CHAPTER II.

LIBERTY.

Ir appears to me, then, that by far the greatest and most important advance of the modern world. over antiquity is in the progress of man himself. It appears to me, also, that the chief instrument of such progress is the Christian religion. With reason does Europe still compute its chronology by "the year of our Lord," thus paying unconscious homage to Him who is the source of all that is highest in its civilization. Christianity is commonly spoken of as a revelation of God to man. It is also, most assuredly, a revelation of man to himself. Hegel goes so far as to say that we owe to it the very idea of personality. "Entire quarters of the world, Africa and the East, have never had, and have not yet, this idea. The Greeks and Romans, Plato and Aristotle and the Stoics had it not. It came into the world through Christianity, in which the individual, as such, had an infinite worth, as being the aim and the object of Divine Charity." I confess this seems to me too strongly said. But if it is not strictly

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accurate to assert that the world owes to Christianity the idea of personality, we may, at all events, safely affirm that Christianity has impressed upon that idea quite a new significance. "Persona est homo civili statu præditus " was the highest account of the matter which Roman jurisprudence had to give. The conception developed among the Hebrews of their direct relations with the Creator and Judge of men went far beyond that. But it was reserved for Christianity, as an universal religion, to exhibit in personality the key to the problems of existence; to reveal the true nature of the obligation attaching to it; the real import of that ethical "ought" which the wisest of the ancient world confessed but could not explain: to proclaim the transcendent worth of man as a moral being. The distinctive consciousness of personality, diffused by Christianity, has transfigured the whole mental and spiritual life of the nations that have received it, and has renewed the forms of their social existence. And the essential note of personality is Liberty. Not mere external Liberty, but a Liberty which stone walls and iron bars cannot annihilate, nay, which even a slave may enjoy, knowing himself to be "Christ's freeman.’ This idea of freedom, I say, working from within, it is, which has most potently shaped the ethical conditions of life in Christian countries. Not by the storm of war, not by the earthquake of revolution, but by the still, small voice of conscience has

11.] THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE INDIVIDUAL. 51

the vast change been wrought, which, more than anything else, marks off our modern civilization from the civilizations that have preceded it.

Dimly, one might perhaps say unconsciously, has this truth been apprehended by the popular mind and expressed in a Shibboleth most effective upon the popular imagination. The panegyrist of "our enlightened age," after expatiating, much to the satisfaction of his audience, upon its scientific discoveries and mechanical inventions, will not infrequently go on, with their entire approbation, to speak very excellent things of the Liberty which is our proud prerogative. And we may say with Gretchen, "Das ist alles schon recht und gut.” Liberty merits all the praises which human rhetoric can lavish upon it. Liberty which is really such. But there is, in Burke's phrase, a Liberty which is not liberal: a counterfeit which usurps the noble name and august attributes of true freedom. Liberty is very generally understood, in the present day, to consist in doing as one pleases. "Over his own mind and body the Individual is sovereign" is a dictum in which Mr. Mill expresses this view: while Mr. Herbert Spencer takes "real freedom to "consist in the ability of each to carry on his own life without hindrance from others, so long as he does not hinder them." And if we pass from the private to the public order, the most popular and widely held doctrine of the State is that it is merely a machine for assuring this individual

independence and sovereignty. I suppose Rousseau must be held to have most clearly formulated that doctrine in his receipt for making the constitution, which is "To find a form of association that defends and protects with the public force the person and property of each partner, and whereby each, while uniting himself to all, still obeys only himself, and is as free as he was before." In Rousseau's philosophy, Liberty is conceived of as lawlessness. That is supposed to be the natural condition of man-his birthright, of which civilization has deprived him.

"I am as free as nature first made man,

Ere the base laws of servitude began,

When wild in woods the noble savage ran."

No Shibboleth is commoner at the present day than this of Liberty. And the vast majority of the people who use it so understand it, their notion of law being purely empirical: a combination of interest and force. The extremest form of this view finds succinct expression in the favourite formula of a certain section of French Radicalism, "Ni Dieu, ni Maître."

Now, I take leave to say that this is an extremely false conception. I say that "the ability of each to carry on his own life without hindrance from others, so long as he does not hinder them," is a most inadequate account of freedom. For such freedom is merely negative. It has no root in itself. It is the freedom of the wild beast, not human: physical, not rational: chaotic, not constructive. I say

II.]

THE UNIVERSALITY OF LAW.

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that the sovereignty of the individual over his own mind and body is not absolute. I say that positive Liberty, real Liberty, does not reside in lawlessness that law is not its opposite, but its essential condition. And I say that this is universally true -true in the political order, true in the ethical order, true in the physical order. "Nothing is that errs from law." Everywhere, to ascertain and to obey the law is the one way to Liberty. Let us consider it a little in detail.

And first take the domain of the physical sciences. The very word science implies law. If the universe were the realm of chance, science could not exist. Banish from it law, and you have "chaos come again." What is the astronomical world but an expression of the laws of gravitation? What the vegetable world but an expression of the laws of growth? What the organic world but an expression of the laws of life? What is the eye but an expression of the laws of optics? or the lung but an expression of the laws of respiration? or the ear but an expression of the laws of acoustics? The deeper our insight into nature, the profounder is our apprehension of the great truth that law reigns throughout the universe, dominating the organic and the inorganic, the smallest things and the greatest, the most complex and the simplest, the seemingly most mutable and capricious and the