Legitimate as it is, this method of investigating society has its special danger. In pursuing the ideal it sometimes loses hold of the actual. In analysing the meaning of institutions it may overlook their actual working, and if we follow it too blindly we may end either in abstract propositions which have little relation to practical possibility and serve only to breed fanatics; or in abandoning the interest in actual society altogether and amusing ourselves with the construction of Utopias. In reaction from this tendency many students would say that the primary business of social theory is to investigate the facts of social life as they are, the historical development of society and its several institutions, the statistical description of any given society as it is, the endeavour to ascertain the laws of cause and effect which, it is held, must permeate social life as they permeate every other sphere of reality. In place of a social philosophy, then, we have a social science, and it is held that by a social science we can ascertain, measure and predict, just as we can ascertain, measure and predict the behaviour of any system of physical bodies.
Without touching here on the question whether in social science prediction is possible or not, it is sufficient to say that the scientific study of social life or the endeavour to ascertain the relations of cause and effect is not only a legitimate object but one which has in point of fact yielded good results. Few would now deny that the strictly scientific method has its place in social inquiry. But objection may still be taken to the distinction between ideals and facts. To begin with, it may be urged that the social inquirer could not if he would lay aside his ideals. Whenever we are dealing with social life we are dealing with a matter of profound interest to ourselves. When the chemist wishes to ascertain the temperature at which a solid liquefies, or a liquid boils, he has in the end to read off a certain observation, and it is not a matter of profound human interest whether the figure that he reads is 150 or 160; but when a social student inquires how an institution is working, whether a new law is attaining its object, whether Trade Union activity is or is not succeeding in raising wages, shortening hours or otherwise improving the condition of the operatives, the answer to his question is not only in reality much more difficult to ascertain but is also one which stirs prejudices, confirms or refutes presuppositions, is certain to be challenged by lively interests. The difficulty is not peculiar to the study of contemporary fact. History, even ancient history, is written in a certain spirit and a certain temper dependent on the personal presuppositions of the writer. Human affairs are so complex and the interweaving of cause and effect so subtle that in the presentation of an historical development there will always be an element dependent on the point of view of the writer and on the selection and emphasis which may honestly seem the fairest selection and the natural emphasis to the particular writer, but which may seem quite other to a different investigator approaching the same object with a different background of thought.
Nor is this all. Putting aside all that may be said as to the bias of investigators, it may be urged that the subject of investigation itself is charged throughout with the ideals, emotions, interests of men and women, both as individuals and as corporate bodies; and, moreover, the logic of those ideals, the very thing which social philosophy investigates, the degree, that is, of their mutual consistency or inconsistency, is a matter of profound importance to their actual working. If two ideals penetrate the same nation or the same class and those two ideals are at bottom in conflict, the results must show themselves in the tangle of history. They must manifest themselves in divided aims and ultimately in failure. If, on the other hand, they are coherent and harmonious, then once more that result must appear in the greatness of the success attending their historical development. Thus, if we start with the most rigid determination to adhere to facts, we shall find that ideals are a part of the facts, and if we say that nevertheless we will treat them as facts without examining their truth, we shall find it hard to adhere to that position because their consistency and coherence, which are intimately relevant to their truth, deeply affect their practical efficiency.
It may be granted that it is easier to distinguish the philosophical and the scientific treatment of society in principle than to keep them apart in practice. In principle we call the philosophical inquiry that which deals with the aim of life, with the standard of conduct, with all that ought to be, no matter whether it is or is not. The scientific method we call that which investigates facts, endeavours to trace cause and effect, aims at the establishment of general truths which hold good whether they are desirable or not. The distinction of principle is clear, but in point of fact the inquiry into ideals can never desert the world of experience without danger of losing itself in unreality and becoming that which the poet of idealism was unfairly called, "a beautiful, ineffectual angel beating in the void his luminous wings in vain." The ideal, though it has never been realized and perhaps may never be realized, must grow out of reality. It must be that which we can become, not that which is utterly removed from the emotions and aspirations which have grown up within us in the actual evolution of mind. The ethically right, Professor Höffding has said, must be sociologically possible. Thus, even as pure theory, the philosophical view cannot afford to disregard the facts. Still less can it do so if it passes over, as philosophy should, into the constructive attempt to reorganize life in accordance with its ideals. If the principles which it discovers are to be realized in this workaday world, this can only be by intimate knowledge of the details of this world, by the control of events through their causes, for the discovery of which we must go to pure science. Social Science, on the other hand, as we have seen, cannot ignore the elements of idealism as a working factor, as one of the forces, if you will, among the other forces, which it studies; nor can it disregard the logical consistency or inconsistency of ideas, upon which their working force depends. Thus the philosophical, the scientific, and the practical interest, however distinct in theory, tend in their actual operation to be intermingled, and it must be admitted that we cannot carry one through without reference to the other.
