Henry Sidgwick- Eye of the Universe
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the argument for laissez-faire requires “besides the psychological proposi-
tion that every one can best take care of his own interest” the “sociological
proposition that the common welfare is best attained by each pursuing
exclusively his own welfare and that of his family in a thoroughly alert and
intelligent manner” (EP ). And he stresses how no actual nation
is composed of individuals having only the few simple and general characteristics
which are all we can include in our conception of the civilised man to whom our
abstract political reasoning relates. An actual nation consists of persons of whom
the predominant number have, besides the general characteristics . . . a certain vaguely defined complex of particular characteristics which we call the ‘national
character’ of Englishmen, Frenchmen, etc.; among which sentiments and habits
of thought and action, formed by the previous history of the nation, must always
occupy a prominent place: and a consideration of these particular characteristics
may properly modify to an important extent the conclusions arrived at by our
general reasoning. (EP –)
This fixation on “national character” was, as previously noted, perva-
sive during this period, a legacy of Romanticism that had passed into
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the post-Darwinian ethos, and one that can be found throughout the
work of Sidgwick and his various social scientific friends. It is quite cen-
tral to Sidgwick’s thought, complementing his account of commonsense
morality.
Clearly, Sidgwick is once again setting up the individualistic (or non-
paternalistic) principle for an extended beating, decorously disguised by
his admission that it is in the main sound and the best point of departure
for considering admissible deviations. He wastes no time in explaining
that it will not do either as a basic or ultimate principle or as the means
of advancing human happiness. In fact, the Elements goes a bit further,
claiming
general – if not universal – assent for the principle that the true standard and criterion by which right legislation is to be distinguished from wrong is conduciveness
to the general ‘good’ or ‘welfare.’ And probably the great majority of persons
would agree to interpret the ‘good’ or ‘welfare’ of the community to mean, in
the last analysis, the happiness of the individual human beings who compose the
community; provided that we take into account not only the human beings who
are actually living but those who are to live hereafter.
At any rate, he continues, this is his view, and thoughout this treatise he
will “take the happiness of the persons affected as the ultimate end and
standard of right and wrong in determining the functions and constitution
of government” (EP ). Of course, in Millian fashion, he owns that “when
we have agreed to take general happiness as the ultimate end, the most
important part of our work still remains to be done: we have to establish or
assume some subordinate principle or principles, capable of more precise
application, relating to the best means for attaining by legislation the end of
Maximum Happiness” (EP ). Obviously, this is where the individualistic
principle comes in.
This is, to be sure, a fairly generous assessment of the general political
consciousness, one that cannot help but make many of Sidgwick’s concerns
about the dualism of practical reason fade into the background, at least
somewhat, though this is consistent with his statements about common
sense being only implicitly or potentially as receptive to egoism as it is
to utilitarianism, with the decline of religion. The actual rational egoistic
arguments of Hobbes or Bentham (or of orthodox political economists,
for that matter) find little resonance in the Elements, and the generous
reconstruction of political common sense would seem to be at odds with
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Sidgwick’s worries about the rank selfishness evident in party politics. Not
surprisingly, it was of the Elements that Hayek complained that although
it was “in many respects an admirable work,” it scarcely “represents what
must be regarded as the British liberal tradition and is already strongly
tainted with that rationalist utilitarianism which led to socialism.” Hayek
was not one to be put off the scent by Mauricean subterfuges.
