“It is true that the necessity which the State lays on the individual is for the most part one to which he is so accustomed that he no longer kicks against it; but what is it, we may ask, but an external necessity, which he no more lays on himself than he does the weight of the atmosphere or the pressure of summer heat and winter frosts, that compels the ordinary citizen to pay rates and taxes, to serve in the army, to abstain from walking over the Squire’s fields, snaring his hares, or fishing his preserved streams, to pay his rent, to respect those artificial rights of property which only the possessors of them have any obvious interest in maintaining, or even (if he is one of the proletariate) to keep his hands off the superfluous wealth of his neighbour when he has none of his own to lose?”
“A conception does not float in the air. It must be somebody’s conception. Whose conception, then, of general good is it that these institutions represent?”
“Is it not seriously misleading, when the requirements of the State have so largely arisen out of force directed by selfish motives, and when the motive of obedience to these requirements is determined by fear, to {289} speak of them as having a common source with the morality of which it is admitted that the essence is to be disinterested and spontaneous?”
[1] Principles of Political Obligation, p. 8; cf. p. 127 ff.
I have quoted these passages—the whole section should be carefully read—in order to state plainly a paradox which affects the theory of society from beginning to end. It continually shows itself in the pessimistic criticism of economic motive, political motive, and of every-day social motive.
The whole question really depends on our understanding of the relation of abstract and concrete. It is plain, as Green says, that the idea of a common good has never been the sole influence operative in the formation or maintenance of States. And, in as far as it has operated at all, it has only done so in very imperfect forms. Green goes so far as to say that Hegel’s account of freedom as realised in the State does not seem to correspond to the facts of society as it is, or even as, under the unalterable conditions of human nature, it ever could be; though, no doubt, there is a work of moral liberation, which society, through its various agencies, is constantly carrying on for the individual.
Now, the truth of these criticisms may be granted in the same sense in which we grant the imperfection of knowledge (as currently conceived) or of morality—imperfections not accidental, but inherent in each particular form of human experience. The conflict of interests, the failure to reconcile rights, and the weight and opaqueness, so to speak, of law and custom to the individual mind, are contradictions of the same type and {290} due to causes of the same kind as those which arise in the world of ethics and of theory. And, though the new relations which spring up in society are perpetually resulting in new contradictions, there is no reason to compare the State unfavourably, in this respect, with Morality or with Science. The contradictions, in fact, are the material of organisation. [1]
[1] Take, for instance, the chaos of the medical charities of London. It consists of endeavours to adjust help to needs, which endeavours are themselves unadjusted to each other. Thus, precisely as in the theoretical progress, the unadjustment of adjustments brings out ever new contradictions which demand readjustment.
Without differing profoundly from Green in theory, therefore, we venture to assign a greatly diminished importance to his criticisms. This is due in part to the growth of a more intimate experience, owing in some measure to his initiative, which seems to show the essentials of life to be far more identical throughout the so-called classes of society than is admitted by such a passage as that cited above about the dweller in a London yard. [1] It is due, further, and in connection with such experience, to the psychological conceptions developed in previous chapters, according to which the place of actual fear of punishment in maintaining the social system is really very small, while {291} the place of a habituation, which is essentially ethical, is comparatively large. These suggestions, which lead us to lay decreasing stress on Green’s criticism of Hegel, point wholly in the general direction of his own convictions, and we may finally meet the general difficulty, which expresses itself in pessimism, by considerations such as Green himself alleges in mitigation of his own criticism.
[1] Not much stress should be laid on an isolated expression of this kind, used in making clear the difficulties of a theory which on the whole he supported, and putting these difficulties, as was his custom, as high as possible. But it is worth noting that no one, who really knows the class thus rhetorically alluded to, fails to experience in them the same great relations and recognitions which make life worth living for more fortunate persons, and, as they feel very keenly, the experience is often more emphatic there than in the richer class. Probably, in fundamental matters, there is as large a proportion of persons untaught and bred up between temptations among the rich as among the poor.