THE JAMES K. MOFFITT FUND. 
 
 LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 JAMES KENNEDY MOFFITT ' \* 
 
 OF THE CLASS OF '86. 
 
 Accession No. 
 
 Class No. 
 
 

 . 
 
 A , te^\Vv^ UL<A - x:-.x ti>, ^i^ ^r -'-. ^i-^.s^v o\.^r^^i 
 
 
 
PRICE THREE SHILLINGS & SIXPENCE. 
 
 THE NATURAL 
 RIGHT TO 
 FREEDOM- 
 
 BY M. D. O'BRIEN. 
 
 ^^TBRA/fjNv 
 f or 
 { UNJVE 
 
 V 
 
 There is but one birthright, Freedom. IMMANUEL KANT. 
 
 The idea of a polity in which there is the same law for all, 
 a polity administered with regard to equal rights and equal freedom 
 of speech ; the idea of a kingly government which respects most of 
 all the freedom of the governed. M. AURELil'S ANTONINUS, Book I, 
 Chapter 14. 
 
 WILLIAMS & NORGATE, 
 
 14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON ; 
 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH. 
 
NOTE TO PAGE 33. 
 
 Direct personal experience of the loss naturally following upon want 
 of personal discrimination, is necessary to all real improvement, as well 
 as to all sound, practical wisdom. Moreover, it is also necessary to good 
 officialism. For how can an artificially-coddled nation of grown-up 
 babies breed a wise crew of officials ? It is not in the nature of things, 
 and, as we know from the downfall of bureaucratic Peru, which 
 collapsed at the touch of a few plucky adventurers, does not as a 
 matter of fact happen. To interfere with the spontaneous growth of 
 the root weakens the quality of the fruit. For man to play the little 
 god-almighty to man, is for man to loose the discipline and guidance 
 of nature. 
 
 NOTE TO PAGE 34. 
 
 Says a recent issue of the Daily Chronicle: "Last year 462 
 mistakes were made in London by doctors in notifying cases of infectious 
 disease for removal to public hospitals, with the result that 102 of the 
 mistaken cases ended fatally." There is a sample of State Paternalism 
 for adults. Here is a sample of the snme thing for children. " Out of 
 365 schools built by the London School Board 230 already examined 
 have, it is stated, been declared faulty and unhealthy; and it has been 
 found necessary to appoint a Sanitary committee, which held its first 
 sitting on Wednesday, to deal with the reports which continue to come 
 in. In nearly all cases the Board paid for work which was not carried 
 out,- and consequeiitly, in order to make bad drainage good, the rate- 
 payers of London are called upon to pay a further sum of ^250,000. 
 Lloyds News, 19 Feb., 1893. Physical and mental degeneration 
 carried out by state compulsion costs a lot now, but it will cost more 
 when feeding and clothing comes on. The total cost to the municipality 
 of Paris for maintaining a school with two meals a day provided 
 gratituously, and clothing for those who cannot afford it, is ".73 95. 
 per pupil per annum, or, with the daily wine which is to be added (15 
 centimes a day ^2 is. 5d. per annum), the expenses will be 
 ;75 IDS. 50!. each." [Report of the late Royal Commission on 
 Elementary Education Vol. iii., appendix B, page 727], This system 
 simply means that somebody must get the children and everbody must 
 keep them. 
 
 NOTE TO PAGE 68. 
 
 "The Community" is but a phrase used to denote an indefinite 
 crowd of persons ; some living in harmony and some not living in 
 harmony with each other ; an indefinite number of separate individuals 
 regarded en masse, and abstracted in thought from the rest of nature, 
 to which they belong, and without which they can neither be nor be 
 conceived to be. In the same way " Orchard " is but a word to denote 
 an indefinite number of trees, which appear as a distinct group when 
 taken together and abstracted from and compared with the rest of 
 nature, or when taken together and abstracted from and compared with 
 other trees. Two or three trees don't constitute an Orchard, and yet, 
 however large the latter may be, it is never anything more than the sum 
 of the particular trees, each with its own particular nature and shape, 
 that go to make it up. So with a " Community," a Jack and a Jill are 
 not conventionally supposed to constitute this, but an indefinite number 
 of Jacks and Jills are conventionally supposed to do so. The whole 
 thing is purely conventional. What alone constitutes real sociability, 
 whether of two or many, is voluntary, mutual consent respecting 
 exchange of private service or private property. 
 
 [Continued at back of inside title.] 
 
THE NATURAL 
 
 RIGHT TO 
 FREEDOM. 
 
 BY M. D. O'BRIEN. 
 
 There is but one binhright, Freedom. IMMANUEL KANT. 
 
 The idea of a polity in which there is the same law for all, 
 a polity administered with regard to equal rights and equal freedom 
 of speech ; the idea of a kingly government which respects most of 
 all the freedom of the governed. M. AURELIUS ANTONINUS, Book I, 
 Chapter 14. 
 
NOTE TO PAGE 120-122. 
 
 A critic writes: " As readily as the understanding translates for us 
 sensations from the external world; so readily does our reason give us 
 an intuition that certain actions are in themselves goof' or evil. For 
 example we have learned through sense experience, the existence of 
 fraud; and then our reason, without rambling argument as to when, 
 where, or how, it could be excused passes an a priori judgement upon 
 fraud as evil in itself, and consequently, under all circumstances, 
 immoral. Every text book on " Equity " applies this principle by 
 declaring that "fraud vitiates everything;" and that any contract tainted 
 with it is voidable. Whoever looks into the huge indexes to English 
 law reports, under the head of fraud, will find that this a priori 
 principle, for hundreds of years, and in thousands of cases, has. been 
 applied by the Courts to put down fraud as evil in itself: and no 
 Court has ever been so absurd as to say, "you may use fraud occasionally 
 for a good purpose-" The entire administration of justice rests on an 
 a prioti principle traceable to Cicero ; " give each one his own :" and 
 our Judges, when they were law students, had to learn, and when on 
 the Bench had to apply hundreds of a priori principles, like, " he who 
 seeks equity must do equity :" and they carry out a priori judgements 
 condemning numerous crimes as evil in themselves; and no one ever 
 dreams of excusing murder, larceny, or burglary in a particular case ; 
 because reason pronounces them a priori to be of necessity and univer- 
 sally unrighteous. The uncertainty in litigation arises from conflicting 
 evidence ; from the tangle of Acts of Parliament ; and from some 
 principles which are generalizations of the understanding merely ; and 
 which, not being known like re?son's a priori judgement against fraud, 
 are not unconditioned so as to be universally true; and those secondary 
 principles, as Thomas Aquinas called them in morals, are innumerable. 
 Take the constitutional enactments of the Bill of Rights ; and the 
 illegality of the King dispensing with laws, erecting Courts, or keeping 
 up a standing army without consent of Parliament, are mere general- 
 izations, founded on antient usage in England, and having their fitness 
 in the experiments of English ^experience ; but they are not known a 
 priori, so as to be of necessity true nod unconditioned all over the 
 world : and the only a priori principle in the Bill of Rights is one for- 
 bidding fines and forfeitures to be exacted from people, before being 
 tried and convicted of the offences for which they were fined ; for this 
 would be a violation of a first principle of justice in any age and in 
 any country." About liberty the same crilic writes: "The highest 
 ideal of political liberty is government by laws, mainly limited to giving 
 each one his own, by hindering unjust aggressions of the citizens upon 
 one another, so that they may have opportunities and motives for 
 competing among themselves in mental and physical strength, with the 
 final purpose of each individual working out his greatest possible self- 
 development, in accord with right reason." 
 
 NOTE TO PAGES 170 AND 171. 
 
 ("Education" and Improvement). "With the single exception of 
 offences against property without violence [there has been] a decided 
 increase in indictable offences of every other description, an increase 
 which has in almost every instance more than kept pace with the 
 growth of population." Police Force has grown- at double the rate of 
 ordinary population. Commitments have also increased in proportion 
 [Continued on inside of cover at back.] 
 
THE NATURAL RIGHT TO FREEDOM. 
 
 THAT which them would'st not suffer thyself seek not to lay upon 
 others. Thou would'st not be a slave look to it that others be 
 not slaves to thee. For if thou endure to have slaves, it seems that 
 thou thyself art first of all a slave, for virtue hath no communion 
 with vice, nor freedom with slavery. 
 
 As one who is in health would not choose to be served by the sick, 
 nor that those dwelling with him should be sick, so neither would 
 one that is free bear to be served by slaves, or that those living with 
 him should be slaves. EPICTETUS. 
 
 Schopenhauer, in correction of a far greater thinker, observes that 
 when Spinoza denies the existence of right apart from ,the State, he 
 confounds the means for asserting right with right itself. This is 
 unquestionably true. But the belief thit human law can be the 
 ultimate ground and the only measure of right appears upon the face 
 of it so untenable that one is lost in wonder how it could possibly 
 have obtained such credit. All right the creation of positive law ! 
 The right to existence, for example? or the right of self-defence ? or 
 the right to use to the best advantage one's moral and spiritual 
 faculties? Imagine a number of settlers in a new country before they 
 have had time to frame a polity. Are they then devoid of these 
 rights? Surely it is sufficient to ask such a question. But we are 
 told that these rights arise from a contract, express or implied. As 
 a matter of fact society is not founded upon convention, although I 
 allow a virtual compact whence is derived the binding obligation of 
 laws regarding things in themselves indifferent. But if the rights 
 which I hive instanced exist at all and in practice everyone admits 
 their existence they possess universal validity. A contract may or 
 may not be. It is contingent. But these rights must be. They are 
 absolute. Right is founded on necessity. What is necessary and 
 immutable cannot proceed from the accidental and changeable. To 
 me it is evident, upon the testimony of reason itself, that there are 
 certain fights of man which exist anterior to and independently of 
 positive law, which do not arise ex contracts or quasi ex contracts , 
 and which may properly be called natural, because they originate in 
 the nature of things. \V. S. LILLY. 
 
 A. 
 
 < 
 
 11 3185 
 
The adjective right has a much wider signification than the substantive 
 right. Everything is right which is conformable to the supreme rule 
 of human action : but that only is a right which, being conformable 
 to the supreme rule, is realized in society and vested in a particular 
 person. Hence the two words may often be properly opposed. We 
 may say that a poor man has no right to relief, but it is right he should 
 have it. A rich man has a right to destroy the harvest of his fields, 
 but to do so would not be right. 
 
 To a right on one side, corresponds an obligation on the other. 
 If a man has a right to my horse, I have an obligation to let him 
 have it. If a man has a right to the fruit of a certain tree, all other 
 persons are under an obligation to abstain from appropriating it. 
 Men are obliged to respect each other's rights. 
 
 My obligation is to give another man his riglit ; my duty is to 
 do what is right. Hence duty is a wider term than obligation ; just as 
 right, the adjeciive, is wider than right, the substantive. 
 
 Duty has no correlative, as obligation has the correlative right. 
 "What it is our duty to do, we must do, because it is right, not 
 because any one can demand it of us. We may, however, speak of 
 those who are particularly benefit! ed by the discharge of our duties, 
 as having a moral claim upon us. A distressed man has a moral 
 chiim to be relieved, in cases in which it is our duty to relieve him. 
 
 The distinctions just explained are sometimes expressed by using 
 the terms peifect .obligation and imperfect obligation for obligation 
 and duly respectively; and the terms perfect tight and imperfect 
 rigt for -right and moral claim respectively. But these phrases 
 have the inconvenience of making it seem as if our duties arose from 
 the rights ofothers ; and as if duties were only legal obligations, 
 with an inferior degree of binding force. WHEWELL, Elements of 
 Morality, book i., 84-89. V. Jurisprudence, Rectitude. 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
 CHAPTER /. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 AS Emerson points out in his essay on politics, there is 
 a striking contrast between our behaviour towards 
 each other as man dealing personally with man, and our 
 treatment of each other as units of a social aggregate./ When 
 a party of tourists agree to travel together for a few months, 
 in some new and interesting country, each one is allowed by 
 the rest or such is the tacit understanding to do exactly 
 as he likes so long as he permits others to do the same. All 
 meet on equal terms, make free agreements, and invariably 
 respect what each one would call his rights and liberties. 
 Not that cases never arise when it would be to the temporary 
 advantage of some to coerce others as for example when 
 cold weather might suggest an equal distribution of coats, 
 rugs, &c. Yet nothing of the kind ever occurs, and if the 
 idea were suggested, it would be treated as a joke, with 
 perhaps a hearty laugh all round at the tactics of modern 
 legislators. Why is this ? Why should we be ashamed to 
 treat those we know as we are always trying to treat those 
 we do not know ? I should not think of attempting 
 personally to force my neighbour to send his child to school, 
 or to work only a certain number of hours a day, or to 
 abstain from drinking alcohol, or smoking tobacco. I mean 
 I should not do these things in person. I am too big a 
 coward for that. In fact, I should use honeyed words to him, 
 and say : " My dear Sir, I respect your opinions ; I think 
 
2 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 we are all entitled to hold and act upon our convictions." 
 And then I should go, like a shuffling cur, behind that 
 ingenious contrivance for hiding sneaks the ballot box 
 and vote away his liberty. I should not do this openly. I 
 should not do it to those I know, even were I stronger than 
 they. Why should I do it in a roundabout way to those I 
 do not know. 
 
 / To ask this question is to ask why Individualism exists 
 at all. It is the expression of a conviction whir-fa jjes ua 
 deep down in human nature -the- conviction of equality./ 
 Xoi the Socialist's equality of share and share alike all 
 round ; good, bad, and indifferent. It is the expression of 
 the conviction that we are all logically entitled to the same 
 freedom for expressing our motives in action, that is, for 
 doing as we like. Take an illustration of what is meant by 
 this. Suppose that a member of the before-mentioned 
 tourist party, seeing that one of h ; s fellow-tourists possessed 
 a goodly number of warm coats, suggested that they should 
 forcibly be taken away from their owner and given to those 
 who had none. What would be the feeling of all the rest ? 
 Probably they would be some time before they could take 
 him seriously, and when they did, their disgust would close 
 their mouths. But why should this be ? We should all be 
 actuated by similar feelings if some one attempted to coerce 
 any of our friends in such a manner. It is quite a common 
 thing to find people refusing to vote for a particular 
 Socialistic measure, solely on the ground that it would bear 
 unjustly on a friend's business or profession ; 'although, w r ere 
 this not the case, they would vote for it willingly ; that is to 
 say, they would do exactly the same injustice to other people, 
 simply because they did not happen to know them. 
 
 Is not the answer to our question extremely simple ? As 
 long as I know my Itrother, I am logical. I say : " Here 
 am I living, and showing in my life that I consider myself 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 3 
 
 fully entitled to act upon my own motives : here is my 
 brother, who is a human being like myself, and is therefore 
 logically entitled to act as I do, since things which are 
 equal to the same thing are equal to one another.'' In short 
 his nature and mine are so much alike that I cannot logically 
 claim a liberty for myself, without at the same time implicitly 
 claiming the same liberty for him. But I do claim such 
 liberty for myself. Every man does so. No bigot or tyrant 
 who tries to coerce his fellow-man, can so coerce without 
 acting on his own motives ; or, in other words, .proclaiming 
 to the world his intense belief in the personal liberty of some 
 men at least the violators of their fellow citizen's liberty 
 and, therefore, logically of all men. 
 
 And this is all that is meant by natural right. It is what / 
 people always claim for themselves,. and what therefore they 
 cannot help tacitly claiming for all who are like themselves. 
 TJlfl fa^ \A f -fl- rp n11 Tnrlividnalisfoqfl J9 a certain point,* 
 We are logical enough, and could argue out our own case 
 well enough ; but we cannot bring ourselves to apply our 
 own arguments all round. " I am stronger than you, and 
 therefore, I will force you into what I hope to be the good 
 of the community. I will force you to do, not what you 
 want, but what I or other people want." That is the paltry 
 plea we are continually bringing up : as if violating each 
 other's liberties, whenever we get the chance, could be for 
 the good of any community. "Who are the community? 
 You and I, and everybody else I Will it, then, do us or the 
 community any real good, to be continally at war with each 
 other ? each of us continually claiming more liberty for our- t 
 selves than we are willing to grant to others ? The whole 
 business is a piece of illogicality and unfairness from 
 beginning to end. 
 
 But, so it is said, there is no natural right. " Right is 
 transfigured might." As well argue that the book of Euclid 
 
4 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 is transfigured might. What we individualists say is, that 
 natural right is a logical extension of a certain postulate 
 which every person makes, and cannot help making, so long 
 as he continues to act upon his own opinions, and even 
 in voluntarily giving up a certain amount of our liberty, we 
 do give it up, and are thus acting upon our own motives, 
 and therefore tacitly assuming a right so to do. No talk 
 about animals continually warring upon each other ; no argu- 
 ment about what majorities can actually do when so disposed, 
 affect the question at all. If I am stronger than you I can 
 knock you off the pavement ; but if I do so, I am claiming 
 more liberty for myself than I am allowing to you : or, in 
 other words, I am claiming for myself, and by " the substitu- 
 tion of similars " for every other man, the fullest possible 
 liberty of action, and am thus laying down a principle which 
 reaches to all mankind, and ultimately condemns myself. 
 Natural right is the inevitable logic of men as rational beings ; 
 and they can no more avoid affirming it by implication than 
 they can help acting and thinking. 
 
 But, it is objected, all this is mere abstract reasoning. So 
 is all reasoning. An abstract proposition is only a geneial 
 proposition a predication of similarity or disimilarity 
 between two or more facts. No reasoning is possible with- 
 out a certain degree of abstraction. I never saw an argu- 
 ment yet that did not involve a general or abstract statement 
 of some kind. The only difference between abstract pro- 
 positions and ordinary propositions is, that the former cover 
 a greater number of facts than the latter. They are of wider 
 generality. But this is only a difference of degree : not of 
 kind. The rejectors of natural right always set up some 
 other abstraction in its place, such as happiness, welfare, 
 progress, efficiency ; or some other object, not less abstract, 
 although much more vague, narrow, and unsatisfactory than 
 natural right. 
 
The Natural Right f Freedom 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE controversy between the believers in natural right, 
 and their opponents, is largely due to a mutual mis- 
 understanding. " Men have a natural and equal right to 
 liberty," say the first. " When and where has such a right 
 ever been recognized ? " .ask the second. Now-RightJs^ no 
 more an historical than it is a biological fact. In the actual 
 _world there is often as little recognition of it as among lions 
 and tigers. And, as might be expected, those who claim to 
 rest politics on some other basis than that of Right, fancy 
 they effectually dispose of the Intter by pointing to the 
 actual facts of life and history. They might as well deny 
 the existence of truth speaking and the duty of truth speak- 
 ing, on the ground that the world is full of liars. Right, we 
 contend, is an unavoidable postulate of the reason, like the 
 existence of our neighbours' thoughts and feelings, for 
 instance. We cannot demonstrate it from more ultimate 
 data, but all reasoning about human relations necessarily 
 take it for granted \ and the fact that people frequently 
 follow passion before reason, no more gets rid of reason, its 
 postulates, and its obligations, than the ravings of a maniac 
 disprove the postulates and deductions of mathematics. 
 Force, and the passion of which it is the fitting expression, 
 lie outside the sphere of argument. You don't reason with 
 a confirmed bully ; you knock him down, and then employ 
 your reasoning faculties to devise the best means for keeping 
 him down. This protection of personal right and liberty is 
 the only art of governing that is based upon any science of 
 
6 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 human life ; it is the only application of rules that are of 
 universal validity for rational beings. 
 
 Right is a deduction of the understanding, drawn from 
 the implicit claim for free action made by force-worshipper 
 and liberty-advocate alike ; a deduction which becomes only 
 more and more unavoidable as men rise in the scale of 
 reason. An idiot cannot understand the axioms and 
 deductions of EUCLID, but none the less are they binding 
 upon human reason. The fact is, the laws of the under- 
 standing are as real and unavoidable, as those of the material 
 world to which they correspond. The rational faculty is as 
 rigidly bound by the limitations and conditions of its own 
 nature, as the running stream or the falling rain ; and the 
 more rational a man is, the more difficult it is for him to 
 avoid the conclusion that his fellow-being is logically entitled 
 to the same freedom for expressing internal motives in 
 external acts, as he himself is ; and, indeed, no one makes a 
 greater claim for this liberty than those who abuse it. As 
 we have seen, when only two or three are gathered together, 
 this law of rational and logical consistency is recognised as 
 the most sacred and important thing for men to consider in 
 determining their respective activities. We say to the 
 individual bully who attempts to squeeze his fellow-man into 
 some arbitrary pattern, " Let him alone, though a fool, he is 
 a man like yourself and entitled to the same freedom for 
 enacting his folly, and of profiting by the experience it 
 brings, that you are for showing your wisdom (?). If he is 
 wrong he must be left to find out -the fact for himself; you 
 have no warrant from Heaven for being your fellow-citizen's 
 moral guardian, for forcibly imposing your wisdom ^upon his 
 acceptance ; therefore, mind your own business, and let 
 other people's lives and actions alone." This is how 
 practical common sense deals with the ordinary government 
 of life; but, unfortunately, when that enlarged pattern of 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 7 
 
 ordinary government, which we call the State, is concerned, 
 common sense takes to itself wings, and leaves the mind a 
 prey to the grossest political superstitions. The consequence 
 is that we allow the crowd of bullies to do things that every 
 individual amongst them would be ashamed to do alone. 
 Thus the State comes at last to be looked upon as infallible : 
 a law unto itself; above all respect for Right, and bound by 
 no obligations to respect moral considerations; divinely 
 anointed with the oil of authority, and accurately described 
 by the maxim once applied to kings " The State can do no 
 wrong." 
 
