Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics / With Some of Their Applications

by William Thomas Thornton

The gravest, however, of Mr. Mill's criticisms is that mine is 'a doctrine à priori, claiming to command assent by its own light, and to be evident by simple intuition.' This is an imputation to which I am so unaware of having laid myself open that I can account for its having been made only on the supposition that Mr. Mill, in common with most other Utilitarians, imagines that their only opponents are Intuitionists, and that it is only necessary to set aside the tenets of these in order to get their own established instead. If this were really the case, utilitarian advocacy would be a comparatively easy task. Intuitionism, whether capable or not of being disproved, is by its nature unsusceptible of decisive proof. If I, in support of the proposition that there is in the human mind an intuitive sense of any sort, were to assert that I had such a sense while you denied that you had, it would be impossible for me to prove you to be mistaken, while, unless you were mistaken as to your individual experience, I should clearly be mistaken as to the generalisation which I had based upon mine. But I never said a word about an intuitive sense of right and wrong. How could I, seeing, as no one who chooses to look can fail to see, that the instincts of untutored children prompt them to disregard all rights but their own, to spit cockchafers, rob birds' nests, and confiscate younger children's cakes and apples? All I say is that there may be and are rights independent of and even opposed to utility, and these, for reasons which shall immediately be stated, I call natural rights; but I do not say that they are intuitively perceived. As for sense of justice or of duty, or moral sense or faculty, what I understand by that is not recognition of certain rights or duties as such, but recognition of the obligation to respect whatever rights and to fulfil whatever duties are recognised, according to which definition it is mere tautology to add that the sense or faculty in question originates simultaneously with the recognition of any rights or duties. For inasmuch as rights invariably imply corresponding obligations—inasmuch as if a thing be rightfully claimed, that same thing must needs be due or owing, it is of course impossible to perceive that a thing is owing without perceiving at the same moment that it ought to be paid. On this account, and with this explanation, I should not scruple to speak of the moral sense as intuitive; but if for that reason I am to be called an Intuitionist, so equally must Mr. Mill, for he has said precisely the same thing. He likewise has said that 'the moral faculty, if not a part of our nature, is a natural out-growth from it, capable, in a certain small degree, of springing up spontaneously.'

II.

By my avowal of a belief in 'Natural Rights,' I feel that I must have incurred in philosophic quarters a sort of civil contempt, which I am very desirous of removing, and which will, I trust, be somewhat diminished on my proceeding to explain how few and elementary are the rights that I propose for naturalisation. They are but two in number, and they are these:—(1) Absolute right, except in so far as the same may have been forfeited by misconduct or modified by consent, to deal in any way one pleases, not noxious to other people, with one's own self or person; (2) right equally absolute to dispose similarly of the produce either of one's own honest industry, or of that of others whose rights in connection with it have been honestly acquired by oneself. I call these 'rights,' because there cannot possibly anywhere exist either the right to prevent their being exercised, or any rights with which they can clash, and because, therefore, by their freest exercise, no one can possibly be wronged, while to interfere with their exercise would be to wrong their possessor. And I call them 'natural,' because they are not artificially created, and have no need of external ratification. Whoever thinks proper to deny this—whoever, as all Utilitarians do, contends that society is entitled to interfere with the rights which I have called natural, is bound to attempt to show how society became so entitled; when for the claim he puts forward on society's behalf he will find it impossible to produce any plausible pretext, without crediting society with possession of a right belonging to that same 'natural' class, the existence of which he denies. For, as there can be no rights without corresponding obligations or duties, if it be really the right of society to deal at its discretion with the persons or effects of individuals, it must be incumbent on individuals to permit themselves and whatever is theirs to be so dealt with. Have, then, individuals incurred any such obligation? No obligation, be it remembered, can arise, except through some antecedent act of one or other or both of the parties concerned. Either a pledge of some sort must have been given or a benefit of some sort must have been received. Now undoubtedly there are no limits to the extent to which society and its individual members might have reciprocally pledged themselves. It might have been stipulated by their articles of association that society at large should do its utmost for the welfare of each of its members, and that each of its members should do his utmost for the welfare of society at large. But it is certain, either that no such compact ever was made, or that, if made, it has always been systematically set at nought. Society has never made much pretence of troubling itself about the welfare of individuals, except in certain specified particulars; so that, even if individuals had, on condition of being treated with reciprocal solicitude, accepted the obligation of attending to the welfare of society in other than the same particulars, that conditional obligation would from the commencement have been null and void. The one thing which society invariably pledges itself to do is to protect person and property, and by implication to enforce performance of contracts; and the two things which individual associates in turn pledge themselves to do are to abstain from molesting each other's persons and property, and to assist society in protecting both. In so abstaining and so assisting consist all those 'many acts and the still greater number of forbearances, the perpetual practice of which by all is,' as Mr. Mill says, 'universally deemed to be so necessary to the general well-being, that people must be held to it compulsorily, either by law or by social pressure.'[7] Under one or other of these two heads may be ranged everything that individuals owe to society in return for the mere protection which they receive from it.

