GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

54*
POLITICS
doctrine of Rights on the Social Contract is interesting;
it is that no generation can bind its descendants to carry
out any contract which it may happen to have made.
"Every age and generation," Paine wrote, "must be as
free to act for itself in all cases as the age and generations
which preceded it" "Man," he continued, "has no
property in man; neither has any generation a property,
in die generations which are to follow . ... It requires
but a very small glance of thought to perceive that although
laws made in one generation often continue in force
through succeeding generations, yet they continue to
derive their force from the consent of the living."
While, however, Paine repudiates the notion of an
historically formed and eternally binding Social Contract,
he agrees with the Contract theorists that the rights which
a man possesses in society derive their sanction from
rights which he possessed independently of society, asserting
that "every civil right has for its foundation some natural
right pre-existing in the individual." Paine's views are
strongly represented in the American Declaration of
Independence (1776). It is self-evident, it declares, that
men were "endowed by their Creator with certain in-
alienable rights and that among these are life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness". The French revolutionists,
also under the influence of Paine, added "property"
as "an inviolable and sacred right".
Bentham and Spencer on Rights. Paine was the
last writer to maintain the doctrine of Natural Rights
in its traditional form, but although subsequent writers
criticized it, vestiges of the theory are still discernible in
their thought. Bentham, for example, was a severe critic
of Natural Rights, denouncing the doctrine as vague and
unscientific, and the considerations upon which it was
based as sentimental. Although, however, he studiously
refrains from using the language of Natural Rights, his
particular brand of Utilitarianism is, it is obvious, con*
siderably influenced by the notions which he repudiates.