The foundations of liberty

Preface

HPHIS little book aims at setting forth Liberty, Personal and National — not as a mere Utility

as is usually the case — but as an a priori moral \ necessity, the sine qua non of all true civilisation. ^ No apology will be required by students of Words- 5 worth for the great use here made of that Author's J works. They are all too little read at the present day, ^ and more is the pity, seeing how wonderfully Words- <) worth's philosophy, political and moral, is adapted to

the problems of the present time.

It is not to be thought of that the flood

Of British freedom, which to the open sea

Of the world's praise, from dark antiquity

Hath flowed, "with pomp of waters unwithstood,"

Roused though it be full often to a mood

Which spurns the check of salutary bands,

That this most famous stream in bogs and sands

Should perish ; and to evil and to good

Be lost for ever. In our halls is hung

Armoury of the invincible knights of old ;

We must be free or die, who speak the tongue

That Shakespeare spoke ; the faith and morals hold

Which Milton held. In everything we are sprung

Of earth's first blood, have titles manifold.

Wordsworth

Part I Introductory

THE partisan or extreme man is one who selects at will certain of the facts or truths of the matter with which he is called upon to deal, and ignores others which, for whatever reason, are less agreeable to him. Truth is generally to be found in a just balance. This balance obviously cannot be maintained if we assert our own predilections and proceed to pick and choose among the facts. The facts we select will all be of one type, and all restraint arising from the presence in our minds of the correcting or balancing truths having been lost, we shall proceed to extremes of foolishness, the only limit to which will be the strength of the partisan's energy or the condition of his sense of humour. Such persons having nothing to consider more solid or more permanent than their own desires, are often subject and always liable to violent oscillations of opinion, and in the process of selecting a new set of truths will frequently go direct from one extreme to the other.

It is as though the truth or Aristotelian " mean " were the apex of a triangle, with the related " untruths " or " extremes " at the angles of the base, so that he who falls from Truth can pass directly from one extreme to the other without passing through the " mean " on the way — that is to say, without ever arriving at Truth.

The Truth, however, is not a mere compromise between its opposite aspects or component ideas, nor is it their sum or their mixture. As water is more than its elemental gases, and a song than its several notes, so is Truth more than those things into which it can be analysed.

There are two chief ways in which " extremism " or passionate, unjust, unbalanced opinion is injuriously affecting modern politics.

On the one hand we have partial and consequently extreme and partisan views as to the fundamental and essential Nature of Man. Some will have it that he is only a Mind in conflict with unreality, or with a " matter " which is purely evil ; others that he is wholly material, or at any rate wholly conditioned by his material environment.

The former of these schools may become a political danger in the distant future, but the latter are already a danger.

The second is intimately connected with this, and concerns the partial, ill-considered, and passionate views, which are everywhere rife, as to the relation of the Individual to the Society.

To take first the popular views as to the relation of Man to his material environment.

There is at present a certain more or less unphilosophic reaction against materialism — that is to say, as that is popularly conceived and accepted — expressing itself hazily in the various forms of occultism, and among the upper classes from time to time in a so-called Buddhism, and indeed in a great variety of ways.# But the movement or tendency is expressed with much more definite intention in the dogmas of the various sects, of which the Christian " Scientists " might be taken as typical.

These modern reactionaries for the most part regard matter as lawless, or purely subjective, or illusory, and as wholly or mainly evil, or at any rate the source of evil ; while the social aspect of the individual and the dependence of his moral and physical well - being upon his social environment are among them greatly minimised.

Such people, however, it is needless to say, do not at present constitute a political danger, and their case need not here be dwelt upon.

But the opposite extreme or materialistic conception of Man is of grave political import.

The political evil of materialism lies in the atheism or agnosticism involved in it ; for atheism and agnosticism sap the moral foundations upon which all Society is based. And so, perhaps, it might seem better, instead of speaking of a materialistic view as the political danger of the day, to ascribe the danger to a popular atheism or agnosticism. But this is largely a question of names, because among the populace agnosticism is for all practical purposes materialism, and has its origin and its end in an indifference to, and elimination of, all that is ultra-physical, and a willing surrender to the dogma that the Substance of the universe, whether that be Absolute or not, is the only thing with which Man, as they have limited and defined him, can have any concern. Furthermore, there are persons who, consciously or unconsciously, are influenced by materialism (and who are a political danger in proportion to the strength of that influence), who yet could not possibly be described as atheists ; and to describe them as " atheists who are partly theists " is not so fitting as to speak of them as theists who are in some measure influenced by materialism.

