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PART I
THE INDIVIDUAL IN RELATION TO LAW AND INSTITUTIONS
BY
JAMES H. TUFTS
(Associate PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO)
AN ID
HELEN B. THOMPSON
(FELLow IN PHilosophy)
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CHICAGO
Cbe Ulniversity of Cbicago Oregg
:- 1898
3. *















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THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS RELATION
TO SOCIETY
AS REFLECTED IN BRITISH ETHICS
NO. V
PART I
THE INDIVIDUAL IN RELATION TO LAW AND INSTITUTIONS
by .)"Aº’
JAMES fºrurts
- *R-2'-
(Associate PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO)
AND
HELEN B. THOMPSON
(FELLow IN PHILosophy)
CHICAGO
Cbe Ulnívetøity of Cbicago Oregg
1898

CopyRIGHT 1898 by
JAMES H. TUFTS
BJT
| 52
Tº 2
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION, tº ſº se tº * sº sº * sº sº
PART I.
THE INDIVIDUAL IN RELATION TO LAWS AND INSTITUTIONS.
SECTION I.
THE LIFE AND ACTIVITIES OF THE PERIOD, - sº 3- sº sº
I. Economic conditions, - tº sº ſº ast & sº sº
2. Political conditions, - sº * tº gº gº mº sº sº
3. Religious conditions, - sº sº sº sº * , sº- se
4. Intellectual atmosphere, - sº gºe sº wº º tº tºº
5. The literary standpoint, * : gº sº sº wº s sº
SECTION II.
THE INDIVIDUAL IN THE REFLECTIVE THOUGHT OF THE PERIOD, -
I. Economics: individual and national prosperity, - sº &
2. Theology: divine sovereignty and human freedom, sº tº-
3. Politics, sº g * , --> sº sº $º sº *º º
Hooker and Milton, I 4 ; Hobbes: the individual made the source
of sovereignty, 16; physical concept of the individual, 18; jus
naturale transformed from a social to an individual category, 19;
the concept “right reason,” 20.
4. Ethics prior to Cumberland, - $º *º tºº sº º amº
Bacon, 22; Hobbes, 24; his conception of man, 24; his psychol-
ogy of desire, 26; conception of ethics and the ethical categories,
26; his conception of the individual allows only an external
universal, 27.
:
IO
IO
I I
I I
I 2
I 4
2 I
2 CONTENTS
5. Cumberland, * º - - tº & tº tº- * 27
(1) His problem to find a universal within the individual, 29; his
method, “right reason,” 30 ; (2) the solution of the problem:
(a) the individual broadened by the internalizing of the moral law,
31 ; relation of reason to will, 34; (b) universal benevolence as
criterion, 37; relation of the individual to the universal in this, 43.
6. Locke, * sº º ſº-> $º s gº gº gº sº - 45
(1) The individual's right to toleration, 46; (2) the individual as
sovereign, 47 ; (3) the individual's power recognized: (a) in the
discovery of the law, 49; (b) in its motivation, 5o; social ele-
ments in the criterion, 5 I.
CONCLUSION, * e- wº º * gº gº sº gº * - 53
NOTE
The treatment of the theme in Part I will be found to include
a wider range than is indicated by the title. But the emphasis is
intended to be upon the moral constitution and relations of the
individual, and other aspects of thought are treated only as throwing
light on these. As to the respective shares of the joint authors in the
work, while each has had the benefit of the suggestions of the other,
Miss THOMPson is directly responsible for the section on Cumberland,
and Mr. TUFTs for the remainder of the essay.
INTRODUCTION.
British ethical reflection may be conveniently considered under
three periods: the first antecedent to Shaftesbury; the second extend-
ing from Shaftesbury to the close of the eighteenth century; the third
embracing the present century. The present essay, which is designed
to form part of a study of the development of individuality and indi-
vidualism as reflected in modern thought, will confine itself to the
first two periods, and, without pretending to be exhaustive, will aim
to interpret the leading categories in terms of the actual life of the
writers.
As has often been noted, the two periods in question are character-
ized by different points of view in their treatment of ethical questions.
The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were preeminently interested
in religious and political themes. Commerce and industry had
entered on that course of expansion which was to break down national
barriers and reorganize the structure and interests of society; but
commerce and industry were as yet viewed rather as means to political
power than as ends in themselves. The attitude of England to the
Reformation was doubtless at the outset largely determined by policy,
but the new conception of individual rights and responsibilities soon
laid such hold on countrymen of Knox and Milton that, instead of
the cujus regio ejus religio of the continent, the religious convictions
of the subject could shape a commonwealth or change a dynasty. And
finally, the ecclesiastical and constitutional struggles forced the relation
of the individual to authority home upon the whole people, and called
out the most notable productions of the time. In the eighteenth cen-
tury, at least in the first half, neither religious nor political enthusiasm
lifted individuals above private interests into unity of faith and action;
but with the spread of commerce and intelligence, economic and social
conditions had brought their categories of interest and good-will into
the foreground, while the virtues were estimated, not in relation to law
of God or man, but in terms of the ordinary relations of the merchant
and neighbor. God, in the first period, is author of a law; in the second
he is the benevolent disposer of a universe in which private and public
happiness is most skillfully adjusted. Milton sings man's disobedi-
ence and redemption, or sounds the note of human freedom ; Swift
5
6 THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS RELATION TO SOCIETY
and Pope satirize man's cupidity or praise his natural goodness. The
century of Hobbes and Cumberland is the age of natural rights and
laws of nature; the century of Shaftesbury and Butler, of Hume and
Smith, is the period of self-love and sympathy; while Locke, with the
ethics of the one and the psychology of the other, stands as mediator
between the two.
THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS RELATION TO SOCIETY
AS REFLECTED IN BRITISH ETHICS.
PART I.
THE INDIVIDUAL IN RELATION TO LAWS AND INSTITUTIONS
SECTION I. THE LIFE AND ACTIVITIES OF THE PERIOD.
I. Although, as already stated, this was not a period in which eco-
nomic categories were dominant in thought, it is none the less true
that the actual economic conditions were intricately involved in the
religious and political conditions, and must, therefore, be briefly noted
in an attempt to get a conception of the individual of this period.
The fact of capital importance is that in this period England
ceased to be exclusively agricultural and became in a steadily rising
degree a commercial and manufacturing people. This meant that the
influences which had been so potent in Italy and the Low Countries for
the awakening and strengthening of individuality were now to be
transferred to British soil. The causes of this were no doubt in part
political. The deliberate aim to build up national power, clearly con-
ceived by the statesmen of Elizabeth's time, fostered all agencies which
it was believed would conduce to this end. Refugees from the cruelties
of Alva, Huguenots from France, bringing the trades of wool and
linen and silk manufacture, found ready welcome. Shipping, as pecu-
liarly valuable for an island kingdom, was given especial encourage-
ment. Colonies, whatever the motives of the emigrants themselves,
were favored by the government as supplying raw material and requir-
ing manufactures from the home country, exchanged in English ships.”
It was an age of commerce and industry controlled in the interests of
national power.
Looking now at the significance for individuality of the new lines
of activity thus opened to the British people, we note in the first place
that it means the growing power of movable property, born of labor,
* For the economic conditions and theories of this time I am chiefly indebted to
Cunningham's English Commerce and Industry.
7
8 THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS RELATION TO SOCIETY
in its struggle with landed property, born of conquest.” Individual
skill and boldness of initiative found new fields for development. The
expansion of England involved the widening of individual as well as of
national horizons. Although as yet submitting to be governed in his
private business by regulations made in the supposed interest of the
nation, the individual was started on the road on which he would
ultimately refuse to consider public policy as a thing apart from the
sum of the goods of the individuals composing the public. This
becomes more apparent when we consider the changes in the character
of commerce itself which mark the modern as compared with the
mediaeval system. These changes, as pointed out by Cunningham,”
accompany the breaking down of the corporate conduct of industry and
commerce by the guild, and the substitution of individual self-interest
as the leading factor. The recognition of the fact that the state might
be economically justified in allowing free play to individual self-inter-
est marks a distinct departure. The revolution in public opinion
about money transactions marks even more completely the change.
In the Middle Ages, to take any interest for the use of money was
usury. It was taking advantage of the needs of the borrower. But
with the increase of bullion, the opportunities for investment, and the
new situation of the borrower, who was now not the unfortunate victim
of circumstances but the prosperous banker or trader seeking to extend
his business, money transactions were regarded like other exchanges. It
became possible, through the formation of capital, to handle the prop-
erty resulting from the labor of many just as the feudal lord had con-
trolled the persons. But inasmuch as capital stands for the accumulated
labor and skill of men in a form set free from the persons of the laborers,
it now becomes possible to control the one and leave the other a
measure of freedom. The old feudal conditions had always been
favorable enough for the development of courage and power in the
lord; the new commercial conditions afforded the opportunity for
the same development on the part of the merchant. Ambition had
now a larger scope for exercise and a richer prize to reward success,
when dress and style of life were regulated, not by station, but by
ability. Competition began its work of stimulation, and “an active
middle class was coming to the front, well able to insist on having a
say in the direction of affairs.”3
* Baudrillart, Jean Bodin et son temps, pp. 7 f.
* Op. cit., I, 404 ff.; II, 67–97. 3 Cunningham, II, Io.
THE INDIVIDUAL IN RELATION TO LAws AND INSTITUTIONS 9
2. Politically the English people was feeling its way toward that
democracy which the radical William of Occam had already proclaimed
as the source of all sovereignty, and to which Wiclif had already made
appeal in things religious. While on the surface the Tudor monarchs.
exercised almost arbitrary royal power, they held it “only because they
were ever regardful of popular opinion.” “A new age of political
liberty was felt to be at hand when Martin Marprelate forced the politi-
cal and ecclesiastical measures of the government into the arena of
public discussion;” and though the Stuarts proclaimed the doctrines
of divine right and absolute monarchy, and thus began at once that
struggle against the tide which was to cost one his life and another his
throne, the tide was but checked in this course or that to gather strength
for a more resistless sweep. The popular will, at first seeking for
expression through the crown, was to find in Parliament a fitter organ.”
It was but anticipating the actual advance of history when the Com-
mons declared, in their struggle with the King and Lords, “that the
people under God are the original of all just power, and that the
House of Commons have the supreme power of the nation.” Com-
mercial England would have naught of an absolute sovereignty over
taxation. Puritan England was in no temper to hear of any right
divine to compel the individual's conscience.
3. For the great significance of the religious consciousness of this
age was its sense of individual responsibility to God, and to God alone,
of the divine will manifesting itself in the individual and so exalting
him to dignity and power. The individual of the Renaissance had
grown into consciousness of himself and his powers through the
activities of commercial and industrial life, and had found expression
in literature and art. Over against the old constraints of the mediaeval
he had set the new forces of the rediscovered secular life with its joys
and its free play of aesthetic interests. The individual of the Refor-
mation found himself in a sterner crisis, and over against the older
powers of dogma and tradition he set the mighty universal of God
himself, to whom he could appeal, and reinforced by whose strength
he could defy all human sovereignty. “The Christian is through his
God an independent being, who needs nothing, and stands neither
* Medley, Manual of English Constitutional History, chap. vi, Sec. 43.
* Green, Short History of the English People, chap. viii.
3 Burgess, Political Science and Comparative Constitutional Law, Vol. I, Bk. III,
chap. i.
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IO THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS RELATION TO SOCIETY
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under the bondage of commands of law nor in dependence on men.
He is priest before God, and a king over the world.” “ The professed
seat of authority in the Middle Ages was, to be sure, the divine law;
but it was a law mediated through a church, interpreted by the clergy,
embodied in writings which only the doctor could read. The author-
ity of the Reformation was to be experienced directly and immedi-
ately by the individual; at most it was recorded in writings which any
believer could interpret ; and for those who pushed the principle
farthest there was an inner illumination of the spirit supreme over any
dogma of the letter. A desire to be one's self went hand in hand
with a humble trust in the Almighty—a union which may sometimes
degenerate into cant and hypocrisy, but is none the less a vital charac-
teristic of the time, and speaks in Spinoza, no less than in Calvin or
Cromwell, in the demand for freedom of prophesying as well as in
the creeds of the new faith.” It was a true instinct which led Hobbes
in his defense of political absolutism to attack the Puritan view of
religion, for this had been the most powerful factor in the Puritan
spirit of independence.
4. The intellectual atmosphere of the time, no less than the indus-
trial, political, and religious, was that of an awakening liberty of
thought, accompanied by a new recognition of the scope and signifi-
cance of natural law. A Bacon was followed by a Boyle and a Newton.
Galileo and Descartes stand at once the assertors of a new method
and the discoverers of the laws of a nature which, to a degree impos-
sible before, stands now revealed to man as orderly and harmonious.
