290 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



by his conceptions of the world, and man, and conduct, to be still among 

 the sternest of Scotch Calvinists. Similarly, Science furnishes an in- 

 stance in one who united naturalism in Geology with supernaturalism 

 in Biology — Sir Charles Lyell. While, as the leading expositor of the 

 uniformitarian theory in geology, he ignored wholly the Mosaic cos- 

 mogony, he long defended that belief in special creations of organic 

 types, for which no other source than the Mosaic cosmogony could be 

 assigned ; and only in the latter part of his life surrendered to the ar- 

 guments of Mr. Darwin. In Politics, as above implied, we have an 

 analogous case. The tacitly - asserted doctrine, common to Tories, 

 "Whigs, and Radicals, that governmental authority is unlimited, dates 

 back to times when the lawgiver was supposed to have a warrant from 

 God ; and it survives still, though the belief that the lawgiver has 

 God's warrant has died out. " Oh, an Act of Parliament can do any- 

 thing," is the reply made to a citizen who questions the legitimacy of 

 some arbitrary state interference ; and the citizen stands paralyzed. 

 It does not occur to him to ask the how, and the when, and the 

 whence, came this asserted omnipotence, bounded only by physical 

 impossibilities. , 



Here we will take leave to question it. In default of the justifica- 

 tion, once logically valid, that the ruler on Earth being a deputy of the 

 ruler in Heaven, submission to him in all things is a duty, let us ask 

 what reason there is for asserting the duty of submission in all things 

 to a ruling power, constitutional or republican, which has no heaven- 

 derived supremacy. Evidently this inquiry commits us to a criticism 

 of past and present theories concerning political authority. To revive 

 questions sujjposed to be long since settled, may be thought to need 

 some apology ; but there is a sufficient apology in the implication 

 above made clear, that the theory commonly accepted is ill-based or 

 unbased. 



The notion of sovereignty is that which first presents itself ; and a 

 critical examination of this notion, as entertained by those who do not 

 postulate the supernatural origin of sovereignty, carries us back to the 

 'arguments of Hobbes. 



Let us grant Hobbes's postulate that, " during the time men live 

 without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that con- 

 dition which is called war ... of every man against every man " ; * 

 though this is not true, since there are some small societies in which, 

 without any " common power to keep them all in awe," men maintain 

 peace and harmony better than it is maintained in societies where such 

 a power exists. Let us suppose him to be right, too, in assuming that 

 the rise of a common ruling power over associated men, results from 

 their desires to preserve order among themselves ; though, in fact, it 

 habitually arises from the need for subordination to a leader in war, 

 * Hobbes's " Collected Works," vol. iii, pp. 112, 113. 



