ART. VII.-SPENCER'S SOCIAL STATICS.

Social Statics; or, the Conditions essential to Human Happiness specified, and the first of them developed. By HERBERT SPENCER. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1865.

MR. HERBERT SPENCER is a clear reasoner. He writes good English; and, for an Englishman, he is brave in following out an idea to its consequences, and accepting the legitimate results of his own principles. These mental and moral qualities are enough to give the collection of his rather hasty reviews a good deal of deserved popularity. That popularity will be rather increased than lessened by the republication of "Social Statics."

It is, however, rather a pity, if you can help it, to rake out a book fifteen years old, and reprint it, when those fifteen years have all been engaged in experiments and discussions upon the subject involved. Excepting books of pure speculation or of high genius, every generation has to write its own books; and there are indeed many books of pure speculation and high genius which do not deserve to outlive the generation of men in which they were born. There is nothing in "Social Statics" to make it one of the exceptions. Counting a generation at thirty-three years then, fifteen thirty-thirds of this book, at the least, have to be floated up by what is left. The illustrations borrowed from English politics and English scandal of 1848 and 1849, are not very piquant now, and, being mostly forgotten in themselves, do not illustrate a great deal. And so the author has to explain, in a prefatory note, that the book must not be taken as a literal expression of his present views. All we have got, therefore, is an authoritative document as to what Mr. Spencer thought in December, 1850. He does not think the same things now. Thus "the bases of morality," as explained here, "are but adumbrations of what he holds to be the truth now." "They form but a moiety of the groundwork of a scientific VOL. LXXIX.- -5TH S. VOL. XVII. NO. II.

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system of ethics."-"The chapters on the rights of women and on the rights of children" need qualification, and so on. Such large retractations as these lead one to wonder a little why the book is reprinted at all. But there is left, undoubtedly, a theory of society; and this is so boldly put, and so distinctly explained, as to be worth study.

In an introductory notice, which explains by extracts from a pamphlet of Mr. Spencer's the odd accident by which the very inadequate name of "Social Statics" happened to be given to this book, he says himself, very happily, that his aim is not the increase of authoritative control over citizens, but the decrease of it. "A more pronounced individualism, instead of a more pronounced nationalism, is the ideal of this treatise." "Society," he holds, "is to be re-organized only by the accumulated effects of habit upon character." That is, as men become better, society will have less and less to do with controlling them; and, when all is well, there will be no government at all. This is the central theory of the book.

In plan, it is divided into five parts. The first annihilates the doctrine of expediency, as held by Bentham; and, with great distinctness of statement and illustration, substantiates the existence, and asserts the province, of the moral sense. The second part, defining morality first, argues the steady evanescence of evil from the world; and then claims that the divine idea, or the creative purpose, is the greatest happiness of men. This need not be the immediate aim of man, however. The fatal error of the expediency philosophers has been to suppose that it is. Man's business is to ascertain the conditions by conforming to which the greatest happiness of the race will ultimately be obtained. As the social state exists in spite of us, these conditions are stated thus: First and all-essential, Justice; supplementary to this, Negative Beneficence, or abstaining from injuring others; secondary to this, among sympathetic beings, there must be positive benevolence; and, lastly, under these limitations, each individual "shall perform those acts required to fill up the measure of his own private happiness," or, as the gentle reader would be more apt to say, "shall do as he likes."

From these foundations there is wrought out, by different processes, in the next part, the "first principle" of the book, which is, that

"Every man has freedom to do all he wills, provided he infringe not the equal freedom of any other man."

Any qualifications of this principle, however necessary, must remain for private and individual application, and cannot be recognized in the just regulation of a community. This principle is then applied to the rights of life and personal liberty, the right to the use of the earth, the right of property, the right of property in ideas, the right of property in character, the right of exchange, the right of free speech, the rights of women and children, and some further rights.

The next part applies the general principle to political rights, as the duty of the State, and the limit of that duty; to national education, and similar offices which have been assumed by organized governments. The last part is a summary of conclusions.

