Moral Science by Alexander Bain (top 20 books to read txt) 📖

enemies and seek to destroy each other. In such a case, it will be natural for any man to seek to secure himself by anticipating others in the use of force or wiles; and, because some will not be content with merely securing themselves, others, who would be content, will be driven to take the offensive for mere self-conservation. Moreover, men will be displeased at being valued by others less highly than by themselves, and will use force to extort respect.

Thus, he finds three principal causes of quarrel in the nature of man--_competition, diffidence_ (distrust), and _glory_, making men invade for gain, for safety, and for reputation. Men will accordingly, in the absence of any power to keep them in awe, be in a constant state of war; by which is meant, not actual fighting, but the known disposition thereto, and no assurance to the contrary.

He proceeds to draw a very dismal picture of the results of this state of enmity of man against man--no industry, no agriculture, no arts, no society, and so forth, but only fear and danger of violent death, and life solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. To those that doubt the truth of such an 'inference made from the passions,' and desire the confirmation of experience, he cites the wearing of arms and locking of doors, &c., as actions that accuse mankind as much as any words of his. Besides, it is not really to accuse man's nature; for the desires and passions are in themselves no sin, nor the actions proceeding from them, until a law is made against them. He seeks further evidence of an original condition of war, in the actual state of American savages, with no government at all, but only a concord of small families, depending on natural lust; also in the known horrors of a civil war, when there is no common power to fear: and, finally, in the constant hostile attitude of different governments.

In the state of natural war, the notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have no place, there being no law; and there is no law, because there is no common power. Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues. Justice is no faculty of body and mind like sense and passion, but only a quality relating to men in society. Then adding a last touch to the description of the state of nature,--by saying of property, that 'only that is every man's that he can get, and for so long as he can keep it,'--he opens up, at the close of the chapter, a new prospect by allowing a possibility to come out of so evil a condition. The possibility consists partly in the passions that incline to peace--viz., fear of death, desire of things necessary to commodious living, and hope by industry to obtain them; partly in reason, which suggests convenient articles of peace and agreement, otherwise called the Laws of Nature.

The first and second Natural Laws, and the subject of contracts, take up Chap. XIV. First comes a definition of _Jus Naturale_ or Right of Nature--the liberty each man has of using his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature or life. Liberty properly means the absence of external impediments; now a man may externally be hindered from doing all he would, but not from using what power is left him, according to his best reason and judgment. A Law of Nature, _lex naturalis_ is defined, a general rule, found out by reason, forbidding a man to do what directly or indirectly is destructive of his life, or to omit what he thinks may best preserve it. Right and Law, though generally confounded, are exactly opposed, Right being liberty, and Law obligation.

In the natural state of war, every man, being governed by his own reason, has a right to everything, even to another's body. But because thus no man's life is secure, he finds the First and fundamental law of nature, or general rule of reason, to be _to seek peace and follow it, if possible_: failing which, we may defend ourselves by all the means we can. Here the law being 'to endeavour peace,' from this follows the Second law, that a man be willing, when others are so too, as far forth as for peace and self-defence he shall think it necessary, to _lay down this right to all things_; and be contented with so much liberty against other men as he would allow other men against himself. This is the same as the Gospel precept, Do to others, &c.

Laying down one's right to anything is divesting one's self of the liberty of hindering another in the exercise of his own original right to the same. The right is _renounced_, when a man cares not for whose benefit; _transferred_, when intended to benefit some certain person or persons. In either case the man is _obliged_ or _bound_ not to hinder those, in whose favour the right is abandoned, from the benefit of it; it is his _duty_ not to make void his own voluntary act, and if he does, it is _injustice_ or _injury_, because he acts now _sine Jure_. Such conduct Hobbes likens to an intellectual absurdity or self-contradiction. Voluntary signs to be employed in abandoning a right, are words and actions, separately or together; but in all bonds, the strength comes not from their own nature, but from the fear of evil resulting from their rupture.

He concludes that not all rights are alienable, for the reason that the abandonment, being a voluntary act, must have for its object some good to the person that abandons his right. A man, for instance, cannot lay down the right to defend his life; to use words or other signs for that purpose, would be to despoil himself of the end--security of life and person--for which those signs were intended.

