It must he the original one, and for a very good reason. Limiting the liberty of each by the hke liberty of all, excludes a wide range of improper actions, hut does not exclude certain other improper ones. Limiting the hberty of each by the necessitj' of not giving pain to the rest, excludes the whole of these improper actions, but excludes along with them many others that are proper. The one does not out off enough; the other cuts off too much. The one is negatively erroneous; the other is positively so. Evidently, then, we must adopt the negatively erroneous one, seeing that its shortcomings may be made good by a supplementary law. And here we find the need for that distinction lately drawn between justice and negative lenejicence — a distinction which we habitually make in the afiairs of life. Justice imposes upon the exercise of faculties a primary series of limitations, which is strictly true as far as it goes. Negative beneficence imposes a secondary series. It is no defect in the first of these that it does not include the last. The two are, in the main, distinct; and, as we have just seen, the attempt to unite them under one expression leads us into fatal errors.
Yet another objection will probably be started. By full liberty to exercise the faculties, is meant full liberty to do all that the faculties prompt, or, in other words, to do all that the individual wills; and, it may be said, that if the individual is free to do all that he wills, provided he does not trespass upon certain specified claims of others, then he is free to do things that are injurious to himself — is free to get drunk, or to commit suicide. To this it must be in the first place replied, as above, that whilst the law now laid down forbids a certain class of actions as immoral, it does not recognise all kinds of G 82 DERIVATION OF A FIRST PRINCIPLE.
immorality — that the restriction it puts on the free exercise of faculties, though the chief, is not the sole restriction, and must he received without prejudice to further ones. Of the need for such further ones, the difficulty here raised furnishes a second instance.
Mark now, however, that these supplementary restrictions are of quite inferior authority to the original law. Instead of heing, like it, capahle of strictly scientific development, they (under existing circumstances) can he unfolded only into superior forms of expediency. The limit put to each man's freedom, by the lite freedom of every other man, is a limit almost always possible of exact ascertainment; for let the con- dition of things be what it may, the respective amounts of freedom men assume can be compared, and the equality or inequality of those amounts recognised. But when we set about drawing practical deductions from the propositions that a man is not at liberty to do things injurious to himself, and that he is not at liberty (except in cases hke those lately cited) to do what may give unhappiness to his neighbours, we find ourselves involved in comphcated estimates of pleasures and pains, to the obvious peril of our conclusions. It is very true, that to trace out the consequences a given act will entail upon oneself or another, is incomparably less difficult than to deter- mine the ultimate effects of some public measm-e upon a whole nation; and hence the being guided by expediency in private life is proportionably less dangerous. Yet it is also true, that even here, trustworthy inferences are attainable in but a minority of cases. In the first place we frequently cannot say whether the bad results will exceed the good ones; and in the second place we frequently cannot say whether the faculties on which suffering wiU be inflicted, are in normal or abnormal states. For example, though it is very manifest that drunkenness is an injurious exercise of faculties, as being clearly productive of more pain than pleasure, it is by no means manifest how much work is proper for us, and when work becomes detrimental; it is by no means manifest where lies the fine between due and DERIVATION OF A FIRST PRINCIPLE. 83 undue intellectual activity; it is by no means manifest what amount of advantage will justify a man in submitting to ud- suitable climate and mode of life; and yet in each of these cases happiness is at stake, and the wrong course is wrong for the same reason that drunkenness is so. Even were it possible to say of each private action whether the resulting gratification did or did not preponderate over the resulting sufiering, there would still present itself this second difficulty, that we cannot with certainty distinguish suffering that is detrimental, from suffering that is beneficial. Whilst we are as yet imperfectly adapted to our conditions, pain must inevitably arise from the_ repression of faculties that are too active, and from the over- tasking of those Ihat are not equal to their duties; and, as being needful to the development of the ultimate man, such pain cannot be held damnatory of the actions causing it. Thus, referring again to the instances just cited, it is self-evident that the abihty to work is needful for the production of the greatest happiness; yet is the acquirement of this ability by the un- civilized man so distressing, that only the severest disciphne will force him to it. That degree of intelligence which our existing mode of life necessitates, cannot be arrived at witliout ages of wearisome apphcation; and perhaps cannot get organ- ized in the race without a partial and temporary sacrifice of bodily health. The realization of the Divine Idea impUes the peopling of every habitable region; and this implies the adapt- ation of mankind to a variety of climates — an adaptation which cannot be undergone without great sufiering. Here, then, are cases in which men's liberty must not be limited by the neces- sity of not injuring themselves; seeing that it cannot be so limited without a suspension of our approach to greatest happi- ness. Similarly we saw awhile since (p. 79), that there are cases in which for the same reason men's liberty must not.be limited by the necessity of not inflicting pain upon others. And the fact now to be noticed is, that we possess no certain way of distinguishing the two groups of cases thus exemplified from those cases in which the doing what diminishes happiness,' 84 DKRIVATIOX OF A FIRST PRINCIPLK.