Scattered among these discussions, there are some fine passages of eloquence and beauty on the possible charm of human society. There is an exquisite and very valuable statement of man's sympathy with other men, as supplying much of the working power of man's life. The greatest mutual dependence is held up as one of the triumphs which we shall attain in the perfect world. Yet this greatest mutual dependence is to be joined with the highest individuation. By the highest individuation is meant the most perfect separation of each man, as an atom or unit, from all other men. And, as the undercurrent of the whole book, it is clear enough that, for all the rhetoric about sympathy, Mr. Spencer considers society as a sad bore after all. He repeats with enthusiasm a fancy of Coleridge's, that the true idea of life is a tendency to individuation; and undertakes, in a specific illustration, to show, that from the sponges to the Alcyonidae, from these to the Corallids, and from these higher yet, the lowest of animals ascend as they gain more individuality and more. He thus, consciously or unconsciously, argues that

the human race will attain its perfection when the individual men and women are most widely separated; that Simon Stylites and Alexander Selkirk are thus far the most successful men, and Robinson Crusoe, till he was cursed by Friday's arrival, the most successful idea of manhood; indeed, that solitary confinement for life, as occasionally ordered for the most depraved of criminals, really gives to them, after lives of worthlessness, one happy dream of the ultimate perfection of mankind.

The true theory of the human race is precisely opposed to this. Fichte states it very precisely, where he says the human race is the individual, of which separate men and women are the several necessary organs, each necessary, even essential, to the welfare of all the others. St. Paul had stated it better, in some memoranda of his, made centuries before.

Because Mr. Spencer's book works out with great gallantry and precision the unsocial view of society, it has a decided interest for people who believe with us, that man is a gregarious animal; that the existence of a family is not an accident, but a result of the creative design; that society has an organic life, all its own, and is not a mere heap of separate individual lives; and that government always has a divine element in it, and in the end will be thoroughly divine, or the kingdom of heaven.

We do not propose, in the few pages we can assign to this history of what Mr. Spencer thought in 1850, to follow this contrast in the speculative discussion of the theory of individuation. We shall merely trace it in one or two of the brilliant illustrations where Mr. Spencer carries his theory into practice.

First of all, as we have intimated, before Mr. Spencer was a philosopher, he was an Englishman. And, though he is perhaps the very boldest of English speculators, there is always the very drollest reference to English customs and precedents, as if," of course, you know," there were no others worth considering in the world. The Americans are justly thought to

hold a good opinion of themselves; yet we remember no American writer of philosophy, who would venture on a statement so charmingly cool as this:

"The English national character, as contrasted with that of other races, will supply a further illustration. We are universally distinguished for our jealous love of freedom, for the firm maintenance of our rights. At the same time, we are not less distinguished for the greater equity of our general conduct."

Starting on as comfortable a theory as this, Mr. Spencer illustrates the practices of government purely from those of England. His allusion to administration in other countries are always inadequate, often mistaken. Now the English administration, however good it may be thought, and he certainly thinks it very poor, is simply the administration of an oligarchy. Claim, if you please, that the members of that oligarchy are saints, still they are an oligarchy, — a handful of men governing a much larger number. When Mr. Spencer, then, in discussing the interference of Government with the management of affairs, as of lighthouses, post-offices, banking or trade, clinches his argument by showing how the English Government has failed, he only proves what all the world outside of England knew very well before, that the English Government is a very imperfect one, and that England is not very fortunate in her system. To show that Parliament has legislated ill for silk-weavers or cotton-spinners, is only to show that an assembly elected mostly by landed proprietors, educated to preserve game and write Latin verses, cannot and will not understand rightly the interests of manufactures. But how if you enlarge the constituency of that legislature? How if you open the lines of promotion, so that every living man votes, and every living man is a candidate for your Parliament? Then, in the long run, you will have legislative bodies which will embrace men of very wide experience, of very curious information, and who will respect the knowledge of experts about their own affairs to the very fullest. On the other hand, each interest will be quite jealous enough of favors or advantages extended to others. Such a