Critiques and Addresses

by Thomas Henry Huxley

It is urged, I am aware, that if the right of the State to step beyond the assigned limits is admitted at all, there is no stopping; and that the principle which justifies the State in enforcing vaccination or education, will also justify it in prescribing my religious belief, or my mode of carrying on my trade or profession; in determining the number of courses I have for dinner, or the pattern of my waistcoat.

But surely the answer is obvious that, on similar grounds, the right of a man to eat when he is hungry might be disputed, because if you once allow that he may eat at all, there is no stopping him until he gorges himself, and suffers all the ills of a surfeit. In practice, the man leaves off when reason tells him he has had enough; and, in a properly organized State, the Government, being nothing but the corporate reason of the community, will soon find out when State interference has been carried far enough. And, so far as my acquaintance with those who carry on the business of Government goes, I must say that I find them far less eager to interfere with the people, than the people are to be interfered with. And the reason is obvious. The people are keenly sensible of particular evils, and, like a man suffering from pain, desire an immediate remedy. The statesman, on the other hand, is like the physician, who knows that he can stop the pain at once by an opiate; but who also knows that the opiate may do more harm than good in the long run. In three cases out of four the wisest thing he can do is to wait, and leave the case to nature. But in the fourth case, in which the symptoms are unmistakable, and the cause of the disease distinctly known, prompt remedy saves a life. Is the fact that a wise physician will give as little medicine as possible any argument for his abstaining from giving any at all?

But the argument may be met directly. It may be granted that the State, or corporate authority of the people, might with perfect propriety order my religion, or my waistcoat, if as good grounds could be assigned for such an order as for the command to educate my children. And this leads us to the question which lies at the root of the whole discussion—the question, namely, upon what foundation does the authority of the State rest, and how are the limits of that authority to be determined?

One of the oldest and profoundest of English philosophers, Hobbes of
Malmesbury, writes thus:—

"The office of the sovereign, be it monarch or an assembly, consisteth in the end for which he was entrusted with the sovereign power, namely, the procuration of the safety of the people: to which he is obliged by the law of nature, and to render an account thereof to God, the author of that law, and to none but Him. But by safety, here, is not meant a bare preservation, but also all other contentments of life, which every man by lawful industry, without danger or hurt to the commonwealth, shall acquire to himself."

At first sight this may appear to be a statement of the police-theory of government, pure and simple; but it is not so. For Hobbes goes on to say:—

"And this is intended should be done, not by care applied to individuals, further than their protection from injuries, when they shall complain; but by a general providence contained in public instruction both of doctrine and example; and in the making and executing of good laws to which individual persons may apply their own cases."[1]

[Footnote 1: "Leviathan," Molesworth's ed. p. 322.]

To a witness of the civil war between Charles I. and the Parliament, it is not wonderful that the dissolution of the bonds of society which is involved in such strife should appear to be "the greatest evil that can happen in this life;" and all who have read the "Leviathan" know to what length Hobbes's anxiety for the preservation of the authority of the representative of the sovereign power, whatever its shape, leads him. But the justice of his conception of the duties of the sovereign power does not seem to me to be invalidated by his monstrous doctrines respecting the sacredness of that power.

To Hobbes, who lived during the break-up of the sovereign power by popular force, society appeared to be threatened by everything which weakened that power: but, to John Locke, who witnessed the evils which flow from the attempt of the sovereign power to destroy the rights of the people by fraud and violence, the danger lay in the other direction.