The Foundations of Society. By J. William Harper. (Ward, Lock,
and Co. 6s.)—The ostensible aim of this book is, by careful examin- ation of the constituent elements of social life, to ascertain the com- parative importance of the contribution each makes to the well- being and continuity of "associated humanity." But in the course of his inquiry into the origin of society and of his review of the various views that have been held in reeard to it by the free-
thinking philosophers of our own and other times, Mr. William Harper commits himself to an important confession of faith which removes him from the plane of the inquiring philosopher to that
of the interpreter of the Gospel of Christ. It is, he says, futile "to attempt to understand the end of human life, and the goal of society apart from what Christ has taught. We assume all the responsibility, the praise or blame that comes from acknowledging His authority, and we say it deliberately, that unless there had been first of all an objective revelation— teachings that come to us from without, but, which also, when once stated, find an immediate response from our moral nature—the end of personal life and that of society could not have been clearly perceived. Following, it may be very imperfectly, the directions which Christ has given, and striving to obey the commands and aiming at the ideal He has set lup, men are gradually approaching the goal. A long time may be required before it is reached ; but experience proves how true to life are Christ's words; and what has been accomplished is a distinct prophecy that much more will yet be attained. The kingdom of God must come, and His Will be done in Earth as it is in Heaven." With the first half of this confession—that is to say with all that is said as far as the first full-stop in the extract—all Christians must agree. But the second part involves an assumption (elaborated further on in the book) that human society is progressing towards a perfect Christian State, to be outwardly realised on earth ; and this assumption, for which many Christians (among whom the present writer does not hesitate to number himself) recognise no warrant, tends to complicate unhelpfully the practical problem of the book. That problem, shortly stated, is the familiar one, how to apply the principles of Christianity to the conditions of political and social life in a community imperfectly Christianised. Mr. Harper recognises that pure Socialism will not meet all the difficulties of the problem. Individualism must be allowed play as a corrective of Socialism. He carries on the discussion in a very moderate and reasonable tone, bearing, however, always in mind the obligations of the frank and full confession of Christian faith which gives its special distinction to the book. And he makes an exceedingly good point in favour of allowing considerable place to the Socialistic spirit in legislation, by calling attention to the special provisions by which the Jewish code protected the weak, and the poor, and the shiftless, and the thriftless, against the inherent tendency of law to strengthen the hands of the strong, and of riches to multiply themselves at the expense of the poor. As the writer very justly points out, it is to the Old Testament rather than the New that we should look for guidance as to the Divine Will in the matter of legislating for the temporal state. But the force of this very wise distinction is, in our judgment, slightly weakened in its application to the whole argument of the book, by that assumption that the teaching of Christ is intended to prepare the way for the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth. Not because the method of working should in that case be necessarily different, but because this assumption bases the reasons for the method upon grounds which will not bear examination. Upon some points on which both Christian and agnostic philosophers are apt to go wrong, such as the limits of analogy and the common fallacies by which the conscious moral development of man is confounded with the processes of biological evolution, Mr. Harper is very satisfactorily and refreshingly clear, and now and then he puts his criticisms of such fallacies into a terse phrase that is likely to stick—as when he says, in objecting to the habit of speaking of Society as an organism : "No great harm would be done if it were said that society is like an organism, but the issues are quite different when it is maintained that Society is an organism." On the other hand, we are a little surprised to find Mr. Harper, when discussing the Parliamentary system of Government and the uses of Second Chambers, ignoring altogether the importance of the House of Lords as the expression of the hereditary or bio- logical principle, which is the proper corrective of the elective or conscious principle of social development, just as individualism is the natural corrective of Socialism in legislation.
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