TABLE OF CONTENTS

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th>Page</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>A. Introduction</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>B. Historical Background and Discussion of Doctrine</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>C. Political Philosophers</td><td>8</td></tr><tr><td>D. Conclusions</td><td>16</td></tr></tbody></table>

I

A. Introduction.

The history of the modified form of the Law of Nature
as it appeared in the 17th Century is the history of modern
Europe. It appeared at the time of the collapse of one
universal and substituted in its place a different concept
of Absoluteness, an Absolute conceived by its essence instead
of an end. Fathered by such men as Althusius and Grotius,
developed by Hobbes, Spinoza and Locke it branched out into 2
broad streams, the conflict of which is the mark of our time:
democracy or the inherent right of the individual vs
Totalitarianism or the organic nature of the group, the
atomistic insignificance of the individual. Withal the modified
Form of the Law of Nature is no accidental growth. Its roots
are deep in Stoic thinking, its growth was made possible by
existing political constellations, its philosophy was influenced
by ancient notions of morality. This will have to be considered
when we inquire into the claims of the new philosophy as being
an exact science. It will be to not avail, therefore, to
consider the doctrine of the modified Natural Law in a vacuum.
We will have to approach it in relation to its history, to the
moral sentiments of the period, to its place in the perspective
of continuing political thought.

2

B. <u>Historical Background and Discussions of Doctrine.</u>

The beginning of the 17th century saw the consummation
of a process that had been steadily going on for 150 years,
the disintegration of the 2 pillars of the accepted concepts
of universality: the Catholic church and Holy Roman Empire.
Under the impact of the Reformation through the religious wars
and settlements of the 16th century, the Catholic church led
split up and given birth to several Protestant Sects. The Holy
Roman Empire, growing steadily weaker ever since the collapse
of the Hohenstauffen dynasty, rend violently by the Reformation,
was ruined in everything but name by the Thirty Year's War.
An new era was dawning in Europe, an era of dynastic monarchy,
of absolute sovereignty, of nationalism.

To understand the nature of the raid left by this collapse,
it is necessary to examine briefly medieval philosophy. Dominated
by Christianity, it had adopted the Stoic law of Nature and
the Aristotilian concepts of *telemacy*. This stated that a
Universal law existed, the connecting link between God and man.
Right was right only in so far as it approached this Universal.
Man could achieve salvation only by conformity to this Law.
Salvation was necessary, for everything had a purpose. Nature
was created for man, and man existed for God. The only judge
of Truth and E Reason, at least as far as doctrine was concerned,
was God's representative on earth, the Pope in Rome. Faith,
was thus the key to medieval thinking, with reason supporting
accepted dogma. The only worthwhile object of speculation was
one of an object and even this was limited by a
the purpose

3

a presumption of inquiry in God's purposes; inquiry into causality was Herely Lucky. It was thus an age of certainty and universality.

The slow disintegration and final splitting up of the Catholic church shook this belief, for universality implies uniqueness. The renewed study of Greek philosophers, particularly Plato, opened other vistas. The new National States were groping for a justification of their doctrine of Sovereignty. Most importantly the 17th century was an era of tremendous scientific discoveries. Galileo proved that the earth was just another planet, Harvey established the circulation of the blood, Newton's Principia comest the period. A belief arose in the feasibility of an inquiry into cavaus. Maybe one did not need God to explain everything. Mathematics, particularly Geometry seemed to offer a method of logic that led to infallible results. It was only necessary to find axioms as obviously apparent as Euclid's to discover the true key to nature, the new *a* modified Law of Nature.

The new concept of Natural law then still talked of Universals. But they were absolutes discoverable by anybody, the pilot of nature was no longer God, but Reason. It was stated that induction would yield certain self-evident principles, from which by a series of progressive deductions all problems could be resolved. With premises self-evident, with the power of reason supreme, method became permanent and many leading philosophers of the period concentrated on finding the "true" method. It is probably best expounded in Descartes who lays

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down the following 4 rules for abstract speculation. (1) To accept nothing but what is self evident. √Power of Reason and Premises inductively determined. (2) To resolve each problem into parts small enough so that they may be individually examined. (3) To advance by a series of steps from premise to certain deductions. (4) To linger on each problem until all its possibilities are examined. This attempt to adapt Geometric reasoning to Philosophy was the mark of the period. Spinoza wrote his Ethics in the form of a mathematical treatise, conceiving motion as the underlying principle of the Universe, developed his philosophy along hardly less injurious lines.

