IN the foregoing essay I have endeavoured to point out the inconsistency between Mr. Spencer's political individualism and the scientific conception of society, which he himself has done so much to develop and to teach. The former is a "survival" from the so-called "philosophical radicalism," which flourished in Mr. Spencer's early days, and it is a survival which vitiates his whole political thinking. In the present essay I propose to examine a few other points in Mr. Spencer's attack upon the State. SI. THE SINS OF LEGISLATORS. In the essay on "The Sins of Legislators," Mr. Spencer appears to maintain that, because governments in the past have made great errors, therefore they can never be trusted to do well; 1 because sumptuary laws were mistaken, sanitary legislation is mischievous. Is there not such a thing as learning by blunders in individual life? And may not a 1 The Man versus the State, p. 43. nation learn in the same way? Because we have been unsuccessful hitherto in one direction, are we to give up every attempt in other directions? “To behave well, do nothing at all," thought Hans, the awkward youth in the German story; and Mr. Spencer appears to think with him. I might as well argue that because (in Mr. Spencer's opinion) all philosophers in the past have been mistaken, therefore Mr. Spencer must be mistaken also. On the other hand, he argues that, since inventions have been made and trade has grown and languages have been developed without the State doing anything, government action should not be much esteemed.1 I might perhaps similarly argue that, because all these good things have come about without Mr. Spencer's philosophy, therefore Mr. Spencer's philosophy is of little worth; but I am aware that such a mode of argument is fallacious, and think it more important to raise the question, Whether all these good things have happened without the help of the State? Mr. Spencer's inductions derived presumably from the tables of descriptive sociology, remind one of the story (referred to by Bacon) about the votive offerings hung up 1 The Man versus the State, p. 63. by those who escaped shipwreck, nothing being said about those who had been drowned. Mr. Spencer's historical scraps are like these votive offerings. The ill successes of English sanitary legislation are recounted, but nothing is said about those countries. which have had no sanitary legislation at all (pp. 57, 58, and note on p. 57). It is true, that where there are no drains at all, there can be no typhoid fever produced by bad drains; in the good old days before sanitary legislation they had the plague instead. "Uninstructed legislators," we are told, "have continually increased human suffering in their endeavours to mitigate it." Of course we do not know what blessed results might follow from legislators brought up on Mr. Spencer's writings, or perhaps from hereditary legislators in whom the whole system of synthetic philosophy had by descent acquired the character of relatively à priori truth. We can only compare countries we actually know about; and though doubtless our uninstructed legislators have blundered frightfully, yet we think, on the whole, we are not so badly off as some people who have never had Parliaments to make blunders at all. Let us improve our legislature, educate our legislators, codify our laws, by all means; but it is childish to argue that, because three thousand Acts of Parlia |