either in ourselves or others, is hoth immediately and ultimately detrimental, and therefore wrong. Not heing able to define specifically the constitution of the ideal man, but being able to define it generically only — not being able to deteiTnine the ratios of the several faculties composing that constitution, but being able simply to lay down certain laws which their action must conform to— we are quite incompetent to say of every particular deed whether it is or is not accordant with that con- stitution. Or, putting the difficulty in its simplest form, we may say, tliat as both of these supplementarj' limitations involve the term happiness, and as happiness is for the present capable only of a generic and not of a specific definition (p. 5), they do not admit of scientific development. Though abstractedly correct limitations, and limitations which the ideal man will strictly observe, they cannot be reduced to concrete forms until the ideal man exists.
And now we have arrived at the tlu-eshold of an impoitant truth touching this matter; the truth namely, that only by a universal exercise of this alleged Hberty of each, limited alone by the like liberty of all, can there ever arise a separation of those acts which, though incidentally and temporarily injurious to ourselves or others, are indirectly beneficial, from those acts I which are necessarily and eternally injurious. For manifestly, that non-adaptation of faculties to their functions, from which springs every species of evil, must consist either in excess or defect. And manifestly, in the wide range of cases we are now treating of, there exists no mode but a tentative one of dis- tinguishing that exercise of faculties which produces sufifering because it oversteps the conditions of normal existence, from that other exercise of faculties wliich produces suffering be- cause it falls short of those conditions. And manifestly, the. due employment of this tentative mode requires that each man shall have the greatest freedom compatible with the like free- dom of all others. Or, turning the proposition the other side DERIVATION OF A FIRST PRINCIPLE. 85 up, we may say, that whilst these secondary conditions of greatest happiness are really fixed, yet the practical intei-preta- tion of them requiring a detailed knowledge of the ultimate human constitution, bodily and mental, and such detailed knowledge heing unattainable, our course is to regard the law of equal freedom as setting up the only recognisable limit to the exercise of faculties, knowing that the other limits will inevitably make themselves felt, and that in virtue of the law of adaptation, there must eventually arise a complete conformity to them.
That, on tliis course being piu'sued, there will happen a gradual cessation of the detrimentally painful actions, whilst the beneficially painful ones will be continued until they have ceased to be painful, may be made clear by a few illustrations. Thus, the change from the impulsive nature of the savage to that nature which enables the civilised man to sacrifice a present gratification for a futui-e greater one, involves much suffering; but the necessities of social life demanding such a change, and continually visiting the lack of a self-restraining power with severe punishment, ensure a constant though irk- some endeavour on the part of all to acquire this power — ao endeavour that must surely though slowly succeed. Conversely, the prevalence amongst men of a somewhat undue desire foi food, entaihng as it perpetually does much bodily, and some mental, affliction, is sure to be therefore accompanied by suet attempts at abstemiousness, as must, by constantly curbing it, finally reduce this desire to a normal intensity ". And what so manifestly happens in these simple cases, will with equal certainty happen in those complex ones above exemphfied, where the good and bad results are more nearly balanced: for ^ Why the appetite for food- should now be greater than is proper, seems at first difficult to understand. On calling to mind, however, the conditions of the abo- riginal man, we shall find an explanation of this apparent anomaly in the fact, that the irregularity in his supplies of.food necessitated an ability to eat largely' wht;n food was attainable, and necessitated, therefore, a corresponding desire. Now tljat the supplies of food have become regular, and no contingent periods of long fasting have to be provided against, the desire is in excess and has to be abated.
