Liberty in the Nineteenth Century

by Frederic May Holland

Generosity is still too apt to take an impulsive and reckless form which perpetuates pauperism. Spencer has taught us that conscience is worthy not only of obedience, but of education.

Spencer's attempt to substitute a thoughtful for a thoughtless goodness of character has been much aided by his protest against such undiscriminating exhortations to self-sacrifice as are constantly heard from the pulpit. Good people, and especially good women, welcome the idea of giving up innocent pleasure and enduring needless pain. The glory of martyrdom blinds them to the fact that, as Spencer says in his Psychology, "Pains are the correlatives of actions injurious to the organism, while pleasures are the correlatives of actions conducive to its welfare." In other words, "Pleasures are the incentives to life-supporting acts, and pains the deterrents from life-destroying acts." Abstinence from pleasure may involve loss of health. Self-sacrifice is scarcely possible without some injury to mind or body; as is the case with people who make it a religious duty to read no interesting books and take scarcely any exercise on Sunday. It is further true that "The continual acceptance of benefits at the expense of a fellow-being is morally injurious"; as "The continual giving up of pleasures and continual submission to pains are physically injurious." Blind self-sacrifice "curses giver and receiver—physically deteriorates the one and morally deteriorates the other," "the outcome of the policy being destruction of the worthy in making worse the unworthy." No wonder that men are stronger, and also more selfish, than women. Almost all self-sacrifice involves loss of individual liberty. The subjection of women has been deepened by their readiness to sacrifice themselves to those they love; their fondness for martyrdom often leads them into the sin of marrying without love; and generosity of heart facilitates ruin. Women would really be more virtuous if they felt less obligation to their lovers and more to their race.

IV. Spencer's psychological discoveries were corollaries to that great principle of evolution of which he made the following announcement as early as 1857 in the Westminster Review. After declaring his belief in "that divergence of many races from one race which we inferred must have continually been occurring during geologic time," he stated that "The law of all progress is to be found in these varied evolutions of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous," or in other words, "out of the simple into the complex." The discoveries of Darwin and Wallace were not announced before 1858, but Spencer avowed in 1852 his belief in "the theory of evolution" or "development hypothesis," according to which "complex organic forms may have arisen by successive modifications out of simple ones." It was without any aid or suggestion from Darwin that Spencer's statement of the law of evolution was brought into the final form published in 1862. Evolution was then described as change, not only from the simple to the complex, but also from the chaotic to the concentric and consolidated, or, in Spencer's own words, "from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity." Progress, he says, consists in integration as well as differentiation. There is an increase in permanence and definiteness as well as in variety. Higher forms are not only more complex and unlike than lower ones, but also more stable and more strongly marked.

Spencer has been represented by some Transcendentalists as Darwin's pupil; but the whole system just described would, in all probability, have been built up in substantially its present form, if both Darwin and Wallace had kept their discoveries to themselves. The only difference would have been that Spencer could not have been sustained by such a great mass of evidence. All these facts were collected by Darwin merely to prove the physical development of men and other animals from lower forms of life; but Spencer showed that all the phenomena of thought and feeling, as well as of astronomy, geology, and chemistry, are results of the great laws of integration and differentiation. All human history and social relations can be accounted for in this way. And if this extension had not been given to the principle of evolution, Darwin's discoveries might soon have ceased to have much interest, except for students of natural history. Each of the two great evolutionists helped the other gain influence; but their co-operation was almost as unintentional as that of two luminaries which form a double star.

V. Spencer has done much to diminish intolerance, by teaching, as early as 1862, that all religions are necessary steps in the upward march of evolution.