It seems to his naive theory of knowledge, not the embodiment of his
own categories, but the source from which all experience flows, and
whose laws are there, majestic, eternal, and supreme, to be recognized
and obeyed if the individual would rise to mastery of his situation
and bend nature's forces to his ends. This conception of natural law
we shall see to be of determining influence for a whole line of Eng-
lish ethics, but the end to be attained by discovery and invention was
consciously in mind in a Bacon’s “New Atlantis,” and finds recognition
in a Hobbes and Spinoza. In principle, at least, the individual was
beginning to feel dimly, yet surely, that knowledge is power.”
5. In literature, after that splendor of dramatic spontaneity which
* Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, III, 719.
* Cf. further Harnack, III, 577 f.
3 Windelband, History of Philosophy, p. 386.
THE INDIVIDUAL IN RELATION TO LAWS AND INSTITUTIONS II
could find itself at home in every sphere of life had passed away, but
two names stand forth as conspicuous. Bacon, like his contemporary,
Montaigne, gives the reflections of the man who is finding himself at
home in his world. Milton, who is in prose the impassioned pleader
for larger liberty in speech, in the realization of the ends of marriage,
and in the conduct of the state, embodies in his epic of the race the
twofold aspect of Puritan consciousness, the story of divine law and
of human guilt and emancipation. But if we are to judge the literary
spirit of a time not merely by its productions, but by its appreciations,
then we have to remember that the book which was read until it
formed the warp into which all the new contents of life were woven
was the new English Bible, and especially the Old Testament. The
blending of theocracy with recognition of individual choice of rulers,
the ascriptions to divine majesty, the emotional outpouring of the
individual soul and its reliance on God which find triumphant
expression in the Psalms, all these voiced the Puritan consciousness;
and the New Englander, in his bleak and lonely land, left out no part
of the parallel, but saw in the Indians the heathen who, like the
Canaanites, were hostile to the people of God.
SECTION II. THE INDIVIDUAL IN THE REFLECTIVE THOUGHT OF THE
PERIOD.
The reflective thought of the period was naturally centered about
the two categories which we have found coming to consciousness in
the various activities of life, viz.: that of the individual on the one
hand, and that of some controlling law or universal on the other.
The category through which it was sought to reconcile these was
usually that of compact. We shall point this out briefly for economics
and theology, and more in detail in the case of politics and ethics.
1. Economics.
Although there is little distinctively economic theory in this period,
the general point of view is that of an increasing recognition of private
interest as a motive force, while the conception of trade and national
power involved in the mercantile theory is kept steadily in view.
“In mediaeval times it [the individual desire of wealth] was recognized
only to be condemned as immoral; in our own day it is sometimes
spoken of as though there were a prearranged harmony which made
private self-seeking tend unconsciously to public good; in Elizabeth's
I 2 THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS RELATION TO SOCIETY
time Hales considers it is possible for the government so to modify
circumstances that it shall lead to the public good.” Hobbes, while
conceiving private interest as the motive force, and defending the
good as the satisfaction of desires, puts his economic theories under the
head of the “Nutrition and Procreation of a Commonwealth,” and would
have not merely foreign trade but domestic industry controlled for
public advantage. Harrington, who stands to Hobbes in economics
as Cumberland stands in ethics, affords an interesting illustration of
the employment of the two categories. The conception of natural law
is taken for the basis of his political and economic organization, and
this law of nature is identical, not with the individual’s interest, but
with the “interest of mankind.” But the individual is recognized in
that the authority of the government as contrasted with its force
depends on the “goods of the mind” and the choice of those who
obey it. And the power of wealth, now just emerging to distinct con-
sciousness, finds recognition in the new and important doctrine that
the nature of a government is determined by the distribution of its
landed property,’ which must, accordingly, be so regulated by the
government as to secure a proper balance of interest. The end, viz., the
common interest, is prescribed by the law of nature, but the efficient
forces of individual wealth are seen in new significance when it is
declared that they may make or unmake the universal, which is still in
older fashion regarded as something other than the sum of its par-
ticulars.
2. Theology.
The great theological controversies of the day showed in more
explicit form the struggle between individual and universal. It
was by no means a revolt against all authority—that was reserved for
a later generation—but a recourse in the first instance to divine
authority, immediately manifest or directly accessible in the Scriptures,
as contrasted with church and dogma; and, in the second instance,
when the “formal rule” of Protestantism had become as external an
authority as the dogmas of the church, an appeal to the laws of reason,
or the inner light. In the great theological controversy of the time,
Calvinism stood for the absolute sovereignty of God. His eternal
decrees are unsearchable, his grace is irresistible, his elect are secure
* Cunningham, II, 70 fſ.
* Bonar, Philosophy and Political Economy, 87 f.
THE INDIVIDUAL IN RELATION TO LAWS AND INSTITUTIONS I.3
against outward assault and inward lapse. The Arminian, on the other
hand, sought the “maintenance of human responsibility, and the moral
conditions of praise and blame, reward and penalty, while still uphold- .
ing salvation by grace.” It was an “attempt to formulate a protest
from an ethical point of view.” But it is characteristic of the time
that in Arminianism as well as in Calvinism the central category is
that of sovereignty. For the celebrated “governmental theory of the
atonement,” which was defended by Grotius the Arminian, conceives
the relation of God to man as that of ruler to subject. Moreover, the
modification of the Calvinistic system which obtained greatest accept-
ance in England was in close analogy to the political theories of the
day. For while the “covenants” of works and grace which were taught
by the “Federal Theology” and set forth in the Westminster Confession
were not contracts in exactly the sense of the social contract, they yet
set up “jural relations in the room of bare sovereignty,” and attempted
to give some answer to the difficulty beginning to be felt in making
men accept the guilt of Adam as their own. The realistic conceptions
of the Middle Ages still lived on in some forms of the theory in the
connection of men with Adam, but the growing individualism showed
itself in the general acceptance of creationism, and in the conception
that the relation of the individual to Christ was personal and not
generic. The famous Barebones bore in his long name the symbol
at once of racial guilt and of personal salvation.
As already stated, the second advance in this field during this
period lay in the movement called Rational Theology.” Reformed
theology had become scholasticism. The shelter of the advancing line
of progress became all too soon the bulwark of authority, and the
individual sought a new support in the “laws of right reason,” a
universal to which Descartes had already made triumphant appeal,
and to which the methods and successes of the dawning science of
nature seemed to lend additional surety. What is antiquity but “man’s
authority born some ages before us”?”
In its attempts to magnify the divine greatness, Calvinism had
reduced the individual’s “natural” condition to the state of sin and
misery. From this the elect was rescued and made triumphant by
* Fisher, History of Christian Doctrine, 1896, pp. 339 f.
*Tulloch, Rational Theology and Christian Theology in England in the Seven-
teenth Century.
3 John Hales, cited in Tulloch, I, p. 249.
I 4 THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS RELATION TO SOCIETY
grace. But for man in this “state of nature” little divine illumination
was admitted. The “rational” theologians, on the other hand, in
their attempt to reinstate man into some measure of individual dignity,
emphasized rather man's rational ability and considered “religion as
a seed of a deiform nature.” Some of the school, in their emphasis
upon the rational nature of man, resorted to the Neo-Platonist con-
ception of innate ideas against which Locke was to direct his polemic.
This found favor especially with the “Cambridge School,” which
remained in sympathy with the church. Another party, of which Lord
Herbert of Cherbury was the leader, found a more congenial formula-
tion in the Stoic and Ciceronian conception of “common notions” and
a religion of nature.” The individual was not driven to external author-
ity, nor deprived of all “natural light.” He had within himself the
sources of truth, and their validity was guaranteed, it was maintained,
by their universal presence in the minds of men.” Every man was
thus not merely, as with Luther, the interpreter of a Scripture; he was
himself a deposit, a document of revelation.
The doctrine of innate ideas which, to Locke's view, was an
obstacle to progress, a hindrance to a completely rational theory of
human experience, and a reliance of conservatism, was thus in its
origin an assertion of the worth of the individual, and of the immediate
access of the individual to the sources of truth and reason.
3. Political Theory.
1. The political theories of the time vary from the defenses of divine
right to the doctrines of popular sovereignty, but the instructive
aspect of the period is that the ablest thinkers, whether the “judicious.”
Churchman, the impassioned advocate of freedom, or the timid and
conservative absolutist, all agree in recognizing the original sovereignty
of the people, and in assuming that in them must be found the sanc-
tion for the power of monarch or commonwealth.
*Bishop Burnett, cited in Fisher's History of Christian Doctrine, p. 366.
*Dilthey has pointed out with great detail the dependence of Herbert upon
Cicero and Stoic writings, and in general the utilization of the Stoic concept of
“nature” as an auxiliary, in the attempt to reach autonomy of thought in this period.
(Archiv für Gesch. d. Philos., Bde. VI and VII, especially VII, p. 41.)
3 Cf. Hooker: “The general and perpetual voice of men is as the sentence of
God himself. For that which all men have at all times learned, nature herself must
needs have taught; and God being the author of nature her voice is but his instru-
ment.” (Ecclesiastical Polity, I, viii, 3.)
THE INDIVIDUAL IN RELATION TO LAWS AND INSTITUTIONS I 5
In the case of the Churchman or the Puritan this is carried back
still farther to the divine authority itself as ultimate. For, as we have
seen, this was really the essence of the religious consciousness of the
Reformers. The classic statement from Hooker is as follows:
Two foundations there are which bear up public societies: the one a
natural inclination, whereby all men desire sociable life and fellowship ; the
other an order expressly or secretly agreed upon touching the manner of their
union in living together. . . . . The lawful power of making laws to command
whole political societies of men belongeth so properly unto the same entire
societies, that for any prince or potentate of what kind soever on earth to
exercise the same of himself, and not either by express commission immedi-
ately, personally received from God, or else by authority derived at first from
their consent upon whose persons they impose laws, is no better than mere
tyranny. Laws they are not therefore, which public approbation hath not
made so.”
Clearer still is the statement of the New England document
entitled “The Model of the Church in Civil Power,” written probably
by Richard Mather:
In the free state no magistrate hath power over the bodies, goods, lands,
liberties, of a free people, but by their own consent; and as all free men are
only stewards of God, they may not give the magistrate power over these
things as they please, but as God pleases.
But the plea for the rights of the individual which takes the highest
ground is found in Milton's political writings:
No man who knows aught can be so stupid as to deny that all men nat-
urally were born free, being the image and resemblance of God Himself, and
we are by privilege above all the creatures born to command and not to
obey; and that they lived so till from the root of Adam's transgression, fall-
ing among themselves to do wrong and violence, and foreseeing that such
courses must needs turn to the destruction of them all, they agreed by com-
mon league to bind each other from mutual injury and jointly to defend
themselves against any that gave disturbance to such agreement. Hence
came cities, towns, and Commonwealths ; and because no faith in all was
found sufficiently binding, they saw it needful to ordain some authority that
might restrain by force and punishment what was violated against peace and
common right.”
* Ecclesiastical Polity, I, x, I, 8.
*The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates.
I6 THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS RELATION TO SOCIETY
He argues that this has been the theory of government actually
observed in Scotland and Holland, and in Britain from the earliest
times, and cites with approval the bold utterance of Zwingli: “But
when by sufferance and consent of the whole people, or the better part
of them, a tyrant is deposed or put to death, God is the chief leader
in that action.”
It will scarcely escape notice how similar the view of Milton as to
the reasons for establishing government is to the view of Hobbes, but
this whole view of the state of nature, which is found not merely in the
Epicurean Hobbes, but in the churchman Hooker, is really a part of
the Reformation view of the natural man. To the theologian the
natural man is “desperately wicked,” and to the advocate of monarchical
government anarchy involves the war of every man with his fellow.
Hooker's view is, indeed, strikingly like that of Hobbes in its concep-
tion, not merely of the condition of man without civil society and law,
but also in the reason assigned for that condition.
Laws politic [says Hooker] ordained for external order and regiment
amongst men, are never framed as they should be, unless presuming the will
of man to be inwardly obstinate, rebellious, and averse from all obedience
unto the sacred laws of his nature ; in a word, unless presuming man to be
in regard of his depraved mind little better than a wild beast. . . . . If
therefore when there was but as yet one only family in the world, no means
of instruction human or divine could prevent effusion of blood, how could
it be chosen but that when families were multiplied and increased upon
earth, after separation each providing for itself, envy, strife, contention, and
violence must grow amongst them 2 For hath not nature furnished man
with wit and valour, as it were with armour, which may be used as well unto
extreme evil as good f *
2. The great significance of Hobbes lies not in his maintenance of
absolutism; it had been strange, indeed, if conservatism had not produced
one distinguished exponent in this as in other times of clashing interests.
Nor does it lie in his most frequently cited doctrine of the state of
nature as that of universal war, of the homo homini lupus; this, as we
have seen, can be paralleled from Hooker, and is a point on which
orthodox authority in abundance could be cited, as Hobbes is fully
aware when he replies to the charge that he has made men wicked.
