THE HEART OF LIBERALISM
The teaching of Mill brings us close to the heart of Liberalism. We
learn from him, in the first place, that liberty is no mere formula of
law, or of the restriction of law. There may be a tyranny of custom, a
tyranny of opinion, even a tyranny of circumstance, as real as any
tyranny of government and more pervasive. Nor does liberty rest on the
self-assertion of the individual. There is scope abundant for Liberalism
and illiberalism in personal conduct. Nor is liberty opposed to
discipline, to organization, to strenuous conviction as to what is true
and just. Nor is it to be identified with tolerance of opposed opinions.
The Liberal does not meet opinions which he conceives to be false with
toleration, as though they did not matter. He meets them with justice,
and exacts for them a fair hearing as though they mattered just as much
as his own. He is always ready to put his own convictions to the proof,
not because he doubts them, but because he believes in them. For, both
as to that which he holds for true and as to that which he holds for
false, he believes that one final test applies. Let error have free
play, and one of two things will happen. Either as it develops, as its
implications and consequences become clear, some elements of truth will
appear within it. They will separate themselves out; they will go to
enrich the stock of human ideas; they will add something to the truth
which he himself mistakenly took as final; they will serve to explain
the root of the error; for error itself is generally a truth
misconceived, and it is only when it is explained that it is finally and
satisfactorily confuted. Or, in the alternative, no element of truth
will appear. In that case the more fully the error is understood, the
more patiently it is followed up in all the windings of its implications
and consequences, the more thoroughly will it refute itself. The
cancerous growth cannot be extirpated by the knife. The root is always
left, and it is only the evolution of the self-protecting anti-toxin
that works the final cure. Exactly parallel is the logic of truth. The
more the truth is developed in all its implications, the greater is the
opportunity of detecting any element of error that it may contain; and,
conversely, if no error appears, the more completely does it establish
itself as the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Liberalism applies
the wisdom of Gamaliel in no spirit of indifference, but in the full
conviction of the potency of truth. If this thing be of man, _i. e._ if
it is not rooted in actual verity, it will come to nought. If it be of
God, let us take care that we be not found fighting against God.
Divergences of opinion, of character, of conduct are not unimportant
matters. They may be most serious matters, and no one is called on in
the name of Liberalism to overlook their seriousness. There are, for
example, certain disqualifications inherent in the profession of certain
opinions. It is not illiberal to recognize such disqualifications. It is
not illiberal for a Protestant in choosing a tutor for his son to reject
a conscientious Roman Catholic who avows that all his teaching is
centred on the doctrine of his Church. It would be illiberal to reject
the same man for the specific purpose of teaching arithmetic, if he
avowed that he had no intention of using his position for the purpose
of religious propagandism. For the former purpose the divergence of
religious opinion is an inherent disqualification. It negates the object
propounded, which is the general education of the boy on lines in which
the father believes. For the latter purpose the opinion is no
disqualification. The devout Catholic accepts the multiplication table,
and can impart his knowledge without reference to the infallibility of
the Pope. To refuse to employ him is to impose an extraneous penalty on
his convictions. It is not illiberal for an editor to decline the
services of a member of the opposite party as a leader writer, or even
as a political reviewer or in any capacity in which his opinions would
affect his work. It is illiberal to reject him as a compositor or as a
clerk, or in any capacity in which his opinions would not affect his
work for the paper. It is not illiberal to refuse a position of trust to
the man whose record shows that he is likely to abuse such a trust. It
is illiberal--and this the "moralist" has yet to learn--to punish a man
who has done a wrong in one relation by excluding him from the
performance of useful social functions for which he is perfectly
fitted, by which he could at once serve society and re-establish his own
self-respect. There may, however, yet come a time when Liberalism,
already recognized as a duty in religion and in politics, will take its
true place at the centre of our ethical conceptions, and will be seen to
have its application not only to him whom we conceive to be the teacher
of false opinions, but to the man whom we hold a sinner.
The ground of Liberalism so understood is certainly not the view that a
man's personal opinions are socially indifferent, nor that his personal
morality matters nothing to others. So far as Mill rested his case on
the distinction between self-regarding actions and actions that affect
others, he was still dominated by the older individualism. We should
frankly recognize that there is no side of a man's life which is
unimportant to society, for whatever he is, does, or thinks may affect
his own well-being, which is and ought to be matter of common concern,
and may also directly or indirectly affect the thought, action, and
character of those with whom he comes in contact. The underlying
principle may be put in two ways. In the first place, the man is much
more than his opinions and his actions. Carlyle and Sterling did not
differ "except in opinion." To most of us that is just what difference
means. Carlyle was aware that there was something much deeper, something
that opinion just crassly formulates, and for the most part formulates
inadequately, that is the real man. The real man is something more than
is ever adequately expressed in terms which his fellows can understand;
and just as his essential humanity lies deeper than all distinctions of
rank, and class, and colour, and even, though in a different sense, of
sex, so also it goes far below those comparatively external events which
make one man figure as a saint and another as a criminal. This sense of
ultimate oneness is the real meaning of equality, as it is the
foundation of social solidarity and the bond which, if genuinely
experienced, resists the disruptive force of all conflict, intellectual,
religious, and ethical.
