Chapter 33

OF THE STATE.

SECTION I.--_Of the Monstrosities called Leviathan and Social Contract_.

1. Thomas Hobbes, than whom never was greater genius for riding an idea, right or wrong, to the full length that it will go, was born in 1588: and notwithstanding his twelve pipes of tobacco daily, his vigorous constitution endured to his ninety-second year. The first half of his life fell in with the age of the greatest predominance of Calvinism. In religion he was scarcely a Calvinist, indeed he laboured under a suspicion of atheism: but his philosophy is accurately cast in the mould of the grim theology of Geneva. We may call it the philosophy of Calvinism. It has for its central tenet, that human nature either was from the first, or is become, bad, "desperately wicked," depraved, corrupt, and utterly abominable, so that whatever is natural to man, in so far forth as it is natural, is simply evil. The remedy for our evil nature Hobbes finds in no imputed merits of a Redeemer, no irresistible victorious grace, but in the masterful coercion of a despotic civil power. But, lest any one should suspect that there was at least this good in man, a propensity to civil society and obedience to the rulers of cities, Hobbes insists that man is by nature wholly averse to society with his kind: that the type of the race is an Ishmael, "a wild man, his hand against all men, and all men's hands against him:" in fact that the state of nature is a state of war all round. He writes (_Leviathan_, c. xiii.): "Men have no pleasure, but on the contrary a great deal of grief, in keeping company where there is no power able to overawe them all. For every man looketh that his companion should value him at the same rate he sets on himself; and upon all signs of contempt or undervaluing naturally endeavours, as far as he dares (which among them that have no common power to keep them quiet, is far enough to make them destroy each other), to extort a greater value from his contemners by damage, and from others by the example.... Hereby it is manifest, that during the time that men live without a power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war, and such a war as is of every man against every man.... In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth: no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea: no commodious building: no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force: no knowledge of the face of the earth: no account of time: no arts, no letters, no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.... To this war of every man against every man this also is consequent, that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have there no place. Where there is no common power there is no law: where no law, no injustice.... It is consequent also to the same condition, that there be no propriety, no dominion, no _mine_ and _thine_ distinct, but only that to be every man's that he can get, and for so long as he can keep it."

2. Such is what Hobbes is pleased to call "the natural condition of mankind," a condition which man would have every natural reason for getting out of with all speed, were he ever so unhappy as to fall into it. It is true that, apart from civil government, violence would reign on earth. But it is not true that to live apart from civil government is the natural condition of mankind. It is not true that the only motive which draws men into civil society is the fear of violence, as though there were no such facts and exigencies of human nature as sympathy, friendship, intellectual curiosity, art, religion. It is not true that the one reason for the existence of the civil power consists in this, that without the restraining hand of the magistrate men would bite and devour one another. Lastly, it is not true that all rights, notably rights of property, are the creation of the State. A man is a man first and a citizen afterwards. As a man, he has certain rights actual and potential (c. v., s. i., p. 244): these the State exists, not to create, for they are prior to it in the order of nature, but to determine them, where indeterminate, to sanction and to safeguard them.

Natural rights go before legal rights, and are presupposed to them, as the law of nature before that law which is civil and positive. It is an "idol of the tribe" of lawyers to ignore all law but that upon which their own professional action takes its stand.

3. "In considering man as he must have come from the hands of nature," writes Jean Jacques Rousseau, "I behold an animal less strong than some, less active than others, but upon the whole in organism having the advantage of them all. I behold him appeasing his hunger under an oak, slaking his thirst in the first brook, finding a bed at the foot of the same tree that furnished his repast, and there you have all his cravings satisfied." (_Discours sur l'origine de l'inégalité _.) This noble savage--quite a contrast to Hobbes's ruffian primeval, "nasty, brutish," and short-lived--observes and imitates the industry, and gradually raises himself to the instinct, of the beasts among whom he lives. His constitution is robust, and almost inaccessible to malady. He attains to old age, free from gout and rheumatism. He surpasses the fiercest wild beasts in address as much as they surpass him in strength, and so arrives to dwell among them without fear. Yet withal he is distinguished from brutes by freewill and perfectibility, qualities which gradually draw him out of his primeval condition of tranquil innocence, lead him through a long course of splendours and errors, of vices and virtues, and end by making him a tyrant at once over nature and over himself.

