How far the Negro differs from the white man,whether he is intellectually equal or on a wholly lower plane,is a question of fact to be decided by experience.Mill's refusal to accept one doctrine passes imperceptibly into an equally unfounded acceptance of its contradictory.The process is shown by the doctrine to which,as we have seen,he attached so much importance,that political science must be deductive,because the effect of the conjoined causes is the sum of the effects of the separate causes.When two men act together,the effect may be inferred from putting together the motives of each.'All phenomena of society,'he infers,'are phenomena of human nature generated by the action of outward circumstances upon masses of human beings.'(45)We can therefore deduce scientific laws in sociology as in astronomy.This tacitly assumes that man,like molecule,represents a constant unit,and thus introduces the de facto equality of human beings,from which it is an inevitable step to the equality of rights.The sound doctrine that we can only learn by experience what are the differences between men becomes the doctrine that all differences are superficial,and therefore the man always the same.The doctrine becomes audacious when 'man'is taken to include 'woman.'He speaks of the 'accident of sex'and the 'accident of colour'as equally unjust grounds for political distinctions.(46)The difference between men and women,Whites and Negroes,is 'accidental,'that is,apparently removable by some change of 'outward circumstances.'
Mill,indeed,does not admit that he is begging the question.
He guards himself carefully against begging the question either way,(47)though he thinks apparently that the burthen of proof is upon those who assert a natural difference.Accordingly he urges that the so-called 'nature of women'is 'an eminently artificial thing';a result of 'hothouse cultivation'carried on for the benefit of their masters.(48)He afterwards(49)endeavours to show that even the 'least contestable differences'between the sexes are such as may 'very well have been produced merely by circumstances without any differences of natural capacity.'What,one asks,can the 'circumstances mean?
Psychology,as he truly says,can tell us little;but physiology certainly seems to suggest a difference implied in the whole organisation and affecting every mental and,physical characteristic.It is not,apparently,a case of two otherwise equal beings upon which different qualities have been superimposed,but of a radical distinction,totally inconsistent with any presumption of equality.(50)When we are told that the legal inequality is an 'isolated fact'--a 'solitary breach of what has become a fundamental law of human institutions'(51)--the reply is obvious.The distinction of the sexes is surely an 'isolated fact,'so radical or 'natural'that it is no wonder that it should have unique recognition in all human institutions.
Mill has,indeed,a further answer.If nature disqualifies women for certain functions,why disqualify them by law?Leave everything to free competition,and each man or woman will go where he or she is most fitted.Abolish,briefly,all political and social distinctions,and things will right themselves.If 'inequality'is due to 'force,'and the difference between men and women be 'artificial,'the argument is plausible.But if the difference be,as surely it is,'natural,'and 'force'in the sense of mere muscular strength,only one factor in the growth of institutions,the removal of inequalities may imply neglect of essential facts.He is attacking the most fundamental condition of the existing social order.The really vital point is the bearing of Mill's argument upon marriage and the family.He thinks (52)that the full question of divorce is 'foreign to his purpose';and,in fact,seems to be a little shy of what is really the critical point.He holds,indeed,that the family is a 'school of despotism,'(53)or would be so,if men were not generally better than their laws.Admitting that the law retains traces of the barbarism which regarded wives as slaves,the question remains whether the institution itself is to be condemned as dependent upon 'force.'Would not the 'equality'between persons naturally unequal lead to greater instead of less despotism?If,as a matter of fact,women are weaker than men,might not liberty mean more power to the strongest?Permission to the husband to desert the wife at will might be to make her more dependent in fact though freer in law.Whatever the origin of the institution of marriage,it may now involve,not the bondage but an essential protection of the weakest party.This is the side of the argument to which Mill turns a deaf ear.We are to neglect the most conspicuous of facts because it may be 'artificial'or due to 'circumstances,'and assume that free competition will be an infallible substitute for a system which affects the most vital part of the whole social organism.To assume existing differences to be incapable of modification is doubtless wrong;but to treat them at once as non-existent is at least audacious.
Finally,the old difficulty recurs in a startling shape.If differences are to disappear and the characteristics of men and women to become indistinguishable,should we not be encouraging a 'levelling'more thoroughgoing than any which can result from political democracy?
VII.THE SELF-PROTECTION PRINCIPLE
