The Philosophical Theory of the State

by Bernard Bosanquet

Like the other ideas of which we have spoken, the idea of class or specialised function may be illustrated both by the extreme in which it is nothing, and the extreme in which it is everything. The less a society is differentiated—the less that, considered as a mind, it has developed intense and determinate capacities—the more its structure repeats itself from household to household, [1] and fails to exhibit lines of formation pervading the community as a whole. Dicey’s The Peasant State [2] gives an idea of a social mind thus undifferentiated, without classes, without ambitions, and without interests. Both in this case and in that of the Boers of the Transvaal it would be rash for an outsider to pronounce dogmatically on the value of the life which is achieved. But as cases of social formation and of social minds, they illustrate our present theme. To say that there is no specialised function, is the same as to say that there is no developed intelligence.

[1] Durkheim’s “Segmentary Structure,” De la Division, p. 190.

[2] See also H. Bosanquet, Standard of Life, p. 8.

“Class” appears to be everything, an absolute and inflexible rule of precedence and privilege, when it has lost or has not gained the power of accommodating itself to function, and function to social logic. Such denials of free adjustment, of {316} the career open to talents, may take the form of a confusion of the principle of class with that of birth, or even with that of private property. In the former case function and position are inherited, in the latter they are bought and sold. The two confusions may even be combined, as when public functions are inherited like or with a house or an estate. [1] Such a “class” system may be an oppression to its members, [2] or to the community, or to both. But the essence of the evil is that a function of mind is divorced from its characteristic of free logical adaptation within the social system. The institution has become ossified; and instead of moulding itself, like a theory or a living organism, to the facts and needs which it is there to meet, it nails itself to an alien principle, and becomes a fallacy in social logic, or a dead organ in the social body.

[1] As in the judicial privileges of the Baron of Bradwardine and his likes.

[2] The hereditary executioner in Maurus Jokai’s novel, Die schöne Michal.

In both of these extreme cases individuality is minimised. In the former the individual does not pretend to any high capacity. In the latter he pretends to a considerable capacity, but this being cut apart from the principle of the whole, and pretending to be everything in itself to exist absolutely or for its own sake has lost the connection which gave it value, and becomes a mere pretension.

There is a strange and sad institution in which, it may be suggested, the two extremes of error are combined. This is the institution of “the {317} poor” as a class, representing, as an ethical idea in the modern mind, a permanent object of compassion and self-sacrifice. “Poverty,” it has been said, “has become a status.” The “déclassés” have become a social class, with the passive social function of stimulating the goodness of others. [1] Let any one consider carefully, from the point of view which regards ethical ideas as an embodiment of human or social purposes, the offertory sentences of the Church of England. It is needless to press the criticism, for no one would be likely to deny that here we have ideas gathered from other soils and climates, and rightly applicable only in the spirit, but not in the letter. “Give alms of thy goods, and never turn thy face from any poor man; and then the face of the Lord shall not be turned away from thee.” “He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord, and look, what he layeth out it shall be paid him again.” The victims of misfortune in a small community, under strict regulations, as were the Jews, for the promotion of industry, are one thing. The recognition of a class marked by the function of dependence—to use a contradictory expression—in a vast community whose industrial organisation rests on the individual will, is another thing. The idea of pity and self-denial, inherited, I presume, largely from the Jewish scriptures as also from the New Testament, has tended, in the modern world, to become mechanical, and combine with a false class-conception. All who know the inner life of evangelical Christians a {318} generation ago will admit that, among earnest persons of this type, the notion of the tithe—the devotion of one tenth or more of the income to purposes of religion or benevolence—had been inherited as a guiding idea, representing an end valuable per se, almost according to the letter of the offertory. I am not suggesting any vulgar charge of other-worldliness, but recalling a genuine conviction that the surrender of a portion of income to a less fortunate class of the community was in itself desirable and a religious duty.

[1] The incurably sick and helpless in all ranks of society do, no doubt, rightly fulfil such a passive function.

It would not be difficult to show that the true and highest idea of Christian charity is remote from this conception of a dependent status as inherent in a certain portion of society. What seems to be needed here, as in so many aspects of morality and religion, is to combine the inspiration and abandon of the modern mind with the definiteness of purpose and lucidity of plan that characterised the ancient City-state.