The Anarchism.net editors are proud to present Stephen Pearl Andrews’ The Science of Society. Thanks to Kenneth R Gregg for generously letting Anarchism.net re-publish the book from his blog: CLASSical Liberalism..
No. 1: The True Constitution of Government
in the Sovereignty of the Individual as the Final Development of Protestantism, Democracy and Socialism
Explanatory
This book was first printed nearly forty years ago in 1848. Its seed, for the
most part, fell upon stony ground. In consequence of this cold reception, this
lack of demand, the work passed through but a few small editions and then
disappeared from the market. The author’s keen broad, and untiring mind leading
him into new fields of thought, he never reprinted it. Thus, for more than a
quarter of a century, it has been practically out of sight, out of mind.
Nevertheless, its work has never stopped. Here and there the seed did fall
upon oases, and in fertile spots it always took deep root and reproduced its
kind. Its children and grand-children and great-grandchildren have seldom been
conscious of their ancestry, but today the family is so numerous that the
branches of its genealogical tree pervade with a growing, and often a
controlling, influence every department of what Mr. Andrews happily calls
“Man’s social habitat” It can be only helpful to this family to be
made acquainted with its origin, especially when the power of the printing-press
enables it to revive and freshly scatter the parent-seed upon a more receptive
soil.
Such is the purpose of this new edition of “The Science of Society”; The
social problem is pressing more closely upon our heels than it was in 1851, and
a book expounding as lucidly as this the basic principles in which alone its
solution is to be found is greatly needed. The author himself, in the closing
years of his life, earnestly desired its republication, and the publisher takes
pleasure in the thought that the enterprise would meet his approbation. And not
only his, but that of Josiah Warren as well, who was never tired of praising Mr.
Andrew’s work as in his opinion the soundest exposition that ever had been made
or ever could be made of the two principles which he (Mr. Warren) had introduced
to the world in his less pretentious work, “True Civilization.”
But even if this double incentive of satisfying a public demand and honoring
a master’s memory were altogether lacking, the publisher might sill find
abundant justification and encouragement in Robert Browning’s lines:
To shoot a beam into the dark, assists;
To make that beam do fuller service,
spread
And utilize such bounty to the height,
That assists also,--and that
work is mine.
March, 1888.
 
Introduction
This little treatise on the True Constitution of Government was delivered as
one of the regular course of lectures before the New York Merchants’ Institute
for the present winter. It is now published as the introductory number of a
contemplated series of publications, presenting certain new principles of
society, which it is the belief of the author are eminently adapted to supply
the felt want of the present day for an adequate solution of the existing social
disturbances. For the principles in question, either as original discoveries, or
else as presented in a new light, as solvents of the knotty questions which are
now puzzling the most capacious minds and afflicting the most benevolent hearts
of Christendom, the author confesses his very great indebtedness, and he
believes the world will yet gladly confess its indebtedness, to the genius of
Josiah Warren, of Indiana, who has been engaged for more than twenty years in
testing, almost in solitude, the practical operation, in the education of
children, in the sphere of commerce, and otherwise, of the principles which we
are now for the first time presenting prominently to the public.
It has been the belief of the author that there are, in the ranks of those
who are denominated Conservatives, many who sympathize deeply with the objects
of radical reform, but who have never identified themselves with the movements
in that direction, either because they have not seen that the practical measures
proposed by the advocates of reform contained the elements of success, or else
because they have distinctly perceived or intuitively felt that they did not.
They may have been repelled, too, by the want of completeness in the program,
the want of scientific exactness in the principles announced, or, finally, by
the want of a lucid conception of the real nature of the remedy which is needed
for the manifold social evils of which all confess the existence in the actual
condition of society. If there are minds in this position, minds more rigid than
others in their demands for precise and philosophical principles preliminary to
action, it is from such that the author anticipates the most cordial reception
of the elements propounded by Mr. Warren, so soon as they are seen in their
connections and interrelations with each other.
Believing that these principles will justify the assumption, I have ventured
to place at the head of this series of publications, as a general title, “The Science of Society.”
The propriety of the use of the term “Science” in such a connnection may be
questioned by some whom habit has accustomed to apply that term to a much lower
range of investigations. If researches into the habits of beetles and tadpoles,
and their localities and conditions of existence, are entitled to the dignified
appellation of Science, certainly similar researches into the nature, the wants,
the adaptations, and, so to speak, into the true or requisite moral and social
habitat of the spiritual animal called Man must be, if conducted according to
the rigid methods of scientific induction from observed facts, equally entitled
to that distinction.
The series of works, of which this is the first in order, will deal in no
vague aspirations after “the good time coming.” They will propound definite
principles which demand to be regarded as having all the validity of scientific
truths, and which, taken in their co-relations with each other, are adequate to
the solution of the social problem. If this pretension be made good, the
importance of the subject will not be denied. If not well founded, the
definiteness of the propositions will be favorable to a speedy and successful
refutation.
S.P.A.
New York, January 1851.
The True Constitution of Government: A Lecture
Ladies and Gentlemen:
The subject which I propose to consider this evening is the true constitution
of human government.
Every age is a remarkable one, no doubt, for those who live in it. When
immobility reigns most in human affairs, there is still enough of movement to
fix the attention, and even to excite the wonder of those who are immediately in
proximity with it. This natural bias in favour of the period with which we have
most to do is by no means sufficient, however, to account for the growing
conviction, on all minds, that the present epoch is a market transition from an
old to a new order of things. The scattered rays of the gray dawn of the new era
date back, indeed, beyond the lifetime of the present generation. The first
streak of light that streamed through the dense darkness of the old
régime was the declaration by Martin Luther of the right of private
judgment in matters of conscience. The next, which shed terror upon the old
world, as a new portent of impending revolutions, was the denial by Hampden,
Sidney, Cromwell, and others of the divine right of kings, and the assertion of
inherent political rights in the people themselves. This was followed by the
American Declaration of Independence, the establishment of a powerful Democratic
Republic in the western world upon the basis of that principle, followed by the
French Revolution, the Reign of Terror, the Reaction, and the apparent death in
Europe of the Democratic idea. Finally, in our day, comes the red glare of
French Socialism, at which the world is still gazing with uncertainly whether it
be some lurid and meteoric omen of fearful events, or whether it be not the
actual rising of the Sun of Righteousness, with healing in His wings; for there
are those who profoundly and religiously believe that the solution of the social
problem will be the virtual descent of the New Jerusalem,--the installation of
the kingdom of heaven upon earth.
First in the religious, then in the political, and finally in the social
relations of men new doctrines have thus been broached, which are full of
promise to the hopeful, and full of alarm and dismay to the timid and
conservative. This distinction marks the broadest division in the ranks of
mankind. In Church and State and social life, the real parties are the
Progressionists and the Retrogressionists,--those whose most brilliant
imaginings are linked with the future, and those whose sweetest remembrances
bind them in tender associations to the past. Catholic and Protestant, Whig and
Democrat, Anti-Socialist and Socialist, are terms which, in their origin,
correspond to this generic division; but no sooner does a new classification
take place than the parties thus formed are again subdivided, on either hand, by
the ever-permeating tendency, on the one side toward freedom, emancipation, and
progress, and toward law and order and immobility on the other.
Hitherto the struggle between conservatism and progress has seemed doubtful.
Victory has kissed the banner, alternately, of either host. At length the
serried ranks of conservatism alter. Reform, so called, is becoming confessedly
more potent than its antagonist. The admission is reluctantly forced from pallid
lips that revolutions—political, social, and religious—constitute the programme
of the coming age. Reform, so called, for weal or woe, but yet Reform, must rule
the hour. The older constitutions of society have outlived their day. No truth
commends itself more universally to the minds of men now than that thus set
forty by Carlyle: “There must be a new world, if there is to be any world at
all. That human things in our Europe can ever return to the old sorry routine,
and proceed with any steadiness or continuance there,--this small hope is not
now a tenable one. These days of universal death must be days of universal new
birth, if the ruin is not to be total and final! It is a time to make the
dullest man consider, and ask himself, Whence he came? Whither he is bound? A
veritable “New Era” to the foolish as well as to the wise.” Nor is this state of
things confined to Europe. The agitations in America may be more peaceful, but
they are not less profound. The foundations of old beliefs and habits of thought
are breaking up. The old guarantees of order are fast falling away. A veritable
“new era” with us, too, is alike impending and inevitable.
What remains to be done, then, for wise men, is clearly this: to attempt to
penetrate the future by investigating the past and the present to ascertain
whether there be no elements of calculation capable of fixing with tolerable
certainty the precise point in the sidereal heavens of human destiny toward
which our whole system is confessedly verging with accelerated velocity. To
penetrate the gloom which encircles the orbit of our future progression might,
at least, end the torture of suspense, even to those who may be least content
with the nature of the solution. “If,” says Carlyle again, “the accused
nightmare that is crushing out the life of us and ours would take a shape,
approach us like the Hyrcanian tiger, the Behemoth of Caos, or the Archfiend
himself,--in any shape that we could see and fasten on,--a man can have himself
shot with cheerfulness, but it needs that he shall clearly see for what.”
It is, then, neither unbecoming nor inappropriate, at this time, to attempt
to prognosticate, by philosophical deductions from operative principles the
characteristics of the new society which is to be constructed out of the
fragments of the old. It is, perhaps, only right that I should begin by
declaring the general nature of the results to which my own mind is conducted by
the speculations I have made upon the subject, and toward which I shall, so far
as I may, endeavour, this evening to sway your convictions.
I avow that, for one, I take the hopeful, the expectant, even the exulting
view of the prospects of humanity, under the influence of causes which, to the
minds of many,m re pregnant with evil. I hail the progress of that unsparing
criticism of old institutions which is the characteristic of the present age. I
hail with still higher enthusiasm a dim outline which begins to be perceived by
the keenest vision, through th twilight mists which yet hang upon the
surrounding hilltops of a social fabric, whose foundations are equity, whose
ceiling is security, whose pillars are cooperation and fraternity, and whose
capitals and cornices are carved into the graceful forms of mutual urbanity and
politeness. It is just to you that I should announce this faith, that you may
receive the vaticinations of the prophet with the due allowance for the
inebriation of the prophetic rhapsody. I proclaim myself in some sense a
visionary; but in all ages there have been visionaries whose visions of today
have proved the substantial realities of tomorrow.
I shall make no apology for the rashness of the attempt to trace, with a
distinct outline, some of the gigantic changes which will occur in the social
organization of the world as the necessary outgrowth of principles now at work,
and which are becoming every day more potential, in proportion as forces, which
have hitherto been deemed antagonistic, converge and cooperate.
I affirm, then, firstly, that there is at this day a marked convergence and a
prospective cooperation of principles which have hitherto resisted each other,
or, more properly, a development of one common principle in spheres of life so
diverse from each other that they have hitherto been regarded as unrelated, if
not positively antagonistic. I assert, and shall endeavour to make good the
assertion, that the essential spirit, the vital and fundamental principle of the
three great modern movements to which I have already alluded,--namely, the
Protestant Reformation, the Democratic Revolution, still progressing, and
finally, the Socialist Agitation, which is spreading in multiform varieties of
reproduction over the whole civilized world,--is one and the same, and that this
common affinity is beginning in various ways to be recognized or felt. If this
assertion be true, it is one of immense significance. If Protestantism,
Democracy, and Socialism are merely different expressions of the same idea,
then, undoubtedly, the confluent force of these three movements will expand
tremendously the sweep of their results, in the direction toward which they
collectively tend.
