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

556
POLITICS
problem of the duty of the good man in the bad State.
As we have seen, 1 a substantial body of opinion represented
in all the ages has urged that a man has a right to revolt
against the State which violates his conscience. If 9 however,
we admit this right, we are, as I pointed out in discussing
Spencer's theory of the State, conceding the right to
anarchy; for since, to every man who has a grievance,
virtue seems to reside in himself and wickedness in the
State, and since between the individual and the State
there can be no impartial judge, the right to revolt entails
the right to be one's own judge of the occasions on which
the right to revolt may be justifiably exercised. If, on the
other hand, we* insist that the individual must toe the
State's line, while holding at the same time, a moral theory
of the State, which Tp^intain f as Green maintained,
that the citizen has a right to the good life and that it is
the function of the State to enable him to exercise this
right,
forgo
our insistence means that the individual must
the pursuit of those ends which seem to him to
be good, must forgo, in other words, the pursuit of the
very ends for the sake of which the State is agreed to
exist.
For this dilemma Green offers no adequate solution.
He points out very properly that many of die individual's
rights can only be pursued in harmony with others. To
insist upon his right to pursue ideal ends, when such
insistence entails disobedience and revolt against the
State, is to jeopardize all the other rights, freedom from
violence, security under the law, unrestricted combination
with his fellows, and so forth, which the individual, in
common with other members of society, enjoys ; to jeopardize
these rights not only for himself, but for others. Green's
suggestion is, then, that an individual placed in the dilemma
which I have imagined, would be well advised to hold hi*
hand until he has succeeded in educating public opinion
up to die level of his own insight, and then, with a majority
behind him, to proceed gradually to modify the pontive
'Seepp. 544, 545 *bove.