A man writing after a quarter-century of that devastation and massacre
called the Thirty-Years' War might well be pessimistic in his view of
* Ecclesiastical Polity, I, x, 1, 3.
THE INDIVIDUAL IN RELATION TO LAWS AND INSTITUTIONS I 7
human nature, and portray the horrors of that “hateful condition ” of
anarchy in such a light as to warn his countrymen, if possible, from such
a fate. The significance lies rather in the facts that the upholder of
absolutism founds all authority on the free consent of individuals, that
the friend of monarchy asserts the prior existence and indispensable
agency of democracy. That this is not ordinarily recognized in
expositions of Hobbes is due to the fact that the “Leviathan " is usually
made the basis of treatment, whereas the doctrines cited are stated
much more emphatically in other works:
The first in order of time of these three sorts is democracy; and it must
be so of necessity, because an aristocracy and a monarchy require nomination
of persons agreed upon, which agreement in a great mulitude of men must
consist in the consent of the major part; and where the votes of the major
part involve the votes of the rest, there is actually a democracy.”
Nor was this merely an earlier view abandoned with maturer
thought, for in the “Behemoth,” after the citation of the vote of the
Commons already quoted (p. 9), the comments of the persons B
and A of the dialogue are as follows:
B: “But yet, I believe, under God the original of all laws was in the
people.” A : “But the people, for them and their heirs, by consent and
oaths, have long ago put the supreme power of the nation into the hands of
their kings, for them and for their heirs; and consequently into the hands of
this king, their known and lawful heir.” (English Works VI, 353).
The case for the monarchy is placed entirely upon historical
grounds. And this is, indeed, just where Hobbes was at fault. Like the
House of Stuart itself, Hobbes had failed to read history aright and to
see that the sovereignty, once located preeminently in the kings, was
there no more. It is not that Hobbes makes sovereignty too absolute.
The doctrine of absolute sovereignty is maintained by democratic
writers of today” as vigorously as by Hobbes. Indeed, it is one of
the interesting phenomena of progress that, as Ritchie points out,” the
theory of natural rights, once the watchword of advance, is now more
often the maxim of conservatism and “vested interests ; ” and the count-
erpart is equally true, that the possibility of an advancing democracy
* “De Corpore Politico,” English Works, IV, 138 f.
* E. g., Burgess, Political Science and Comparative Constitutional Law, Bk. II,
chap. i ; Willoughby, The Nature of the State, chap. ix.
3 Natural Rights, pp. 13 ff.
I 8 THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS RELATION TO SOCIETY
demands an absolute sovereignty. It is because Hobbes' conception
is thus capable of uses quite other than the defense of the existing
order, as well as because of the basis of individual consent on which
it rests, that Hobbes has always been felt to be in the intellectual
kinship of the radical rather than the conservative. It was urged
against him in his own lifetime that his theory could be made to
justify the authority of Cromwell. It needed but to deny the
legitimacy of the specific application made by him of his theory to fit
one part of it for valiant service in the cause of progressive individu-
alism and another part for service in the advance of organized society,
when the social nature of the individual should come to fuller recogni-
tion. -
Apart from the historical error, the logical error in Hobbes' theory
was twofold: first, that he identified the sovereign with the govern-
ment, and, secondly, that he regarded the sovereignty, once resident in
the people, as alienable. Not to repeat the criticisms of Shaftesbury
and Hume as to the possibility of getting civil society from such units
as Hobbes postulates, the contradiction may be stated in a form more
fruitful for our purpose of tracing the growing recognition of individu-
ality as follows: Hobbes stands on the platform of his time in placing
original sovereignty in the individual. But his conception of the
individual is yet so purely that of an abstract unit of force that he
imagines the individual to be capable of alienating his sovereignty and
still remaining a moral agent. He conceives the will, in which the
individual consists, and which performs the fundamental act of con-
sent, as yet being so mechanical a thing that it can will to transfer its
own prerogative to another and cease to be. It wills to annihilate
itself. The individual submits to authority to secure self-preservation;
but the “self” that is preserved by a denial of the essence of self is not
a free or moral self. The subject of such a state would be morally in
the same condition that he would be religiously in a church in which
implicit faith in the doctrine, because taught by an authority, takes the
place of any personal or intelligent acceptance. It was for Locke and
Rousseau to declare for a larger conception of the individual in which
sovereignty should be inalienable," though they themselves rather
voiced the progress of their age than saw its philosophic significance.
* Althus, however, had already (1610) maintained that the people cannot transfer
the sovereignty (Janet, Histoire de la science politique, II, p. 49), and Milton
regarded government as a trust. “To invest any mortal creatures with a power over
THE INDIVIDUAL IN RELATION TO LAWS AND INSTITUTIONS I9
Another illustration of Hobbes' conception of the individual is his
transformation of the term “jus naturale” from a social to an individual
category, a transformation which requires a change in the category itself
from a moral to a physical concept. The term jus had always been a
term signifying primarily social control, corresponding to the English
“law,” and only secondarily a term denoting the individual’s legal
power. In particular, the term jus naturale" had borne in Roman and
mediaeval law the conception of a control founded in the constitution
of the universe itself, the Stoic pious. But as the Stoic conception of
nature signified preeminently a rational order, the law of nature was
also defined as the law of right reason. This is embodied in the defi-
nition of Grotius : “Jus naturale is the dictate of right reason, showing
that any act from its agreement or disagreement with rational nature
itself [cum ipsa matura rationali (ac sociali)] is morally disgraceful or
morally necessary, and consequently is forbidden or commanded by
God, the author of nature.”* Hobbes, in his English works, trans-
lates jus by “right,” and thereby gives an entirely different meaning
to the concept. For the English speech had always kept the term
“right” (as substantive) for the designation of the individual's posi-
tive claim upon society, while the French and German terms have fol-
lowed the twofold usage of the Latin ſus.” The jus primarily signifies
the control of society over the individual. A “right” expresses the
control of the individual over society, in so far, that is, as it means
that he can justly call on society, through the law, to support his
claim, to reinforce his power. Interpreted in the later conceptions of
Rousseau, in his attitude to law the individual is the citizen as subject,
in his assertion of rights he is the citizen as sovereign. When Hobbes,
themselves on any other terms than a trust were extreme madness.” (A Defence of the
People of England, chap. vi.)
* Ritchie, Natural Rights, chap. ii.
*Sidgwick, History of Ethics, p. 161, translates “from its agreement or disa-
greement with man's rational and social nature.” But, from the authorities whom
Grotius cites, I think this conveys to the modern ear too individualistic a conception.
It was doubtless by man only that the ipsa natura rationalis could be apprehended
(nam juris proprie capax mon est misi natura praeceptis utens generalibus, $ 11)
in such a way as to make him a subject of law, but from the way in which Grotius
goes on to speak of the esse rerum, it seems probable that the ipsa natura rational;
was something conceived in quite realistic fashion. It might be manifested in man,
but it was by no means merely the sum total of individual tendencies or processes of
thought.
3 Cf. Holland, Jurisprudence, chap. vii.
2O THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS RELATION TO SOCIETY
therefore, translates jus naturale by “right of nature,” he gives it a
decidedly individualistic turn, which immediately gives rise to a con-
tradiction that must be met by a second transformation. For if we are to
consider the state of man antecedent to society, or if we consider the
present relations of armed states in war, where all laws are set aside
and anarchy prevails, it is impossible to think longer of the individual
as asserting rights in either moral or legal sense. He has no claim on
society which society can recognize, for there is no society. Hence
the logical outcome is that, if we still speak of natural rights, we must
divest the term of all social implications, and leave the individual a
purely physical concept. “The Right of Nature . . . . is the liberty
each man hath to use his own power, as he will himself, for the pres-
ervation of his own nature . . . . By liberty is understood . . . . the
absence of external impediments” — a conception which is further
exhibited in his definition of the equality of men as their ability to do
equal things.
Hobbes' own psychological justification of the turn given to the
term “right of nature” is found in his individualistic definition of the
term “right reason.” Right reason in the older writers had meant
the divine order of the universe and the capacity on man's part of
entering into it. And as the universe was always regarded as social in
its organization, right reason meant not primarily “self-consistent,” but
“consistent with the divine order.” Hobbes' individual, however, is
his own universe. He can recognize no order or control outside him-
self. Hence, right reason must mean self-consistency, or, what is but
a change in point of view, self-preservation. “Forasmuch as neces-
sity of nature maketh men to will and desire bonum sibi, that which is
good for themselves, and to avoid that which is hurtful, . . . . it is not
against reason that a man doeth all he can to preserve his own body
and limbs both from death and pain. And that which is not against
reason, men call right or jus.” “ Moreover, Hobbes himself explicitly
recognizes the twofold meaning of reason in a passage which may be
freely translated as follows: “Although in an organized political
society the corporate reason of the society—that is, the civil law—
must be regarded by individual citizens as ‘right’ reason, yet where
there is no organized society, where, consequently, no one can distin-
* Leviathan, chap. xiv. English Works, III, II6. Grotius also gives libertas as one
meaning of jus, but it is a potentia in se regarded as a qualitas moralis. (I, i, secs. 4, 5.)
* “De Corpore Politico,” English Works, IV, 83. -
THE INDIVIDUAL IN RELATION TO LAWS AND INSTITUTIONS 21
guish right reason from false reason except by comparing it with his
own,” etc.” We shall have to recur to this concept of reason again in
examining Hobbes' ethics, but it may be characterized in its relation
to the general movement of thought as follows: The Englishman,
especially since the days of Elizabeth, is eminently a patriot. His
hopes and personality are in the commonwealth. In this—under God
alone, if religious enthusiast, or apart from any other authority what-
ever, if religiously indifferent—the controlling, normative law of life is
to be placed. But his patriotism is not like that of the French, pre-
eminently one of sentiment. The commonwealth is rather the object
of his rational free-will than of his blindly passionate adoration.
Hobbes was true to the prevailing genius of his countrymen when
he magnified the state; when he urged peace; when he insisted that it
is only in a state of civil society that the saying, homo homini Deus,
applies. He was true to the other aspect of that genius when he tried
to base the state on the individual’s own inner motivation, his free
act, determined by no reason outside himself. It was left for others to
widen the self, to change the conception of freedom; but, to return to
the assertion made at the outset, it is the merit of Hobbes to have set
the individual in the forefront of discussion, and to have used him as
the indispensable agency for the authorization of power.
4. Early Ethical Theory, especially Hobbes.
Ethical and psychological thought in this period is so intimately
dependent on political and juristic conceptions that it is a more or
less arbitrary procedure to attempt to consider it by itself; but there
are certain psychological implications as to human nature that may be
arranged under this head with reference to the development of the
succeeding period. In view, however, of the peculiar significance
of Cumberland's thought, it seems better to consider his system by
itself and as a whole.
The ethical consciousness of the Reformation involved in general
a more inward conception of the moral life, and a greater emphasis
* “Quamguam in civitate, ipsius civitatis ratio, hoc est lex civilis,” etc. (Latin
Works, II, 170, note). The force is lost in the English version in English Works, II, 16.
It may be thought that “corporate reason of the society” is too social a conception for
Hobbes' phrase, but he so repeatedly distinguishes between the wills of the multitude
as individuals and the will of the sovereign as person (and we must remember that
sovereign means this same multitude organized) that the above translation seems
quite in line with his general thought.
22 THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS RELATION TO SOCIETY
upon its voluntary aspect. “An act is good, not because it harmonizes
with the law, but because the good is freely chosen. Thus, in opposi-
tion to the scholastic intellectualism which had subordinated will to
knowledge and described conscience as a faculty of judgment and
inference, the Reformation regards the moral will as that power of the
human soul which ranks above all the powers of thought and knowl-
edge.” But save for the fact that the early English writers on casuistry
tended to reflect this higher authority of the individual conscience,”
nothing of special significance for our purpose derives from this
source. The main task of inwardizing the moral life, of finding its
intrinsic value and its internal sanctions, was to proceed rather by
a progressive analysis of the individual and society, emphasizing now
one, now the other side of human nature, until both the ends and the
sanctions of the moral life should be recognized as individual, and
the individual should be recognized as social.
The opening theme for nearly all the variations that were to follow
was announced by Bacon. For although admitting that the question as
to the “supreme good” may belong to theology, and that the “light of
nature,” “which is imprinted upon the spirit of man by an inward
instinct, according to the law of conscience, which is a sparkle of the
purity of his first estate,” may be only “sufficient to check the vice, but
not to inform the duty,” and hence that moral philosophy may be
regarded as “a wise servant and humble handmaid " to “sacred
divinity,” he is evidently much more hopeful of the fertility of the
handmaid than of that of the mistress, and believes that a little observa-
tion of nature in general on the part of moral philosophers would
have given the clue to a psychological analysis that would have
“saved and abridged much of their long and wandering discourses.”
