Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century
Chapter 1 From Renaissance to Revolution
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THE general political, social, and institutional background of the period of the Enlightenment is the Renaissance. The former falls in a general way in the eighteenth century. Immediately back of it lies the Renaissance and the philosophy of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibnitz. The philosophy of the eighteenth century gathers particularly about a published presentation of Leibnitz' philosophy made by the German philosopher, Wolff. It was a somewhat superficial statement, and it presented the world from the point of view of what is termed "rationalism." There is one phase of this rationalism to which I particularly want to call your attention, namely, that it is an inheritance from an earlier period and came into European thought by way of Christianity. The conception of the world as a rational order came through the theology of the church. The doctrine was built around the gospel of Jesus and the conception of St. Paul when he undertook to formulate the Jewish theory in such a form that it would be made universal.
With the advent of Christianity came the conception of a world created by a God who was infinitely intelligent and who had infinite power. Everything that such a deity created, everything that he did, must be the expression of that intelligence, and nothing could resist its expression. You can see that there could be nothing accidental or irrational in such a world. Of course, it might not be rational to us. An infinite mind would have purposes and methods of which we could not conceive with our finite intelligence. Particularly there would be purposes which would be carried out in later periods. We cannot see what these purposes are. Therefore the world may appear to us to be irrational; but actually, having been created by an
(2) intelligence that has infinite power and an infinite understanding, it must be rational clear through.
This conception, as I have said, was of a world which was fashioned to carry out God's purposes. The first expression of these purposes was found in bringing into existence men with souls, who were free to sin and who were condemned to death because of their sin. Back of this view lay the philosophy and history of St. Augustine. The world was thrown up, so to speak, as the scene in which the drama of the fall and the salvation of man was to be enacted. It had just the relation to the drama that the theater has. It had no purpose except as the scene in which the drama could be enacted. After it was enacted, the heavens were to be rolled up like a scroll. The history of the world was simply a device of the Deity for the carrying-out of this program. We have expression of this picture in the poetry of Milton. God determines to replace the fallen angels by human souls, and for this purpose he takes out of the chaos matter from which he fashioned the world. The value of the world centered in men's faith, in their souls, in what they experience.
In the light of this view St. Augustine, who lived at about the time of the fall of Rome, undertook, as Milton did later, to justify the ways of God to man on the basis of what he conceived to be the inspired scriptures. He undertook to show what God had tried to do, in so far as God revealed it to man.
As we have seen, the history of the world constitutes a sort of drama. It begins with the creation of the world as depicted in Genesis. Here man is presented as a free moral agent. He falls from grace, he sins, and the punishment of sin is death; but Goa elects to offer salvation to man through the ultimate sacrifice of his son., if man will accept the means of grace. On that authority St. Augustine undertakes to arrange the whole of human history: it advances from, the fall of man up to the appearance of Christ, and his crucifixion, suffering, and mediation. From that time on, the world presents the opportunity for man's salvation. It was created for that purpose.
This much we know about the world and about God's inten-
(3) -tion: he made the world out of nothing; he created it in six days and placed man in it; man sinned, fell from grace, and God in his infinite mercy set up his plan of salvation through the appearance of Christ. From that time on, the world existed in order that the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve might have the opportunity of being saved. When this opportunity had been offered, the drama, so to speak, would be completed. Then the world was to be burned up, the scroll prepared, and those lost in hell were to go on suffering through eternity. That is the picture which St. Augustine portrayed.
But it assumes a perfectly definite end. And it assumes another power besides that of God, and one which runs counter to God, and that is man's free will. This is present because God saw fit to create it. Of course, he created it with the possibility of man sinning. Even the devils in hell speculated; but the assumption was that God had infinite knowledge, and he knew what the result of his creation would be. But there was in the world a principle which could oppose itself even to the infinite power because God placed it there. He saw fit to create individuals with such powers. There should be suffering and misery due to man's sinning. It was part of God's chastisement for sin. The world was, on the face of it, irrational. It was a world created by an infinite God, a perfect, deity, but still one in which evil and imperfection could appear because man could exercise his choice. Man was responsible for the evil and for the accompanying suffering which came with sin. He could elect to use the means of grace which God gave him to be saved, or he could refuse and be lost. The picture of the world from that standpoint was most comprehensively given by Dante; but we have the same picture of it in Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, having therein beings that were able to choose contrary to God's law, consequently introducing the element of evil into the world. It was natural, then, that the world should, on the face of it, be irrational.
