by
fitness for the conditions of existence. The ill-fitted must suffer the evils
of unfitness, and the well-fitted prove their fitness.
2.—Sub-Human Justice.
The law of sub-human justice is that each individual shall receive the benefits
and the evils of its own nature and its consequent conduct.
3.—Human Justice.
Each individual ought to receive the benefits and the evils of his own nature
and consequent conduct, neither being prevented from having whatever good his
actions normally bring him, nor allowed to shoulder off this evil on other
persons.
4.—The Sentiment of Justice.
Our feeling that we ourselves ought to have freedom to receive the results
of our own nature and consequent actions, and which prompts maintenance of
the sphere for this free play, results from inheritances of modifications produced
by habit, or from more numerous survivals of individuals having nervous structures
which have varied in fit ways, and from the tendency of groups formed of members
having this adaptation to survive and spread. Recognition of the similar freedom
of others is evolved from the fear of retaliation, from the punishment of interference
prompted by the interests of the chief, from fear of the dead chief's ghost,
and from fear of God, when dead-chief-ghost worship grows into God worship,
and, finally, by the sympathy evolved by gregariousness.
5.—The Idea of Justice.
It emerges and becomes definite from experiences, generation after generation,
which provoke resentment and reactive pains, until finally there arises a conception
of a limit to each kind of activity up to which there is freedom to act. But
it is a long time before the general nature of the limit common to all cases
can be conceived. On the one hand there is the positive element, implied by
each man's recognition of his claims to unimpeded activities and the benefits
they bring; on the other hand there is the negative element implied by the
consciousness of limits which the presence of other men having like claims
necessitates. Inequality is suggested by the one, for if each is to receive
the benefits due his own nature and consequent conduct, then, since men differ
in their powers, there must be differences in the results. Equality is suggested
by the other, since bounds must be set to the doings of each to avoid quarrels,
and experience shows that these bounds are on the average the same for all.
Unbalanced appreciation of the one is fostered by war, and tends to social
organization of the militant type, where inequality is established by authority,
an inequality referring, not to the natural achievement of greater rewards
by greater merits, but to the artificial apportionment of greater rewards to
greater merits. Unbalanced appreciation of the other tends to such theories
as Bentham's greatest happiness principle, and to communism and socialism.
The true conception is to be obtained by noting that the equality concerns
the mutually limited spheres of action which must be maintained if associated
men are to co-operate harmoniously, while the inequality concerns the results
which each may achieve by carrying on his actions within the implied limits.
The two may be and must be simultaneously asserted.
6.—The Formula Of Justice.
It must be positive in so far as it asserts for each that, since he is to
receive and suffer the good and evil of his own actions, he must be allowed
to act. And it must be negative in so far as, by asserting this of every one,
it implies that each can be allowed to act only under the restraint imposed
by the presence of others having like claims to act. Evidently, the positive
element is that which expresses a prerequisite to life in general, and the
negative element is that which qualifies this prerequisite in the way required,
when, instead of one life carried on alone, there are many lives carried on
together.
Hence, that which we have to express in a precise way is the liberty of each
limited only by the like liberties of all. This we do by saying, Every man
is free to do what he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of
any other man.
7.—The Authority of this Formula.
The reigning school of politics and morals has a contempt for doctrines that
imply restraint on the doings of immediate expediency. But if causation be
universal, it must hold throughout the actions of incorporated men. Evolution
implies that a distinct conception of justice can have arisen but gradually.
It has gone on more rapidly under peaceful relations, and been held back by
war. Nevertheless, where the conditions have allowed, it has evolved slowly
to some extent, and formed for itself approximately true expressions, as shown
in the Hebrew Commandments, and without distinction between generosity and
Justice, in the Christian Golden Rule, and in modern forms in the rule of Kant.
It is also shown on the legal side, in the maxims of lawyers as to natural
law, admitted inferentially even by the despotically minded Austin.
These, it will be objected, are a priori beliefs. The doctrine of evolution
teaches that a priori beliefs entertained by men at large must have arisen,
if not from the experiences of each individual, then from the experiences
of the race. Fixed intuitions must have been established by that intercourse
with
things which throughout an enormous past has directly and indirectly determined
the organization of the nervous system, and certain resulting necessities
of thought. Thus had the law of equal freedom no other than a priori derivations,
it would still be rational to regard it as an adumbration of a truth, if
not
still literally true. And the inductive school, including Bentham and Mill,
are, on analysis, driven to the basis of a priori cognitions.
But the principle of natural equity, expressed in the freedom of each, limited
only by the like freedom of all, is not exclusively an a priori belief.
Examination of the facts has shown it to be a fundamental law by conformity
to which life has evolved from its lowest up to its highest forms, that each
adult individual shall take the consequences of its own nature and actions:
survival of the fittest being the result. And the necessary implication is
an assertion of that full liberty to act which forms the positive element in
the formula of justice; since, without full liberty to act, the relation between
conduct and consequence cannot be maintained. Various examples have made clear
the conclusion manifest in theory, that among gregarious creatures this freedom
of each to act has to be restricted; since if it is unrestricted there must
arise such clashing of actions as prevents the gregariousness. And the fact
that, relatively unintelligent though they are, inferior gregarious creatures
inflict penalties for breaches of the needful restrictions, shows how regard
for them has come to be unconsciously established as a condition to persistent
social life.
These two laws, holding, the one of all creatures and the other of social
creatures, and the display of which is clearer in proportion as the evolution
is higher, find their last and fullest sphere of manifestation in human societies.
We have recently seen that along with the growth of peaceful co-operation there
has been an increasing conformity to this compound law under both its positive
and negative aspects; and we have also seen that there has gone on simultaneously
an increase of emotional regard for it, and intellectual apprehension of it.
So that we have not only the reasons above given for concluding that this
a priori belief has its origin in the experiences of the race, but we are enabled
to affiliate it on the experiences of living creatures at large, and to perceive
that it is but a conscious response to certain necessary relations in the order
of nature.
No higher warrant can be imagined; and now, accepting the law of equal freedom
as an ultimate ethical principle, having an authority transcending every other,
we may proceed with our inquiry.
8.—Its Corollaries.
That the general formula of justice may serve for guidance, deductions must
be drawn severally applicable to special classes of cases. The several particular
freedoms deducible from the laws of equal freedom may fitly be called, as they
commonly are called, rights. Rights truly so called are corollaries from the
law of equal freedom, and what are falsely called rights are not deducible
from it.
It is not worth while to examine this argument. It is sufficient for our
purpose to see that in Justice Mr. Spencer re-asserts the same principle from
which in Social Statics he condemned private property in land.
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