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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to his merits and faculties ; and an altru- 

 istic one, by virtue of which he recog- 

 nizes the right of others to such benefits 

 as may be due to their merits or may 

 flow from a proper use of their facul- 

 ties. These two elements Mr. Spencer 

 also calls positive and negative the for- 

 mer positive, as putting forward positive 

 claims ; the latter negative, as implying 

 a restraint upon natural liberty. 



Another important distinction which 

 Mr. Spencer makes is between the ethics 

 of the family and the ethics of the state. 

 In the family the young have to be cared 

 for, and, in their case, benefits have to 

 be proportioned, not to merits, but to 

 needs, which, in a certain sense, may be 

 described as lack of merits ; in other 

 words, the less a child can do that is 

 beneficial to others the more care and 

 attention it must receive. The state, 

 on the other hand, deals with adults, 

 and its guiding principle therefore should 

 be exclusively benefits according to 

 merits, evils according to demerits. Only 

 confusion and trouble can arise, accord- 

 ing to Mr. Spencer, from applying the 

 ethics of the family to state action. He 

 is willing that individuals should exer- 

 cise a prudent benevolence if they will, 

 but he sees no reason why the state 

 should ever depart from the strictest 

 rule of justice. In discussing The Con- 

 stitution of the State and the question 

 of giving women the suffrage, he makes 

 the following significant remarks : "Hu- 

 man beings at large, as at present con- 

 stituted, are far too much swayed by 

 special emotions temporarily excited and 

 not held in check by the aggregate of 

 other emotions ; and women are carried 

 away by the feelings of the moment 

 more than men are. This characteristic 

 is at variance with that judicial-minded- 

 ness which should guide the making of 

 laws. ... At present both men and 

 women are led by their feelings to viti- 

 ate the ethics of the state by introduc- 

 ing the ethics of the family. But it is 

 especially in the nature of women, as a 

 concomitant of their maternal functions, 



to yield benefits not in proportion to 

 deserts, but in proportion to the absence 

 of deserts to give most where capacity 

 is least. . . . The present tendency of 

 both sexes is to contemplate citizens as 

 having claims in proportion to their 

 needs their needs being habitually pro- 

 portionate to their demerits ; and this 

 tendency, stronger in women than in 

 men, must, if it operates politically, 

 cause a more general fostering of the 

 worse at the expense of the better." 

 These are weighty words, and we can 

 not but hope they may not be entirely 

 inoperative on the minds of modern 

 legislators. 



On the subject of political rights our 

 author does not strike at all a popular 

 key. In the chapter entitled Political 

 Eights so called, he says that such 

 rights are not, strictly speaking, rights 

 at all. A man's substantial rights are, 

 he says, the right to physical integrity, 

 the right to free motion and locomo- 

 tion, the right to the use of natural me- 

 dia, the right of property, the right of 

 incorporeal property, the right of gift 

 and bequest, the right of free exchange 

 and free contract, the right of free in- 

 dustry, the right of free belief and wor- 

 ship, and the right of free speech and 

 publication. As to political rights, they 

 are merely the supposed means of ob- 

 taining the above real rights ; and seri- 

 ous mischiefs have resulted from con- 

 fusing them with real rights. It has 

 been assumed that where political rights 

 were possessed by all, the liberty of all 

 would be secure ; but, far from this be- 

 ing the case, we can not fail to observe 

 that, "where so-called political rights 

 are possessed by all, rights properly so 

 called are often unscrupulously trampled 

 upon." For example, "universal suf- 

 frage does not prevent the corruptions 

 of municipal governments, which impose 

 heavy local taxes and do very inefficient 

 work, . . . does not prevent citizens 

 from being coerced in their private 

 lives by dictating what they shall not 

 drink; does not prevent an enormous 