The medieval world was conceived of as being inhabited not only by men and women but by evil and good spirits. It was a
(4) world shot through with what we might call "magic." The science of the Middle Ages is simply a history of magic, but here again the conception was that God was utilizing these spirits for his purposes. You have a fitting picture of it in Goethe's Faust. That world, as we look back on it, was all shot through with magic and historiology. There was the conception of it as seeming to be absolutely irrational. Yet this evil is overcome in the end by God, and everything which is for the highest glory of God is fully rational.
This attitude was entirely different from that of the ancient world. If we look back to the great systematic philosopher of the ancient world, Aristotle, we find that he regarded the world as provided with "forms." That is an Aristotelian technical term which answers in a certain way, on the biological side, to our term "species"; on the logical side, to our term "concept." It answers to the nature of things, that about things which is known. For example, it is that which goes to make up a tree, that which constitutes the nature of a spade, a house, or a chair. A spade is any object which we recognize as having a certain nature. Aristotle recognized such noble objects, such forms, in nature in so far as nature was rational. Objects which have certain exact characters, certain qualities by means of which we can make them out and from which we can deduce certain consequences, can be defined. In this way we find objects in the world from which we can deduce logical consequences.
But Aristotle recognized also that there was a great deal in the world which was not rational. A tree, for example, seldom reaches its proper symmetry. Animals are subject to all sorts of defects and monstrosities. His explanation of this, in so far as he did explain it, was that the "matter" in the world somewhat resisted the "forms." In any case he recognized not only that there was a rational character but that some things were irrational, accidental-something was present that could not be accounted for.
The ancient world assumed that there was absolute perfection in the heavens. But the ancient scientist and philosopher recog-
(5) -nized an accidental character of affairs on the surface of the earth. They accepted a world in which there was not only a rational order but an irrational something that could not be explained, something that just happened. If the assumption were pushed far enough, we should find it to be resolvable into contingent elements. Hume later made this the basis for his skeptical philosophy.
The medieval world, as over against Aristotle's, had nothing in it that was irrational. It was this medieval view which passed down through the Renaissance to the world of modern science. Galileo in particular drew upon this conception of the absolute rationality of the world, that is, the view that everything that happens can be explained. The assumption which he used was that God works through natural forces. As an infinitely rational being he must act uniformly in accordance with what Galileo terms the "rational law of nature"; and he must act in a most perfect fashion, that is in a mathematical fashion. God is conceived of as the supreme mathematician. Objects have certain ways in which they move in reference to one another. These must be expressed and carried out in accordance with mathematical law. If we find out what the important processes of nature are, we also discover the laws which represent their various relations; we find out the laws by means of which God works. For example, one can look at a highly complicated machine without understanding it or knowing its purpose, and yet one can be confident that everything in it was arranged by a mechanic in accordance with natural law. Now God has a perfect mind; and the most rational manner in which to exercise a mind, from the point of view of the physicist of the Renaissance period, was to make mathematical use of it. It was thought, then, that laws could be found in the world which could never be broken, that uniformities could be discovered which would be absolute, because that must be the way in which a perfect mind would work.
The attitude of Galileo and also of the early modern philosophers was that God inevitably presented a world to man which
(6) was so devised that man could understand nature. This marks the passage from what we might call the "theological dogma" to the basic postulate of modern science. We state this postulate in terms of the uniformity of nature; we assume that nature may be comprehensively arranged in uniform series. We still have that confident faith. Our knowledge comes back to nature. We assume that there is a world in 'Which there are the laws of nature, but we have no assurance of it. This is one of the great contributions of the medieval period to the modern world, and it is a contribution which has been of increasing importance as science pushed its investigations further and further into nature.
The eighteenth century was the century of the triumph of mathematical analysis. The Copernican theory had been accepted by the scientists, and thus mathematical analysis was carried both to the heavens and to the earth. This analysis, which Galileo really initiated, was carried further and further and always with distinguishing success. Men had found a language in which they could read the world; it was a mathematical language. The point I am emphasizing is that the plan of things was devised by an infinitely intelligent being who did everything in a most perfect fashion. Every detail would be carried out in the manner of a perfect mechanic. If God were a mechanic, he would construct a world perfectly worked out.