Every part of nature, namely, shows four tendencies—to receive,
to give, to 'assume harmonious relations to the whole, and to approach
or seek what is higher of its own kind; and here we have the sug-
gestion for a “quaternion of good.” Later he returns again to the
necessity of consulting “with the nature of things as well as moral
axioms,” opposes the third kind of good in his earlier list to the
other three taken together, and thus in both method and result
suggests the work of Cumberland. “There is formed and imprinted
*Wundt, Ethical Systems, p. 51.
*See Whewell's Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy, pp. 29 f.
3 Works, edition Spedding, III, 229 f.
THE INDIVIDUAL IN RELATION TO LAWS AND INSTITUTIONS 23
in everything an appetite toward two natures of good; the one as
everything is a total or substantive in itself, the other as it is a
part or member of a greater body; whereof the latter is in degree the
greater and the worthier, because it tends to the conservation of a
more general form. The former of these may be termed ‘Individual
or Self-good,’ the latter, the ‘Good of Communion.’” It is a striking
illustration of the hold which the Christian principle of unity and
self-sacrifice still retained that so shrewd an observer as Bacon should
have thought it quite unnecessary to dwell on the second sort of good,
“for never in any age has there been any philosophy, sect, religion,
law, or other discipline which did so highly exalt the good which is
communicative, and depress the good which is private and particular
as the Holy Christian Faith.” This twofold nature of good enables us
to see the inadequacy of any theory that places good in contemplation
—“in this theatre of man's life it is reserved only for God and Angels
to be lookers on ”—or in private pleasure or tranquility—“as if it were
not a thing much more happy to fail in good and virtuous ends for
the public than to obtain all that we can wish to ourselves in our
private fortune.” Nor is individual good to be conceived too nar-
rowly. “For there is impressed on all things a triple desire or appetite
in respect of self or individual good; one of preserving, another of
perfecting, and a third of multiplying and spreading themselves,” of
which the last is “Active good,” and though this has no necessary iden-
tity with the good of society, it is yet the stronger and more worthy of
the individual goods, the perfective good coming second. Bacon's con-
ception of the individual and his relation to society is thus that of the
man of affairs who felt the thrill of ambition for himself, and came in
touch with the men of large powers and achievements; that of the
scholar who looks forth upon unknown possibilities of development;
that of the shrewd observer who recognizes the play of selfish forces;
but above all that of the statesman who finds the scope and opportunity
for satisfaction only in the service of the state.” He suggests the
cause of the narrowness of former philosophers, in terms which might
apply also to some who followed. “So have philosophers sought in
all things to make men's minds too uniform and harmonical, not
breaking them to contrary motions and extremes; the reason whereof
*
*Works, edition Spedding, V, 7.
*Professor Fowler has shown that Bacon's Essays reflect the same standpoint.
(Bacon, p. 41.)
24 THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS RELATION TO SOCIETY
I suppose to be because they themselves were men dedicated to a
private life, free from business and from the necessity of applying
themselves to other duties.”*
It may not have needed the shock of religious and civil discord at
home and the horrors of actual war abroad to make a narrower view of
human nature and its springs of action seem more plausible to a man of
Hobbes' timorous and suspicious constitution, but there can be little
doubt that the clashing interests of churchman and presbyter and puri-
tan, of King and Parliament, in which national temper was taking on a
grimmer sternness of resolution, and the various churches were fighting
as keenly as non-religious bodies for self-preservation, gave intensity
and confidence to his opinions. It was a time when will met will, and
refused to bow to sentiment or to any consideration save force. To a
man, then, who believed in the supreme value of organized society, to
found it on any sentiment, however “natural,” must have seemed to
lay its foundations too slightly. Nothing but the very instinct of
self-preservation itself, with its counterpart, the fear of death, could
stand the test. Only as rationally motived, in the strongest possible
sense of the term, could the social control be adequately grounded.
Hobbes, then, differs from Bacon and from Grotius, whom he had more
immediately in mind, not in that he considers society as less indispen-
sable to man, but in his view of its psychological sanction. Grotius had
made the source of society to be human nature itself, which would
bring us to a mutual desire of society “if we needed nothing,” but had
reinforced this sanction of a particular instinct by the additional
sanction of self-interest. Utility joins its force to that of natural law,
“for the author of nature has willed us to be singulos et infirmos, and in
need of many things for the right conduct of life that we might be the
more forced (raperemur) to cultivate society.” Hobbes, throwing the
whole weight on utility, is obliged to make the utility the greatest possi-
ble, or in other words to portray anarchy as without a redeeming feature,
a state of the homo homini lupus. It was not primarily that he loved man
less, but society more; and in his own opinion he was giving a
stronger basis for society when he made it a product of intelligent
self-interest.
Is man, then, according to Hobbes, naturally social P This depends
upon what we mean by man, and what we mean by social. Taking men
* Works, V, 14 f.
* De jure belli, Prolegomena, sec. 16.
THE INDIVIDUAL IN RELATION TO LAWS AND INSTITUTIONS 25
as we actually find them, they are doubtless, to a certain extent, soci-
able. They “come together and delight in one another's company.”
We have the term “love,” “under which is contained the love men
bear to one another, or pleasure they take in one another's company,
and by which nature men are said to be sociable.” “The observers
of this law (i.e., that every man strive to accommodate himself to the
rest) may be called sociable.” “There is in men's aptness for society
a diversity of nature.” There are also such emotions as pity, benevo-
lence, compassion, and fellow-feeling.” In society the natural virtues
are equity and charity. But it is one thing to say this of man in
society and a very different thing to say it of man out of society, or
antecedent to society. For there are other instincts of man which
lead so inevitably to conflict of interests that he has much more reason
to fear than to trust, and that the law of self-preservation requires
“deceit and violence” as imperatively as it now requires justice and
charity. If such beings seek society, it must be because the state of
man without civil society is so wretched that “all men as soon as they
arrive to understanding of this hateful condition, do desire, even nature
itself compelling them, to be freed from this misery.” It is not because
of the immediate and direct value of society as satisfying a natural
impulse, but because of the immediate and indirect value of society as
affording peace, and so an opportunity for the satisfaction of a great
variety of impulses, that the natural man submits to control. If we bear
in mind that reason is no less of the nature of man than passion, we
may then say that man, on Hobbes' premises, is so compelled to society
that, as Hume afterwards points out, justice, though an “artificial”
virtue, is in a sense as natural as any other.
As to the other question, Is man naturally social 2. our answer must
depend upon what we mean by social. That men “delight in one
another's company” sounds well, until we read that “we do not there-
fore by nature seek society for its own sake, but that we may receive
some honor or profit from it.” “All society therefore is either for
gain or for glory; that is not so much for love of our fellows as for
love of ourselves.”5 And pity, which, if any, ought to be a social
motion, is defined as “imagination or fiction of future calamity to our-
selves proceeding from the sense of another man's calamity.”* There
* English Works, IV, 48. 4 /bid., II, xvii.
*Ibid., III, 139. 5 Zbid., II, 3, 5.
3 Ibid., III, 43 ff. ° Ibid., IV, 44.
26 THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS RELATION TO SOCIETY
can be no question, therefore, that the self, as Hobbes views it, is an
exclusive ego. The value in which it measures all else is self-preser-
vation in the barest sense.
This brings us naturally to Hobbes' psychology of desire. Will is
“the last appetite in deliberating.” Deliberation means the “alternate
succession of appetites and aversions” which “is no less in other liv-
ing creatures than in man.” Appetite is the endeavor, or small begin-
ning of motion, toward the object which causes it. “Of appetites,
some are born with men, . . . . the rest proceed from experience and
trial of their effects.” When an object helps or hinders “vital motion
about the heart,” it excites pleasure or pain, which stimulates the
motions of approach or retirement called appetite or aversion. The
objects which please or displease we then call good or evil. The fact
of capital importance here is that Hobbes defines the good in terms
of desire, and desire in terms of impulse. Thus the doctrine brought
forward five centuries before by his countryman, Duns Scotus, was to be
taken up as representing the modern conviction that the good is not
something external but a something internal. It is not decided for me,
but is constituted by me. It is measured in terms of myself, and
not in terms of a nature or a deity that is external. But while Hobbes
thus reflects the dawning consciousness of the internal character of
value, he defines the self, by which it is measured, in very narrow
terms. In the first place the rational and spiritual nature has scant
recognition, for, although there are pleasures of the mind as well as of
the body, “all the mind's pleasure is either glory (or to have a good
opinion of one's self), or refers to glory in the end;” and the pas-
sages already cited show that the self to which the bonum sibi is
referred, the self as the subject of interests and desires, is viewed, so far
as social relations are concerned, not as an inclusive self, in which the
good of others as such is comprised as element of value, but as an
exclusive ego, to which “self-preservation” does not necessarily
include the preservation of home and country. It is the self of war,
in which interests are exclusive, not the self of commerce, in which they
are mutual. It is the atomic individual, stripped by the analytic
method of the day of all its attributes save those essential to a unit of
action.
Ethics, on the basis of this psychology, naturally resolves itself
into the science of appetites and aversions. These differ widely, but
* English Works, II, 5.
THE INDIVIDUAL IN RELATION TO LAws AND INSTITUTIONS 27
one is so fundamental (viz., self-preservation) that all men agree on
this, that peace (the means to self-preservation) is good. The “laws”
of ethics are then really dictates of (egoistic) reason. They are
improperly called laws, “for they are but conclusions for theorems
concerning what conduceth to the conservation and defence of them-
selves,” “ and “the sum of virtue is to be sociable with them that will
be sociable, and formidable to them that will not.”
It remained for Hobbes, when he had thus got all the moral life stated
in terms of such an abstract individual, to attempt to explain the terms
which involve the social character of the individual. He is clear in
seeing that the terms “law” and “just” have no normative social sig-
nificance under such conditions, for both imply a controlling universal
to which the particular is brought for judgment. He meets the difficulty
differently in the case of the two concepts. “Law” of nature is used
of the “dictates of reason,” above cited, “but improperly,” for “law is
the word of him that by right hath command over others.”* The
real significance of the use of the term “law of nature” by Hobbes is
that it points to a norm or authority.that is internal, viz., self-preserva-
tion, although his conception of the self does not allow the norm to
retain any social content. The term “right,” as already noted, is trans-
formed into a physical category, and for either God or man is made
synonymous with “irresistible might.” The term “just,” finally, as bear-
ing too inevitably the social stamp, is excluded absolutely from the
state of nature, and based on the “consequences from speech in con-
tracting.”" From such particulars as are assumed as units no universal
can flow except by some external act. For the process of consent,
which expresses the will, is not conceived as the expression of a social
relation, but as the establishing of a new universal, which shall be
regarded as external. Thus Hobbes, in spite of recognizing that only
consent can give authority, and in spite of his effort to state the indi-
vidual’s experience in terms of itself, ends with an external universal,
because he conceives his individual as so particular that no internal
universal is left, and as so mechanical that will means force.
5. Cumberland.
A comparison of the conception of the individual, as it appears in
the “De Legibus Naturae,” with that presented by Hobbes shows that
*English Works, III, 147. 3 Zbid., III, 147.
*Ibid., IV, II of. 4 Zbid., III, 73.
28 THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS RELATION TO SocIETY
Cumberland's conception is enriched in two essential respects. The first
of these is that in Cumberland the moral law has become internalized.
Instead of being a word of command of a higher authority external to
the individual, it has become a law which is written in the very nature
of each human being. The second important addition is that Cum-
berland takes the first step in the process of the gradual recognition
of the social nature of the individual by his insistence upon an active
benevolence as a fundamental impulse in human nature.
Cumberland's view of the individual seems to be the resultant of
hree forces which were playing upon him. The first of these was the
growing interest in the individual, and the increasing emphasis upon
his rights and significance characteristic of the age; the second was the
ethics and philosophy of the Christian church in which Cumberland
was a most devout and consistent believer; and the third was the
modern science views and methods which were molding the thought
of the period. Let us consider (1) the way in which the interaction
of these three factors determined Cumberland's problem and the
method of its solution in so far as it bears upon the conception of the
individual, and (2) the way in which the solution of the problem brings
about a broadening of the theoretical individual (a) by an inter-
nalizing of the moral law, and () by the introduction of benevolent
impulses.
I. It was the political, social, and religious unrest of the period which
determined the central problem of both Hobbes and Cumberland—the
problem of establishing some absolute foundation upon which an
ordered political, moral, and religious life could be built up amid the
disturbed conditions of the times. Such an absolute foundation could
be reached, in their opinion, only by the establishment of some uni-
versal law, which should be binding on all individuals. Accordingly
we find Hobbes and Cumberland both concerned with the attempt to
establish some universally valid law.
Hobbes, starting with his simple, atomistic conception of the indi-
vidual stripped of all motive forces but the one of self-interest, was
able to reach no source of universal law save the civil authority, estab-
lished by a contract entered into by the separate units. Consistently
with this view we find Hobbes asserting that the state is the final
authority in all questions, political, ethical, and religious. The state
can do no wrong, because it is in itself the source of all distinctions
between right and wrong. For Hobbes the good of the individual
THE INDIVIDUAL IN RELATION TO LAWS AND INSTITUTIONS 29
is that which the individual desires. On this principle the good of
the state can be nothing more nor less than that which the sovereign
desires. Since, then, in Hobbes' favorite form of polity the sovereign
and the prince are one, good and evil become the caprice or arbitrary
command of the prince.