In political theory this new concept brought fundamental changes. The "organic" concept of state - √ was for the moment discarded, to reappear later in modified form in Rousseau. If Nature could be explained by its parts, states must derive their reason for existence from the members composing it. The old concept of man existing for the state was thus revised. This led to an inquiry into the very basis of organized society and resulted in the formulation of the concept of the social contract.√ Some writers such as Althusius conceived of society as a pyramid of smaller associations, each bound by its own agreement and the state including all in general contract. Others such as Hobbes or Locke conceived of a Social Contract occurring only between the Sovereign and Society and only once, at the inception of the state. The important fact is that the Sovereign, even the Absolute Sovereign of Hobbes, derived

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his authority from an obligation voluntarily incurred, versed AREST
by the inevitable CAUSABILITY of human nature and existing
for certain specified ends.

This new WARLIVENESS of the individual expressed in the
Social Contract also gave birth to concepts of individual
dignity, laid the basis for modern concepts of democracy.
In Locke, as will be seen further down, this was best expressed
in a doctrine of inalienable natural rights to life, liberty
and property. Another strand of this democratic theory came
down to the present in the Calvinistic and Puritan concepts
of voluntary associations, where each man was conceived to
have his distinctive contribution to make and the group as a
whole to gain by diversity rather than uniformity of its
members.

However, the third trend of the period, and probably the
most distinctive, the emphasis on science, was less CONDUCT
to democratic thought. True it divided the whole into its
parts and stressed the part to explain the whole. But it
made its component so small that their very insignificance
made them impotent. Just as Nature was divided into atoms
of a size so small as to be indiscernible, with no color, taste
or any other attribute of sense distinction, so society was
reduced to a collection of similar, equal individuals. As
Lord Lindsay has pointed out, however, this equality is one of
impotence, implies a manipulation of the components by the master-
brain of the scientist. Hobbes is a typical example of this
concept which results in an all-pervasive sovereign, and which

6

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carried through Rousseau into its one of the clues to Totalitarian thinking.

Some other implications of Natural Law will be discussed under the heading of "Conclusions." For the moment it is important to consider just how far the new doctrine could claim to be scientific. By substituting the power of Reason for the all-inclusiveness of God, it in one sense merely changed one Absolute for another. For what is meant by the power of reason? Daily experience seems to refute that reason alone is sufficient. This Natural Law philosophers will counter, is not the fault of Reason, but the fault of the method. Then we have to ask: What is correct method? It is according to Descartes - and he expresses the prevailing sentiment - nothing less than going from self-evident principles by infallible logic to inevitable deductions. But what are self-evident principles? Obviously the cause of disagreement among political theorists is very rarely difference in logic, but divergence in premises, usually a concept of Human Nature. And the very nature of "Self-Evidence" is relative. What is obvious in one century, is obscure in the next and the morality of any period determines and limits the applicability of any "self-evident" doctrine. There is no perfect "Form" of man on of a State", as there is an ideal triangle to which all others must correspond. Even Descartes was in the final analysis forced to call on the intervention of God to prove that reasoning was not fallacious and Spinoza in his Essay on Human Understanding, objects any

7

speculation that will not lead to a pre-determined and, which
is hardly an unquestioning acceptance of causality, no matter
where it will lead. None of the political theorists, of the
age, moreover, were able to free themselves from the prevailing
sentiments of their environment. The self-evident premises
of Hobbes of 1640 were much less clear to Locke in 1690. Thus
it is necessary to examine the political theories of several
philosophers of the period, to show that even the "scientific"
method is not the road to Absolute Certainty in Political
Theory, to inquire into how far these theories were influenced
by their times and thus to determine their universal feasibility.