 H In this way it comes about that government is excused 
 for doing a thousand things which are morally abominable. 
 Equality of rights is destroyed in order to build up arbitrary 
 power. We should all question the right of A to regulate 
 the diet of B ; we should s^e that in such a case might and 
 right are totally distinct. But when a majority of A's, 
 calling themselves a State, decide that a minority of B's shall 
 drink no more claret to dinner, the might of the former is 
 supposed to endow them with a moral right to coerce the 
 latter. Nothing -is more demoralizing than government; 
 nothing tends more to destroy character than the regulation 
 of minorities by majorities ; hence nothing needs more 
 keeping within the narrowest possible limits than that 
 corporate action of individual despots called the State. In 
 our collective treatment of each other the temptations of 
 power usurp the place of conscience, and men who would 
 scorn to disregard the opinions and tastes of their nearest 
 neighbours, come, when acting in the capacity of voters, to 
 treat large masses of their fellow-citizens whose freedom 
 they are in a moral sense under an equal obligation to 
 respect not as men and women with thoughts, passions, 
 and feelings, but as things, or rather as animals, to be " like 
 dumb cattle driven," 
 
8 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 No\v-a-days even the fanatic has grown too cowardly to 
 act by himself; he only bullies when backed up by a crowd 
 of others. The living presence of his opponent makes the 
 civilized savage hide his scalping knife. When he stands 
 face to face with his fellow, be that fellow the meanest villain 
 that crawls ; the presence of the latter fills him with the 
 sense of the true equality, to which, as isolated rational pro- 
 ducts of the same eternal fact, we are all logically entitled ; 
 viz., equal scope for playing out the deep eternal drama that 
 is always going on in the greatest and the least of the souls 
 of men. When brought face to face with the fellow being 
 he is longing to coerce, even the fanatic has a dim sense 
 that the stage of life, and the settings of the pieces that are 
 to be enacted thereon, belong neither to him nor to his 
 political clique or majority ; but that even the humblest 
 player has an equal right to choose his own part ; and that 
 all should be free to act a self-chosen, and not a prescribed 
 role ; until the last scene is reached, and the Power which 
 built the stage and formed the players, shall ring down the 
 curtain. The most crafty politicians pay involuntary homage 
 to this feeling. How many, for example, of the pharisaical 
 maniacs who suffer from chronic water on the brain, have 
 the courage to go in person and dash the wine cup from the 
 lips of their non-teetotal friends ? The natural greatness of 
 human individuality awes the modern tyrant into a certain 
 measure of mock homage to liberty ; so that he generally 
 seeks to do his dirty work by means of the ballot box, the 
 magistrate, and the policeman. Like most cowardly animals 
 the modern tyrants hunt in packs ; and when brought face to 
 face with their victims, take refuge behind a barrier of sham 
 politeness and sickening cant. Needless to add that the one 
 thing these very righteous hypocrites abhor, is plain 
 speaking. 
 
 The despotism of the single individual is pretty well played 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 9 
 
 out, but that of the clique, of the party for the moment, or 
 of the numerical majority at the ballot, is only in its infancy 
 as yet. After centuries of painful experience, we have come 
 to see that one individual's opinions, even if they be those 
 of the infallible Pope himself, can only rightly form the 
 guides for that individual ; and that, however wise and great 
 a man may be, he has no right to force his opinions upon 
 other men. The tyranny of the individual is no longer 
 admitted. It is the tyranny of the individuals that we have 
 yet got to learn to regard as equally illogical, equally 
 inconsistent with the rational part of our nature. No man, 
 we say, should force another man's thoughts, or rather force 
 him to profess opinions he does not hold. No single man 
 should force another man's actions. But when a number of 
 these same men are gathered together in the form of what is 
 termed a State, it is perfectly legitimate for them to force 
 anything and everything they like down the throats of the 
 numerically weaker party! Numbers carry the reason 
 captive. You can see the absurdity of me regulating >our 
 life and your affairs ; you can understand that it is much 
 better for each of us to look after our own concerns, than to 
 be perpetually prying into and busybodying over each other's 
 actions ; you can see that we have each as much as we can 
 really and effectually do to rightly regulate ourselves ; and 
 that whenever we attempt to regulate others, none of our 
 duties will be adequately performed. But when one of us is 
 multiplied a few thousand times, your intellect gets befogged ; 
 you become the plaything of phrase-mongers and politicians, 
 who talk in pompous language about the big State, spelt 
 always with a capital S, and about your very important 
 duties towards it. As if your duties to a crowd of your 
 fellows could be any more or less than your duties to your 
 fellow. We owe no more service to the organised crowd 
 than we do to the first stranger we meet. He who helps his 
 
TO The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 I 
 neighbour as he would help himself, has fulfilled all the 
 
 duties of citizenship ; and the poorest beggar that crawls is 
 entitled to exactly the same service as the biggest crowd that 
 ever abused its power. Numbers make no difference to duty ; 
 for the fulfilment of duty is obedience to the supreme voice 
 of individual reason, and not a servile following of the slavish 
 prescriptions of ' : society." The individual to himself is 
 greater than the crowd. The law of conscience, to which he 
 is alone answerable, is higher than legislation, and it knows 
 no difference between few and many, between States and 
 subjects, and between the highest and the lowest of rational 
 creatures. 
 
 WHAT is the State ? As used by Politicians and Socialists, 
 a mere abstraction : a bogie set up to frighten fjols. 
 Strictly speaking there is no such thing as a State. The 
 term expresses a pure mental fiction, like aquosity, 
 luminosity, and similar abstract figments. All that really 
 exists is the individual surrounded by a number of beings 
 similar to himself. And the separate groups of these 
 individuals are classified as States, municipalities, counties, 
 &c. The individual is the basis of society ; for the social 
 aggregate is simply the unit multiplied. There is no 
 commune existing as a sort of divine providence over the 
 heads of the individuals that make up the commune, and 
 capable, as some seem to fancy, of showering down unlimited 
 happiness upon its subjects. The English State, using the 
 term in its widest sense, is simply the sum total of the 
 activities of individual Englishmen. If we once firmly grasp 
 this fact, we ~are able to see that the greatness of a State 
 depends upon the greatness of its individual components ; 
 just as the strength of a chain depends upon the character 
 of the individual -links of which it is composed : so that all 
 Socialistic measures which sap the individual character and 
 personal responsibility of citizens, destroy the integrity of the 
 
'Ihc Natural Right to Freedom. 1 1 
 
 whole State. The strength of England, for example, like that 
 of Greece and Rome in their best days, has hitherto consisted 
 in the strength of each individual unit of the nation : and it 
 is only the sturdy individuality of the units of the past that 
 has made this country what it is. When the individual 
 strength, private originality, and personal reponsibility, go 
 with the old freedom we have hitherto held so dear, the 
 greatness of England will disappear like that of all the nations 
 dead. Fortunately for the future of the human race, nature, 
 as exemplified in the rise and fall of empires, has decreed 
 that strength shall only be with the free, and in this fact has 
 sealed the doom of social democracy for ever. Socialism 
 may be the death of States and Nations, but the human race 
 outlives its failures, and it will never rest until it realizes its 
 highest ideal of perfect liberty, enjoyed through that harmony 
 of reason, that rational obedience of natural law, which, 
 properly understood, is perfect love. For in the last resort 
 reason and love are one. Reason is the light of la\y, and by 
 this light the soul recognizes its kinship with all things ; the 
 recognition of this kinship is love, is oneness with the infinite, 
 is the perfect peace which not even death can destroy. 
 Towards this " the whole creation moves." 
 
 In opposition to the foregoing argument, it is often urged, 
 both by the Socialist and others, that the State is an organism, 
 an organised aggregate of human beings forming an indepen- 
 dent community. But this, I venture to think, hardly meets 
 my contention. Independent of what ? Of the individuals 
 that make up the " State " ? Surely the organicist hardly 
 means this. Yet, unless he does mean this, I fail to see how 
 his definition disposes of my argument that the State is the 
 sum total of the activities of the individuals included in it. 
 Where and what is the State apart from its component units? 
 We can easily conceive of individuals existing independently 
 of the State, but we cannot imagine the State existing 
 
12 77/6' Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 independently of individuals. If the individual is not the 
 basis of society, what is ? The onus probandi lies, not upon 
 those who deny, but upon those who assert the existence of 
 these metaphysical entities. 
 
 So long, however, as these general terms "State,'' 
 "Society," " Social organism," are acknowledged to be what 
 they really are ; viz., convenient metaphorical expressions for 
 classifying groups of similar objects under single and 
 commanding statements, there is not much to say against 
 them ; but when they are used to prop up theories which 
 assign greater rights mights we cannot dispute to groups 
 and majorities, than to single individuals, it is high time they 
 were stript of their imaginary meaning, and shown to be the 
 empty abstractions they are. Nothing is easier than to 
 conjure with abstractions. We speak of " man " as if the 
 term denoted something more than the individual human 
 beings who dwell upon this earth as if there would still be 
 a something answering to the term if all individual human 
 beings disappeared. We speak of the " crush " at the doors 
 of a theatre as if it described something more than the 
 summation of individual pushes. And in the same way we 
 speak of " society " as if it were something more than " you 
 and I and everybody else." In this manner we make our 
 minds the slaves of their own bogies, and fall down in abject 
 fear before creatures of our own comparing and classifying 
 faculties. 
 
 The organicist is fond of comparing the various voluntary 
 and compulsory associations included in the " State," to the 
 different parts of a highly complex army. But he may make 
 his sections and sub-sections, his companies, battalions, and 
 divisions, as complex as he likes. He may segregate and 
 re-segregate them as much as he wants ; and he will be no 
 nearer than ever to showing that they are anything more than 
 the various summations of the individuals that go to make 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 13 
 
 them up ; or that their respective activities are anything more 
 
 than the sum of the activities of those same individuals. The 
 
 organicist lays stress on the well known action and reaction 
 
 of human beings, and groups of human beings, upon each 
 
 other. But instead of simply showing that individuals act 
 
 and re-act upon each other, that they form into small 
 
 aggregates, and these last again into larger aggregates, and 
 
 that the separate aggregates also act and re-act on one 
 
 another, he should show t-nat these groups are something 
 
 more than the units that make them up ; and the best way to 
 
 do so, is to show us such groups existing apart from their 
 
 component units. As one proof of the truth of his theorVj 
 
 the organicist urges that the stability and well-being of the 
 
 aggregate depends on the degree of efficiency with which the 
 
 various sections fit in and work with one another towards 
 
 "the common good." Does it not rather depend upon 
 
 something antecedent to this, viz., upon the degree of 
 
 efficiency with which the various individual components of 
 
 the sections fit in and work with one another towards the 
 
 common good ; that is to say, towards the freest possible 
 
 individual development ; which is the only good common 
 
 to all ? Even if society were an organism, individual liberty 
 
 would still be the first requisite to social health. You may fit 
 
 your sections as you like ; but if they are composed of 
 
 individual conscripts, neither sections, nor companies, nor 
 
 battalions will work together as harmoniously as they must 
 
 do when each individual, not having his consent over-ridden 
 
 by others, is freely combining with his fellows in an association 
 
 that does not sacrifice liberty to combination. Your society \ 
 
 must be a free aggregation of free units, or it is merely a 
 
 name for a degrading form of social slavery. The organicist 
 
 often argues as if Individualism were opposed to co-operation. 
 
 All it opposes is compulsory co-operation. Of voluntary 
 
 co-operation every individualist club is an instance. Even 
 
14 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 compulsory co-operation the individualist would not do away 
 with suddenly, but slowly and surely, beginning, say, with the 
 board schools, the Post Office, the State dependence of the 
 Church, and such tyrannies as compulsory vaccination, 
 registration, &c. 
 
 Let us now ask a few questions about this mysterious 
 thing called a " social organism." Where is it ? Does it 
 include all the human inhabitants of the earth ? If not, are 
 there more than one of these creatures ? Would you call 
 the British Empire a social organism ? Or would you perfer 
 to limit the application of the terms to the British Isles ? 
 Would you call a voluntary association like the Salvation 
 Army an " organism ? " Do not such obvious questions at 
 once expose the fanciful character of the theory ? Would it 
 not be better to admit that it is much less misleading to say 
 that we each of us exist in a world full of thousands of 
 similar units, that these units are able to combine and 
 're-combine, to act and re-act on each other in diverse ways, 
 but that none of their conceivable combinations are such as 
 to justify the application of the term " organism " in any- 
 thing more than a purely metaphorical sense ? Social 
 organism ! As well talk of an ant-organism, of a beaver- 
 organism, or of a wolf-organism. As well argue about a 
 bird-organism held together by the common medium of the 
 air. If we were all stuck together like the Siamese Twins, 
 then the term " organism " might do ; but until this event 
 happens, such a word, taken in anything like a literal sense, 
 is a gross and. unmeaning exaggeration. 
 
 Everybody who knows anything of biology is aware that 
 the word " organism " is only used to describe something 
 whose parts are physically continuous. Yet this is precisely 
 what the individual parts of society are not. You might as 
 well call a forest an organism, simply because the trees afford 
 each other mutual warmth and protection, and are joined 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 15 
 
 together by substantial air. One could understand that if a 
 militant regime \\ere established with its battalions, com- 
 panies, &c., commanded from one centre, as described by 
 the organicist, society might then bear some remote resem- 
 blance to an organism. Under a system of absolute com- 
 mand and slavish obedience, the units move together more 
 like one body; as witness the German Army under Von 
 Molke. But this is precisely what we outgrow as we become 
 civilized. Under the industrial regime, where conscription 
 and compulsory service have given place to free contract and 
 free exchange, the units are much less closely held together ; 
 individual independence; is at its maximum and central 
 control at its minimum. As true civilization progresses, 
 society gets less like one militarily organised whole; and 
 more like a collection of freely moving, freely co-operating 
 units : the chains of compulsion which bind the parts together 
 are broken ; the individuil tends to become everything, the 
 State nothing ; liberty takes the place of slavery, exchange of 
 service the place of Government regulation, and, at last, the 
 social machine having done its work, the individual stands 
 out clear and free of all external trammels. It is only after 
 experiencing all forms of tyranny that the mind comes to 
 really value liberty above all other things. The outer 
 compulsion is the sign of inner weakness, and dies in 
 proportion as the knowledge of law grows. When his know- 
 ledge of the laws of human character and of external things 
 is complete, man will become a law unto himself; conscience, 
 the embedded knowledge of all time, will become the only 
 recognised authority ; and all minds, having been brought 
 into more complete harmony through the clearer and fuller 
 knowledge of the natural results of conduct, will dwell, as it 
 were, in the common enjoyment of one great light the only 
 thing that all varieties of taste and temperament can peaceably 
 possess in common the light of physical and moral laws. 
 
1 6 The Natural Right to Freedom 
 
 This is the true communism ; the seeing together of the same 
 facts and uniformities of facts : the joint service of law and 
 truth. The other communism that of property is but a 
 common grovelling in dirt. It is the worship of the material 
 for its own sake, and the consequent blindness to the great 
 light of law, which shines through all things. 
 
 Society will outgrow the State, will leave it behind. For 
 the State is political law, is force, is the negation of reason 
 and of love ; is the clumsy scaffolding within which the spirit 
 of man is slowly and painfully building up a nobler temple. 
 At best, political law is only passion's check upon the 
 external expression of passion ; the outward form of man's 
 inward slavery, the measure of his backwardness in the 
 direction of self reform. For the inner life ever determines 
 the character of the outer life, and as the former improves 
 the latter will change. Complete Liberty is only for the pure 
 in heart. When men are free from their own personal 
 infirmities, they will be free from the tyranny of one another. 
 Then shall there be for them a new heaven and a new earth. 
 Then shall they enter upon another life, which shall be glad 
 and complete and free ; in that its spring and principle will 
 be a common love of that which is more than life : the 
 eternal law, ever exemplified by the universe, and by all that 
 it contains : this will be mirrored in each soul ; each soul 
 will find its true freedom in the loving service of it. To 
 understand, and to love that which is understood ; the 
 marriage of the heart with the intellect ; the love of the fire 
 for the light, and the oneness of all souls in this common 
 love : this is freedom, this life, this the goal that shall be. 
 Not the love of men ; men by themselves are nothing : but 
 the joint love of the universal harmony, in which men will be 
 but as notes ; this shall bring the world together : not on the 
 footing of dust, not as mere eaters and drinkers, not as 
 political sharers out and mutual thieves of each other's fodder, 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom* 17 
 
 not as greedy Socialists and sticky material communists ; 
 but as rational portions of a perfect order, as beings whose 
 only happiness consists in intelligent performance of human 
 functions, and consequent harmonious co-operation with an 
 orderly working whole. For man does not live for himself, 
 or for his fellows ; but for that which, call it by what name 
 you will, is greater and stronger than man. To walk by the 
 sight of law, and find peace in its light : to live according to 
 nature : to eat, drink, and clothe only for the sake of health, 
 and use the sex relations solely for that parental continuance 
 of the race which is their only intelligible and unharmful 
 function ; to meet all rational wants while avoiding every 
 form of excess ; to keep the mind pure and free from 
 unhealthy fancies and degrading superstitions, ever fixed 
 upon the hard and naked truth ; to enjoy life without pining 
 over death ; to love and welcome whatever forms a necessary 
 part of nature's order ; to reverence nothing but truth, and 
 obey nothing but the plain dictates of individual reason : to 
 be one with all intelligent beings in this sense, and in this 
 sense alone : this is the true life, this the individualism of 
 the future. The perfectly balanced nature, rich and complete 
 in mental insight, tolerant with width and depth of thought, 
 strong with the strength of transfigured passion, and calm 
 through the peace that reason gives : with the advent 
 of this will come the final release of man from the tyranny of 
 men. At present man is so far below the height of his true, 
 his rational nature, that he cannot trust himself. He is not 
 free because he is not worthy to be free. He is steeped to 
 the eyes in a coarse materialism. But when the rational use 
 of necessaries has replaced the irrational lust after unneces- 
 saries, when truth and reality are preferred before glitter and 
 display, then will he become fit for the freedom that shall 
 yet be his. 
 
1 8 77/6- Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 IN its narrower acceptation the State is simply a group of 
 persons, whether elected or not is no matter, who, by 
 means of tax collectors, police, &c., exercise control over the 
 rest of the nation. Taken in either sense, the State is 
 nothing more than a collection of units, and although the 
 fact of being backed up by superior numbers, may give it 
 greater flowers, it cannot in the very nature of the case confer 
 greater rights than what are already possessed by the poorest 
 individual that the State contains. All that numbers can confer 
 on a Government is might : right is a deduction of reason ; 
 not a present made to C/KSAR by the legions either of 
 soldiers or of voters. A cynic may reply, that if might is not 
 right, it is invariably the winning side. So said the selfish 
 monster who died at St. Helena, but events turned out other- 
 wise. So, no doubt, thought CHARGES IX. and his friends 
 on the % eve of St. Bartholomew. So thought the Holy 
 Catholic Church in the days of JOHN Huss and JEROME of 
 Prague. And so thought the howling Jewish Democracy, 
 who. mad with passion, cried out " Crucify Him." But, 
 curiously enough, the moral teaching of the solitary 
 Individual who sought neither power nor fame, and whose 
 staunchest disciples forsook Him in the hour of danger, 
 triumphed over persecution and torture, outlived the wreck 
 of empires, survived the craft of priest, and cardinal, and 
 Pope, and finally established itself in the hearts and minds 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom: 19 
 
 of men for ever. Never was the lie more clearly given to 
 that cry of a baffled ambition "the big battalions win." 
 
 If, then, Government, being but a group of individuals, 
 can have no more right than the units of which it is composed, 
 it follows that a Government is under exactly the same 
 obligations to respect human liberty as any single member 
 of the State is. And by obligation is here meant a law of 
 understanding of rational consistency which is binding on 
 man only in so far as he is a rational being. Either it is right 
 or it is wrong for me to dictate to you what you shall eat or 
 drink, what you shall wear, where you shall live, how you 
 shall work, and for how long either this kind of regulation 
 is legitimate or illegitimate. If right, then it is as legitimate 
 for one man to so regulate the life of another, as for ten 
 thousand men to regulate the lives of nine thousand. 
 If wrong, then it is as unwarrantable for ten thousand to 
 regulate nine thousand as for one to regulate another. A bad 
 action does not become good because many people conspire 
 together to perform it, and a good action does not become 
 bad because few, or possibly only one, can be got to enact it. 
 If one man is under an obligation to respect the liberty of 
 of his fellows, all men are ; all Governments are ; all major- 
 ities are. Numbers cannot add one fraction to the justice 
 of a just action, neither can they take away one fraction from 
 the injustice of an unjust action. 
 
 We argue, therefore, that men are under a mornl nh u gntinn 
 torespect each other's liberty : that as Governments cannot 
 make morality, so, neither, can they by any amount of Acts 
 of Parliament, unmake it. Laws do not create morality : 
 on the contrary it is morality that justifies or condemns laws. 
 judge of right and wmng i'g nnt tfa^ ^rfl| flf -K^ 
 
 Government, or of its supporter^ h^ th*> 
 
 conscience, enlightened by the reason./ This is the only light 
 men have, and when they give it up to follow a mere crowd 
 
20 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 of beings equally as imperfect and devoid of the inner light 
 as^Jhey are themselves, they commit an act of self-abasement 
 that cuts them off from the line of human progress, and 
 reduces them to the level of mere puppets, pulled by strings 
 from without/ 
 
 But what do we mean by moral obligation ? I " ought " 
 to respect your liberty ; " ought " to leave you to develope 
 along the lines your conscience and reason seem to dictate. 
 Why ? Because as long as I remain a rational being, 
 judging and choosing for myself, I implicitly lay it down as a 
 postulate that liberty is desirable, is right, for myself. There 
 is a logic of action and of conduct, as well as a logic of 
 woids. Man, in every action he freely performs, in every 
 thought he freely utters, posits himself and his claim for free 
 scope of thought and action. Thus, in my very argument 
 with you, and in my printing and circulation of that argument, 
 I am claiming a freedom of thought and action which I 
 cannot, without committing logical suicide, limit to myself. 
 My actions assume that liberty is right for myself. But you 
 and all others are only so many other selves ; consequently 
 I am bound to admit that liberty is right for all men. So 
 that, having made this admission, I am acting inconsistently 
 and irrationally, if I singly, or jointly with others, proceed to 
 place restrictions upon your freedom, or upon that of others. 
 This is the only intelligible meaning of moral obligation. 
 " Ought " is the expression of a law of the understanding. 
 It is a short way of saying that when we have laid down such 
 and such an assumption, we are bound, in logical consistency, 
 to follow out the consequences that reason shows to flow 
 therefrom. Thus, for example, A makes up his mind that 
 such and such shop hours are desirable. He opens and 
 closes his shop accordingly. Having, therefore, by his own 
 action, laid down the postulate that he should be free to form 
 his opinion on this question and to act upon it, he has tacitly 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom 21 
 
 claimed the same freedom for his neighbour ; so that when, 
 by a process of nose counting, he manages to force his 
 neighbour to swallow and act upon his (A's) personal 
 * theories, he is behaving inconsistently claiming freedom for 
 himself but denying it to others. All forms of tyranny have 
 this illogical and inconsistent character about them. They 
 at once both assert and deny the obligation of obedience to 
 individual conscience : assert it for the tyrant and deny it to 
 the slave. They are so many attempts to realise that worst 
 of all kinds of inequality : the inequality that must exist 
 where some are attempting to set their consciences as 
 custodians over others. /The only equality that is worth 
 having, is equal freedom for all men to obey the promptings 
 of individual reason and conscience. This equality of 
 freedom is the one indispensable condition without which 
 men are neither rational nor moral beings, j The other kind 
 of equality, which consists in equal amounts of creature / 
 comforts for eveiybody, is simply the equality of well fed pigs./ 
 Fortunately man does not live by bread alone. He has a 
 moral nature, which requires a sphere of individual liberty 
 for its development, and which can only exist along with 
 personal responsibility, personal risks, and personal posses- 
 sions. These individual requisites enable each one to make 
 what the Stoics called a " right use of appearances," and it is 
 only in the right use of appearances that the most perfect 
 human life consists. 
 