Such a theory inevitably called out the violent opposition of the
church. It destroyed individual freedom of conscience as irrevocably
as had the church of the Middle Ages. Hobbes had only shifted the
arbitrary authority from the church to the state. It was Cumber-
land, the devout bishop, who formulated the ethical and religious
opposition to Hobbes.
In such a doctrine as that of Hobbes, Cumberland says, “it is
hard to see whether palpable falsehood, or barefaced insult against the
sacred persons of princes, is most predominant.” It is palpable
falsehood, because a prince is a man like other men, and must make
his decisions of right and wrong after the same fashion. “For even
among bad princes there is not one so consummately profligate in his
mind and manners as not to submit, as not to desire, that certain of
his acts should be tried by some rule different from that of his own
arbitrary will and pleasure.” It is an insult for princes, because it
“robs them of all praise, of all commendation due to Prudence, Wis-
dom and Justice, because these virtues, . . . . are discerned only in such
works and operations as are influenced by certain laws, derived from
the nature of that subject matter about which these virtues are con-
cerned.”* Moreover, Cumberland argues, the doctrine that the state
can be the ultimate source of standards of right and wrong is dis-
proven by the fact that the civil authorities are constantly committing
acts which the simplest private man knows to be unjust.
Hobbes' supposedly universal authority is thus shown not to be
universal, and Cumberland finds himself face to face with the problem
afresh. But in one vital point Cumberland coincides with his prede-
cessor, and that is that, in building up any political or social theory,
the individual must be the starting point. His problem becomes a
question of how, starting with the individual as a basis, we can arrive
at some universally valid moral law which shall serve as a standard
alike for individuals and for states. The problem necessitates, as its
* De Legibus Naturae, chap. 9, sec. 18. All the quotations from Cumberland are
taken from the translation by John Towers, 1750.
*
* Chap. 9, sec. 18. 3 Chap. 9, sec. 19.
30 THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS RELATION TO SOCIETY
most important factor, a remodeling of the conception of the indi-
vidual, for the conclusions of Hobbes were but the logical outcome of
the narrow, atomistic conception of the individual with which he had
started. In Cumberland, therefore, the stress of interest is shifted
from political theory to the problem of the ethical and psychological
analysis of the individual.
So much for the new problem; what now of the method? Although
himself an earnest believer in the revelation of the Scriptures, Cumber-
land expressly sets aside revelation in his attempt to establish a moral
law, and uses a method of proof which he considers valid alike for
skeptic and for believer. Moreover, to be just, we must keep in mind
not only the machinery of the method, but the new turn given to its
working. The machinery by which Cumberland gets at his universal
is essentially that of the Stoics and the mediaeval churchmen — the
conception of right reason as “the divine order of the universe and the
capacity on man's part for entering into it.” Reason, unlike the other
faculties of the individnal, transcends the physical universe and partakes
of the nature of the divine. Through reason it is possible to know the
universe as God knows it, and to read its laws.
Reason is thus the universal element in the individual which gives
the possibility for the derivation of a universally valid law. But the ,
conception of the way in which reason works in the derivation of such
laws is modified in Cumberland by his attempt to apply the methods
of modern science to his problem. The later Stoics and the mediaeval
theologians had held that right reason gives to each individual a set of
innate ideas that afford him definite information about the existence
of God and the laws of ethics. But Cumberland confesses that he has
“not arrived at so high an excess of happiness as to come at the
knowledge of natural laws in so concise and compendious a way.” In
accordance with the views of the physiological psychology of his period,
Cumberland holds that the material for all knowledge must come
originally from sense perception. The method by which the indi-
vidual gets at a knowledge of the universal is the same as that by
which he gets at any other piece of knowledge—an analysis of the
world of nature. By this very fact the nature of the universal and
the relation of the individual to the universal become materially dif-
ferent from the Stoic” and mediaeval view. The universal becomes,
* Prolegomena, sec. 5. t -
* Cumberland’s doctrine that all knowledge comes through sense perception
THE INDIVIDUAL IN RELATION TO LAws AND INSTITUTIONS 31
not an entirely immutable external thing, but a thing which is brought
to a certain degree under the control of the individual. It is not
given to the individual already made, but is discovered by him through
the application of scientific methods.
2. This change in method was no slight factor in that internalizing
of the moral law which was one of Cumberland's most important con-
tributions to the movement we are tracing.
(a) For the change from the purely external moral law of Hobbes
to the essentially internal law of Cumberland came about, not because
Cumberland's conception of what a law is differed from that of
Hobbes, but because of difference as to how the moral law is a)
derived, 8) promulgated, and y) enforced. Cumberland agrees with
Hobbes in the conception of a law as “the word of command of him
that hath authority over others,” a conception derived from civil law.
But Hobbes, starting with his simple atomistic individual, had been
unable to get at a genuine “Law of Nature.” That which he calls a
law of nature, viz., the law which commands all men to seek peace, he
is forced to admit is called a law only by a loose use of the term. It
is a dictate of prudence, not a command laid upon man by a higher
authority. On Hobbes' theory the only source of authority is the state,
and to speak of laws which exist before the formation of the state is
absurd. -
a) But Cumberland's individual is not entirely atomistic." He has
within him a universalistic element, right reason, which enables Cum-
berland, starting from the individual, to get at a universal source of
authority and derive a genuine law of nature from it. In accordance
with the advanced scientific views of his times, Cumberland regarded
this physical universe as a system of matter in motion. Now, when-
ever man attempts to reason back from cause to cause in the physical
system of the universe, his right reason carries him inevitably to this
conclusion, “that all bodily motions are originally caused by the
impressed force of the first Mover, God, and that, by the continuance
of the same impressed force, such determinations are always carried
approached that of the early Stoics (Windelband, History of Philosophy, p. 203), but
his view had none of their pantheistic turn, which loses the individual in God the
universal. For Cumberland each individual was a separately existing, independent
being.
* Cf. on this, and especially for Cumberland's relation to utilitarianism, E. Albee
in the Philosophical Review, 1895.
32 THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS RELATION TO SOCIETY
on, according to the laws of motion.” The universal which Cum-
berland reaches is God, the ruler of the universe, the same universal
that the Stoics and mediaeval theologians had reached by a similar
method. God is the source of authority, from whose word of com-
mand issue all laws. He and his laws exist from the beginning. On
this basis, Hobbes' assumption of a state of nature where no laws
exist because the state has not yet been formed becomes impossible. God
issues the same laws for states and for individuals.
Right reason not only discloses the source of authority to each
individual, but also enables each individual to discover what the word
of command—or, in other words, the law of nature—given by God
is. On Cumberland's view, God has written all laws in the physical
system of the universe of matter and motion, of which man is a part.
The law of nature can then be discovered by a study of the physical
universe, including man. The first problem which arises is whether or
not our sense impressions, through which we obtain all knowledge of
the external universe, are to be trusted to give us adequate representa-
tions. The universe is a system of matter upon which God has
impressed laws of motion. Some of these motions affect our sense
organs and give rise to impressions. But our sense organs are also
made by God; the laws of activity of the mind, by which our impres-
sions are built up into ideas about the external universe, are his work,
too. For these reasons our right reason concludes that “The will of
God as declared in the works of creation is that the human mind
should frame and put together true propositions from those apprehen-
sions which such objects have raised in us.” It is practically Descartes'
reason for trusting our sense impressions—that God would not deceive
us. The most general proposition which the mind is able to frame
from its observation of nature is, according to Cumberland, the law of
universal benevolence. In his cumbrous phraseology, the law of
nature is “that the greatest benevolence of each individual agent in
the rational system, fully exercised toward all, essentially forms the
happiest state which each single individual from his own free capaci-
ties and powers is capable of ; and which Benevolence is, moreover,
the only method or measure indispensably necessary toward effectu-
ally promoting the happiest state which each can possibly enjoy.””
* Prolegomena, sec. 7. - 3 Chap. i, Sec. 4.
* Ibid., sec. 8. -
THE INDIVIDUAL IN RELATION TO LAws AND INSTITUTIONs 33
The way in which Cumberland arrives at just this content for his law
of nature, and the importance of it, will be considered later.
The method of derivation of the law involves the first step in
making the moral law an internal one, because, while Cumberland's
natural law is regarded as the word of command of a lawgiver, yet
the content of the law is framed by the individual himself from a study
of natural phenomena. Instead of being drawn up by some legisla-
tive body entirely external to the individual, as were Hobbes' laws, or
revealed already formulated, like the law of the Reformers, Cumber-
land's law was in its content the product of the activity of the indi-
vidual, and therefore partly within his control.
B) For a full understanding of the way in which Cumberland's law
of nature is promulgated a further consideration of the implications of
his principle of right reason is needed. Reason is, of course, a faculty
of the individual, but right reason is not a faculty which varies from
one individual to another. It is absolutely the same, whether found
in God or in man. It is that faculty which gives accurate information
about the external universe, and its activity brings about an exact
correspondence between the ideas of the individual and the objects
and events of the physical universe. “Every man is able to dis-
tinguish right reason without forming any comparison between it
and his own reason, for there is one common rule whereby everyone's
own reason and opinion, as well as that of others, must be tried, and
that rule is the nature of things. . . . . The truth, the rectitude, the
reality of propositions depend entirely upon their conformity, their
agreement with things themselves.” From this proposition Cumberland
derives the evident corollary that “every one being who exercises right
reason . . . . must and ought to agree with all other beings who judge
likewise by right reason about the same thing.” Upon this principle
every man who bends his right reason to the understanding of the
universe must inevitably arrive at the same law of nature. The method
of its promulgation thus gives each individual immediate access to it,
instead of making him dependent for a knowledge of its content upon
the announcement of some external authority, whether it be God,
through revelation, or the civil authority, through the publication of a
code of laws. t
The universal which Cumberland reaches in right reason is from
one point of view external to the individual. It is the “nature of
* Chap. ii, Sec. 5. * Chap. ii, sec. 8.
34 THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS RELATION TO SOCIETY
things,” the physical system of the universe, with its immutable laws.
But from another point of view it is internal for the individual, it is
the faculty of the mind called right reason. In Cumberland's words,
the nature of things impresses itself on our minds. Now right reason
may be regarded either as the nature of things or as the faculty of the
mind whereby they are impressed.
The consideration of right reason as a psychological factor brings
us to the fundamental difference in the psychological analyses made by
Hobbes and Cumberland, which is the source of their differing con-
ceptions of the individual. The central point in which they disagree
concerns the relative value to be assigned to reason in the psychic life.
Hobbes regarded reason as mere self-consistency. As a faculty it is
subservient to will and impulse. We judge that good which we desire.
But the whole strength of Cumberland's position lies in regarding rea-
son as the dominating factor in consciousness, to which impulse,
desire, and will are naturally subservient. Only on this view does
reason contain a universalistic reference which makes it possible to
use it as a basis in establishing a universal authority and deriving a
universal moral law. After quoting Hobbes' view, that we first desire
things and then call them good, Cumberland says: “We on the contrary
say that things are first judged and determined good and then in the next
place they are desired as such.” As long, therefore, as a man makes
use of right reason, he cannot go wrong, for the reason determines the
will, and right reason can make no mistakes. The law of right reason,
which is the moral law, is accordingly one of the psychic laws of the
individual, but Cumberland cannot hold that the law of right reason
is the only one which determines action, because that would leave no
possibility for wrong action, and that some acts are wrong he consid-
ers self-evident. It is to the conception of free will that Cumberland
turns to help him out of this dilemma. “Neither nature without us
nor nature within us ever did force us by an inevitable necessity to err
in our judgment, and by consequence nature never did determine us
to choose and act ill. . . . . And therefore if we at any time either
determine, desire or act anything contrary to nature, and to all the
criteria or marks of truth, it must in my opinion be imputed to a
precipitate rash use of our own free will.”
That it is in will that Cumberland finds the depraved aspect of
man becomes suggestive when we remember that the impulses and
* Chap. iii, Sec. 2. * Chap. ii, sec. Io; cf. Descartes, Med., iv.
THE INDIVIDUAL IN RELATION TO LAWS AND INSTITUTIONS 35
will are the purely individualistic elements in consciousness, while the
reason or knowledge process is the factor which has a universalistic
aspect—that which appropriates the universal to the individual. Cum-
berland is thus at one with Hobbes and the Reformers in regard-
ing the purely individualistic element as evil. All three of them
believed that all ethical laws emanate from some universal authority,
and regarded all acts guided by this universal authority and directed
toward its good as right, and all acts with a purely individualistic
guidance and reference as wrong. But both Hobbes and the Reform-
ers, in so far as the latter used the concept of authority as contrasted
with the concept of faith, conceived of their universal as external to the
individual. The natural individual was for them totally depraved and
evil. It was only after the individual had been brought into contact
with the universal that the possibility for moral action occurred.
