As the originator of the term, “survival of the fittest,” Herbert Spencer has come to symbolize the harsh excesses of the liberal state. This unflattering portrait emanates from two sources. First, Spencer's political ideas read like a handbook for doctrinaire libertarians: maximum liberty for the individual, unrestrained pursuit of self-interest, and minimum governmental interference. Second, Spencer's theory of social evolution in his eyes grants his political ideas scientific validity, but it also presents those ideas in a most inhumane and anticommunitarian light. And yet, in an obscure editorial in the Times, this apologist for only the “most fit” of evolutionary forms writes of the “horribly cruel practice of boiling lobsters alive.” Suggesting a more humane method of killing these primitive creatures, Spencer concludes true to form that “legislative coercion is not needful to enforce adoption of this method.” Rather, consumers of lobster should form a voluntary organization aimed at boycotting lobsters not treated according to his humanitarian proposal.

It has often been noted that opponents of the doctrine of natural law sometimes claim that it is no accident that its principal elaborators and defenders have been Christians who attempt to forge a doctrine that harmonizes reason and revelation, nature and grace. But, the argument goes, natural law theorists achieve that harmony by claiming that reason knows things about nature that wise and reasonable nonbelievers fail to see there. So it is interesting to see one who is a believer and, at least in appearance, a defender of the doctrine of natural law admitting the validity of the nonbeliever's objection, at least on one major point.

Professor Goerner has little or nothing to say about my critical assessment of John Finnis's book, in which I take it he concurs. His main concern is with some incidental remarks that I was led to make regarding the much debated and still unresolved question of the “naturalness” of the natural law as Thomas Aquinas understood it. The purpose of these remarks was twofold. First, since I had raised doubts about the theoretical viability of the modern rights doctrine, I did not wish to leave the reader with the impression that I was advocating a pure and simple return to the old natural law theory, which, although more adequate, is not without serious difficulties of its own.