We only know of matter through our own bodies, where we see it, as it were, from within. The notions we entertain of matter will therefore depend on the assumption we make concerning our own Nature — that is, the Nature of Man. Were it otherwise, and the only means of attaining to a materialistic or agnostic view of things lay in pursuing the painful paths of arduous scientific research and profound philosophic meditation on the subject of Matter and Reality, we might be delivered from any alarm as to this creed ever becoming in the least degree popular. But the usual materialistic views as to Man and his material nature are by no means the result of elaborate study and cogent reasoning, nor, on the other hand, do they spring from the soil of faith, conscience, and moral discipline. They are, on the contrary — whether in the fashionable world or among the populace — the result of gratuitous one-sided assumptions made by the individual, which involve, neither at the time of making them nor subsequently, any moral effort or intellectual ability. They are suggested by pride and passion, and when once made open the door to every destructive political influence. Busybodies of a certain type are not slow to perceive this, and diffuse among the people in various ways materialistic propaganda, not, as is affected, with a philosophic or scientific aim, but with the purely political intent of resolving into dust those transcendental ideas which are the life and inspiration of human society.

Associated with and depending upon these materialistic views of the Nature of Man, there remains as the second menace to all that is of permanent value in social and individual life, the extravagant ideas which are now everywhere so acceptable on the subject of the relation of the individual to the Society.

On the one side there is the pure Socialistic conception, and on the other the extreme Individualistic and Anarchistic ; both the Socialistic and Individualistic conception being wide of the Truth, and indeed about equally so.

As to the anarchistic attitude, it must be remarked, in passing, that while the anarchistic policy is undoubtedly a development of Socialism — perhaps its only logical issue — yet the immediate aims of the two parties are, for all practical purposes, diametrically opposed ; so much so that Anarchism may be regarded as having assimilated the essential theories of materialistic Individualism.

It becomes necessary at this point to state what in this book is meant by an Individualist. At present the term Individualism is universally employed merely to connote the various political opinions which are not described as Socialistic ; so that Individualistic now means nothing more than anti-Socialistic. So it happens that Individualism connotes many opinions which are mean and base and possessed of no ethical or religious foundation, but are founded rather upon inductions based upon observations of the brute creation. The doctrine of " each one for himself," which pretends to the support of biological science, is characteristic of this type of Individualism.

The term Individualism is a purely negative one, and does not suggest any ethic or any positive constructive political ideal. It is therefore confined throughout this argument to denote the opinions of those persons who are not Socialists, and do not base their claim to self-government and general Personal Liberty on an ethical and spiritual conception of Man, but upon their own self-interest or class interest, or upon the Socialist doctrine of seeming public " Utility," i.e. the alleged advantage of the majority, or " Good of the Whole," as it is hopefully styled.

But the term Individualism also denotes a body of opinion which is most emphatically founded on Christian ethics and the Christian religion, and which has, moreover, a positive political ideal, and is inspired by a noble public spirit. This most legitimate creed has suffered much by being classified under the title Individualism, with a variety of other non-Socialistic opinions with which it has nothing in common, and to which it is radically opposed. It is therefore proposed, for the sake of avoiding ambiguity, to designate this political philosophy, or rather religion, by the term Personalism. The reason for the selection of this name is that the non-Socialist of this positive and moral creed, unlike those whom we have here styled Individualists, bases his claim to self-determination, i.e. his claim to Freedom, on the transcendental fact of Personality. This claim he makes equally for all others, and on the same ground, viz., this fact of Personality, with all that this involves of Free-will, and of correspondence with, and responsibility to, an ultrapolitical and ultra - social Environment, to wit the supreme Person, from whom he and his fellow men derive that Divine element existing in them and which alone makes them human, namely their Personality. To the Personalist the claim to liberty does not involve questions of demonstrable political Utility, for it is not in Utility that it has its origin. The claim is set forth as one of absolute moral Right, and the obtaining and maintaining of Liberty thus becomes the beginning and end of Political Justice.

Employing then the term Personalism in contradistinction to the term Individualism, let us return from this digression to the consideration of the extreme Views of the Individualist, and Socialist.

It will not be disputed that the subject matter of politics, as indeed in a certain sense of all branches of abstract thought — including religion — is Man, that is Man in his entirety ; and that a partial or sectarian estimate of Man will vitiate our conclusions on almost any matter, but especially on matters religious or political.

