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

566
POLITICS
man the same right to a ration of meat as an able-bodied
man of arms, and to an equal ration? The answer is, to
say the least of it, doubtful. If we choose to invoke thfc
authority oftime-honoured axioms such as " to each accord-
ing to his need", or "to each according to his usefulness",
axioms which have seemed self-evident to many people,
we shall have to answer in the negative. We cannot, in
other words, lay down by means of a priori theorizing
general propositions about rights which will command
universal acceptance; what rights we shall in practice
be prepared to admit will depend upon circumstances.
Again it is far from clear that the different natural rights
which various thinkers have postulated may not on
occasion conflict. Locke, for example, postulates a right
to equality and a right to property. But the right to equality
is clearly threatened by the exercise of the right to property.
Locke sees the difficulty and tries to evade it by an argument
to the effect that, when people consented to the use of
money, their consent implied a consent to inequality in
the possession of money. But inequality in the possession
of money is, as the history of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries has shown, destructive of real equality; is,
theiefore, a negation of the right to equality.
That any Doctrine of Rights is Conditioned by Assump-
tions. The above considerations apply to those rights
which thinkers have supposed men to possess by nature,
and to bring with them into society from a state of nature.
The position in regard to the ideologically conceived rights
oi^ Green is different; but the doctrine of teleological rights
is cohul'tioned, even more directly than that of Social
Contract rights, by certain assumptions, and, unless we
make these assumptions, the doctrine falls to the ground.
If, for example, wfe are prepared
to assume that God
created man for a purpose, then we may plausibly argue
that man has a rigfyt to an opportunity to fulfil that pur*
pose; if, further) w* assume that the purpose is the full
development of a nVan's personality, then dearly a man