 The obligation we are under to respect one another's 
 freedom may be illustrated by the similar obligation which 
 morally binds us to respect the truth. Each man, we say, 
 " ought " to tell the truth to his fellow. Why? Because he 
 is always asking and expecting it to be told to him. Now, 
 each one of us is only a unit in an aggregate of similar beings. 
 So that when we lay down the postulate that men should 
 speak the truth to us, we are bound, in logical self-consist- 
 
22 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 ency, to speak it to them. Every individual man is thus 
 bound by a law of reason, and therefore all possible groups 
 of such individuals are so bound. A lying Government, 
 unlike one that tramples on the freedom of the individual, is 
 seldom excused on the ground that public lying redounds to 
 " the welfare of society." ,The individual and the collective 
 welfare are here seen to be inseparable ; and the inconsistency 
 of applying a principle to men in general, and then 
 proceeding to deny its validity for particular units or groups, 
 is clearly perceived. And the fact that it is frequently 
 difficult to find where the truth lies, or to express it when 
 found without some mixture of error, is not allowed to weigh 
 a feather weight in excusing either the individual or the group 
 from uttering and furthering the truth to the full extent of 
 their power. Life is full of obstacles, and there are 
 difficulties in the way of expressing truth, just as there are in 
 the path of protecting liberty ; many a time the easiest, and 
 the momentarily better course,' seems to consist in the 
 circulation of a little falsehood, and not seldom the temporary 
 welfare of others appears to rest on lies. But the steadfast 
 respect for truth justifies itself in the end ; and the case is 
 exactly the same with liberty. The evils incidental to liberty 
 are temporary, and are always more than counter-balanced 
 by its advantages : but the evils of coercion are lasting and 
 deep, and they have no advantages to be set against them. 
 "V Thus the same reasoning which applies to truth applies 
 with equal force to liberty. Although, in our complex 
 relations with each other, it may be no more possible to 
 always secure equal and absolute liberty for all, than it is to 
 always utter absolute truth ; yet the same force of moral 
 obligation which binds us to respect the latter holds equally 
 good with regard to the former ; and just as there is an ideal 
 of perfect truth towards which it should be our aim always 
 to move, so there is an ideal of equal liberty which claims 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 23 
 
 our respect and ought* to be the goal of all our efforts. 
 The obligation we are always under to respect each other's 
 liberty, may be well expressed in a form similar to PORTIA'S 
 appeal to the Jew for mercy 
 
 " In our every word and action, we do ask for freedom, 
 And that same claim doth teach us all to respect 
 The liberty of others." 
 
 .^The foregoing sufficiently establishes what is known as 
 the doctrine of natural right ; the right, namely, of all 
 rational creatures to equal liberty of action, and the moral 
 obligation all men are under of respecting that right. It 
 has been shown that no possible arrangement of social units, 
 whether in the form of minorities or of majorities, of 
 Governments or of the governed, can justify men, either 
 severally or jointly, in violating in others the liberty-claims 
 they implicitly and unavoidably set up for themselves. It 
 has been shown that all forms of coercion are in their very 
 nature self-contradictory and irrational, and that although, 
 historically, tyranny precedes liberty, yet logically and 
 ethically, liberty precedes tyranny. Of course to the 
 politican this conclusion will carry little weight. Politics, 
 
 * Controversialists have kicked up a great dust over the word 
 "ought." It is said that no natural explanation c.ui be iven of it. 
 Vet when we remember that the word is only used when some previous 
 assumption has been made there should be no difficulty. Suppose I 
 assume, for example, that I am going to London by the shortest and 
 quickest route. Then if A is that route, I "ought " to go by it ; .that 
 is to say, in order to be consistent it is necessary for me to go by that 
 route: I must go by it or be illogical. This "must" is merely the 
 logic of my previous assumption. It is the same as the word " ought." 
 This is how the character of necessity arises. It is really a logical 
 necessity. Thus, suppose I say " All men ' ought ' to be 
 virtuous." The word "ought" 'here takes for granted two things. 
 First that virtue is a good ; and, second, that men have agreed to seek 
 whatever is good ; so that when I say they "ought" to be virtuous, I 
 am merely saying that they are acting inconsistently in not being so. 
 If someone comes forward and says that he desires nothing but evil, then 
 unless I am permitted to make an assumption for him, I cannot say he 
 is acting inconsistently in not seeking the good. If I still say he ought 
 to pursue the good I am assuming something for him, 
 
24 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 or the art of group-regulation, it will be said, are in no way 
 related to ethics, or the science of individual conduct ; for 
 while the primary rule of the latter is the recognition of 
 personal liberty, that of the former is " the happiness of the 
 greatest number," " the public good," or " the commonweal." 
 While the first law of the latter is " be just before you are 
 generous," that of the former is "be generous before you 
 are just." 
 
 It may be admitted that, as a fact, ethics and politics have 
 very little in common about as much as lies and truth 
 but this is all to the advantage of the former and of the 
 theories that are reared thereon. Ethics are a body of 
 statements expressing the fundamental conditions of per- 
 manent individual and social welfare. They represent the 
 relatively lasting and indestructible laws of human nature. 
 And human nature, it must be remembered, alters very 
 slowly from century to century, and from civilisation to 
 civilisation. The heart of man is pretty much the same in 
 all ages and climes : the same passions agitate it, the same 
 hopes and fears raise and depress it ; it finds the same 
 satisfaction in freedom, and pays the same respect to justice, 
 and it rebels with equal readiness against force, whether 
 that force rests upon a counting of noses or upon a military 
 organisation. The moral world is a cosmos whose more 
 important laws are as well known as those of the physical 
 world. The maxim that " the wages of sin is death " is as 
 true as the generalisation " unsupported bodies fall to the 
 ground." The connection between lies and confusion is as 
 unbreakable as that between the moon and the tides. 
 Interference with liberty and property breeds hatred, and 
 hatred rebellion, as surely as lighted gunpowder explodes. 
 The generalisations of ethics are formulations of laws, which 
 are as old as humanity, and which cannot be destroyed 
 without unmaking and rebuilding human nature afresh, 
 
7 he Natural Right to Freedom. 25 
 
 And these generalisations rest, not upon the whims and 
 fancies of a clique, a majority, a crowd, or an age, but upon 
 the experiences of all men who live and have lived since 
 long before the dawn of history. The instincts which, in 
 the course of countless generations, these experiences have 
 generated, and which respond to them as note vibrates to 
 note, afford the strongest evidence of the reality and per- 
 manence of moral laws, and are, in literal truth, the stored 
 up testimonies of all the dead generations to the transcendant 
 importance of ethical considerations. How real must be 
 those laws, to whose awful majesty the voices of the living 
 dead, bear witness in the silent speech of conscience. 
 
 The generalisations of ethics, then, rest upon permanent 
 laws of human nature, and therefore partake of the perman- 
 ance of these laws just so far as they accurately express 
 them. Ethics approximate to the nature of an exact science 
 as our knowledge of moral laws becomes more complete, 
 and, as already pointed out, the basic generalisations of such 
 a science are already laid in a foundation as real and lasting 
 as the law of gravitation. Now generalisations of observed 
 jaws when applied to practice become principles. Take an 
 example. Experience discovers that drinking cold water, 
 when heated to perspiration by violent exertion, invariably 
 leads to disastrous results. The fact is generalised and 
 applied as a principle for the guidance of conduct. 
 Similarly with regard to ethical generalisations, only with 
 greater certainty. The generalisation of the moral sequence 
 or law that lies always produce confusion, either directly or 
 through the formation of habits that ultimately end in con- 
 fusion this generalization when applied to conduct 
 becomes a principle, and those who so apply to tell truth, 
 as the phrase goes, " on principle." This principle, or 
 rather the generalisation of which it is the application, like 
 the theory of gravitation, has been verified so often that it 
 
26 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 has at last become recognized as a law of life, and those 
 whose minds are properly balanced, as soon think of ignor- 
 ing it as of disregarding the fact that fire burns, or that 
 heavy falling bodies crush. It is, indeed, well to be open to 
 re-verify everything, even the most sacred and widely-estab- 
 lished conceptions, when good reason is shewn for doing so ; 
 but a man who went on the principle of trying every case of 
 truth-speaking " upon his merits " would be as wise as one 
 who always made a rule of sticking his hand into every new 
 fire, in order to see if, like all the old ones, it would burn. 
 And the same reasoning applies with equal force to all the 
 promptings of passion, as distinguished from the promptings 
 of reason, i.e., to all immoral conduct. What is in 
 itself disorder and confusion, produces disorder and con- 
 fusion, either within or without the individual consciousness, 
 as surely as intense cold freezes water. The moral world 
 has its heaven of satisfied conscience and its hell of unsatis- 
 fiable passion " where the worm dieth not and the fire is not 
 quenched." 
 
 If it be replied that this is the degradation of morality to 
 a science of natural laws, it is fair to ask wherein lies the 
 degradation ? What is there more solid than law to build 
 upon ? What more awe-inspiring, what more productive of 
 reverence than the consciousness of law ? Only in so far as 
 they recognise law do all minds become as one. In pro- 
 portion as we know the laws of things all hopes and fears 
 alike vanish : we are able to look the eternal in the face, 
 without complaint and without request, and something of 
 the peace of eternal things descends to calm the passions 
 of the soul.* 
 
 This truth is so important as a guide in life that the following 
 account of it may not be out of place : " The mind has greater power 
 over the emotions (in so far as they are passions), and is less subject 
 thereto in so far as it understands all things as necessary. . , 
 
77/6' Natural Right to Freedom. 27 
 
 The denial of Right, based as it is on the ground that the 
 obligation we are under to respect each other's liberty, is an 
 ethical and not a political obligation, has no more weight 
 than the argument of a blind man that light does not exist 
 because he cannot see it. That anyone accustomed to look 
 at things through the politician's spectacles, should at last 
 reach such a depth of demoralization that he cannot see any 
 wrong in an otherwise unjust action, provided a majority of 
 the electors approve of it, is not all surprising. The theory 
 that the obligations of the individual do not exist for the 
 individuals, and that laws which the unit cannot ignore with- 
 out suffering disastrous consequences, may be treated with 
 impunity by the large or small group, forms the one weak 
 point in all governments. The theory of the politician is, 
 that so long as a government has force behind it whether 
 that force rests upon soldiers or citizens things are going 
 all right ; and no doubt so they are for the politician, since 
 his very existence is a sign of social rottenness, and, up to 
 certain limits, the more corrupt the State becomes the 
 stronger he gets. Up to certain limits. The more diseased 
 becomes the body, the more thrive the disease germs until 
 the patient dies. The quack flourishes as the fools become 
 more numerous, but he comes to grief at last along with 
 objects he feeds upon. So it is with a powerful government. 
 Up to a certain point, its power increases with the spread of 
 
 The more this knowledge, that things are necessary, is applied to parti- 
 cular things, which we conceive more distinctly and vividly, the greater 
 is the power of the mind over the emotions, as experience also testifies. 
 For we see that pain arising froai the loss of any good is mitigated as 
 soon as the man who has lost it perceives that it could not by any 
 means have been preserved. So also we see that no one pities an 
 infant because it cannot speak, walk, or reason, or, lastly, because it passes 
 so many years, as it were, in unconsciousness. Whereas if most people 
 were full-grown and only one here and there as an infant, everyone 
 would pity the infants, because infancy would not then be looked on as a 
 state natural and necessary, but as a fault or delinquency in nature. "- 
 SPINOZA, Ethics, Part T', Prop. VI. 
 
a 8 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 oppression, but that point once reached, it is either destroyed 
 by some mighty social convulsion, or gradually dies with the 
 nation it has lived upon. The power of the individual, or 
 collective tyrant, is made up entirely of the passions of his 
 supporters. Taken together these form a very SAMSON of 
 strength to begin with. But, unfortunately, the giant is 
 blind ; he can neither see nor avoid the indispensable 
 conditions of social welfare ; consequently, either he destroys 
 the State or the State has the wisdom to destroy him. It is 
 often said that there are no limits to the action of a popularly 
 elected government. There are limits to all human action, 
 whether individual or collective. As well urge that there is 
 nothing to limit the action of a drunkard. The conditions 
 of social welfare can, it is true, always be ignored ; but not 
 with impunity, either by units or groups. These conditions 
 limit all human conduct, and to ignore the ethical rules 
 which express them, for the mere sake of following party 
 expedients, is like attempting to steer a ship according to the 
 momentary and ever-changing shape of the waves, and not by 
 the rules of navigation. The laws of men are always weighed 
 in a balance of natural laws, and when the latter are 
 systematically ignored nothing can save society from 
 destruction. When ethics express the permanent conditions 
 of social welfare they are sound. When politics are built 
 upon the recognition of these conditions, as formulated in 
 ethical canons, they too are sound. But when men, by 
 reason of acting in groups, allow their passions to obscure 
 what their individual judgment has already amply proved, 
 and proceed to set up and act upon those rules of short-sighted 
 expediency, by which no individual or group can survive, the 
 social aggregate inevitably decays with the units that 
 compose it. 
 
 If it be urged that this is pinning down politics ^to hard 
 and fast a priori rules, then it may be replied, that so far as 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom 29 
 
 they are sound, they must be regulated by hard and fast 
 rules. This is not saying that there should be no flexibility 
 in applying those rules. Life is an art resting upon a science 
 of moral generalisations which get stronger and clearer as the 
 centuries pass. Every generation re-verifies and strengthens 
 the fundamental canons of ethics. " Thou shalt not steal," 
 " Thou shalt do no murder," " Thou shall not covet," do 
 not grow weaker as man grows wiser. Their value, their indis- 
 pensibility as conditions of life, rests upon an ever wider and 
 wider field of experience. All the invariableness and stability 
 of real laws of nature become theirs ; and while it is true 
 that the mind should always be open to alter them, and even 
 to ignore them, whenever a sufficient amount of experience 
 has been accumulated to justify such treatment ; yet until 
 this is done, they must be allowed, under penalty of loss, to 
 possess the same a priori relation to each individual act, as, 
 for example, the law of gravitation does. Each day we set 
 out with the a priori maxim " unsupported bodies fall to the 
 ground," and we shall continue to apply this method until 
 experience builds us up a better. Similarly with morality. 
 A generalisation, although resting upon antecedent induction, 
 is always a priori in its application to practice. In 
 the very nature of the case this must be so ; for we cannot 
 be making our knife and cutting our stick with it at one and 
 the same moment. Now the laws of nature, and of that 
 part of it which consists of human character, are rigid. 
 Their seeming uncertainty is solely due to our ignorance. 
 The more we know about them, the more rigid they appear. 
 And, consequently, the more rigid become the ethical 
 generalisations framed upon them. The more true a 
 system of ethics is, the more closely does it correspond to 
 the real facts of life, and the more rigid become its rules. 
 A perfect ethic would be as inflexible as nature herself. 
 What follows from this ? Why ; that so far as politics rest 
 
30 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 upon ethics, they must be governed by hard and fast rules. 
 In so far as they are ruled by mere five-minutes-expedients, 
 passion, haphazard, and guess-work, they are not based upon 
 ethics. But what are ethics ? As we have seen, the science 
 of human life, the only guide to a successful art of living. 
 If, then, politics are not bases upon ethics, on what are 
 they based ? If individuals, when acting jointly, may ignore 
 the plain distinctions between right and wrong, why may 
 they not also ignore them when acting singly? And if it is 
 admitted that ignoring them as individuals, must bring us to 
 grief; does it not follow that the same conduct pursued by 
 groups of individuals, must also end in the same disaster ? 
 Social utility and personal morality here coincide ; for what 
 is utility but the application of generalisations which have 
 been inductively established, deductively applied, and again 
 inductively verified ? 
 
 It is said that the first consideration for that corporate 
 action of men called government, is not so much natural 
 law and the ethical generalisations based thereon, as the 
 collective happiness, or, failing that,- " the happiness of the 
 greatest number." " Not only material security, but the 
 perfection of human and social life," says Sir Frederick 
 Pollock (The history of the Science of Politics, Fortnightly 
 Review, Jan., 1883, p. 99), "is what we aim at in that 
 organised co-operation of many men's lives and works which 
 is called State," and he adds " I fail to see good warrant of 
 either reason or experience for limiting the co-operate 
 activity of a nation by hard and fast rules.'' Here we have 
 the very essence of the Socialistic argument. The State, 
 like the individual, is to aim at human happiness ; but the 
 State, unlike the individual, is not to limit its action by 
 those hard and fast ethical rules which are considered 
 binding upon the individual. It would be wrong for you 
 and I to interfere with the work of our neighbours ; to 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom \ 31 
 
 forcibly take away all or portions of the result of his labour ; 
 to prescribe his food, clothing, health, education, opinions, 
 religion, c., c., in a word, to turn his life into a puppet's 
 dance done to the tune of our own fads. This kind of 
 thing as carried on between individuals is not only wrong, 
 it is "inexpedient." In fact, it is a perfect nuisance, produc- 
 tive of infinitely more loss than gain to all parties concerned. 
 Busybodyism on a small scale does not pay anyone ; it only 
 leads to distrust, envy, malice, and ill-feeling all round. 
 But tried on a large scale, it is sure to be a great success ; 
 to perfect social life, and render everybody or at least the 
 majority perfectly happy ! When there are only one or 
 two persons co-operating, they cannot afford to ignore the 
 hard and fast rules of ethics. If they neglect the canons of 
 fundamental morals their co-operation soon lands them in 
 chaos. But when a larger number whether a majority or 
 minority is immaterial sailing under the title of "State," 
 choose to try and promote human happiness by violating 
 the indispensable conditions of social welfare, they are sure 
 to succeed ; for what power is there to make against the 
 effective majority ? Society is an " organism " specially 
 exempted by some fairy grandmother from having to obey 
 any laws of health. When acting en masse the collective 
 creature can just do what it likes with perfect impunity. 
 Men in their joint action constitute a little omnipotence all 
 to themselves. The social " organism " forms no part of a 
 larger organism : of nature herself, the remorseless destroyer 
 alike of the few or the many who ignore her laws. It stands 
 apart by itself. All this talk about law is merely the 
 expression of the fancies of impractical theorists. Man is 
 GOD, there is no greater power in the universe, and the 
 practical politician is his duly qualified representative ! 
 There are rules of health, rules of morals, rules of trade, 
 hard and fast rules, conditioning the successful application 
 
32 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 of all art, but no rules of politics ! The politician is the only 
 genuine miracle worker : the infallible Cagliostro of the 
 nineteenth century, and he has managed to learn his art with- 
 out having to burden his mind with such unscientific 
 formulas as " hard and fast rules." 
 
 Sir F. Pollock, to whom we have just alluded, continues 
 reasoning thus : -"We must fix the limit by self-protection, 
 says Mill ; by negative as opposed to positive regulation, 
 says Mr. Spencer. But where does protection leave off and 
 interference begin ? If it is negative and proper regulation 
 to say a man shall be punished for building his house in a 
 city so that it falls into the street, is it positive and improper 
 regulation to say that he shall so build it, if he builds at all, 
 as to appear to competent persons not likely to fall into the 
 street ? It is purely negative regulation, and may therefore 
 be proper, to punish a man for communicating an infectious 
 disease by neglect of common precautions. Why is it 
 improper to compel those precautions, where the danger is 
 known to exist, without waiting for somebody to be actually 
 infected ? " 
 
 The reply to this is obvious. What is the end of law ? 
 Is it not the nearest possible approximation to justice that 
 can be made by finite power? The completest possible 
 correspondence between offences and penalties that human 
 art can achieve ? Where then is the justice of putting all the 
 building trade in an official strait waistcoat, just for the sake 
 of catching a few bad builders, and, possibly, protecting a 
 few thoughless persons ? It is not to a builder's interest to 
 build places that won't stand. But shauld such a case ever 
 occur, justice is fully met by the punishment of the individual 
 offender. It is a waste of energy to punish .all builders 
 beforehand, in order to prevent the real culprits from being 
 found out: for this is exactly what these cut and dried 
 beforehand preventions mean. They may save our skins for 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 33 
 
 a time ; but they prevent us from discovering where the 
 weak places are ; and so creates blindness that eventually 
 leads to a still greater general loss. They prevent the 
 incidental fall, but precipitate the general crash. In 
 confounding good, bad, and indifferent together in one lump, 
 in punishing all alike, they deprive the public of the requisite 
 data for forming sound individual judgments, and by this 
 means protecting themselves. It is to the advantage of 
 everybody that evil doers should be known, so that the 
 energies of the law may be directed where they are really 
 needed, not wasted over good, bad, and indifferent alike. 
 But in proportion as you prevent beforehand, you curtail 
 experiment, and thus shut out the possibility of discovery. 
 Also you prevent improvement. It is a well known fact that 
 in this matter of building alone, the arbitrary and absurd 
 rules of municipal inspectors, much more frequently prevent 
 improved houses from being built, than they save inferior 
 houses from falling. The expensive law suits, the loss of 
 capital, the loss of time, and the general industrial discour- 
 agement that these rules cause to the general body of builders, 
 only result in giving the average tenant an inferior house to 
 live in. Protection indeed ! As if people could be protected 
 agaii.st their own innate lack of common sense ! Let them 
 suffer from bad house? ; for in no other way can they 
 acquire the requisite experience by which to estimate better 
 ones. There is no official royal road to comfort, or even to 
 security ; for it is probable that, taken on the whole, state 
 officialism causes more accidents than it prevents. 
 
 And as for the communication of disease ; this depends 
 far more upon those private personal habits that no law 
 can alter, than upon any amount of mere official drill. The 
 vaccination laws are a fair sample of the value of state drill. 
 The community were to be "protected" by the forcing of 
 diseased matter out of one person into another. In order to 
 
34 The Natural Right to Freedom, 
 
 prolong our piecious lives we poisoned our neighbour. 
 Why not? Some of our neighbours might unconsciously 
 cause our death before it is "fairly due ! . How terrible to 
 think of ! Therefore don't wait to discover the guilty party, 
 but punish everybody beforehand, in order to make sure of 
 safety. Don't make yourself disease-proof by purity of life 
 and intelligent obedience of the laws of health ; this is 
 altogether too obvious and simple a method : but "protect" 
 your rotten system by a forcible regulation of everybody. 
 For who knows from whom you may not catch your death ? 
 How sad if you died a few years too soon. What a loss to 
 society ! And lock everybody up, in order to prevent your- 
 self from being robbed. For who can tell who is a not a 
 possible thief ? Make yourself safe ! Hang everybody, so 
 that you may not be murdered. For who is there that may 
 not possibly commit this offence ? In short, why run any 
 risk whatever when regulation can prevent it ? Comfort, not 
 justice, is the end of law. 
 
