# Four and Twenty Minds/Chapter 6

VI
SPENCER
I
The doctrine of individualism has had altogether too many devotees. Each of them has given it a new dress, motto, attitude, name, or seal, until the very mass of attributes has come to obscure the true nature of the doctrine. All men boast today of their individualism: conservative philosophers in search of theoretical weapons of defense; liberals and liberators who seek to bring free trade and competition under the banner of the struggle for existence; mild socialists, like Fournière, who see no incompatibility between the ideas of collectivism and individualism, and would enthrone Nietzsche among the prophets of socialism; and anarchists, dreamers or actors, who plunder Max Stirner by way of preparing themselves for the great destruction.
In a history of individualism you would find the soldiers of fortune of the Renaissance beside the disheveled philosophers of the Sturm und ​Drang; abstract theorists like Fichte and poets of the imagination like Goethe; supporters of Prussian aristocracy like Hegel and revolutionary radicals like Ibsen; mystics like Carlyle and skeptics like Renan; dialecticians like Stirner and lyrists like Nietzsche. Hippolyte Taine, for all his talk of race and of tradition, is as strong for the individual as is the vagabond Gorky, dreaming in Russian solitudes fantastic dreams of gypsy anarchy. And the weighty evolutionary learning of Spencer joins with the elegant subtleties of Maurice Barrès to form part of the current conception of individualism.
Clearly, then, individualism cannot be a single and unchanging thing: too many spirits have exalted it. We must confess, as honest individualists, that there is no common and accepted type of individualism. And there could be perhaps no better proof of the profound and continual diversity of men than the fact that we give a single name and symbol to this many-colored flowering of forms and of ideals.
But perhaps the variety is not so great as it seems. Is it not possible that we are abusing terms when we class as individualistic certain theories which superficially proclaim the preëminence of the individual?
I can hardly repress this suspicion, for ​instance, in the presence of the highly vaunted individualism of Spencer.
To many it has seemed that the philosopher of Derby is the only ideological athlete of the second half of the nineteenth century who is worthy to compete with the prophets of collectivism. His name has become the bulwark of the bourgeoisie. His critique of the state has provided material for propagandist pamphlets. His evolutionary formula has been wielded against the dogmas of equality and historical materialism. In the shadow of his synthesis conservatives have felt themselves secure. The Man versus the State has been the delight of laissez-faire politicians. His Data of Ethics has lulled the hearts of those whose egotism is not yet dead.
What cries of protest went up when Ferri, moved by a cowardly mania for finding allies and supports for socialism, tried to drag Spencer behind the triumphal chariot of collectivism!
Yet no one has seriously raised the question whether Spencer could rightly be called an individualist. No one has sought to discover whether the spirit of Spencer's philosophy is in accord with our most immediate purposes. We have read the chapters in which he justifies egotism and inveighs against the domination of the state, and we have read no further. In so doing, we have done ill.
​I find myself obliged to confess that Spencer is far less of an individualist than his admirers appear to believe. But since the noblest characteristic of an individualist is his self-sufficiency, his admirers will surely waste no tears for the loss of their ally.
He had been, to be sure, a powerful ally. Being on Spencer's side meant being in accord with the most influential recent philosophic doctrine, the doctrine of monistic and evolutionary positivism. But the very thing which the conservatives, in their desire to be in accord with approved thought, have failed to discover, is that this conception cannot rationally be made to serve as a support for individualism. They have copied the pattern of the latest fashion, but that fashion was never meant for figures such as theirs. Individualism is borrowing for itself a uniform designed by collectivists for the use of collectivists. That is what monism is. The dogma of equality in the field of democratic sociology is the counterpart of the dogma of unity in the field of democratic cosmology.
I have called Spencer an evolutionary monist. I might as well have left out the adjective. The theory of evolution is merely one of the methods by which philosophers—those deadly enemies of the particular—have tried to prove unity. Spencer, like all philosophers, is fundamentally a monist, both in his goal and in his methods. ​Philosophy, indeed, despite its apparent variety, is conservative, constant, pertinacious. Philosophy is like a romantic old lady who to the day of her death cherishes the dream of her girlhood: the dream of reducing all things to one single thing, of denying all differences and all distinctions—that is, frankly, of annihilating things. The philosopher desires to see the world issue and unfold, like a gigantic plant, from one single seed; or seeks to trace all appearances of variation back to some vague primordial mystery wherein reason may find a certain pleasure, though sense be lost.
