Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/868

848 treatment for the partially supernatural explanations implied in Social Statics, has made a freer use of the inductive method in support of his deduced principles of ethical and social growth, and has given the law of relativity greater prominence as influencing his practical conclusions, some of which, as expressed tentatively in Social Statics, have been modified or rejected in the present volume.

Defining the objective law of subhuman justice as that social condition wherein "each individual shall receive the benefits and evils of its own nature and its consequent conduct," Mr. Spencer also points out that among gregarious creatures this objective law is modified by the necessity for self-subordination and occasional self-sacrifice in the interest of the species. Human justice is simply a natural development of subhuman justice. The growing necessity for cooperation imposes an increasing obligation for individual restraint; and the social sentiments, of which the sentiment of justice is chief in importance, are correspondingly evolved.

An important difference is pointed out between family ethics and the ethics of the state. In the former the obligations of parents are conditioned upon the children's needs, while in the latter obligations are proportioned to the nature and actions rather than the needs of the individual. A clear distinction is drawn between the sentiment of justice and the idea of justice. The former may be strong, while the latter is relatively weak. Men may understand clearly that they ought to deal justly by their neighbors, but have a very imperfect comprehension of the course of action which justice requires. The primary characteristic of the idea of justice, contrary to the popular understanding, is that of inequality. The natures and consequent activities of individuals are greatly unequal. Justice, therefore, requires that they shall receive correspondingly unequal rewards. The spheres or opportunities of all, however, should be mutually bounded, and hence approximately equal. The formula of justice may accordingly be expressed by saying, "Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man."

Mr. Spencer incidentally defends with great ability the approximate validity of fixed intuitions or deductions against the positivistic disciples of an exclusively inductive method of reasoning. Such intuitions, he shows, "must have been established by that intercourse with things, which, through an enormous past, has, directly or indirectly, determined the organization of the nervous system and certain resulting necessities of thought." Ethical intuitions, however, require the correction of methodic criticism and the application of inductive tests. Both methods work together for the discovery of truth.

In the subsequent chapters the rights and duties of individuals and governments are deduced from the foregoing principles. Man's fundamental right is declared to be that of physical integrity. Under the law of relative ethics this right can only be perfectly maintained in a state of permanent peace. The rights of man to free motion and locomotion are next asserted—rights which conflict, of course, with all forms of serfdom or slavery. The recognition of these rights is said to have been of very recent origin. In early times "the conception of freedom as an inalienable right had little or no place either in ethics or law. . . . Neither Christ nor his apostles denounced slavery." It may, however, be maintained by Christian apologists that certain seed principles contained in the Gospels are in logical conflict with slavery, and exerted a powerful though indirect influence toward its overthrow.

In the important chapter on The Right to the Uses of Natural Media, after noticing some of the habitual infringements on the admitted right of all to free light and air—as by smokers in public places, injurious fumes from chemical works, bad street music, etc.—Mr. Spencer attacks the much agitated land question. He reaffirms the principle laid down in Social Statics, that all men have a natural right to the use of the soil—a right which, he strongly asserts, has everywhere been alienated by force and fraud. Its fundamental character is now tacitly admitted, however, he claims, in the universally recognized principle of eminent domain, in defense of which he quotes Sir Frederick Pollock. His final conclusions on this subject, however, will not be acceptable