This medieval faith in the uniformity of nature became, as I have said, the background of the thinking of the modern world. It did not belong to the ancient world. From the point of view of the former there is nothing in the world which is accidental. Everything is taken care of by God, and everything he does is done in an absolutely perfect fashion. His methods are those which express themselves in mathematical form. It was to that faith that the scientist of the Renaissance period turned to unravel the facts of nature. We talk sometimes about the uniformity of nature being demonstrated by the law of probabilities; and if we try to find what the line of the argument is, we discover a number of uniformities. Together they represent the
(7) uniformity of nature. If we ask why we find them, it is because we have already assumed the uniformity; we have taken it as our major premise that nature is uniform. If nature is not uniform, of course our argument falls to the ground. But you cannot prove the uniformity of nature by assuming it in advance. It is a postulate; it has never been proved. If we look for the origin of the concept, we find it not in Greek philosophy but in Christian theology. At the present time science does not go back to a theological doctrine; it accepts the postulate of uniformity on a pragmatic basis. We state natural laws; our modern science assumes the world is rational in the sense that we can explain that which we find in terms of the uniformities of the laws of nature. We go on with perfect confidence because so far this view has always worked. It is a postulate which cannot very well be overthrown. If the laws of nature break down, we can assume that there is some other uniformity which we have not found as yet. It is a postulate for us since we have taken over the fundamental assumption of an infinite creator who has fashioned the world in a perfect way with a purpose of his own. That was definitely the attitude of Renaissance science; and, if you want an interesting account of it, you will find it in Mr. Whitehead's Science and the Modern World. In the early part of the book you will find a very adequate and admirable presentation. In this period the world had become more and more definitive and scientific in its attitude. This is one of the things that we do not think of; and consequently, because we do not think of it, we do not realize that it is there. But it has had a very profound effect.
When men in the Renaissance period turned to an intensive study of nature, they found that their most efficient tool was mathematics; it was that which enabled them to reach simple elements and to discover what the uniformities were in the events in which these simple elements appeared. Thus, if the world was perfectly ordered, it was ordered by a perfect mathematician. God was the great mechanic, not because his ethical or his moral ends were at all of a mechanical character, but because
(8) the means by which these were carried out were inevitably the most perfect. If God created the world for the fall and the salvation of man, as he did from the point of view of the Middle Ages, he would create it in a mathematical fashion so that a mathematical statement of it could be given.
This rationalistic conception of a mathematically ordered world was a postulate which was almost a dogma. Those of you who have followed the development of the philosophy of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibnitz, know how they gave to the mathematical interpretation of nature an almost religious value. Descartes' conception was of a world in which reality was that which was clearly and distinctly perceived; in which truth was that of which the mind had immediate and clear conception. Clearness and distinctness were his criteria for truth. He pushed his analysis further than it had ever gone before, carrying it over into analytical geometry. Here he used the mathematical statement of the process of motion itself, dividing motion up into an infinite number of accelerations. Galileo showed that bodies fall with a uniformly increasing velocity. Descartes carried on this mathematical conception in order to reach elements which could be arranged into uniform series. Scientists were occupied with this analysis for a century and a half.
This general attitude freed the scientist; it freed him from the dogma of the church. He was studying the indefinite matter in which the church was not interested. The church was interested in man's soul and its salvation, and the material scene in which the drama took place was of no value itself.
I want to call your attention at this point to the fact that in the ancient world the atomic doctrine was fully presented but was not made use of. Our science has gone ahead through the use of this atomic conception of matter. Not only do we have atoms, but we divide the atoms up into electrons and protons. The avowed purpose of Epicurus in his presentation of this idea was to free men's minds of superstitions. There was no reality outside of weight, size, and shape. That was all there was.
(9) Through this doctrine he hoped to free the minds of his disciples from the fear of death. But the philosophers who undertook to find values in the world were unwilling to adopt this theory. In fact, no other school did adopt this Democritean doctrine.