86 DERIVATION OF A FIRST PRINCIPLE.
although it may be impossible in such cases for the intellect to estimate the respective amounts of pleasure and pain consequent upon each alternative, yet will experience enable the constitu- tion itself to do this; and will further cause it instinctively to shun that course which produces on the whole most suffering, or, in other words — most sins against the necessities of exist- ence, and to choose that wliich least sins agaiast them. Turn- ing to those actions which put us in direct relationship to other men, it must in the same manner happen that such of them as give no necessary displeasure to any one, will be persevered in, and the faculties answering to them developed; whilst, on the contrary, actions necessarily displeasing to our neighbours, must, by virtue of the disagreeable reaction which they com- monly entail upon ourselves, be, m the average of cases, subject to a certain degree of repression — a repression that must ulti- mately tell upon the desires they spring from. And now observe what it is the special purpose of the present argument to show, namely, that in the course of this process there must be continually produced a different effect upon conduct which is necessarily painful to others, from that produced upon conduct that is incidentally painful only. Conduct which hurts necessary feelings in others, wiU, as just explained, inevitably undergo restraint and consequent diminution: con- duct which hurts only their incidental feelings, as those of caste, or prejudice, will not inevitably do so; but, if it springs from necessary feelings, will, on the contrary, be continued at the expense of these incidental feehngs, and to the final sup- pression of them. When men mutually behave in a way that offends some essential element in the nature of each, and all in turn have to bear the consequent suffering, there will arise a tendency to curb the desire that makes them so behave. When, instead of this, they keep hurting in each other those non- essential elements of character pecuhar to a passing phase of things, and are impelled to do this by impulses that are permanently requisite, then will these non-essential elements be extirpated. Thus, the existing confusion of necessary and con- DERIVATION OF A FIRST PRINCIPLE. 87 ventional feelings, necessaiy and conventional circumstances, and feelings and circumstances that are partly necessary and partly conventional, will eventually work itself clear. Conven- tional feelings will give way before necessary circumstances, and conventional circumstances before necessary feelings. And when, as a result of this process, complete adaptation between constitution and conditions has been anived at, a complete classification of actions into essentially injurious and essentially beneficial, will have been arrived at also.
If, then, we find that the one thing needful to produce ultimate subordination to these secondary limits of right con- duct is, that we should have the opportunity of freely coming in contact with them — should be allowed freely to expand our natures in all directions until the available space has been filled, and the true bounds have made themselves felt — if a develop- ment of these secondary Umits into practical codes of duty can only thus be accomplished, then does the supreme authority of our first law — the Hberty of each limited alone by the like liberty of all — become still more manifest, seeing that that right to exercise the faculties which it asserts, must precede the unfolding of this supplementary morality. Indeed, regarding it from this point of view, we may almost say that the first law is the sole law; for we find that of the several conditions to greatest happiness it is the only one at present capable of a systematic development; and we further find that conformity to it, ensures ultimate conformity to the others.
Nevertheless, it must still be admitted, that in cases where these secondary limitations to the exercise of faculties are un- doubtedly transgressed, the full assertion of this law of equal freedom betrays us into an apparent dilemma. By drunken- ness, or by brutality of manner, our own happiness, or the hap- piness of others, is diminished; and that not in an incidental but in a necessary way. And if by affirming a man's liberty to do 88 DERIVATION OF A FIRST PRINCIPLE.
all that he wills so long as he respects the like liberty of every other, we imply that he is at liberty to get drunk or to behave brutally, then we faU into the inconsistency of affirming that he is at liberty to do sometliing essentially destructive of happiness. Of this difficulty nothing can be said, save that it seems in part due to the impossibility of making the perfect law recog- nise an imperfect state, and in part to that defect in our powers of expression elsewhere exemphfied (p. 39). As matters stand, however, we must deal with it as best we may. There is clearly no alternative but to declare man's freedom to exercise his faculties; for without this freedom fulfilment of the Divine will is impossible. There is clearly no alternative but to de- clare the several hmitations of that freedom needful for the achievement of greatest happiness. And there is clearly no alternative but to develop the first and chief of these limita- tions separately; seeing as we have done that a development of the others is at present impossible. Against the conse- quence of neglecting these secondary hmitations, we must therefore guard ourselves as well as we can; supplying the place of scientific deductions from them, by such inferences as observation and experience enable us to make.
