Chapter XI Individualistic Social Thought

At the dawn of the Renaissance, tradition and dogmatism were ruling mankind. Here and there, however, individuals were perceiving the nature of the bondage. Occasionally a cry for individual freedom was uttered. Petrarch dared to say that the world was made for man’s enjoyment. The early Teutons crudely developed the idea of personal liberty. In France a movement arose which culminated in the doctrines of natural rights and “Back to Nature.” The stress upon individualism in England became so deeply ingrained that it exists today as a powerful form of traditionalism. The United States was founded, in part, upon a doctrine of natural rights.

Absolutely unlike Sir Thomas More in many ways, Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527), an Italian contemporary, broke with tradition and received the sobriquet, the Galileo of social science. Unfortunately, many people think of the Italian writer in terms of the adjective which bears his name, Machiavellism, or political intrigue. While he deserves this reputation, he also should be considered in another light. He cut loose from the customary ways of thinking of his time and asserted that it is not necessary to take all things on fiat or alleged divine decree. Although this may be dangerous doctrine, it serves a useful and constructive purpose when people are ruled by political and ecclesiastical autocrats. Machiavelli was no idealist in the accepted sense of the term, but a man who mixed with people, traveled extensively, and studied actual conditions. He declared that people should be considered as they are, and not according to false teachings about them.

A century before the time of Sir Francis Bacon, the inaugurator of the so-called inductive or scientific method of study, Machiavelli was observing human conditions and upon the basis of these observations was drawing conclusions. He believed that it does not pay to be guided in one’s conduct by abstract ethics or impracticable ideals—and said so, in an age when imprisonment, exile, or death awaited anyone who opposed the autocratic authorities. From abstract ethics, Machiavelli swung to the extreme of concrete expediency. He lived and thought in the exigencies of the moment. He is an example of one who reacts so strongly against the stress and strain of the hour that he cannot get the larger vision that is necessary for balanced thinking on fundamental issues.

Machiavelli wrote on the subject of leadership and government. He advocated either an autocratic or democratic form of government—according to the conditions of the time and place. In the Prince he described with noteworthy accuracy the traits and methods of a leader whose constituents must be treated with absolute authority. In the Discourses he dealt with a democratic-republican type of leadership and control.

The succesful prince, or leader, in the selfish sense, makes himself both beloved and feared by his people.XI-1 On occasion he uses force and even fraud. Sometimes he must either exterminate or be exterminated. He must repeal or suppress old laws and make new ones to fit the social situation. He seeks to be considered merciful rather than cruel. He exercises universal pity in order to prevent social disorders from occurring and producing rapine and murder.XI-2 He does not allow his mercy to be taken advantage of by ungrateful and hypocritical persons. He is strong-minded; he is either a sincere friend or a generous foe. He is paternalistic, urging that his subjects be well-fed and have a good livelihood,XI-3 thus gaining and maintaining the affection of the people. In international affairs he acts with a strong hand, fortifying well his city or nation, and providing good laws for internal growth.XI-4 He errs grossly, however, in his fundamental philosophy that any plan or action that is for the welfare of the state, or nation, considered as a supreme unit of authority in itself, is morally sound.

Sir Francis Bacon, whose contribution to utopian social thought has been indicated in the foregoing chapter, placed all social and sociological thinkers under deep obligations by his emphasis upon inductive reasoning. He helped to free the individual from control by dogma and superstition. He provided the individual with a technique for securing a new sense of individual freedom. In freeing himself the individual discards his irrational pre-judgments, whether socially inherited or individually developed. He protects himself from anthropomorphic judgments, i. e., from judgments which he makes because he looks upon life and the universe through human eyes. These pre-judgments are common to all mankind—they are “the idols of the tribe.” On the other hand, the individual avoids purely personal preferences, which he is likely to hold because of his own peculiar experiences, and which thus place him outside the pale of common experience—these are “the idols of the cave.”