What, then, if this be so, is this common element? In what great feature are
Protestantism, Democracy, and Socialism identical? I will answer this
interrogatory first, and demonstrate the answer afterward. Protestantism,
Democracy, and Socialism are identical in the assertion of the Supremacy of the
Individual,--a dogma essentially contumacious, revolutionary, and antagonistic
to the basic principles of all the older institutions of society, which make the
Individual subordinate and subject to the Church, to the State, and to Society
respectively. Not only is this supremacy or SOVEREIGNTY OF THE INDIVIDUAL, a
common element of all three of these great modern movements, but I will make the
still more sweeping assertion that it is substantially the whole of those
movements. It is not merely a feature, as I have just denominated it, but the
living soul itself, the vital energy, the integral essence or being of them
all.
Protestants and Protestant churches may differ in relation to every other
article of their creed, and do so differ, without ceasing to be Protestants, so
long as they assert the paramount right of private or individual judgment in
matters of conscience. It is that, and that only, which makes them Protestants,
and distinguishes them from the Catholic world, which asserts, on the contrary,
the supreme authority of the church, of the priesthood, or some dignitary or
institution other than the Individual whose judgment and whose conscience is in
question. In like manner, Democrats and Democratic governments and institutions
may differ from each other, and may vary indefinitely at different periods or
time, and still remain Democratic, so long as they maintain the one essential
principle and condition of Democracy,--namely, that all governmental powers
reside in, are only delegated by, and can be, at any moment, resumed by the
people,--that is, by the individuals, who are first Individuals, and who
then, by virtue only of the act of delegating such powers, become a
people,--that is, a combined mass of Individuals. It is this dogma, and this
alone, which makes the Democrat, and which distinguishes him from the Despotist,
or the defender of the divine right of kings.
Again, Socialism assumes every shade and variety of opinion respecting the
modes of realizing its own aspirations, and, indeed, upon every other point,
except one, which, when investigated, will be found to be the paramount rights
of the Individual over social institutions, and the consequent demand that all
existing social institutions shall be so modified that the Individual shall be
in no manner subjected to them. This, then, is the identical principle of
Protestantism and Democracy carried into its application in another sphere. The
celebrated formula of Fourier that “destinies are proportioned to attractions,”
means, when translated into less technical phraseology, that society must be so
reorganized that every Individual shall be empowered to choose and vary his own
destiny or condition and pursuits in life, untrammeled by social restrictions;
in other words, so that every man may be a law unto himself, paramount to all
other human laws, and the sole judge for himself of the divine law and of the
requisitions of his own individual nature and organization. This is equally the
fundamental principle of all the social theories, except in the case of the
Shakers, the Rappites, etc., which are based upon religious whims, demanding
submission, as a matter of duty, to a despotic rule, and which embody, in
another form, the readoption of the popish or conservative principle. They,
therefore, while they live in a form of society similar in some respects to
those which have been proposed by the various schools of Socialists, are, in
fact, neither Protestants nor Democrats, and, consequently, not Socialists in
the sense in which I am now defining Socialism. The forms of society proposed by
Socialism are the mere shell of the doctrine,--means to the end,--a platform
upon which to place the Individual, in order that he may be enabled freely to
exercise his own Individuality, which is the end and aim of all. We have seen
that the shell is one which may be inhabited by despotism. Possibly it is unfit
for the habitation of any thing else than despotism, which the Socialist hopes,
by ensconcing himself therein, to escape. It is possible, even, that Socialism
may have mistaken its measures altogether, and that the whole system of
Association and combined interests and combined responsibilities proposed by it
may be essentially antagonistic to the very ends proposed. All this, however, if
it be so, is merely incidental. It belongs to the shell, and not to the
substance,--to the means, and not to the end. The whole programme of Socialism
may yet be abandoned or reversed, and yet Socialism remain in substance the same
thing. What Socialism demands is the emancipation of the Individual from social
bondage, by whatsoever means will effect that design, in the same manner as
Protestantism demands the emancipation of the Individual from ecclesiastical
bondage, and Democracy from political. Whosoever makes that demand, or labours
to that end, is a Socialist. Any particular views he may entertain,
distinguishing him from other Socialists, regarding practical measures, or the
ultimate forms of society, are the mere specific differences, like those which
divide the Protestant sects of Christendom.
This definition of Socialism may surprise some into the discovery of the fact
that they have been Socialists all along, unawares. Some, on the other hand, who
have called themselves Socialists may not at once be inclined to accept the
definition. They may not perceive clearly that it is the emancipation of the
Individual for which they are laboring, and affirm that it is, on the other
hand, the freedom and happiness of the race. They will not, however, deny that
it is both; and a very little reflection will show that the freedom and
happiness of each individual will be the freedom and happiness of the race, and
that the freedom and happiness of the race cannot exist so long as there is any
individual of the race who is not happy and free. So the Protestant and the
Democrat may not always have a clear intellectual perception of the distinctive
principle of their creeds. He may be attached to it from an instinctive
sentiment, which he has never thoroughly analyzed, or even from the mere
accidents of education and birth.
Protestantism proclaims that the individual has an inalienable right to judge
for himself in all matters of conscience. Democracy proclaims that the
Individual has an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness. Socialism proclaims that the Individual has an inalienable right to
that social position which his powers and natural organization qualify him, and
which his tastes incline him to fill, and, consequently, to that constitution or
arrangement of the property relations, and other relations of society,
whatsoever that may be, which will enable him to enjoy and exercise that
right,--the adaptation of social conditions to the wants of each Individual,
with all his peculiarities and fluctuations of tasted, instead of the moulding
of the Individual into conformity with the rigid requirements of a preconcerted
social organization.
If this be a correct statement of the essential nature of Protestantism,
Democracy, and Socialism, then Protestantism, Democracy, and Socialism are not
actuated by three distinct principles at all. They are simply three partial
announcements of one generic principle, which lies beneath all these movements,
and of which they are the legitimate outgrowths or developments, modified only
by the fact of a different application of the same principle. This great generic
principle, which underlies every manifestation of that universal unrest and
revolution which is known technically in this age as “Progress,” is nothing more
nor less than “THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE INDIVIDUAL.” It is that which is the
central idea and vital principle of Democracy; and it is that which is the
central idea and vital principle of Socialism.
This being so, it is high time that the mutual affinity of these movements
should be intelligently perceived and recognized both by the friends and the
enemies of the movements themselves. It is high time that the scene of the
battle-field should be shifted from the right or wrong of any or all of the
partial developments of the principle to the essential right or wrong of the
principle itself. The true issue is not whether Protestantism be good or evil,
whether Democracy be good or evil, nor whether Socialism be good or evil, but
whether the naked, bald, unlimited principle of the Sovereignty of the
Individual, in human government and the administration of human affairs, be
essentially good and true or essentially pernicious and false. This is the issue
now up for trial before the world, and the definitive decision of which must be
had before the final destiny of mankind upon earth can be even rough-hewn by the
most vivid imagination, and certainly before any thing approximating scientific
deduction respecting it can be had.
You will please to consider yourselves, Ladies and Gentlemen, as a jury
empaneled to try this issue. I take my position before you as the advocate of
the Sovereignty of the Individual, and the defender of the spirit of the present
age. If this principle be essentially good and true, then it may be trusted
wherever it leads, and the general drift of what the world calls “Progress” is
in the right direction, whatever mistakes may be made in matters of detail. If
it is a false principle, the sooner we understand that fact the better; but let
it be also understood, in that case, that we have much to undo which has been
already done, and which has been supposed to be well done, in these modern
times. In that case, Protestantism is all wrong, and Democracy is all wrong; the
Whateleys, the Wisemans, the Bronsons, the Windischgratzes, and the Haynaus are
philosophers and philanthropists of the right school; and the Luthers, the
Channings, the Jeffersons, the Washingtons, and the Kossuths are the world’s
worst foes,--the betrayers and scourgers which the wrath of an offended Heaven
has let loose upon earth, first to delude and then to punish mankind for their
sins.
I will first endeavor to set before you a clearer view of the doctrine of the
Sovereignty of the Individual, as based upon the principle of the infinite
Individuality of things. I will then show that this Sovereignty of the
Individual furnishes the law of the development of human society, as illustrated
in the progressive movements of modern times. Finally, I shall endeavor to trace
the development which is hereafter to result from the further operation of this
principle and to fix, so nearly as may be, the condition of human affairs
towards which it conducts, especially in that particular department of human
affairs which constitutes the subject of investigation this evening,--namely,
the government of mankind.
The doctrine of the Sovereignty of the Individual—-in one sense itself a
principle—-grows out of the still more fundamental principle of “INDIVIDUALITY,”
which pervades universal nature. Individuality is positively the most
fundamental and universal principle which the finite mind seems capable of
discovering, and the best image of the Infinite. There are no two objects in the
universe which are precisely alike. Each has its own constitution and
peculiarities, which distinguish it from every other. Infinite diversity is the
universal law. In the multitude of human countenances, for example, there are no
two alike, and in the multitude of human characters there is the same variety.
The hour which your courtesy has assigned to me would be entirely consumed, if I
were to attempt to adduce a thousandth part of the illustrations of this subtle
principle of Individuality, which lie patent upon the face of nature, all around
me. It applies equally to persons, to things, and to events. There have been no
two occurrences which were precisely alike during all the cycling periods of
time. No action, transaction, or set of circumstances whatsoever corresponded
precisely to any other action, transaction, or set of circumstances. Had I a
precise knowledge of all the occurrences which have ever taken place up to this
hour, it would not suffice to enable me to make a law which would be applicable
in all respects to the very next occurrence which shall take place, nor to any
one of the infinite millions of events which shall hereafter occur. This
diversity reigns throughout every kingdom of nature, and mocks at all human
attempts to make laws, or constitutions, or regulations, or governmental
institutions of any sort, which shall work justly and harmoniously amidst the
unforeseen contingencies of the future.
The individualities of objects are least, or, at all events, they are less
apparent when the objects are inorganic or of a low grade of organization. The
individualities of the grains of sand which compose the beach, for example, are
less marked than those of vegetables, and those of vegetables are less than
those of animals, and, finally, those of animals are less than those of man. In
proportion as an object is more complex, it embodies a greater number of
elements, and each element has its own individualities, or diversities, in every
new combination into which it enters. Consequently these diversities are
multiplied into each other, in the infinite augmentation of geometrical
progression. Man, standing, then, at the head of the created universe, is
consequently the most complex creature in existence,--every individual man or
woman being a little world in him or herself, an image or reflection of God, and
epitome of the Infinite. Hence the individualities of such a being are utterly
immeasurable, and every attempt to adjust the capacities, the adaptations, the
wants, or the responsibilities of one human being by the capacities, the
adaptations, the wants or the responsibilities of another human being, except in
the very broadest generalities, is unqualifiedly futile and hopeless. Hence
every ecclesiastical, government, or social institution which is based on the
idea of demanding conformity or likeness in any thing, has ever been, and ever
will be, frustrated by the operation of this subtle, all-pervading principle of
Individuality. Hence human society has ever been and is still in the turmoil of
revolution. The only alternative known has been between revolution and
despotism. Revolutions violently burst the bonds, and explode the foundations of
existing institutions. The institution falls before the Individual. Despotism
only succeeds by denaturalizing mankind. It extinguishes their individualities
only by extinguishing them. The Individual falls before the institution. Judge
ye which is best, the man-made or the God-made world.
In the next place this Individuality is inherent and unconquerable, except,
as I have just said, by extinguishing the man himself. The man himself has no
power over it. He can not divest himself of his organic peculiarities of
character, any more than he can divest himself of his features. It attends him
even in the effort he makes, if he makes any, to divest himself of it. He may as
well attempt to flee his own shadow as to rid himself of the indefeasible,
God-given inheritance of his own Individuality.
