Force is a moral adiaphoron. The stigma attaching to the use of force belongs rather to its abuse. The employment of force is good or bad according as the ends for which it is used are good or bad.
The precept of non-resistance in the Sermon on the Mount is to be understood as a piece of ethical irony.
The right, or to be more explicit, the duty, of society to coerce individual members of it rests on the same ground and holds within the same limits as the duty of the individual to coerce himself. Self-coercion depends on the difference in the quality of one’s impulses, on the choice one is bound to make between competitive ends. Self-coercion is of two kinds: stimulative and repressive; stimulative to overcome inertia, repressive to subject wrong to right impulses.
He who denies the duty of self-coercion, to be consistent, must fall back on the position of the Cynics. For the Cynics were indeed consistent. They asserted not only the right of the individual to be free from outside compulsion, but also the right of each individual moment of the individual’s life to be lived without regard or subjection to future moments. Hence they rejected civilization and its tasks, inasmuch as the prosecution of any task involves the subordination of the present to the content of some future moment.
But if the coercion of a man by himself be admitted, it follows that the exercise of force upon a man by society must in principle be likewise admitted. For we are social by nature; we take an interest in the achievement by each one of his ends, and we regard such achievement as a social-benefit.
As to the limits within which outside interference is to be permitted and welcomed, these can best be ascertained by fastening attention upon the end to be attained. And here the positive conception of freedom seems to be the most helpful,—freedom defined as the release in each one of his essential self, that is, of his distinctive gift and capability, or of that in him which is unique or most nearly so. A society in which such valuable contributions were elicited from each would be the ideal society. Stimulative and repressive social coercion are justified in so far as they provoke energy and check disturbing impulses,—always of course without discouraging spontaneity, which is the very good to be secured.
The antithesis of reason and force common in discussions of this subject seems misleading and inadequate; since reason is a faculty of inference and not of preference, has to do with the adapting of means to ends, and does not of itself afford guidance in the choice of ends.
The concept of freedom as defined is more illuminating. Let freedom and force be contrasted, not reason and force.
The idea of law that would follow from what has been said may be illustrated by comparing the action of law with that of automatism in the human body. The system of co-ordinations by which we learn to walk, or acquire any kind of skill, such as that of performing on a musical instrument, is at first painfully and consciously acquired. Consciousness superintends every step in the process. But after a time the sequences reel off automatically. Consciousness retires from the field, ascends to a higher plane, and devotes itself to more interesting and significant business. Law, taking it in its broadest sense, may be regarded as the automatic machinery of freedom. It is the system of stimulations and repressions which the experience of mankind at any given time has found conducive to the attainment of the superior ends of life. In the minds of the more advanced members of the community repressive laws like the prohibitions of murder, theft, etc., have already become automatic. Such a thing as questioning or transgressing these laws never once in a lifetime occurs to them. (Of the stimulative laws, such as the requirement to pay taxes in support of the progressive interests of society, the same is not yet true.) As regards the backward members of society, however, the repressive laws are educative. Just as in certain diseases the convalescent needs to acquire anew the art of walking, which his neighbors exercise without thinking, so the backward members of society have to learn painfully those habits of repression which for others have sunk below the threshold of consciousness.
Social compulsion therefore may be defined as discipline in the interest of positive freedom. We may expect that in future this salutary kind of compulsion will go to even much greater lengths than it has yet gone. Society as organized in the state has undoubtedly the right to interfere in the choice of the sexes by prohibiting the marriage of persons afflicted with infectious disease. If the study of human character could ever be so far developed as to determine what kind of temperaments are radically incompatible with one another (a bare throw in the air of course), it would be within the province of the state to prohibit the conjugal union of such temperaments, and thus to prevent the disastrous effects on real freedom which such incompatibilities are apt to cause.
I am well aware of the perils of this point of view. There is a brutal factor in the action of society, as in that of individuals. A given community is apt to mistake its prejudices for principles, its torpor for conservatism, its superstitions for spirituality. Such apprehensions as those that weighed on the mind of John Stuart Mill as set forth in his Essay on Liberty are not to be lightly dismissed. And yet the main trend of his argument was plainly determined by an individualistic conception of liberty which many of us no longer share. It is safe to say that on the whole the benefits of coercion outweigh the detriments. We have only to picture to ourselves a state of society in which these coercions should not exist to realize that this is so. The dangers are real, but are due to the abuse of force and not to the exercise of it under the controlling idea of positive freedom which is here proposed.