 The absurdity of the Socialist's theory lies in his assump- 
 tion that people can be effectually coerced into happiness or 
 into virtue. The priest once imagined they could be suc- 
 cessfully coerced into "true" religion he may think so now 
 for anything we know. The sanitarian thinks they may be 
 coerced into cleanliness. The teetotaller would compel 
 them to temperance. The State educationalist imagines 
 they can be crammed to hold any quantity and quality of 
 knowledge, like a gun plumbed up to the muzzle with wads. 
 This theory is very old as old as impatience, intolerance 
 and bigotry, and although in its older forms in religious 
 matters, for instance we have, or are supposed to have, 
 amply demonstrated its falsity, yet we still go on applying 
 it to education, health, amusement, trade, and all the other 
 crazes of modern fanatics. After centuries of persecution, 
 wars, and massacres, we have at last discovered that force 
 
7 he Natural Right to Freedom. 35 
 
 cannot make people religious ; that the substitution of an 
 external authority in the place of the internal conscience 
 only produces formalists and hypociites ; and that genuine 
 piety springs from the internal impluses of free beings. 
 Eventually we shall come to see that force is equally^ 
 impotent to make men either cleanly, healthy, wise, or 
 virtuous. These four things make up the very strength and 
 greatness of the individual, and of all his possible multipli- 
 cations and arrangements. And, curiously enough, like 
 genuine religion, they are the result, not of external or 
 governmental compulsion, but of the spontaneous activity of 
 free citizens. Of course it is perfectly true that we can pay 
 a lot of inferior men to look after our health, our knowledge 
 and our virtue. But at what a fearful price. The money 
 payment is nothing : it is the loss of individuality, self-con- 
 trol, manhood, and variety, that is the great thing. All 
 these patent arrangements for getting rid of personal 
 responsibility, tend to reduce men and women to the level 
 of a flock of sheep, swayed this way or that way by the 
 biggest crowd or the cunningest official. There are, or used 
 to be, some very noble people who kept valets to wash, 
 dress, and perfume them ; their conduct has been often 
 justified on the ground of expediency and utility, but 
 nobody has yet had the hardihood to maintain that either 
 masters or servants were morally or physically any better 
 for such unmanly and degrading practices. And neither 
 are men and women who delegate to officials the personal 
 duties of cleanliness, health, education, and virtue. 
 Socialism is only the old Tory privilege system applied to 
 DEMOS. The highest and strongest societies are composed 
 of individuals who are capable of looking after themselves, 
 who are virtuous from choice, and who need neither the 
 quacks of the soul to tell them how to think, nor the quacks 
 of the body to tell them how to act, Individual variety an4 
 
36 The Natural Right to Freedom 
 
 character form the greatest of all social utilities, and no kind 
 of compulsory organization can supply their loss. The aim 
 of all successful and lasting government is, not to degrade 
 free citizens to the level of well-fed pigs, whose styes are 
 mechanically cleaned out at stated periods, but to leave the 
 course clear for the evolution from within of the ideal man, 
 so well described by Sir F. POLLOCK as at last coming " forth 
 into the light, with the moral law written in trs soul, and 
 justice for an immortal heritage." 
 
 Looked at in the light of the lowest utility, the recognition 
 of equal right to liberty of thought, of speech, and of action, 
 comes before everything else. The coercionists who 
 attempt to distinguish between happiness and freedom, and 
 pretend to see how the former can be promoted at the 
 expense of the latter, never justify their position. If the 
 end they propose is in itself desirable, no enquiry is made 
 as to whether the means indicated do or do not promote 
 that end. Education, for example, is assumed to be a con- 
 dition of happiness. This being granted, it is never asked 
 \i whether the dragooning of parents and children either tends 
 to promote happiness, or to create a natural desire for 
 knowledge, or a pleasure in freely pursuing it. Although it 
 is admitted that cramming a food down a person's throat is 
 about the most effectual method that can be used for pro- 
 ducing an ineradicable dislike for such food ; although 
 nobody has ever yet been known to excel in any pursuit that 
 was not followed freely and for the sake of the profit or 
 pleasure derived therefrom ; although it is well known that 
 the vast majority of successful men and women in all the 
 different walks of life have risen to eminence through 
 possessing the freedom to follow the natural bent of their 
 own tastes and inclinations, and that in proportion as they 
 have been coerced by others, in that proportion have their 
 various abilities been hindered of their possible achieve- 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 37 
 
 mcnts ; although all these advantages of liberty are well 
 known to the utilitarian and five-minutes-expediency-quacks, 
 yet, when the advocacy of some drastic and cast-iron 
 coercion system is likely to get them a fleeting popularity 
 and a majority at the next election, such world-wide and 
 every-day experience is thrown aside as the mere a priori 
 speculations of let-be reactionaries. It is never noticed that 
 the worst kind of " let-be " is that which ignores fact and 
 experience in order to rush blindly in the dark. Thus, the 
 real utility the adoption of appropriate means to secure 
 clear and desirable ends is sacrificed to a sham utility, 
 which, like a lie, helps for the instant or the minute, to 
 damn for the hour and the day. There lives no more short- 
 sighted dealer in a priori nonsense than the fanatical 
 compulsionist who expects to. produce inward joy, or virtue, 
 or knowledge by outward compulsion. The athlete who 
 should attempt to promote vigour by manacling arms and 
 legs, would be a philosopher in comparison. Perhaps after 
 the quacks have worn out their present popularity, we may 
 come to see that while there are many different ways of 
 helping each other, there is one sure and certain way of 
 hindering the effects of even the best efforts, destroying the 
 indispensable condition of all success, viz., liberty. 
 
 As judged by a standard of social expediency or utility, 
 liberty comes off with flying colours. Take any department 
 of life you please, and you will find that in proportion as 
 individual or collective coercion steps in, in that proportion ( / 
 does life, character, and happiness deteriorate. For after all w 
 what is life but movement, and what can be the result of 
 restricting movement but a diminution of life? The 
 murderer restricts the movements of his victim, and in 
 order that there may be as little as possible of this kind of 
 restriction we are obliged to restrict him. The same applies 
 to the thief, and, to a lesser extent, to the breaker of con- 
 
38 7he Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 tracts as well. The assumption underlying and justifying 
 all these social restrictions is the maximising of movement 
 the production of the greatest possible amount and variety 
 of life. Social life may be defined as the sum total of 
 human activities existing at any given moment, and the only 
 condition of the greatest volume of these activities consists 
 is the greatest possible scope for their free play. Any 
 a priori scheme which seeks to drive them into some stiff 
 political pattern, not only restricts all activities that won't 
 square with its own cramping form, but, worse still, curtails 
 the opportunities of natural selection to such an extent as 
 practically to bar out that slow evolutionary process, which 
 saves society from the explosion of its pent up forces in 
 what is known as " revolution." Hence, equal liberty is a 
 safeguard, the loss of which nothing can compensate. It is 
 to the forms of life what a free press is to the forms of 
 thought a practice ground for unlimited experiment, for 
 natural selection, and for the survival of the newer and 
 better over the older and worse. In a word, it is at once 
 the condition of all healthy life, and of progress towards 
 heathier life. Equal freedom of thought, we say, is the only 
 condition of healthy and vigorous thought, of new ideas, of 
 the survival of new forms of thought over old forms ; in 
 short of intellectual progress. Is it not exactly the same 
 with forms of social life ? How shall there be progress in 
 social life if there is not the fullest possible opportunity for 
 every human form to grow, to appear, and to develop along 
 with others ; so that free experiment may find out the types 
 that are best fitted to advance? Put us all under one 
 system, and progress comes by shocks and jumps, instead 
 of slowly, surely, naturally and peacefully. Every now and 
 then the hard shell has got to be broken in order to allow 
 the crab to grow. Heretics and reformers are crushed by 
 the system, until at last some mighty LUTHER and his 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 39 
 
 followers suddenly appear on the scene, with courage and 
 strength enough to hurl the gigantic tyranny to the ground. 
 All these force systems are reared upon a sea of social unrest, 
 and when excess of power has so far corrupted them that 
 the forces of archery out-balance the forces of tyranny, the 
 shaky social fabric suddenly falls into in easier position, 
 like an iceberg whose sudden collapse has been led up to by 
 the slow and silent destruction of its base. These 
 unexpected and violent re-adjustments of social arrangements 
 are called revolutions. There is only one way of preventing 
 them ; and this is by allowing the fullest possible liberty for 
 each unit, compatible with the equal liberty of all units. 
 
 In point of fact the coercionist, or the majority or minority 
 of coercionists, are simply doing on a large scale what the 
 murderer and the thief are doing on a small scale. The 
 latter only cut down the activities of others until those 
 activities square with their own notions of fitness. Like the 
 fanatical quacks, instead of adapting themselves to human 
 nature, they attempt to adapt human nature to themselves ; 
 the only difference is that they do their work without either 
 passing Acts of Parliament, shirking the personal dangers 
 and risks, or indulging in cheap cant about the " welfare of 
 society," the "commonweal," or the "happiness of the greatest 
 number." The social outcasts whose actions we are obliged 
 to restrict are barefaced and unpretending coercionists ; the 
 cunning busybodies who run round fawning upon working 
 men for votes are anything but this ; and, although they are 
 infinitely the more dangerous of the two, they have not yet 
 become social outcasts ; but unless human affairs are all 
 going to the dogs, these very good and disinterested gentle- 
 men will become social outcasts presently* 
 
 It is sometimes urged that even under Individualism, sociaf 
 activity is essentially a species of coercive regulation, like the 
 drill of the conscript for example. This is utterly untrue, 
 
40 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 J All social relations, all dealings with our fellows, are only 
 social so far as they are free. Introduce the element of force, 
 and they become anti-socul to the extent of the compulsion 
 applied. That is only a social act in which a man realizes 
 his own and not some other person's motive. If you say 
 " Good morning " to your neighbour because it is the fashion 
 to do so, or because some authority has attached a penalty 
 to omission, and not because you have any genuine personal 
 feeling in the matter, then the act is not vital, human, social, 
 but indifferent, mechanical, anti-social. In itself it has no 
 more social character about it than the act of a well-drilled 
 soldier who shoots mechanically at his target. All that force 
 . produces is a sham. So far from promoting reason, 
 v charity, and toleration, the only factors that make acts truly 
 social, it hinders them ; and the more this force system 
 increases, the more unsocial men become. The real 
 happiness of men does not consist in elaborate and compli- 
 cated drill systems, in the uniformity and monotony to which 
 they lead, or even in the gigantic monuments they sometimes 
 produce else the social state of the slaves who built the 
 pyramids should form the true ideal of human progress 
 but in the variety of character, the sincerity of motives, the 
 charity, toleration, and reason that come in with liberty, and 
 go out with it. The dependence of all human happiness 
 and of all rational social relations upon individual liberty, 
 has been well expressed by FICHTE in his work on the 
 Science of Rights. "If, "says he, "reason is to be realized 
 in the world of sense, it must be possible for many rational 
 beings to live together as such ; and this is permanently 
 
 -\ / possible only if each free being makes it its law to limit its 
 f own freedom by the conception of the freedom of all others. 
 y ifor each free being having the power to check or destroy 
 ( the freedom of other free beings, and being dependent in its 
 \ free actions only upon its will, it is only when all free beings 
 
The Nairn at Right to Freedom. 41 
 
 have voluntarily made it their law (rule of action) never so to 
 check the freedom of all others, that a community of free 
 beings becomes possible, wherein such a check never 
 rccu:s.'' 
 
42 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 LET us now look at an argument that has recently been 
 advanced against the fundamental principle of 
 Individualism. 
 
 In the course of his papers on Socialism, which appeared 
 in last year's issue of Good Words, Professor Flint attempts 
 to upset the Individualist position. Not that he approves of 
 Socialism. He appears to have as great a dislike for the 
 latter as most of us have. The socialism of democracy is 
 often as distateful to the cultured recipients of State favours, 
 who flourish on a one-sided educational socialism, as it is to 
 the pampered products of our Socialistic National Church. 
 That those who believe the socialism of wealth and patronage 
 to be right, but the socialism of poverty and starvation to be 
 wrong, should have no definite theory of government at all, 
 is not in the least surprising. Definite principles and rules 
 are always awkward things for those who live in glass houses. 
 A lax, blow-hot-and-cold, commit-yourself-to-nothing sort of 
 creed, which enables you to adopt just as much Socialism or 
 Individualism as you like, is the thing. "I believe in 
 Socialism to a certain limited extent, don't you know?; and 
 in Individualism to a certain limited extent, don't you 
 know?" say some of Mr. Donisthorpe's political friends; 
 and, if we are to judge by his articles, Professor Flint might 
 well sit for their portraits ; so forcibly does the description 
 apply to him. 
 
 Listen to what he says about the Individualist's doctrine 
 of equal liberty : " The party of Individual liberty believe 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom] 43 
 
 that they find at least the firm foundation stone of such a 
 system (he is referring to a free system) in the formula ' the 
 Liberty of each, limited only by the like liberty of all.' But 
 is it so ? To me these words seem to be vague and 
 ambiguous. They tell neither what is the liberty of ' each ' 
 nor of all, and, therefore, nothing as to how, or how far, the 
 liberty of each is to be limited by that of all. ' Like liberty '! 
 Like to what ? Like to a liberty which has no other limit 
 than the liberty of others ? Then the formula means that 
 each individual may do to any other what he pleases, 
 provided all other individuals may do to him what they 
 please." 
 
 This argument effectually disposes of Individualism, thinks 
 the Professor. The faith he has in its impregnable nature 
 makes one smile. He forgets that if all others are to be free 
 to do to the coercing individual or individuals what they 
 please, coercion is impossible, and that to the extent to 
 which coercion prevails all others are more or less hindered 
 from doing what they please. For it is perfectly certain that 
 all must include the individual who is coerced, and who is 
 prevented to the extent of the coercion that he is subjected to, 
 from doing what he pleases. When, for example, nine men 
 fall upon one man, can it fairly be urged that all the ten men 
 are doing what they please : certainly nine are, but how 
 about the tenth ? If all others are to be equally free, the 
 doing must be of such a nature as not to hinder the action 
 of others must be non-coercive. Suppose, for example, 
 Professor Flint, through the tax-gatherer, compels me to 
 subscribe 5s. to a State grant for the University of Edin- 
 burgh ;* am I not then hindered to the extent of 53. from 
 
 The consideration in Committee of the Education and Local 
 Taxation Relief (Scotland) Bill was resumed. Of the total equivalent 
 grant of 265,000 to Scotland, 60,000 was set apart by the second 
 clause in aid of the cost of secondary education, and two sums of 25,000 
 
44 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 doing to him (Professor Flint) what I please? I might 
 please to make him a present of the amount for the purpose 
 of helping him to found a non-Socialistic University. 
 Professor Flint cannot see that coercion, in so far as it is 
 coercion, necessarily stops one or more of the "a//" from 
 doing as they please ; and is, therefore, as inconsistent with 
 the unfettered pleasing of all as, for example, a Socialistic 
 University is. Suppose I forcibly tie my neighbour's hands; 
 would it be fair to say that all (including my neighbour) may 
 then do to me as they please ? Coercion at least stops the 
 "pleasing " of some, and the more people there are coerced, 
 the less number there are among the "all" who are able to 
 please. 
 
 Professor Flint then goes on to inform us that allowing 
 each one to do as he pleases so long as he does not hinder 
 others from doing what they please " is simply saying that 
 there should be no society, no government, no law whatever." 
 Here he again ignores the law implied in his own definition 
 of Individualism, viz., the law or rule that none shall be 
 
 and 7^50, ooo were to be distribu'ed among the Parochial Boards, the 
 former sum being for the maintenance of pauper lunatics, and the latter 
 for the relief of the local rates in such manner as the Boards might 
 determine. The first Amendment to this Clause was moved by Mr. 
 Esslemont, with the view of increasing the secondary education grant 
 from 7^50,000 to 7jioo,ooo. Mr. Balfour said the Government felt 
 obliged to adhere to the general distribution of the funds as sketched in 
 the Bill, and he must, therefore, oppose the Amendment, which 
 ultimately was rejected by 180 to 123. Mr. D. Crawford moved an 
 Amendment providing that the 7j6o,ooo should be devoted to "inter- 
 mediate" education, instead of "secondary," the object being to obtain 
 the inclusion of technical education within the scope of the Bill. The 
 Amendment was rejected by 197 to 136. The third substantial Amend- 
 ment was moved by Mr. J. Wilson, his object being to strike out the 
 Sub-section of the second Clause which allocated, out of the grant, 
 /J3O.OOO to the Scottish Universities. He contended that any such 
 grant should be provided out of the Imperial funds, and not out of 
 Scotch money of which the ^"30,000 entirely consisted. Tha Amend- 
 ment was rejected by 236 to 104. 77/6' Evening Standard, 
 \Ycdnesday, May 4, 1892. 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom, 45 
 
 hindered from doing as they please. He once more forgets 
 that directly interference takes place some people are 
 hindered. The Professor, like most semi-Socialists, identifies 
 peace and security with Governments, forgetting that the two 
 are by no means identical. In Russia there is plenty of 
 government, but very little security. Among the Wood- 
 Veddas there is no social organization at all, but nevertheless 
 it is thought " perfectly inconceivable that any person should 
 take that which does not belong to him, or strike his fellow, 
 or say anything that is untrue."* Not only is the rule or law 
 that I should not interfere with the pleasing of my neighbour 
 perfectly intelligible, but it is practised among some uncivil- 
 ized savages. Needless to say, the latter don't possess 
 Socialistic Universities. 
 
 But if the liberty of each is not to be limited by the 
 equal liberty of all, what is it to be limited by ? Shall 
 we say, " by the unequal liberty of all ? " The Professor 
 dislikes the word liberty. He asks what the liberty of 
 each is ? This is exactly what Socialistic law pretends to 
 tell. We content ourselves with saying what it is not : 
 we say it is not interfering with your neighbour. To tell 
 what it is would require an enumeration of all men's 
 infinitely varied non-aggressive activities. The Professor 
 says that liberty must be limited by a social law. The 
 abuse of it, which makes liberty unequal, must ; and if 
 the law gives more liberty to all, than it takes away, we 
 don't object. All law is an evil, but sometimes it is a lesser 
 evil than anarchy. But in order to give more freedom 
 than it takes away, law must be framed upon a 
 recognition of the liberty of each limited by the like 
 liberty of all. In a word, the law in question must be an 
 attempt to restore the broken equality : i.e., the equal 
 
 Quoted by II. Spencer in " Man versus the State." 
 
46 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 freedom that has been destroyed by the violence or fraud it 
 is seeking in its blundering way to remedy. Professor 
 Flint says liberty should be "limited by just law." Exactly ; 
 but is interfering with our neighbours just at all ? If not, then, 
 how can any law be just which carries out such interference ? 
 We are ultimately brought back to the questions : what are 
 the justifications of law ; on what principles should law be 
 framed ? If we say that it is unjust to interfere with our 
 neighbour, and that it is just to respect his freedom, then 
 law, in so far as it is just, must be of a purely protective 
 and non-interfering character. In this sense just law is 
 "constituted by liberty, or mere equality of liberty," the 
 very thing Professor Flint denies. To talk about " social 
 law " as if it were something to be determined apart' from 
 all considerations of equal liberty, and yet never to tell 
 us on what other considerations it should be determined, 
 is simply darkening counsel with words. It throws no 
 light whatever upon the problem of the limits of Govern- 
 me.nt, while it furnishes a specious excuse for every new 
 Socialistic interference. 
 
 Professor Flint sums up his argument thus : " In fact, 
 the phrase 'the liberty of each, limited alone by the like 
 liberty of all ' is destitute of meaning apart from knowledge 
 of a law which limits liberty apart from knowledge of the 
 very law which it is supposed to reveal." Now, if Professor 
 Flint had stated the Individualist maxim more clearly he 
 would have seen that it does express a rule or law by which 
 to limit liberty. For this very purpose it was framed. 
 " The fullest possible liberty for each, consistent with the 
 equal liberty of all," either means that liberty should be 
 limited by the rule of equality, or it means nothing. But if 
 it means the former it does convey the " knowledge of a 
 law which limits liberty," viz., the law of equality. 
 
 Now let us examine a reply that has been made to the 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 47 
 
 contention that socialistic regulation is incompatable with 
 justice. 
 
 On page 35 of his book on Darwinism and Politics, 
 Mr. D. G. Ritchie urges that the arguments advanced 
 against State Socialism on the score of injustice, only hold 
 good as against a partial collective compulsion ; complete 
 and thoroughgoing State-action does not lie open to them. 
 For example, " giving free education to some children may 
 be objected to as pauperising : free education as the right 
 of all would make none paupers." 
 
 How thoughtless these force-fanatics are ! Free educa- 
 tion for all, would still leave the possessors of children in 
 pauper-dependence upon the non-possessors the married 
 dependent upon the earnings of maids and bachelors. Like 
 all Socialism, it would frequently mean the compulsory 
 endowment of the more sensual and less thrifty at the 
 expense of the less sensual and more thrifty. In other 
 words, it would largely amount to the expropriation of the 
 worthy in order to fill the world with the unworthy. 
 State-Socialism is laziness, carelessness, and sensuality com- 
 bined into a sort of old man of the sea, seated firmly with 
 his legs twined around the neck of personal worth, bullying 
 the latter until it is ridden to death. If, as Socialists affirm, 
 the voluntary survival of the fit is cruel, what shall we say of 
 the compulsory survival of the unfit? If it is unjust to 
 prevent people from forcing the results of their own short- 
 comings upon others, what shall we say of the justice of a 
 system which does not only fail to prevent, but actually 
 forces, the consequences of unthrift or of sensuality on those 
 who are not responsible for them ? " Bear ye one another's 
 burdens" is well when the burden is voluntaiily undertaken, 
 for then, and then only, the good feeling goes with the act ; 
 but where it is not voluntarily undertaken, where virtue has 
 the consequences of vice forcibly thrust upon it, and this 
 
48 7 he Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 without any choice or moral acquiesence on its own part, a 
 system prevails which tends to drag all individual worth 
 down to one low level of degradation. And certainly if there 
 is little justice in this kind of compulsion when it is partial, 
 there can be still less when it is complete. This is only 
 going from bad to worse. What we want from Mr. Ritchie 
 and his fellow force-worshippers, is a justification for A legally 
 forcing the consequences of his vice or folly upon B ; until 
 we get this, we are without any justification for similar 
 conduct on the part of a crowd of A's towards a crowd 
 of B's. 
 
 The shortsighted character of Mr. Ritchie's analysis, shows 
 itself plainly enough when he is found arguing about "Free" 
 Education as if everybody were willing to have exactly the 
 same article, provided it is called by the same name. As a 
 matter of fact, views on education are fortunately as varied 
 as views on religion. This is a sign of health and promotes 
 toleration. Now, State education is at best but the particular 
 kind of cramming system approved of by the majority (or 
 their official wire-pullers) for the moment ; so that to force 
 this one system upon all varieties of ideas and tastes, is as 
 unjust as to force a particular kind of State religion upon 
 everybody. Surely the centuries of religious persecution 
 have sufficiently shown the folly of forcing our fads, religious 
 or non-religious, upon each other. The great danger of 
 modern times is, that the variety and many-sideness of 
 human nature, will be destroyed in the cast-iron force- 
 machines of social fanatics. It should be remembered that 
 social tyranny is worse than religious tyranny. The latter 
 touched but a portion of life : trade, commerce, amusement, 
 health, &c., it generally left entirely free. But the tyranny 
 of the social bigot has no limit. It coerces all parts of life 
 alike. There is no portion of personal freedom that is not 
 in some way threatened by it. The State machine would be 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom, 49 
 
 everywhere : everything would go through it, and would be 
 crushed and maimed by it. Popery in its worst days was a 
 flea-bite to what this would be. The greatest curse of 
 modern times is the social fanatic, who seeks to use the 
 strong arm of the State in order to drag all humanity down 
 to the level of his own narrow and degraded views. 
 