8

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C. <u>Philosophers of Natural Law.</u>

Althusius, the first in point of time of the philosophers about to be discussed is also the first theorist to discuss the Social Contract. His "self-evident" premise is that man is a social animal and naturally tends to forming groups. Each of these groups has a two-fold law, the Social Contract, the law determining the aim of the organization and a rule stating and limiting the type of authority to be yielded by the organization. Society is based on a pyramid of these groups, stratified through family, voluntary corporation, local community, province and at the apex the State. Each of the larger groups is formed by and association of the primitive groupings, as units, rather than as a collection of individuals. The powers of every larger group and finally the state are limited to the minimum necessary for its purposes, the residue remaining with the more primitive unit. The right of rebellion is recognized, but only when supported by a group of officials appointed to prevent transgression of central authority; the ephors.

The significance of Althusius' philosophy resides in the fact that for the first time since the advent of Christian dominance a theory of state-hood was formulated that for its moral foundation did not rely on God, the Natural Laws of right: — the social contract, the necessity of association - could by hypothesis be established even without the existence of God by pure induction. Althusius thus a true prophet of the new theory of Natural Law discussed above. Several implications are

9

apparent from his philosophy. On the one hand the contracting
on the basis of groups implies at least a hint of what Rousseau
later developed into the General Will. This concept of the
State as a series of voluntary organizations was also the basis
for Lord Lindsay's concept of the modern Democratic State.
On the other hand, Althusius' state was federal in character,
with power at each level limited to the purposes to be achieved,
and the residue remaining with the more primitive group. In
this sense he is the forerunner of Locke, Monteqüieu and the
fathers of the American Constitution.

But this is not the place to go into exact details of
Althusius' theory. We must determine, however, in how far his
philosophy was absolutely self-evident and thus rested on
"scientific" principles. Althusius was a Calvinist, writing
in France at a period when this religious group was defending
the moral basis of toleration, established by the edict of
Nanters in 1598, after 50 years of religious persecution.
The Calvinist doctrine of justification by faith was the
basis for voluntary organizations and the federal concept
butressed by the Social Contract Theory seemed the best safeguard.

Grätius was the first political theorist to explicitly
state the new theory of Natural Law. In examining any group
or association, he stated, certain aspirations and moral norms
can be determined. These represent the Natural Laws, approximation
to which alone determine Right or Wrong. In organized Society
the State enforces the Natural Law. However, Natural Law is above
the State, and in a sense even above God. The State
can no more make wrong, right, than can God. For to do

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this would be a manifestation of weakness, not of strength. Similarly among national states, certain universal moral concepts exist, even without an enforcing agency. This Grotius made the philosophical basis for his treatise, which out of the Roman ius Gentium (the law common to all nations) created what is now called International Law. The chief difference between Grotius, and the Natural Law, philosophers of the earlier period is to be found in the fact that Grotius' universal principles are founded in Reason alone and do not need the intervention of God to establish their validity.

Yet Grotius, too, was a child of his time. Writing during the Thirty Year's war in the ravaged Netherlands, the necessity of an International Law was more evident to him than it might have been at another period.

Hobbes was the founder of what Lord Lindsay calls the atomistic, scientific theory of society. (His Natural Law could be resolved into a struggle for existence with no limits save man's power. But an atomistic theory implies equality, a balance, not before a code of ethics, but of strength, an equality that enables the weakest human being to destroy the strongest. This equality leads to a constant state of insecurity compounded by the fact that man will do only what is to his advantage unless restrained by superior force. Ethics in a universal sense do not exist and justice in Tratychemus' words (Book I, the Republic) "is the advantage of the stronger." In order to escape this insecurity and to at least maintain his life, man forms society. But the Sovereign, or State, will be impotent unless backed by force, and can acquire force only through the

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the surrender by each member of all his rights. Hobbes, requires a Social Contract to achieve this, at the inception of the State. The State then is Absolute Sovereign. It can do no injustice, though it may be inequitable, for each person has given up all his rights except that to his life. This, admittedly is not desirable, but so much the lesser of two evils that it is worth submitting to.

Hobbes then modifies the Natural Law theory to what one may call Natural Phenomena. No longer is there any speculation about Universal Ends though discoverable by Reason, but only an inquiry into CAUSES, intuitively perceived. Right or wrong are measured by no better standard than expediency and the "lesser-of-two-evils" theory. Hobbes' concept although it starts by examining man, develops a more Absolute State, than even medieval theories of sovereignty. But in the final analysis Hobbes state is a device for man, its short-comings, a reflection of man's FAILURE. This doctrine of the Absolute Sovereignty of the State, apparently scientifically deduced has appeared time and again since Hobbes. Rousseau, uses it through the instrument of the General Will. And as adapted by MARXISM, or Nazism it has found receptive audiences in totalitarian Europe.