But, further, while personal opinions and social institutions are like
crystallized results, achievements that have been won by certain
definite processes of individual or collective effort, human personality
is that within which lives and grows, which can be destroyed but cannot
be made, which cannot be taken to pieces and repaired, but can be placed
under conditions in which it will flourish and expand, or, if it is
diseased, under conditions in which it will heal itself by its own
recuperative powers. The foundation of liberty is the idea of growth.
Life is learning, but whether in theory or practice what a man genuinely
learns is what he absorbs, and what he absorbs depends on the energy
which he himself puts forth in response to his surroundings. Thus, to
come at once to the real crux, the question of moral discipline, it is
of course possible to reduce a man to order and prevent him from being a
nuisance to his neighbours by arbitrary control and harsh punishment.
This may be to the comfort of the neighbours, as is admitted, but
regarded as a moral discipline it is a contradiction in terms. It is
doing less than nothing for the character of the man himself. It is
merely crushing him, and unless his will is killed the effect will be
seen if ever the superincumbent pressure is by chance removed. It is
also possible, though it takes a much higher skill, to teach the same
man to discipline himself, and this is to foster the development of
will, of personality, of self control, or whatever we please to call
that central harmonizing power which makes us capable of directing our
own lives. Liberalism is the belief that society can safely be founded
on this self-directing power of personality, that it is only on this
foundation that a true community can be built, and that so established
its foundations are so deep and so wide that there is no limit that we
can place to the extent of the building. Liberty then becomes not so
much a right of the individual as a necessity of society. It rests not
on the claim of A to be let alone by B, but on the duty of B to treat A
as a rational being. It is not right to let crime alone or to let error
alone, but it is imperative to treat the criminal or the mistaken or the
ignorant as beings capable of right and truth, and to lead them on
instead of merely beating them down. The rule of liberty is just the
application of rational method. It is the opening of the door to the
appeal of reason, of imagination, of social feeling; and except through
the response to this appeal there is no assured progress of society.
Now, I am not contending that these principles are free from difficulty
in application. At many points they suggest difficulties both in theory
and in practice, with some of which I shall try to deal later on. Nor,
again, am I contending that freedom is the universal solvent, or the
idea of liberty the sole foundation on which a true social philosophy
can be based. On the contrary, freedom is only one side of social life.
Mutual aid is not less important than mutual forbearance, the theory of
collective action no less fundamental than the theory of personal
freedom. But, in an inquiry where all the elements are so closely
interwoven as they are in the field of social life, the point of
departure becomes almost indifferent. Wherever we start we shall, if we
are quite frank and consistent, be led on to look at the whole from some
central point, and this, I think, has happened to us in working with the
conception of 'liberty.' For, beginning with the right of the
individual, and the antithesis between personal freedom and social
control, we have been led on to a point at which we regard liberty as
primarily a matter of social interest, as something flowing from the
necessities of continuous advance in those regions of truth and of
ethics which constitute the matters of highest social concern. At the
same time, we have come to look for the effect of liberty in the firmer
establishment of social solidarity, as the only foundation on which such
solidarity can securely rest. We have, in fact, arrived by a path of our
own at that which is ordinarily described as the organic conception of
the relation between the individual and society--a conception towards
which Mill worked through his career, and which forms the starting-point
of T. H. Green's philosophy alike in ethics and in politics.
The term organic is so much used and abused that it is best to state
simply what it means. A thing is called organic when it is made up of
parts which are quite distinct from one another, but which are destroyed
or vitally altered when they are removed from the whole. Thus, the human
body is organic because its life depends on the functions performed by
many organs, while each of these organs depends in turn on the life of
the body, perishing and decomposing if removed therefrom. Now, the
organic view of society is equally simple. It means that, while the life
of society is nothing but the life of individuals as they act one upon
another, the life of the individual in turn would be something utterly
different if he could be separated from society. A great deal of him
would not exist at all. Even if he himself could maintain physical
existence by the luck and skill of a Robinson Crusoe, his mental and
moral being would, if it existed at all, be something quite different
from anything that we know. By language, by training, by simply living
with others, each of us absorbs into his system the social atmosphere
that surrounds us. In particular, in the matter of rights and duties
which is cardinal for Liberal theory, the relation of the individual to
the community is everything. His rights and his duties are alike defined
by the common good. What, for example, is my right? On the face of it,
it is something that I claim. But a mere claim is nothing. I might claim
anything and everything. If my claim is of right it is because it is
sound, well grounded, in the judgment of an impartial observer. But an
impartial observer will not consider me alone. He will equally weigh the
opposed claims of others. He will take us in relation to one another,
that is to say, as individuals involved in a social relationship.