 Now let us see what Mr. Ritchie has got to say about 
 industrial competition. There are two kinds of competition : 
 that of brains and that of muscles. According to Mr. 
 Herbert Spencer these are respectively exemplified in indus- 
 trial and militant types of society. Under the industrial regime 
 the individual reason of each citizen is allowed the fullest 
 possible expression, consistent with equal freedom for the 
 expression of the reason of all other citizens. You are free 
 to produce what you can with such faculties, great or small, 
 that you happen to possess, and to exchange the product for 
 whatever others will freely give out of the results of their 
 faculties, but you are not free to forcibly appropriate either 
 the faculties or products of others. In order that liberty 
 shall be maximized, it is necessary for compulsion to be 
 minimized. We .coerce the thief because, not content 
 with equal liberty for himself, he coerces others ; he breaks 
 the equality of freedom, and so puts himself outside the 
 rightful enjoyment of it. In order to make liberty as equal 
 as possible we are obliged to restrict him -for a time at 
 least. If as much as possible of individual liberty for 
 everybody, were not the object aimed at, we should have 
 no more warrant for coercing the thief, than for treating 
 the taxation compulsionists in the same manner. The 
 thief makes a forced levy in order to carry out something 
 which he thinks desirable ; the taxation-compulsionist does 
 exactly the same thing; only the thief, unfortunately for 
 himself, is in such a small minority that he is soon put hors- 
 dc-combat. There is an external social force to stop the 
 
50 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 small confiscate* ; there is none to hinder the larger confis- 
 cator. The unit collars with fear and trembling ; the 
 majority with impunity. It is disgraceful to steal on a small 
 scale ; but robbery on a large scale is respectable. 
 
 It is quite obvious from this that our present regime 
 is a mixture of militancy and industrialism. In some cases 
 we unite to defend the freedom of the personal character, 
 and to allow it scope for expression. In other cases we 
 unite to crush the individual ; and attempt to compel him to 
 square his non-aggressive actions with our despotic social 
 framework. The thief shall not coerce him for his (the 
 thief's ends) but we (the majority) shall coerce him for ours. 
 Of course the thief's ends are wrong and ours are right. We 
 say so, and we are the majority, and the majority's ends are 
 always right. The voice of the majority is the voice of 
 God, because the majority is God. We cannot possibly do 
 wrong : we never crucified the world's Saviours, or com- 
 pelled them to drink hemlock : we never tolerated the 
 inquisition, or at any time took advantage of our numerically 
 weaker brethren. 
 
 Putting these considerations aside for* the moment, it is 
 evident that the compulson of the many by the few, or of 
 the few by the many, is of the older militant and warlike 
 type of competition the competition which destroys the 
 struggle for survival amongst ideas, and sacrifices brains to 
 muscles. This is equally so when the contending parties 
 fight with votes instead of with bayonets. If we " count 
 heads to save the trouble of breaking them " this is because 
 we intend to break them if the counting is not admitted* as a 
 substitute. Both weapons are those of force, as distin- 
 guished from those of reason. In the matter of your free 
 Church, the competition involved is a struggle of brains, of 
 reason, of argument ; compulsion is not now allowed : but 
 in -the matter of your "free" museum or park, the lower 
 
The NahnaJ Right to Freedom. 51 
 
 form of purely militant warfare is revived ; the oldest form 
 of the struggle for existence again comes to the front, and 
 rational beings are not ashamed to imitate the antics of 
 savages. 
 
 Yet Mr. Ritchie has the audacity to tell us that this 
 majority struggle is the new and civilized method; while 
 the industrial form of competition, which prevents the 
 compulsion of muscles in order to allow free play for the 
 action of reason, is the old form revived ; and he urges that 
 the latter " belongs to a lower type than the struggles 
 between organized communities, where a strict organization 
 mitigates the internal strife." In other words, Mr. Ritchie 
 is of opinion that the continual struggle of parties to cram 
 each other's nostrums down one another's throats, is a 
 higher form of competition than what occurs under Free 
 Trade, where each one is at liberty to make the best of his 
 faculties, so long as he does not coerce or compel his fellow. 
 Mr. Ritchie is reversing the order of thing with a vengeance. 
 Free Trade may not be perfect what is in this world ? 
 but it is at any rate a more elevated and less degrading 
 form of competition than the unprincipled warfare of party 
 politicians. 
 
52 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 IN another book written on a similar subject (The Prin- 
 ciples of State Interference) Mr. Ritchie lays great stress 
 on the fact that liberty is purely negative. He appears to 
 think this objection a very strong one. Of course liberty is 
 negative, but it is none the less valuable on that account. 
 Nay, its negative character is its value ; for it is this feature 
 alone that enables it to be the condition of all that is 
 valuable in life. In one part of his book Mr. Ritchie him- 
 self appears to recognise this truth ; for he admits that 
 freedom of choice, a purely negative condition, is the neces- 
 sary ground of all human morality ; and he even goes so 
 far as to approve of the late Professor Green's statement 
 that "the direct legal enforcement of morality cannot be 
 considered expedient or inexpedient : it is impossible. The 
 morality of an act depends on the state of the will of the 
 agent, and therefore the act done under compulsion ceases 
 to have the character of a moral act. It wants the negative 
 condition of morality." And in a note Mr. Ritchie himself 
 adds, " The same holds true, of course, with regard to 
 religion, if religion is anything more than ritual observance. 
 There is a story told that some Tory Churchman (who must 
 have been born two centuries too late) said to the late Pro- 
 fessor Thorold Rogers : " Religion must be compulsory, or 
 else there will be no religion at all." 
 
 As might be expected from a State Socialist, Mr. Ritchie 
 cannot see any analogy between compulsory religion and 
 compulsory education. He thinks that while State compul- 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 53 
 
 sion cannot produce genuine piety, it may very easily 
 produce genuine knowledge. We are beginning to find out 
 otherwise. We are discovering that while, on the one hand, 
 the compulsion of the Board Schools has given young 
 people such a distaste for healthy reading, that they use 
 what little educational residue it leaves behind, in helping 
 them to devour their favourite penny dreadfuls and shilling 
 shockers, in flooding the Free Libraries with demands for 
 for sensational literature, or in wallowing in all the filth of 
 the criminal and divorce courts ; on the other hand every- 
 thing in the shape of literature that partakes of an intellectual 
 or a moral character, is becoming more and more shunned 
 by these satiated recipients of compulsory State cram, these 
 soiled minds that speedily vomit up the good food they have 
 been so carefully stuffed with, and then take to feeding on 
 garbage. In France, where the State has had education in 
 its hands for a longer period, the literary degradation is even 
 more marked. The coarse animalism of ZOLA dominates 
 alike both story and play, and even the refined literary 
 genius of a DAUDET cannot keep clear of the sewer. 
 
 The reason advanced by Mr. Ritchie for making a 
 distinction between religion and education is paltry in the 
 extreme. He says " There is no a priori presumption in 
 favour of a general policy of laissez faire, because in the vast 
 number of cases the individual does not find himself in a 
 position in which he can act " freely " (i.e., direct his action 
 to objects which reason assigns as desirable) without the 
 intervention of the State to put him in such a position 
 e.g if by insuring that he shall at least have some education." 
 One cannot avoid smiling at this antiquated excuse. Was 
 there ever an unjust institution in this world that did not 
 exist for the good of the individual ; either for his spiritual 
 or temporal good ? These coercionists are all sacrificing 
 themselves for your good, my dear reader ! Surely, under 
 
54 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 these circumstances, you cannot do anything less than love 
 and obey them. 
 
 Precisely the same argument has all along been used by 
 religious fanatics to justify the compulsory attendance of 
 religious observances. You must be coerced for your good, 
 not merely your temporal good, but your eternal good : 
 a much more important thing. If from your earliest years, 
 any amount of religion is not crammed down your throat, you 
 may grow up in Egyptian darkness worse than death. 
 Think of that ! You may go to hell ; and its our special 
 duty not to let you. You shall not even damn yourself. 
 We vi\[\ force salvation upon you, and pitch you into heaven 
 whether you want to go there or not. Ah, my friend ! it's 
 not the money, or the position, or the power that we want. 
 All these things are nothing. It's you, or rather your 
 precious soul, that we are grieving about. We love you, my 
 dear friend, and we mean to save you from hell. Be assured 
 you shall not go there if force can keep you away. 
 
 It is never noticed that if people are left perfectly free, 
 those who want religion will take it : those who don't, will 
 let it alone. The want will prove that it is adapted to their 
 nature : the dislike will prove that it is unadapted. What 
 profit can there be in compelling men to wear what does not 
 fit them ? The disadvantages outweigh the advantages. In 
 the matter of religion we have already discovered this truth, 
 and the time will come when we shall acknowledge that 
 education comes equally under the same law. Those who 
 like and desire education, always pick it up; just as they take 
 to music, painting, drawing, or any other hobby. Then it 
 fits them : it becomes a part of themselves. They under- 
 stand it, and use and wield it as easily as an expert fencer 
 wields his sword. All excellence is built up in this free and 
 spontaneous manner. Nature is at the bottom of everything 
 that is of the least value, and all the artificial cramming in 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 55 
 
 the world w^ll ultimately break down before her. The 
 interest and the love that always go hand in hand with 
 freedom, will do infinitely more to help on the cause of real 
 knowledge, than the most perfect universal coercion system 
 that official cunning can contrive ; for the latter at best but 
 turns knowledge into a task, and thus leaves it as devoid of 
 soul and reality as the mechanical ritual of a State 
 compelled hypocrisy. The only ends of compulsion in 
 matters educational will be pedantry, monotony, uniformity, 
 hatred of natural spontaniety, and contempt of all real self- 
 acquired knowledge. " That the whole or any part of the 
 education of the people," says JOHN STUART MILL, "should 
 be in the hands of the State, I go as far as anyone in 
 deprecating. All that has been said of the importance of 
 individuality of character, and diversity in opinions and modes 
 of conduct, involves, as of the same unspeakable importance, 
 diversity of education. A general State education is a mere 
 contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one 
 another : and as the mould in which it casts them is that 
 which pleases the predominant power in the government, 
 whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or a 
 majority of the existing generation, in proportion as it is 
 efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the 
 mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body." 
 
 The reply made to all this, is, that the child is too young 
 to judge for itself ?* Even the most elementary instruction 
 
 * Useful and instructive though good reading may be, it is yet only 
 one mode of cultivating the mind : and is much less influential than 
 practical experience and good example in the formation of character. 
 There were wise, valiant, and true-hearted men bred in England long 
 before the existence of a reading public. Magna Charta was secured 
 by men who signed ihe deed with iheir marks. Though altogether 
 unskilled in deciphering the literary signs by which principles were 
 denominated upon paper, they yet understood and appreciated, and 
 boldly contended for the things themselves. Thus the foundations of 
 English liberty were laid by men who though illiterate, were neverthe- 
 less of the very highest stamp of character Many of our 
 
56 The Natiiral Right to Freedom. 
 
 is useless to many, and the vast majority of occupations in 
 no way require it. Indeed, in the vast majority of cases, the 
 State cramming system only unfits the children of the work- 
 ing class, for those more laborious occupations to which they 
 are both by nature and heredity specially fitted. If it pro- 
 vided them with something better, there might be some 
 excuse for its existence. But this is beyond its power ; for 
 it cannot alter the laws of supply and demand. All it can 
 do is to stock the labour market with physically and 
 mentally broken down wasters, who are fit neither for thought 
 or action. The practical politician is a very practical person. 
 He does all the harm he possibly can, and then cries out for 
 power to do more harm. What he has done for education 
 the public will some day have their eyes opened to see. 
 
 But who are best able to judge what kind of training a 
 child most needs? or whether it is or is not naturally 
 fitted for book learning ? An official bureau acting from a 
 remote centre, or those persons directly interested and 
 related, who can act on the spot, are able to " temper the 
 wind to the shorn lamb," and who are specially fitted both 
 by experience, relationship, and heredity to ascertain what 
 each particular child is specially adapted to do ?* 
 
 most energetic and useful workers have been but sparing readers. 
 BRINDLEY and STEPHENSON did not learn to read and write until they 
 reached manhood, and yet they did great works and lived manly lives ; 
 JOHN HUNTER could barely read or write when he was 20 years old, 
 though he could make tables and chairs with any carpenter in the trade. 
 " I never read," said the great physiologist, when lecturing before his 
 class ; "this" (pointing to some part of the subject before him) "this 
 is the work that you must study if you wish to become eminent in your 
 profession." When told that one of his contemporaries had charged 
 him with being ignorant of the read languages, he said, " I would 
 undertake to teach him that on the dead body which he never knew in 
 any language, dead or living." Self Help, by S. SMILES, page 273. 
 
 * In the same way that legal enactments and customs have 
 authority in States, so also the words of a father and customs have 
 authority in private families ; and still greater authority on account of 
 the relationship, and the benefits conferred : for children have a natural 
 
7/ie Natural Right to Freedom. 57 
 
 The whole system of State parenthood is suicidal. For 
 logically carried out it means that children shall be regulated 
 by a nation, or rather by a majority of people who 
 individually have had no experience of parenthood, and who 
 consequently are totally incapacitated for their duties. Every- 
 body doing the duties of each in this matter of training 
 children, means that each shall shirk his own duties ; and 
 therefore that each separate unit of the State shall be with- 
 out any personal experience of what these duties are. 
 Everybody under this system is trying to shove his duties 
 on to everybody else, and the result will be well those who 
 come later will see what it will be. 
 
 The position of individualism on this point is perfectly 
 clear. Let education alone. It is better that a continually ' 
 diminishing number of children should go uneducated, than 
 that the State should usurp the natural and morally- 
 disriplining functions of parents, that it should first begin to 
 teach, then to feed and clothe, and then to lodge the 
 children of the middle and working classes. Ignorance is a | 
 trifle by the side of State communism. But under greater 
 freedom the advantages of education would become manifest 
 (just as the advantages of religion do), and when needed 
 would be practically adopted. The principal of the survival 
 of the fittest might be safely left to take care of this. We 
 must remember that in the last resort, it is not we who 
 decide what is fittest, and what shall survive ; but nature 
 herself: and she can weigh up communes and States as 
 easily as atoms and stars. We are strong only in obedience 
 
 affection for their parents, and are naturally disposed to obey. More- 
 over private education differs from public ; as in the case cf medicine ; 
 for universally abstinence and rest are good for a man in a fever ; but to 
 a particular individual perhaps they are not ; and the pugilist perhaps 
 does not use the same style of fighting with all. It would seem then 
 that the case of the individual mighc be studied with greater accuracy if 
 the education was private, for then each is more likely to meet with what 
 suits him. ARISTOTLE, ETH. 10, ix. 
 
58 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 to her laws. Our legislative defiance of these laws will only 
 lead us to national death. The final judge of efficiency and 
 inefficiency is not a loutish duty-shirking democracy : it is 
 an unvarying cosmic process, which takes no cognizance of 
 the shouts and screams of passion-driven multitudes, and 
 which will eventually sweep all the circumventions of these 
 cunning political knaves into the well merited limbs of 
 oblivion. Natural law is just the one fact that the politician 
 never reckons with ; and it is this fact that will throw him 
 at last. 
 
 One point on which Mr. Ritchie very strongly insists is 
 the impossibility of drawing a hard and fast line between 
 social and self-regarding conduct. He is perfectly right. 
 There are few, if any, actions that affect only the agent. 
 No doubt to disparage his book very seriously affects Mr. 
 Ritchie ; and the fact that he wrote the book must 
 very seriously affect those who are foolish enough to 
 imagine that the cause of liberty can be in the least 
 degree damaged by it. The religious people were once 
 very seriously affected by arguments they could only 
 refute with chains and faggots. And why not ? Whatever 
 you do that displeases me, that I disbelieve in and 
 think wrong (and of course if I think a thing wrong it is 
 .wrong) very seriously affects me : and whatever I do on the 
 same terms very seriously affects you. The religious people 
 had a rather neat way of putting this undeniable truth. 
 They used to say that if a man only damned himself, it 
 would not much matter, but unfortunately, he had such a 
 sociable knack of damning others, or at least of persuading 
 others to damn themselves. Such damnable conduct could 
 not be tolerated, any more than the social conduct of which 
 Mr. Ritchie disapproves can be allowed ; and the religious 
 people did their level best to stop it, just as Mr. Ritchie 
 and his friends will do what they can to stop what they don't 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom, 59 
 
 agree with : they (the religious people) failed ; religious 
 heresy proved too strong for them; and Mr. Ritchie and his 
 friends will also fail : social heresy will prove too strong for 
 them. For 
 
 " Freedom's battle once begun 
 
 Though baffled oft is ever won." 
 
 Dear me ! the social effect of conduct : where does it stop? 
 Take one extremely simple but important instance. If you 
 wear no collar you outrage society. If you wear three collars 
 you outrage society. What is there you can do or abstain 
 from doing that does not hurt somebody ? True, you may 
 only hurt their feelings ; but then feelings are the only, and 
 the tenderest, and therefore the most important things, most 
 people have got. You won't hurt men of sense ? Granted. 
 But then men of sense are in too small a minority to 
 constitute a State ; and when they are numerous enough to 
 do this, you will have been long ago dead and buried. 
 For you must remember that society in relation to you 
 simply means "everybody else," and if you don't live to 
 please this motley collective creature, naturally it will attempt 
 to make you do so. Mr. Ritchie comes forward to back it 
 up in the good work : or at least he would do so if it did 
 what he wants it to do : but if it did otherwise well, he 
 would begin to entertain some doubts about its infallibility. 
 Power is only legitimate when it coerces in our way, and 
 rams our excellent ideas down the throats of the people. 
 When it takes to thrusting the wrong ideas of others down our 
 throats, it is illegitimate, unjust, tyrannical, inexpedient, and 
 therefore cannot be abolished to soon. 
 
 There is no end to the regulation that might be started in the 
 name of other people's (societies) interest. Think of the 
 number of laws that could be passed on the plea of protecting 
 posterity. In the first place there would be the need of pro- 
 tection from the disastrous and far-reaching effects of bad logic. 
 
60 The Natural Right to Freedom 
 
 This would mean the suppression of all socialistic literature, for 
 a start. Volumes might be written to show how necessary this 
 measure is ; how bad logic injures, not merely the externals 
 of life, but the very centre, the very heart and core, the 
 supreme directing agency on whose purity and strength the 
 whole business of life rests. Then there is the injury done 
 to future generations by the drinking of fermented liquors. 
 For even if you drink little, you lay the seed of a habit 
 which may sprout in the drunkenness of the next generation. 
 "If I get drunk," says Mr. Leslie Stephen, "my son has the 
 2[out." "Then stop the tap," chorus Sir Wilfred Lawson 
 and the whole of his fanatical crew. This is your social 
 despotism all over. Has my neighbour a habit that won't 
 square with my notions of fitness ? Then fine him ! 
 imprison him ! bully him into some semblance of right 
 behaviour ! Don't trust to the spontaneous growth of 
 individual reason, or to nature's steady illimination of the 
 unfit. These methods are too slow. Humanity must be 
 made perfect immediately. Force is the true remedy, and 
 my party the only one that knows how to wield it. 
 
 This is the method of sentimentalism, of the mental blind- 
 ness which cannot see that moral evils tend to cure them- 
 selves. This is the pity which is ten thousand times more 
 cruel than the reason 'that it affects to despise. In a village 
 not far from here dwells a man who only lives to starve him- 
 self to death. He wants to pass through what EPICTETUS 
 poetically calls "the open door " before nature gives him the 
 signal. His friends object and provide a keeper to retain 
 him. This keeper will frequently spend hours in patiently 
 bullying him to eat. The man is a misery to himself and 
 to all around him. But it would be cruel to allow him to 
 follow what appears to him to be to his own interest ! He 
 must be forcibly retained in a world that he is not adapted 
 to live in. This is a fair sample of the wisdom of 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom 61 
 
 sentimentalism, of that busybodying spirit which presumes 
 to take the universe under its charge. How much truer 
 and more just is the healthy common-sense so well expressed 
 by KENT in the last scene of King Lear. 
 O let him pass ! he hates him, 
 That would rpon the rack of this tough world 
 Stretch him out longer. 
 
 Apply the foregoing to the case of a great drunkard. 
 Sentimentalism is now agitating for public asylums, supported 
 out of the rates, for the cure of "poor inebriates." Here is 
 a young man who is rapidly drinking himself to death. 
 " What a pity," says sentimentalism, "cannot something be 
 done for him ? " As a matter of fact something is being 
 done for him, and the best that can be done under the 
 circumstances. He is rushing (or lushing) himself out of a 
 world in which he is not adapted to live. Nothing could be 
 better.* Moreover, he is a self-made helot, a standing 
 example against the evil to which he is succumbing. "This 
 won't do," says sentimentalism, "he must be stopped at this 
 game ; science must take care of him ; sober people must 
 be taxed to prop up this morally rotten pillar, this encum- 
 brance which, if left to itself, will speedily carry itself off." 
 So he is forcibly thrust into an asylum, where he is gently 
 treated ; that is to say, where he is messed and fiddled about 
 for a time, and then returned "cured." Yes, cured indeed; 
 but his spirit is gone. Before, he was a dying man ; now, 
 he is a living baby ; watched continually, and always 
 suspected of being liable at any moment to again fall into 
 the same habit. And, if ever he marries, he transmits this 
 slavish, broken spirit to posterity. Is it worth while taxing 
 
 This excludes no sort of voluntary help, or, what is better still, 
 voluntary example. But it allows sufficient play for the illumination of 
 the unfit : a most necessary process, and one that has to be artificially 
 supplied when the State undertakes to look after everything. For 
 example, in socialistic Sparta it was found necessary to inspect every- 
 body, and to snuff out those that were thought to be unfit. 
 
62 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 the sober and self-reliant in order "to keep this weak and 
 morally bankrupt type artificially on the go ? 
 
 To logically carry out Mr. Ritchie's doctrine of social 
 influence, we must stop people from doing anything. For 
 whatever they do will be done imperfectly, and will more or 
 less injure present or future generations. Even Mr. Ritchie 
 would hardly go to this length. He would say that to some 
 extent we must permit human folly and take the risks. But 
 by what rule are we to measure this extent ? Is it to be 
 legal to chew twist, and illegal to drink beer ? Is political 
 gambling to be permitted, and usury suppressed by Act of 
 Parliament? Is Protestantism to be "the thing," and 
 Catholicism " not wanted ? " Mr. Ritchie supplies no rule 
 whatever. He never attempts to supply any. Yet the more 
 this sort of regulation is indulged in, the more needful does 
 some rule become. He prefers the happy-go-lucky method 
 of tinkering here and patching there, getting everything into 
 a hopeless tangle, and then crying out for more grand- 
 motherly legislation to set matters stn tight. He fails to see 
 that this is a game at which two can play ; that if the 
 teetotalers coerce the drinkers to-day, the drinkers may turn 
 the tables on the teetotalers to-morrow ; and that where 
 there is no respect for the principle of liberty, one set of 
 fools have as much right as another, to act the part of petty 
 despot, and ride the high horse over everybody. 
 
