ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841 - 1901)
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ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841 - 1901) |
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{The Coming Terror 1891}
1 THE COMING TERROR: AND URBANUS, A COCKNEY. _____ 3
THE COMING TERROR: AND URBANUS, A COCKNEY. _____
URBANUS. I have often wondered, my dear Alienatus, at the very scant respect you seem to pay to lawfully constituted authority, and to those who have been termed, and rightly, the leaders of mankind. This attitude of irreverence, combined with a disposition to enter into combat with any individual, however ignoble and unworthy, who throws down to you the gage of battle, has prejudiced many intelligent people against you. For myself, I love a quiet life, and cannot understand the temperament which disturbs itself with social and political shadows; and I think, if you will permit me to say so, that your position in the world would have been very different if you had, like certain other poets, led ‘a philosopher’s life in the quiet woodland ways’—in other words, let the squabbles of the world alone, and confined your attention to literature pure and simple. _____ 41 A CONTROVERSY. _____ 43
ARE MEN BORN FREE AND EQUAL? *
NO more crowning illustration of the incapacity of the scientific mind to grasp philosophical propositions could possibly be found than the criticism of the Socialistic theories of Rousseau, just published by Professor Huxley in the Nineteenth Century. Admirably as he is equipped for the light skirmishing of popular knowledge, Professor Huxley fails altogether to understand the great French idealist, just as surely as he fails, in his perversion of Herbert Spencer, to grasp the meaning of our greatest English philosopher; and both in the matter of his argument and in the manner of its expression, he exhibits the logical insecurity of the specialist transformed into the dilettante. Great wisdom and insight, attaining to almost prophetic vision, cannot be combated by the random shots of mere intelligence, and all the Professor’s cleverness, all his liberal culture, — * The following letters appeared in the Daily Telegraph in January and February, 1890. They originated in the attempt of Professor Huxley to discredit Mr. Spencer’s theory of absolute political ethics. — 44 does not save him from the fate of those who criticise great propaganda unsympathetically, and from the outside. So serious a social issue, however, hangs on the advocacy by a distinguished man of retrograde and anti-human political theories, that it may be worth while to point out the fallacy, nay, the absurdity, of Professor Huxley’s main contention. I am, etc.,
[To the above letter Professor Huxley first replied as follows, but in the meantime an editorial article had appeared commenting somewhat adversely on my suggestions.]
To the Editor of the ‘Daily Telegraph.’ SIR, I am, faithfully yours, 53 To the Editor of the ‘Daily Telegraph.’ SIR, ‘Le passé n’est pour nous qu’un triste souvenir; So sang Voltaire. A colossal Hand, which some call the hand of Destiny and others that of Humanity, is putting out the lights of Heaven one by one, like candles after a feast. It behoves us, then, to watch heedfully that the same Hand, having emptied the heavens, does not touch the lowly but life-illumining lights of Earth. The fairest of these lights is Liberty, is the principle of natural freedom and equality, without which individual growth would be impossible, and social organization, as men now understand it, an impossibility. I am, etc., P.S.—Some idea of the absurdities of Over-legislation may be gathered from the regulations of Saint Just, quoted in Von Sybel’s ‘History of the French Revolution’: No servants, no gold and silver utensils, no child under sixteen to eat 69 meat, nor any adult to eat meat on three days of the decade; boys at the age of seven to be handed over to the national school, where they will be taught to speak little, to endure hardships, and to train for war; divorce to be free to all; friendship ordained a public institution, every citizen on attaining majority being bound to proclaim his friends, and if he had none, to be banished; if any one committed a crime, his friends were to be banished, etc. This, it must be admitted, is the Code of Nature with a vengeance!
[My second letter caused Professor Huxley to break his vow of silence, and answer as follows:]
To the Editor of the ‘Daily Telegraph.’ SIR, —* What, no one? — 72 over-legislation, by a worshipper of Rousseau. An ingrained habit of scientific grovelling among facts has led me to the conclusion that Jacobin Over-legislation was a direct consequence of Rousseauism. These gentlemen guillotined the people who did not care to be free and equal and brotherly in their fashion. If anyone doubt the fact, I would advise him to read M. Taine’s volume on the ‘Jacobin Conquest of France,’ which is all the more interesting just now, as it affords the best of commentaries on the Parnellite conquest of Southern Ireland. I am, sir,
To the Editor of the ‘Daily Telegraph.’ SIR, —* For ‘Socialism’ read ‘Communism,’ and this is true.—R. B. — 75 from external enemies. Contrariwise, every form of what is called ‘Individualism’ restricts the functions of government, in some or in all directions, to the discharge of internal and external police duties, or, in the case of Anarchist Individualism, still further. Scientifically founded by Locke, applied to economics by the laissez-faire philosophers of the eighteenth century, exhaustively stated by Wilhelm von Humboldt, and developed, in this country, with admirable consistency and irrefutable reasoning (the premisses being granted) by Mr. Auberon Herbert, I had always imagined Individualism to have one of its most passionate advocates in Mr. Spencer. I had fondly supposed, until Mr. Robert Buchanan taught me better, that if there was any charge Mr. Spencer would find offensive, it would be that of being declared to be, in any shape or way, a Socialist. Can it be possible that a little work of Mr. Spencer’s, ‘The Man versus the State,’ published only six years ago, is not included by Mr. Buchanan among the ‘more recent writings’ of which he speaks, as, perhaps, too popular for his notice? I am, Sir,
To the Editor of the ‘Daily Telegraph.’ SIR, ‘An tenebras Orci visat vastasque lacunas.’ And when he emerges into common daylight what has he to tell us? Not the grand truths which he and others have won honour by advocating, but trivial ipse dixit statements, not to be verified in any daylight whatever. His one ruling idea concerning men is that they must be ‘governed’—washed, cleaned, assorted, parcelled out and labelled, educated up to the theory that there is a political ‘statute of limitations,’ and that the force of a special governmental Providence is a thing not to be resisted. I am, etc.,
