Natural rights : a criticism of some political and ethical conceptions / by David G. Ritchie.

  • David George Ritchie
Date:
1916
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Natural rights : a criticism of some political and ethical conceptions / by David G. Ritchie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    age, and by the Hebrew legend of Paradise ; and when it was possible, before the birth of anthropological science, and at a safe distance from savage races, to idealise the noble inhabitant of the woods. Even now, as I shall have occasion to point out later on—even now, with the phraseology of evolution in everybody’s mouth, it is remarkable how per- sistent is the belief in those ever-receding “ good old days ” ; and stray attempts are sometimes made, where we should least expect them, to rehabilitate the Golden Age. The real significance of the theory of natural rights is, how- ever, entirely independent of any historical, or quasi-his torical, setting that may be given to it. The real significance of the theory is not to be determined by reference to remote ages, or to rude peoples ; as with all political theories, and as with all philosophical theories which are a genuine expression of the thought and feeling of the period in which they prevail, its meaning is only understood aright if we consider it in relation to the circumstances of the very time in which it was main- tained. The real significance of the appeal to nature is, in the first place, the negative element in the appeal; it is an appeal against authorities that had lost their sacredness, against insti- tutions that had outlived their usefulness; against artificiality in art, in literature, in manners, in dress—against wigs and hair-powder. Secondly, as we have already seen, the theory of natural rights is Protestantism transferred to the region of worldly affairs, and stripped of the traditionalism against which at first it did not “ protest ’’—the paramount authority of a book, accepted on the guarantee of the “ Church ” whose authority was rejected, and interpreted on certain traditional assump- tions. Mediaeval doctors accepted the authority of the Church, of the Bible, and of the Law of Nature interpreted by reason, but under a general guidance from the other two authorities. The earlier Protestants, protesting against the corruptions in the Church, were not careful to lay down the precise relation- ship between the other two authorities. When Protestantism had in its turn crystallised into a traditional system, the intel- lectual descendants of the first Protestants appeared as the Deists and Rationalists of the eighteenth century. Calvin’s Geneva in due time brought forth Rousseau; and English Puritanism on American soil produced the Declaration of
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