 The doctrine of liberty has its difficulties, but it is, at any 
 rate, more definite and precise than Socialism. It says : 
 " Stop, where possible, overt interferences, and deal Avith 
 frauds and contract-breakings in proportion as they approx- 
 imate towards the character of overt interferences. This 
 rule is not infallible, and, like everything human, its carrying 
 out is beset with difficulties. But, if roughly observed, it 
 will at least keep a country clear of that miserable condition 
 of things where each fool, as his turn comes round, attempts 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 63 
 
 to force all his special fads and crotchets upon everybody ; 
 where you, together with all other citizens, are my collective 
 master, while I, together with all other citizens, conspire to 
 make a slave of you : in a word, where each individual man 
 is a perfect slave, minus the millionth part of mastership he 
 is able to exercise through the ballot. The experience of 
 all ages teaches us to leave men's vices and follies to punish 
 themselves. Springing as they do from moral causes which 
 force cannot touch, it follows that all our legislative attempts 
 to destroy them are only so much time and trouble to the 
 bad ; time and trouble that might be better used in furthering 
 the really needful and defensive work of government. Nature, 
 as exemplified in that law of mental consistency, which, for 
 want of a clearer term, we call the moral law, gets at these 
 vices and follies much better than we can. She alone reaches 
 down to the conscience, the centre from which all the 
 government of life proceeds, and strengthens it with a real 
 knowledge of the tremendous issues of conduct. She works 
 both within and without, and moulds the soul as easily as the 
 body. But our legislative machinery only touches the mere 
 externals of life : the soul, the moral part, that which alone 
 gives value and direction to all the rest, this machinery leaves 
 unaffected, except for the worse ; inasmuch as the force it 
 involves augments the hatred which the coerced man 
 naturally feels towards those who attempt to coerce him. 
 
 It is of course quite true that freedom by itself, and apart 
 from moral effort, cannot make humanity perfect. Nobody 
 ever urged that it could. What the believers in individualism 
 do urge, is, that all the good there is in men has grown out 
 of the right use of freedom. Liberty is not exactly well- 
 being, but it is an indispensible condition of well-being. 
 And the evils attendant upon freedom are, on the whole, far 
 less than those accompanying tyranny. It is better for me 
 to run the risk of my neighbour's want of cleanliness than 
 
64 'I he Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 attempt to wash and comb him down regularly every morning. 
 It is better to put up with his ignorance than destroy his love 
 of knowledge by cramming books down his throat. I would 
 rather read Mr. Ritchie's bad arguments than compel him to 
 learn logic. In short, in a free country, if a man has not 
 sufficient sense to be anything else, he has a perfect right to 
 be a fool. It is not worth while trying to regulate everybody 
 because so many exercise this right. The game isn't worth 
 the candle ; we lose more than we gain by attempting to 
 restrict such a right ; and assuredly our Socialist reformers 
 ought to be the last people in the world to menace it. 
 
 Mr. Ritchie tries to get MILL into a corner by bringing 
 forward a very frivolous argument. MILL urged that "liberty 
 consists in doing what one desires." This, rejoins Mr. 
 Ritchie, is only a negative definition. " If you see a man 
 stepping on a bridge which you know to be unsafe, you feel 
 justified in seizing and holding him back. . . ." " But," 
 says MILT,, " Liberty consisted in doing what one desires ; 
 and the man does not desire to fall into the river." Possibly 
 not. But it by no means follows that he does not prefer to 
 take the risks, in preference to being "seized and held" by 
 Mr. Ritchie. At any rate, there are men who prefer this. 
 Those who believe in liberty must take these risks ; unless 
 they prefer a State appointed Ritchie following them about 
 everywhere, in order to safeguard them against the possible 
 risks of freedom. Not a bad illustration, this, of what 
 Socialism is ; of what it will be when every man is every 
 other man's jailor. The argument applies all round. When, 
 for example, Mr. Ritchie was just about to publish his book 
 on State interference, some official personage might have 
 come along saying, " My dear sir, this book won't sell : it's 
 not what the public want : they prefer Ally Sloper and the 
 penny novelette. I cannot therefore allow you to fall into 
 the river of economic ruin, My conscience and the State's 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 65 
 
 love for you won't let me quietly stand by and see you run 
 such terrible risks. This MSS must be ' seized and held ' 
 until the refined tastes of the majority learn to appreciate it." 
 All that Mr. Ritchie and his friends are warranted in doing, 
 consists in warning a man of the danger he runs, and if he 
 still persists in risking that danger, the strongest possible 
 evidence is afforded that running risks is doing "as he 
 desires." There is no accounting for tastes. The game of 
 seizing and keeping a would-be suicide is more expensive 
 than it is worth. The world is best rid of such people, 
 Though, in point of fact, a man may run risks without being 
 a suicide. Just fancy Mr. Ritchie "seizing" and "holding" 
 Blondin from his walk over Niagara, saying in the sweetest 
 possible accents, " My most worthy sir, liberty consists in 
 in doing what you desire. Like myself you desire to run no 
 risks." We can imagine how Blondin might turn round and 
 say "You wretched busybody, I am willing to run any 
 amount of risks rather than be placed at the tender mercies 
 of you and your despotic crew. I did not come into this 
 world to dance at the end of your official string. Because 
 you live in a state of chronic funk, is life for me to be with- 
 out danger and excitement? Out of my daylight, and go 
 bury yourself in your socialistic feather bed ! Go ; be looked 
 after ; or look after somebody else ! This world was made 
 for the fearless and the free, and to them it will belong when 
 poltroons are no more." 
 
66 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 MR. Ritchie is not content with bad reasoning: he 
 indulges in still worse superstition. The latter 
 shall now be examined. 
 
 Nearly all men worship a fetish of one kind or another, a 
 special, local, limited pet mumbo jumbo, that never was and 
 never will be outside the imaginations of its purblind votaries. 
 There is the Paleyian teleologist with his convenient deus ex 
 machina, that fits and squares with anything, and " alters as 
 it alteration finds." There is the more advanced theist with 
 his infinite personality, his metaphysical round square and 
 square circle ; for such in truth is all that it amounts to. 
 There is the devout Catholic with his infallible Pope. 
 There is the Positivist with his abstract Humanity, the 
 "Virgin Mother" as Mr. Congreave prefers to call it. 
 There is the Spiritualist with his unlimited supply of highly 
 probable ghosts. There is the Theosophist with his 
 constantly re-incarnated Mahatmas. And, finally, there is 
 the State Socialist with his worship of the abstract State, the 
 the gracious dispenser of favours, the supreme and infallible 
 source of all power and all wisdom ; in a word, the only God 
 there is or ever will be. It is true that socialists like Mr. B. 
 Shaw have discovered that there is no God,* but their 
 
 I deny that God exists, that Reason is a motor, and that Duty, 
 Self-Sacrifice and Discipline are abstractly any better than Self- 
 Assertion and Insubordination. Free Life, October 31*1, 1890, 
 page 65. 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 67 
 
 investigations have never been carried so far as to undermine 
 the divinity and prestige of the organized crowd, the State 
 par excellence. The abstract man is ungodable : this 
 multiplied duplicate of your noble self, was before the 
 worlds were, and as a God he will remain when they have 
 ceased to be. In his corporate capacity, he is the source of 
 all natural law, the maker and unmaker of every natural 
 power : he is limited and conditioned by nothing stronger 
 than himself : at his nod all the possesses of nature stop ; 
 the course of evolution turns back ; and when he wills it, a 
 new universe suddenly comes into being. In short, in his 
 collective aspect he is the embodiment of infinite wisdom 
 and infinite strength. And when we look around on our 
 noble fellow mortals, when we carefully mark all their inex- 
 
 Self-Assertion and Insubordination are vague : so is Self-Sacrifice. 
 As for Reason, it is rather a guide than a motor, a balancing of life's 
 forces in such a manner that they harmonize with the rationally inter- 
 preted process of things, on the basis of seeking one's own true self- 
 interest. This alone is virtue. Take an instance. You would avoid 
 drinking adulterated spirit, if your reason told you that you would be 
 injured by so doing. In other words, your desire for the stuff would be 
 outbalanced by the still greater desire for calm harmonious working 
 with the process of things. And so with all other vices. This is all 
 that is meant by virtue or obedience to the dictates of right reason. 
 Who disobeys is a fool ; for he does worse than deny the highest (call it 
 what you please) : he soils and degrades himself, and fouls the purity of 
 his own most high and intellectual nature. Says EPICTETUS, "But thou 
 art a supreme object, thou art a piece of God, thou hast in thee something 
 that is a portion of Him. Why, then, art thou ignorant of thy high 
 ancestry ? Why knowest thou not whence thou earnest ? Wilt thou not 
 remember, in thine eating, who it is that eats, and whom thou dost 
 nourish ? in cohabiting, who it is that cohabits? in converse, in exercise, 
 in argument, knowest thou not that thou art nourishing a God, exercising 
 a God? Unhappy man ! thou bearest about with thee a God, and 
 knowest it not ! Thinkest thou I speak of some God of gold and silver, 
 and external to thee ? Nay, but in thyself thou dost bear him. and seest 
 not that thou defilest him with thine impure thoughts and filthy deeds. 
 In the presence even of an image of God thou hadst not dared to do one 
 of those things which thou dost. But in the presence of God himself 
 within thee, who seeth and heareth all things, thou art not ashamed of 
 the things thou dost both desire and do, O thou unwitting of thine own 
 nature, and subject to the wrath of God !" 
 
68 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 pressible perfections, we are forced in common honesty to 
 admit this truth. There is no doubt about it, Humanity is 
 the supreme being : and in virtue of its honour, truthfulness, 
 toleration, charity, disinterestedness, and noble love of 
 justice. 
 
 One of the sincerest converts to this great religion is Mr. 
 Ritchie. According to him the individual is nothing : the 
 individuals, everything. He builds up his huge collective 
 God by adding together a sufficient nnmber of nothings, and 
 then (as is most fit) begins to speak of the product with 
 bated breath. His arguments shall now be examined. On 
 page 1 1 of The Principles of State Interference he says : 
 "The individual is thought of, at least spoken of, as if he 
 had a meaning and significance apart from his surroundings, 
 and apart from the community of which he is a member. 
 [His relation to his surroundings is not and cannot be denied. 
 But the " community " is a mere drop in the ocean of these 
 surroundings. The individual lives and works with the 
 strength of the sun and stars, aye, and of what is infinitely 
 more than these. A member ! What is the "community ' 
 itself but a little screaming, fretting member of the infinite?] 
 // may be quite true that the significance of the individual is 
 not exhausted by his relations to any given set of surroundings ; 
 but apart from all of these [here " all " and the little herd 
 called the " community " are cleverly lumped togeiher, as 
 will be seen from the following words] he is a mere 
 abstraction a logical ghost, a metaphysical spectre, which 
 haunts the habitations of those who have derided meta- 
 physics. The individual, apart from all relations to a 
 community, is a negation. You can say nothing about him, 
 or rather it, except that it is not any other individual." 
 
 Well, if we happened to be this " individual," we think we 
 could say a good deal ; or if we did not say it we could think 
 it. When we hear these superstitious people trying to 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 69 
 
 explain away "the individual," we simply laugh ; for we know 
 that such self-effacing philosophers cannot, and never wijl, 
 explain this fact away. The reader may perhaps say we 
 ought not to call them hard names. Perhaps not, but at 
 present we are unable to think of any more exact descriptions, 
 and, after all, truth is largely an affair of naming. If we can 
 say what is correct we are content, and as for politeness- 
 well, we leave that for polite people. It is one of those sweet 
 sociable habits we could never learn. 
 
 Now, on comparing the two sentences that are printed in 
 italics, it will be at once seen that the first sentence admits the 
 possible inaccuracy of the second. It is true that this 
 admission is veiled as much as possible. And no wonder 
 too ! For the man who tells his reader that he (the reader) 
 has no meaning apart from the community, asserts what each 
 individual knows to be false on the strength of his own 
 personal experience. If every man, woman, and child in the 
 world died to-morrow and left you to live alone, you would 
 still have a meaning and a relation to your natural environ- 
 ment, and so, under the same circumstances, would your 
 neighbour, and so would Mr. Ritchie, and so would any man. 
 The man who tells me that I am a metaphysical ghost, apart 
 from him and the rest of the crowd, either says what he 
 knows to be a deliberate lie, or fails to grasp the simplest 
 elements of reasoning. If he says that he himself is a ghost, 
 or that the crowd is a collection of ghosts, I shall not 
 presume to contradict him. They may all be ghosts for 
 anything I know, or care, or can demonstrate to the contrary ; 
 and if, like ghosts, they all vanished this moment, they could 
 not take the world away with them : the sun will still rise and 
 set, the grass and flowers would grow, the everlasting stars 
 would still look down ; still would remain the air and the 
 light ; and the unit could live out his natural term in harmony 
 with that infinite existence, that universal order, whose laws 
 
jo The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 he is here to obey ; and which was before the jarring discord 
 of human voices broke its silence, and will remain when 
 human voices are as silent as itself. If " Society " is great, 
 Nature is greater ; and he who knows himself to belong to 
 her, who lives to see and obey her laws, could be strong, 
 self-reliant, and happy, though all the cunning knaves and 
 babbling fools of this world should one fine morning sink 
 into eternal dust, and leave him to inhabit time and liberty 
 alone. This is as certain as that twice 2 are 4. It utterly 
 disposes of all the shallow lies about the necessary dependence 
 of the unit upon the crowd. The laugh is always against the 
 Socialist, for no man with an ounce of spirit in his nature 
 cares a toss either for him or his crowd. The best reply to 
 this fussy person's nonsense about " Society " is to point him 
 to the universe, and tell him and his crowd to go to the deuce: 
 that they are quite as much in your road as you are in theirs, 
 and that you can do just as well without them as they can do 
 without you. The real strength of the individual is the truth 
 he sees, not the vain chattering of the foolish crowd ; and 
 this truth remains so long as he remains ; totally unaffected 
 by the coming and going of the outside units that make up 
 what is called " Society " : fixed and sure to the last second 
 of this mortal life. The unit will make a sorry exchange, 
 when he gives away this real and unshakable piety, for the 
 State Socialist's puerile unhealthy social-god worship. His 
 only good is within himself, and, if he finds it not there, 
 nothing outside can give it to him. 
 
 What poor transparent twaddle it is, this stuff about the 
 "community." The very existence of the thief and the 
 murderer in our midst, proves how much social membership 
 is necessarily involved in individual existence. Facts speak 
 louder than theories. What sort of a " member " is that un- 
 sentimental gentleman who contrives machines for blowing 
 up holy Czars and uncorrupt Houses of Parliament ? That 
 
The Natmal Right to Freedom, 71 
 
 is a strange hand which knocks off its own head. The 
 truth is, no man need belong to any human association 
 unless he sees it is to his interest to do so. And the more 
 you restrict his freedom, the less will he be likely to find his 
 interest inside your association. Whatever healthy human 
 association there is, is not a physical fact, or a social fact, but 
 a moral fact ; and it rests entirely upon that respect for 
 individual freedom which permits men to freely associate 
 together and work in rational harmony with one another. 
 If you tell a man that he must do some particular thing 
 because he is a "member" of your social body, he will 
 quickly tell you tint there are two things necessary to this 
 kind of "membership," namely, your consent and his 
 consent^ and that the membership cannot truthfully exist 
 until you have obtained the latter. You may say it exists, 
 but he will know you to be either a fool or a liar, and in the 
 long run you will be made to know that socialistic humbug 
 does not pay even in politics. 
 
 " Membership " indeed ! The nearest approach made to 
 this in human affairs is the relation of an unborn child to its 
 mother, and even this is not a membership of " society/ 
 but only of a single and perfectly distinct individual, who 
 may (or may not) live at the time in what is called "society": 
 that is, in the same " State " or in the same town as other 
 single and distinct individuals. And even this narrow and 
 non-social membership is broken at birth. The very act of 
 birth is a clear and distinct liberation from all real member- 
 ship, except the unbreakable and universal membership of 
 nature, and is a launching forth of each human creature into 
 the realm of choice, where each one can either work with 
 others, go into the wilds, or into the silence ; or make it as 
 hot as hell for those who attempt to compel " membership " 
 of a " community " by violating the consent and trampling 
 upon the rights of individuals. 
 
72 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 Let us take a concrete case, and assume for argument's 
 sake that A was a member of a community before he was 
 actually separated at birth from B, who was a member of a 
 community before she was separated from C, who was a 
 member of a community before she was separated from D, 
 and so on to infinity. Now when do we arrive at real, and 
 not hocus pocus membership. For if B was separate when 
 A was born, and if C was separate when B was born (and so 
 on to infinity) how can there ever have been any actual 
 membership at all ? We may rest assured there never was, 
 and, what is more, there never will be. The unit is a distinct 
 and independent creature, so far, at least, as other people are 
 concerned. His only object of membership is the infinite 
 impersonal reality in which he lives and moves and has his 
 being. He is one with no outside herd, but only with the 
 indwelling light, whose strength no man and no crowd shall 
 ever break. Even if you put him in a cage, he is still distinct 
 from others, both in his thoughts and actions. All this 
 nonsense about " membership " of a community is simply a 
 lot of bamboozling metaphor and shallow lying. Of course, 
 as the socialist bully is never tired of throwing in the face of 
 his opponent, each individual has the whole social world 
 against him. He knows this if he knows anything. He 
 knows also that the world can and does do its level best to 
 snuff him out. Well, his business is to defend himself. He 
 may as well be killed for a sheep as a lamb. He has only a 
 short time to stand fire. Let him cast all sentiment in the 
 teeth of the hypocrisy that seeks to play upon it. Let him 
 make a virtue of necessity, take the odds, and go out with 
 his face towards the foe. The world can always get rid of 
 the unit : what a poor insignificant mite the single individual 
 is ! but there is one thing the world can never do : it can 
 never get rid of the courage which defies the world, and 
 works on through all things for the perfect liberty that yet 
 
7 he Natural Right to Freedom. 73 
 
 shall be. There is at work in this infinite universe, a force, 
 a power, a spirit, call it what you will, that cannot allow the 
 monstrous tyranny of socialism to flourish. Under many 
 forms and names has that tyranny sought to get itself fairly 
 established. Biiu, in the long run, it has always been broken, 
 and it will be broken to the end of time. It is a mean 
 cowardly lie, an attempt to cheat each man out of his birth- 
 right, and the universe is so constructed that no lie can 
 permanently succeed. 
 
 As an instance of the separateness of the individual and 
 the State, take this anecdote : Helvidius Priscus, a Roman 
 senator and a Stoic philosopher, was commanded by the 
 Emperor Vespasian not to go into the Senate. He replied 
 " It is in your power not to allow me to be a member of the 
 Senate, but so long as I am, I must go in." Said the 
 Emperor, "Go in, but say nothing." Said Helvidius, 
 " Do not ask my opinion, and I will be silent." Said 
 Vespasian, " But I must ask your opinion." Said Helvidius, 
 "And I must say what I think right." "But if you do, I 
 shall put you to death." "When did I tell you that I am 
 immortal. You will do your part, and I will do mine : it is 
 your part to kill ; it is mine to die, but not in fear. Yours 
 to banish me ; mine to depart without sorrow." 
 
 In what relation, then, does an ordinary individual stand 
 towards those other individuals who, taken together, are 
 called the general community ? In the relation of an 
 exchanger. Exchange makes the only difference between 
 the citizen and the thief, between the man who respects 
 individual consent and the man who violates individual 
 consent ; in a word, between the State Socialist and the 
 defender of liberty and property. The Socialist does not 
 believe in quid pro quo. It is too sociable to agree with him. 
 For, curiously enough, the man who talks most about social 
 " membership," is precisely the man who is least worthy to 
 
74 The Natural Right to Freedom 
 
 be a " member." Of all unsocial people, he is most unsocial 
 who violates the consent of his fellow-man. The Socialist, 
 like the thief and the taxgather, is simply a person who tries 
 to " socialise " what he wants, without stopping to obtain the 
 consent of those to whom it belongs, and who have worked 
 to acquire it. The ordinary citizen does stop to obtain this 
 consent. The latter produces something that he does not 
 want (or gives the time and labour that he would sooner part 
 with than starve) in exchange for something that he does 
 want. This is the only normal human relationship for adult 
 human beings, for those who prefer manhood to babyhood. 
 Civilised man is an exchanging animal, a respecter of that 
 personal consent on which all exchange depends. The 
 savage, like the Socialist and the tax-gatherer, is not an 
 exchanging animal : he is a sort of land pirate who goes out 
 and collars what he wants : thinking, no doubt, that he is 
 justly entitled to all he can get, either by hook or by crook. 
 The difference, then, between savagery and civilization, and 
 between socialism and liberty, is simply this fact of exchange, 
 this respect for personal consent and private property. 
 Consent is the very essence of civilization. Hence it is the 
 business of government, acting on behalf of all, to see that the 
 consent of each individual citizen as regards the disposal of 
 his actions and of his property, shall be carefully respected 
 by all other citizens, in order that each may exchange what 
 he does not want for what he does want. This healthy and 
 unsentimental process of industrial exchange is the only real 
 and lasting social life. Puling Socialists come and disappear, 
 but this shall go on for ever. Nothing can be conceived to 
 be higher. Business, as such, is the noblest and purest form 
 of social intercourse. Compared with this bracing discipline, 
 all other social relations are little better than namby-pamhy 
 tea meetings, where old women whine and groan over every- 
 thing. You, for example, exchange so much money that 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 75 
 
 you don't need for more important purposes (such as betting 
 and ballet girls for example) in order to obtain this book : 
 I exchange so many words that I don't need, for this money. 
 Is it not awfully mean ? Yet it is true. And what is equally 
 true, is, that this kind of exchange is a type of all real 
 sociability. Of course, the world affects to despise it ; but 
 then what is there that the world does not affect ? The vices 
 of the world are sometimes the virtues of sensible men. 
 Nature has endowed each man with certain needs, and, in a 
 civilized community, exchange is the only fair way of meeting 
 these needs. Business does you good, my canting denouncer 
 of commercialism ; it stops your childish whine, makes you 
 keep your eyes open, lest you should be cheated ; and 
 effectually knocks all the silly sentimentalism out of your 
 maudlin soul. There is nothing, my dear communist, like 
 business, and minding your own business. Exchange is the 
 noblest thing in life, nobler even than socialization. This 
 capitalist, for instance, exchanges so much capital for so 
 much work : this labourer so much work for so much capital. 
 The former would rather have the work than the capital : 
 the latter would rather have the capital than the luxury of 
 walking about with his hands in his pockets. Of course, 
 both seek to reap some direct or indirect advantage from the 
 exchange. Is it not mean of them ? But what that 
 advantage is, is their business and not ours. Ours is to mind 
 our own business. This consent-respecting and exchanging 
 process is the basis of civilization ; and the only normal duty 
 of government is to see that neither the Socialistic thief nor 
 the thieving Socialist shall in any degree impare or destroy 
 it. Business, my poor puling sentimentalist : that alone is 
 sociability and true sociableness : all the rest is a nauseous 
 mass of cant, and lies, and flattery, and mutual admiration. 
 C,o and read this to your " comrades " : they will enjoy it : 
 they love plain truth, and plain unsentimental speaking. 
 