Indeed, the list of deviations from individualism that Sidgwick assem-
bles is quite daunting, covering again a vast range of items such as educa-
tion, defense, child care, poor relief, public works, collective bargaining,
and so forth. He delicately teases apart the different degrees of interven-
tion, according to whether the government “merely regulates, and perhaps
subvents,” or “itself undertakes a department of business,” or actually
“establishes a legal monopoly of the business in its own favour – as in the
case of the post office in England” (EP ). He stresses two cases that he
thinks point up in a quite obvious way the limitations of the individual-
istic principle: “the humane treatment of lunatics, and the prevention of
cruelty to the inferior animals.” Such restrictions do not aim at securing
the freedom of the lunatics or the animals, but are “a one-sided restraint
of the freedom of action of men with a view to the greatest happiness of
the aggregate of sentient beings.” An unfortunate note explains that the
“protection of inferior races of men will be considered in a subsequent
chapter.” (EP –)
In typical manner, such considerations lead Sidgwick back to the dis-
cussion of socialism. Many of the cases discussed shade imperceptibly
from individualism to socialism – thus, “when it is evident that children
are, through their parents’ poverty, growing up in such a way as to render
them likely to be burdensome or dangerous to society, it seems prima facie
a prudent insurance against this result for the community to assist in their
support and education.” Here, Sidgwick recognizes, there is indeed a slip-
pery slope, though not one that can realistically be avoided. For “similar
arguments may be used to justify a governmental provision of sustenance
for adults, in order that they may not be driven into criminal courses: and
if either kind of governmental assistance is once admitted as justifiable
in principle, it is not very easy to limit the burden that may be thrown
on industrious and provident individuals by the improvidence of others.”
This question lands us in “the debatable territory between Individualism
and Socialism.” (EP ) But Sidgwick is starting to sound much mo
re
like Green on temperance than Mill on liberty.
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In the Elements, the extremist form of socialism is labelled “collec-
tivism” rather than “communism.” Against collectivism or communism
Sidgwick, as usual, urges that it would under the present circumstances
“arrest industrial progress,” in such a way that “the comparative equality
in incomes which it would bring about would be an equality in poverty”
(EP ). But in this book, much more a product of the turbulent eighties
that witnessed the rebirth of working-class activism, he seems far less con-
fident that the extreme form of socialism has had its day, and admits in less
qualified fashion that such a scheme “has much attraction for thoughtful
and sympathetic persons; not only from its tendency to equalise wealth,
but also from the possibilities it holds out of saving the waste and avoiding
the unmerited hardships incident to the present competitive organisation
of business; and of substituting industrial peace, mutual service, and a
general diffusion of public spirit, for the present conflict of classes and
selfish struggles of individuals” (EP ). The general case of socialistic
interference is presented in, if anything, an even more favorable, polit-
ically relevant light than it was in the Principles, and the evolution to-
ward collectivism is cast as “quite conceivable,” through “improvements
in the organisation and working of governmental departments, aided by
watchful and intelligent public criticism – together with a rise in the
general level of public spirit throughout society” (EP –). The col-
lectivist idea is only impracticable “at the present time or in the proximate
future.”
Allowing that much of the relevant discussion is a matter for political
economy, Sidgwick is nonetheless anxious to “point out certain general
considerations which must to some extent govern our estimate of the expe-
diency” of socialistic schemes especially concerned with “the mitigation
of the harshest inequalities in the present distribution of incomes” (EP
). He thinks it “indubitable that the attainment of greater equality in
the distribution of the means and opportunities of enjoyment is in itself
a desirable thing, if only it can be attained without any material sacrifice
of the advantages of freedom,” and he accepts, as he did in the Methods
and the Principles, “Bentham’s view, that any given quantum of wealth
is generally likely to be less useful to its owner, the greater the total of
private wealth of which it forms a part . . . that the utility of a given quantum of any particular commodity to its possessor tends to be diminished,
in proportion as the total amount of the commodity in his possession
is increased” (EP ). While admitting the force of the arguments for
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maintaining incentives to productivity, and for the “effective maintenance
and progress of intellectual culture” through “the existence of a numerous
group of persons enjoying complete leisure and the means of ample ex-
penditure,” Sidgwick still insists that “at least the removal of the extreme
inequalities, found in the present distribution of wealth and leisure, would
be desirable, if it could be brought about without any material repression
of the free development of individual energy and enterprise” (EP ).