It is easy to show, how both the character and the environment of Hobbes influenced his philosophy. "Fear and I were twins" is his own self characterization. Living during the period of the Civil War and CROMWELL, with the attendant insecurity,

12

loss of life and turmoil, it is clear how to this essentially timid thinker the most obvious good was security, worthy of almost any sacrifice. Hobbes' concept of Human Nature then, the very basis of his philosophy, is based on an empirical approach, rather than on intuitive premises.

Spinoza is the most difficult to explain in terms of his time and utilizes the most rigorous method of logic of any of his contemporaries. His whole philosophy is based on the power of Reason. As far as man lives according to Reason he leads a good life. At first sight Spinoza's philosophy seems strangely similar to Hobbes'. Man's essence is expressed in his drive for self-preservation. Virtue is anything that conduces to man's advantage. Moral standards of Good or Evil are meaningless except as far as they are related to this effort. Society is created to give man the greatest possibility of self-preservation and just as self-preservation in a soldier implies giving up all his rights to the commander, so it requires giving up all the individual's right to the State.

So far the similarity to Hobbes is striking. But Spinoza is more subtle. It is true, he affirms, that man will do only what is to his advantage. But Reason alone is the criterion of advantage. And true Reason will demonstrate that man will best realize his essence, and thus conduce to his self-preservation by living in amity with his fellow-man. The State then becomes merely a restraining force on those perverted characters whose essence is expressed in anti-social activity. Moreover the State though absolute will act correctly only insofar as it in turn

13

approaches the Law of Reason. There exist for Spinoza 2
levels of ambition: the striving for material advantage,
and the true advantage discovered by correct application of
Reason.* A conflict between Natural Law as a cause, and
Natural Law as an end. This difficulty Spinoza never wholly
resolves. But important residues remain: Since he considers
democracy the most natural form of government, and since he
feels that the Sovereign merely "expresses the will of all
in the common interest" he is coming very close to Rousseau's
doctrine of the "General Will." On the other hand his
affirmation of certain "Natural Rights" such as freedom of
speech and freedom of thought that the Sovereign should never
interfere with, anticipates Locke. And lastly his doctrine
of Absolute Sovereignty is closely akin to Hobbes.

It will be difficult to place Spinoza into his time.
Undoubtedly the democratic institutions of his native Holland
influenced him. Certainly the existing spirit of scientific
inquiry gave him impetus. But his greatness, his cosmic idea
of the universe, which allowed him to see the whole as a
function of the parts and at the same time consider the
parts as manifestations of the all-pervading Reason called God,
trandescends any age. Like all true greatness, he had somewhat
his own laws. And yet, with all the undoubted severity of his
method, one must still ask: how far can any philosophy, no
matter how brilliantly argued, claim universality if it is
based on premises derived from Human Reason, unless one accept
the infallibility of men, which to me, at least, is a contradiction
in terms. The answer to this question is the answer to the

14

universal applicability of the Law of Nature.

Locke, the philosopher of democracy, believed in a Natural Law; the Law of Reason. Its dictates are all pervasive and universally applicable. However, men are notoriously bad judges in their own cases. Moreover, the strength of an individual is frequently insufficient to enforce his rights. Thus a state of insecurity arises particularly as to Property which to Locke is the basis of Society. But since men are reasonable and since they have a Natural Right to Life, Liberty and Property there is no sense in creating an all-powerful state, a Leviathan or Mortal God. Indeed, the disadvantages of that would compound the original insecurity and negate the very reason for the state's existence. Therefore, Locke devises a Social Contract, very similar to that of a joint Stock Company which creates a state for a specific mission, namely the preservation of the Life, Liberty and Property of its members. But since uncertainty as to the nature of the law caused men to originally form a state there must be standing laws, interpreted by an impartial judiciary, enforced by a controlled executive. To prevent the State from getting too strong it is well to separate Executive and Legislative functions. To insure representation of the popular will, an elected assembly should press terms.