Thus from Thales to the latest Germanic Weltanschauung the constant philosophic tendency has been to make reality illusory and to make the illusion real—that is, to sacrifice variety to oneness, the particular to the universal. And Spencer, though his acquaintance with the history of philosophy was very limited, moved in the same way. Setting aside the unknowable—established as a category for several compelling reasons, but chiefly in order to escape an embarrassing dualism—he took the knowable in hand in the endeavor to reduce it to one single principle. Force, and to one single law, Evolution. His point of departure was the homogeneous. From the homogeneous, that is, from the unique, everything is derived, everything has unfolded. All that which to us seems varied, diverse, ​heterogenous, came out of the great cosmic heart of the primal homogeneity. In the beginning there was but one; later, and for reasons which we see none too clearly, plurality ventured to intrude, for the confusion of the world.
Plurality, in short, is admitted, but not desired. The idea of differentiation which recurs so often in Spencer's explanations is not the goal, but an insistent datum which the philosopher seeks as best he can to trace back to its fabulous origin, to the undifferentiated beginning—that Cockayne of monistic meditation. The diverse is an object to be explained or reduced, not a goal to be achieved—it lacks, indeed, the stability that one desires in a goal. By the side of evolution appears the inverse process, involution, which leads back to the original vagueness. All things issue from the homogeneous, and return to the homogeneous: there you have the synthetic formula of evolutionism.
Spencer then, like all monists, like all philosophers, has failed to grasp the specific characteristic of reality. Truth, multiplicity, that which permits one to compare and contrast objects—that is, really to know them—is regarded as a deviation and a mere appearance, a deceit and a prejudice. In other words, the individual is a dream. That which is called personal, that which seems to us particular, specific, peculiar to one man, is reducible to other elements, may be found ​in other men. Men themselves are reducible to more inclusive species, and these to one single species. And so on from the organic to the inorganic, and at last to the cold universalism of Energy.
If evolution is an instrument of a supreme unity, if all varieties are reducible, if all chasms may be filled, if nature is continuous and uninterrupted, then what the scholastics used to call the ineffable individual disappears like a child's dream. The individual, the person, the man unique, the self, does not and cannot exist, is but a legend denied by science, destroyed by philosophy, abjured by thought. In short, while the individualist feels the need of affirming, accentuating, and increasing diversities, the monist, on the contrary, tends to attenuate, to forget and to deny all differences. Their interests are opposed. Their purposes are antipodal.
Thus the collectivism of sociology finds in monism its perfect metaphysical counterpart.
Positivism, like democracy, is a leveler. It ferrets out facts—tiny facts, by preference. The triumph of Comte was brought about by his enthronement of things. The higher activities of the spirit, sentiment and will, have been dispossessed; their place has been usurped by fact, by representation, by all that which is least personal. And positivism, in its search for law, has sought to remove all irregularity and all caprice. It ​has enrolled the world in regiments, has put facts in uniform, and has thrust the exceptional into the prison of the absurd.
In Spencer, then, monist and positivist, the individualists cannot find a sure defense. If they still share the common desire to win a metaphysical fortress for themselves, with the unconfessed purpose of justifying a posteriori their instinct for personal life, they must turn not to Spencer, but to some pluralistic doctrine. And if they do not find the right doctrine, they will have to invent it.
II
When Spencer left the heights whereon metaphysics battle with the incomprehensible, and came down to consider with greater clearness and with equal profundity the things of earth, the life of men, he did not succeed in forgetting or discarding those intellectual habits which had revealed themselves in his metaphysical speculation.
Indeed, Spencer had developed those habits in sociology before he applied them to ontology. His practical bent had led him very early toward the consideration of human groupings and to the writing of his Social Statics (1851), in which—it is well to remember—he proposed the nationalization of landed property. The sociologist ​finds it impossible to disregard the group, and the student of the group finds it impossible to disregard the elements common to the individuals who compose the group. He is thus led to fix attention on elements of likeness, and to remove attention from elements of difference—to be, in short, a seeker of contacts and affinities rather than of chasms and aversions.
The very first interests of Spencer, then, indicate that fundamental characteristic which makes him in reality an opponent of individualism: his love for unity and for likeness.
This affirmation will seem strange to those who are wont to consider Spencer as the prophet of individualism à outrance. But your true individualist doesn't write sociology. If he writes at all, he writes "confessions," recording the adventures of his egotism. Shall we say that he disregards men? Not that, for an individualism which simply carried off a little slice of the world would be the individualism of a mole. The individualist considers men as servitors, as instruments to grasp, as animals to drive in leash, and not as objects of knowledge. In a word, your true individualist does not write history: he makes it. He lives the life of society, and does not stop to theorize. He is a Pandolfo Petrucci or a Napoleon, not a Comte or a Spencer.