Trees and houses, and other things, as our science conceives of them, are made up of electrons. But a tree is not simply a definite number of ultimate physical particles. Something else is responsible for the tree. There is, as Aristotle says, a certain nature in the tree which brings about its development into a tree. When various phenomena in the world are taking place around us, we try to analyze them in order to understand them. We are always seeking simplicity in our modern scientific method. But what has been done with the unities in the content of the world? There is something more than atoms. What right have we to take the particles of the tree and say that they constitute the tree itself? These particles are really connected with the climate, the solar system, and other things. All the particles have relationships with all the other particles in the universe. A field of force surrounds every particle in the universe. There is no justification for our taking a particular group of them and saying that these constitute a tree. To make this clear we have to go back again to the medieval period, to the time of Abelard. There is a certain nature of the tree which develops in the tree itself, until it takes on the form of the fully actualized tree. What Abelard substituted for this was the concept which we have of the tree. The tree is the matter. You can conceive of the tree as made up of just matter. But our concept of the tree, or the value that it has for us, with its color, its leaves and foliage, and its bark, is a concept which we form. That concept we find in the tree in so far as it is in our mind to begin with. Then there are certain likenesses which exist. The philosophers of the Renaissance were more or less free to deal with the physical world as made up of physical particles. They could seek after this simplicity. If they were asked what the other attributes of the so-called physical world were, they would say that they were put into men's minds as impressions,
(10) colors, sounds, tastes, and odors. The atoms and molecules had no color in themselves. What you have there, what you conceive of, are vibrations. When you strike the retina, you arouse color; it comes from the mind itself. The secondary qualities exist in the mind. Space, form, and motion-these alone were supposed to belong with the objects themselves. The secondary qualities, those which come through the eye, the ear, and the palate belong to the mind. We transfer these qualities to things, and so more and more of the world is put into the consciousness of individuals. This is particularly true of the meanings of things, e.g., that which goes to make up a tree. The characters which we state in terms of the concept of a tree exist in the minds of men, and they had previously existed in the mind of God. The determination of other characters, those which Aristotle found in nature, could be put into the consciousness of individuals.
One of the reasons why it was relatively easy to transfer these attributes to the consciousness of the individual is another of the gifts of Christianity. The whole universe is created simply as a scene in which the drama of the soul, which is independent of the setting, could be enacted. Would this human soul act virtuously or viciously? Would it use the means of grace provided for it, or would it fall from grace? Everything bore upon the fall and salvation of man. The human soul had an infinite life, a life of blessedness or a life of suffering. It was essential even to the perfection of God. It was thus relatively easy to carry over the important characters of the world into the consciousness of man, and the work of the scientist was made easy. First of all he comes to realize that God is a great mathematician. In the second place the indefinite world, the indefinite matter, in themselves have no value except in so far as they express the laws of God. And in the third place the consciousness of individuals is the very reason for the existence of the world. The world is there only for the sake of the individual.
Going back to the point which I have already made: the world was created for a specific purpose, and this purpose was to
(11) be carried out by the agencies which God placed on the earth. Those agencies were centered in the church. It was a living source of inspiration. God spoke through this agency as he had spoken through the Holy Writ. The church was inevitably the source of authority. The period in which the medieval world expressed itself most completely was during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. We have the picture of the world as the theologian, the philosopher, the churchman, and the layman conceived it. It was a world created for a certain definite purpose. The salvation carried out by God and, after the sacrifice of his son, by the institution of the church itself was passed on to man through the church. This was an outside authority. It was an authority which came from an infinite deity; it was an authority which was not to be comprehended in its operation. God did not explain what all his purposes were; he told only enough to guide men in their conduct. Aside from that, his purposes transcend men's conduct. The institutions of the family and of the state themselves came from God. He established them and all other institutions. The schools and the universities were the means by which man could comprehend the will of God. This will is arbitrary. When you call in a physician, his comprehension is presumably better than yours; otherwise you would not call him in. He speaks with authority, but he does not speak with an arbitrary authority. When you call upon the engineer who builds a bridge or a skyscraper, you are not making use of an arbitrary authority, because the ground of the authority lies in the knowledge which you yourself can in some sense grasp. But the authority of the church came from an infinite deity, an infinite mind, whose knowledge you could not comprehend. You had to accept it simply because God spoke and gave his authority through the church. This authority got its expression not simply in the church but in the state. The sword was placed in the hands of the king by God himself. All institutions were conceived of as established by God. In so far as the institution reflected God's purpose, man had to accept the institution; it spoke with the authority that
(12) came to it from the church itself. This embodied itself in the so-called Holy Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Empire had at its head the emperor, who was crowned by the pope. We know that empire died out and went to pieces; it became, as it were, neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. But that conception belonged to practically all men's minds during that period.