Hobbes' natural man was entirely non-moral until he came into con-
tact with the civil authority. The natural man of the Reformers was
utterly lost, except by the grace of God. In Cumberland also, as we
have seen, the purely individualistic element is the evil one. It is the
will of man, his desires and impulses, which are at times bad. In him
also the universal element, right reason, is the good one. The great
difference lies in the fact that Cumberland finds his universal element
zvithin the individual as well as external to him. The natural man is
not entirely bad; only one aspect of him, his will, is evil, while
another aspect, his right reason, is good. The laws of right and
wrong are not simply prescribed to the individual by a higher
authority; they are made inherent in the constitution of the individual
by a higher authority. Moral control becomes not merely the control
of the entire individual by an external authority. It is more essentially
the control of one part of the individual by another. The moral law,
instead of being an external command, becomes an element in the
nature of each human being. -
y) According to the conception of a law uppermost in the minds of
Cumberland and his contemporaries, the authority whose word of com-
mand the law is must enforce the word of command by penalties before
it becomes truly a law. As Cumberland puts it, there are always
“pains and penalties, as well as also privileges and immunities, annexed
to laws by the authority which establishes and enacts them.” The
real obligation of a law “arises from the will of some superior.”” For
* Chap. v., sec. II. - * Chap. v., Sec. I9.
36 THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS RELATION TO SOCIETY
Hobbes a law was a command of the sovereign enforced by penalties
and rewards arbitrarily attached by him to the performance of certain
acts. The Reformers had regarded God as the sovereign, and laid more
stress on the penalties and rewards to be administered after death than
on those of this life. Cumberland also regarded the will of God as
the source of obligation, and thought the law was enforced by rewards
and punishments attached by God to the actions of men :
Mankind are determined to act in conformity to the injunctions of these
laws [i.e., ethical laws], partly by the hope of good to arise from a submissive
obedience; partly by fear of evil to follow from an insolent disobedience.
. . . . For the necessity which determines the human will to act, is no other
than the desire of avoiding evil, so far as it appears evil to us, and on the
contrary the desire of prosecuting, pursuing and attaining to good, so far as
it appears good to us. . . . . The whole power then of obligation lies here,
that the author and maker of a law has annexed to the obedience of his laws,
good, and to the disobedience of them evil, which good and evil are natural ;
from the view and expectation of which, mankind are influenced to prefer, in
their outward behavior and deportment, actions conformable rather than con-
trary to the laws prescribed."
The important point in which Cumberland's conception differs from
that of Hobbes and the Reformers is indicated in the phrase, “which
good and evil are natural.” The punishments which follow evil acts
are not arbitrary punishments inflicted by the state, or by God after
death; they are the necessary results of evil acts according to the laws
of nature. Good to the agent results, in this world, from right acts,
and evil from wrong acts, as inevitably as a sensation of heat results
from an application of fire to the skin — and by a law of the same type:
a scientific law, Cumberland reiterates, which is as thoroughly capable of
demonstration as are the laws of mathematics and physics.
Since the will of God is indicated to the individual by his own
good or evil, any particular act must be judged as right or wrong by
the agent, according as good or evil is expected to result to himself
from the performance of the act. As Cumberland puts it, it is the
divine will that mankind should be influenced by consequences, and
should weigh them before acting.”
From this point of view, the immediate constraining force to obey
the moral law is the fact that the happiness of the individual is entirely
dependent upon obedience to the law, and it is upon this aspect of
* Chap. v., sec. II. * Chap. v., sec. 22.
THE INDIVIDUAL IN RELATION TO LAws AND INSTITUTIONS 37
obligation that Cumberland lays greatest stress. He tells us that “no
happiness can be hoped for or expected outside of the general happi-
ness,” therefore we must “pursue the common happiness as the most
fruitful and beneficent parent of all private beatitudes, bliss and happi-
ness.”* Common reason directs mankind to put forth all their united
social energies in tilling the prolific soil of public utility, that each
may reap the plentiful increase of his own private happiness.”
The internalizing of the moral law is thus evident again in the
method of its enforcement, for it is enforced by a process which takes
place within the individual himself by natural law, without the inter-
vention of any arbitrary act of an external authority. It is not
primarily the law of the state, nor the will of God, which induces the
individual to act in accordance with the moral law, but the fact that
his own personal happiness depends upon such action. Happiness
may be extrinsic to the act, as critics of Hedonism maintain, but it is at
least internal to the agent, and signifies his control over his conduct.
Cumberland himself states this internal aspect of the moral law from
the point of view of obligation, when he says that the external obliga-
tion “ought not to take place, it being an obligation intrinsic and
inherent to the law itself.” "
(b) We have seen how Cumberland's application of scientific con-
ceptions and methods to the problem of the derivation, promulgation,
and enforcement of the moral law brought about an internalizing of
the law, and made the conception of the individual richer by includ-
ing ethical laws as one of his attributes. Let us now consider a)
the way in which Cumberland arrived at universal benevolence as the
content of his moral law; 3) the importance of that content in
broadening the conception of the individual; and y) the conception
of the relation of the individual to the universal involved in the law
of benevolence.
a) Cumberland's criterion for the existence of a law is the presence
of a system of rewards and punishments enforcing the supposed com-
mand. If, therefore, he can show that any particular line of action in
this world is normally followed by good to the agent, and that any
deviation from it normally results in evil, he has proved the existence
of a law commanding such a line of action. When we press him for a
statement as to what the good is for the individual, he has no con
* Chap. ii, sec. 13. 3 Chap. v., sec. 15.
* Chap. ii, sec. 13 * Chap. v., sec. 19.
38 THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS RELATION TO SOCIETY
sistent answer to give. The good is sometimes pleasure or happiness,
and sometimes perfection. But a survey of man as a part of the
universe reveals the fact that all acts directed toward the good of the
whole result in good to the agent, while all acts directed against the
good of the whole result in evil. Usually the argument takes the more
general form of showing that the good of any individual member of
any sort of a system depends upon the good of the whole system. If
that is so, the individual can reach his own good only through acting
for the good of the whole, while any act contrary to the good of the
whole must necessarily result in evil to the agent, and the command to
act for the good of the whole becomes a law. .
The fact that the good of any individual depends upon the good
of the whole can be derived from many various aspects of man—mathe-
matical, physical, biological, physiological, and psychological.
First, the mere mathematical relation of the individual to society,
of part to whole, shows it, “for the efficient cause of each single hap-
piness necessarily inheres in the whole.' . . . . Every singular part
receives either advantage or loss just in the same proportion as such
an universal whole is differently affected by good and evil.” The
physical system of the universe reveals the same dictate of God:
The substance of the matter of every one individual, natural body, and
consequently of every human body; the motions of body in general, and con-
sequently of every human body in particular, do . . . . contribute toward
. . the common good ; at least so far, as each individual body is in its
motions determined by the general motion of the whole system, upon which
system depends the security, the continuance, the preservation of each indi-
vidual. Does not then the nature of things powerfully persuade, command
and enforce a studious care and concern for the common good of all
mankind P3
The animal world of which man is also a member reveals the same
law of benevolence. Each animal strives for only such things as are
necessary for his own preservation, “leaving all that remains over and
above to the use of others.” More positively the instinct of self-pres-
ervation, includes as a part of itself the instinct to propagate and
care for the species. “From hence it follows, that animals, the very
moment they consult and provide for their own preservation and safety,
at the very same moment they consult and provide for the continuance
*Chap. i., sec. 6. 3 Chap. ii, sec. 15.
* Prolegomena, sec. 17.
THE INDIVIDUAL IN RELATION TO LAws AND INSTITUTIONS 39
of their species; and in the necessary consequence of things they
at the same moment promote the good and happiness of all.” This
does not mean that the animal consciously acts for the good of
the whole. It is only another illustration of the fact that God has
made the good of the whole the supreme end in nature, and has
thereby shown that it ought to be the supreme end in human action.
The psychic natures of animals give a stronger proof for the law of
nature, which is interesting as the first statement of the principle
of sympathy which became so important in the ethics of the fol-
lowing century. “Since impressions made by outward objects upon
their senses show animals that others of the same species partake
of a nature very similar to their own, these same impressions immedi-
ately passing into the brain, where they become images in the imagina-
tion, dispose and influence such animals in general, to cherish affec-
tions for their own species, similar and much alike to such affections,
as, from the very same constitution of nature, they cherish for them-
selves.” According to this theory, if one animal sees another of the
same species suffer, the fact that the image he gets of that animal is
like his image of himself would prompt him to feel as if he were him-
self suffering and act to relieve the pain. This process is due to the
simple psychological law that like images give rise to like acts.” The
crudity of the psychological analysis is, of course, evident. It arises
from Cumberland's determination to make the reason, which in his
usage is but little more than cognition, that which alone determines
action.
The physiological structure of the human being is made to offer a
most interesting support to the great law of benevolence:
It is a truth . . . . that in love, desire, hope, joy (but more especially when
these passions are exercised about any great good) that the motion of the blood
and heart, so necessary to animal life, is greatly helped and promoted . . . .
the animal spirits are enlivened; the whole circulation of the several juices
also, and by consequence all the offices in the animal economy must be much
more readily performed. . . . . Now on the contrary in hatred, envy, fear,
sorrow, . . . . innumerable disorders follow. . . . . Man then may learn from
his own animal nature, and from the nature of his passions, . . . . to cherish,
indulge, and exercise a benevolence, as much as in us lies, an universal bene-
volence toward all."
* Chap. ii, sec. 20. 3 Cf. Spinoza, Ethics, Pt. III, prop. xxvii.
*Chap. ii, sec. 18. * Chap. ii, Sec. 19.
4O THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS RELATION TO SOCIETY
The most vital relationships of a human being, however, are not
those of a physical body to other physical bodies, or of an animal to
other animals, but of a rational being to other rational beings. A
man as a part of the system of rational beings is much more inti-
mately related to the other parts than man as a part of the physical
system is related to its other parts. This closer relationship is better
symbolized by the organic relations of the animal body than by the
mathematical relation of part to whole. “Such an essential connexion,
therefore, between the happiness of the whole and of all its parts,
operates and influences all, just as the nourishment of each single
member of the animal economy is derived from the whole mass of
blood, as secerned and diffused through all the distinct several parts.”
Man's psychic nature attests this. Hobbes had asserted that the indi-
vidual is moved by selfish motives alone, but this assertion does not
stand the test of fact. “For we cannot but observe how natural it is
to hope and expect to find in mankind pity, compassion, and a sym-
pathy . . . . whereby we rejoice with them that rejoice and weep
with them that weep.”* This sympathy, so universally found in
mankind, Cumberland speaks of as a “propensity to act”3 toward
the public good, or as a “passion ” “ which finds its satisfaction in
the public good. It is an instinct implanted by God for his own ends,
and is as fundamentally a part of human nature as Hobbes' principle
of self-preservation.
An analysis of the process of desire, moreover, shows that the
good of the whole must normally be the object of greatest desire.
The tendency of all human beings to seek the good is an ultimate fact.
“The mind is carried toward the appetite, the desire of good, and also
to the avoidance of evil.” 5 A rational mind has been so constituted
that, as soon as it determines that an object is good, desire springs up
and leads to action. But in a case where several things are judged
good, the desire will follow the greatest good. It is evident “that such
a good as is well known to extend its general influence to the greatest
number imaginable (in which calculation the individual animal we are
now speaking of is comprehended) must, upon this very account
appear the greatest.”" The very structure of the human mind, there-
fore, necessitates the seeking of the general good. And in confirma-
* Prolegomena, sec. 16. * Chap. v., Sec. I5.
* Chap. ii, sec. 2. - 5 Chap. ii, Sec. 3.
3 Prolegomena, sec. 19 ; chap. i, sec. 21. * Chap. ii, sec. 19.
THE INDIVIDUAL IN RELATION TO LAWS AND INSTITUTIONS 4 I
tion of this analysis, we find, when we inquire into the sources of hap-
piness for the individual, that those acts which bring greatest happiness
to the individual are the acts which contribute most to the public good.
Cumberland speaks of this highest happiness as “that sublime joy
which naturally arises in every benevolent breast from that impressed
sense excited by the happiness of others.”
Not only the greatest happiness, but also the highest perfection of
the individual, rest upon acts of benevolence. We find every man
endowed with natural capacities for acts which are useful to others, but
not of any great advantage to himself. “Now supposing that as
opportunity offers, such benevolent assistances are denied, the capacities
become insignificant and vain, and only tend to the everlasting shame
and disgrace of the man thus gifted. He and his capacity exactly
resemble an uncultivated field, and seed rotted through neglect. For
the very act itself (and we certainly do act when we serve others,) is,
even as to ourselves, more healthy and much pleasanter than a downright
neglect.””
