[1] The theory of punishment will modify this proposition in some degree.
The State, then, as such, can only secure the performance of external actions. That is to say, it can only enforce as much intention [1] as is { 190} necessary to ensure, on the whole, compliance with requirements stated in terms of movements affecting the outer world. So far from promoting the performance of actions which enter into the best life, its operations, where effective, must directly narrow the area of such actions by stimulating lower motives as regards some portion of it.
[1] On this question _vide_ Green’s very thorough discussion. It is true, of course, that the law takes account of intention, and does not, _e.g._, treat accidental homicide as murder, the difference between them being a difference of intention. But it is obvious that, in attempting to influence human action at all, so much account as this must be taken of intention; for intention is necessary to constitute a human action. An unintentional movement of the muscles cannot be guarded against by laws and penalties; it is only through the intention that deterrent or other motives can get at the action, and a constant law-abiding disposition is the best security for law-abiding action. On the importance of intention and disposition as affording a certainty of action, Bentham, who wholly rejects judgment according to moral motive, is as emphatic as possible.
5. The State, then, in its distinctive capacity, has no agency at its command for influencing conduct, but such as may be used to produce an external course of behaviour by the injunction or prohibition of external acts, in enforcing which acts the State will take note of intentions, so far as it can infer them, because it is only through them that its influence can be exerted.
The relation of such a means to the imperative end, on which we have seen that political obligation depends, must be in a certain sense negative. The means is one which cannot directly promote the end, and which even tends to narrow its sphere. What it can effect is to remove obstacles, to destroy conditions hostile to the realisation of the end. This brings us back to a principle laid down by Kant, [1] and in its bare statement strongly resembling Mill’s contention. When force is opposed to { 191} freedom, a force that repels that force is right. Here, of course, all depends upon what we mean by freedom, and in what sense we think that force can hinder hindrances to it. If freedom meant for us the empty hexagon [2] round each individual, the principle would take us back to Mill’s Liberty. If, on the other hand, we failed to grasp the discrepancy between force of any kind and the positive nature of the common good which we take to be freedom, the principle would lead us straight to a machine-made Utopia. For its negative character cannot restrain it from some degree of positive action. It is only through positive operation that a negation or opposition can find reality in the world. And the limits of its positive action must depend on the precise bearings of the negation which it puts in force.