Nevertheless, to keep the issues distinct at every point is the first necessity of sound reasoning upon social affairs. What is essential for social investigation, whether it starts with the philosophic or scientific interest, is that in putting any question it should know precisely what that question is; specifically, whether it is a question of what is desirable, of what ought to be; or a question of what has been, is, or probably will be. These two questions, though necessarily related, are no less necessarily distinct, and to confuse them is the standing temptation of the social inquirer. If the social philosopher has sometimes thought to legislate for society without first informing himself of the facts as to what is possible and what is not, the scientific sociologist on his side is not innocent of all encroachments. It is a standing temptation to overbear questions of right and wrong by confident predictions, which in reality rest more On the prepositions of the prophet than on his insight into cause and effect. It is the weakness of human nature that it likes to be on the winning side, and just as in an election the argument most effective in catching votes is the demonstration that we are winning already -- a demonstration which might seem to make effort on that side superfluous -- so in the study of social and economic development it is rhetorically effective to demonstrate that a particular social change is at hand, that it is an inevitable consequence of a concatenation of events that is bringing it about whether we will or not; and this demonstration exercises, and is intended to exercise, a kind of coercion upon our minds whereby we resign ourselves to accept the change as desirable on the strength of arguments which have never touched its desirability at all, but have proved, if they have proved anything, nothing more than the probable effect of certain operative causes. Intellectually, this method is one of confusion; morally, it is paralysing to the will. If there were nothing for us but to accept the trend of events as we find it, then our science would relapse into fatalism, and, as members of the society which we study, we should be in the position simply of knowing the course of the stream which carries us along without any increase in the power to guide it, whether it happen to be taking us into the haven or over Niagara.
When we allow Social Science thus to persuade us of the inevitableness of things, we are reversing the normal course of science. For, whatever else may be said of science, one of its functions is to increase human power, and this applies to sciences which deal with human life as well as to sciences which deal with inanimate objects. When we know the etiology of a disease we acquire for the first time a real prospect of controlling it. So it should be in social affairs, but so it can only be if we hold firmly to the distinction between the desirable and the actual, if we grasp clearly the principles which should regulate social life, and do not allow ourselves to be shaken in our hold of them by any knowledge of the changes which are actually going on among us. The foundation, therefore, of true social method is to hold the ideal and the actual distinct and use our knowledge of the one as a means to realizing the other. We may pursue the two investigations, if we will, side by side, for we have seen how very closely they are interwoven. But every question that we ask and every statement that we make ought to he quite clearly a statement as to fact or an assertion of what ought to be, and never a hybrid of the two.
This distinction would, I think, be accepted both by the bulk of ethical thinkers and of scientific students of society, but there exists a form of social theory which repudiates it in principle. The foundation of this theory is the belief that the ideal is realized in the actual world, and in particular in the world of organized society, not in the sense already noted above that there are ideals operating as psychological forces in human beings, but in the sense that the world at large, and in particular the social world, is, if properly understood, an incarnation or expression of the ideal; that, as one thinker would put it, the Absolute is perfection; or, as Hegel, who may be considered as the father of this school, laid down, "the insight to which... philosophy is to lead us is that the real world is as it ought to be."1 The theory of society on this view is not to be detached from general metaphysics; it is an integral part of the philosophy of things. Just as in a simple form of religion, the powers that be are ordained of God, so with the metaphysician who starts from the belief that things are what they should be, the fabric of human life, and in particular the state system, is a part of an order which is inherently rational and good, an order to which the lives of individuals are altogether subordinate. The problem of social theory upon this view will not consist in the formulation of ideals as distinct from anything actual, yet capable of becoming actual if once human beings grasp them with a very firm determination to realize them; still less can it consist in investigating facts in distinction from ideals, for the very foundation of society as a part of the fabric of things is the ideal which it enshrines. The problem will be neither ethical nor scientific. It will start by a repudiation of the distinction upon which we have been insisting, and its task will be to state the nature of society in terms revealing the ideal elements which mere facts have a tendency to veil from our human eyes.