To sum up :
Does not then the nature of things (and consequently God, the author
of nature,) powerfully persuade, command and enforce a studious concern
for the common good of all mankind—have we not a clear and full indi-
cation that such a good is possible; that it is the greatest good; that it
is more intimately blended and interwoven with the private happiness of each
individual than any other effect which human skill, sagacity, foresight and
power can possibly produce P Do not these deep impressions imprinted on
our minds by God and nature, necessarily, whether we will or no, actually
promote this general good—nay even at the very time we are gratifying
our brutal appetites and acting even as much as we can against such a
good P3
B) The content of Cumberland's law of nature differs from
Hobbes' most strikingly in being positive, while Hobbes' is negative.
The condensed form of Hobbes' law of nature is, “Do not that to
another which thou wouldst not have done to thyself.” It is a nega-
tive statement of the golden rule, while Cumberland's law of benevo-
lence is a positive statement. Hobbes' law enjoins forbearance—
peace toward one's fellow-men, where Cumberland's commands an
active benevolence. This difference in the formulation of the two
* Chap. i, sec. 6. 3 Chap. ii, Sec. I5.
* Chap. v., sec. I4. * English Works, Vol. III, p. 144.
42 THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS RELATION TO SOCIETY
laws is correlated with an important difference in the psychological
analysis of the individual. The only motive power which Hobbes
recognized in the individual was the desire for self-preservation, which
expresses itself as a fear of pain. A universal fear of harm from one's
fellow-men might conceivably lead to a universal agreement to let one
another alone, but it could never give rise to an active desire to assist
others. Cumberland’s contribution was to establish the fact that the
hope of pleasure is a force as fundamental in the individual as the fear
of pain. With the introduction of an active element such as the desire
for pleasure, an active, outgoing impulse of benevolence in the indi-
vidual, as fundamental as the impulse toward self-preservation, becomes
possible. While Hobbes' individual is so simple in structure that he
is moved by but one spring, the selfish impulse, Cumberland's is com-
plicated by the introduction of a second, which moves to benevolence.
Cumberland admits that the selfish impulse does exist in the indi-
vidual and is of importance, but side by side with it we find active the
still more important impulse of benevolence. The two classes of
impulses are not fundamentally antagonistic, for the good of one indi-
vidual, when not the evil of another, is good to society as a whole. In
this case the selfish and benevolent impulses coincide. The selfish
impulse is contrary to the law of benevolence only when it prompts
acts which are harmful to others.
The recognition of the fundamental nature of the benevolent
impulses is a beginning of the recognition of the social nature of the
self, for it is an impulse within the self which is directed, not toward
the self, but toward others.
'y) Although Cumberland takes the first step in the modern move-
ment of thought which has resulted in a recognition of the social
nature of the individual, there is much in his method of deriving the
law of benevolence which savors strongly of the mediaeval view of the
relation of the individual to the universal. Cumberland deals with the
problem of the relation of the individual to the universal principally
under the form of the relation of the good of the individual to the
good of society as a whole.
Underlying all the arguments to prove that the good of the whole
should be made the object of endeavor for each individual is the idea
that the good of the whole is in itself a higher order of good than the
good of the individual. He tells us that a good known to be a good
to all members of a species must by that fact appear to the individual
THE INDIVIDUAL IN RELATION TO LAWS AND INSTITUTIONS 43
the greatest good." He admits that self-preservation is the first appe-
tite of being,” but says that a man has no right to his own preservation
unless he establishes it by showing that it is essential to the public
good.” The reason why it is wrong for one member of society to
injure another is not because of the harm done to the individual, but
because such an act is contrary to the good of the whole." Good is
granted to the individual by the divine will, in order that the whole
may be benefited, and is distributed to individuals entirely with a view
to the good of the whole. In outlining his hierarchy of duties" Cum-
berland places first a man's duty to the common good; second, his
duty to himself; third, his duty to his parents and children; and,
fourth, his duty to humanity. To the modern mind his duty to the
common good would be the same as his duty to humanity. But for
Cumberland humanity is only the sum of the various individuals with
whom a man comes into contact less closely than with his family. The
good of humanity would be only the sum of the goods of those indi-
viduals. But the common good is evidently regarded as of far
greater worth than the sum of individual goods.
The explanation of the fact that Cumberland regards the good of
the whole as something more than the sum of the individual goods
goes back to his mediaeval system of thought. For him the good was
not determined by the individual and his needs and desires. It was a
universal attribute, determined by the nature of things, and revealed
to the human understanding by right reason. The individual might
partake of the good, but the fact that the individual possessed the good
could be of little importance in comparison with the existence of the
good itself. The thought is closely analogous to the mediaeval con-
ception of the relation between being and particular existence, as Cum-
berland himself points out. The “object of happiness creating acts
(i. e. the good) cannot be considered under a more universal, a more
perfect, a more delightful notion than that of the common good, for
the term good is to the full as complete, comprehensive and extensive
a term as the term being, and consequently comprehends all singulars
under one universal.”7 “And from hence it follows that the extensive,
infinite latitude and extent of such an object as this, has a full right to
* Chap. ii, sec. IQ. 5 Chap. v., sec. Io.
* Chap. ii, Sec. I4. * Chap. i, Sec. 24.
3 Chap. v, Sec. 45. 7 Chap. v., Sec. I3.
* Chap. i, Sec. 24.
44 THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS RELATION TO SOCIETY
demand and elicit the whole energy of our most enlarged faculties,
and is the complete and adequate object for the
º t
* * tº ºf sº, as ºf * * * * * * * * * * * object 4. Sº A. ºr full exercise of them.
Thus the superior value of the good of the whole to the good of the
individual rests on the same basis as the superior reality of being as a
whole to any particular existence in the thought of the Middle Ages.
In Cumberland the emphasis is still upon the universal, as it is in the
Middle Ages. The individual has not yet clearly emerged as the
center of reference in philosophical analysis.
But the fact that the individual was beginning to come into promi-
nence is evident in some of Cumberland's statements about the relation
between individuals and society. He often speaks as though he
regarded society as nothing more than the sum of its individual mem-
bers. He tells us that “the whole differs in nothing from the sum of
all its parts taken together,” and mentions the “sameness that exists
between the parts and the whole.” But more often his idea is of society
as an organism of which the individual members are organs. From
this standpoint society is a something more than the sum of its mem-
bers, just as an organism is something more than the sum of its organs.”
The real importance of Cumberland's work, both in ethics as a
whole and in the development of individuality, lies in another aspect
of his theory than that which he himself considered important and
emphasized. Cumberland was in spirit a thorough theologian. His
great ambition was to establish his theological ethics on a basis of
scientific truth. His interest was in showing that the law of benevo-
lence is the law of God. For him all laws of nature are laws of God,
and he shows that the law of benevolence is the law of nature, only
because in so doing he proves that it is the law of God. He points
out the existence of benevolent impulses in the individual as confirma-
tion of the fact that the law of benevolence is the law of God. The
good which follows right acts and the evil which follows wrong ones
are important as the rewards and punishments which God attaches to
his law. Any particular act must be judged as right or wrong by an
anticipation of good or evil consequences, because good and evil con-
sequences are the signs by which God points out right and wrong
conduct to mankind.
But in the history of the development of thought, Cumberland's
importance lies, not in the fact that he tried to prove that the golden
rule is the dictate of God to man, but in that he tried to prove it by
?? I
* Chap. v., Sec. I3. * Chap. vii, sec. I.
THE INDIVIDUAL IN RELATION TO LAws AND INSTITUTIONS 45
the most advanced scientific methods of, his day. The theological
applications of his doctrine, which were for him of prime importance,
had little effect upon the succeeding century, while the scientific facts
and methods which he brought to light were those which dominated its
thought. After the advance in the theory of knowledge brought
about by the “Essay on the Human Understanding,” the naïve realism
which served Cumberland as a basis for his system was no longer
possible. The external universe, therefore, offered no such direct
access to a universal source of authority and law as Cumberland had
found through it. The grounds for regarding the law of nature as the
law of God were no longer so simple and evident. The interest in
bringing out evidences of God's law in nature gave way to an interest
in the laws of nature as ultimate. At the same time the recognition of
the fact that laws of nature are in their last analysis the product of the
activity of the human mind threw the stress more and more upon
analysis of the individual consciousness. .
But in spite of this shifting of emphasis, Cumberland's system
contains most of the material elaborated by the thought of the suc-
ceeding period. The theological aspect of his theory readily separates
itself from the natural science portion, and leaves the latter standing
in close connection with the distinctly modern movement in ethics.
Throwing out of court Cumberland's constant reference to the fact
that the law of nature is for him the law of God, and regarding his
law of nature as merely a law of nature, we have left a modern stand-
point, closely allied to utilitarianism. The existence of benevolent
impulses becomes not so much an indication of God's law as a fact in
natural science of which ethical theories must take account. The
good and evil which follow in the train of right and wrong acts are
no longer God's rewards and punishments; they are merely natural
consequences of the acts. Acts are guided according to consequences,
not because consequences indicate God’s will, but because the good
or evil results to the individual are themselves sufficient motives for
action. There is, therefore, contained within the shell of theological
ethics in Cumberland a first attempt, and a fairly well worked out attempt,
to formulate a scientific ethics based upon the analysis of the individual.
6. /ocke.
Although in his theory of knowledge Locke is so closely identified
with the thought of his immediate successors as to be naturally placed
46 THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS RELATION To society
rather at the opening of the century of Aufklärung and intellectual
emancipation than at the close of the preceding century of religious
and political struggle, it is yet with this last-named movement that
his conception of the individual as related to society has most in com-
mon. Indeed, Locke, as the champion of civil and religious liberty,
may properly be said to present the final outcome of the seventeenth
century's evolution of individuality, while his other work gave the
inspiration for that freedom of thought and introspective analysis
which made the individual of the eighteenth century so interesting to
himself that society often seemed of minor importance.
1. The final outcome of the seventeenth century, and yet the voice
of the Restoration rather than of the Commonwealth. For though the
broad Puritanism of Owen may well have influenced Locke's temper,
it is the spirit of a secular rather than of a religious age that speaks in
the “Epistles on Toleration.” The smart of personal grievance, no
doubt, lends eloquence to Roger Williams and Milton. It is no
wonder that it needed this to bring the principle home upon them, and
it is but natural that Owen should be able to say in 1646 : “I never
knew one contend earnestly for a toleration of dissenters who was not
one himself.” But the demand for toleration in an intensely religious
age almost necessarily shaped itself in the form of a demand that my
truth shall not be crushed by your error. I ask for toleration because
I believe that I am right in my belief, and to persecute me is to fight
against the truth of God itself. It is quite a different standpoint which
announces toleration itself to be “the chief characteristical mark”
of the true church and asserts boldly that “every one is orthodox to
himself.” The liberal writers of the preceding generation are pleading
primarily for liberty of conscience in the interest of religion. Locke
argues rather from the standpoint of the individual's privilege to be
free from dictation in matters which are solely his own concern.
Church and state are two voluntary societies which a man joins for
two distinct purposes, the state to obtain happiness in this world, the
church to attain “happiness after this life in another world.” There is
this marked difference that “in all Civil Society one man's good is
involved with another's ; in Religious Society every man's concerns are
separate, and if he err he errs at his own private cost.” “ The Puritan
had been so impressed with the primacy of the religious obligation
*From an early paper on “The Difference between Civil and Ecclesiastical Power”
(Fraser's Locke, pp. 64 f.).
THE INDIVIDUAL IN RELATION TO LAWS AND INSTITUTIONS 47
that it never occurred to him to state the problem in such a purely
personal and individualistic fashion. Locke says, “thou art not to
punish him (a person of supposedly erroneous belief) in the things
of this life because thou supposest he will be miserable in that which
is to come,” and thus assimilates the question of religious toleration
to that of general non-interference in the private affairs of the individ-
ual. He had seen the nation after the strenuous rule of Puritanism
settle back into the easy-going morality or open license of the Restora-
tion and recognized the futility of enforced opinion ; the conviction
that nothing is to be gained for religion but reinforced the judgment
that a man’s future happiness is his own affair. It is on the same basis
with the care of his health or his estate, and if the magistrate cannot
force men to be well or to be rich, much less can he compel knowledge
of the truth or acceptance of his views, since the responsibility must
lie with the individual’s reason and with his alone. The Reformers
had appealed to God and his Word in the unhesitating conviction
that any free, unbiased mind must agree with them in their deductions.
Locke, with calmer outlook, sums up the lesson of two centuries of
religious controversy in the position that no one can be certain that
he has the truth. The new authority to which the Protestant appealed
proves to be of uncertain interpretation; the responsibility is, therefore,
the individual’s and his alone. Only in the case of such doctrines as
are directly hostile to civil society itself (in which Locke places atheism
and the recognition of foreign jurisdiction) are subject to the magis-
trate’s interference.
2. As in religious, so in political theory, Locke gives increasing
recognition to the individual as such. Adopting the thought of Mil-
ton that man is “born to command,” he makes the individual in the
state of nature possess not merely, as with Hobbes, the right to self-
preservation, but the right to punish transgressors of the law of nature.
