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IX The Natural Iniquity of Man In Chapter VI we saw that, as the Rev. J. Nevill Figgis maintains, "religious liberty is rightly described as the parent of political." (The Cambridge Modern History, Vol. III, Chap. XXII). Nor was it long before the Reformers' claims were translated into the field of politics. In his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (late 16th century, Bk. 1), Richard Hooker already demanded that government should be subject to popular consent, and he regarded "the equality of men by nature" as so obvious that it bound all men to mutual love, justice and charity. This, he said, expressed a state of "Liberty". Locke built on Hooker's conclusions a political philosophy embodying all his claims, and argued that Man's natural condition before the dawn of Civilisation was one of "perfect freedom" and equality. His lack of anthropological information enabled him to draw a picture of primitive humanity, the unreality of which did not in the least disturb his sympathisers, especially as it summarised many of the sentiments popular at the time. Thus, describing "what state all men are naturally in," he said it was one "of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the Law of Nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man. . . . A state of equality" in which "no one having more [power or jurisdiction ] than another, there being nothing more evident than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of Nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another." (J. Locke: Two Treatises on Government, II, Chap. II). Passing over the many false assumptions in this paragraph, a word must be said about the comment on Property which it contains. For the fact that one of the more serious thinkers
Old Isaac knew better than that in 1700 B.C. For, although he gave Esau's birthright to Jacob through a ruse, it is clear that both he and his wife disapproved of Esau (Genesis XXVI, 35), that he was never really deceived (Genesis XXVII, 35-40), and that he abided by his supposed error after the fraud had been exposed. He thus set an example which was unfortunately ignored by the property owners of England; for the rule of primogeniture (established in Henry II's reign) inevitably led to frequent desecrations of Private Property's Sanctity. And the fact that in the Middle Ages "primogeniture, even in royal houses was not accepted without much opposition", and that in the case of a fief "primitive usage seems to have recognised the lord's right to grant it to the son whom he considered best fit to hold it" shows how superior in many respects was the mind of Mediaeval Man over that of his descendants. In Parzival I, verses 4-5, Wolfram von Eschenbach, only a decade or two before Henry III's reign, actually declared primogeniture as an "outlandish custom", and an "alien trick." (See M. Bloch: Feudal Society, Part IV, Chap. XIV). Hardly 600 years later Darwin condemned it, not as an alien trick, but as a procedure wholly inimical to sound biological principles. "Primogeniture", he wrote to J. D. Hooker, "is dreadfully opposed to selection; suppose the firstborn bull was necessarily made by each farmer the begetter of his stock!" (Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol. II, p. 385). Despite the raptures of the early champions of Liberalism, they were not blind to the graver implications of their doctrines. They soon saw that if they were to succeed with their plea for self-government on the basis of Liberty and Equality, they must appease the alarm their proposals provoked among the more realistic thinkers of the Age. These opponents of the mass dictatorship Popular Government promised to establish,
In meeting this objection, the Liberals really had no choice. They were compelled to rejoin that it was utterly fallacious to assume that most men would behave in the way alleged. On the contrary, they said, "Men were born good. Therefore Popular Government could not possibly prove injurious." As Lord Bryce was later to point out, the idea of Popular Government was that "With Liberty and Equality the naturally good instincts would spring up with the flower of rectitude and bear the fruit of brotherly affection. Men would work for the community . . . would refine manners and increase brotherly kindness." Referring to the ultimate effects of this romanticism, based on false psychology, Lord Bryce adds, "Thus democratic institutions are now deemed to carry with them as a sort of gift of nature, the capacity to use them well." (Modern Democracies, Vol. I, Part I. Chap V). Truth to tell, no more important issue could possibly have been debated; for, as Father Frederick Muckermann, S.J., has declared, "In discussing how men should be governed, it cannot be a matter of indifference whether we consider human nature as being radically bad as Luther did, or as radically good as Rousseau maintained." (Dictatorship on Its Trial, 1930, Chap. III). Machiavelli thought this problem at least important enough to require solution before one could attempt to govern, for he wrote: "They who lay the foundations of a State and furnish it with laws, as is shown by all who have treated of civil government and by examples of which history is full, assume that all men are bad and will always, when they have free field, give loose to their inclinations." (Discorsi, 1531, Bk. I, Chap. 5). Great Britain's greatest thinker, David Hume, after acknowledging that "Political writers have established it as an axiom that in contriving any system of government . . . every man ought to be supposed a knave," himself concludes, "It is therefore a just political maxim that every man must be supposed a knave." (Essay VI: Of the Independency of Parliament).