7 6 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 But to continue our argument about the unit and the 
 community. Into what a bog does the contention of the 
 State socialist lands him. For if each individual is a nega- 
 tion when considered apart from his fellows, it is strange that 
 one individual negation should write a book for other 
 individual negations to read ; in order to convince them 
 that both writers and readers, considered apart from the 
 community, and in their relation to nature as a ivhole, are 
 mere spectres and phantoms, metaphysical ghosts, non- 
 entities, dreams, nothings. What a plight this leaves the 
 poor State in ; for what solidity can that structure contain 
 which is built up of mere ghosts and nonentities ? No 
 doubt, as the socialist says, a house is something more than 
 a haphazard collection of stones : it is a particular arrange- 
 ment of that collection. But if the stones in question were 
 individually only so many abstractions, if they had no 
 reality in relation to nature as a whole, the structure they 
 were formed into would be somewhat unreal. And the 
 same reasoning applies with equal force to the State. If we 
 as separate units had no reality in relation to the universal 
 order, if \ve did not ultimately draw all our strength and 
 reality from thence, if we could not continue to draw that 
 strength and that reality though all men save ourselves 
 vanished into thin air, the State in which we may (or may 
 not) form a part would be a very unsubstantial affair. It 
 would be a State woven out of moonbeams, misty and unreal 
 a s the ghosts that composed it. No, no, my socialist fetish- 
 worshipper, the State is not a deity, and no amount of bad 
 reasoning can ever transform it into one. It draws its 
 strength and reality from that universal order from which 
 you and I draw . our strength and reality. If it were 
 abolished to-morrow, this eternal fountain of all life would 
 not be abolished with it ; and you and I could still live, 
 though the State perished. Can the State pull down the 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 77 
 
 sky ? Can it alter a single law of nature ? It cannot. It 
 is but an atom in the infinite, a momentary whisper in the 
 everlasting silence. The socialist is not logical. The out- 
 come of his premise about the unreality of the unit, is not 
 the exaltation of the State into a deity, but rather the deep 
 philosophy of PROSPERO. 
 
 Our revels now are ended. These our actors, 
 As I foretold you, were all spirits, and 
 Are melted intc air, into thin air : 
 And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, 
 The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
 The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
 Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve ; 
 And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 
 Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff 
 As dreams are made of, and our little life 
 Is rounded with a sleep. 
 
 That the reality of the State depends upon the reality of 
 its units may be shown by another example. A country 
 dance is something more than a haphazard collection of 
 dancers : it is a conscious joint action of what may be here 
 turned dance-units. But the reality of the dance depends 
 entirely on the reality of the units in whose conscious action 
 and interaction it consists. If these units were only so many 
 logical ghosts, the dance would be rather a ghostly affair. 
 So with the State. Group-action at least implies groups of 
 realities, not of phantoms. Even a logical ghost implies a 
 logician somewhere. Perhaps Mr. Ritchie will say that the 
 State is the only logician. When we read his arguments we 
 almost feel disposed to believe him. 
 
 Mr. Ritchie has no time to enquire how this most positive 
 and real entity called the State ever managed to get itself 
 into existence. Did it start with a few individual ghosts, 
 and then gradually grow from a few nothings into a crowd of 
 somethings ? No doubt an entire community was let down 
 from the clouds by what Mr. Ritchie calls the " Spirit of the 
 Nation " let down as a beginning, as a fair and definite 
 
78 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 start ; and in order to save the socialist from having to admit 
 that the parts were anticedent to the whole, the individuals 
 prior to the crowd. In most cosmologies one or two 
 individuals come first. But evidently the cosmologies are too 
 individualistic. One or two individual negations could never 
 go on growing until they developed into a positive Stace. 
 Therefore they did not do so. The many are anticedent to 
 to the few, and the " social body " existed before its 
 elements. 
 
 The truth is that Mr. Ritchie gets into his fog by 
 consciously or unconsciously ignoring the distinction between 
 the social environment and the natural environment. In 
 point of fact, the former is but a small fragment of the latter. 
 It is perfectly true, not indeed that we are, but that we have 
 been related to others ; or rather to a few of them. To two 
 individuals we owe our very existence, just as they in their 
 turn owe their existence to two other individuals, these last 
 to two others, and so on, until the little child called 
 " society " is lost and merged in that universal mother which 
 is greater than we, which makes and unmakes States, and 
 ultimately brings destruction upon all the high-blown schemes 
 of lying knaves and time-serving political quacks. But if we 
 are related to the. human ant-hill, how much more are we 
 related to the manifold and infinite reality, whose air 
 provides us with the breath of life, whose sun warms and 
 supplies us with food, the pulse of whose being beats within 
 our breasts, and whose silent and inexorable laws associate 
 us "with a presence that gives fulness and tone to life, but 
 which we can neither analyse nor comprehend"? These 
 facts cinnot be got rid of, whatever theological or anti- 
 theological explanation may be sought to be put upon them. 
 Destroy all individuals save one, and that one is no more 
 reduced to the level of a mere negation than was Alexander 
 Selkirk on his island (when the latter again found himself 
 
.The Natural Right to Freedom. 79 
 
 surrounded with the falseness of "society," he regretted that 
 he had not remained with the reality of his island). The 
 real truth is, the relations of the individual are not by any 
 means exhausted by his voluntary connection with his 
 fellows, important as that connection is supposed by shallow 
 and superstitious minds to be. It has been well said that 
 each man is a universe in himself, and that he has another 
 universe to attend him. This is the true philosophy, and 
 when once a man sees through all the hollow cant about 
 other people, he makes it his own, and lives in it, and dies 
 in it ; for truth alone is " the great companion " : that only 
 lasts and is with the soul always, even unto the end. This 
 is the indwelling light that lighteth all men. And the love 
 of this is the love which a man giveth unto what alone is 
 divine within him : free, spontaneous, without money 
 and without price ; unassailable and unshakable by the 
 'envy, malice, and falsehood of others ; a summum bonum, 
 which society can neither give nor take away. Fill your 
 heart with it, and nothing that others can either do or leave 
 undone, shall ever hurt or harm you more. For to love 
 truth is to be reconciled with all things. This is the peace 
 which conquers death, being, in fact, but a foretaste of the 
 peace to which death leads. And if you have this peace, 
 you will never need to depend on the excitements of others : 
 you will be able to bestow rather than receive; for you will 
 possess that which, the more you give away, the more 
 remains to yourself. How shall this peace be obtained? 
 By despising cant, and going in for justice and fair play all 
 round, by repudiating with all the strength of your soul the 
 wretched lie of mobocracy, and by always walking in spirit 
 with the eternal reality, ever above that herd of low slimy 
 things which little cringing knaves flatter and fear only to 
 their own ultimate undoing. 
 
 The individual is indeed but a part of a larger whole; but 
 
 F 
 
8o The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 that whole is infinitely greater than society ; in fact, when 
 compared with that whole, society is but a drop in the ocean. 
 This is an old doctrine, taught by the most individualistic 
 philosophy the world has yet heard : the philosophy of 
 Stoicism : the philosophy to which the average human mind 
 has not yet reached, but to which it will reach when the 
 religious and social superstitions of to-day are long buried 
 and forgotten. And the individual is, through his under- 
 standing, related to a yet deeper fact. For even the largest 
 assemblage of actual or possible mental phenomena are not 
 all. Before the faintest gleam of consciousness dawned 
 upon the infinite silence, there was, as there is and ever will 
 be, that unknown and unknowable substance, which forms 
 the ultimate ground of all thought and all motion ; and when 
 human thought and feeling have gone to their eternal rest, 
 that reality will remain, real and permanent as ever; an 
 indestructable prerequisite to all things. This ultimate fact 
 is inexpressible in terms of thought, not necessarily because 
 it is less than thought, but possibly because it is more. 
 The apprehension of this reality has been well put by 
 TENNYSON 
 
 ' ' Thy voice is on the rolling air ; 
 
 I hear thee where the waters run ; 
 
 Thou stanclest in the rising sun, 
 And in the setting thou art fair." 
 
 "What art thou, then ? I cannot guess ; 
 But tho' I seem in star and flower 
 To feel thee some diffusive power, 
 
 I do not, therefore, love thee less." 
 
 " Far off thou art, but ever nigh ; 
 
 I have thee still, and I rejoice 
 
 I prosper, circled with thy voice 
 I shall not lose thee, tho' I die." 
 
 This is the strength of the eternal, and against it the 
 yelping curs of democracy will ever break themselves in vain. 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 81 
 
 Seeing that Mr. Ritchie argues that individuals, considered 
 in themselves and apart from the State, are but so many 
 mere negations, it might be fairly expected that he would be 
 found contending that all possible collections and arrange- 
 ments of them are mere negations of negations ; and that 
 consequently the so-called State is the veriest abstraction of 
 abstractions, the ghost of ghosts. Nothing of the sort. This 
 kind of logic does not agree with Mr. Ritchie. Listen to 
 what he says: "The body corporate is mysterious, if any- 
 one likes to call it so, mysterious like the personality of the 
 individual." Comment Yet he has previously sa'd that, 
 apart from their relations to a small fragment of nature called 
 the " social environment," the individuals are only so many 
 mere negations. Now, he adds all these nothings together, and 
 then calls their sum total mysterious. The process by which 
 he manages to create this mystery is certainly mysterious. 
 " Emperors, kings, councils, and parliaments, or any 
 combinations of them are only the temporary representatives 
 of something that is greater than they. ' Principis mortalis 
 republiria ieterna? This sovereignty of the people, this 
 general will, is only an idea, it will be said." Comment 
 It should hardly reach to the level of a voice, still less of an 
 idea, or of a will, if every individual component of it is only 
 a mere negation. "But," continues Mr. Ritchie, "it is an 
 idea; but not therefore unreal. It is real as the human 
 spirit is real, because it is this very spirit striving for objective 
 manifestation. It lives and grows and becomes conscious 
 of itself. It realizes itself in different forms, in the family, 
 the clan, the city, the nation, perhaps some day in the 
 federation of the world." Principles of State Interference, 
 page 69. 
 
 If ever there was a social ghost, here is one with 
 a vengeance. It closely resembles the famous grin without 
 the cat, so humourously described in Alice in Wonderland. 
 
82 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 It is a re-dished up form of the abstract Man, spelt with a 
 capital M, and who, according to the late Professor Clifford, 
 was before Jehovah was, &c., &c. Here in full bloom and 
 as large as life, is all the hocus pocus of the Positivist school. 
 Is it for this that all theological contradictions have been 
 discarded? is it in order that we may the more readily fall 
 down in abject grovelling worship before a noisy collection 
 of mere duplicates of ourselves, some of them little better, 
 and many of them infinitely worse, than ourselves? Every 
 lover of clear thought must refuse to believe it. As long as 
 he can see the light of the sun, the spirit of individual man, 
 animated with the strength of that which is one with every 
 star and world throughout the universe, will rise in eternal 
 revolt against such degrading mental prostitution. That 
 spirit of nonconformity, which is the eternal strength working 
 in the individual soul ; that spirit which arms the soul to 
 dare all things for the truth it sees ; will for ever lift 
 individual life above this debasing social slavery, this super- 
 stition worse than death and blacker than hell. And that 
 spirit is destined to trample all these shallow sophistries (the 
 cunning excuses for seeking to establish slavish contrivances) 
 under its feet continually. It will constantly break down 
 every barrier and every wall that knaves throw across 
 the path that leads to freedom. For the highest aspiration 
 of the human soul is not the State; with its dishonest 
 politics, its bribery, its lies, its crowd of greedy lusters after 
 power and place, its gingerbread external pomp and 
 unspeakable inner corruption ; its tyranny, its respect for 
 nothing but brute force; its mean underhand tricks; its 
 secret crushing of the weak, the helpless, the friendless, or 
 the unknown, the highest aspiration of the soul is not for 
 this gigantic whited sepulchre, full of ravening wolves that 
 devour widows' houses, and, for a pretence, make fulsome 
 speeches to the mob, the ideal towards which life moves is 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 83 
 
 not this wretched den of political thieves, but is a world 
 where no man dictates to another man, where no majority 
 of men dictate to a minority of men, ind where all, 
 individually obeying the natural laws of the universal order, 
 having discarded show and seeking only to supply rational 
 needs, are one with nature in all things, "and work and 
 worship in the infinite." 
 
 The illusive character of Mr. Ritchie's theory is clearly 
 shown by his comparison of the family with the State, as if 
 the latter were simply an outgrowth of the former. In point 
 of fact, what answers to the State, namely, the commune, is 
 frequently antecedent to the family ; the power of the latter 
 growing up at the expense of the former. Modern Socialists 
 recognize this, and aim to reverse the process, so as to drag 
 humanity buck to that piggish condition in which the 
 commune is everything, and the separate family nothing. 
 But there is indeed no sort of analogy between the family 
 and that political sham called the State. The former arises 
 out of no mysterious metaphysical hobgoblin, as Mr. Ritchie 
 pretends to think, but arises simply and solely out of the 
 desire on the part of individuals to obey one of the funda- 
 mental and universal laws of nature; a law that runs through- 
 out all animate existence, and which is no more mysterious 
 than the law of gravitation. The family is but a means, and 
 the best means, for obeying this law. In this sense, the 
 family is necessary, quite apart from all defects of human 
 nature ; but who will venture to say that the State is 
 necessary, apart from such defects ? The State is but a mere 
 keeper, sometime needed for a violent patient, and destined 
 to go on the recovery of health ; but the family is as much 
 needed in health as in sickness, if not rather more. No, no ! 
 the two are not varieties of the same force. They are wide 
 as the poles asunder. They are diverse as light and dark- 
 ness. The family is natural and real : the State artificial 
 
84 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 and unreal. The family is a perpetual truth : the State a 
 transitory sham. 
 
 This ideal of the universal omnipotent State is not new : 
 it is old. In obedience to this ideal the Romans tried to 
 establish a military despotism over the necks of men. 
 The individualism of barbarism broke that despotism to 
 prices. Out of its ruins emerged an ecclesiastical ghost, 
 a lie infinitely more subtle and diabolical than Caesar him- 
 self. The individualism of the Reformation broke down 
 that despotism. And now the same " spirit "* is trying to 
 establish a political despotism. The individualism of the 
 present and of future will break this also to pieces. How- 
 soever often the attempt is made to enslave individual life, 
 the result will always be the same. For liberty works with 
 the strength of an eternal truth : tyranny with the weakness 
 of an eternal lie. 
 
 When a writer roundly affirms that each individual spirit 
 as such, is a mere nonentity, and then goes on to talk of a 
 sort of general spirit which resides in no particular human 
 body, but which takes councils and parliament as its repre- 
 sentatives, he is simply trying to get a song without voices 
 and music without notes. He is letting all the gas out 
 of his balloon and then expecting it to rise. In short, he 
 is attempting to make something out of nothing, and seeking 
 to create a compound without elements. Even State 
 socialism cannot manage this feat. Nature is a cruel jade 
 to these circle-squarers. Why cannot she allow her laws to 
 be made and unmade at their pleasure ? 
 
 And the most sublime joke about the whole thing, is, that 
 even if this general, national, social, or whatever it may be 
 called : even if this spirit did exist, there is no reason for 
 supposing that any particular king, or council, or parliament, 
 
 * This word is used, not in a mysterious, but in a purely metaphorical 
 
 sense, 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 85 
 
 or what not, is its fair and legitimate representative. Why 
 pin it down to this or that narrow form ? What is 
 here meant shall be illustrated by the case of a papal 
 council. Nine disinterested and pure souled priests are 
 called together for the purpose of ascertaining the preference 
 of God. Five vote for Pope A, and four for Pope B. This 
 means that God or the " spirit " of the church prefers Pope 
 A : he is its legitimate representative. Why, nobody can 
 tell. Why should the spirit in question have a greater 
 weakness for number five tb an for number four ? Nobody 
 knows and nobody cares so long as the favourite man gets 
 elected. If you happen to i e among the majority, you will 
 say that the wisdom goes along with the greatest number of 
 heads : if you have the misfortune to be in the minority, you 
 will think that fools are many and wise men few. But what 
 a spirit can have in common with political numbers and 
 mere party triumphs, no man in this world knows or ever 
 will know. Why not look at the matter in a plain common 
 sense light ? The whole business has got no more to do 
 with a mysterious spirit, than counting a brood of chickens 
 has got to do with such a nonsensical bogie. It is purely a 
 matter of physical force, or (as in the case of religion) of 
 mental fear ; and the power that is secured by it may be 
 exercised with bad motives or with good motives, but its 
 better or worse use has nothing whatever to do with 
 numbers. 
 
 But this national spirit, it may be said, only incarnates 
 itself in a democratic majority. This majority, and this 
 alone, is the genuine one; all else are mere pinchbeck 
 imitations. Of course. But which democratic majority? 
 That of to-day, of yesterday, or of to-morrow ? Why, this 
 mysterious hobgoblin is as changeable as Dame Fortune 
 herself. It never knows its own mind two elections together. 
 It is as fickle as the luck of a gambling table. To-day it 
 
86 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 moves in the decrees of the National Assembly: to-morrow 
 in the knife of Charlotte Corday. -Who shall say he has not 
 got it ? Who shall say he has got it ? It is everywhere and 
 nowhere. Kach party swears by it ; and each party denies 
 the right of the other's claim to it. It is only used to make 
 fools believe in a universal national agreement, which the 
 very use of it proves not to exist. In fact, it is only another 
 form of the theist's " universal consent," advanced to 
 convince those who don't consent. What have you got to 
 put in its place ? Nothing. We don't nee4 anything in 
 exchange for superstition. We sweep it out, and then dwell 
 in a clean house. 
 
 This " spirit of the nation " plays some strange freaks at 
 times. On one memorable occasion, expressing itself in the 
 will of an Athenian democratic majority, it disfranchised a 
 democratic minority. Nay, it went further. It took every- 
 thing the minority possessed, and then sold them into 
 slavery. Possibly the State socialist will say that under such 
 circumstances it was a privilege for the minority to be 
 allowed to bow to the infallible decision of this great national 
 spirit ; or rather, to that of its "temporary representative." 
 Very likely. But if that minority had properly known their 
 business, they would speedily have changed the "temporary" 
 complexion of that spirit's outward manifestation, or, at least, 
 have perished in the attempt. For the national spirit is very 
 tractable when properly taken in hand ; it only bullies those 
 who fear it ; and it may be persuaded to alter its mind by 
 means far more conclusive and straightforward than ballot 
 voting. There is a form of force which needs no superstition 
 to prop it up, and which soons knocks all cant on the head. 
 When the talkers and spouters see this force, they know 
 their little day is ended. Let them go on, and they will see 
 it, and feel it too. 
 
 Mr. Ritchie sees plainly enough that, in proportion as the 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 87 
 
 Socialistic State interferes more and more with in- 
 dividual freedom, the source of legislative power will be 
 questioned. To meet this contingency he drags in his 
 metaphysical ghost. He says that " the acts of the govern- 
 ment in every country which is not on the verge of revolution 
 are not the acts of a majority of individuals, but the acts of 
 the uncrowned and invisible sovereign, the spirit of the 
 nation itself." How extremely conclusive and satisfactory ! 
 Let it be applied to a concrete case. When (a revolution 
 not just about to begin) 800 tax 700 for a public museum, 
 this tax is not the act of a majority, but of some great social 
 or municipal ghost, some collected essence of everybody in 
 general and nobody in particular. If, for example, Sir W. 
 Lawson and his fellow fanatics shut up all the public-houses, 
 the tyrannical act in question is not merely expressive of the 
 fads of a political faction, but of a non-natural, magnified, and 
 unseen something called the SPIRIT OF THE NATION. 
 How like the old-fashioned "spirit of the glen," which 
 robbed belated travellers whenever it could do so. But in 
 what way such a mysterious thing can be affected by a 
 revolution, nobody can tell : revolutions only affect flesh and 
 blood, but this queer creature is impalpable, unseen, &c. 
 And the curious part of the statement argument it cannot 
 be called is, that when the tyrannical laws of this bogie are 
 swept away, the change in question is not due to the fact 
 that the game of social despotism is played out (this would 
 be far too natural and obvious an account) but because the 
 "uncrowned and invisible sovereign" has altered its infallible 
 mind. Well, the sooner it is made to alter its mind the 
 better. At least, one thing is evident. This nonsense, 
 when thoroughly sifted to the bottom, makes no more for 
 Socialism than for Individualism. The uncrowned king, 
 like our shadows, will move as we move, and change as we 
 change : therefore it is collectively everything, and we .are 
 
88 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 individually nothing. Q.E.I). Such is the argumentative 
 pap with which we may expect to be fed when the liberty- 
 hating officials of the Socialist State, work all the printing 
 presses in the country, and when, therefore, whatever 
 questions the infallibility of the despotic State, will be rigidly 
 excluded " for the general good." 
 
 This grand national ghost is very similar to the familar 
 little hobgoblin known as the " spirit of a meeting." The 
 latter " lives and grows, becomes conscious of itself, realizes 
 itself," does it not my eloquent political favour-currier ? 
 Only there is one curious little feature about it. When 
 sensible people are present, it behaves itself : when fools are 
 present well, it doesn't ; it breaks down platforms and 
 throws chairs about. So with that larger and more 
 permanent meeting called a nation. When those present 
 know how to behave, the spirit also knows : when they don't, 
 neither does it. A most real and independent entity, my 
 dear reader ; as real as your own image in the glass, or as 
 the shadow which imitates all that you do ! A strange, very 
 strange, and mysterious thing, this national hobgoblin ! 
 
 Like other State socialists, Mr. Ritchie does his best to 
 exaggerate the indebtedness of the individual to what is 
 termed "society." This imaginary obligation of the one to 
 the many, is always made the grand excuse for every social 
 tyranny. With this inexhaustable cant about other people, 
 and the noble sacrifices they have made for the individual, 
 every political knave fills his pockets. The sugary stuff is 
 species of political spice, which the seeker after political 
 power and pelf lavishly scatters wherever he goes. It costs 
 nothing and buys everything. Grown children run after 
 and greedily devour it. It serves the double purpose of 
 conciliation and flattery : and thus both bamboozles the 
 unit and leads the crowd. 
 