Finally, this indestructible and all-pervading Individuality furnishes,
itself, the law, and the only true law, or order and harmony. Governments have
hitherto been established, and have apologized for the unseemly fact of their
existence, from the necessity of establishing and maintaining order; but order
has never yet been maintained, revolutions and violent outbreaks have never yet
been ended, public peace and harmony have never yet been secured, for the
precise reason that the organic, essential, and indestructible natures of the
objects which it was attempted to reduce to order have always been constricted
and infringed by every such attempt. Just in proportion as the effort is less
and less made to reduce men to order, just in that proportion they become more
orderly, as witness the difference in the state of society in Austria and the
United States. Plant an army of one hundred thousand soldiers in New York, as at
Paris, to preserve the peace, and we should have a bloody revolution in a week;
and be assured that the only remedy for what little of turbulence remains among
us, as compared with European societies, will be found to be more liberty. When
there remain positively no external restrictions, there will be positively no
disturbance, provided always certain regulating principles of justice, to which
I will advert presently, are accepted and enter into the public mind, serving as
substitutes for every species of repressive laws.
I was saying that Individuality is the essential law of order. This is true
throughout the universe. When every individual particle of matter obeys the law
of its own attraction, and comes into that precise position, and moves in that
precise direction, which its own inherent individualities demand, the harmony of
the spheres is evolved. By that means only natural classification, natural
order, natural organization, natural harmony and agreement are attained. Every
scheme or arrangement which is based upon the principle of thwarting the
inherent affinities of the individual monads which compose any system or
organism is essentially vicious, and the organization is false,--a mere bundle
of revolutionary and antagonistic atoms. It is time that human system builders
should begin to discover this universal truth. The principle is self-evident.
Objects bound together contrary to their nature must and will seek to rectify
themselves by breaking the bonds which confine them, while those which come
together by their own affinities remain quiescent and content. Let human system
makers of all sorts, then, admit the principle of an infinite Individuality
among men, which cannot be suppressed, and which must be indulged and fostered,
at all events, as one element in the solution of the problem they have before
them. If they are unable to see clearly how all external restrictions can be
removed with safety to the well-being of society, let them, nevertheless, not
abandon a principle, which is self-evident, but let them modestly suspect that
there may be some other elements in the solution of the same problem, which
their sagacity has not yet enabled them to discover. In all events, and at all
hazards, this Individuality of every member of the human family must be
recognized and indulged, because first, we have seen it is infinite, and cannot
be measured or prescribed for, then because it is inherent, and cannot be
conquered; and, finally, because it is the essential element of order, and
cannot consequently, be infringed without engendering infinite confusion, such
as has hitherto universally reigned, in the administration of human affairs.
If, now, Individuality is a universal law which must be obeyed if we would
have order and harmony in any sphere, and, consequently, if we would have a true
constitution of human government, then the absolute Sovereignty of the
Individual necessarily results. The monads or atoms of which human society is
composed are the individual men and women in it. They must be so disposed of, as
we have seen, in order that society may be harmonic, that the destiny of each
shall be controlled by his or her own individualities of taste, conscience,
intellect, capacities, and will. But man is a being endowed with consciousness.
He, and no one else, knows the determining force of his own attractions. No one
else can therefore decide for him, and hence Individuality can only become the
law of human action by securing to each individual the sovereign determination
of his own judgment and of his own conduct, in all things, with no right
reserved either of punishment or censure on the part of any body else
whomsoever; and this is what is meant be the Sovereignty of the Individual,
limited only by the ever-accompanying condition, resulting from the equal
Sovereignty of all others, that the onerous consequences of his actions be
assumed by himself.
If my audience were composed chiefly of Catholics, or Monarchists, or
Anti-Progressionists of any sort, I should develop this argument more at length,
for, as I have said, it is the real issue, and the only real issue, between the
reformatory and the conservative portions of mankind; but I supposed that I may,
with propriety, assume that I am before an auditory who are in the main
Protestant and Democratic, and, assuming that, I shall then be authorized to
assume, in accordance with the principles I have endeavored to develop, that
they are likewise substantially Socialist, according to the definition I have
given to Socialism, whether they have hitherto accepted or repudiated the name.
It is enough, however, if I address you as Protestants and Democrats, or as
either of these. I shall therefore assume, without further dwelling upon the
fundamental statement of those principles, that you are ready to admit so much
of Individuality and of the Sovereignty of the Individual as is necessarily
involved in the propositions of Protestantism or Democracy. I shall assume that
I am before an assembly of men and women who sympathize with ecclesiastical and
political enfranchisement,--who believe that what the world calls Progress, in
these modern times, is in the main real and not sham progress, a genuine and
legitimate development of the race. Instead, therefore, of pursuing the main
argument further, I will return to, and endeavor more fully to establish, a
position which I have already assumed,--namely, that, by virtue of the fact of
being either a Protestant or a Democrat, you have admitted away the whole case,
and that you are fully committed to the whole doctrine of Individuality and the
Sovereignty of the Individual, wherever that may lead.
I assert, then, the doctrine of Individuality, in its broadest and most
unlimited sense. I assert that the law of genuine progress in human affairs is
identical with the tendency to individualize. In ecclesiastical affairs it is
the breaking up of the Church into sects, the breaking up of the larger sects
into minor sects, the breaking up of the minor sects, by continual schism, into
still minuter fragments of sects, and, finally, a complete disintegration of the
whole mass into individuals, at which point every human being becomes his
own sect and his own church. Does it require any demonstration that his is the
natural tendency and the legitimate development of Protestantism, that it is in
fact the necessary and inevitable outgrowth of its own fundamental principle.
The History of all Religions in Protestant Christendom is becoming already too
voluminous to be written. With the multiplication of sects grows the spirit of
toleration, which is nothing else but the recognition of the sovereignty of
others. A glance at the actual condition of the Protestant Church demonstrates
the tendency to the obliteration of Sectarianism by the very superabundance of
sects.
In the political sphere the individualizing tendency of Democracy is
exhibited in the distribution of the department of government into the hands of
different depositories of power, the discrimination of the chief functions of
government into the Legislature, the Executive, and the Judiciary, in the
division of the Legislature into distinct branches, in the representative system
which recognizes the Individuality of different confederated states, and of
different portions of the same state, in the divorce of the Church and State,
and yet more strikingly than all in the successive surrender to the Individual
of one branch after another of what was formerly regarded as the legitimate
business of government.
Under the old order of things, government interfered to determine the trade
or occupation of the Individual, to settle his religious faith, to regulate his
locomotion, to prescribe his hours of relaxation and retirement, the length of
his beard, the cut of his apparel, his relative rank, the mode of his social
intercourse, and so on, continuously, until government was in fact everything,
and the Individual nothing. Democracy, working somewhat blindly, it is true, but
yet guided by a true instinct, begotten by its own great indwelling vital
principle, the Sovereignty of the Individual, has already substantially
revolutionized all that. It has swept away, for the most part, in America at
least, the impertinent interference of government with the pursuits, the
religious opinions and ceremonies, the travel, the amusements, the dress, and
the manners of the citizen. One whole third of the field heretofore occupied by
government has thus been surrendered to the Individual. To this point we have
already attained, practically, at the precise stage at which we now are in the
transition from the past to the future model of the organization of society.
But the principle of Democracy does not stop here. Government still
interferes, even in these United States, in some instances, with the social and
political status of the Individual, as in the case of slavery, with
commerce, with the title to the soil, with the validity of private obligations,
with the treatment of crime, and, finally, with the marriage and parental
relationships of the citizen; and it is obviously an incongruous fact that it
interferes with all these, in many instances at least, to the great annoyance of
the citizen, who, according to our political theory, is himself the sovereign,
and consequently the voluntary fabricator of that which annoys him. To the
philosophical mind there is that in this incongruity alone which predicts the
ultimate emancipation of the citizen from the restrictions of legislation and
jurisprudence, in every aspect of his existence. Accordingly, there is another
whole third of the domain hitherto occupied by Government which is at this
moment in dispute between it and the Individual. The whole of that legislation
which establishes or tolerates that form of human bondage which is called
slavery is at this moment undergoing the most determined and vigorous onset of
public opinion which any false and tyrannical institution of Government was ever
called upon to endure. The full and final abolition of slavery cannot but be
regarded, by every reflecting mind, as prospectively certain. Such is the fiat
of Democracy; such is the inevitable sequitur from the Democratic premise
of inherent political rights. Government interferes, again, to regulate
commerce; but what is the demand of Democracy in relation to that? Nothing short
of free trade. Democracy says to Government, Hands off! Let the Individual
determine for himself when, and where, and how he will buy and sell. Does any
one doubt that Democracy will, in the long run, have its own way in relation to
this matter as well, and that tariffs, and custom houses, and collectorships,
and the whole lumbering paraphernalia of indirect taxation, which fences out the
intercourse of nations, will be looked back upon, in a generation or two, in a
light akin to that in which the police system of Fouché, the passport system of
the despotic countries of Europe, and the censorship of the press are now
regarded by us? Government still interferes to control the public domain; but
already an organized and rapidly augmenting political organization is demanding
in this country a surrender of this whole subject to the Individual Sovereigns
who make the Government, and who need the land. Nor are the modest pretensions
of Land Reform, which as yet touch only the public domain, likely to end at
that. The very foundation principles of the ownership of land, as vested in
individuals and protected by law, cannot escape much longer from a searching and
radical investigation; and when that comes, the arbitrary legislation of
Government will have to give place to such natural and scientific principles
regulating the subject as may be evolved. Land Reform, in its present aspect, is
merely the prologue to a thorough and unsparing, but philosophical and equitable
agrarianism, by means of which either the land itself, or an equal participation
in the benefits of the land, shall be secured to the whole people. Science, not
human legislation, must finally govern the distribution of the soil Government,
again, interferes with contracts and private obligations. But already the demand
is growing loud for the abolition of the usury laws, and a distant murmuring is
overheard of the question whether good faith and the maintenance of credit would
not be promoted by dispensing with all laws for the collection of debts. Both
the statesman and the citizens have observed, not without profound
consideration, the significant fact that the fear of the law is less potential
for the enforcement of obligations than commercial honor; that the protest of a
notary, or even a whisper of suspicion on Change, is fraught with a cogency
which neither a bench warrant nor a capias ad satisfaciendum ever
possessed. Government still deals with criminals by the old-fashioned process of
punishment, but both science and philanthropy concur in pronouncing that the
grand remedial agency for crime is prevention, and not cure. The whole theory of
vindictive punishment is rapidly obsolescent. That theory once dead, all that
remains of punishment is simply defensive. Imprisonment melts into the
euphemism, detention; and, while detained, the prisoner is treated tenderly, as
a diseased or unfortunate person. Nor does Democracy stop at that. Democracy
declares that liberty is an inalienable right, the inherent prerogative of the
Individual Sovereign, of which there is no possible defeasance, even by his own
act. Democracy therefore claims, or will claim, when it better understands the
universality of its own pretension, either such conditions of society that
criminals shall no longer be made, or else that some more delicate method of
guardianship shall be devised which shall respect the dignity with which
Democracy invests the Individual man.