_Contract_ is the mutual transferring of right, and with this idea he connects a great deal. First, he distinguishes transference of right to a thing, and transference of the thing itself. A contract fulfilled by one party, but left on trust to be fulfilled by the other, is called the _Covenant_ of this other, (a distinction he afterwards drops), and leaves room for the keeping or violation of faith. To contract he opposes _gift, free-gift_, or _grace_, where there is no mutual transference of right, but one party transfers in the hope of gaining friendship or service from another, or the reputation of charity and magnanimity, or deliverance from the merited pain of compassion, or reward in heaven.

There follow remarks on signs of contract, as either express or by inference, and a distinction between free-gift as made by words of the present or past, and contract as made by words past, present, or future; wherefore, in contracts like buying and selling, a promise amounts to a covenant, and is obligatory.

The idea of _Merit_ is thus explained. Of two contracting parties, the one that has first performed merits what he is to receive by the other's performance, or has it as _due_. Even the person that wins a prize, offered by free-gift to many, merits it. But, whereas, in contract, I merit by virtue of my own power and the other contractor's need, in the case of the gift, I merit only by the benignity of the giver, and to the extent that, when he has given it, it shall be mine rather than another's. This distinction he believes to coincide with the scholastic separation of _merilum congrui_ and _merilum condigni_.

He adds many more particulars in regard to covenants made on mutual trust. They are void in the state of nature, upon any reasonable suspicion; but when there is a common power to compel observance, and thus no more room for fear, they are valid. Even when fear makes them invalid it must have arisen after they were made, else it should have kept them from being made. Transference of a right implies transference, as far as may be, of the means to its enjoyment. With beasts there is no covenant, because no proper mutual understanding. With God also none, except through special revelation, or with his lieutenant in his name. Anything vowed contrary to the law of nature is vowed in vain; if the thing vowed is commanded by the law of nature, the law, not the vow, binds. Covenants are of things possible and future. Men are freed from them by performance, or forgiveness, which is restitution of liberty. He pronounces covenants extorted by fear to be binding alike in the state of mere nature and in commonwealths, if once entered into. A former covenant makes void a later. Any covenant not to defend one's self from force by force is always void; as said above, there is no transference possible of right to defend one's self from death, wounds, imprisonment, &c. So no man is obliged to accuse himself, or generally to give testimony where from the nature of the case it may be presumed to be corrupted. Accusation upon torture is not to be reputed as testimony. At the close he remarks upon oaths. He finds in human nature two imaginable helps to strengthen the force of words, otherwise too weak to insure the performance of covenants. One of these--_pride_ in appearing not to need to break one's word, he supposes too rare to be presumed upon. The other, _fear_, has reference either to power of spirits invisible, or of men. In the state of nature, it is the first kind of fear--a man's religion--that keeps him to his promises. An oath is therefore swearing to perform by the God a man fears. But to the obligation itself it adds nothing.

Of the other Laws of Nature, treated in Chap. XV., the third, _that men perform their covenants made_, opens up the discussion of _Justice_. Till rights have been transferred and covenants made there is no justice or injustice; injustice is no other than the non-performance of covenants. Further, justice (and also property) begins only where a regular coercive power is constituted, because otherwise there is cause for fear, and fear, as has been seen, makes covenants invalid. Even the scholastic definition of justice recognizes as much; for there can be no constant will of giving to every man his own, when, as in the state of nature, there is no _own_. He argues at length against the idea that justice, _i.e._, the keeping of covenants, is contrary to reason; repelling three different arguments. (1) He demonstrates that it cannot be reasonable to break or keep covenants according to benefit supposed to be gained in each case, because this would be a subversion of the principles whereon society is founded, and must end by depriving the individual of its benefits, whereby he would be left perfectly helpless. (2) He considers it frivolous to talk of securing the happiness of heaven by any kind of injustice, when there is but one possible way of attaining it, viz., the keeping of covenants. (3) He warns men (he means his contemporaries) against resorting to the mode of injustice known as rebellion to gain sovereignty, from the hopelessness of gaining it and the uncertainty of keeping it. Hence he concludes that justice is a rule of reason, the keeping of covenants being the surest way to preserve our life, and therefore a law of nature. He rejects the notion that laws of nature are to be supposed conducive, not to the preservation of life on earth, but to the attainment of eternal felicity; whereto such breach of covenant as rebellion may sometimes be supposed a means. For that, the knowledge of the future life is too uncertain. Finally, he consistently holds that faith is to be kept with heretics and with all