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

SOVEREIGNTY AND NATURAL RIGHTS 543
As we have seen, the American Declaration of Independence,
following Paine, maintains the right to "the
pursuit of happiness ", as a fundamental Natural Right.
Bentham accepted this "right" as axiomatic, and devoted
his efforts to discovering, by what he believed to be strictly
scientific methods, the laws which govern human nature
in its pursuit of happiness. Granted that all human beings
want happiness and only happiness; granted, too, that
they have a right to happiness, by what kind of collective
action, Bentham wanted to know, can their collective
happiness be promoted? Or, to use the language ofNatural
Rights, by what kind of collective action can their right
to happiness be guaranteed?
Herbert Spencer's thought also bears traces of the doc-
trine of Rights. In one of his later works, Man versus the
StaUy he set himself to answer one of the questions propounded
by his ethical theory, 1 the question, namely,
" How is man to achieve that stage of equilibrium at which
he is perfectly adjusted to his environment?" He answers
this question by what is in effect a re-assertion of the
eighteenth century doctrine. The right upon
which he
chiefly insisted was a right to the "free energy of faculty,"
that is to say, a right to the free development of one's
personality. The primary function of die State was,
Spencer held, that of securing this right to its individual
members. If it failed to do this, the individual had the
right to defy it. The implication of this "right of
defiance" that anybody who feels that his right to free
development is restricted by the application of the State's
laws has a right to resist is tantamount to an assertion
of the right to anarchy.
Difficulties Latent in Spencer's Theory of the State.
The Right of Revolt Spencer did in fact avoid this
anarchical conclusion at the cost of some inconsistency,
by invoking the Social Contract theory of the origin of
society. Men, he affirmed, had entered into a form
* See Chapter X, pp. 369, 370.