Hence arises the importance — before discussing politics, that is, before attempting to apply principles to the solution of political issues — of being sure that we have any principles to apply ; and if we have any, of ascertaining exactly what they are, and on what authority they rest.

When we have decided what we mean by a Man, and consequently by a citizen, a government, a state, a nation, then will it be quite soon enough to discuss and pronounce upon the vast political questions which centre round the family, the nation, religion, private property, and personal freedom.

io THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

The whole matter resolves itself into what we mean by a Man ; and the more simple and childlike the spirit in which we approach this question, the more likely are we to arrive at a truthful solution of the grave political questions that are more and more urgently forcing themselves upon us. For the present then, and to put the matter as briefly as possible, it may be said that the whole of the two-sided political truth concerning Man is involved in the conception of him as a personal spiritual Being ; a Being which is spiritual as well as material, and related to Heaven as well as to Earth. He has both a divine relation and a social relation, neither of which has any significance without the other. He therefore cannot be regarded either as an Individual pure and simple, nor yet can he be treated as a "social animal." His unconscious social instincts have become transformed into deliberate social principle, which principle has its origin in the nature of his divine and ultra-social relation. For is not our duty to our neighbour always supported by religion of some sort or another? If we dismiss the divine relation, and own ourselves the outcome of chemical and mechanical forces, what becomes of Duty? Does not that too become the result of chance — a meaningless and momentary disposition of chaos ?

It is this dual relation in which human Personality exists, and without which there is no human Personality, which gives rise to the social question regarding the relation of the Individual to Society. The bees in a hive, the ants in a nest, the leaves on a tree with their various developments into flowers and seeds, have no social question, because the individuals have no ultra-social relation, and so have no significance beyond their connection with the society in which they live. Were Man so situated, he too would lead a blind, automatic and infallible life ; but as it is his ultra-social relation introduces a disturbing element. For what is this relation to the Supreme Person if it does not involve a community of character and idea with that Person ? How else could there be a reciprocal relation? If this relation exists, must not we too on our side also be possessed of self-consciousness and free-will ? For what moral meaning or reality could this relation have without the existence of these qualities ? And if we are thus possessed of free-will or self-determination, must not we be also morally responsible to that Supreme Person, who is the Author of our free-will ? And what meaning has moral responsibility apart from self-development, self-control, independence, liberty ?

It is this distracting claim to personal liberty, a claim which increases in force as Man develops, which entering in, complicates at once the problem of social organisation.

But why should it complicate it? Surely it is admitted by all that the individual cannot realise or develop his powers except by social intercourse. Why should the fact that Man has an individual as well as a social aspect cause such terrible complications ?

These complications are indeed terrible, culminating at times in fire and sword, and every horror of revolution. The answer is that there can be no human intercourse on lines of social irresponsibility. Human intercourse involves human subjection, and liberty involves obedience. Human Society, with a view to maintaining the moral and transcendental character of its units, claims a moral right to coerce by force, that is by law with a physical sanction, each and all of its individual members. It is this power of demanding obedience, and of exacting it by compulsion which is the immediate cause of the ever recurring conflict between the Individual and the State, between Personal freedom and civic restraint. According to the good or bad adjustment of this matter, so we have a good or bad government. Everything depends upon what we call upon each other to obey ; upon whether the obedience exacted is justified by the fidelity of the laws to the claims of the Personal, individual Man ; — upon whether, that is, the laws make for the freedom of the Person and the consequent education or calling forth of individual character ; or whether they make for individual diminution and suppression in the supposed interests of the Good of the Whole.

It may then safely be said that for practical purposes at any rate, it is at that point in the social relations of the individual where coercive law becomes operative, that there arises the conflict of idea between the Individual and the Society ; and it is at this point, therefore, that there emerge the rival parties of the Individualist and the Socialist. Graduated, indeed, these parties are ; for it is not to be supposed that the views of the parties have in all cases been pushed so far in their various directions as practically to constitute a contradiction of the whole Truth. It is a question of degree, and extreme doctrines generally will be found to be — not so much total violations of the Truth — as partisan expressions of it, and so partial defections from it. It may be added, however, that though this is the case, yet "half-truths," while infinitely preferable to "no truths," may become very much more dangerous. But however graduated these parties may be, the ideas of the Individualists and Socialists, which are to be seen in their nakedness among the extreme men of these denominations, exist as distinct tendencies, among all grades of these two schools.