The points which I have been bringing out are points which we are apt to overlook in the background of the thought of the later Renaissance period. It was a period of fundamental revolution -- a period of breaking away from the conceptions of the authority of the church, an authority which was arbitrary. It is this latter which makes revolutions almost necessary. The attitude of revolution which marks the early modern period was one against the arbitrary authority of the medieval institutions, an authority which came to them as supposedly inspired by God, given by God, and given with reference to ends and purposes which lay beyond the purview of man so that he was unable to criticize those institutions or to reform them: he had to receive them as they were. This was the fundamental conception which belonged to the medieval period; its institutions were fundamentally church institutions. In the mind of the medieval period the state derived its authority from the church and from God through the church. The transcendent character of the divine purpose also carried with it the necessarily arbitrary character of the institution as such. Men could not determine what the authority of the institution should be from its function in the community. One could not say that the administration of the institution should have such and such authority in order to bring about certain results which men presented as desirable, They had to look to the purposes of God in the establishment of these institutions, and so the authority of the institutions was necessarily arbitrary. The reaction against this came on the basis of a description of human nature as having in it a rational principle from which authority could proceed. This rational principle was presented by Rousseau as the recog-
(13) -nition of rights which were the end of the individual and which could be made universal because in asserting his rights the individual recognized them as belonging to others also.
The reaction against arbitrary authority is one which took place, on the political side, in the French Revolution; and we shall see that Rousseau expressed the gospel of this revolution in his Contrat social. He undertook to find in man's own nature the basis for the institutions of society. He undertook to find in man's rational nature the basis for the state as the sovereign authority. It was not necessary to go outside of man's own nature to get the basis for such an authority. On this ground, in so far as a member of the community both enacts and obeys the laws of the community, a rational state is possible. If laws express the will of the whole community, the individual is able both to enact them and to obey them as a member of the community. And such laws could express the will of the whole community in so far as they expressed the rights of the members of that community, for rights exist only in so far as they are acknowledged, and only to the extent that those who claim them acknowledge them in the person of others. That is, no man can claim a right which he does not recognize for others. No man can claim a right who does not at the same time affirm his own obligation to respect that right in all others. In so far, then, as legislation can be an expression of the rights of individuals, that legislation can flow from the whole community because it will take on the form of that which is universal. If men are capable of recognizing rights as well as of claiming them, then they are capable of forming a community, of establishing institutions whose authority will lie within the community itself.
The revolution gathered about the rights of man. That has been perpetuated in the Declaration of Independence and the statement that men are born free and equal. The great and outstanding illustration of such rights is property. No one can make a claim to property except as he admits it in others.
When men came to conceive the order of society as flowing from the rational character of society itself; when they came to
(14) criticize institutions from the point of view of their immediate function in preserving order, and criticized that order from the point of view of its purpose and function; when they approached the study of the state from the point of view of political science; then, of course, they found themselves in opposition to the medieval attitude which accepted its institutions as given by God to the church. The medieval monarch ruled by divine right. In England, where the Puritan government was to be a regime of sense, it was still assumed. that the form of the state was determined from without. With the revolution this form was brought within the rational power of man himself in society so that institutions could be criticized and discussed to determine what they were designed to accomplish, and to see how far they did accomplish what they set out to do.
This general attitude is rationalistic, and is expressed specifically in three accounts of government-those of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. These are roughly dated about as follows: Hobbes about the time of the Puritan Revolution; Locke by that which passes in English history as the Revolution, that is, the disturbance in which the Stuarts were sent across the channel and Parliament brought over William and Mary as the sovereigns of England; and Rousseau by the French Revolution.
The work of these three men undertakes to justify these revolutions. In one sense, of course, the doctrine of Hobbes is not a justification of revolution. On the contrary, it is a criticism of it. But in criticizing it Hobbes attempted to go back to a study of human nature and to discover from that study what sort of a state ought to exist. He does not go outside of that which man's reason can compass in order to account for the institution. The result which he reached as a consequence is much like that of the medieval community. From Hobbes's point of view every human being is necessarily selfish, seeking for what he wants; and this brings to the community an inevitable conflict between all the individuals who are seeking what they want. When they seek the same thing, they are at war. This picture is given by Hobbes in his Levia-
(15) -than. [The conception of the state arises out of the social contract. The individual has natural rights, which spring from his own impulses and desires. But if one gathered together a group of such individuals and the desires of all were set into operation, one would find that the different people would often desire the same thing and would come to blows. A community established upon the basis of natural rights would lead to what Hobbes called "a war of all against all." It was because of this anticipated result that he advocated the absolute monarch. This was the Leviathan; it was not the absolute monarch that belonged to the catholic tradition, the tradition of Christendom, but one set up by individuals who were unable to agree with one another. The individual was, from Hobbes's point of view, too entirely individualistic for the success of any but an autocratic state. Yet you find in him, in his reason, the principle of social organization.
