The idea of law that would follow from what has been said may be illustrated by comparing the action of law with that of automatism in the human body. The system of co-ordinations by which we learn to walk, or acquire any kind of skill, such as that of performing on a musical instrument, is at first painfully and consciously acquired. Consciousness superintends every step in the process. But after a time the sequences reel off automatically. Consciousness retires from the field, ascends to a higher plane, and devotes itself to more interesting and significant business. Law, taking it in its broadest sense, may be regarded as the automatic machinery of freedom. It is the system of stimulations and repressions which the experience of mankind at any given time has found conducive to the attainment of the superior ends of life. In the minds of the more advanced members of the community repressive laws like the prohibitions of murder, theft, etc., have already become automatic. Such a thing as questioning or transgressing these laws never once in a lifetime occurs to them. (Of the stimulative laws, such as the requirement to pay taxes in support of the progressive interests of society, the same is not yet true.) As regards the backward members of society, however, the repressive laws are educative. Just as in certain diseases the convalescent needs to acquire anew the art of walking, which his neighbors exercise without thinking, so the backward members of society have to learn painfully those habits of repression which for others have sunk below the threshold of consciousness.

Social compulsion therefore may be defined as discipline in the interest of positive freedom. We may expect that in future this salutary kind of compulsion will go to even much greater lengths than it has yet gone. Society as organized in the state has undoubtedly the right to interfere in the choice of the sexes by prohibiting the marriage of persons afflicted with infectious disease. If the study of human character could ever be so far developed as to determine what kind of temperaments are radically incompatible with one another (a bare throw in the air of course), it would be within the province of the state to prohibit the conjugal union of such temperaments, and thus to prevent the disastrous effects on real freedom which such incompatibilities are apt to cause.

I am well aware of the perils of this point of view. There is a brutal factor in the action of society, as in that of individuals. A given community is apt to mistake its prejudices for principles, its torpor for conservatism, its superstitions for spirituality. Such apprehensions as those that weighed on the mind of John Stuart Mill as set forth in his Essay on Liberty are not to be lightly dismissed. And yet the main trend of his argument was plainly determined by an individualistic conception of liberty which many of us no longer share. It is safe to say that on the whole the benefits of coercion outweigh the detriments. We have only to picture to ourselves a state of society in which these coercions should not exist to realize that this is so. The dangers are real, but are due to the abuse of force and not to the exercise of it under the controlling idea of positive freedom which is here proposed.

INDEX

INDEX

FOOTNOTES:

[1] In view of the writer’s connection with the Ethical Culture Societies it is fitting to state expressly that the philosophical positions herein set forth are not to be taken as an official pronouncement on behalf of the Ethical Culture Movement. The Ethical Societies as such have no official philosophy. See Book IV, Chapter 9.