True, there is an universal understanding that individuals shall be subject to any laws, whether wise or foolish, provided only they be of equal and impartial operation, which may be enacted by a numerical majority of the community to which the individuals belong; and in this manner individuals may become bound by any number of miscellaneous pledges, society acquiring simultaneously the right to hold individuals to the performance of those pledges. Thus, if by the vote of an unimpeachably representative House of Commons it were declared to be for the general good, and agreed to accordingly, that every one should be vaccinated or circumcised, it would be incumbent on every one to submit quietly to vaccination or circumcision, however deleterious the operation might be deemed by some. Or if, improving upon a hypothetical suggestion of Mr. Mill, a parliament elected by constituencies in which the labouring-class element greatly predominated, should prospectively forbid the accumulation by any individual of property beyond a specified amount, then, though the almost certain consequence would be that the prescribed limit of accumulation would not be exceeded, still if it were exceeded, the accumulator could not justly complain when the surplus was forfeited according to law. Yet even thus the obligations or duties created will correspond exactly with the pledges given; none will be incurred except such as have been imposed by special legislation—nor even those, unless the legislation have been impartial. A law requiring people to pay poor's-rates would not suffice as a pretext for requiring them to pay education rates likewise. Neither if, instead of passing the prospective law just now supposed, a governing majority which had previously always permitted the indefinite accumulation of wealth, were retrospectively to decree the forfeiture of all past accumulations beyond a defined amount, would individuals be morally bound to submit to such a decree if they could contrive to evade it, any more than sexquipedalians would be bound to lay their heads on the block in obedience to a law directing everybody six feet high to be decapitated. All such partial legislation would be tyrannical, and circumstances must be very peculiar indeed to make submission to tyranny a duty. But of all conceivable legislation, none could possibly be more partial, or therefore more tyrannical, than such as should give to society a general power of dealing at its pleasure with its associates, and of arbitrarily subjecting separate classes or individuals to exceptional treatment. Even, therefore, if a law to such monstrous effect were enacted, it could have no morally binding force. It would be no one's duty to acquiesce in it.

I will not here stop to dispute, though I am not sure that I could without some slight reservation admit, that the receipt of unasked-for benefits places the recipient under precisely the same obligation to benefit his benefactor, as if the good received by him had been conferred on express condition of his availing himself of the first opportunity to render equal good. I will not stop to dispute, for instance, that a person saved from drowning at the risk of his own rescuer's life, would be bound, on occasion arising, to risk his own life in order to save his former rescuer's. For my immediate purpose, it may suffice to remark that society has never been in the habit of showing such parental solicitude for its component members as would warrant its claiming filial devotion from them. In the matter of philanthropy its practice has never been in advance of its very moderate professions. It has invariably contented itself with rendering certain specific services, never failing to exact in return fully equivalent services of each species.