Thus Locke, starting from one premise similar to Hobbes' - insecurity, diverges from him radically in his estimate of human nature - the second essential premise. Thus Locke becomes the great forerunner of the Natural Rights of men, branching into

15

two streams, the Constitutional democracy of the U.S. and the
parliamentary system of Great Britain.

But Locke too can lay no claim to intuitive certainty,
although he of all 17th century philosophers would least claim
this for himself. His approach, was in most respects empirical.
He wrote about people recognizably English, in an age marked
by self-reliance, commercial expansion /emphasis on Property/,
whose only threat was a strong state.

We have now examined 5 of the leading philosophers of
this modified doctrine of Natural Law. It seems obvious that
their self-evident premises were self-evident only as related
to their period and not an Absolute standard. The scientific
approach to political theory can in the final analysis lay
no more claim to exactness, than the organic conception of the
medieval period. But relativity can be overdone. Each period
produces concepts that in relation to it are Absolute and many
of our present-day ideas can not be understood except in the
light of this doctrine of Natural Law, which in the 17th
century, boldly asserted that man, not the State counted, that
with all its variations yet invariably conceived of the State
as merely an instrument of man and not an end in itself, and
which for the next 200 years spawned such movements as
Liberalism, Marxism and such thinkers as Rousseau, Mill and Bentham.

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D. Conclusions

The 17th century doctrine of Natural Law with its
substitution of the power of Reason to explain the universe,
in place of the emphasis on final ends, began the era of
modern political thinking. To-day we may demonstrate that
Reason is incapable of an intuitively - perceived truth.
Even Spinoza had to admit in his Ethics that any idea has
a tendency to assert itself and can only be refuted by a
stronger contrary idea derived from experience which is
affirming the value of empiricism. But even though we can
show that intuition is not infallible and is in fact as much
a result of existing morality as a cause of philosophy, the
contribution of the 17th century philosophers can not be
underrated.

Certain trends are common to all of them and continued
in Western thinking throughout the 18th and 19th century; the
idea of the Social Contract as the basis of society, the
concept of Natural Right of Men even if restricted to the
right to live in the case of Hobbes.

Two main branches of thinking developed from the 17th
century, and each was again subdivided. The democratic idea
went from Althusius through Locke into the American Constitution
with the typically American substitution of Life, Liberty and
the Pursuit of Happiness, for Locke's idea of Life, Liberty
and Property. The concept of voluntary association of the
State as a collection of General Wills enunciated by Bosanquet,
stressed by Lindsay still exists.

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The other democratic theory went from Hobbes through Rousseau into the French Constitution, where it asserted the Absolute Sovereignty of the people, and created a system of Legislative Supremacy. Probably my classification of Hobbes as a fore-runner of Rousseau is open to criticism. But in their emphasis on the absolute Sovereignty of the Sovereign they were identical. And if one substitutes a Democracy is Hobbes' sovereign [which Hobbes dislikes, but does not rule out] one will be very lose indeed to Rousseau's position.

But Hobbes - again through Rousseau - also fathered another philosophy; the theory of the absolute supremacy of the State with the corollary of an absolute insignificance of the individual. A logical development of the concept that there is one, and only one, true Reason it leads to such paradoxes as Rousseau's "Force people to be free" and communism, "dictatorship of the proletariat to educate for democracy."

For if there is an Absolute Truth discoverable by all men of Good-will it follows that only men of Ill-Will disagree and must be liquidated. The Fascism of the 1930's and Communism to-day offer examples of this type of thinking.

This, then, is the doctrine, the history and the development of Natural Law. With all its logical inconsistencies, with all the diverse implications resulting, it still seems to express a basic human void; the search for universals, the quest for certainty in an uncertain world, the desire for understanding the incomprehensible. Few centuries have produced as many men who thought so deeply or who have come closer to solving the problem of Man's relation to Man.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

I

A. Introduction.

The history of the modified form of the Law of Nature
as it appeared in the 17th Century is the history of modern
Europe. It appeared at the time of the collapse of one
universal and substituted in its place a different concept
of Absoluteness, an Absolute conceived by its essence instead
of an end. Fathered by such men as Althusius and Grotius,
developed by Hobbes, Spinoza and Locke it branched out into 2
broad streams, the conflict of which is the mark of our time:
democracy or the inherent worth of the individual vs
Totalitarianism or the organic nature of the group, the
atomistic insignificance of the individual. Withal the modified
Form of the Law of Nature is no accidental growth. Its roots
are deep in Stoic thinking, its growth was made possible by
existing political constellations, its philosophy was influenced
by ancient notions of morality. This will have to be considered
when we inquire into the claims of the new philosophy as being
an exact science. It will be to no avail, therefore, to
consider the doctrine of the modified Natural Law in a vacuum.
We will have to approach it in relation to its history, to the
moral sentiments of the period, to its place in the perspective
of continuing political thought.

