Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative; Vol. 1 of 3: Library Edition (1891), Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and Various other Additions.Spencer, Herbert
Philosophy
Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative; Vol. 1 of 3: Library Edition (1891), Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and Various other Additions.
Spencer, Herbert
Philosophy; Political science; Science
And Hobbes carries this comparison so far as actually to give a drawing
of the Leviathan--a vast human-shaped figure, whose body and limbs are
made up of multitudes of men. Just noting that these different analogies
asserted by Plato and Hobbes, serve to cancel each other (being, as they
are, so completely at variance), we may say that on the whole those of
Hobbes are the more plausible. But they are full of inconsistencies. If
the sovereignty is the _soul_ of the body-politic, how can it be that
magistrates, who are a kind of deputy-sovereigns, should be comparable
to _joints_? Or, again, how can the three mental functions, memory,
reason, and will, be severally analogous, the first to counsellors, who
are a class of public officers, and the other two to equity and laws,
which are not classes of officers, but abstractions? Or, once more, if
magistrates are the artificial joints of society, how can reward and
punishment be its nerves? Its nerves must surely be some class of
persons. Reward and punishment must in societies, as in individuals, be
_conditions_ of the nerves, and not the nerves themselves.
But the chief errors of these comparisons made by Plato and Hobbes, lie
much deeper. Both thinkers assume that the organization of a society is
comparable, not simply to the organization of a living body in general,
but to the organization of the human body in particular. There is no
warrant whatever for assuming this. It is in no way implied by the
evidence; and is simply one of those fancies which we commonly find
mixed up with the truths of early speculation. Still more erroneous are
the two conceptions in this, that they construe a society as an
artificial structure. Plato's model republic--his ideal of a healthful
body-politic--is to be consciously put together by men, just as a watch
might be; and Plato manifestly thinks of societies in general as thus
originated. Quite specifically does Hobbes express a like view. "For by
_art_," he says, "is created that great LEVIATHAN called a
COMMONWEALTH." And he even goes so far as to compare the supposed social
contract, from which a society suddenly originates, to the creation of a
man by the divine fiat. Thus they both fall into the extreme
inconsistency of considering a community as similar in structure to a
human being, and yet as produced in the same way as an artificial
mechanism--in nature, an organism; in history, a machine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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