Both Alexander von Humboldt and our own George Moore appear to have known enough about themselves to hold human nature in poor esteem; for the former declared, "I despise mankind in all classes" (Memoirs), and the latter hoped that when his hour came he might be able to turn his face to the wall and boast, "I have nor increased the evil of human life." (Confession of a Young Man, XIII, iii). In any case, one would have thought that every intellectually honest, middle-aged man and woman would have learnt enough about themselves and their fellow-creatures to hold but a poor opinion of mankind and to feel certain that, if one is called upon to govern, it is wiser and safer to side with Machiavelli and Hume than with Locke and Bentham. The most cursory acquaintance with Man's history and with recent events in our Western World, should suffice to convince the least realistic observer of humanity that many of the greatest disasters that have befallen our race have been the outcome of a mistaken view of the character of Man. And when we look about us to-day and see the steadily soaring incidence of crimes of violence, of wanton cruelty and of wilful vandalism and dishonesty, in a society in which poverty and privation have been largely eliminated, it is difficult not to form the conclusion that all this defiance of Law and Order in a community which has practically banished the motives we used to think conduced to lawlessness, is in itself, apart from other evidence available elsewhere, an indication that modern Man, has, owing to a much too favourable estimate of his fellows, been indulging for the last few decades in an orgy of mistaken benevolence and leniency based on a fallacious psychological principle. We have but to think of a sentimentalist like the late Alex-
When we think that hardly thirty years ago, at the peak of the period of maudlin benevolence which began in the last decades of the nineteenth century, a widely read and in his day, very influential writer like G. K. Chesterton was able to thank God that he was no psychologist a boast that was unfortunately deplorably true (See his Autobiography, Chap. II); and that in spite of this honest admission both he and his friend Belloc never ceased to pontificate on political issues, can we wonder that our society is now revealing all the morbid signs of having long been led by men with a false estimate of Man's nature? In the crucial debate on the nature of Man, all Liberals have argued that he is born good and that consequently Popular Government could have only desirable results. Poets like Wordsworth, philosophers like Bentham and Rousseau, and all women, joined in the chorus proclaiming mankind's inveterate harmlessness and lack of guile. As already indicated, however, Liberals, especially in England, had no alternative. Heterodox as the point of view was even from the Christian standpoint, they were forced to adopt if, for otherwise how could they advocate Popular Government? In any case, at no time in the history of their Movement, was any one of them shrewd enough to appreciate how much more sound psychologically was Christianity's estimate of Man than that professed by their leaders. The formidable criticism of those realists who saw in Liberalism, besides a pessimistic and premature rejection of all hope of regenerating the national élite, a policy which would inevitably lead to mob tyranny and anarchy — this criticism had to be answered, and the only retort with which the Liberals could justify their claims amounted to a flat denial of what Machiavelli, Hume, Hobbes, Luther, Baxter and Milton and Christianity alleged. With emphasis, therefore, they pronounced Man fundamentally good, by which they meant that his envy of all forms of superiority, his malice, his instinctive aggressiveness, self-indulgence and secret indifference to the public good when it was incompatible with his own advantage all these traits were exceptional enough to be ignored.
Locke was more consistent. But was he as honest? For although he championed the school which Rousseau was later to join, he never let such a tremendous cat out of the Liberal bag. Perhaps he merely had less psychological flair than his disciple and was thus able with unruffled composure to advocate popular Government. As Phyllis Doyle says, "Locke's belief in human nature . . . led him to advocate a democratic form of government." (A History of Political Thought, Chap. X). It led him even further, for he was one of the first to argue that Man's native goodness becomes corrupted only through the influence of environment. By the second half of the seventeenth century, it struck the more enlightened political thinkers of England that in practice Liberalism assumed the existence of a nation composed of saints or at least of wise and virtuous men. L'Estrange, for instance (1616-1704) quite properly maintained that "Our fierce champions of a free state presuppose great unity, great probity, great purity". And Harrington (1611-1677) defended the idea of democracy only because he believed in an "inexhaustible supply of worthy and capable men ready to participate in government, and that men were good and wise enough always to choose the good." As I have already pointed out, however, the Liberals had no alternative. They either had to abandon their political principles, or else profess a belief in Man's natural immaculacy. As F. M. Cornford was later to maintain, "To believe in democracy you must believe in the essential goodness of common humanity." (The Unwritten Philosophy, 1950, Chap. IV). Whilst Santayana claimed quite reasonably that "If a
Rousseau, on the other hand, whilst recognising that a democracy must presuppose a highly virtuous community, denied on that account that it was a feasible form of government. "Were there a people of gods", he said, "their government would be democratic. So perfect a government is not for men." (Le Contrat Social, Chap. IV). If Man is by nature bad, in the sense described on p. 67, and can conform to the conventions of social life only by controlling instincts which, even after 10,000 years of civilised life, still exert a baneful influence over his behaviour, what about forms of government other than the Liberal and Democratic? Can the rulers in a Monarchy, or an Aristocracy, being human, be otherwise than bad? Naturally, they cannot. And for this reason it is just as romantic and at variance with the few wise polities of past Ages, to found a Monarchy, an Oligarchy, an Aristocracy, or any other governing élite, on the hope of its being just and wise, without framing any measure calculated to