According as we desert the Truth of the Person as this is known and felt in its entirety, so will we be in a position to become either blank Individualists or Socialists. We may hold that Man seeks his interests best as an individual on absolutely independent and irresponsible lines, and that all State interference is essentially an evil ; or we may hold with the Socialists that the Greater Number of Men will best satisfy their individual desires by entirely surrendering their individual character and becoming wholly merged in the political "organism." Whichever of these political sects we elect to follow, our choice will be the result of an ignoring of that transcendental relation of the individual, which making him into a Person provides him at once with the moral claim or Right to Freedom, and at the same time imposes on him inevitable responsibility for the Rights of others. The purely individual and the purely social view of Man are both alike based on a partial conception of the Truth, on a conception, that is, which is limited by materialistic ideals. But it is only by frankly recognising the whole Truth of the material, the social and divine relations of Man, that we shall tread with certainty the path of politics, beset as that is with doubts and complexities, and be able to make laws which will avoid the materialism and the follies of Socialism and Individualism ; and so, while providing for the social relations of the individual, at the same time, and thereby increase his Freedom and intensify his Personality.

It has already been stated that the attitude which persons adopt regarding the relation of the Individual to the State, is intimately associated with the views they hold concerning the relation of Man to Matter, that is with the idea the person has of himself; and it was further observed that a political danger lies in the widespread tendency to interpret the Person exclusively in terms of Matter — that is to say, in the tendency to materialism. The materialist may not style himself such ; he may call himself an agnostic. But among the great mass of people absence of active religious faith is in practice, for obvious reasons, equivalent to materialism.

The person has undoubtedly a material aspect ; and, doubtless, to limit our contemplation of him to this one point of view, is a great temptation. It appeals to our intellectual idleness and vanity by its seeming simplicity and comprehensibility, and furthermore it involves no moral effort.

Materialists having thus boldly reduced the essentially incomprehensible to a neat formula well within their grasp, they can become, according to their temperaments or interests, either Socialists or Individualists.

We may hold with the Socialists that the individual is a pure abstraction ; that he is exclusively a member of the social " organism " ; and that his significance is wholly exhausted in that relation. That is to say, that the State is to be no longer trammelled and guided by considerations of the "a priori" or "moral" rights inherent in the idea of Personality, but is henceforth to adopt as its sole criterion of right and wrong, or as a substitute for morals altogether, the notions which the State — or rather Government of the moment — may entertain, or affect to entertain, on the subject of political "Utility" or "Good of the Whole." Or we may cleave to the Individualists and maintain simply, either that the Good of the Whole is not our concern — the non-philosophic type — or that that Good will be best attained by each person pursuing in an almost untrammelled manner his own advantage and asserting his own independence and liberty, leaving it to others to do likewise if and according as they are able — " mind your own business " and " the devil take the hindmost " being adopted by us, under these circumstances, as our political mottoes.

In Socialism we have the extreme where legal interference is idolised and the State deified. Even among the less convinced and more moral Socialists the State dictates morality on principles of its own making, without reference to a priori or personal rights as a guide or limitation in its search for " Utility."

These Socialists, however — some of whom style themselves "Christian Socialists" — save themselves from the risk of being compelled in this way to abandon all or part of the Christian morality, by affecting to have proved empirically that the accepted ethics are so demonstrably of utilitarian value that there could be no collision between these ethics and the conclusions of the Utilitarian ; and they proceed, in consequence, to set forth their morals — which are very often specifically Christian — in the guise of Utilitarian discoveries. But it is clear that in this matter they have made a pure assumption, and, from a Utilitarian point of view, a most treasonable one, For these ethics of theirs are not the result of calculation or experiment at all, nor can they even now (especially in view of the conflicting ideas both as to means and ends entertained by Utilitarians) be regarded as of a logically demonstrable and irrefutably proven Utility. They have, of course, their real origin in the securer region of Faith, in a belief that is in the transcendental relation of the individual and his consequent Personality, and in an a priori Right and Wrong, arising from the divine or extrasocial relation and origin of the Person, and of his spiritual attributes.

The true Socialists, it may be observed, who have attempted to arrive on empirical lines at the utilities that make for the Good of the Whole, deny that the received morality has any value whatever.