When the battles which are thus already waged in these various departments of
human affairs between Government and the Individual shall have been finally
fought and won, the domain of Government will have shrunk to the merest fragment
of its old dimensions. Hardly any sphere of legislation, worthy of the name,
will remain, save that of the marriage and parental relations. These are
subjects of great delicacy, and form, ordinarily, an insuperable barrier to the
freedom of investigation in this direction. It is in connection with these
subjects that men shrink with dismay from what they understand to be the program
of Socialism. A brief consideration of the subject, conducted with the boldness
and impartiality of science, will demonstrate, however, that the most extreme
proposition of Socialism does not transcend, in the least, the legitimate
operation of the fundamental principle of either Protestantism or Democracy.
There is that, both in one and the other, which, carried simply out to its
logical and inevitable conclusion, covers the whole case of marriage and the
love relations, and completely emancipates them from the impertinent
interference of human legislation. First, what says protestantism? Why, that the
right of private judgment in matters of conscience is paramount to all other
authority whatsoever. But marriage has been, in all ages, a subject eminently
under the dominion of conscience and the religious sense. Besides, it is one of
the best recognized principles of high-toned religionism that every action of
the life is appropriately made matter of conscience, inasmuch as the
responsibility of the Individual towards God is held to extend to every, even
the minutest thing, which the Individual does. No man, we are told, can answer
for his brother. This, then, settles the whole question. It abandons the whole
subject to the conscience of the Individual. It implies the charge of a
spiritual despotism, wholly unwarranted, for any man to interfere with the
conscientious determination of any other with regard to it. Nor can it be
objected, with any effect, that this role only applies when the determination of
the Individual accords with, and is based upon, his own conscientious
conviction, for who shall determine whether it be so or not? Clearly no one but
the Individual himself. Any tribunal assuming to do it for him would be the
Inquisition over again, which is the special abhorrence of Protestantism. Such,
then, is the Protestant faith. But what, let us inquire, is the Protestant
practice? Precisely what it should be, in strict accordance with the fundamental
axiom of Protestantism. Every variety of conscience and every variety of
deportment in reference to this precise subject of love is already tolerated
among us. At one extreme of the scale stand the Shakers, who abjure the
connection of the sexes altogether. At the other extremity stands the
association of the Perfectionists at Oneida, who hold and practice, and justify
by the Scriptures, as a religious dogma, what they denominate complex marriage
or the freedom of love. We have, in this State, stringent laws against adultery
and fornication; but laws of that sort fall powerless, in America, before the
all-pervading sentiment of Protestantism, which vindicates the freedom of
conscience to all persons and in all things, provided the consequences fall upon
the parties themselves. Hence the Oneida Perfectionists live undisturbed and
respected, in the heart of the State of New York, and in the face of the world;
and the civil government, true to the Democratic principle, which is only the
same principle in another application, is little anxious to interfere with this
breach of its own ordinances, so long as they cast none of the consequences of
their conduct upon those who do not consent to bear them.
Such, then, is the unlimited sweep of the fundamental axiom of Protestantism.
Such its unhesitating endorsements, both theoretically and practically, of the
whole doctrine of the absolute Sovereignty of the Individual. It does not help
the matter to assert that it is an irreligious or a very immoral act to do this,
or that, or the other thing. Protestantism neither asserts or denies that. It merely asserts that there is no power
to determine that question higher than the Individual himself. It does not help
the matter to affirm that the Scriptures, or the law of God, delivered in any
form, have determined the nature and limits of marriage. Protestantism, again,
neither denies that proposition nor affirms it. It merely affirms, again, that
the Individual himself must decide for himself what the law of God is, and that
there is no authority higher than himself to whose decision he can be required
to submit. It is arrogance, self-righteousness and spiritual despotism for me to
assume that you have not a conscience as well as I, and that, if you regulate
your own conduct in the light of that conscience, it will not be as well
regulated in the sight of God as it would be if I were to impose the decisions
of my conscience upon you.
In general, however, Government still interferes with the marriage and
parental relations. Democracy in America has always proceeded with due deference
to the prudential motto, festina lente.
In France, at the time of the first Revolution, Democracy rushed with the
explosive force of escapement from centuries of compression, point blank to the
bull’s eye of its final destiny, from which it recoiled with such force that the
stupid world has dreamed, for half a century, that the vital principle of
Democracy was dead. As a logical sequence from Democratic principle, the legal
obligation of marriage was sundered, and the Sovereignty of the Individual above
the institution was vindicated. That the principle of Democracy is, potentially,
still the same, will appear upon slight examination. Democracy denies all power
to Government in matters of religion. No Democratic Government does, therefore,
or can base its interference with marriage upon the religious ground. It defines
marriage to be, and regards it as being, a mere civil contract. It justifies its
own interference with it upon the same ground that it justifies its interference
with other contracts,--namely, to enforce the civil obligations connected with
it, and to insure the maintenance of children. But here, as in the case of
ordinary obligations, if the conviction obtains that different conditions of
society will render the present relations of property between husband and wife
unnecessary, and secure, by the equitable distribution and general abundance of
wealth, a universal deference on the part of parents to the dictates of nature
in behalf of children. Democracy will cease to make this subject an exception to
her dominant principles. A tendency to change these conditions is already shown
in the passage of laws to secure to the wife an independent or individual
enjoyment of property. Already the observation is made, too, that children are
never abandoned among the wealthy classes, and hence the natural inference that
the scientific production, the equitable distribution, and the economical
employment of wealth would render human laws unnecessary to enforce the first
mandate of nature,--hospitality and kindness toward offspring. The doctrine is
already considerably diffused that the union of the sexes would be, not only
more pure, but more permanent, in the absence, under favorable circumstances, of
all legal interference. But whether that be so or not is not now the question. I
am merely asserting that the inevitable tendency of Democracy, like that of
Protestantism, is toward abandoning this subject to the sovereign determination
of the Individual, and that Democracy in this country will attain, only more
leisurely, the same point to which it went at a single leap, and from which it
rebounded, in France.
It is far less obvious, judging from the practical exhibition what it has
hitherto made of itself, that the essential principle of Socialism is, equally
with that of Protestantism and Democracy, the Individual Sovereignty. Indeed,
Socialism has been attacked and resisted more vigorously than from any other
cause in consequence of an instinctive perception that the measures hitherto
proposed by it sap the freedom of the Individual. The connected interests and
complicated artificial organization proposed by Fourier, and the renunciation of
independent ownership contemplated by Communism, have been severely criticized
and denounced, and the most so, perhaps, by those who are the most thoroughly
imbued with the Protestant and Democratic idea of Individuality. To understand
this apparent discrepancy we must distinguish the leading idea of
Socialism from the methods proposed by its advocates. The two are quite
distinct from each other, and it may be that Socialism has mistaken its
measures, as every human enterprise is liable to do.
Socialism demands the proper, legitimate, and just reward of labor It demands
that the interests of all shall be so arranged that they shall cooperate,
instead of clashing with and counteracting each other. It demands economy in the
production and uses of wealth, and the consequent abolition of wretchedness and
poverty. To what end does it make these demands? Clearly it is in order that
every human being shall be in the full possession, control, and enjoyment of his
own person and modes of seeking happiness, without foreign interference from any
quarter whatsoever. This, then, is the spirit of Socialism, and it is neither
more nor less than a still broader and more comprehensive assertion of the
doctrine of the inherent Sovereignty of the Individual. The Socialist proposes
association and combined interests merely as a means of securing that which he
aims at,--justice, cooperation, and the economies of the large scale. Hence it
follows that the Democrat resists and the Socialist advocates
Association and Communism for precisely the same reason. It is because both want
identically the same thing. The Democrat sees in connected interests a fatal
stroke at his personal liberty,--the unlimited sovereignty over his own
conduct,--and dreads the subjection of himself to domestic legislation, manifold
committees, and continual and authorized espionage and criticism. The Socialist
sees, in these same arrangements, abundance of wealth, fairly distributed among
all, and a thousand beneficent results which he knows to be essential conditions
to the possession or exercise of that very Sovereignty of the Individual. Each
has arrived at one half the truth. The Socialist is right in asserting that all
the conditions which he demands are absolutely essential to the development of
the individual selfhood. He is wrong in proposing such a fatal surrender of
Individual liberty for their attainment as every form of amalgamated interests
inevitably involves. The Democrat is negatively wrong in omitting from his
program the absolute necessity for harmonic social relations,--wrong in
supposing that there can always be a safe and legitimate exercise of those
rights which he declares to be inalienable, short of those superior domestic
arrangements which the Socialist demands. It is futile, for example, to talk of
removing the restraints of law from marriage, thus guaranteeing freedom in “the
pursuit of happiness” in that relation, before the just reward of labor and the
consequent prevalence of general wealth shall have created a positive security
of condition for women and children. Hence the blunder of Democracy in the old
French Revolution, and hence the absolute dependence of Democracy, for the
working out of its own principles, upon the happy solution of all the problems
of Socialism. Hence, again, the natural affinity of Democracy and Socialism, and
the reason why, despite their mutual misunderstanding, they have recently fallen
into each other’s embrace, in France, resounding in the ears of terrified Europe
the ominous cry Vive la Republique Démocratique et Sociale.
The blunder of Socialism is not in its end, but in its means. It consists in
propounding a combination of interests which is opposed by the individualities
of all nature, which is consequently a restriction of liberty, and which is,
therefore, especially antagonistic to the very objects which Socialism proposes
to attain. It is this which prevents the harmony of Democracy and Socialism,
even in France, from becoming complete, and which renders inevitable the
disruption of every attempted social organization which does not end
disastrously in despotism,--the inverse mode in which nature vindicates her
irresistible determination toward Individuality. Let that feature of the
Socialist movement be retrenched, and a method of securing its great ends
discovered which shall not be self-defeating in its operation, and from that
point Socialism and Democracy will blend into one and, uniting with
Protestantism, lose their distinctive appellations in the generic term of
Individual Sovereignty.
Such a principle is already discovered. It is capable of satifactory
demonstration that out of the adoption of a simple change in the commercial
system of the world, by which cost and not value shall be
recognized as the limit of price, will grow, legitimately, all the
wealth-producing, equitable, cooperating, and harmonizing results which
Socialism has hitherto sought to realize through the combination or amalgamation
of interests, while, at the same time, it will leave intact, the individualities
of existing society, and even promote them to an extent not hitherto conceived
of. It is not now, however, the appropriate time to trace out the results of
such a principle. We are concerned at present with Individuality and the spirit
of the age as connected with governmental affairs.
It is already the axiom of Democracy that that is the best government which
governs least,--that, in other words, which leaves the largest domain to the
Individual sovereign. It may sound strange, and yet it is rigidly true, that
nothing is more foreign to the essential nature of Democracy than the rule of
majorities. Democracy asserts that all men are born free and equal,--that is,
that every individual is of right free from the governing control of every other
and of all others. Democracy asserts also, that this right is inalienable,--that
it can neither be surrendered nor forfeited to another Individual, nor to a
majority of other Individuals. But the practical application of this principle
has been, and will always be found to be, incompatible with our existing social
order. It presupposes, as I have said, the preliminary attainment of the
conditions demanded by Socialism. The rule of majorities is, therefore, a
compromise enforced by temporary expediency,--a sort of half-way station-house,
between Despotism, which is Individuality in the concrete, and the Sovereignty
of every Individual, which is Individuality in the discrete form.
Genuine Democracy is identical with the no-government doctrine. The motto to
which I have alluded looks directly to that end. Finding obstacles in the
present social organization to the realization of its theory, Democracy has
called a halt for the present, and consented to a truce. The no-government men
of our day are practically not so wise, while they are theoretically more
consistent. They are, in fact, the genuine Democrats. It is they who are fairly
entitled to the sobriquet of “The unterrified Democracy.” They fearlessly face
all consequences, and push their doctrine quite out to its logical conclusions.
