THE 



POPULAR SOIEISrCE 

 MONTHLY. 



JULY, 1884, 



THE GREAT POLITICAL SUPERSTITIO:^". 



By HERBEET SPENCER. 



THE great political superstition of the past was the divine right of 

 kings. The great political superstition of the present is the 

 divine right of parliaments. The oil of anointing seems unaware to 

 have dripped from the head of the one on to the heads of the many, 

 and given sacredness to them also and to their decrees. 



However irrational we may think the earlier of these beliefs, we 

 must admit that it was more consistent than is the latter. Whether 

 we go back to times when the king was a god, or to times when he 

 was a descendant of a god, or to times when he was god-appointed, we 

 see valid reason for passive obedience to his will. When, as under 

 Louis XIV, theologians like Bossuet taught that kings " are gods, and 

 share in a manner the Divine independence," or when it was thought, 

 as by our own Tory party in old days, that "the monarch was the 

 delegate of heaven," it is clear that, given the premise, the inevitable 

 conclusion was that no bounds could be set to governmental commands. 

 But for the modern belief, such a warrant does not exist. Making no 

 pretension to divine descent or divine appointment, a legislative body 

 can show no supernatural justification for its claim to unlimited au- 

 thority ; and no natural justification has ever been attempted. Hence, 

 belief in its unlimited authority is without that consistency which of 

 old characterized belief in a king's unlimited authority. 



It is curious how commonly men continue to hold in fact, doctrines 

 which they have rejected in name — retaining the substance after they 

 have abandoned the form. In Theology an illustration is supplied by 

 Carlyle, who, in his student-days, giving up, as he thought, the creed 

 of his fathers, rejected its shell only, and kept the contents — was proved 



VOL. XXV. — 19 