The discussion that follows is hardly what one would call utopian, with
its account of the English Poor Law as guilty of diminishing “the induce-
ments to industry and thrift, without any counterbalancing tendency to
stimulate labour by enlarging its opportunities” – such systems “simply
and nakedly take the produce of those who have laboured successfully
to supply the needs of those who have laboured unsuccessfully or not at
all.” Again, he tends to favor measures that avoid such controversy, be-
cause their “primary aim is not to redistribute compulsorily the produce of
labour, but to equalise the opportunities of obtaining wealth by productive
labour, without any restriction on the freedom of adults.” (EP ) Inter-
estingly, against the objection that even such schemes as these cost money,
and will have to be funded by taxation that is effectively redistributive, he
argues that such arguments ignore the fact
that the institution of private property as actually existing goes beyond what
the individualistic theory justifies. Its general aim is to appropriate the results
of labour to the labourer, but in realising this aim it has inevitably appropriated
natural resources to an extent which, in any fully peopled country, has entirely
discarded Locke’s condition of ‘leaving enough and as good for others.’ In any
such country, therefore, the propertied classes are in the position of encroaching
on the opportunities of the unpropertied in a manner which – however defensible
as the only practicable method of securing the results of labour – yet renders a
demand for compensation justifiable from the most strictly individualistic point
of view. It would seem that such compensation may fitly be given by well-directed
outlay, tending either to increase the efficiency and mobility of labour, or to bring within the reach of all members of a civilised society some share of the culture
which we agree in regarding as the most valuable result of civilisation: and in
so far as this is done without such heavy taxation as materially diminishes the
stimulus to industry and thrift of the persons taxed, this expenditure of public
money, however justly it may be called Socialistic, appears to be none the less de-
fensible as the best method of approximating to the ideal of Individualistic justice.
(EP )
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This passage, reflecting the familiar line of argument dealing with
Spencer’s inconsistent individualism, marks again Sidgwick’s penetrating
assessment of how the champions of laissez-faire have tended to “tacitly
assume” conditions of equality of opportunity – or at least, “the loss to the
community arising from the restricted opportunities of large masses has
been tacitly overlooked.” Given that, when he wrote this, it was still the
case that some percent of the land in England was owned by the aristoc-
racy, the whiff of Ricardian radicalism about the conflictual components
of the English economy
is undeniable. And the conclusion Sidgwick
derives is, as we have seen, more general than the Ricardian one, given the
difficulty of drawing the line between property in land and property in
manufacturing or financial assets.
The ensuing discussion, concerning poor relief, draws together a num-
ber of Sidgwick’s arguments on the topic, from his various unpublished
lectures on the “Theory of Almsgiving” and the “Poor Law,” to his in-
troduction to the English translation of Aschrott’s book on The English
Poor Law System, a work that he much admired. After reviewing the
French system, with its dependence on private charity, he sums up
the English system and introduces a comparison to the German one.
The English system
secures adequate sustenance from public funds to all persons who are in complete
destitution, while it aims at minimising the encouragement thus offered to idleness
and unthrift by attaching unattractive – though not physically painful – conditions
to the public relief given to ordinary adult paupers. Practically, it succeeds better as regards industry than thrift. So far as able-bodied men are concerned, experience
has shown that the required combination of unattractiveness with sufficiency of
provision for physical needs is attainable by insisting that the recipient of relief
shall submit to the constraints of a ‘workhouse.’ But the system has hitherto failed
to bring about the general provision against old age, which – for the most part –
might be made without difficulty even by unskilled labourers in the period of early
manhood, if they were content to defer marriage for a moderate term of years.
Further, it would be unpractically severe to insist on the condition of entering
the workhouse in the temporary disablement of breadwinners through sickness or
accident; while to dispense with it even in these cases involves a serious discour-
agement to providence. These evils are avoided by the German method – so far
as can be applied – of compulsory insurance against sickness, accidental disable-
ment, chronic infirmity, and old age. This method, it may be observed, involves
governmental interference, which is in one aspect greater than that entailed by
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