This, then, is the metaphysical theory of the state. It is the endeavour to exhibit the fabric of society in a light in which we shall see it, in or through its actual condition, as the incarnation of something very great and glorious indeed, as one expression of that supreme being which some of these thinkers call the Spirit and others the Absolute. There is no question here of realizing an ideal by human effort. We are already living in the ideal. It does not much matter whether we are rich or poor, healthy or enfeebled, personally aware of happiness or misery; nay, it does not seem to matter very much whether we are just or unjust, virtuous or depraved, for we all are integral parts in something much wider and nobler than the individual life, something to which mere human good and evil, happiness or misery, are small matters, mere constituent elements that, whatever they may be for each one of us, play their part right well in the magnificent whole. Evil is indeed necessary to good. It is a part of the Perfection of the Absolute, and anything which would point to its extirpation as an ideal is condemned as an offshoot of popular notions of progress or ridiculed as a piece of humanitarian enthusiasm.
Such, then, is the spirit of the metaphysical theory of society which I propose to examine in the shape given to it by its founder, Hegel, and his most modern and most faithful exponent, Dr Bosanquet. This theory is commonly spoken of as idealism, but it is in point of fact a much more subtle and dangerous enemy to the ideal than any brute denial of idealism emanating from a one-sided science. Against every attempt to construe the world as mere fact which we cannot modify, there will always spring up the reaction of human hope, of human endeavour, of the deep-seated indignation at injustice, the "rebel passion" of pity. If the scientific man insists that as this world rose out of the whirl of atoms, agitated by mechanical forces, so it will ultimately disappear in the cold and darkness, none the less men will say "Here are we, conscious living beings palpitating with emotion, with feeling, products it may be of your whirl of atoms, yet allowed meanwhile some latitude to shape our lives, to avoid the worst evils and to cultivate some fleeting happiness; let us at least stand together against this unkindly fate and make the best of life while we can, not only for our short-lived selves, but for our feeble race." Thus mechanical science stimulates at least the ethics of revolt. But when we are taught to think of the world which we know as a good world, to think of its injustices, wrongs and miseries as necessary elements in a perfect ideal, then, if we accept these arguments, our power of revolt is atrophied, our reason is hypnotized, our efforts to improve life and remedy wrong fade away into a passive acquiescence in things as they are; or, still worse, into a slavish adulation of the Absolute in whose hands we are mere pawns. These, it may be said, are questions of general rather than social philosophy, but the point is that to the idealistic school, social philosophy is an application of the theory of the Absolute to human affairs. As Dr Bosanquet tells us,2 "the treatment of the state in this discussion is naturally analogous to the treatment of the universe." The happiness of the state is not to be judged by the happiness of the individual; the happiness of the individual must be judged by the goodness of the state. It is to be valued by the perfection of the whole to which he belongs. In the conception, therefore, of the state as a totality, which is an end in itself, an end to which the lives of men and women are mere means, we have the working model of an Absolute. For the thoroughgoing idealist, all the conscious beings that live under the shadow of the Absolute seem to have just as much or as little title to independent consideration as the cells of the human body. Now, for Hegel, the state is a form of the absolute spirit, which is the essence of all things. "The state is the divine idea as it exists on earth."3 For "all the worth which the human being possesses -- all spiritual reality he possesses only through the state."4 "The state is the spirit which stands in the world and realizes itself therein consciously.... The existence of the state is God's movement in the world." 5 "The state is the divine will as the present spirit unfolding itself to the actual shape and organization of a world" (Ph. d. R. p. 327). "It is the absolute power upon earth" (p. 417). "It is its own end (Selbstzweck). It is the ultimate end which has the highest right against the individual, whose highest duty is to be a member of the state"( p. 306).