2

[N]

## B. Historical Background and Discussions of Doctrine.

The beginning of the 17th century saw the consummation of a process that had been steadily going on for 150 years, the disintegration of the 2 pillars of the accepted concepts of universality: the Catholic church and Holy Roman Empire. Under the impact of the Reformation through the religious wars and settlements of the 16th century, the Catholic church had split up and given birth to several Protestant Sects. The Holy Roman Empire, growing steadily weaker ever since the collapse of the Hohenstauffen dynasty, rend violently by the Reformation, was ruined in everything but name by the Thirty Year's War. An new era was dawning in Europe, an era of dynastic monarchy, of absolute sovereignty, of nationalism.

To understand the nature of the void left by this collapse, it is necessary to examine briefly medieval philosophy. Dominated by Christianity, it had adapted the Stoic law of Nature and the Aristotilian concepts of teleology. This stated that a Universal law existed, the connecting link between God and man. Right was right only in so far as it approached this Universal. Man could achieve salvation only by conformity to this Law. Salvation was necessary, for everything had a purpose. Nature was created for man, and man existed for God. The only judge of Truth and Error, at least as far as doctrine was concerned, was God's representative on earth, the Pope in Rome. Faith, was thus the key to medieval thinking, with reason supporting accepted dogma. The only worthwhile object of speculation was the purpose of an object and even this was limited by a

3

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a proscription of inquiry in God's purposes; inquiry into
causality was heresy. It was thus an age of certainty and
universality.

The slow disintegration and final splitting up of the ✓ Catholic church shook this belief, for universality implies uniqueness. The renewed study of Greek philosophers, particularly Plato, opened other vistas. The new National States were groping for a justification of their doctrine of Sovereignty. Most importantly the 17th century was an era of tremendous scientific discoveries. Galileo proved that the earth was ✓ just another planet, Harvey established the circulation of the blood, Newton's Principia crowned the period. A belief arose in the feasibility of an inquiry into causes. Maybe one did not need God to explain everything. Mathematics, particularly Geometry seemed to offer a method of logic that led to infallible results. It was only necessary to find axioms as obviously apparent as Euclid's to discover the true key to nature, the new or modified Law of Nature.

The new concept of Natural law then still talked of Universals. But they were Absolutes discoverable by anybody, the pilot of nature was no longer God, but Reason. It was stated that induction would yield certain self-evident principles, from which by a series of progressive deductions all problems could be resolved. With premises self-evident, with the power of reason supreme, method became paramount and many leading philosophers of the period concentrated on finding the "true" method. It is probably best expressed in Descartes who lays

4

[Y]

down the following 4 rules for abstract speculation. (1) To accept nothing but what is self evident. √Power of Reason and Premises inductively determined. (2) To resolve each problem into parts small enough so that they may be individually examined. (3) To advance by a series of steps from premise to certain deductions. (4) To linger on each problem until all its possibilities are examined. This attempt to adapt Geometric reasoning to Philosophy was the mark of the period. Spinoza wrote his Ethics in the form of a mathematical treatise, Hobbes, conceiving motion as the underlying principle of the Universe, developed his philosophy along hardly less rigorous lines.

In political theory this new concept brought fundamental changes. The "organic" concept of state -Loo was for the moment discarded, to reappear later in modified form in Rousseau. If Nature could be explained by its parts, states must derive their reason for existence from the members composing them. The old concept of man existing for the state was thus revised. This led to an inquiry into the very basis of organized society and resulted in the formulation of the concept of the social contract. Some writers such as Althusius conceived of society as a pyramid of smaller associations, each bound by its own agreement and the state including all in general contract. Others such as Hobbes or Locke conceived of a Social Contract occurring only between the Sovereign and Society and only once, at the inception of the state. The important fact is that the ✓ Sovereign, even the Absolute Sovereign of Hobbes, derived

5

[Y]

his authority from an obligation voluntarily incurred, created
by the inevitable causality of human nature and existing
for certain specified ends.