Then there are “the idols of the forum,” which cause the individual to give undue dependence to words and language. “The idols of the theater” are traditional systems of thought. Bacon’s dictum has been stated as follows: Get as little of yourself and of other selves as possible in the way of the thing which you wish to see.

Having eliminated human predispositions, the individual is ready to gather facts, arrange them in groups, draw conclusions from them, and act according to the resultant laws. Knowledge gives power.XI-4 Social knowledge gives power to improve human conditions and makes possible wise social control. Thus, Bacon opened the road to individual freedom.

Too much individual freedom, however, destroys government and the social order. If each individual is a law unto himself, anarchy reigns and progress is prevented. Consequently, the question arises: How can individually free persons unite in a society without giving up their freedom? The answer to this question took the form of a controversy on the subject of the social contract, i. e., the contract or agreement of individuals, as units, to form and maintain societies. This controversy arose in the seventeenth century and was waged vigorously in the eighteenth century.

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1678), the distinguished social philosopher of England, introduced his analysis of society with the idea that man was originally self-centered, egoistic, and pleasure-loving. He was an independent center. His interest in other people was based on their ability to cater to his own good. He and they desired the same things in life. His hand was thus raised, in competition, against every other man. This state of continual conflict became mutually destructive and unbearable.XI-5 In consequence, each individual agreed to give over some of his precious, inalienable rights to a central authority or sovereign, whose decrees should constitute law and serve as the guide for conduct. The war of each against all, with the concomitant state of fear, was thus supplanted by a mutual contract, conferring sovereignty by popular agreement upon the ruler. In this way Hobbes met the dilemma of supporting an absolute form of government in which he believed and of denying the divine right of kings which he abhorred. Hobbes performed a useful service in intellectually destroying the idea of the divine right of kings, but urged after all an undemocratic political absolutism. Hobbes conferred humanly derived but irrevocable authority upon the king. He, however, traced sovereignty back to the people rather than to a divine right.

In getting away from the conditions “of Warre of every one against every one” in the natural state where “every man has a Right to everything,” Hobbes swung to an undemocratic extreme. His Puritanic training gave an undue severity to his social thought. The Puritans, however, believed in the complete eradication of the savage human tendencies and also in the ultimate elimination of kings. Hobbes did not analyze deeply the instinctive bases of human nature. He built his Leviathan out of natural human qualities and tied its units together by means of a strong, central will—this was his perfect society.

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), the Portuguese Jewish philosopher of Holland, improved the social contract idea. He believed that man was originally of an anti-social and a tooth-and-fang nature, possessing only incipient social impulses. Hence, man is not naturally bad, but naturally anti-social. Social organization was effected for purposes of individual gain and glory; it was promulgated and furthered by individuals in order that they might escape the miseries of unregulated conflict. Agreements were made whereby sovereignty was embodied in a ruler, but if the ruler abused the sovereignty entrusted to him, it reverted immediately to the people. This democratic conception was vastly superior to the idea of Hobbes, that sovereignty is delegated by the people to the king as an irresponsible monarch.

John Locke (1632–1704) strengthened the social contract theory, elaborating the idea that sovereignty reverts to the people whenever the king becomes a tyrant. He held that the natural state of individuals is a condition of perfect freedom to order their actions, not asking leave of any man.XI-6 This state of liberty is not a state of license to individuals to destroy themselves or their neighbors.XI-7 The state of liberty has the law of nature to govern it. Since all are equal, no one ought to harm another in his liberty or possessions.

Locke affirmed that men are in a state of nature until by their own consent they join in a political society.XI-8 In order to meet their needs effectively, they join in societies. One of these important needs is the preservation of property. Locke defended private property on the ground that it is a normal expression of individuality and necessary to individuality.

Right and wrong are not determined by the ruler or the state; they existed before society developed. Here the Puritanism of Locke enters. He stressed moral values. He made the natural rights of individuals supreme; individuals may even overturn the government and still keep within their rights.