In candour, however, there must be admitted to be innumerable blessings not yet adverted to, including indeed most of those by the possession of which man is distinguished from brutes, for which he is in so far indebted to society that, but for the instrumentality of society, they would never have been his. Unless individuals had formed themselves into communities, civilization could have made no sensible progress: there could have been no considerable advances, material, intellectual, moral, or æsthetic. Not only should we have been destitute of all the comforts and luxuries that now surround us, we should have lacked also whatever cerebral development we have attained, together with all its concomitants and consequences; whatever of intelligence, or moral perceptiveness, or artistic taste we have to boast of. Still, though none of these faculties could have made much approach to maturity except under the shelter of society, they are not gifts of society. Without the help of a plough, land cannot be ploughed; but we do not therefore credit the ploughmaker with the achievements of the ploughman. Neither is society to take to itself praise because its members have made good use of the protection which, in consideration of stipulated services on their part, it has afforded them. Besides, whatever we inherit from society, we inherit from a society of members no longer in being. Let the dead come to life again, and it may then become us to examine their claims upon our gratitude, but we need not meanwhile confound past and present generations, nor our forefathers with our contemporaries. To the mass of these latter, at any rate, we are none of us indebted for our brains or our aptitudes of thought and feeling, and the circumstance of our being joint sharers with them in patrimony bequeathed by a common ancestry, affords no very obvious reason why our share of the inheritance, together with whatever else we possess, should be at their absolute disposal.

Thus it appears that in no one of the ways in which alone can originate the obligations which must always precede or accompany artificially-created rights, has that particular obligation arisen without which it is impossible for society to obtain artificially the right of preventing individuals from doing as they will with their own. No sufficient pledge has been given by one side, no sufficient benefit conferred by the other. Individuals never agreed to place their all at the disposal of society; society never rendered to individuals any services entitling it to claim such boundless gratitude. One service which it invariably undertakes is that of protecting person and property. This is its chief and primary duty, the fulfilment of which is always the first object of its institution, often the only one it acknowledges. But clearly it cannot by performance of a duty acquire the right of doing the exact reverse of that duty. It cannot by protecting acquire the right of molesting. It cannot by preventing person and property from being meddled with, acquire in its corporate capacity the right of itself meddling. Since then this right of meddling, this right of disposing of what is exclusively some individual's own, otherwise than the owner wishes, has not been acquired by society artificially, it must, if it do actually belong to society, have been come by naturally; and this accordingly is what Utilitarians really, though perhaps unconsciously, assume, treating moreover this gratuitous assumption of theirs as a self-evident truth.

For, as Utilitarians themselves cannot fail on reflection to perceive, they offer no shadow of argument in support of that 'greatest happiness principle' on which their whole system rests. Commencing with the undeniable postulate that happiness is the sole object of existence, and perceiving that individual happiness alone would be a very misleading object, they proceed to take quietly for granted that the only happiness at which life ought to aim is social happiness. Now, undoubtedly social happiness is of more importance than individual happiness—the happiness of many than that of one or a few; neither can there be any worthier object of pursuit than the greatest happiness of the greatest number. All this is seen without being said, but what is by no means so easily seen is how it can be incumbent on any one to pursue that object to his own detriment—how it can be imperative on one or on a few to sacrifice his or their happiness in order to promote that of the many. Plainly such self-devotion cannot be for their personal advantage, and Utilitarianism does not even attempt to show how it can have become their duty. Meritorious, magnanimous, heroic in the highest degree it would certainly be, but does not that very circumstance prove conclusively that it cannot be due, inasmuch as there is nothing meritorious in merely doing one's duty and paying one's debts? But of that which is not due, how can payment be rightfully insisted upon? What the few are under no obligation to yield, how can the many be entitled to extort, or how can the worthiness of the latter's object excuse their doing that which they have no right to do? Is any object, however worthy, to be pursued regardless of all collateral considerations? To these objections Utilitarians have no answer to make. All they can do is tacitly to take for granted the disputed duty and right. That the less ought to give way to the greater, and the few to the many, and that the many may rightfully therefore, if need be, use force to compel the less or the few to give way—these are treated by them as incontestable propositions, even as 'doctrines à priori, claiming assent by their own light, evident by simple intuition.' And although thus from their own inner consciousness evolving the very first principles of their own philosophy, the premises of their deduction that social happiness is the proper aim in life, and that conduciveness to such happiness is the test of morality—'Intuitionists,' strange to say, is the distinctive appellation which they propose to affix to all those who hesitate to accept as ethical foundation stones the results of their intuitional evolution.