Spencer, however, chose the other course: he turned to the study of men in their actions and ​their relations. As man of letters he wrote of others, not of himself. He had individualism enough to write books on life, but not to achieve in life. Neither as man of words nor as man of deeds was he in reality personal, individual. As a scientist he bowed before facts; as a metaphysician, before the unknowable; as a moralist, before the immutable truth of natural law. His philosophy is formed of fear, of ignorance, and of obedience: virtues from the point of view of Christ, but vices from the point of view of the individualist. Spencer was no more nor less than a forger of individualism.
The common belief that Spencer defended the individual comes wholly from his criticism of the domination of the State. The English philosopher is in fact one of the most tenacious assailants of governmental tyranny. Valiant indeed are his onslaughts against the new Leviathan that seeks to swallow all activities and all persons in the mechanistic mass of its bureaucratic tentacles.
The little book called The Man versus the State is excellent reading. It is a pleasure to take it up after the imposition of some idiotic penalty, or a debate on Sunday closing: for though the muzzling powers of the State increase, its fundamental weakness and absurdity are here revealed.
Yet even this, intelligent and edifying though ​it is, cannot be called individualism. Spencer, to be sure, attacks the State, and the State is a collective entity; but the reasons which underlie his attack remain to be examined. And his principal reason is not the fact that the State is a collective entity and tends, as such, to enthrall the individual; his principal reason is that the State is a collective entity which does not function well. His scorn for governmental action is based on the fact that it costs too much and does not yield enough. Without the stimulus of competition it grows torpid, it falls asleep, it becomes needlessly complicated, spasmodic, cumbersome. He criticizes the State as an engineer might criticize an old-fashioned engine which uses much coal and produces little energy. The engineer, that is, does not object to the engine as an engine, but to a defect in its functioning. If the machine worked well, the engineer would not care whether it were old or new, whether it were composed of few or many pieces. So it is with the State. Spencer does not oppose it because it is a State, a group, a collective and dominant entity—but because it consumes too many pounds sterling and yields but scanty benefits.
Furthermore, he does not by any means oppose all collective entities. He merely criticizes one form of collective entity, the State, to the advantage of other forms, such as societies and private companies. He knows that public ​utilities, such as postal service or the distribution of energy, of light, or of education, cannot be carried on by individuals acting independently, but demand union and coöperation; and he believes that a multiplicity of private organizations, made keen by competition and by the more immediate control of their component members, may have better success than a monopolistic State in satisfying individual needs. But with all this we are still within the realm of unionism; there is no indication here of the development of a truly individual point of view.
Nor can it be said that Spencer is trying to substitute voluntary for compulsory coöperation, and that individual liberty is thus safeguarded, since we can turn from one society to another when the first no longer satisfies us. For since certain services are necessary for all, one must accept a society perforce just as one becomes part of a nation perforce; and since the enterprises in question are necessarily on a large scale, the societies cannot be numerous, and one's choice is therefore limited. Furthermore, they may unite as trusts for their own advantage, and to the disadvantage of the consumer. They may be as tyrannical as the State. And if it be said that one may go from one society to another, cannot the same be said with regard to States? A man who is unwilling to accept the laws of one State may go to another and assume another ​nationality; and as States are governed differently, it may be claimed that there is in theory a rivalry between States just as there is in theory a rivalry between private companies.
In short, Spencer's criticism is directed rather against the excesses of governmental domination than against government in itself. To say nothing of the fact that some services are so fundamental and so complex that a private society could not undertake them, it is to be remembered that Spencer, in the heat of his anti-governmental rage, nevertheless assigns to the State the all-important function of guarding life and property—that is, of guarding all that is worth guarding. And the fact that Spencer assigns this particular function to the State proves that his hatred for the State is partial and superficial, not deep and definitive. If I dislike and distrust a man I do not ask him to become the guardian of my life and the custodian of my property. Yet it is to the State that Spencer gives this confidential task; for he makes the State the policeman, the judge, and the protector of human life, allows it indeed the most intimate and vital offices. He behaves toward the State like a bourru bienfaisant: he complains, grumbles, and protests, but in the end he yields on the most important points. He attacks the State only to exalt it. He attacks public collective entities only ​to put private collective entities in their place. Mere substitution, then, not demolition.