In so doing, they repeat the blunder which was committed in France. They insist
upon no government higher than that of the Individual, while they leave in
existence those causes which imperatively demand, and will always demand so long
as they exist, the intervention of just such restrictive governments as we now
have.
It results from all that has been said that the essential principle of
Protestantism, of Democracy, and of Socialism, is one and the same; that it is
identical with what is called the spirit of the present age; and that all of
them are summed up in the idea of the absolute supremacy of the Individual above
all human institutions.
What, then, the question returns, is to be the upshot of this movement? If
every department of modern reform is imbued with one and the same animating
principle; if there be already an obvious convergence, and, prospectively, an
inevitable conjunction and cooperation of the three great modern revolutionary
forces, Protestantism, Democracy, and Socialism; if, even now, in their
disjointed and semi-antagonistic relations, they prove more than a match for
hoary conservatism; if, in addition, material inventions and reforms of all
sorts concur in the same direction; if, in fine, the spirit of the age, or, more
properly, of modern times, and which we recognize also as the spirit of human
improvement, tends continually and with accelerated velocity toward the absolute
Individualization of human affairs,--what is the inevitable goal to be
ultimately reached? I have said that in religious affairs the end must be that
for every man shall be his own sect. This is the simple meaning of
Protestantism, interpreted in the light of its own principles. If the occasion
were appropriate, it would be a glorious contemplation to dwell upon that more
perfect harmony which will then reign among mankind in the religious sphere,--a
unity growing out of infinite diversity, and universal deference for the
slightest Individualities of opinion in others, transcending in glory that
hitherto sought by the Church in artificial organizations and arbitrary creeds,
as far as the new heavens and the new earth will excel the old.
Socialism demands, and will end by achieving, the untrammeled selfhood of the
Individual in the private relations of life, but out of that universal selfhood
shall grow the highest harmonies of social relationship. It is not these
subjects, however, that are now especially appropriate. Let us restrict our
specific inquiry to the remaining one of the three spheres of human affairs
which we have in the general view considered conjointly,--namely, that which
relates to human government.
Is it within the bounds of possibility, and, if so, is it within the limits
of rational anticipation, that all human governments, in the sense in which
government is now spoken of, shall pass away, and be reckoned among the useless
lumber of an experimental age,--that forcible government of all sorts shall, at
some future day, perhaps not far distant, be looked upon by the whole world, as
we in America now look back upon the maintenance of a religious establishment,
supposed in other times, and in many countries still, to be essential to the
existence of religion among men; and as we look back upon the ten thousand other
impertinent interferences of government, as government is practiced in those
countries where it is an institution of far more validity and consistency than
it has among us? Is it possible, and, if so, is it rationally probable, that the
time shall ever come when every man shall be, in fine, his own nation as well as
his own sect? Will this tendency to universal enfranchisement—indications of
which present themselves, as we have seen, in exuberant abundance on all hands
in this age—ultimate itself, by placing the Individual above all political
institutions, the man above all subordination to municipal law?
To put ourselves in a condition to answer this inquiry with some satisfactory
decree of certainty, we must first obtain a clear conception of the necessities
out of which government grows; then of the functions which government performs;
then of the specific tendencies of society in relation to those functions; and,
finally, of the legitimate successorship for the existing governmental
institutions of mankind.
I must apologize as well for the incompleteness as for the apparent dogmatism
of any brief exposition of this subject. I assert that it is not only possible
and rationally probable, but that it is rigidly consequential upon the right
understanding of the constitution of man, that all government, in the sense of
involuntary restraint upon the Individual, or substantially all, must finally
cease, and along with it the whole complicated paraphernalia and trumpery of
Kings, Emperors, Presidents, Legislatures, and Judiciary. I assert that the
indications of this result abound in existing society, and that it is the
instinctive or intelligent perception of that fact by those who have not
bargained for so much which gives origin and vital energy to the reaction in
Church and State and social life. I assert that the distance is less today
forward from the theory and practice of Government as it is in these United
States, to the total abrogation of all Government above that of the Individual,
than it is backward to the theory and practice of Government as Government now
is in the despotic countries of the old world.
The reason why apology is demanded is this: So radical a change in
governmental affairs involves the concurrence of other equally radical changes
in social habits, commerce, finance, and elsewhere. I have shown already, I
think, that Democracy would have ended in that, had it not been obstructed by
the want of certain conditions which nothing but the solution of the problems of
Socialism can afford. To discuss the changes which must occur in every
department of life, in order to render this revolution in Government
practicable, and to provide that those changes now exist in embryo, would be to
embrace the whole field of human concerns. That is clearly impossible in the
compass of a lecture. But it is equally impossible to adjust the radical changes
which I foretell in Government to the notion of the permanency of all other
institutions in their present forms. What, then, can be done in this dilemma? I
am reduced to a method of treating the subject which demands apology, both for
incompleteness and apparent dogmatism. I perceive no possible method open to me
but that of segregating the subject of Government from its connection with other
departments of life, and deducting from principles and rational grounds of
conjecture the changes which it is destined to undergo; and when those changes
involve the necessity of other and corresponding changes elsewhere, to assert,
as it were, dogmatically, without stopping to adduce the proofs, that these
latter changes are also existing in embryo, or actually progressing.
I return now to the necessities out of which Government grows. These are in
the broadest generalization: 1. to restrain encroachments, and 2. to manage the
combined interests of mankind.
First, with regard to restraining encroachments and enforcing equity. Is
there no better method of accomplishing this end than force, such as existing
Governments are organized to apply? I affirm that there is. I affirm that a
clear scientific perception of the point at which encroachment begins, in all
our manifold pecuniary and moral relations with each other, an exact idea of the
requirements of equity, accepted into the public mind, and felt to be capable of
a precise application in action, would go tenfold further than arbitrary laws
and the sanctions of laws can go, in obtaining the desired results. In saying
this, I mean something definite and specific. I have already adverted to the
discovery of an exact, scientific principle, capable of regulating the
distribution of wealth, and introducing universal equity in pecuniary
transactions,--an exact mathematical gauge of honesty,--which, when it shall
have imbued the public mind, and formed the public sentiment, and come to
regulate the public conduct, will secure the products of labor with impartial
justice to all, and tend to remove alike the temptations and the provocations to
crime. What that principle does in the sphere of commerce is done in the social
and ethical spheres by the doctrine of the Sovereignty of the Individual. Both
give to each his own, for it must be continually remembered that the doctrine of
Sovereignty of the Individual demands that I should sedulously and religiously
respect your Individuality, while I vindicate my own. These two ground
principles, with a few others incident thereto, once accepted and indwelling in
the minds of men, and controlling their action, will dispense with force and
forcible Government. The change which I contemplate in governmental affairs
rests, therefore, upon these prior or concurrent changes in the commercial,
ethical, and social spheres. Statesmen and jurists have hitherto dealt with
effects instead of causes. They have looked upon crime and encroachment of all
sorts as a fact to be remedied, but never as a phenomenon to be accounted for.
They have never gone back to inquire what conditions of existence manufactured
the criminal, or provoked or induced the encroachment. A change in this respect
is beginning to be observed, for the first time, in the present generation. The
superiority of prevention over cure is barely beginning to be admitted,--a
reform in the methods of thought which is an incipient stage of the revolution
in question. The highest type of human society in the existing social order is
found in the parlor. In the elegant and refined reunions of the aristocratic
classes there is none of the impertinent interference of legislation. The
Individuality of each is fully admitted. Intercourse, therefore, is perfectly
free. Conversation is continuous, brilliant, and varied. Groups are formed
according to attraction. They are continuously broken up, and re-formed through
the operation of the same subtle and all-pervading influence. Mutual deference
pervades all classes, and the most perfect harmony, ever yet attained, in
complex human relations, prevails under precisely those circumstances which
Legislators and Statesmen dread as the conditions of inevitable anarchy and
confusion. If there are laws of etiquette at all, there are mere suggestions of
principles admitted into and judged of for himself or herself, by each
individual mind.
Is it conceivable that in all the future progress of humanity, with all the
innumerable elements of development which the present age is unfolding, society
generally, and in all its relations, will not attain as high a grade of
perfection as certain portions of society, in certain special relations, have
already attained?
Suppose the intercourse of the parlor to be regulated by specific
legislation. Let the time which each gentlemen shall be allowed to speak to each
lady be fixed by law; the position in which they should sit or stand be
precisely regulated; the subjects which they shall be allowed to speak of, and
the tone of voice and accompanying gestures with which each may be treated,
carefully defined, all under pretext of preventing disorder and encroachment
upon each other’s privileges and rights, then can any thing be conceived better
calculated or more certain to convert social intercourse into intolerable
slavery and hopeless confusion?
It is precisely in this manner that municipal legislation interferes with and
prevents the natural organization of society. Mankind legislate themselves into
confusion by their effort to escape it. Still, a state of society may perhaps be
conceived, so low in social development that even the intercourse of the parlor
could not be prudently indulged without a rigid code of deportment and the
presence of half a dozen bailiffs to preserve order. I will not deny, therefore,
that Government in municipal affairs is, in like manner, a temporary necessity
of undeveloped society. What I affirm is that along with, and precisely in
proportion to, the social advancement of a people, that necessity ceases, so far
as concerns the first of the causes of Government referred to,--the necessity
for restraining encroachments.
The second demand for Government is to manage the combined interests of
society. But combined or amalgamated interests of all sorts are opposed to
Individuality. The Individuality of interests should be as absolute as that of
persons. Hence the number and extent of combined interests will be reduced with
every step in the genuine progress of mankind. The cost principle will furnish
in its operation the means of conducting the largest human enterprises, under
Individual guidance and control. It strips capital of its iniquitous privilege
of oppressing labor by earning an income of its own, in the form of interest,
and places it freely at the disposal of those who will preserve and administer
it best, upon the sole conditions of returning it unimpaired, but without
augmentation, at the appropriate time, to its legitimate owners.
A glance at the functions which Government actually performs, and the
specific tendencies which society now exhibits in relation to those functions,
will confirm the statement that all, or most of, the combined interests of
society will be finally disintegrated and committed to individual hands. It is
one of the acknowledged functions of Government, until now, to regulate
commerce. But, as we have already seen, the spirit of the age demands that
Government shall let commerce alone. In this country, an important Bureau of the
Executive Department of Government is the Land Office. But the public domain is,
we have seen, already demanded by the people, and the Land Office will have to
be dispensed with. The Army and Navy refer to a state of international relations
of which every thing begins to prognosticate the final extinction. The universal
extension of commerce and intercommunication, by means of steam navigation,
railroads, and the magnetic telegraph, together with the general progress of
enlightenment, are rapidly obliterating natural boundaries, and blending the
human family into one. The cessation of war is becoming a familiar idea, and,
with the cessation of war, armies and navies will cease, of course, to be
required. It is probable that even the existing languages of the earth will
melt, within another century or two, into one common and universal tongue, from
the same causes, operating upon a more extended scale, as those which have
blended the dialects of the different countries of England, of the different
departments of France, and of the kingdoms of Spain into the English, the French
and the Spanish languages, respectively. We have premonitions of the final
disbanding of the armies and navies of the world in the substitution of a
citizen militia, in the growing unpopularity of even that ridiculous shadow of
an army, the militia itself, and in the substitution of the merchant steamship
with merely an incidental warlike equipment instead of the regular man-of-war.
The Navy and War Departments of Government will thus be dispensed with. The
State Department now takes charge of the intercourse of the nation with foreign
nations. But with the cessation of war there will be no foreign nations, and
consequently the State or Foreign Department may in turn take itself away.