Finally, however, there is satisfaction in the thought, that no such imperfection as this, can in the least vitiate any of the conclusions we are now about to draw. Liberty of action being the first essential to exercise of faculties, and therefore the first essential to happiness; and the liberty of each limited by the like Uberty of all, being the form which this first essen- tial assumes when applied to many instead of one (§ 3), it follows that this liberty of each, Umited by the hke hberty of all, is the rule in conformity with which society must be organ- ised. Freedom being the pre-requisite to normal life in the individual, equal freedom becomes the pre-requisite to normal life in society. And if this law of equal freedom is the pri- DERIVATION OF A FIRST riUNCIVLE. 89 mary law of right relationship hetween man and man, then no desire to get fulfilled a secondary law can warrant us in break- ing it.
Now we shall find that in the unfolding of this primary limitation to the exercise of faculties into a series of practical regulations, it is impossible to recognise any secondary limita- tions without commilting a breach of the primarj' one. For, in what must recognition of any secondary limitations consist? It must consist in the establishment in our social organization of certain further restrictions on the exercise of faculties be- sides those imposed by the law of equal fi'eedom. And how are these further restrictions to be enforced? Manifestly, by men. Now the men who enforce them must necessarily as- sume in so doing a greater amount of freedom than those on whom they are enforced; — that is to say, they must transgress the primary law to prevent others transgressing secondai"y ones.
Hence, in drawing from it deductions respecting the equitable constitution of society, we may safely assert in full this liberty of each limited alone by the hke hberty of all — must so assert it. The neglect of other hmitations will in no way afiect the accuracy of our conclusions, so long as we confine ourselves to deducing from this fundamental law the just relationships of men to each otber; whereas we cannot include these other limitations in our premises without vitiating those conclusions. We have no alternative therefore but, for the time being, to ignore such other limitations; leaving that partial interpretation of them which is at present possible to us, for subsequent state- ment.
CHAPTER V.
SECONDARY DEEIVATION OF A FIEST PRINCIPLE.
Having inquired how the Divine Idea, greatest happiness, is to be realized — having found that it is to be realized through the exercise of faculties — and having found that, to fulfil its end, such exercise of faculties must be confined "within certain hmits; let us now pursue the investigation a step further, and see whether there does not exist in man himself an impulse to claim that exercise, and an impulse to respect those limits. Some such provisions are clearly needful for the completion of the creative scheme. It would be quite at variance with the general law of our structure, that there should be nothing to restrain us from the undue exercise of faculties, but abstract considerations like those set forth in the last chapter. As elsewhere pointed out (p. 19), man is ruled by quite other in- strumentalities than intellectual ones. The regulation of his conduct is not left to the accident of a philosophical inquiry. We may, therefore, expect to find some special agent by which the distinction between riglit and wrong exercise of faculties is recognised and responded to.
From what he has already gathered, the reader will of course infer that this agent is that Moral Sense, in whose existence we elsewhere saw good reason to believe. And possibly he will anticipate the further inference, that this first and all-essential 3aw, declaratory of the liberty of each limited only by the like SECONDARY DEEIVATION OF A FIRST PRINCIPLE. 91 liberty of all, is that fundamental truth of which the moral sense, is to give an intuition, and which the intellect is to develop into a scientific morality.
Of the correctness of this inference there are various proofs, upon an examination of which we must now enter. And first on the list stands the fact, that, out of some source or other in men's minds, there keep continually coming utterances more or less completely expressive of this truth. Quite independ- ently of any such analytical examinations as that just con- cluded, men perpetually exhibit a tendency to assert the equality of human rights. In all ages, hut more especially in later ones, has this tendency been visible. In our own history we may detect signs of its presence as early as the time of Edward I., in whose writs of summons it was said to be " a most equitable rale, that what concerns all should be approved of by aU." How our institutions have been influenced by it may be seen in the judicial principle that " all men are equal before the law." The doctrine that " all men are naturally equal " (of course only in so far as their claims are concerned), has not only been asserted by philanthropists like Granville Sharpe, but as Sir Eobert Filmer, a once renowned champion of absolute monarchy, t«lls us, " Heyward, Blackwood, Barclay, and others that have bravely vindicated the rights of kings, * * * yfith one consent admitted the natural hberty and equality of mankind." Again, we find the declaration of American independence affirming that " all men have equal rights to hfe, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; " and the similar assertion that " every man has an equal right with every other man to a voice in the making of the laws which all are required to obey," was the maxim of the Complete Suffrage movement. In his essay on Civil Government, Locke, too, expresses the opinion that there is " nothing more evident than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously bom to the same advantages of nature, and the use of the saine faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or sulajection." And those who wish for more 92 SECONDARY DERIVATION OF A FIRST PRINCIPLE.