Scarcely by a taunt so readily rebuttable will anti-Utilitarians be excited to speedier apprehension of the nature of the lien which corporate self-interest is presumed to have upon individual self-devotion. Not the less tenaciously may they cling to their belief in the right of every one to do as he will with whatever has come by fair means into his exclusive and complete possession. Neither, I venture to think, need less store be set by that right in consequence of an objection very adroitly taken to it by Mr. Mill, which, on account both of its inherent ingenuity and of its having been addressed more immediately to myself, it would be inexcusable in me to leave unexamined. In Mr. Mill's opinion, the right in question, even if valid, would be valueless, because it would be neutralised by precisely similar rights belonging to society. If, he argues, individuals are at liberty to do as they will with their own, so likewise must society be. But 'existing social arrangements and law itself exist in virtue not only of the forbearance, but of the active support of the labouring classes' who in every community constitute a numerical majority. This working-class majority might then if they pleased withdraw their support from existing arrangements, thereby depriving person and property of social protection; and by merely threatening such withdrawal they could compel individuals to acquiesce in their most extravagant demands. 'They might bind the rich to take the whole burden of taxation upon themselves. They might bind them to give employment, at liberal wages, to a number of labourers in a direct ratio to the amount of their incomes. They might enforce on them a total abolition of inheritance and bequest.' Mr. Mill maintains that these things, although exceedingly foolish, might according to my principles, with perfect equity be done; nay, if I understand him correctly, that according neither to mine nor to any one else's principles can any adequate reason be assigned why they should not be done, except that their practical results would be baneful instead of beneficial. And taking this view, he is fully warranted in asking what it can matter that according to my theory 'an employer does no wrong in making the use he does of his capital, if the same theory would justify the employed in compelling him by law to make a different use—if the labourers would in no way infringe the definition of justice by taking the matter into their own hands and establishing by law any modification of the rights of property which in their opinion would increase the remuneration of their labour.'[8]

My reply to this and to the whole argument is the following. So long as society continues to exist, society cannot divest itself of the primary function for the discharge of which it was originally constituted. Society, having come together in the first instance, tacitly pledged to extend protection to each individual associate, cannot, without breach of contract, withdraw that protection. It may, indeed, make any impartial laws it pleases, and attach any penalty it pleases to violation of any impartial law, but it cannot in equity, whatever it may in practice, place any of its members outside the law; neither, most certainly, even if its competence did extend thus far, could it go the farther length of conferring on any one the right of doing wrong to an outlaw. It may even be doubted whether, if an outlaw were to injure any one still belonging to the society, any but the injured person himself would be warranted in retaliating. The sole reason that I can perceive why even he would is, that his rights had been infringed, and that reparation was due to him for any damage sustained by him in consequence, while, on the other hand, the aggressor had forfeited those rights of his which might otherwise have forbidden the injured person from taking the reparation due. But society had had none of its rights infringed. By society no injury had been sustained. To society, therefore, no reparation was due; and society, it seems to me, would have no right to insist on exacting reparation not due to itself from one whom it had forcibly extruded from its communion, and who, therefore, was no longer amenable to its jurisdiction. Society might, indeed, dissolve itself, proclaiming that 'every man for himself, and God for all,' should thenceforward be the rule. But although it might thus leave individual rights without other defence than that of the owner, it could not annihilate individual rights. It might cancel the right to mutual protection, but it could not, in place of that, create a right of mutual molestation. One's own person and property would still be as much one's own as before, and whoever outraged either would not be the less a wrong doer because society permitted his wrong doing to remain unpunished. In all ethical investigations it is impossible to guard too watchfully against the smallest approach to confusion of might with right.