The method followed by this theory is not ethical because it does not seek to find reasons for human conduct in any ultimate goal of human endeavour or in any rational principle of human duty. It does not seek these because it denies that the reflective reason of the individual is the method by which truth about ideals is to be ascertained. All true ideals are actual; they belong to what is called the objective mind; they are incarnated in the laws, traditions, customs of the society to which we belong. Nor, again, is the method scientific. It is neither historical nor statistical. It does not concern itself with the varying forms of social institutions, nor with the correlations of coexistence or succession. It assumes certain abstract conceptions6 and expounds them dogmatically in general terms, putting aside the appeal to experience. If actual societies differ from the idealistic conception of them, so much the worse for those societies. Thus the centre of discussion is "the state," as though there were precisely one and only one type of social organization to which the name applies and which can be described without reference to experience in universal terms. Dr Bosanquet in his latest restatement justifies this procedure. "The state," he tells us, "is a brief expression for states qua states."7 Now it may be perfectly true that there are propositions which hold of states as such, distinguishable from propositions which hold of some states and not of others; but the urgent question for any science is how such general truths are arrived at. Is it by induction -- a comparison of states, from which the points of agreement and difference may emerge? No such inductive process is to be found in the metaphysical theory. Is it by self-evidence? Is it, for example, self-evident "that states represent differentiations of a single human spirit... whose extent and intensity determine and are determined by territorial limits"?8 Is this a proposition which commands acceptance by intuition like a mathematical axiom? If not, on what evidence is it based? When Hegel asserts that the state must have a monarch to complete its personality and that the monarch must be determined by a natural method, and this is primogeniture, are these self-evident propositions? Do they rest on intrinsic necessities revealed to Hegel's intuition or do they really do no more than clothe the practice of the Prussian state in sounding generalities? The truth is that in social investigation large and unproven principles are apt to be either mere generalizations of customs or institutions which happen to be familiar to the writer, or expressions of his ideals, or very possibly a fusion of the two. Dr Bosanquet thinks that his critics, dealing unguardedly "with states" (positively wandering off into the region of fact), "attribute to states that which qua states they are not, namely, defects which the state organization exists to remove." For him the state is the power which, as the organization of the community, "has the function of maintaining the external conditions necessary to the best life." If one objects that many states maintain conditions that are quite adverse to the best life, Dr Bosanquet retorts that we must distinguish a function from its derangement. States qua states do not maintain bad conditions. It results that the state is not the actual organized community, but only so much of the organized community as makes for good. This is to define the state by an ideal. But elsewhere9 Dr Bosanquet defines the state as that society "which is habitually recognized as a unit lawfully exercising force," a definition which would apply to the rule of the Czar or Sultan. The second definition is much nearer to common usage, which certainly thinks of the state as an organization which may serve good or bad ends, maintain good or bad conditions, but is a state as long as it holds together and maintains law and government. It is a violent departure from usage, which at best would only lead to constant misunderstanding, to restrict the term to the good elements of any such organization. But things are still worse if the state means at one time that which is actually common to stable political organizations and at another the ideal functions of a possible political organization.10 Such methods of definition are equally fatal to science and philosophy, and our general charge against the method of idealism must be that it starts with and never corrects the fundamental confusion of the ideal and the actual.11
In older days we passed by the Hegelian exaltation of the state as the rhapsodical utterances of a metaphysical dreamer. It was a mistake. The whole conception is deeply interwoven with the most sinister developments in the history of Europe. It is fashionable to conceive German militarism as a product of the reaction against a beautiful sentimental idealism that reigned in the pre-Bismarckian era. Nothing could be more false. The political reaction began with Hegel, whose school has from first to last provided by far the most serious opposition to the democratic and humanitarian conceptions emanating from eighteenth-century France, sixteenth-century Holland and seventeenth-century England. It was the Hegelian conception of the state which was designed to turn the edge of the principle of freedom by identifying freedom with law; of equality, by substituting the conception of discipline; of personality itself, by merging the individual in the state; of humanity, by erecting the state as the supreme and final form of human association.12
The direct connection between Bismarckian ethics and Hegelian teaching was ably worked out many years ago by a close student of the relations of ideas and facts in the political sphere, Mr William Clark, but it is not in Germany alone that the Hegelian influence has profoundly affected the course of thought in one form or another. It has permeated the British world, discrediting the principles upon which liberal progress has been founded and in particular depreciating all that British and French thinkers have contributed. Perhaps it has been none the less dangerous because it has captivated men of real humanity, genuinely interested in liberal progress, so much so that in the hands of T. H. Green the Hegelian theory was for a time transmuted into a philosophy of social idealism, a variant which has a value of its own and does not lack distinguished living disciples. But as a fashionable academic philosophy genuine Hegelianism has revived, and the doctrine of the state as an incarnation of the Absolute, a super-personality which absorbs the real living personality of men and women, has in many quarters achieved the position of an academic orthodoxy. For academic purposes, indeed, it is a convenient doctrine; its bedrock conservatism is proof against all criticisms of the existing order. It combats the spirit of freedom in the most effective method possible, by adopting its banner and waving it from the serried battalions of a disciplined army. It justifies that negation of the individual which the modern practice of government is daily emphasizing. It sets the state above moral criticism, constitutes war a necessary incident in its existence, condemns humanity, and repudiates a Federation or League of Nations. In short, we see in it a theory admirably suited to the period of militancy and regimentation in which we find ourselves. The truth or falsity of such a theory is a matter of no small interest; indeed, it is not a question of theory alone but of a doctrine whose historical importance is written large in the events of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I propose in the following lectures to set out the fundamentals of this theory and endeavour to discover the processes of thought by which, in the judgment of so many able men, the state assumes in the modern world a position which earlier ages might have given to the church or to the Deity Himself.