This seems actually to have been the result of the attempts made in the revolution to establish a state on a rational basis. Men fell out with one another; there was turmoil, internecine warfare; and the final solution was found in the Leviathan, in the form of Napoleon, who took all the power into his own hands. And that seemed to be the only solution that could be presented at the time.][1]
Going from Hobbes to Locke, we find that the latter had a different view of human nature. He assumes that property, for example, arises naturally from man's adding value to natural objects by means of his own labor. If an individual has added this value to the natural object, then it becomes his property. And Locke assumed that men will recognize this as regards the product not only of their own labor but also of the labor of others. He assumes that man is naturally social, that he has an interest in the good of others since all are found in social relationships with each other-in their families and their neighborhood. So from Locke's standpoint there is material for the building up of a society based upon human nature. What is needed
(16) primarily is some sort of an impartial authority, which all will recognize, to overcome the disputes which will arise over property, over the rights of individuals in their social relations. But he assumes that, if these disputes are settled from a standpoint which all recognize, this authority will also be recognized. It is the court, then, that is really central in Locke's conception of human society, a court which will settle disputes in accordance with the accepted principles that are to be found in human nature itself.
When we reach Rousseau, we have a somewhat different approach to the problem. It is an approach which was determined by the political situation in France. The authority there lay entirely with the monarch. All powers came back to him, and all the authority which the different administrators of the state exercised came from the king. He was the monarch, and everyone else was a subject of the monarch. Rousseau approached the problem from the current fiction of a social contract in order to see how a community could be established in which the authority could rest in the people themselves. The king, as the monarch in France, was proving inadequate to the task which belonged to him. For example, he maintained orders which served no function in the community and which had all the privileges of the old feudal caste. Among these privileges was that of high taxation. The king was unable to rid the state of this incubus. There were advances in the administration of the community, but it was still unsatisfactorily administered and was criticized by the active intellects of the time. This was done indirectly, for example, by Montesquieu in his Esprit des lois, a special study of the old Roman order and of the English order which serves as a critique of the orders which existed in France.
But could the authority be brought back to the people themselves? This idea presented the seeming paradox of people being both sovereign and subject, and this Rousseau undertook to solve. How can the people be both? The answer he presents to this is that the people may be sovereign in so far as they exercise
(17) a volonté générale If they exercise this general will, each is a sovereign. On the other hand, each is a subject in so far as he obeys the laws which the general will enacts. He can be both subject and sovereign if his will is the will of the community.
This assumption, as over against Hobbes's, is that there can be such a general will, that a man as an individual in the community can act not simply as a representative of himself or for himself but for the whole community if his will is identical with the will of the other members of the community. This not only presupposes common interests, which were emphasized by Locke, but it presupposes that the very form of the will which man exercises is universal, that is, a man wills something only in so far as he puts himself in the place of everyone else in the community and in so far as he accepts the obligations which that act of will carries with it. A striking illustration of this is found in property. If one wills to possess that which is his own so that he has absolute control over it as property, he does so on the assumption that everyone else will possess his own property and exercise absolute control over it. That is, the individual wills his control over his property only in so far as he wills the same sort of control for everyone else over property.
That represents the difference between the attitude of a rational being in a society and that of the man whose strength or cunning is able to hold on to something. When the latter wills to hold on to something, he does it despite everyone else. It is his by his strong arm. He does not will that others shall maintain possession of their property. On the contrary, he is ready to take things away from everyone else. To will to hold on to what he has on the basis that might is right is to will to deprive everyone else of his property just in so far as he has the opportunity to get it. There is a fundamental difference between these two acts of volition. To will on the basis of power threatens everyone else in the community with the loss of that which he has, because the power of one person is greater than that of another. On the other hand, when a person comes forward and says, "This property is mine, I propose to maintain it as
(18) property," he can do it only in so far as he can present evidence that it is his property on bases which everyone else recognizes; it is property only in so far as everyone's possessions are property. In this sense property is something universal. The type of possession guaranteed by might is quite particular.