So it may be said that the half-convinced or semi- Socialist in reality begins and ends with the consideration of the Person and not of the Commonwealth. The reason they style themselves Socialists, and not Reformers, is partly because of the melodramatic soul within them, and the necessity of attracting attention, and partly because they think it necessary to the attainment of their reforms to get rid of individual initiative and to " socialise " private property. It is obvious that these things can be more easily and swiftly effected if their movers are not too closely bound by notions of an a priori Right and Wrong, but may also consider the apparent convenience of the Commonwealth, i.e. of the majority. If we say that the test of " Right " is " Utility " we have clearly a freer hand than if we say that the test of " Utility " is " Right."

The "Useful" and the "Right" are no doubt ultimately identical ; but, unfortunately, while every common man has a fairly reliable test of Right — apart from Right, not only have we no test of Utility, but we have not even any certain indication of the End to which our various Utilities are to avail.

There is, therefore, for practical purposes, a great difference between the sayings that " the Right is the Useful " and the " Useful is the Right."

But, while faith in Personality, and the a priori moral rights and relations of the Person, plays a large, though unacknowledged, part in the political doctrines of the distinctively English Socialists, and still more in those of the party styling themselves Christian Socialists, yet among their more logical and less compromising brethren there are no such saving scruples.

Among the wholly converted Socialists the State takes the place entirely of the transcendental relation, and rids itself of a priori morality altogether. While the moral semi-Socialist makes a pope of the State, these men make it their God. In their view, Natural or a priori Rights have no existence except in imagination ; laws are not the product of Rights inherent in the very idea of Personality; Rights are the product of laws ; Rights are only abilities and immunities conferred on the individual at the will of the State as a matter of " Utility " — i.e. of what a majority at any time esteems to be the Desire of the greatest number.

The question, therefore, arises why anyone who thus derives the moral or a priori rights of the individual Person from non-moral conceptions of Utility, should feel himself morally compelled to concern himself with the Good of the Majority of Persons, and should not rather confine himself to the search after his own private or class interests, as (he alleges) does the materialistic Individualist. The individual, as such, has by hypothesis no a priori claim on his consideration. In so far as he considers him, it must be because he calculates that it will redound to his own advantage. This is, of course, also the logical position of the materialistic Individualist. But even if in a sentimental manner some public spirit or illogical sense of (t duty " possessed him, and he pursued disinterestedly what he supposed to be the Greatest Good of the Greatest Number — in the absence of any belief in the a priori Personal Rights of each individual — such an aim would inevitably involve the grossest and most immoral tyranny, such tyranny as the Socialists attribute to the extreme individualists. For the position of Minorities, especially of small ones, would be most unenviable, and indeed desperate — Serfdom, political exile, destruction of the sick, vivisection of criminals and imbeciles, and innumerable other things, impossible to contemplate under our present morality, might at some time appear to make for the convenience of the Greatest Number.

Socialists, however, claim that no group of individuals, or political majority, could advantage themselves at the expense of other citizens (as, e.g., by re-introducing slavery), even though the Good of the Greatest Number might appear to be subserved thereby, because of an alleged substantive Socialist doctrine of " equality of consideration." But unless this doctrine is based on its proven utility to the State as a Whole — which it clearly is not — we are compelled to ask why citizens should be " equally considered " if they have no moral a priori "right" to be so treated? If, however, they have this particular " right," on what is it based if not on their moral and Personal Nature? And if it is so based, what of the other Rights that are equally deducible from that Nature — the Right, for instance, to Personal Freedom ? Leaving this question for the consideration of the Socialist, we go a step farther and ask another one. To wit — if the individual has no moral right to be considered, what claim has the Whole, or in practice the Majority, to be so considered ? That is to say, if politics is a simple question of non-moral Utility, i.e. the pleasure of the majority, why should any one vex himself with the question at all?

Why should not the Socialist confine himself to the pursuit of his own individual or class interests as does the individualist, and, when convenient, pursue them in the same manner?

The answer is that in his character of Socialist he generally does pursue his own private interests, and in theory at any rate, if he chose to do so, he could equally well pursue them on the lines of Individualism. But in practice he tends to become Anarchist rather than avowedly Individualist. It will be perceived, however, that though not generally adopting Individualistic politics, yet in so far as he is logical he is inspired by the maxim of " each for himself," which is also the inspiration of the pure Individualist ; though he finds it more advantageous to seek "himself" through civic co-operation and conspiracy, that is, through the medium of the State. But the fact that the one hopes to attain his ends by glorifying the State, and the other by performing the same office for the Individual, is due merely to the respective temperaments and material interests of the persons composing the two parties.