Patriotism will expand into philanthrophy. Nations, like sects, will dissolve
into the individuals who compose them. Every man will be his own nation, and,
preserving his own sovereignty and respecting the sovereignty of others, he will
be a nation at peace with all others. The term, “a man of the world,” reveals
the fact that it is the cosmopolite in manners and sentiments whom the world
already recognizes as the true gentleman,--the type and leader of civilization.
The Home Department of Government is a common receptacle of odds and ends, every
one of whose functions would be better managed by Individual enterprise, and
might take itself away with advantage any day. The Treasury Department is merely
a kind of secretory gland, to provide the means of carrying on the machinery of
the other Departments. When they are removed, it will of course have no apology
left for continuing to exist. Finances for administering Government will no
longer be wanted when there is no longer any Government to administer. The
Judiciary is, in fact, a branch of the Executive, and falls of course, as we
have seen, with the introduction of principles which will put an end to
aggression and crime. The Legislature enacts what the Executive and Judiciary
execute. If the execution itself is unnecessary, the enactment of course is no
less so. Thus, piece by piece, we dispose of the whole complicated fabric of
Government, which looms up in such gloomy grandeur, overshadowing the freedom of
the Individual, impressing the minds of men with a false conviction of its
necessity, as if it were, like the blessed light of day, indispensable to life
and happiness.
There is abundant evidence to the man of reflection that what we have thus
performed in imagination is destined to be rapidly accomplished in fact. There
is, perhaps, no one consideration which looks more directly to that consummation
than the growing unpopularity of politics, in every phase of the subject. In
America this fact is probably obvious than anywhere else. The pursuit of
politics is almost entirely abandoned to lawyers, and generally it is the career
of those who are least successful in that profession. The general repugnance of
the masses of mankind for that class of the community, by which they testify an
instinctive appreciation of the outrage upon humanity committed by the attempt
to reduce the impertinent interference of legislation to a science, and to
practice it as a learned profession, is intensified, in the case of the
politician, by the element of contempt. In the sham Democracies, wherein
majorities govern, the condition of the office-seeker and of the office-holder
is alike and peculiarly unfortunate. Defeated, he is consigned unceremoniously,
by popular opinion, to the category of the “poor devil.” Successful, he is
denounced as a political hack. His position is preeminently precarious. Whatever
veneration attaches still to the manufacturers and executors of law among us is
mostly traditionary. So much of the popular estimation of the men whose business
is governing the fellow-men as is the indigenous growth of our institutions is
essentially disrespectful. The politician, in a republic, is a man whose
business it is to please everybody, and who, consequently, has no personality of
his own, and this, here and now, in a country and age in which distinctive
personality is becoming the type and model of society. It is regarded today as a
misfortune, in the families of respectable tradespeople, if a son of any promise
has an unlucky turn for political preferment. Those who execute the laws are in
little better plight than those who make them. Recently, throughout most of the
States, when changes have been made in the fundamental law, the tenure of office
of judges of all ranks has been reduced to a short period of from two to four
years, and the office rendered elective. Such is the fearful descent upon which
the dignity of powered wigs is fairly launched in Republican America. Judges,
Chancellors and Chief Justices entering the canvass, at short intervals, for
returns to the Bench, and shaking hands with greasy citizens as the price of
judicial authority. It is said that familiarity breeds contempt, or that no man
is great to his valet de chambre. When the inhabitants of a heathen
country begin to treat their priests and their wooden divinities with
contemptuous familiarity, wise men see that the power of Paganism is broken, and
the Medicine-man, the Fetish, or the Juggernaut must soon give place to some
more rational conception of the religious idea. At the ratio of depreciation
actually progressing, office-holding of all sorts, in these United States, from
the president down to the constable, will, in a few years more, be ranked in the
public mind as positively disreputable. In the higher condition of society,
toward which mankind is unconsciously advancing, men will shun all
responsibility for and arbitrary control over the conduct of others as
sedulously as during past ages they have sought them as the chief good.
Washington declined to be made king, and the whole world has not ceased to make
the welkin ring with laudations of the disinterested act. The time will come yet
when the declinature, on all hands, of every species of governmental authority
over others will not even be deemed a virtue, but simply the plain dictate of
enlightened self-interest. The sentiment of the poet will then be recognized as
an axiom of philosophy.
Whoever mounts the throne,--King, Priest, or Prophet,--Man alike shall
groan.
Carlyle complains, in the bitterness of his heart, that the true kings and
governors of mankind have retired in disgust from the task of governing the
world, and betaken themselves to the altogether private business of governing
themselves. Whenever the world at large shall become as wise as they, when all
men shall be content to govern themselves. Whenever the world at large shall
become as wise as they, when all men shall be content to govern themselves
merely, then, and not till then, will “The True Constitution of Government”
begin to be installed. Carlyle has but discovered the fact that good men are
withdrawing from politics, without penetrating the rationale of the
phenomenon. He may call upon them in vain till he is hoarse to return to the
arena of a contest which has been waged for some six thousand years or so, with
continuous defeat, at a time when they are beginning to discover that the whole
series of bloody conflicts has been fought with windmills instead of giants, and
that what the world wants, in the way of government, is letting alone.
But what then? Have we arrived at the upshot of the whole matter when we
have, in imagination, swept all the actual forms of Government out of existence?
Is human society, in its mature and normal condition, to be a mere aggregation
of men and women, standing upon the unrelieved dead level of universal equality?
Is there to be no homage, no rank, no honors, no transcendent influence, no
power, in fine, exerted by one man over his fellow-men? Will there be nothing
substantially corresponding to, and specifically substituted for, what is now
known among men as Human Government?
This is the question to which we are finally conducted by the current of our
investigations, and to this question I conceive the answer to be properly
affirmative. Had I not believed so, there would have been no propriety in the
title, “The True Constitution of Government,” under which I announced this
discourse. It might be thought by some a sufficient answer to the question that
might be thought by some a sufficient answer to the question that principles,
and not men, will then constitute the Government of mankind. So vague a
statement, however, does not give complete satisfaction to the inquisitive mind,
nor does it meet the interrogatory in all its varying forms. We wish to know
what will be the positions, relatively to each other, into which men will be
naturally thrown by the operation of that perfect liberty which will result from
the prevalence and toleration of universal Individuality. We desire to know this
especially, now, with reference to that class of the mutual relations of men
which will correspond most exactly to the relations of the governors and the
governed.
Negatively, it is certain that in such a state of society as that which we
are now contemplating no influence will be tolerated, in the place of
Government, which is maintained or exerted by force in any, even the subtlest,
forms of involuntary compulsion. But there is still a sense in which men are
said to exert power,--a sense in which the wills of the governor and the
governed concur, and blend, and harmonize with each other. It is in such a sense
as this that the great orator is said to control the minds of his audience, or
that some matchless queen of song sways an irresistible influence over the ears
of men. When mankind graduate out of the period of brute force, that man will be
the greatest hero and conqueror who levies the heaviest tribute of homage by
excellence of achievement in any department of human performance. The avenues to
distinction will not be then, as now, open only to the few. Each individual will
truly govern the minds, and ears, and conduct of others. Those who have the most
power to impress themselves upon the community in which they live will govern in
larger, and those who have less will govern in smaller spheres. All will be
priests and kings, serving at the innumerable altars and sitting upon the
thrones of that manifold hierarchy, the foundations of which God himself has
laid in the constitution of man. Genius, talent, industry, discovery, the power
to please, every development of Individuality, in fine, which meets the
approbation of another, will be freely recognized as the divine anointing which
constitutes him a sovereign over others,--a sovereign having sovereigns for his
subjects,--subjects whose loyalty is proved and known, because they are ever
free to transfer their fealty to other lords. With the growing development of
Individuality even in this age, new spheres of honorable distinction are
continually evolved. The accredited heroes of our times are neither politicians
nor warriors. It is the discoverers of great principles, the projectors of
beneficent designs, and the executors of magnificent undertakings of all sorts
who, even now, command the homage of mankind. While politics are falling into
desuetude and contempt, while war, from being the admiration of the world, is
rapidly becoming its abhorrence, the artist and the artisan are rising into
relative importance and estimation. Even the undistinguished workers, as they
have hitherto been, shall hereafter hold seats as Cabinet Ministers in the new
hierarchical government, which shall shadow, in those days, with its
overspreading magnificence, the dwellings of regenerated humanity. In that
stupendous administration, extending from the greatest down to the least things
of human discernment, there shall be no lack of functionaries and no limit upon
patronage. Of that social state, which opens the avenues of all honorable
pursuits to all, upon terms of equity and mutual cooperation, it may be truly
said, as was said by the Great Teacher, when speaking of another kingdom,--if
indeed it be another,--”In my Father’s house there are many mansions.” The
laudable ambition of all will then be fully gratified. There will be no defeated
candidates in the political campaigns of that day. Where the interests of all
are identical, even the superiority of another is success, and the glory of
another is a personal triumph.
A superficial observer might judge that there was more prosperity and power
in a petty principality of Germany than there is in the United States of
America, because he sees more pomp and magnificence surrounding the court of a
puppet prince, whom men call the ruler of that people. No one but an equally
superficial observer will mistake the phantom, called Government, which resides
in the Halls and Departments at Washington—the mere ghost of what such a
Government once was, in its palmy days of despotism—for a nearer approximation
to the true organization of Government than that natural arrangement of society
which divides and distributes the functions of governing into ten thousand
Departments and Bureaus at the homes, in the workshops, and at the universities
of the people.
If that trumpery Government be called such, because it performs important
public functions, then have we distinguished private individuals among us who
are already preeminently more truly Governors than they. If the concern at
Washington is legitimately denominated a Government of the people, because it
controls and regulates a Post Office Department, for example, then are the
Harndens and Adamses Governors too, for they control and regulate a Package
Express Department, which is a greater and more difficult thing. They carry
bigger bundles, and carry them farther, and deliver them with more regularity
and dispatch. It is stated, upon authority which I presume to be reliable, that
Adams & Co.’s Express is the most extensive organization of any sort in the
world,--that it is, in fact, absolutely world-wide; and yet it is strictly an
individual concern. As an instance of the superiority of administration in the
private enterprise of the national combination, I was myself at Washington
during the last winter, when the mails were interrupted by the breaking up of a
railroad bridge between Baltimore and Philadelphia, and when, for nearly two
weeks, the newspapers of the Commercial Metropolis were regularly delayed, one
whole day, on their way to the Political metropolis of the country, while the
same papers came regularly and promptly through every day by the private
expresses. The President, Members of Congress, and Cabinet Ministers, even the
Postmaster-General himself was regularly served with the news by the enterprise
of a private individual, who performed one of the functions of the Government,
in opposition to the Government, and better than the Government, levying tribute
upon the very functionary of the Government who was elected, consecrated, and
anointed for the performance of that identical function. Who, then, was the true
Governor and Cabinet Minister, the Postmaster General, who was daily dispatching
messengers to rectify the irregularity, and issuing bulletins to explain and
apologize for it, or the Adams Express man, who conquered the difficulty, and
served the public, when the so-called Government failed to do it? The fault is
that the Government goes by rule, preordained in the form of law, and
consequently has no capacity for adapting itself to the Individuality of an
unforeseen contingency. It has not the Individual deciding power and promptitude
of action which are absolutely necessary for such occasions.