There can be, then, a type of volition which is not, as Hobbes conceived of it, individual in the sense of grasping for what one wants. It can be a demand simply for that which belongs to the individual in the same sense as the same sort of possession belongs to everyone else. What one wants is possession guaranteed by the community itself. He wants property; he does not want mere possession. Possession may be nine-tenths of the law, but it does not become valuable unless it is the law. One cannot call upon the community to support it, cannot depend upon the institutions of the community to back his claim, unless that possession does constitute the law, unless that sort of possession on the part of anyone else would give him property rights. A community in which the volitions of the different members would be of this universal character would, in the nature of the case, be one made up of both sovereigns and subjects. The volition of each would be the volition of all in so far as his acts were universal, not simply because they happen to agree, but because what they set up is that which is guaranteed by all. What makes property extremely valuable in the community is that it does give to each man a right which everyone else recognizes, which no one can take away. If the volitions of the members of the community take on the form of rights which are acknowledged and recognized by everyone, the community is made up of individuals who are both sovereign and subject.
Of course, there are details in the doctrine of the Contrat social which call for discussion. This conception of tile universal will, which could be the will of the individual and yet the will of all the community, is of one which is universal not simply because of the number of people who get together and who have the same ideas but because that which is willed is willed by everyone in the community; it is because what is
(19) willed gets its value through its being the common will. In other words, this is the nature of a right as such, and it does not exist unless this is recognized. On the other hand, we see in the case of property no such thing as a right which does not carry with it necessarily certain obligations. One cannot assert his right without at the same time asserting his obligation to recognize other people's property. One cannot assert his rights to property without at the same time recognizing his duties toward that property. Otherwise it will not be property but mere possession; mere possession is not property.
Again, if one seeks for enlightenment, he seeks that for which he realizes all others must also seek. He is trying to find that which has meaning for everyone, that which has value only in so far as it is generally received, generally recognized. What are the so-called laws of nature to a community which is ignorant of them? What is the value of a great work of art in a community which is blind to it? What is the meaning of enlightenment in general? If everyone is bound down by superstition, what is the good of one's own private enlightenment if it exists for no one else? Education, which, of course, is the source of enlightenment, must be general if it is to have the value which ought to belong to it. One may, of course, exist in a class by himself to which other classes are subservient, not a part of his own community. But in so far as one has social relations with others, one's own enlightenment has value for him only to the extent that it is shared by others who have social relationships with him. If you are in the midst of a stampede of cattle, it is of no use for you to know the purpose of their stampede. They do not know it themselves. An enlightenment has no value unless it is universal. Of course, one may use the ignorance of others for one's own advantage. But enlightenment as a social affair must be universal to have any meaning.
The values which lie behind the organization of the institutions of the community must be universal values; and in so far as the will of individuals confirms these values and makes them the basis of those institutions, it is what Rousseau called a
(20) volonté générale. This principle does not go back to a simple rule of majorities. The rule of majorities may be the most satisfactory means we have of expressing this general will, but it will be a faulty one at best. If we seek for an expression of what we mean by this, we find it in what is called "public opinion," that is, that attitude which is itself a universal attitude, which goes to make up the character of the individual. When there is an effective public opinion, one that really expresses the attitude of everyone in the community, one recognizes it as one that has and will have authority. It may be that such a universal opinion cannot be reached. Or it may be that enlightened individuals within the community can recognize what is the meaning of the social situation, can bring it home to the consciousness of the people in the community, enlighten them, and thus give leadership. We may have to muddle along with a very inadequate expression of such a general will, but we assume that the authority of our institutions lies in the rational nature of the individuals which make up society. This point of view we have taken over from the revolution. We do not assume that the institution depends upon an outside authority. We do not assume that human beings have been trained in certain habits, like trick animals in a circus. We assume that there flow from man's own rational nature judgments and volitions which are or can be universal in character, and that it is this which makes human institutions possible; that one wills for himself what he wills for everyone; that one obeys the volitions of others because he identifies them with his own volitions. That is what lies back of what we call, in general, democratic institutions. The form of democracy is not essential to the doctrine. What is essential is the assumption that men are sufficiently enlightened to recognize that their own volitions in great social matters will be identical with those of others who are so enlightened that when one wills such things as property, enlightenment, and security, these things will be recognized as public ends which are also the ends of the individual. As a result of this, the individual will will for himself what is good for others.
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Back of this point of view lay the doctrine of rights. In this sense a man's own volitions give laws for society, and only in so far as the individual's volitions do give laws for society is a society possible which does not depend upon some external authority. This is a society in which the individual is the source of the institutions. A society is possible in the sense of the old empire, the ancient world, a society established by force. Such a society is possible, but a society which springs from the citizen himself is possible only in so far as the citizen can give laws for the community; and he can give laws only to the extent that his volitions are an expression of the rights which he recognizes in others, only in so far as he expresses the volition of others because they affirm rights which the others recognize in him to the extent that he affirms them for himself.
