And here are passages from a review of the Study of Sociology, publish in the Revue des deux Mondes, Vol. VI. of 1874, pp. 107-8: –
“Condamner d’avance la faiblesse et l’infirmité, e’est revenir à la théorie lacédémonienne de l’exposition des enfans. Si l’on était meme consequent, il ne suffirait plus de laisser mourir, il faudrait aller jusqu’à supprimer.”
Then representing it as monstrous to “afficher ces consébares au nom d’une loi biologique,” and reproaching me with paying no regard to the social sentiments, to the tenderness for the feeble, and so no, the reviewer winds up by exclaiming: –
“Quelle école de philosophie que celle où un Las Cases, un Vincent de Paul, un abbé de l’?pée, un Wilberforce, seaient considérés comme les ennemis de l’espèce humaine!”
M.Paul Janet, a member of the Institute of France, is the writer of these last passages. I have recognized, as who would not, the beneficence of “parental affection” as fostering the feeble; and yet he describes me as practically desiring a return to the Spartan practice of exposing infants! I have said that “the regard of relatives” may rightly “mitigate the pains which incapacity has to bear;” and yet he asserts that I would leave the infirm to die, and, logically, am bound to wish them destroyed! I have admitted that “the spontaneous generosity of friends and even of strangers” should qualify “the penalties which unfit impulses bring round;” and yet the “consequences barbares” of my doctrine are represented as being not simply absence of aid to the inferior but active suppression of them! I have said that “individual altruism, left to itself, will work advantageously;” and yet it is alleged that I must consider the distinguished philanthropists he names as enemies of the human race!
That M.Janet’s reproaches are unwarranted, and that he has circulated statements of my views widely at variance with the truth, is sufficiently manifest. A thing not so manifest is that he does not see, or will not see, that the general doctrine urged, is urged as being more humane instead of less humane. He is apparently blind to the face that a kindness which considers only proximate effects may be, and often is, much less in degree than a kindness which takes into account ultimate effects. A sympathy which thinks only of the suffering an operation will give, and exclaims at the cruelty of performing it, is a sympathy inferior to that which, equally affected by the pain inflicted, nevertheless inflicts it, that dying agonies may be escaped and restoration to health and happiness achieved. Anxiety for the welfare of the poor and efforts on their behalf may coexist with profound disapproval of, and strong opposition to, all policies which forcibly burden the worthy that the unworthy may be fostered. If an illustration of their coexistence be asked, I can furnish a conclusive one in the case of a late relative of mine, the Rev. Thos. Spencer, for many years clergyman of a rural parish in Somersetshire. Uncared-for as were his parishioners when he went among them, he established first a Sunday-school, then a village day-school, then a village-library, then land-allotments for labourers, then a clothing club. To his local philanthropic actions were added general ones. He made efforts for churchreform (thus offending his bishop and destroying his chance of preferment); he publicly shared in a movement for extending the suffrage; he took an active part as write and speaker in the Anti-Corn-Law agitation; he gave countless lectures in furtherance of temperance. When not otherwise occupied he wrote pamphlets (twenty-two in number) all directed in one or other way to improving the condition, bodily and mental, of the masses; and he eventually died prematurely from the effects of over-work in seeking to ameliorate the lives of the less-happily placed and the less-happily constituted. And now what were his views on the question here at issue? Originally, while yet his experience of results was narrow, he was always on the side of the pauper and against the overseer; but as his experience widened, first in his own parish and then as chairman of the Bath Union, he became an avowed opponent to all compulsory charity. Of his four tracts under the title Reasons for a Poor-law considered, dated 1841, the first, setting out by adverting to the evils a Poor-law entails, asks, “whether there are any adequate reasons that such a law should exist at all;” and the remaining three are occupied in showing that there are no adequate reasons. In the course of the argument he gives cases, coming under his own observation, of the sufferings caused. He names industrious men for many weeks out of work, compelled to pay rates and starve their children, that the idle might not be hungry; men invalided, whose allowances from sick clubs to which they had for years subscribed, were in part swept away by the overseer’s agent; widows whose offspring had to be further pinched that support might be given to women with illegitimate offspring; artisans settled in other parishes, losing their goods by distraint for nonpayment of rates and obliged to return to their own parishes as paupers. These and other such atrocities committed in the name of Law, strengthened in him the conviction otherwise reached, that public charity is essentially vicious; and the evidence I have given proves that not lack of deep sympathy with the inferior and the miserable was the cause, but a still deeper sympathy with good men in adversity, whose difficulties, already great, were artificially made greater.