amined. In the first part it is shown that the doctrine, as a whole, is a meaningless abstraction, and in the second, that its application is a delusion and a snare. Throughout the book the United States serves as the awful example.
In the first chapter it is pointed out that the doctrine of man's Natural Rights is not the distinctive and peculiar creed of the French Revolution, but a genuine product of English history and thought. It began with the "Levellers"; developed among the Puritans of Cromwell's time; was definitely formulated by Locke in the Treatise of Civil Government, in which he vindicates the revolution of 1688; and finally was adopted by the English colonies in America. "The theory of Natural Rights is simply the logical outgrowth of the Protestant revolt against the authority of tradition, the logical outgrowth of the Protestant appeal to private judgment, i.e., to the reason and conscience of the individual" (p. 6). It is in these two Protestant characteristics, negativity (revolt against traditional authority) and individualism (appeal to individual reason), that the true significance of the theory is found, and not in its reference to some Golden Age of the past. But "negativity and individualism both imply abstractness. … And all abstract theories about human society admit of divergent and conflicting application." Theories are usually somewhat abstract, and even the theory of social expediency might admit of divergent and conflicting application at the hands of real citizens, not absolute philosophers. The next chapter traces the history of the idea of Nature in law and politics from the Sophists down through Aristotle, the Stoics, Roman Law, Thomas Aquinas, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, to Herbert Spencer. It is a most valuable survey, excellently done. There is no more striking example in all human history of the influence of a philosophical conception on public affairs, than this idea of Nature and the laws of Nature. No one can hope to understand the significance of 'natural rights' without a knowledge of the history of this conception. In the third chapter, on "Rousseau and Rousseauism," certain common misapprehensions as to Rousseau's theory are corrected, and the relation of our ideas of Nature and Civilization is aptly discussed. After discriminating between the several senses of the term 'nature' in the next chapter, the author goes on, in the fifth and last chapter of the first part, to consider the question: "What determines rights?" The conclusion is that Natural Rights, in the only proper sense, are those rights which ought to be recognized from the point of view of society. Man's only good is a common good. "The person with