Locke’s justification of revolution is his most startling doctrine. Imagine the heart-throb of the common people who heard Locke’s contention that the end of government is the good of mankind, that people should not submit to tyranny, that whoever uses his force without right and law puts himself in a state of war with those against whom he uses it, and that in such a state the people have a right to resist and defend themselves.XI-9 Further, the people have a right to act as the supreme social force and to put legislation into new forms and into the hands of new executives. By these bold declarations Locke created a new public opinion, and aroused new moral power in the minds and hearts of the common people.

By the middle of the eighteenth century the concept of individual freedom became crystallized in the doctrines of the natural rights of the individual, the contractual societary relationships between independent individuals, and the laissez faire principle in governmental science. The physiocrats, who took up the ideas of natural liberty and economic freedom, exercised a tremendous influence in France during the three decades following 1750. Their leaders were Quesnay, de Gournay, Condorcet, and Turgot. They believed that there was a natural law ruling human lives, just as there is a natural law ruling the physical world. They chafed under social restraints. Under the natural law, every individual has natural rights, chief of which is the right to the free exercise of all his faculties so long as he does not infringe on the similar right of other individuals. Unlike John Locke and other English thinkers who accepted the idea of individual liberty, the physiocrats argued that this natural liberty could not be abridged by a social contract.

According to the physiocrats the chief function of governmental control is to preserve the natural liberty of individuals. Industry and commerce must not be governmentally regulated, for by such regulation the rights of some men, chiefly employers, will be infringed upon. Employees, on the other hand, who are being treated unjustly will freely quit a harsh employer and obtain employment with considerate masters. Thus, an unjust employer will be unable to secure workers and be forced to discontinue his unjust practices—without government regulation. Likewise, a dishonest merchant will lose his customers and be forced to become honest or to close his shop—and again without government regulation. The physiocrats became known by their famous phrase, laissez faire, laissez passer.

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), an able but baffling character, is the best known champion of the social contract idea. Although he advocated the family as a social institution and praised fatherhood, he reports that he carried his own children to a foundling asylum. He deprecated the disintegrating elements in civilization and urged a return to nature’s simple ways. In his chief works, the Contrat social and Emile, he attacked civilization vigorously. He asserted that civilization had almost destroyed the natural rights of man. His dictum was: Trust nature.

According to Rousseau the early life of mankind was nearly ideal in its simplicity and pleasantness. War and conflict were relatively unknown. In his later writings, Rousseau modified his belief and asserted that primitive confusion made necessary some kind of social organization. On the other hand, it became the belief of Rousseau that civilization generates social evils and results sooner or later in social deterioration. Corruption in society has become notorious. Social inequality is rampant and unbearable. “Man is born free, and is everywhere in chains.” People have become so engrossed in the artificialities of social life and so bewildered by its complexities that happiness has been lost.

Leave the individual free to carry out his own plans, untrammelled by complex social rules, restrictions, and duties. There is no social sanction at all; there is no authority except nature, which is necessity. In Emile, Rousseau takes his two leading characters to an island, where they live alone—happily! Liberty not authority reigns. But Emile, who has declared for liberty as opposed to authority, insists in his discussions of domestic relationships that “woman is made to please man.” The “unselfish, unsocial life” of Emile and Sophie turns out to be more than purely individualistic—it is anarchic and sensual. Emile fails to demonstrate the merit of Rousseau’s own theories, such as “Man is good naturally but by institutions he is made bad,” and “Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Author of Nature; everything degenerates in the hands of man.”

Slavery is wrong, according to Rousseau.XI-11 It is a contract or agreement, at the expense of the slave and for the profit of the slaveholder, in which the slaveholder asserts: I’ll observe the agreement and you will observe it—as long as it pleases me.