This new awareness of the individual expressed in the
Social Contract also gave birth to concepts of individual
dignity, laid the basis for modern concepts of democracy.
In Locke, as will be seen further down, this was best expressed
in a doctrine of inalienable natural rights to life, liberty
and property. Another strand of this democratic theory came
down to the present in the Calvinistic and Puritan concepts
of voluntary associations, where each man was conceived to
have his distinctive contribution to make and the group as a
whole to gain by diversity rather than uniformity of its
members.

However, the third trend of the period, and probably the
most distinctive, the emphasis on science, was less conducive
to democratic thought. True it divided the whole into its
parts and stressed the part to explain the whole. But it
made its component so small that their very insignificance
made them impotent. Just as Nature was divided into atoms
of a size so small as to be indiscernible, with no color, taste
or any other attribute of sense distinction, so society was
reduced to a collection of similar, equal individuals. As
Lord Lindsay has pointed out, however, this equality is one of
impotence, implies a manipulation of the components by the master-
brain of the scientist. Hobbes is a typical example of this
concept which results in an all-pervasive sovereign, and which

6

[Y]

carried through Rousseau into Marx is one of the clues to Totalitarian thinking.

Some other implications of Natural Law will be discussed under the heading of "Conclusions." For the moment it is important to consider just how far the new doctrine could claim to be scientific. By substituting the power of Reason for the all-inclusiveness of God, it in one sense merely changed one Absolute for another. For what is meant by the power of reason? Daily experience seems to refute that reason alone is sufficient. This Natural Law philosophers will counter, is not the fault of Reason, but the fault of the method. Then we have to ask: What is correct method? It is according to Descartes - and he expresses the prevailing sentiment - nothing less than going from self-evident principles by infallible logic to inevitable deductions. But what are self-evident principles? Obviously the cause of disagreement among political theorists is very rarely difference in logic, but divergence in premises, usually a concept of Human Nature. And the very nature of "Self-Evidence" is relative. What is obvious in one century, is obscure in the next and the morality of any period determines and limits the applicability of any "self-evident" doctrine. There is no perfect "Form" of man or of State", as there is an ideal triangle to which all others must correspond. Even Descartes was in the final analysis forced to call on the intervention of God to prove that reasoning was not fallacious and Spinoza in his Essay on Human Understanding, rejects any

7

[N]

speculation that will not lead to a pre-determined end, which
is hardly an unquestioning acceptance of causality, no matter
where it will lead. None of the political theorists, of the
age, moreover, were able to free themselves from the prevailing
sentiments of their environment. The self-evident premises
of Hobbes of 1640 were much less clear to Locke in 1690. Thus
it is necessary to examine the political theories of several
philosophers of the period, to show that even the "scientific"
method is not the road to Absolute Certainty in Political
Theory, to inquire into how far these theories were influenced
by their times and thus to determine their universal feasibility.

8

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### C. Philosophers of Natural Law.

Althusius, the first in point of time of the philosophers about to be discussed is also the first theorist to discuss the Social Contract. His "self-evident" premise is that man is a social animal and naturally tends to form groups. Each of these groups has a two-fold law, or Social Contract, the law determining the aim of the organization and a rule stating and limiting the type of authority to be yielded by the organization. Society is based on a pyramid of these groups, stratified through family, voluntary corporation, local community, province and at the apex the State. Each of the larger groups is formed by and association of the primitive groupings, as units, rather than as a collection of individuals. The powers of every larger group and finally the state are limited to the minimum necessary for its purposes, the residue remaining with the more primitive unit. The right of rebellion is recognized, but only when supported by a group of officials appointed to prevent transgression of central authority; the ephors.