4. Rousseau's life, 1715-1778, was a continual protest against the formalism, affectation, pedantry and despotism of the age of the Bourbons. His ideal of man was the unconventional, unconstrained, solitary, but harmless and easy-going savage. Hobbes was the growth of a sterner and more serious age. The only reality to him in heaven and on earth was force: his one idea in philosophy was coercion. Human nature to him was an embodiment of brute violence ever in need of violent restraint. Rousseau, an optimist, saw nothing but good in man's original nature: to the pessimist mind of Hobbes all was evil there. Neither of them saw any natural adaptation to social life in the human constitution. To live in society was, in both their views, an artificial arrangement, an arbitrary convention. But Hobbes found in the intolerable evils of a state of nature an excellent reason why men should quit it for the unnatural condition of citizens. Rousseau found no reason except, as he says, _quelque funeste hasard_. The problem for Hobbes stood thus: how men, entering society, might be "cribbed, cabined, and confined" to the utmost in order to keep down their native badness. Rousseau's concern was, how one might so become a citizen as yet to retain to the full the delightful liberty of a tropical savage. Hobbes's solution is the _Leviathan_, Rousseau's the _Social Contract_. The prize, we think, rests with the Englishman: but the reader shall judge.

5. And first of the Social Contract. Rousseau proposes "to find a form of association which shall defend and protect with all the strength of the community the person and the goods of each associate, and whereby each one, uniting himself to all, may nevertheless obey none but himself and remain as free as before." (_Contrat Social_, i. 6.) This proposal is hopeless, it is a contradiction in terms. No man can contract and remain as free as before, but he binds himself either under a _wider_ obligation to do or abstain, where he was not bound before, or under a _stronger_ obligation where he was bound already. Nevertheless Rousseau finds a means of accomplishing the impossible and the self-contradictory. "Each of us puts into a common stock his person and all his power under the supreme direction of the general will; and we receive in our turn the offering of the rest, each member as an inseparable part of the whole. Instantly, instead of the private person of each contracting party, this act of association produces a moral and collective body, composed of as many members as the assembly has voices, which body receives by this same act its unity, its common Ego, its life and its will." (_ib_.) This awful signing away of all your rights, so that your very personality is merged in that of the community--a self-renunciation going far beyond that of profession in any religious order--ought certainly, as Rousseau says, to be "the most voluntary act in the world;" and he adds the characteristic reason: "every man being born free and master of himself, none can, under any pretence whatsoever, subject him without his own consent." (_Contrat Social_, iv. 2.) Then you ask: When have I made this large contract by the most voluntary act in the world? Rousseau replies: "When the State is instituted, consent is in residing." (_ib_.) But, you reply, my residence is anything but the most voluntary act in the world: it would be awkward for me to emigrate; and if I did emigrate, it would only be to some other State: I cannot possibly camp out and be independent in the woods, nor appease my hunger under an oak. To this plea Rousseau quite gives in, remarking that "family, goods, the want of an asylum, necessity, violence, may keep an inhabitant in the country in spite of himself; and in that case his mere sojourn no longer supposes his consent to the contract." (_ib_.) Then none of us have made the contract, for we have never had the option of living anywhere except in some State.

6. Hobbes, after laying down the necessity of men combining for protection against mutual injustice, observes that a mere promise or agreement not to injure any one will not suffice: "for the agreement of men is by covenant only, which is artificial; and therefore no wonder if there be something else required besides covenant to make their agreement constant and lasting, which is a common power to keep them in awe and to direct their actions to the common benefit." He continues: "The only way to erect such a common power ... is to confer all their power and strength upon one man or upon one assembly of men, that may reduce all their wills by plurality of voices unto one will: which is as much as to say, to appoint one man or assembly of men to bear their person; and every one to own, and to acknowledge himself to be the author of, whatsoever he that so beareth their person shall act or cause to be acted in those things which concern the common peace and safety; and therein to submit their wills every one to his will, and their judgments to his judgment. This is more than consent or concord,--it is a real unity of them all in one and the same person, made by covenant of every man with every man, in such manner as if every man should say to every man: I authorise, and give up my right of governing myself to this man or to this assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy right to him, and authorise all his actions in like manner. This done, the multitude so united in one person is called a _commonwealth_, in Latin _civitas_. This is the generation of that great Leviathan, or rather, to speak more reverently, of that mortal god, to whom we owe under the immortal God our peace and defence." (_Leviathan_, c. xvii.) This idea of all the rights and personalities of the individuals who contract to live socially being fused and welded together into the one resultant personality and power of the State, has evidently been borrowed by Rousseau from Hobbes. We shall deal with the idea presently. Meanwhile several points claim our notice.

7. The hideous piece of cynicism whereby Rousseau (_Contrat Social_,