It has well been observed that many men complain of the tyranny of the State, and yet say not a word against the far more powerful tyranny of society. Social dogmas, precisely because they are not fixed in laws and regulations, are more oppressive and more irresistible than the principles of State control. Against these latter there is some defense; they are matters of law. Against social dogmas, reënforced by public opinion, there is no resource save useless and solitary revolt. If it were really desirable and possible to liberate the individual, one would have to begin by uprooting all those weeds of collective superstition which do not appear in codes of law, and are not external and tangible, but reveal themselves as the torments of an inherited conscience, and are internal, invisible, and for the most part unrecognized.
In short, either we are individualists in the true sense of the word—and then we should attack not only the State but any form whatsoever of human regimentation, of subjection to rules and convention—or else we seek to preserve a little liberty and a little union, a little of the individual and a little of the State, a little of the person and a little of the group. In that case we are taking half measures, we are temporizing ​like the prudent bourgeois that we are—but we are not individualists.
Some one at this point will raise his brows, and glimpse between the lines of my prose the dagger of a Caserio or the dynamite of a Ravachol. He need not fear. I am not a half-anarchist, like Spencer, nor a complete anarchist, like Kropotkin or Malatesta. Indeed, I am hostile to Spencer precisely because, failing to understand individualism, he slips toward anarchy.
It is high time to stop the repetition of the statement that anarchy represents the ideal of the greatest possible liberty. Liberty consists in the ability to do certain things, that is, to enjoy and possess certain properties; and since property is by its nature limited, the giving of all liberties to all men, the granting to all men of the right to perform all acts, would simply mean the restriction of the share of each—to the benefit of none and the injury of many. People ingenuously believe that liberty is a thing to be distributed, and that it would be well to give it to all men. Universal liberty, on the contrary, would result in a greater number of unimpeded actions, that is to say, in universal helplessness. The anarchistic ideal is not only impracticable; it is self-contradictory.
Now Spencer, in his dream of a future altruistic humanity, without laws and without government, has consciously or unconsciously ​approached the anarchistic ideal, has displayed an individualism which is anti-personal, like that of all anarchists. For anarchists have failed as yet to understand that since the liberty of all is a contradiction in terms the only liberty which can be established is the liberty of a limited number—that is to say the power of a limited number, the government of a class. Those who are free exercise power, that is, they possess the greater part of all properties, including the labor of other men. And it is clear that any society in which a few are free must necessarily contain many who are slaves.
Despotism is the only practical ideal of anarchy. Alexander the Great, for instance, was far more free than any citizen of modern Europe, precisely because he stood alone, or almost alone, in the power to command and to possess. True individualism consists, then, in counseling subjection, not rebellion; in making slaves, not revolutionists; instruments, not critics. Individualism, the affirmation of full personal power, is in the nature of things reserved for the few, and it is well that the rest of mankind should not get the idea of liberty into their heads. Anarchy, in short, turns out to be in reality an apology for czarism, comes down from an impossible universalism to an easily realized aristocracy, from the theoretical liberty of all to the practical power of the few.
​Spencer, in his fight against the domination of the State and the army, was but a superficial and prehistoric individualist, sentimental and abstract rather than analytical and practical. His individualism was empty and half-hearted.
Despite his scientific pretensions, Spencer was guided more by sentiment than by reason. Instead of seeing clearly the need for realities beneath words, he, like all philanthropists, sought universal love, altruism, and progress. In the last years of his life, perhaps in conscious recognition of this weakness, he sang the praises of sentiment in his Facts and Comments—forgetting the intellectualistic psychology of his youth.
Sentiment appears too in those moral analyses at the end of the Data of Ethics which have been cited in support of the legend of his individualism. He did indeed attempt a rehabilitation of egotism in so far as it tends to altruism—of that egotism which through ego-altruistic sentiments tends toward a final and universal altruism. The ultimate goal is to think of others; it is well to begin by thinking of one's self. The ego is again subordinate to others, the individual to the common herd.
Now for the true individualist there are possible but two attitudes with regard to men: that of the rebel and that of the dominator, that of the libertarian and that of Cæsar. Those who ​cannot dominate or possess choose the former attitude, and seek to destroy those who do possess and dominate. And these, in turn, seek to conquer more and more, and to ward off their enemies while they endeavor to increase their domination over things and men.
Spencer, a middle-class spirit without courage and without audacity, remains dangling in the limbo of antinomies, wavering between the necessity of government and the lamentation of the oppressed. He was the pedantic Hamlet of a half-intelligent and compromising bourgeoisie.