but respectfully express their opinions. The liberty of the press is the sole palladium of the rights of the people. In fact, it is by this means that the sovereign learns what is the general will; and in idea it is because he represents the general will that he is sovereign. But the exercise of this privilege must be in keeping with reverence for the existing constitution.

No people is safe where the ultimate appeal is not to its own body. Under an autocrat of less wisdom than Frederick the Great the reduction of a people to serfdom would be the probable result of the Kantian scheme of government. Moral but not political freedom would remain. The subject could exclaim, with Epictetus, "God hath made me free; I know his commands; after this no one can enslave me." But he must not refuse to obey a legal law however unjust. There is no surety that the sovereign will choose to act in the spirit of the compact. Kant's theory would have been more consistent, as well as more serviceable, if after emphasizing the worth of man by dilating upon certain natural rights, he had guaranteed the defense of those rights by making the sovereign responsible to the people.

From this actual state, with its possible evil consequences, we turn to the ideal state, i. e., one where the idea of the social compact is realized and all laws are in accordance with the general will of the people. The general will is conceived as determined by a majority of votes. Equality in civil personality or political equality is almost universal among men.2 The suffrage is denied only to criminals and to those who work for masters, and are therefore not self-dependent. The latter class would include, e. g., the plowman and the resident tutor, but not the farmer or the school master. But they have always the possibility of becoming active citizens. Inequality in citizenship, however, due to the dependence of the passive citizens upon the will of others, is not inconsistent with the liberty and equality of the individuals as men. Though laws are conceived as enacted by the expression of will of the active citizens only, the passive citizens in their natural rights have an equal claim to consideration in the determination of legislation.

Private ownership of land, Kant regards as a necessary condition to the ownership of external things in general. The sov

1Principles of Politics, p. 57.

2 Philosophy of Law, p. 167.

ereign is conceived as the supreme proprietor of all the land but he may hold none of it in private possession. Private property in the soil belongs only to the people, taken distributively and not collectively. Its division among them is determined by the sovereign according to "conceptions of right." Just what "conceptions of right" may mean in this instance is not told; therefore we can get from Kant no light on the subject of enconomic equality. He is not a communist. Still, no property can be held in private capacity by any corporation, class or order, and transmitted hereditarily without the willing assent of the sovereign, who is supposed to represent the general will.

1Philosophy of Law, p. 82.

VI. CONCLUSION

To say 'man is a being of absolute worth,' is to express a very simple principle. All else that comes into human experience, in so far as it is valued at all, is valued relatively; i. e., in relation to the end which it serves. Man as an end in himself, concerned with the growth of his capacities into a perfected character serves as an ultimate standard for the valuation of things. His capacities are essentially social; the means as well as the justification of their realization must be found in the conception of a common good. Character cannot be perfected in isolation; nor can it leave quite out of consideration the whole of society. All are presented to it in some way as a part of its problem. Its development must come from participation in and contribution to a common good. From this view-point, what meaning can be attached to individual rights? A right implies at least two things, (1) a power or capacity on the part of the individual, and (2) a willingness on the part of society determined by the conception of a common good that such power should be expressed. A right therefore cannot exist apart from society nor can it be exercised except in accordance with a common good. The capacity of an individual to identify his own good with that of the whole society determines his character as a moral being. It is only as a moral being that he can be said to have rights. The notion of natural rights included in the idea of the social compact differed from this conception in very important respects. There a "natural right" was something which existed anterior to society and to protect which society and its laws came into being. In the latter conception the right coexists only with society and finds its justification in reference to a moral end. Laws cannot be deduced from "natural rights.' "A law is not good," says T. H. Green, "because it enforces 'natural right,' but because it contributes to the realization of a certain end. We discover what rights are natural only by considering what powers must be secured to a man in order to

This is not intended as an argument submitted in proof of a thesis; but rather as the statement of an ethical belief.

the attainment of this end. These powers a perfect law will secure to their full extent. The consideration of what rights are natural (in the only legitimate sense) and the consideration what laws are justifiable form one and the same process, each presupposing a conception of the moral vocation of man." "Rights are derived from the .possession of personality; i. e., the capacity which man possesses of being determined to action by the conception of such a perfection of his being as involves the perfection of a society in which he lives."2 . . . . "The capacity on the part of the individual of conceiving a good as the same for himself and others and of being determined to action by that conception is the foundation of rights."3 "There can be no claim on society such as constitutes a right, except in respect of a capacity freely (i. e., under determination by conception of the good) to contribute to its good." "There ought to be rights because the moral personality-the capacity on the part of an individual to make a common good his own-ought to be developed; and it is developed through rights; i. e., through the recognition by members of a society of powers in each other contributing to a common good, and the regulation of those powers by that recognition.".5

The above passages may be summed up in the following propositions: (1) Personality is primarily the capacity for being freely determined by the conception of a common good. (2) A right is derived from personality; it implies the exercise of those powers of the individual which can be exercised in accordance with the common good; i. e., in relation to a moral end. (3) Laws coexist with rights for the attainment of a moral end; i. e., for the realization of a common good in which all individuals find their ideal good. . . . . A system of perfect laws would have as its aim the regulation of external conditions in such a way as to make possible the realization of all moral rights. The laws of any people at any given time are indicative of the heights which its moral consciousness has attained.

If we accept the above conclusions regarding the relations of the individual in society as an approximation to truth, the con

1Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, § 20.

structive importance of the three writers we have considered will be found in their contributions to it. All recognized a common good for society. It is necessary to the idea of social contract in Rousseau and Kant, and likewise to the greatest happiness principle of Bentham. But the organic relation of the individual with the common good is not recognized even in Kant. This is correlative with the somewhat isolated notion of the individual, a conception, however, which was a necessary step to secure freedom from the dead weight of tradition. The conception of the individual is however pre-eminently moral in its intent. He is the thing of supreme consideration, his supposed "natural rights" and his happiness are to be the objects of all legislation. It is consideration, too, characterized by universality or equality. Rousseau included all in the sovereignty because all had "natural rights to be maintained. The rights of those whom Kant excluded from the suffrage were equally sacred in the determination of legislation. Each was an end in himself by virtue of his humanity. For reasons of present expediency Bentham denied the franchise to women, but believed them entitled to even a greater share of the means of happiness than the male sex on the ground of greater suffering. In the right to happiness "everyone is to count as one; no one for more than one."I

The above considerations have had the utmost to do with the development of the more modern doctrine of personality, an ethical idea which assumes the absolute worth of man and supplies the only possible basis for a conception of social equality.

"There is no absolute equality," says Eisler. "Equality (Gleicheit) is absolute similarity, undistinguishableness in respect to quality and quantity." Two things cannot be equal in all respects, i. e., absolutely equal; because they would then be identical. The mere fact that things resemble each other implies that they differ in something. If we assume two peas to be entirely alike in size, color, weight, etc., we have two contents different in position, though apparently not in quality. But if we are to regard differences in position, i. e., in space and time relations as qualities belonging to the attributes of contents, even the two peas will be

1See Bonar, Philosophy and Political Economy, p. 234.

2 Wörterbuch.