The significance of Althusius' philosophy resides in the fact that for the first time since the advent of Christian dominance a theory of state-hood was formulated that for its moral foundation did not rest on God, the Natural Laws of which: - the social contract, the necessity of association - could by hypothesis be established even without the existence of God by pure induction. Althusius thus a true prophet of the new theory of Natural Law discussed above. Several implications are

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Grotius was the first political theorist to explicitly
state the new theory of Natural Law. In examining any group
or association, he stated, certain aspirations and moral norms
can be determined. These represent the Natural Laws, approximation
to which alone determine Right or Wrong. In organized Society
the State enforces the Natural Law. However, Natural Law is above
the State, and in a sense even above God. The State
can no more make wrong, right, than can God. For to do

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Hobbes was the founder of what Lord Lindsay calls the atomistic, scientific theory of society. His Natural Law could be resolved into a struggle for existence with no limits save man's power. But an atomistic theory implies equality, a balance, not before a code of ethics, but of strength, an equality that enables the weakest human being to destroy the strongest. This equality leads to a constant state of insecurity compounded by the fact that man will do only what is to his advantage unless restrained by superior force. Ethics in a universal sense do not exist and justice in Trasychemus' words (Book I, the Republic) "is the advantage of the stronger." In order to escape this insecurity and to at least maintain his life, man forms society. But the Sovereign, or State, will be impotent unless backed by force, and can acquire force only through the

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Hobbes then modifies the Natural Law theory to what one may call Natural Phenomena. No longer is there any speculation about Universal Ends though discoverable by Reason, but only an inquiry into causes intuitively perceived. Right or wrong are measured by no better standard than expediency and the "lesser-of-two-evils" theory. Hobbes concept although it starts by examining man, develops a more Absolute State, than even medieval theories of sovereignty. But in the final analysis Hobbes state is a device for man, its short-comings, a reflection of man's failure. This doctrine of the Absolute Sovereignty of the State, apparently scientifically deduced has appeared time and again since Hobbes. Rousseau, uses it through the instrument of the General Will. And as adapted by Marxism, or Nazism it has found receptive audiences in totalitarian Europe.

It is easy to show, how both the character and the environment of Hobbes influenced his philosophy. "Fear and I were twins" is his own self characterization. Living during the period of the Civil War and Cromwell, with the attendant insecurity,

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loss of life and turmoil, it is clear how to this essentially timid thinker the most obvious good was security, worthy of almost any sacrifice. Hobbes' concept of Human Nature then, the very basis of his philosophy, is based on an empirical ✓ approach, rather than on intuitive premises.

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approaches the Law of Reason. There exist for Spinoza 2 levels of ambition: the striving for material advantage, and the true advantage discovered by correct application of Reason,* a conflict between Natural Law as a cause, and Natural Law as an end. This difficulty Spinoza never wholly resolves. But important residues remain: Since he considers democracy the most natural form of government, and since he feels that the Sovereign merely "expresses the will of all in the common interest" he is coming very close to Rousseau's doctrine of the "General Will." On the other hand his affirmation of certain "Natural Rights" such as freedom of speech and freedom of thought that the Sovereign should never interfere with, anticipates Locke. And lastly his doctrine of Absolute Sovereignty is closely akin to Hobbes.

It will be difficult to place Spinoza into his time. Undoubtedly the democratic institutions of his native Holland influenced him. Certainly the existing spirit of scientific inquiry gave him impetus. But his greatness, his cosmic idea of the universe, which allowed him to see the whole as a function of the parts and at the same time consider the parts as manifestations of the all-pervading Reason (called God), trandescends any age. Like all true greatness, he had somewhat his own laws. And yet, with all the undoubted severity of his method, one must still ask: how far can any philosophy, no matter how brilliantly argued, claim universality if it is based on premises derived from Human Reason, unless one accept the infallibility of men, which to me, at least, is a contradiction in terms. The answer to this question is the answer to the

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But Locke too can lay no claim to intuitive certainty,
although he of all 17th century philosophers would least claim
this for himself. His approach, was in most respects empirical.
He wrote about people recognizably English, in an age marked
by self-reliance, commercial expansion /emphasis on Property/,,
whose only threat was a strong state.

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D. Conclusions

Two main branches of thinking developed from the 17th century, and each was again subdivided. The democratic idea went from Althusius through Locke into the American Constitution with the typically American substitution of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, for Locke's idea of Life, Liberty and Property. The concept of voluntary association of the State as a collection of General Wills enunciated by Bosanquet, stressed by Lindsay, still exists.