It is the actual performance of the function which is all that there is good
in the idea of Government. All that there is besides that is mere restriction,
and consequent annoyance and oppression of the public, as when our Government
undertook to suppress those private expresses, which serve the public better
than it. The point, then, is thus: I affirm that every useful function, or
nearly every one which is now performed by Government, and the use of which will
remain in the more advanced conditions of mankind, toward which the present
tendencies of society converge, can be better performed by the Individual,
self-elected and self-authorized, than by any constituted Government whatsoever;
and further, since it is the performance of the function, and the influence
which the performance of the function exerts over the conduct, and to the
advantage of men, which makes the true Governor, it follows, I affirm, that the
Adams Express man was, in the case I have mentioned, the true Governor, and that
the Postmaster General, and the whole innumerable gang of Legislators and
Executors of the law at his back, were the sham Governors, such as the world is
getting ready to discharge on perpetual furlough.
It is possible that there may be a few comparatively unimportant interests of
mankind which are so essentially combined in their nature that some species of
artificial organization will always be necessary for their management. I do not,
for example, see how the public highways can be properly laid out and
administered by the private individual. Let us resort, then, to science for the
solution of this anomaly, for every subject has its science, the true social
relations of mankind as well as all others. The inexorable natural law which
governs this subject is this: that nature demands everywhere an individual lead.
Every combined interest must therefore come ultimately to be governed by an
individual mind, to be entrusted, in other words, to a despotism. It is the
recognition of this law which is embodied in the political axiom that “power is
constantly stealing from the hands of the many into the hands of the few,” It is
this scientific principle, lying down in the very nature of things, which
constitutes both the rationale of monarchy and its appropriate apology. The
lesson of wisdom to be deduced from this principle is not, however, as our
political leaders have preached to us, that “the price of liberty is eternal
vigilance,”--a liberty which is not worth possession if it cannot be enjoyed in
security, and a vigilance which is only required to be exercised in order to
defeat the legitimate operation of the most universal and fundamental law of
nature. The true lesson of political wisdom is simply this: that no interests
should ever be entrusted to a combination which are too important to be
surrendered understandingly and voluntarily to the guidance of a despotism.
Government, therefore, in the present sense of the term, can never, from the
very essential nature of the case, be compatible with the safety of the
liberties of the people, until the sphere of its authority is reduced to the
very narrowest dimensions,--never until the mere commission,--a board of
overseers of roads and canals, and such other unimportant interests as
experience shall prove can not be so readily managed by irresponsible individual
action.
It is this latter alone which will then truly merit the imposing title of
Government. There is a sense, as I have said, in which that term is fairly
applicable to the natural organization of the interrelations of men. If Genin,
or Leary, or Knox devises a new fashion for hats, and manufactures hats in the
style so devised, and the style pleases you and me, and we buy the hats and wear
them, therein is an example, a humble example, perhaps you will think, but still
a genuine example, of true Government. The individual hatter is self-elected to
his function. I, in giving him the preference over another, express my
conviction of his fitness for that function, of his superiority over others. I
vote for him. I give him my suffrage. I confirm his election. The abstract
statement of the true order of Government, then, is this: it is that Government
in which the rulers elect themselves, and are voted for afterward.
The uncouth and unscrupulous despot proclaims that he governs mankind in his
own right,--the right of the strongest. The modernized and somewhat civilized
despot announces that he governs by divine right; that he is the God-appointed
ruler of the people, by virtue of the fact that he finds himself a ruler at all.
The more modern Democratic Governor claims to rule by virtue of the will of a
majority. The true Governor rules by virtue of all these authorizations
combined. He rules in his own right, because he is self-elected, and exercises
his function in accordance with his own choice. He rules by authorization of the
majority, because it is he who receives the suffrages of the largest number who
governs most extensively, and finally, he, of all men, can be appropriately said
to rule by divine right. His own judgment of his own fitness for his function,
confirmed by the approval of those whom he desires to govern, are the highest
possible evidence of the divinity of his claim, of the fact, in other words,
that he was created and designed by God himself for the most perfect performance
of that particular function.
What, then, society has to do is to remove the obstructions to this universal
self-election, by every Individual, of himself, to that function which his own
consciousness of his own adaptation prompts him to believe to be his peculiar
God-intended office in life. Throw open the polls, make the pulpit, the
school-room, the workshop, the manufactory, the shipyard, and the storehouse the
universal ballot-boxes of the people. Make every day an election day, and every
human being both a candidate and a voter, exercising each day and hour his full
and unlimited franchise.
In order to this consummation, two conditions are indispensably necessary:
the first is the cordial and universal acceptance of this very principle of the
absolute Sovereignty of the Individual,--each claiming his own Sovereignty, and
each religiously respecting that of all others. The second is the equitable
interchange of the products of labor, measured by the scientific law relating to
that subject to which I have referred, and the consequent security to each of
the full enjoyment and unlimited control of just that portion of wealth which he
or she produces, the effect of which will be the introduction of general comfort
and security, the moderation of avarice, and the supply of a definite knowledge
of the limits of rights and encroachments.
The instrumentalities necessary for hastening the adoption of these
principles are likewise, chiefly, two: these are, first, a more intense longing
for true and harmonic relations; and, secondly, a clear intellectual conception
of the principles themselves, and of the consequences which would flow from
their adoption. The first is a highly religious aspiration, the second is a
process of scientific induction. One is the soul and the other the sensible
body, the spiritual substance and the corporeal form, of social harmony. The
teachings of Christianity have inspired the one, the illumination of science
must provide the other. Intellectual resources brought to the aid of Desire
constitute the marriage of Wisdom with Love, whose progeny is Happiness.
When from the lips of truth one mighty breath
Shall, like a
whirlwind, scatter in its breeze
The whole dark pile of human
mockeries,
Then shall the race of mind commence on earth,
And, starting
fresh, as from a second birth,
Man, in the sunshine of the world’s new
spring,
Shall walk transparent, like some holy thing.
It would, perhaps, be injudicious to conclude this exhibit of the doctrine of
the Individual Sovereignty, without a more formal statement of the scientific
limit upon the exercise of that Sovereignty which the principle itself supplies.
If the principle were predicated of one Individual alone, the assertion of his
Sovereignty, or, in other words, of his absolute right to do as he pleases, or
to pursue his own happiness in his own way, would be confessedly to invest him
with the attributes of despotism over others. But the doctrine which I have
endeavored to set forth is not that. It is the assertion of the concurrent
Sovereignty of all men, and of all women, and, within the limits I am about to
state, of all children. This concurrence of Sovereignty necessarily and
appropriately limits the Sovereignty of each. Each is Sovereign only within his
own dominions, because he cannot extend the exercise of his Sovereignty beyond
those limits without trenching upon, and interfering with, the prerogatives of
others, whose Sovereignty the doctrine equally affirms. What, then, constitutes
the boundaries of one’s own dominion? This is a pregnant question for the
happiness of mankind, and one which has never, until now, been specifically and
scientifically asked, or answered. The answer, if correctly given, will fix the
precise point at which Sovereignty ceases and encroachment begins, and that
knowledge, as I have said, accepted into the public mind, will do more than
laws, and the sanctions of laws, to regulate individual conduct and intercourse.
The limitation is this: every Individual is the rightful Sovereign over his own
conduct in all things, whenever, and just so far as, the consequences of his
conduct can be assumed by himself; or, rather, inasmuch as no one objects to
assuming agreeable consequences, whenever, and as far as, this is true of the
disagreeable consequences. For disagreeable consequences, endurance, or burden
of all sorts, the term “Cost” is elected as a scientific technicality. Hence,
the exact formula of the doctrine, with its inherent limitation, may be stated
thus: “The Sovereignty of the Individual, to be exercised at his own
cost.”
This limitation of the doctrine, being inherent, and necessarily involved in
the idea of the Sovereignty of all, may possibly be left with safety, after the
limitation is understood, to implication, and the simple Sovereignty of the
Individual be asserted as the inclusive formula. The limitation has never been
distinctly and clearly set forth in the announcements which have been made
either of the Protestant or the Democratic creed. Protestantism promulgates the
one single, bald, unmodified proposition that in all matters of conscience the
Individual judgment is the sole tribunal, from there is no appeal. As against
this there is merely the implied right in others to resist when the conscience
of the Individual leads him to attack or encroach upon them. It is the same with
the Democratic prerogative of the “pursuit of happiness.” The limitation has
been felt rather than distinctly and scientifically propounded.
It results from this analysis that, wherever such circumstances exist that a
person cannot exercise his own Individuality and Sovereignty without throwing
the “cost”, or burden, of his actions upon others, the principle has so far to
be compromised. Such circumstances arise out of connected or amalgamated
interests, and the sole remedy is disconnection. The exercise of Sovereignty is
the exercise of the deciding power. Whoever has to bear the cost should have the
deciding power in every case. If one has to bear the cost of another’s conduct,
and just so far as he has to do so, he should have the deciding power over the
conduct of the other. Hence dependence and close connections of interest demand
continual concessions and compromises. Hence, too, close connection and mutual
dependence is the legitimate and scientific root of Despotism, as disconnection
or Individualization of interests is the root of freedom and emancipation.
If the close combination, which demands the surrender of our will to another,
is one instituted by nature, as in the case of the mother and the infant, then
the relation is a true one, notwithstanding. The surrender is based upon the
fact that the child is not yet strictly an Individual. The unfolding of its
Individuality is gradual, and its growing development is precisely marked, by
the increase of its ability to assume the consequences of its own acts. If the
close combination of interests is artificial or forced, then the parties exist
toward each other in false relations, and to false relations no true principle
can apply. Consequently, in such relations, the Sovereignty of the Individual
must be abandoned. The law of such relations is collision and conflict, to
escape which, while remaining in the relations there is no other means but
mutual concessions and surrenders of the selfhood. Hence, inasmuch as the
interests of mankind have never yet been scientifically individualized by the
operations of an equitable commerce, and the limits of encroachment never
scientifically defined, the axioms of morality, and even the provisions of
positive legislation, have been doubtless appropriate adaptations to the ages of
false social relations to which they have been applied, as the cataplasm or
sinapism may be for disordered conditions of the human system. We must not,
however, reason, in either case, from that temporary adaptation in a state of
disease to the healthy condition of society or the Individual. Much that is
relatively good is only good as a necessity growing out of evil. The greater
good is the removal of the evil altogether. The almshouse and the foundling
hospital may be necessary and laudable charities, but they can only be regarded
by the enlightened philanthropist as the stinking apothecary’s salve, or the
dead flies, applied to the bruises and sores of the body politic. Admitted
temporary necessities, they are offensive to the nostrils of good taste. The
same reflection is applicable to every species of charity. The oppressed classes
do not want charity, but justice, and with simple justice the necessity for
charity will disappear or be reduced to a minimum. So in the matter before us.
The disposition to forgo one’s own pleasures to secure the happiness of others
is a positive virtue in all those close connections of interest which render
such a sacrifice necessary, and inasmuch as such have hitherto always been the
circumstances of the Individual in society, this abnegation of selfhood is the
highest virtue which the world has hitherto conceived. But these close
connections of interest are themselves wrong, for the very reason that they
demand this sacrifice and surrender of what ought to be enjoyed and developed to
the highest extent. The truest and the highest virtue, in the true relations of
men, will be the fullest unfolding of all the Individualities of each, not only
without collision or injury to any, but with mutual advantage to all,--the
reconciliation of the Individual and the interests of the Individual with
society and the interests of society,--that composite harmony, or, if you will,
unity, of the whole, which results from the discrete unity and distinctive
Individuality of each particular monad in the complex natural organization of
society.
