First Principles in Politics

"their brutishness, which imagine that virtue is only as men will account of it," seems literally accurate. And the curious thing is that writers of the Utilitarian school, while denying the doctrine of the lex naturæ, really found themselves upon it. They must appeal to the rational faculty in support of their contention that man ought to pursue happiness, and, as the more refined of them hold, the higher kinds of happiness. For their "ought," they allow, is incapable of proof. They may not consent to call it an intuition of the practical reason. But that is what it really is, if it is anything more than an arbitrary assumption; it cannot possibly be derived from sensible experience. Of course, there is a Utilitarianism to which both you and I would heartily subscribe: the doctrine that the criterion of the goodness or badness of actions is their congruity or incongruity with man's rational nature. Equally of course, should we agree in rejecting the teaching that the determinative source of moral quality is the free volition of Deity. Right and Wrong, in their nature, are what they are from everlasting to everlasting, and are unchangeable even by the fiat of Omnipotence.

Considerations such as these were long out of fashion in this country. But fashions change. Truth does not. "Truth," in Cudworth's happy phrase, "is the most unbending and incompliable, the most firm and adamantine thing in the world." On that

foundation I have endeavoured to build in this work.

However many its defects, of which no one can be more conscious than myself, I am very sure that, in offering it to you, I may truly use the words of Montaigne: C'est icy un livre de bonne foy.

I am, dear Mr. Lecky,

Very truly yours,

ATHENEUM CLUB,

March 25, 1899.

W. S. LILLY.

SUMMARY

CHAPTER I

THE FOUNDATION OF THE STATE

A striking characteristic of the present day is the well-

nigh total effacement, from the general mind, of the

idea of law

Most so-called "laws " are not laws at all; they do not

possess that character of necessity which is the

essence of law

This is true, for example, of the laws of conduct pre-

sented to us by Utilitarian ethics, and of the laws

of comfort from which they are derived

It is true, for the most part, of the so-called laws of

Political Economy

Again, if we keep strictly within the domain of the ex-

perimental sciences, we have no right to speak of

laws; for necessity has no place in pure physics.

It is a metaphysical idea

To insist upon this truth is not mere logomachy. The

idea of law, as a function of

utmost practical importance.

derationalize the universe

The age in which we live supplies an illustration of this
truth. Everywhere, except in the experimental
sciences, we find doubt extending to all first principles

of thought and action. The temper of the times

is anarchical

This arises, in great degree, from the absorbing devo-

tion of the age to those sciences, and from the claim

made for them as the one criterion of reality

This tendency of the age is strikingly exemplified in the

domain of politics, where " no one acts on first prin-

ciples or reasons from them"

The present work is the outcome of the deep conviction

that "nothing is that errs from law :" that it rules

in the political province, as in every segment of

human life

The only firm foundation upon which the State can be

built is the moral law, in virtue of which man is a

being invested with rights and encompassed by

duties. The natural rights and the natural duties

of man are the primary postulates of politics

Natural rights and natural duties. "There is a system

of rights and obligations which should be main-

tained by law, whether it is so or not, and which

may properly be called natural." The ideals con-

stituting this absolute jural order are the first prin-

ciples of political philosophy

Of these, the ideal of justice is the first, and embraces,

in some sort, all the rest. Hence the dictum Jus-

titia fundamentum regni

PAGE

CHAPTER II

THE ORIGIN OF THE STATE

At the basis, then, of Politics lies the question, What is

just? Political Philosophy is a chapter in the Phil-

osophy of Right

In it we may proceed either synthetically or analytic-

ally. Both the a priori and the a posteriori methods

are equally valid and valuable

The a priori method has never been popular in England;

and the absurdities and atrocities of the Jacobin

publicists, who followed it exclusively, over-
whelmed it, not unnaturally, with discredit

Their mistake, however, did not lie in their belief that

there are first principles in politics, but in their

gross misapprehension of those principles, and in

their fond conceit that what might suit the phan-
toms of their ratiocination must also suit the in-
habitants of eighteenth-century France

Quite other is the true use of first principles in politics:
they must be admitted with the necessary qualifica-
tions of time and place

The topic of the present chapter is the Origin of the
State. The first point is what history has to tell us
about it. The prehistoric condition of our globe is
not a subject which need detain us

Man, as we meet with him in history, possesses exactly

the same distinctive characteristics in the earliest

annals of our race as in the latest; and one of them

is that he is a political animal