ensure that it will be so, as to assume a like freedom from evil in self-rule by the Populace. The native iniquity of Man does not shrink from manifesting itself simply because it happens to be allied with superior intelligence, education and material resources; for all such advantages merely multiply the means and opportunities to make ill deeds done. Yet, strangely enough, just as few modern Liberal polities have thought of providing against the natural iniquity of Man, so in the whole history of civilisation have few Monarchies Aristocracies taken steps to restrict the evil propensities of sovereigns and nobles. It is as if in this sphere the psychological fallacies committed by Liberal philosophers had been anticipated, if not excelled by most political philosophers throughout history when establishing the principles according to which government by minorities should be conducted. It may be objected that as monarchs are not in their own realms members of any group of peers, they have no colleagues who can watch, censor and control their conduct. This is true. But in the Middle Ages, the Church often functioned as a Super-
Not that the Church always discharged this duty wisely or fairly. But it certainly tried to meet a need no other institution in Christendom was capable of meeting. We have but to recall the pressure exerted on Henry II in 1172 to force him to purge himself of the guilt of Becket's death in December 1170; and more particularly the staggering feat of St. Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan who, in 390 A.D. refused to admit the Emperor Theodosius the Great of Rome to the Eucharist till he had entered Milan Cathedral to do public penance for having punished a riot in Thessalonica by the wholesale massacre of 7,000 of its inhabitants. Inevitably, however, the power of the Church to function as a Super-Monarch and to control the conduct of European sovereigns in accordance with the accepted code of ethics, depended for its efficacy on two factors which were by no means likely to remain permanent — lust, a fervent belief on the part of all Christendom in the sanctity and justice of the Holy Church and in the absolute truth of all its doctrines; and secondly, what was even more important, the certainty of being able to rely on the ready and active support of other sovereigns when one of their number had incurred the disapproval of the Church and required to be called to order. Owing to the ephemerality of these two factors, the Church's power to castigate an offending ruler and bring him to book was therefore shortlived and by the beginning of the sixteenth century may be said to have become extinct. When, for instance, John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester was executed on Tower Hill in June 1535 because he had refused to acknowledge Henry VIII's supremacy in the English Church, Pope Paul III, who had created the bishop presbyter cardinal only a month previously, was terribly shocked. He was in fact so furious that he intimated his intention of depriving Henry of his kingdom and accordingly wrote to all the different powers of Europe asking them to help him to give effect to his sentence. Yet, although Bishop Fisher's execution was one of the most serious affronts ever given to the Holy See, there was no adequate response and Pope Paul had to consume his wrath in impotent silence.
In the attitude of the ancient prophets of Israel to their kings there was some presage of this Church practice. But when in Europe the Church lost its ascendancy, Monarchy in the hands of ruffians like Henry VIII of England and Louis XV of France — not to mention many others — easily degenerated into irresponsible despotism; and the principal of Kingship by Divine Right, by obscuring the human and therefore basically evil nature of every monarch, left a badly governed people no other redress than revolt. How the obsessional basileiophobia of a people like the English, ultimately sought safety in a world no longer possessing any Super Monarchical influence, by improvising a sort of bogus kingship, known as a "Constitutional Monarchy", in which the monarch's power and influence, as Mr. Herman Finer has maintained, are reduced to "practically nothing but a purple rubber stamp", would take too long to tell (See Governments of Great European Powers, Chap. 9: The Government of Gt. Britain). Suffice it to say that, much as it may surprise many people, the ultimate evanescence of true Monarchy in Europe may not have been unconnected with the collapse of the Church's super monarchical functions, imperfectly as these were often performed. And the same remark applies to the slow but steady downfall of all aristocratic power. It was the failure of the aristocrats themselves to organise within their own body a central Watch Committee, or Disciplinary Board, which could rebuke, censure and if necessary demote and disrobe any member of their order who proved unworthy of his exalted rank and undeserving of its privileges, which without a shadow of a doubt was the principal cause of aristocratic failure and therefore of the decline of aristocratic influence and prestige in all European States except perhaps two. But of this anon. Summing up, therefore, it seems correct to conclude that
Then, in what respect is Democracy essentially inferior to Monarchy or Aristocracy? If all men are naturally inclined to evil, why should Democracy be necessarily more fruitful of evil than Monarchy or Aristocracy? — Merely because — as the average alert reader will already have inferred — whereas it is possible to control and censor Kings and Nobles, and whereas history gives us examples of nations where this has been successfully done, it is and always has been utterly impossible to control the vagaries, shortcomings, errors and actual vices of a whole populace — that is to say, of the voting mob, when it is functioning as a ruling body. No system therefore has ever yet been devised whereby the misrule of mobs can be mitigated or controlled, and this, apart from all the other objections that can be advanced against Democracy, is absolutely insuperable. In short, the fatal objection to Democracy is this: it excludes all possible means of correcting or neutralising the effects of the natural iniquity of Man as manifested in the domain of politics, because in this kind of polity the iniquity in question is concealed in an unidentifiable and anonymous national mob, which cannot even be disciplined or brought to book for its blunders or deliberate malice, let alone shot or beheaded. |
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