Strength does not make right. Strength and moral force are not necessarily the same. Strength may often be ironically accepted in appearance and established in principle. By a social contract man loses his natural liberty and gains civil and moral liberty.XI-12 In this connection Rousseau was simply the spokesman of a point of view which found frequent expression in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For example, in 1635, John Winthrop, the first governor of the Massachusetts colony, made a clear-cut distinction between natural liberties, and civil and moral liberties. Natural liberty is liberty to do what one lists, to do evil as well as good. Civil, or moral, liberty is liberty under the covenant between God and man, under the political covenants between men and men, and under the moral law. It is a liberty to do only that which is good, just, and honest.XI-13

It was Rousseau who contended that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are man’s inalienable rights. It was this doctrine which profoundly influenced Thomas Jefferson, as evidenced in the Declaration of Independence. Sovereignty rests not in a ruler or monarch but in the community of people—this was perhaps Rousseau’s main contribution to social thought.

Before Rousseau, however, wrote the Contrat social, the social contract theory had been overthrown. The writings of Montesquieu (1689–1755) offer an elaborate analysis of social and political processes. These analyses are similar, in some ways, to Aristotle’s analyses of 158 constitutions. Montesquieu discussed the doctrine of natural rights, but did not believe that the natural state of mankind was one of conflict, in which social organization was forced as a means of meeting the needs of individual protection. He asserted that there was a natural, innate tendency in man toward association. In the support of this belief, Montesquieu drew facts from the lives of the individual members of the primitive tribes which were extant in his day. The influence of Montesquieu was clearly inimical to the social contract doctrine.

In the Esprit des lois, Montesquieu dissected the laws of many nations and tried to show the relations between these laws and social and political conditions. The general implication is that laws are a natural outgrowth of life conditions rather than of formal contractual agreements. Hence, society is a natural evolution rather than a contract.

Perhaps the chief antagonist in the eighteenth century of the social contract theory was David Hume (1711–1776), the father of social psychology. According to Hume, the origin of society was not in a contract arrived at by intellectual processes; it was instinctive. Man is a social animal. At the basis of this sociability lies the sex instinct, which resulted in the establishment of the family. The sex instinct is strongly supported by the sentiment of sympathy, which also is innate, and which may develop into intelligent co-operation. Man is not entirely self-centered; he takes pleasure in other people’s pleasures and suffers when others are in pain, or the victims of disease, or are dying.

Sympathy, like the sex instinct, is a genuinely fundamental element in human nature and in society. However, the combination of sympathy and the sex instinct is not strong enough to support the family in either its simple or complex stages from the attacks upon it that are made by inherent human selfishness. Hence, social and political organizations are necessary to hold the selfish impulses and interests of mankind in check. Intellectual control of society thus becomes necessary and consciously recognized. Environment alone does not cause people in a given community to act alike. It is imitation, primarily, which operates to bring about group conformity.XI-14

Man in a large measure is governed by interest. It is impossible for men to consult their interests “in so effective a manner as by a universal and inflexible observance of the rules of justice, by which alone they can preserve society, and keep themselves from falling into that wretched and savage condition, which is commonly represented as the state of nature.”XI-15

According to the contract theory, people expect protection and security. If they meet with tyranny and oppression, they are freed from their promises and return to that state of liberty which proceeded the institution of government. But Hume maintained that if people entered into no contract and made no promises, government would still be necessary in all civilized societies. The obligation of submission to government is not derived from any promise of the subjects.XI-16

Adam Ferguson (1723–1816) wrote an Essay on the History of Civil Society and The History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic. He argued that social institutions and social convenience lead to inherent sociability, and pointed out that competition and conflict are vital to social development. Thomas Paine (1737–1809) asserted that man is inherently social and that social organization is a natural development.

The natural rights theory and the resultant individualism not only repudiated their false derivative, the social contract concept, but also wrestled with considerable success with the socio-economic concept of mercantilism. Mercantilism was a system of regulating industrial enterprise by governments in order to build up strong nation-states. Mercantilism reached its strictest form in France in the writings of Colbert (1619–1683). It prevailed in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the first four decades of the eighteenth century. It was a system which grew out of feudalism and the city-state type of society. It operated to bring together towns and cities into national unities. Under feudalism, the town had regulated industry for its own advancement and against the welfare, perchance, of neighboring towns. Mercantilism served to unite towns and to create in townspeople a national loyalty.