authorities who have expressed the same conviction, may add the names of Judge Blackstone and " the judicious Hooker."
The sayings and doings of daily life continually imply some intuitive belief of this kind. We take for granted its uni- versahty, when we appeal to men's sense of justice. In moments of irritation it shows itself in such expressions as — " How would you like it? " " What is tliat to you? " "I \e as good a right as you," &c. Our praises of liberty are pervaded by it; and 'it gives bitterness to the invectives with which we assail the oppressors of mankind. Nay, indeed, so spontaneous is this faith in the equality of human rights, that our very lan- guage embodies it. Equity and e'jual are from the same root; and equity hterally means equalness.
It is manifest, moreover, that some such faith is continually increasing in strength. Rightly understood, the advance from a savage to a cultivated state is the advance of its dominion. It is by their greater harmony with it that the laws, opinions, and nsages of a civilized society are chiefly distinguished from those of a barbarous one. How instrumental it has been in modifying the events of the past was elsewhere hinted (p. 23). If we call to mind the politioal agitations that have run a successful com'se witliin these few years, and consider likewise those that are going on around us, we shall find them nearly all strongly tinctured by it. Nor can we contemplate the late European revolutions, and read the preambles to the new constitutions that have sprung out of them, without perceiving that a conviction of the equality of human rights is now stronger and more general than ever.
Not without meaning is the continued Ufe and gi'owth of this conviction. He must indeed have a strange way of interpreting social phenomena, who can believe that the re-appearance of it, with ever-increasing frequency, in laws, books, agitations, revolutions, means nothing. If we analyze them, we shall find all behefs to be in some way dependent upon mental confonna- tion — temporary ones upon temporary characteristics of our nature^ — permanent ones upon its pennanent characteristics.
SECONDARY DERIVATION OF A FIRST PRINCIPLE. 93 And wlien we find that a belief like this in the equal freedom of aU men, is not only permanent, but daily gaining ground, we have good reason to conclude that it corresponds to some essential element of our moral constitution: more especially since we find that its existence is in harmony with that chief pre-requisite to gi-eatest happiness lately dwelt upon; and that its growth is in harmony with that law of adaptation by which this greatest happiness is being wTought out.
Such, at least, is the hypotliesis here adopted. From the above accumulation of evidence it is inferred that there exists in man what may be termed an instinct of jiersonal rights — a feeling that leads him to claim as great a share of natural privilege as is claimed by others — a feehng that leads him to .repel anything like an encroachment upon what he thinks his sphere of original freedom. By virtue of this impulse, indi- viduals, as units of the social mass, tend to assume hke relation- ships with the atoms of matter, surrounded as these are by their respective atmosphei'es of repulsion as well as of attraction. And perhaps social stability may ultimately be seen to depend upon the due balance of these forces.
There exists, however, a dominant sect of so-called philoso- phical politicians who treat with contempt this behef that men have any claims antecedent to those endorsed by go- vernments. As disciples of Bentham, consistency requires them to do this. Accordingly, although it does violence to their secret perceptions, they boldly deny the existence of " rights " entirely. They nevertheless perpetually betray a belief in the doctrines which they professedly reject. They inadvertently talk about justice, especially when it concerns themselves, in much the same style as their opponents. They draw the same distinction between law and equity that other people do. They applaud _/««>««■«*, and honour, quite as if they thought them something more than mere words. And when robbed, or assaulted, or wrongly imprisoned, they exhibit 94 SECONDARY DERIVATION OF A FIRST PRINCIPLE.