Further, if his decision is in any sense a rational one, it must rest on
a principle of some kind; and again, as a rational man, any principle
which he asserts he must found on some good result which it serves or
embodies, and as an impartial man he must take the good of every one
affected into account. That is to say, he must found his judgment on the
common good. An individual right, then, cannot conflict with the common
good, nor could any right exist apart from the common good.
The argument might seem to make the individual too subservient to
society. But this is to forget the other side of the original
supposition. Society consists wholly of persons. It has no distinct
personality separate from and superior to those of its members. It has,
indeed, a certain collective life and character. The British nation is a
unity with a life of its own. But the unity is constituted by certain
ties that bind together all British subjects, which ties are in the last
resort feelings and ideas, sentiments of patriotism, of kinship, a
common pride, and a thousand more subtle sentiments that bind together
men who speak a common language, have behind them a common history, and
understand one another as they can understand no one else. The British
nation is not a mysterious entity over and above the forty odd millions
of living souls who dwell together under a common law. Its life is their
life, its well-being or ill-fortune their well-being or ill-fortune.
Thus, the common good to which each man's rights are subordinate is a
good in which each man has a share. This share consists in realizing his
capacities of feeling, of loving, of mental and physical energy, and in
realizing these he plays his part in the social life, or, in Green's
phrase, he finds his own good in the common good.
Now, this phrase, it must be admitted, involves a certain assumption,
which may be regarded as the fundamental postulate of the organic view
of society. It implies that such a fulfilment or full development of
personality is practically possible not for one man only but for all
members of a community. There must be a line of development open along
which each can move in harmony with others. Harmony in the full sense
would involve not merely absence of conflict but actual support. There
must be for each, then, possibilities of development such as not merely
to permit but actively to further the development of others. Now, the
older economists conceived a natural harmony, such that the interests of
each would, if properly understood and unchecked by outside
interference, inevitably lead him in courses profitable to others and to
society at large. We saw that this assumption was too optimistic. The
conception which we have now reached does not assume so much. It
postulates, not that there is an actually existing harmony requiring
nothing but prudence and coolness of judgment for its effective
operation, but only that there is a possible ethical harmony, to which,
partly by discipline, partly by the improvement of the conditions of
life, men might attain, and that in such attainment lies the social
ideal. To attempt the systematic proof of this postulate would take us
into the field of philosophical first principles. It is the point at
which the philosophy of politics comes into contact with that of ethics.
It must suffice to say here that, just as the endeavour to establish
coherent system in the world of thought is the characteristic of the
rational impulse which lies at the root of science and philosophy, so
the impulse to establish harmony in the world of feeling and action--a
harmony which must include all those who think and feel--is of the
essence of the rational impulse in the world of practice. To move
towards harmony is the persistent impulse of the rational being, even if
the goal lies always beyond the reach of accomplished effort.
These principles may appear very abstract, remote from practical life,
and valueless for concrete teaching. But this remoteness is of the
nature of first principles when taken without the connecting links that
bind them to the details of experience. To find some of these links let
us take up again our old Liberal principles, and see how they look in
the light of the organic, or, as we may now call it, the harmonic
conception. We shall readily see, to begin with, that the old idea of
equality has its place. For the common good includes every individual.
It is founded on personality, and postulates free scope for the
development of personality in each member of the community. This is the
foundation not only of equal rights before the law, but also of what is
called equality of opportunity. It does not necessarily imply actual
equality of treatment for all persons any more than it implies original
equality of powers.[9] It does, I think, imply that whatever inequality
of actual treatment, of income, rank, office, consideration, there be in
a good social system, it would rest, not on the interest of the favoured
individual as such, but on the common good. If the existence of
millionaires on the one hand and of paupers on the other is just, it
must be because such contrasts are the result of an economic system
which upon the whole works out for the common good, the good of the
pauper being included therein as well as the good of the millionaire;
that is to say, that when we have well weighed the good and the evil of
all parties concerned we can find no alternative open to us which could
do better for the good of all. I am not for the moment either attacking
or defending any economic system. I point out only that this is the
position which according to the organic or harmonic view of society must
be made good by any rational defence of grave inequality in the
distribution of wealth. In relation to equality, indeed, it appears,
oddly enough, that the harmonic principle can adopt wholesale, and even
expand, one of the "Rights of Man" as formulated in 1789--"Social
distinctions can only be founded upon common utility." If it is really
just that A should be superior to B in wealth or power or position, it
is only because when the good of all concerned is considered, among whom
B is one, it turns out that there is a net gain in the arrangement as
compared with any alternative that we can devise.