Under mercantilism, the nation entered upon the task of regulating industry and finance so as to build a strong state. A favorable balance of trade was sought in order to add to the bullion within the state. High tariffs were enacted, which sometimes defeated the intended purposes. A dense population was favored as a means of securing cheap labor, and hence of furthering manufacture, which in turn would develop foreign trade and bring in the coveted bullion—the heralded strength of a nation.

In the eighteenth century, mercantilism in France and England met defeat in the contest with the laissez faire theory, with which the names of the physiocrats and of Adam Smith are inseparably connected. It often fathered too stringent regulations. Instead of supporting national ends, mercantilistic measures frequently furthered private interests. Mercantilism, however, played a strong part in building up the concepts of national unity and loyalty.

In the German states and Austria, cameralism represented the ideas for which mercantilism stood in England, France, and elsewhere in Western and Southern Europe. Among the leading cameralists were Seckendorf, Horing, Justi, and Sonnenfels. Cameralism obtained a far deeper hold upon the German states than mercantilism did, for example, in England. The laissez faire philosophy was never able to make a deep inroad upon cameralism. In fact, the laissez faire philosophy did not receive serious consideration in the German states before 1800, and did not strike deep. National self-sufficiency, paternalistic control, minute regulation of internal affairs, rearing of large families, and subordination of the welfare of the state—these are the concepts which ruled in Germany.

Adam Smith (1723–1790), primarily an economist and often referred to as the father of political economy, exerted a profound influence upon social thought. He coupled a modified natural rights theory with a doctrine of sympathy; he spoke for the natural rights of the individual, of the poorer classes in society, and of the smaller nations. He vigorously attacked mercantilism with its system of minute regulation of individuals. He objected to promoting unduly the interests of one class of men in a country, for by so doing, the interests of all other classes in that country and of all persons in all other countries are harmed.XI-17 He pointed out the fallacy of building a nation of shopkeepers, for in so doing the government of such a nation will be unduly influenced and controlled by the interests of shopkeepers. The interests of other classes will be more or less ignored. Adam Smith protested against Great Britain’s methods of regulating the American colonies. To prohibit the American colonies from making all they could of every part of their own produce or from employing their stock and industry in the way that they judged most advantageous to themselves, was “a manifest violation of the most sacred rights of mankind.”XI-18

Mercantilism made use of monopoly of one kind or another, and hence is objectionable, according to Smith. Mercantilism is regulation, and regulation is often carried on for the benefit of the rich and powerful, thus neglecting and oppressing the poor.XI-19 Smith failed to note, however, that the laissez faire policy likewise favored the rich and powerful and neglected the poor. Mercantilism, according to Smith, considers production and not consumption as the end of industry and commerce, and thus favors one class at the expense of other classes.

“Wherever there is great property,” said Smith, “there is great inequality.” For every very rich man there must be at least 500 poor men, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many.XI-20 But no society can be flourishing and happy wherein the greater part of the members are poor and miserable.XI-21 The laboring men should have “such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.” Poverty does not prevent the procreation of children, but is on the other hand extremely unfavorable to the rearing of children.XI-22

Smith pointed out four causes of social inequality:XI-23 (1) Superiority in personal qualifications, such as strength, beauty, agility of body; or wisdom, virtue, prudence, justice, fortitude, moderation of mind. (2) Superiority of age and experience. (3) Superiority of fortune. Riches give social authority; riches possess power to buy. (4) Superiority of birth, based on family prestige.

Smith extolled the merits of division of labor in industry with the resultant increase in the quantity of work. There are three sets of causal circumstances:XI-24 (1) the increase of dexterity; (2) the saving of time in passing from one kind of work to another; and (3) the invention of a large number of machines. Smith, however, deplored the deadening effect upon the individual of repeating over and over a simple process, hundreds or thousands of times daily. In summary, Adam Smith (1) applied the concept of natural rights to industrial conditions; (2) developed Hume’s concept of sympathy into a theory of mutual aid between individuals, classes, and nations; and (3) supported the necessity of division of labor.