The doctrine of Individuality, and the Sovereignty of the Individual,
involves, then, at this point, two of the most important scientific
consequences, the one serving as a guiding principle to the true solution of
existing evils in society, and to the exodus out of the prevailing confusion,
and the other as a guiding principle of deportment in existing society, while
those evils remain. The first is that the Sovereignty of the Individual, or, in
other words, absolute personal liberty, can only be enjoyed along with the
entire disintegration of combined or amalgamated interests; and here the “cost
principle” comes in to point out how that disintegration can and must take
place, not as isolation, but along with, and absolutely productive of the utmost
conceivable harmony and cooperation. The second is that, while people are
forced, by the existing conditions of society, to remain in the close
connections resulting from amalgamated interests, there is no alternative but
compromise and mutual concession, or an absolute surrender upon one side or the
other. The innate Individualities of persons are such that every calculation
based upon the identity of tastes, or opinions, or beliefs, or judgments, of
even so many as two persons, is absolutely certain to be defeated, and as Nature
demands an Individuality of lead, one must necessarily surrender to the other
whenever the relation demands an identity of action. To quarrel with that
necessity is a folly. To deny its existence is a delusion. To enter such
combinations with the expectation that liberty and Individuality can be enjoyed
in them is a sore aggravation of the evil. Mutual recrimination is added to the
inevitable annoyance of mutual restriction. Hence a right understanding of the
scientific conditions under which alone Individuality can be indulged, a clear
and intelligent perception of the fact that the collisions and mutual
contraventions of the combined relation result from nothing wrong in the
associated Individuals, but from the wrong of the relation itself, goes far to
introduce the spirit of mutual forbearance and toleration, and thus to soften
the acrimony and alleviate the burden of the present imperfect and unscientific
institutions of society.
Hence, again, as self-sacrifice and denial to one’s self of one’s own
abstract rights is an absolute necessity of the existing order of things, there
is a mutual necessity that we claim that of each other, and, if need be, that we
enforce the claim. Herein lies the apology for our existing Governments, and for
force as a temporary necessity, and hence the doctrine of Individuality, and the
Sovereignty of the Individual, while the most ultra-radical doctrine in theory
and final purpose ever promulgated in the world, is at the same time eminently
conservative in immediate practice. While it teaches, in principle, the
prospective disruption of nearly every existing institution, it teaches
concurrently, as matter of expediency, a patient and philosophical endurance of
the evils around us, while we labor assiduously for their removal. So far from
quarreling with existing Government, when it is put upon the footing of
temporary expediency, as distinguished from the abstract principle and final
purpose, it sanctions and confirms it. It has no sympathies with aimless and
fruitless struggles, the recrimination of different classes in society, nor with
merely anarchical and destructive onslaughts upon existing institutions. It
proposes no chaotic, abrupt and sudden shock to existing society. It points to a
scientific, gradual, and perfectly peaceable substitution of new and harmonious
relations for those which are confessedly beset, to use the mildest expression,
by the most distressing embarrassments.
I will conclude by warning you against one other misconception, which is very
liable to be entertained by those to whom Individuality is for the first time
presented as the great remedy for the prevalent evils of the social state. I
mean the conception that Individuality has something in common with isolation,
or the severance of all personal relations with one’s fellow-men. Those who
entertain this idea will object to it, because they desire, as they will say,
cooperation and brotherhood. That objection is conclusive proof that they have
not rightly comprehended the nature of Individuality, or else they would have
seen that it is through the Individualization of interests alone that harmonic
cooperation and universal brotherhood can be attained. It is not the disruption
of relationships, but the creation of distinct and independent personalities
between whom relations can exist. The more distinct the personalities, and the
more cautiously they are guarded and preserved, the more intimate the relations
may be, without collision or disturbance. Persons may be completely
individualized in their interests who are in the most immediate personal
contact, as in the case of the lodgers at an hotel, or they may have combined or
amalgamated interests, and be remote from each other, as in the case of partners
residing in different countries. The players at shuttlecock cooperate in
friendly competition with each other, while facing and opposing each other, each
fully directing his own movements, which they could not do if their arms and
legs were tied together, nor even if they stood side by side. The game of life
is one which demands the same freedom of movement on the part of every player,
and every attempt to procure harmonious cooperation by fastening different
individuals in the same position will defeat its own object.
In opposing combinations or amalgamated interests, Individuality does not
oppose, but favors and conducts toward cooperation. But, on the other hand,
Individuality alone is not sufficient to insure cooperation. It is an essential
element of cooperative harmony, but not the only one. It is one principle in the
science of society, but it is not the whole of that science. Other elements are
indispensable to the right working of the system, one of which has been adverted
to. The error has been in suppressing that, because the Individuality which is
already realized in society has not ultimated in harmony, that Individuality
itself is in fault. Instead of destroying this one true element of order, and
returning to a worse condition from which we have emerged, the scientific method
is to investigate further, and find what other or complementary principles are
necessary to complete the well-working of the social machinery.
Regretting that the whole circle of the new principles of society, of which
the Sovereignty of the Individual is one, cannot be presented at once. I invite
you, Ladies and Gentlemen, as occasion may offer, to inform yourselves of what
they are, that you may see the subject in its entire connection of parts. In the
meantime I submit to your criticism, and the criticism of the world, what I have
now offered, with the undoubting conviction that it will endure the ordeal of
the most searching investigation, and with the hope that, however it may shock
the prejudices of earlier education, you will in the end sanction and approve
it, and aid, by your devoted exertions, the inauguration of the True
Constitution of Government, with its foundations laid in the Sovereignty of the
Individual.
No. 2: Cost the Limit of Price. A Scientific Measure of Honesty in Trade as one of the
Fundamental Principles in the Solution of the Social Problem
Preface
The preface of a book is always the last thing written, and generally the last thing read. The author is safe, therefore, in assuming that he is addressing, in what he says in this part of his work, hose who are already familiar with the book itself. Availing myself of this presumption, I have a few observations to make of a somewhat practical nature in relation to the effects upon the conduct of the Individual which the acceptance of the principle herein inculcated should appropriately have.
At the first blush, it seems as if the Cost Principle presented the most stringent and inexorable law, binding upon the conscience, which was ever announced,--as if no man desiring to be honest could continue for a day in the ordinary intercourse of trade and pursuit of profit. The degree to which this impression will remain with different persons, upon a thorough understanding of the whole subject, will be different according to their organizations. There are powerful considerations, however, to deter any one from making a martyr of himself in a fruitless effort to act upon the true principle wile living in the atmosphere, and surrounded by the conditions, of the old and false system.
In the first place, it is impossible, in the nature of things, to apply a principle, the essence of which is to regulate the terms of reciprocity, where no reciprocity exists. The Equitist who should attempt to act upon the Cost Principle in the midst of the prevailing system, and should sell his own products with scrupulous conscientiousness at cost, would be wholly unable to obtain the products of others at cost in return; and hence his conduct would not procure Equity. He would at most obtain the wretched gratification of cheating himself knowingly and continuously. There is not space in the few pages of a preface to enter into a fundamental statement of the ethical principles involved in the temporary continuance in relations of injustice forced upon us by those upon whom whatever of injustice we commit is inflicted. The question involved is the same as that of War and Peace. A nation desirous of being at peace with all mankind, and tendering such relations to the world, may, nevertheless, be forced into war by the wanton acts of unscrupulous neighbors. Notwithstanding the over-strained nicety of the sect called Friends, and of non-resistants in such behalf, the common sentiment of enlightened humanity is yet in favor of resistance against unprovoked aggression, while it is at the same time in favor of Universal Peace,--the entire cessation of all War. In like manner, the friends of Equity, the acceptors of the cost principle, do not in any case, so far as I am aware, propose beggaring themselves, or abandoning any positions which give them the pecuniary advantage in the existing disharmonic relations of society, from any silly or overweening deference even for their own principles.
They entertain rational and well-considered views in relation to the appropriate
means of inaugurating the reign of Equity. They propose the organization of
villages, or settlements of persons who understand the principle, and desire to
act upon it mutually. They will tender intercourse with “outsiders” upon the
same terms, but, if the tender is not accepted, they will then treat with them
upon their own terms, so far as it is necessary, or in their judgment best, to
treat with them at all. They will hold Equity in one hand and “fight” in the
other,--Equity for those who will accept Equity and reciprocate it, and the
conflict of wits for those who force that issue. It is not their design to
become either martyrs or dupes; martyrdom being, in their opinion, unnecessary,
and the other alternative adverse to their tastes.
Still any view of the practical methods of working out the principle which
may be here intimated is of course binding upon no one. I state the spirit in
which the principle is at present entertained, so far as I know, by those who
have accepted it. Every individual must be left free, whether as an inhabitant
of the world at large, or of an equitable village, to act under the dictates of
his own conscience, his own views of expediency, his own sense of what he can
afford to sacrifice in order to abide by the principle rather than sacrifice the
principle instead; or, in fine, of whatever other regulating influence he is in
the habit of submitting his conduct to. He must be left absolutely free, then,
to commit every conceivable breach of the principles of harmonic society. He who
is in no freedom to do wrong can never, by any possibility, demonstrate the
disposition to do right; besides, whether the absolute or theoretical right is
always the practical or relative right, is at least a doubtful question in
morals, which each individual must be allowed to judge of solely for
himself,--as of every other question of morals and personal conduct
whatsoever,--assuming the Cost. Hence, even in the act of infringing
one of our circle of principles, the individual is vindicating another,--THE
SOVEREIGNTY OF THE INDIVIDUAL,--and in the fact of his differing from another,
from the majority, or from all others, in the moral character of an act, he is
merely illustrating another of the same circle of principles,--namely,
INDIVIDUALITY.
It is found to be the most puzzling of all things to those who commence to
examine these principles, beset as they are by the fogs of old ideas, that a
social reorganization should be proposed without any social compact, the
necessity of which has been alike and universally conceded both by Conservatives
and Reformers. An illustration may render the matter clear. We do not bring
forward a System, a Plan, or a Constitution, to be voted on, adopted, or agreed
to, by mankind at large, or by any set of men whatsoever. Nothing of the sort!
We point out certain principles in the nature of things which relate to the
order of human society; in conforming to which mankind will find their affairs
harmonically adjusted, and in departing from which they will run into confusion.
The knowledge of these principles is science. It is the same with them as
with the principles of Physiology. We teach them as science. We do not ask
that they shall be voted upon or applied under pledges. Men cannot make or
unmake them. So far as he knows them, and cordially accepts them as truths, he
will be disposed to realize them in act. The human mind has a natural appetite
for truth. If there are obstacles in the way of their realization, those
obstacles will differ with the circumstances of each individual, and the
Individual can alone judge of them. Those circumstances may change tomorrow, and
then his capacity to act will change. His own appreciation of the subject may
change likewise. There is Individuality, therefore, in his own different states
at different periods. The man must be bound by no pledges which imply even so
much as that he will be himself the same, in any given respect, at any future
moment of time. It is the evil of compacts that the compact becomes sacred and
the individual profane,--that man is held to be made for the Sabbath and not the
Sabbath for man.
Hereupon there is based the claim that these principles constitute in the
appropriate and rigid sense THE SCIENCE OF SOCIETY. It is the property of
science that it does not say “By your leave.” It exists whether you will or no.
It requires neither compacts, constitutions, nor ballot-boxes. It is objectively
true. It exists in principles and truths. If you understand and conform, well;
if not, woe be unto you. The consequences will fall upon you and scourge you.
Hence the government of consequences is itself scientific, which no man-made
government is. Men have sought for ages to discover the science of government;
and lo! Here it is, that men cease totally to attempt to govern each other at
all! That they |
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