The rights which Rousseau recognized are few in number. They are those which gather about property, about the simplest social institutions such as the family, the rights of education, and the general right of liberty, that which is embodied in our Declaration of Independence.
Liberty became the slogan for the French Revolution. It was naturally the gathering ground in the fight against arbitrary authority. It carried with it the assumption that, if men were free, their interests would be common interests. That, you see, is what is implied in the conception of rights-that the interests of men are, after all, common interests. Even such an interest as that of possession becomes a common interest when one recognizes it as property. If what one wants is not simply possession but property, then one wants something that is universal, because that which he wants involves his recognition of the possession of property by others. That is, he wants that which is recognized by everyone; and of course lie can demand that of others only in, so far as he recognizes their property rights. What is essential for a community is common interests. This was represented in the slogans of the French Revolution, not simply by liberty, but by the others-equality and fraternity. These all imply that the interests of men are common
(22) interests, that that which one person wants is something which other persons want and which, at the same time, he wants them to have.
Now that can be formulated, as John Stuart Mill later formulated the idea of liberty, in the assumption that one wants freedom of action on his own part in so far as it will not interfere with freedom of action on the part of other people. This is somewhat vague; it cannot be put into a clear-cut formula as is the case with property, yet it lies behind most of our judgments in our demand for freedom of action. A person is free to act providing he does not tread on someone else's toes. One wants freedom, but he should ask only for that which he is willing to grant to others. If he asks for the opportunity to express himself, he must at the same time recognize the rights of others to express themselves, and his freedom must not encroach upon the freedom of others.
One can make a general statement out of this; but the difficulty is to give it in clear-cut outlines, to make it clear just what this sort of freedom is. We can discover it in certain cases, as in the freedom of the ballot, of the vote; freedom of expression, of speech. In these cases you can make a definite statement that that which you want you must recognize in the rights of others. But if one attempts to make it the basis for the order of society, one will find that it is negative, not positive. Possession is positive. And if you ask that your possession should be the sort which you recognize in everyone else, then you can formulate it in the law of property, as it has been formulated in all communities in one way or another, and, of course, more exactly in the more highly civilized communities. But it is very difficult to start off with a conception of freedom and make it the basis for the organization of society, for the concept is in itself negative, asking simply that the individual shall be free from restraint. But you have to recognize that you cannot ask for freedom if that freedom will put you in the position of enslaving someone else, of encroaching upon his freedom of action.
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Turning to the conception of equality, we have a still more difficult doctrine, but it does, at least, have positive content. Freedom taken by itself is negative. Equality is the doctrine that each person shall have at least the same political standing as every other person. It may, of course, be carried over from the political to the economic field, where we demand that every person shall have the same property as another. It can even be taken over into other fields, in which, however, it is more difficult to define. But in the field of politics one can define it in terms of the right to vote and the counting of votes so that one person shall count for one and only one. That is something that can be stated in positive fashion, in terms of democracy. Democracy is the rule of counted votes, and consequently the rule of the majority. This is a simple conception and in it, in the application of the revolutionary principles, we come back to a quality of a political character-that in which each individual counts for one and only one and which, in the exercise of the vote, the counting of a ballot, leads to government by the majority. The question then remains, of course, as to whether this conception, if it is so simple, can be made the basis for the organization of the community. The rule of the majority which this leads to is not necessarily the rule of the community. Fifty-one per cent is a majority, but it does not necessarily express the desires of the community as a whole. It is an external statement. Yet it may be the best working method that we have for getting at what does represent the will of the community.
The remaining idea, that of fraternity, is still more general. It comes back to the attitude of neighborliness, the identification of ourselves with others, a common emotional interest in others. This comes under the general term "sympathy." It is 'very vague, and it is only under very exceptional conditions that it becomes universal. These are just the conditions which a universal religion undertakes to establish. It can establish it only in certain ways, in certain periods, under particular conditions; but the conception is one to which all universal religions come back. In so far as all are creatures of one creator, in so far as all
(24) are children of one father, belonging, therefore, to a single family, we get this conception of fraternity. But we can see how varied and elaborate are the conditions by which it is universalized. It has been true in religion, as elsewhere, that people have to depend upon their sense of hostility to other persons in order to identify themselves with their own group. This idea has been found to be much too vague to be made the basis for the organization of the state.