The natural rights and social contract theories affected in one way or another the thinking not only of the men who have already been considered in this chapter, but also of many other individuals. Blackstone (1723–1780) held that man’s weakness in isolation led to association. The primary group was the patriarchal family. Blackstone was not an advocate of social regulation. His exposition of English law in the Commentaries stood for law itself, and became the bulwark at once of the doctrines of individual rights and property rights in both England and the American colonies. In the United States, its influence remained dominant for more than a century after the founding of the republic.

Although Edmund Burke (1729–1797) believed in a corporate unity of society, he became in his century the chief spokesman of humanity for humanity’s sake. He pleaded for justice for and conciliation with the American colonies; he spoke for the benighted Hindus who were being plundered by English stockholders; and he championed the rights of slaves. He failed, on the other hand, to appreciate the struggles of the French people which culminated in the French Revolution.

Immanuel Kant (1724–1817) declared man in a natural state is both social and unsocial and referred to the “unsocial sociableness” of man. “Man cannot get on with fellows and he cannot do without them.” Man has an inclination to associate with others and also a great propensity to isolate himself from others. He wishes to direct things according to his own ideas and thus courts resistance and conflict. It is this conflict, however, which leads to individual advancement.

Kant laid great stress upon a good will.XI-25 The individual may have intelligence and sagacity, power and wealth, but he may still be a pernicious and hurtful member of society. He is not even worthy to be happy unless he possesses a good will. A man’s will is good not because of the end he seeks nor because of the results of his activities but because he inherently wills the good. It is this “good will” of Kant which is in conflict with the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, and also with modern behavioristic psychology and objective sociology. To Kant, morality is subjective. Social laws may regulate and control man’s conduct but they cannot control his motives.

Johann Fichte (1762–1814) joined with Kant in the interpretation of a good will. He held that property is essential to the development of freedom. However, he pushed the social contract idea to an extreme and developed a doctrine of an idealistic state socialism, including the superiority of Germany among the nations of the world.

Hegel (1770–1831) supported cameralism by developing the State idea, with the implication that Germany would become the supreme State in the world. Hegel even asserted that man has his existence and his ethical status “only in being a member of the State.”XI-26 Morality is not a matter of striving independently to realize one’s inner self, but of living in accord with the traditions of one’s State.

Perhaps the individual rights theory never manifested a greater aberration than in the mind of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). Power is supreme. The individual or the nation with the greatest power has the greatest right to live. Against this idea or the expressions of this idea, the weaker individuals tend to combine and to extol their weaknesses as virtues, even building a religion out of these glorified weaknesses, for example, Christianity. Nietzsche’s doctrine of the superman and the superstate will be discussed in Chapter XXI.

Closely related to the discussions concerning natural rights and the social contract is the doctrine of utilitarianism, a modified form of individualism with certain objective standards. Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) made utilitarianism well-known, and particularly the standard: The greatest good of the greatest number. In accordance with a formal idea of social change, Bentham urged that social improvements be made by legislation. He demanded objective standards as opposed to Kant’s emphasis on the inner motive. Where Kant accented the “how” of conduct, Bentham insisted on the “what” of conduct. He pointed out the need for improved forms of government, apparently ignoring or at least greatly underestimating the fact that real progress comes chiefly through modifying organic processes. However, Bentham may be rated a virile social reformer, for he strongly advocated such measures as the secret ballot, woman suffrage, trained statesmancraft. He made social welfare a main goal.

The doctrine of utilitarianism was carried forward by James Mill (1773–1836) and was brought to its highest fruition by the son, John Stuart Mill (1806–1873). The elder Mill contended that utility is morality. Like Bentham the elder Mill urged many social reforms.