He has also attempted to reconcile religion and science, by teaching that the one all-essential belief is in a great unknowable reality, which is not only inscrutable but inconceivable. In writing about this supreme power, he uses capitals with a constancy which would look like an assumption of knowledge, if the same habit were not followed in regard to many other words of much less importance. He admits that "We cannot decide between the alternative suppositions, that phenomena are due to the variously conditioned workings of a single force, and that they are due to the conflict of two forces." "Matter cannot be conceived," he says, "except as manifesting forces of attraction and repulsion"; but he also says that these antagonistic and conflicting forces "must not be taken as realities but as our symbols of the reality," "the forms under which the workings of the unknowable are cognisable." This creed is accepted by many American evolutionists. It is the doctrine of one of Spencer's most elaborate and brilliant interpreters, Professor John Fiske, of such popular clergymen as Doctors Minot J. Savage and Lyman Abbott, and of many of the members of that energetic organisation, "The Brooklyn Ethical Association." The Open Court of Chicago and other periodicals are working avowedly for "the Religion of Science"; but that is not to be established without much closer conformity to the old-fashioned creeds and ceremonies than has been made by Spencer. His later works seem more orthodox than his earlier ones; but his final decision is that "The very notions, origin, cause, and purpose, are relations belonging to human thought, which are probably irrelevant to the ultimate reality." He has also admitted that the proposition, "Evolution is caused by mind," "cannot be rendered into thought." And he is right in saying that he has nowhere suggested worship.

Whether he has proposed a reconciliation, or only a compromise, whether evolutionism will ever be as popular in the pulpit as Transcendentalism, and whether there is not more reality in the forces of attraction and repulsion than in Spencer's great unknowable, are problems which I will not discuss. Darwin was an agnostic like Huxley, who held that "We know nothing of what may be beyond phenomena," and "Science commits suicide when she adopts a creed." Huxley pronounced the course of nature "neither moral nor immoral, but non-moral," and declared that "The ethical progress of society depends not on imitating the cosmic process but on combating it." The severity of his criticism of the Gospel narratives called out threats of prosecution for blasphemy. He avowed "entire concurrence" with Haeckel, who holds that belief in a personal God and an immortal soul are incompatible with the fundamental principles of evolution. The German scientist argues in his elaborate history of the development of animals, that life is no manifestation of divine power, working with benevolent purpose, but merely the necessary result of unconscious forces, inherent in the chemical constitution and physical properties of matter, and acting mechanically according to immutable laws. The position of Haeckel and Huxley is all the more significant because Frederic Harrison knows of "no single thinker in Europe who has come forward to support this religion of an unknown cause."

VI. A much more important controversy has been called out by Spencer's theory of the limits of government. As early as 1842 he proposed "the limitation of state action to the maintenance of equitable relations among citizens." His Social Statics demanded, in 1850, as a necessary condition of high development, "the liberty of each, limited only by the like liberty of all." His ideal would be a government where "every man has freedom to do all he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man." These propositions are repeated in the revised edition of 1892, which differs from the earlier one in omitting a denial of the right of private property in land, and also a demand for female suffrage. How far Spencer had changed his views may be seen in his volume on Justice. Both editions of Social Statics deny the right of governments to support churches, public schools, boards of health, poorhouses, lighthouses, or mints. Spencer would have titles to land guaranteed by the State, and property-holders protected against unjust lawsuits; but otherwise the government ought to confine itself, he thinks, to managing the army, navy, and police.

This position is defended by an appeal to the fact that the citizen is most energetic and intelligent where he is most free to act for himself. No American is as helpless before pestilence or famine as a Russian peasant, or as afraid to go to a burning house until summoned by the police. A despotism may begin with a strong army; but it ends, like the Roman Empire, in the weakness which it has brought on by crushing the spirit of its soldiers. Strong governments make weak men. Never was there a mightier army than was given by the French Republic to Napoleon. Industrial prosperity depends even more closely than military glory on the energy of men who have been at liberty to think and act freely. People develop most vigorously where they are least meddled with. The average man knows much more than his rulers do about his own private business; and he is active to promote it in ways which secure the general welfare.

Great stress is laid not only in Social Statics but in Spencer's book on The Man versus the State, and in several essays, on the many times that the British Government has increased an evil by trying to cure it. What is said about its extravagance will not surprise any American who remembers what vast sums are squandered by Congress. The post-office is often spoken of as proof that our Government could run our railroads; but one of Boston's best postmasters said, "No private business could be managed like this without going into bankruptcy." The British Government has a monopoly of the telegraph; and introduction of the telephone was very difficult in consequence. In Victoria, the Postmaster-General has abused his privileges so much as to appoint a "sporting agent" to telegraph the results of a horse-race; and this same highly protectionist colony has had laws forbidding any shop to be open after 7 P.M., except on Saturday, and any woman to work more than forty-eight hours a week in any factory. How governments interfered in former centuries with people's right to feed, clothe, employ, and amuse themselves, seems almost inconceivable at present.