Nor does this mean merely that he has the power. He is regarded as
the executor of the law of nature, which Locke, like Cumberland, con-
ceives as sovereign in the state of nature. The individual is then not
barely a physical unit, as with Hobbes. He is a subject of rights.
He is a jural as well as a physical person, and as minister of the law
of nature is thereby given sovereignty and authority. This idea of
the law of nature as not merely that to which obedience is due, but
that which, by making each man its executor, really imbues him with
* First letter concerning toleration.
48 THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS RELATION TO SOCIETY
its authority and constitutes him a sovereign, marks the advance of
Locke beyond Cumberland and Hobbes in his conception of the indi-
vidual. The law of nature makes man social, as with Cumberland,
but it makes him sovereign, too. By the law of nature “common to
them all, he and all the rest of mankind are one community, make up
one society,” but the separation “from this great and natural commu-
nity” to join in a “private or particular political society” is by posi-
tive agreement.” The individual gives up his natural sovereignty that
he may have the support of the whole body in the protection of his
life, liberty, and property, and, though at first a certain natural pre-
eminence might give tacit authority to some man without the guaran-
tees of law, yet civil society was not complete until properly repre-
sentative legislative bodies were established, “by which means every
single person became subject equally with other the meanest men,
to those laws which he himself as part of the legislative had estab-
lished.” ”
In Locke's conception of this law of nature we find, as in his
ethics; the older conception of law as imposed by some lawgiver.
“The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves
all ; ”% we find the equality of men likewise based on the view that
they are “all the servants of one sovereign master sent into the world
by his order and about his business,” but in his utilization of these
conceptions to dignify and ennoble the individual, to invest him with
“inalienable rights,”* Locke not merely gave utterance to the
advanced thought of his own day; he was pleading the cause of revo-
lutions yet to come.
3. Locke's ethical conceptions are a combination of the universal-
ism of Cumberland as regards end and authority with the individualism
of Hobbes as regards motive. The ultimate authority for the moral
law is, as already stated, the divine will. The ground of divine
authority is, however, not entirely arbitrary. “He has a right to do
it (i. e., give a rule whereby men should govern themselves); we are
* Cf. Civil Government, II, sec. I28.
* /öid., sec. 94.
3 Letter on Toleration. This is said of human society as founded on “promises,
covenants and oaths” which “can have no hold upon an atheist,” but secs. 6 and 8 of
the Civil Government, II, make it clear that the law of reason is a measure which
God has set.
4 Especially in chap. iv: “For a man not having the power of his own life, can-
not by compact or his own consent enslave himself to any one.”
THE INDIVIDUAL IN RELATION TO LAWS AND INSTITUTIONS 49
his creatures;” but also “he has goodness and wisdom to direct our
actions to what is best.” The opportunity of the individual is placed
by Locke, not in constituting good and evil, right and wrong, but
(1) in the process of discovery and utilization of the eternal laws of
God, and (2) in the motive of individual happiness through which
they receive their motor power in the individual’s consciousness.
As regards (1), there is no doubt that in denying the existence of
any innate practical ideas and insisting that moral laws are “something
that we being ignorant of may attain to the knowledge of by the use
and due application of our natural faculties,” Locke conceived him-
self to be placing morality on a rational basis, and freeing it as well
from the dogmatism of authority as from that of custom. It is true
that laws of morality exist independently of my choice. But so do laws
of gravitation. If I can have a rational account of them, I may plan
accordingly, and so control my own weal or woe. A further step is
taken by Locke when he assimilates moral principles to mathematics,
and declares that morality is capable of demonstration as well as mathe-
matics: “since the precise real essence of the things moral words stand
for may be perfectly known, and so the congruity and incongruity of
the things themselves be certainly discovered ; in which consists per-
fect knowledge.” Moral ideas are “archetypal.” The mind then
really sets its own standard for moral judgments. “If it be true in
speculation, i. e. in idea, that murder deserves death, it will also be true
in reality of any action that exists conformable to that idea of murder.””
How is this to be reconciled with his other position that the moral
ideas are based on the law of God? Apparently by the same principle
which had done duty with Cumberland, that “reason is that law,” “the
candle of the Lord set up by himself in men's minds.” Further,
though the ideas are our own, we are not thereby making morality arbi-
trary, for the ideas, like those of mathematics, are conceived by Locke
(however inconsistently) as sustaining certain “real” relations to each
other, the discovery of which is the discovery of truth. In other words,
while the standpoint of naïve realism is represented to a degree in the
thought of a law already “there,” and the standpoint of externalism in
the thought of a law which is “given,” the more internal and subjec-
tive attitude of the following epoch is seeking expression in the con-
ception that the standard is to be found in “ideas.” A controlling
universal cannot yet be found in the individual, because he is still too
* Essay III, xi, 16. * Essay IV, iv, 8.
50 THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS RELATION TO SOCIETY
narrow, but Locke is too just to common sense to eliminate the ele-
Inent of control and universality from the moral life.
(2) It is in the conception of end and motive that Locke finds
opportunity to do larger justice to individualism. For he defines the
end to be happiness and happiness to be satisfaction,” while good
and evil are defined, as by Hobbes, as causes of pleasure or pain. Nor
is it enough to say that all good is the proper object of desire in gen-
eral; the good for each man is that which satisfies his particular
desires.” “And therefore it was a right answer of the physician to his
patient that had sore eyes : — If you have more pleasure in the taste of
wine than in the use of your sight, wine is good for you; but if
the pleasure of seeing be greater to you than that of drinking, wine is
naught.” It is this variety of palates, bodily and mental, which gives
rise to variety of pursuits. For since desire is uneasiness, and the
greatest uneasiness determines the will, choices will depend “for the
most part ’’ on the sources of present uneasiness.
Three questions naturally rise here: (a) Does the individual as thus
determined have the possibilities of true freedom and moral life P (AE)
What part does the social element play in his actual impulses P and
(c) What part does the social element play in the moral criterion ?
The answer to (a), as Green has shown so elaborately,” is by no means
simple, for Locke, although he has already defined happiness as satis-
faction, then says that “happiness and that alone” moves desire. Again
he insists that pleasure-pain is the sole test of good and evil, and yet
speaks of true measures of good and evil. In view of the variety of
tastes he claims that, “if there be no prospect beyond the grave the
inference is certainly right ‘Let us eat and drink,’ let us enjoy what
we delight in.” He finds the only real reason for any distinction
between true and false to be the quantity of pleasure that will be
awarded in the other life to the man who has been virtuous and reli-
gious. On the other hand, if we should ask Locke whether the pleas-
* His personal statement makes this clear. “Thus, I think; — It is a man's
proper business to seek happiness and avoid misery. Happiness consists in what
delights and contents the mind; misery in what disturbs, decomposes or torments it.
. . . . But here I must have a care I mistake not, for if I prefer a short pleasure to a
lasting one it is plain I cross my own happiness.” The “most lasting pleasures " are
then named — Health, Reputation, Knowledge, Doing good, The expectation of eternal
happiness in another world. (Fox-Bourne, Life, Vol. I, p. 164.)
* Essay II, xxi, 43 ff.
3 Introduction to Hume, II, secs. I-18.
THE INDIVIDUAL IN RELATION TO LAWS AND INSTITUTIONS
5 I
ures and pains of the other life were to consist simply in gratifying
desires, with no reference to the kind of desires to be gratified, he
would doubtless have denied any such inference and refer to his state-
ment that God and the angels are determined by what is best, where
he evidently has in mind a “standard for pleasure” and not “pleasure
as standard.” -
This brings us to ask (*) how Locke conceives the individual's
impulses—are they egoistic, as with Hobbes, or social P His state-
ments that we are moved only by pleasure or pain might seem to
imply the former, but this really leaves the question quite undetermined
as to what the impulses are, the satisfaction of which produces pleasure
or pain. The state of nature is defined as “a state of peace, good-will,
mutual assistance and preservation.” “The being and welfare of a
man's children and friends producing constant delight in him, he is
said constantly to love them,” and this love, as arising from their very
being or happiness, is distinguished from a pleasure or pain we may
feel which is attended by a destruction of the object.” “Doing good” is
one of the five great and constant pleasures of this life, “for I find
the well-cooked meat I eat today does now no more delight me, . . . .
the perfumes I smelt yesterday now no more affect me with any pleas-
ure; but the good turn I did yesterday, a year, seven years since, con-
tinues still to please and delight me as often as I reflect on it.” It may
be fairly said, I think, that, while Locke made no attempt to emphasize
the existence of social affections, he presupposed their existence.
(c) For the third question, viz., as to the extent to which the social
good is made the criterion, there is more explicitness, though the
utilitarian standard is by no means definitely formulated as final and
all-sufficient. The ultimate standard is, as we have seen, the law set by
God, and, as Sidgwick remarks, the two illustrations of moral prin-
ciples have no evident connection with general happiness, nor is his
rationale of the rules of the state of nature utilitarian, except in a
latent or secondary way." But, on the other hand, he holds that
God has “by an inseparable connexion joined virtue and public
happiness together;”3 he is willing to test toleration by its con-
formity to “the law of reason whereby every one is commissioned
to do good.” The fundamental law of nature is “that all as
* Civil Government, II, sec. 19.
* Essay II, xx, 5, 7.
3 Fox-Bourne, Life, I, 164.
4 History of Ethics, p. 177.
5 Essay I, iii, 6.
* On Toleration, III, chap. ii.
52 THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS RELATION TO SOCIETY
:
.
:
:
much as may be should be preserved,”’ and this is “the true principle
to regulate our religion, politics and morals by.” “
Perhaps the most interesting recognition of the social welfare as cri-
terion, however, is found in Locke's theory of property; for this is a point
where individual “rights” and social claims come most directly into
mutual definition. “It is very clear,” says Locke,” that God “has given the
earth to the children of men,” given it to mankind in common.” But, as
man's person and hands are his own, so whatever he “hath mixed his
labour with” he thereby makes his property, and does not require for this
any consent. In this respect, therefore, as in others, Locke's original
individual is far better off than Hobbes'. But it does not follow from
this that “any one may engross as much as he will. The same law of
nature . . . . does also bound that property too,” for no one may take
more than he can use to any advantage of life before it spoils :
“Whatever is beyond this, is more than his share and belongs to
others.” This same rule applied to land as to the fruits of it, “since
there was still enough, and as good left.” In fact, Locke believes this
same rule, “that every man should have as much as he could make
use of,” might hold still in the world without straitening anybody.
It is only the “invention of money, and the tacit agreement of men to
put a value on it,” which has “introduced (by consent) larger posses-
sions and a right to them.” Inequality of possessions then rests on
compact, i. e., the agreement to put a value on gold and silver, “which
may be hoarded up without injury to any one.” It seems clear,
therefore, that Locke regards individual “rights” of property in a
state of nature as clearly limited by the proviso that there is “still
enough and as good left.” What, now, is the principle in civil society?
Here “the laws regulate the right of property,” and it might be pre-
sumed that they could, therefore, regulate it in any way conducive to
the public good. But this is apparently opposed by the statement
that “the supreme power cannot take from any man part of his property
without his own consent;” for this, it is argued, would be to contra-
*Civil Government, II, 182 f.
* See other quotations in Curtis, Locke's Ethical Philosophy.
3 Civil Government, II, chap. v., sec. 50.
* In another place Locke declares: “God has given no one of his children such a
property in his peculiar portion of the things of this world, but that he has given his
needy brother a right to the surplusage of his goods; so that it cannot justly be denied
him when his pressing wants call for it.” (Civil Government, I, 42.)
THE INDIVIDUAL IN RELATION TO LAWS AND INSTITUTIONS 53
dict the purpose of government, which is the security of property. We
seem to have here, therefore, a “right” irrespective of public interest.
But it is evident from the context that Locke has in mind the struggle
in England between King and Commons over the taxing power, for he
goes on to define “his own consent” as “the consent of the majority,
giving it either by themselves or by their representatives chosen by
them.” The “right” of property, therefore, as natural right, is limited
by others' needs; as legal right, by the will of the majority;-although
the cause of the subject which Locke is here pleading makes it neces-
sary to emphasize the individual’s rights rather than his duties, his
inalienable sovereignty rather than the social basis of that sovereignty.
The individual has emerged from the century of political and
religious storm and stress strong in the consciousness of rights. He has
faced the universals which command his respect—the Church, the
Leviathan, the Law of Nature—and in searching out their majesty has
become conscious of his own. For they all exist through him, if not
by him. In them he lifts himself above himself, and feels the dignity
of the sovereign as well as the reverence of the subject. He is
confident in the ability of reason to discover the controlling forces of
the moral and religious life. He feels the motor forces of his inner
world to be those of his own interests. He stands ready to enter on
the new career of social relations and broader intellectual horizons.
He loses sight of external universals and turns with growing interest to
the springs of action within his breast.