John Stuart Mill adopted a modified form of the natural rights theory. He asserted that the individual should have all the rights that he can exercise without infringing upon the equal rights of other individuals. Mill recognized a gradation in the pleasures which satisfy individuals. He declared that it is better to be a man dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; he objected to the prevailing classification of people on the basis of poverty and wealth, and urged the substitution of standards of personal worth, honor, and true leadership as bases for social classification.

Sir Henry Maine (1832–1888) invented the phrase: From status to contract. He applied this phrase to a program of social welfare. There are many illustrations, he pointed out, in business and industrial life, and even in political and fraternal activities where people make social contracts. The marriage contract also has many of the characteristics of a genuine social contract. Maine pushed the social contract idea to its furthest practical point; but deprecated the possibility that the masses might come into power. His individualism deprived him of a faith in the possible social development of the uneducated.

Herbert Spencer, whose ideas will be discussed more extensively in a subsequent chapter, became one of the chief exponents of the doctrine of laissez faire in governmental matters. He brought a vast reading knowledge and able arguments to the support of individualistic doctrines. He added very little that was new to individualistic and laissez faire theories although he was at one time perhaps their leading exponent. One of his chief contributions to social thought was indirect and unintentional, namely, the way in which his writings challenged the attention of an American paleontologist, Lester F. Ward, and led him to point out the psychical nature and hence telic possibilities of civilization. In consequence of this challenge Spencer fell, and Ward rose to the rank of dean of American sociologists. An entire chapter will be devoted to the sociology of Lester F. Ward.

William G. Sumner (1840–1910) was the last noted champion of a governmental laissez faire doctrine. He held that the State owes nothing to anybody except peace, order, and the guarantee of rights. It is not true that the poor ought to care for each other, and that the churches ought to collect capital and spend it for the poor; it is not true that if you get wealth you should support others; and that if you do not get wealth others ought to support you. In a society based on contract there is no place for sentiment in public or common affairs.XI-28 Every individual will develop the self-reliance of a free person, if he is not taught that others will care for him in case he fails to care for himself. Sumner spoke vigorously as well as harshly in support of liberty, contract, and private property. Although he took an extreme and untenable position his ideas will bear careful, unbiased study, for they contain a large amount of common sense. His ethnological work will be indicated at some length in another chapter.

A noteworthy statement which has come from a current American school of legal thinkers concerning individualistic social thought, is found in the writings of Professor Roscoe Pound of Harvard Law School. In “A Theory of Social Interests” he has summed up the new point of view.XI-29 In the last century all interests were thought of in terms of individual interests, all were reduced to their purely individual elements and considered as rights.

In this century, Dean Pound indicates that law, for example, aims primarily to conserve some general social interest. It conserves the social interest in the general security, that is, in public health and in peace. It conserves the social interest in institutions,—domestic, religious, political. It conserves the social interest in natural resources, preventing the waste of oil and gas and protecting water rights. It conserves the social interest in general progress, in economic, political, cultural progress, although its main contribution in other fields, such as promoting the esthetic interests, are yet to be made. It conserves the social interests in individual life and in seeing that people live humanly and that the will of the individual is not trodden upon. Legal processes have thus become types of social engineering.

The doctrine of natural rights reached its largest degree of acceptance in England, France, and the United States. It was not only reflected in the thought of Thomas Jefferson but in the fundamental principles upon which the United States was established. It suffered an aberration in the form of the social contract theory which in its extreme forms was later repudiated. Its greatest weakness was the exaggerated form which it assumed, especially in England and the United States. In the latter country it became greatly magnified through contact with the spirit of discovery, invention, and pioneering which prevailed for over a century. Consequently, it dominated the thought life of the United States throughout the nineteenth century. It permitted captains of industry to exploit the helpless masses, and encouraged politicians to pursue selfish practices until governments became honeycombed with graft. It nearly capsized the good Ship of State—Democracy.

Theories of natural rights have been supplanted by considerations of natural needs, both individual and social. Human needs are now considered the only imperatives, but even they are relative and changing.