To the Editor of the ‘Daily Telegraph.’ SIR, —* ‘Facts’ in my letter was a misprint for ‘facets.’— 90 of absolute political ethics—together with the question whether Mr. Buchanan is entitled to cite a work which Mr. Spencer has repudiated—to be further discussed by those who may be interested in such topics, of whom I am not one (!). I am, your obedient servant,
To the Editor of the ‘Daily Telegraph.’ SIR, I am, etc.,
[This discussion ended with the following energetic letter from Mr. Herbert Spencer:]
To the Editor of the ‘ Daily Telegraph.’ SIR, ‘As no cruel thing can be done without character being thrust a degree back towards barbarism, so no kind thing can be done without character being moved a degree forward towards perfection. Doubly efficacious, therefore, are all assuagings of distress, instigated by sympathy; for not only do they remedy the particular evils to be met, but they help to mould humanity into a form by which such evils will one day be precluded’ (pp. 318, 319, 1st edit.). Professor Huxley’s ingenuity as a controversialist, great though it is, will, I fancy, fail to disclose the ‘reasoned savagery’ contained in these sentences. Should he say that, during the forty years which have elapsed since they were written, my views have changed from a more humane to a less humane form, and that I would now see the struggle for existence, with resulting survival of 94 the fittest, carried on without check, then I meet the allegation by another extract. In the ‘Principles of Sociology,’ sec. 322, I have explained at some length that every species of creature can continue to exist only by conforming to two opposed principles—one for the life of the immature, and the other for the life of the mature. The law for the immature is, that benefits received shall be great in proportion as worth is small; while for the mature the law is, that benefits received shall be great in proportion as worth is great—worth being measured by efficiency for the purposes of life. The corollary, as applied to social affairs, runs as follows: ‘Hence the necessity of maintaining this cardinal distinction between the ethics of the family and the ethics of the State. Hence the fatal result if family disintegration [referring to a view of Sir Henry Maine] goes so far that family policy and State policy become confused. Unqualified generosity must remain the principle of the family while offspring are passing through their early stages; and generosity increasingly qualified by justice must remain its principle as offspring are approaching maturity. Conversely, the principle of the society guiding the acts of citizens to one another must ever be justice, qualified by such generosity as their several natures prompt; joined with unqualified justice in the corporative acts of the society to its members. However fitly in the battle of life among adults the proportioning of 95 rewards to merits may be tempered by private sympathy in favour of the inferior, nothing but evil can result if this proportioning is so interfered with by public arrangements that demerit profits at the expense of merit.’ Still more recently has there been again set forth this general view. In ‘The Man versus the State,’ pp. 64-67, along with the assertion that ‘society in its corporate capacity cannot, without immediate or remoter disaster, interfere with the play of these opposed principles, under which every species has reached such fitness for its mode of life as it possesses,’ there goes a qualification like that above added. ‘I say advisedly—society in its corporate capacity, not intending to exclude or condemn aid given to the inferior by the superior in their individual capacities. Though, when given so indiscriminately as to enable the inferior to multiply, such aid entails mischief; yet in the absence of aid given by society, individual aid, more generally demanded than now, and associated with a greater sense of responsibility, would, on the average, be given with the effect of fostering the unfortunate worthy rather than the innately unworthy; there being always, too, the concomitant social benefit arising from culture of the sympathies.’ In other places the like is expressed or implied, but it is needless to cite further evidence. The 96 passages I have quoted will make sufficiently clear the opinion I have all along held, and still hold; and everyone will be able to judge whether this opinion is rightly characterized by the phrase ‘reasoned savagery.’ HERBERT SPENCER.
FINAL NOTE ON THE DISCUSSION. It will be seen that much of the question, ‘Are men born free and equal?’ became merged in the other question, ‘What is Socialism?’ My answer to that question—i.e., that true Socialism was a combination to protect the rights of individuals—was paradoxical enough to puzzle rny friend Mr. Spencer, and I had neither the time nor the opportunity to explain my meaning fully.I have no more sympathy than Mr. Spencer himself (as I have shown elsewhere) with any kind of tyrannous organization, whether framed in the name of vested interests or in the name of the people. True Socialism—the Science of Sentiment—to which I adhere, fetters no man’s moral activity, limits no man’s character, restricts no man’s evolution: ‘No man can save another’s Soul, And what the individual man cannot do, cannot be done by any organization of men. Thus I stand, with Mr. Spencer, for the spread of the sense of 97 moral responsibility, for individual effort and energization; while Professor Huxley stands for the status quo, for Beneficent Legislation, for Providence made Easy. As little as either of these teachers do I see hope or find comfort in the savagery of false Socialism, in the Anarchy of Ignorance, in the terrorism of the emerging Demogorgon. Far as I follow Mr. Spencer, however, in his masterly abstract statements, there is a point where even a disciple and a friend may hesitate. I cannot calmly leave the regeneration of things evil to the slow and certain evolution of the corporate conscience; I feel that there is much to be said for the advocates of a more active social reorganization, and I am not so convinced as Mr. Spencer of the necessary sacredness of contracts, or of the wisdom of holding them inviolable. It would not be difficult, I think, to define the limits within which even State Socialism is expedient and beneficial. Nothing certainly can be more terrible than the existing condition of things, both social and political, and all efforts to mend that condition, be they ever so revolutionary, have my sympathy. It is quite clear, therefore, that I do not follow the Prophet with my eyes shut, and I can quite understand that Mr. Spencer must have considered me, in more than one expression of opinion, a Devil’s Advocate. R. B. _____
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