If we turn from equality to liberty, the general lines of argument have
already been indicated, and the discussion of difficulties in detail
must be left for the next chapter. It need only be repeated here that on
the harmonic principle the fundamental importance of liberty rests on
the nature of the "good" itself, and that whether we are thinking of the
good of society or the good of the individual. The good is something
attained by the development of the basal factors of personality; a
development proceeding by the widening of ideas, the awakening of the
imagination, the play of affection and passion, the strengthening and
extension of rational control. As it is the development of these
factors in each human being that makes his life worth having, so it is
their harmonious interaction, the response of each to each, that makes
of society a living whole. Liberty so interpreted cannot, as we have
seen, dispense with restraint; restraint, however, is not an end but a
means to an end, and one of the principal elements in that end is the
enlargement of liberty.
But the collective activity of the community does not necessarily
proceed by coercion or restraint. The more securely it is founded on
freedom and general willing assent, the more it is free to work out all
the achievements in which the individual is feeble or powerless while
combined action is strong. Human progress, on whatever side we consider
it, is found to be in the main social progress, the work of conscious or
unconscious co-operation. In this work voluntary association plays a
large and increasing part. But the State is one form of association
among others, distinguished by its use of coercive power, by its
supremacy, and by its claim to control all who dwell within its
geographical limits. What the functions of such a form of association
are to be we shall have to consider a little further in connection with
the other questions which we have already raised. But that, in general,
we are justified in regarding the State as one among many forms of human
association for the maintenance and improvement of life is the general
principle that we have to point out here, and this is the point at which
we stand furthest from the older Liberalism. We have, however, already
seen some reason for thinking that the older doctrines led, when
carefully examined, to a more enlarged conception of State action than
appeared on the surface; and we shall see more fully before we have done
that the "positive" conception of the State which we have now reached
not only involves no conflict with the true principle of personal
liberty, but is necessary to its effective realization.
There is, in addition, one principle of historic Liberalism with which
our present conception of the State is in full sympathy. The conception
of the common good as it has been explained can be realized in its
fullness only through the common will. There are, of course, elements of
value in the good government of a benevolent despot or of a fatherly
aristocracy. Within any peaceful order there is room for many good
things to flourish. But the full fruit of social progress is only to be
reaped by a society in which the generality of men and women are not
only passive recipients but practical contributors. To make the rights
and responsibilities of citizens real and living, and to extend them as
widely as the conditions of society allow, is thus an integral part of
the organic conception of society, and the justification of the
democratic principle. It is, at the same time, the justification of
nationalism so far as nationalism is founded on a true interpretation of
history. For, inasmuch as the true social harmony rests on feeling and
makes use of all the natural ties of kinship, of neighbourliness, of
congruity of character and belief, and of language and mode of life, the
best, healthiest, and most vigorous political unit is that to which men
are by their own feelings strongly drawn. Any breach of such unity,
whether by forcible disruption or by compulsory inclusion in a larger
society of alien sentiments and laws, tends to mutilate--or, at lowest,
to cramp--the spontaneous development of social life. National and
personal freedom are growths of the same root, and their historic
connection rests on no accident, but on ultimate identity of idea.
Thus in the organic conception of society each of the leading ideas of
historic Liberalism has its part to play. The ideal society is conceived
as a whole which lives and flourishes by the harmonious growth of its
parts, each of which in developing on its own lines and in accordance
with its own nature tends on the whole to further the development of
others. There is some elementary trace of such harmony in every form of
social life that can maintain itself, for if the conflicting impulses
predominated society would break up, and when they do predominate
society does break up. At the other extreme, true harmony is an ideal
which it is perhaps beyond the power of man to realize, but which serves
to indicate the line of advance. But to admit this is to admit that the
lines of possible development for each individual or, to use a more
general phrase, for each constituent of the social order are not limited
and fixed. There are many possibilities, and the course that will in the
end make for social harmony is only one among them, while the
possibilities of disharmony and conflict are many. The progress of
society like that of the individual depends, then, ultimately on choice.
It is not "natural," in the sense in which a physical law is natural,
that is, in the sense of going forward automatically from stage to stage
without backward turnings, deflections to the left, or fallings away on
the right. It is natural only in this sense, that it is the expression
of deep-seated forces of human nature which come to their own only by an
infinitely slow and cumbersome process of mutual adjustment. Every
constructive social doctrine rests on the conception of human progress.
The heart of Liberalism is the understanding that progress is not a
matter of mechanical contrivance, but of the liberation of living
spiritual energy. Good mechanism is that which provides the channels
wherein such energy can flow unimpeded, unobstructed by its own
exuberance of output, vivifying the social structure, expanding and
ennobling the life of mind.
FOOTNOTE:
[9] An absurd misconception fostered principally by opponents of
equality for controversial purposes.