 What a mountain of lies is sought to be piled upon each 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 89 
 
 in the name of all ! How much when every pro and con 
 is duly balanced, does an individual owe to his fellows ? 
 1 )o the benefits outweigh the injuries, or is it the other way. 
 Let us see. Let us enumerate a few of the great and mani- 
 fold blessings that our blessed parent " society " in its 
 infinite love has graciously deigned to bestow upon us. 
 
 In the first place each individual man is indebted to his 
 noble fellow creatures for a body, which, owing to their 
 persistent non-observance of the simplest laws of nature, is 
 not even as healthy as that of a wild hedgehog. With 
 admirable self-sacrifice, his dear fellow men have forced 
 upon his acceptance an encumbered estate, which they have 
 been kindly abusing for 10,000 generations. Ah ! how his 
 heart must yearn towards them for all their goodness. They 
 have done everything well through their deep love of him, 
 and if he is not grateful he looks so. He really seems to 
 love his brother like one brother should love another. 
 
 In the next place, truth compels us to acknowledge that 
 the individual man is beholden to his dear fellow creatures 
 for a mind enriched with all the results of their many and 
 great virtues. Heaven only knows how they have striven to 
 make it pure and peaceful, happy and free from stain ! How 
 earnestly they have worked at this self-denying task, this 
 labour of love for him ; never once indulging themselves 
 either in envy, hatred, malice, or uncharitableness; doing all 
 and expecting no return : helping to build up brotherhood 
 and all that, my socialist friend. Don't you feel grateful ? 
 
 Let us glance at some of the methods by which they have 
 sought to benefit him. If these don't make him eager to 
 surrender his liberty and individuality, and rush gladly into 
 social slavery, it is to be feared that gratitude is not one of 
 his virtues. 
 
 Vanities innumerable have they followed, bequeathing the 
 resulting tendencies to him. And because of this, each 
 
90 The Natiiral Right to Freedom 
 
 individual is filled from his earliest youth with a multitude 
 of false inclinations, which only his own imperfect and self- 
 gathered knowledge of nature's laws can to some extent 
 guard him against. For ages his kindly disposed fellow 
 mortals have been doing their level best, by over-eating, 
 over-drinking, flattering, lying, envying, &c., &c., &c., &c., 
 to bury nature's diamond of life under a burning mountain 
 of their own vices. By means of a thousand and one acts 
 of wilful disobedience to natural law, they have managed to 
 poison the racial inheritance with which nature endows each 
 one of her children : and now (if the Socialist is their spokes- 
 man) they turn round upon the few who do strive after 
 natural and healthy life, saying, "There! look what WE 
 have done for you." The Socialist represents them as a noble 
 and modest crew, does he not ? If they are what he says 
 they are, their impertinence is only equalled by their disgust- 
 ing hypocrisy. Their parasite and flatterer has a poor client : 
 a huge, half-drunk, over-gorged, collective lout. Low 
 guzzling herd of mutually-admiring and mutually-deceiving 
 sensualists : in reply to this preposterous claim, set up on 
 your behalf by a set of rascally political pirates and social 
 blood-suckers, hear a bit of truth about yourselves. You 
 call yourselves, or are called by your flatterers, THE 
 DEMOCRACY, THE PEOPLE, THE COMMUNITY. 
 Do you think any kind of fancy names can in the least 
 degree alter what you are ? a reeking, stinking mass of 
 gluttony, drunkenness, lust, envy, vanity, greed, malice, lies, 
 and uncharitableness. Among you all there is not one 
 natural person in a thousand. We are personally indebted 
 to you, and we must bow and cringe to you ? And for what, 
 pray ? For your many and great virtues ! For the excellent 
 example you set us ! Shut up your foul mouth, and cease 
 this silly boasting. It becomes the many no better than the 
 few. Power ! have you ? What power ? Only power to 
 
7 he Natural Right to Freedom. 91 
 
 destroy the flesh ? Every brutish thing has that. But not 
 power to destroy the truth. In the fullness of time this last 
 shall undo you, break your rotten back, and drive you out 
 utterly. Noisy crowd of low base natures ! brave mass of 
 trembling units ! go down the broad road to your congenial 
 hell of national torpidity and ultimate racial extinction. 
 Miserable shams ! conventional puppets ! moral and 
 intellectual pigmies ! The brand of inferiority is on you for 
 ever. You hate and fear principles. Liberty is too bracing 
 for your namby-pamby maudlin unmanliness. You prefer 
 the lusts of your bellies to the dictates of supreme reason. 
 Therefore, as sure as the sun shines in the heavens, you will 
 disappear before the race of real men that is to be. For only 
 they who prefer principle to comfort and luxury, are worthy 
 to be free. 
 
 Undoubtedly, the world at large has done a great deal for 
 the individual. Noble, virtuous, truthful, self-sacrificing 
 crowd ! It has ringed each separate unit round with an iron 
 network of irrational and useless customs, false beliefs, 
 hollow sentiments, and low ideals : lies which take years to 
 explode, and in the vast majority of cases are never exploded 
 at all : for how many die without once seeing through the 
 baseness and littleness of this world ? passing through life 
 with the social slave's harness ever upon their souls, and 
 going into darkness without even having had one glimpse of 
 the light. 
 
 This "society," humanity, community, or whatever you 
 may please to call so general a mass of folly and corruption, 
 has helped each individual towards strength and clearness of 
 mental vision by constantly wallowing in superstitions most 
 gross and unnatural, building out of its own fears a world of 
 gibbering phantoms, and then endeavouring to frighten each 
 new comer with them. This social entity (or non-entity) 
 has flattered itself with the childish conceit that it is some- 
 
92 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 thing distinct from Nature's general order, unbound (in 
 some mysterious manner) by her inexorable laws of life and 
 death ; and from this central and primary illusion it has 
 branched out into evils almost infinite ; from every one of 
 which each individual inherits a special personal advantage. 
 How deep and unpayable is our debt to Society ! This low 
 herd of base characters, has ever lived to serve its belly 
 before its intellect, to obey lust before law, to love passion 
 and fear reason. Its highest glory has always been its 
 deepest shame. Instead of recognizing itself as one with 
 Nature, finding its highest wisdom in learning her laws, and 
 its only happiness in obeying them, it has disdainfully 
 spurned this harmony, hence dwelling in discord continually. 
 There is no falsehood that it has not loved : there is no truth 
 that it has not hated. Its worst specimens, its Calugilas and 
 Neros, have been godded and enthroned by it : its best, its 
 Christs and Socrates, it has basely murdered. Whenever it 
 has felt itself rebuked by the presence of personal nobility or 
 personal purity, its black passions have prompted it either to 
 yell "Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill him," or else " Away with him : 
 crucify him." Not a vice is there that it has not nursed and 
 petted : not a virtue it has not scoffed at and outraged. 
 What little understanding it possesses is due to no merit of 
 its own ; for the germs of this understanding were left it by 
 the animals from which it has fallen ; and the subsequent 
 development of this understanding has been caused by a 
 necessity which would not permit practical life to be carried 
 on otherwise. And, even at its best, this corrupt social 
 " entity " has only obeyed the dictates of reason through 
 fear, and as a task for which it expects to be rewarded with 
 all sorts of earthly and heavenly luxuries : and, wherever 
 possible, it has deserted these dictates to go and luxuriate in 
 unmitigated follies. What it calls its " virtues " are either 
 soulless and mechanical acts, which it does to admire, and 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom 93 
 
 grin at, and mouth about; glassing itself therein, puffing 
 itself out almost till it bursts, endeavouring to exalt itself 
 above the very heavens ; or else they are merely so many traps 
 and gins which it cunningly sets to catch the divine favour, 
 thinking, poor self-deluded conceit, to place the immutable 
 and eternal under a special obligation to it. Some say that 
 even in spite of all these "virtues" it is still going fast to hell. 
 But this is by no means certain. Indeed, it is extremely 
 doubtful whether the gentlemen below stairs would lower 
 themselves to associate with so incorrigible a mass of 
 depravity. Even " Auld Nickey Ben " must draw the line 
 somewhere. This social quintessence of dust, by the strange- 
 ness of its antics, has managed to make itself the standing 
 laughing stock of the universe, the bedaubed, veneered, and 
 decorated curiosity of existence, the only unnatural thing in 
 nature ; unmeet for heaven, and so preposterously absurd 
 that even hell would fling it forth in derision : if, that is, it 
 should ever be so impertinent as to attempt to enter there. 
 Ever has it neglected realities to follow shams ; audit has worn 
 its grinning conventional mask for so long, that the paste- 
 board and stucco have at last grown to the skin, and, if 
 suddenly pulled off, would bleed the poor artificial thing to 
 death. Even its labour, the only reality about it, is nearly 
 all wasted ; for, while toiling and sweating for the useless toys 
 and paltry gewgaws which merely feed its depraved tastes, it has 
 left real needs in many cases almost entirely unprovided for. 
 In a word, it has wholely misused the gift of life, and done 
 its best, by stooping to fear its dreams, to make death as 
 horrible as possible. The result is that it has never yet 
 learnt how to reconcile itself either with time or with 
 eternity, either with itself or with that universal order which 
 is wider and vaster than it. 
 
 It is so base that its good will the only thing it can give 
 in exchange for the services conferred upon it is never to 
 
94 1he Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 be obtained except either with flattery or ostentation ; and 
 when got, the much-prized boon is not worth having \ for it 
 can never rise above a gape at a public meeting, or a vulgar 
 parade through the public prints. Poor low mass of semi- 
 idiocy, even the flies that play at hide and seek through its 
 unclosed lips, are more naturally perfect after their kind than 
 it is after its kind. O most worthy and noble god to worship ! 
 " He that will give good words to thee will flatter beneath 
 abhorring." 
 
 From all this social virtue the individual derives a full and 
 complete benefit. Therefore he ought to feel gratefully 
 obedient, and quietly allow collective wisdom to do just 
 what it likes with him. Such, when stript of all vagueness, 
 is the State Socialist's argument. It is simply a plea for 
 social tyranny in the name of social virtues and social 
 benefits. A more transparent, and at the same time a more 
 disgusting piece of cant, was never sought to be palmed off 
 on human credulity. Individually, we are not under the 
 slightest obligation to obey the crowd, and as long as we 
 possess individual understandings, we never shall be. Good 
 heavens ! what is our understanding good for, but to lift us 
 above all this social prostitution? Our only centre of 
 allegiance is our own individual reason : what that thinks to 
 be right we are logically bound, under penalty of self-hurting 
 inconsistency, to follow : what that thinks to be wrong we 
 are bound, in precisely the same way, to avoid. This truth 
 would hold good if there were only one man in existence : 
 it holds equally good when there are 10 million. Did we 
 come into this world to cringe and bow to one another? 
 Was the lamp of reason purposely given us so that we might 
 not use it ? and are we now to fling it away at the 'socialist 
 bidding ? Are we to see through our own eyes, or through 
 those of some other person or persons ? Are we to walk by 
 our own light, or are we to blindly put our hands into those 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 95 
 
 of other helpless and un-selfdirecting children, and so 
 all go headlong into the ditch together ? Who is to lead if 
 everybody is to follow ? And if some may presume to lead 
 others, why may not others presume to lead themselves ? 
 This socialistic superstition is rotten right through. There 
 is no bottom in it; and, logically carried out, it simply 
 means universal chaos. For if it is right for one man to be 
 a despot, a leader, a chief, or what not, it is equally right for 
 all men to be so. If it is right that one man should be a 
 follower, a fag, or a slave, it is equally right that all men 
 should be such. The only logical conclusion is, that each 
 man should lead himself, and keep his hands off the lives of 
 other men. Either one man should domineer over mother, 
 or one set of men over another set of men, or all men should 
 be equally free. There is no middle position, and the choice 
 between these two positions is the choice between Individual- 
 ism and Socialism: between individual liberty and collective 
 slavery. 
 
96 The Natural Right .to Freedom 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THIS shallow and enslaving claim, so peremptorily 
 made upon the unit by the crowd-worshipper, a 
 claim which society as a whole (as everybody] does not, and, 
 indeed, cannot possibly set up, but which is set up in its 
 name by a few place and power-seeking politicians, can 
 impose on no man whose individuality is worth keeping, and 
 who knows how to laugh at the transparent humbug that 
 " other people " are always trying to foist upon him. The 
 phrase " other people " is here important. For, strictly 
 speaking, the crowd which you see outside yourself is not 
 society; it is only a portion of society; and the least 
 important portion to you. If " Society " means anything at 
 all, it means everybody, and, therefore, when you are left out, 
 society is not present ; only a portion of it is present ; and 
 when you don't agree with it, society does not agree with 
 itself: only a portion of it does so. In order to be condemned 
 by society a man must be condemned by himself : in order 
 to be ruled by society a man must be ruled by himself, his 
 judgment must coincide with that of other people^his want 
 agree with their want ; and when this is the case there can 
 be no tyranny ; all is harmonious and reasonable : there 
 exists a co-operation that is natural, perfect, glad, unirksome, 
 and complete. 
 
 But even admitting it to be possible for the crowd to put 
 forth such a claim as that which the State Socialist sets up 
 in its name, even admitting that such universal unanimity 
 ever did or ever could exist in any crowd, the reply which 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 97 
 
 any clear-thinking individual might fairly make to it, would 
 utterly shatter all its logical and morally bending force. 
 Let the case of Socrates and his murderers be taken as an 
 instance of this. First, let us hear what those murderers 
 might have said to Socrates, and then what Socrates might 
 have said, but did not say, to them. No excuse is required 
 for putting the following address into the mouth of Socrates, 
 seeing that what he really did say may easily be ascertained 
 by those who care to read the Apologies of Plato and 
 Xenophon. It always appeared to us that, in theory at least, 
 Socrates paid much greater respect to the State than right 
 reason warrants. 
 
 IMAGINARY ADDRESS OF ATHENIAN CITIZENS TO 
 SOCRATES. You, O Socrates, have now for many years, and 
 in spite of repeated warnings from us, proved yourself to be 
 a very troublesome old fellow, a corrupter of the youth of 
 this city, a disturber of religious belief, and a wilful disobeyer 
 of the civil laws. This is the return you make for all we 
 have done for you. We gave you life, we educated, fed, 
 and clothed you, we surrounded you with useful institutions, 
 and protected you with just laws. In every way that we 
 possibly could, we have striven to help and benefit you. 
 Yet, in return for all this, you ungratefully persist, despite 
 our repeated warnings against it, in strolling about the 
 streets and market places of the city, constantly talking and 
 arguing with the young men of Athens, saying to them what 
 you know we do not like, and what we firmly believe to be 
 against the true interests both of our holy religion and of 
 the social commonweal. Seeing, therefore, that you 
 entirely belong to us, both body and soul, seeing that you 
 are a member of our "social organism," seeing that we 
 made you what you are, and seeing further, that what you 
 are does not suit us, and that you stubbornly refuse to 
 become anything different, we are fully warranted in doing 
 
98 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 just what we like with you, and thus effectually getting rid 
 of so objectionable a person. We are infallible, and we 
 constitute the State. All who say or write anything con- 
 trary to what we approve, are dangerously and incurably 
 mad. So must they be treated. It is for the general good 
 that such should be gently, but forcibly got out of the way. 
 For, as you well know, in this commonwealth the interest of 
 the individual is nothing : that of the individuals, every- 
 thing. 
 
 IMAGINARY ADDRESS OF SOCRATES TO ATHENIAN 
 CITIZENS. It seems to me, O Athenians, that what you have 
 just said, simply amounts to this : because without my consent, 
 and, indeed, under circumstances where I was obliged 
 to accept whatever other people thrust upon me, you have 
 done something which you believe to be for my good, there- 
 fore, I am morally bound to spring like a slave at your beck 
 and call, and dance like an ape to the discord of your un- 
 worthy prejudices and gross superstitions. In brief, I am 
 either to shut my mouth or only to say just what suits you. 
 Such, when put plainly, is the claim that you make upon 
 me, and as such I now propose to examine it. In the first 
 place, then, I contend that it is out of all proportion to the 
 supposed benefit. I say " supposed benefit," because, as I 
 shall presently show, what you thrpw in my face, is, properly 
 speaking, no benefit at all. But even admitting it to be ten 
 times greater than you imagine it to be, it carries with it no 
 justification for what you propose to do. No gift, however 
 large, can excuse the taking away of life or liberty. Gifts 
 cannot bind any man into slavery. For a man is only 
 morally bound by his own reason, by what he believes to be 
 right, by what he freely assents to and freely agrees to carry 
 out. But in regard to your so-called benefit, no option was 
 given me ; it was thrust down my throat willy nilly ; and, 
 moreover, I made no agreement whatever respecting it : If I 
 
The Natiiral Right to Freedom.. 99 
 
 did make such an agreement, show me the bond, and I will 
 abide by its conditions, be those conditions harsh or mild. 
 
 If one man gives another man a present, that other man 
 is bound no further than the agreement that he makes binds 
 him, and if he makes no agreement he is not bound at all. 
 And the same rule applies to any number of men ; for 
 numbers cannot add to or take away a fraction of the 
 strength of moral obligation, where such obligation exists ; 
 neither can they create an obligation where it does not exist. 
 Now, I have made no agreement with you, therefore I 
 cannot in any reasonable sense be bound in slavery to your 
 narrow-minded intolerance. Neither can you, on any 
 rational ground, attempt to coerce me into such slavery. Of 
 course, I readily admit that you may use all those blessings 
 of civilization, which you have so liberally and unsolicitedly 
 showered down upon me, as so many excuses for doing 
 what you like with me. Every slave driver says to his slave 
 " See what I have done for you ! I have fed, clothed, 
 educated, and brought you up ! I have been a perfect 
 providence to you ! You are mine and I shall do as I like 
 with my own." Thus, O Athenians, you may sacrifice my 
 good to what you are pleased to call the good of all; though 
 I deny that what you propose to do is for the good of all. 
 Of course, I admit that it is for the real or supposed good of 
 yourselves. I deny, however, that it is for my good ; and 
 inasmuch as you are the best judges of what is for your 
 good ; seeing that you alone know what you like best ; 
 so, in like manner, and on precisely the same grounds, 
 I am also the best judge of what is for my good : 
 for none can tell so well as myself what is best suited to my 
 own particular wants and tastes. You say that what you 
 propose to do is for the good of all. Is it for my good ? I 
 don't think so, and I am the best judge of this matter. 
 What is not for the good of one, cannot possibly be for the 
 
ioo The Natural Right fa Freedom 
 
 good of all, however convenient and expedient it may 
 appear to be for some. The only thing that is for the good 
 of all, is, for each man to leave his fellow-man free ; is a 
 mutual respect for personal difference and personal consent. 
 Liberty alone is the common good : it is perfectly true that 
 it gives nothing specially to any, but then it allows every- 
 thing that is consistent with the equal freedom of all. You 
 say that what I speak in this city is unpleasant to you ? 
 Then don't listen. Those who disagree with what I teach 
 may pass on : they are perfectly free to do what they please. 
 Let them allow the same freedom to me I don't interfere 
 with them, therefore let them abstain from interfering with 
 me. What I teach is either true or it is not true. If it is 
 not true, it won't last ; the real truth will eventually prevail 
 against it : for truth moves spontaneously, and of itself, and 
 needs no state law either to get it established or to keep it 
 established. But if what I teach is true, then you go against 
 your own interest, and the interest of this city, in preventing 
 it from being heard. As for me, you may rest assured that 
 I shall not close my mouth at any man's bidding. I am 
 here to use the various parts of my nature in performing 
 those functions to which they are naturally adapted. My 
 understanding is fitted to see truth ; my lips to speak it 
 when seen. In saying what I believe to be true, I am only 
 doing what all of you here present also pretend to do ; so 
 that in condemning me for this, you are logically condemn- 
 ing yourselves. You stand convicted by your own verdict, 
 weighed and found wanting in your own balance. What 
 are you afraid of? Do you fear that my single tongue can 
 out-talk or out-argue all yours put together? Does all 
 Athens need proctecting against the free speech of one man? 
 You profess to be acting politically, and yet you are not 
 politic. You are not even following the lowest expediency. 
 Wise men will recognise it to be to their own interest to 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 101 
 
 allow the fullest possible discussion of everything. For just 
 the view that is ignored or stifled, may be the only true 
 view, and every truth is a gain. If, as I have just pointed 
 out, what I teach is true, your own interest lies in knowing 
 it : if it is not true the real truth will eventually supplant it ; for 
 in a free commonwealth error can never prevail against truth. 
 
 However, O Athenians, since you do not recognize liberty 
 as the common good, and since I have no organized force 
 with which to defend my rights, I must make the best of a 
 bad job and follow necessity with a good grace. To your 
 ruling I must submit as to the earthquake or the thunder 
 bolt. It is the sign by which nature intimates that she wants 
 back what she has only lent for a time ; and true wisdom 
 consists in making that agreeable which fate has made 
 unavoidable. To a man who lives to know the truth about 
 things, and to obey the laws of nature so far as he sees 
 them, a few day or years more or less can make little 
 difference. His knowledge of law lifts him above all slavery 
 to time ; so that the destruction of time is no real loss to 
 him. 
 
 But what I deny, O Athenians, is, that there is any 
 logical or moral force in your arguments. You say you gave 
 me life. This is not true. Two particular individuals 
 gave me life, just as two particular individuals gave 
 life to each of you. On this ground, then, I am no more 
 beholden to you than you are beholden to me. We are 
 more like separate branches of one tree than mutually 
 dependent beings. We meet on equal terms, with the 
 strength and independence of the dead within us, and those 
 who might lay claim to us are not allowed by nature to do 
 so. Moreover, the life that we possess ultimately originated 
 without any volition of ours, in a natural and universal 
 order which is greater than all of us put together. Not to 
 our laws, but to the on-going of this order is all life due; and 
 
io2 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 as for us, we are but the doors through which it enters into 
 possession of its own. You speak as if I belonged to you. 
 Such is not and cannot possibly be the case. I belong to 
 the same great order of natural facts to which you also 
 belong : I am a citizen of a vaster city, not built with hands, 
 a city wherein this little Athenian State lies as a grain of sand 
 beside an infinite sea. Then you say that you educated, 
 fed, and clothed me; and you seek to make all this an 
 excuse of depriving me of my freedom, and for compelling 
 me to shut my mouth. Such a pointed reminder, when 
 made by one man to another, even though it should chance 
 to be true, would rightly be deemed to be unworthy of a 
 noble and generous soul, and I fail to see how it can be 
 otherwise when made by many men to one. But in my 
 case it is not true. As regards the feeding and clothing, the 
 statement won't bear looking at. Assuredly all of you, O 
 Athenians, did not feed and clothe me : on the contrary 
 two particular individuals did this, and these two individuals 
 gave you an equivalent for whatever they received by way of 
 exchange from you. Though, even if you had bestowed 
 these gifts upon me, they could give you no sort of rational 
 warrant for destroying my freedom, so long, that is, as I 
 abstain from destroying yours. For, as I have already 
 pointed out to you, a gift carries nothing with it except the 
 agreements that have been freely made by those who have 
 received it. What agreements have I made ? As to 
 education ; for that I owe you no compensation, if anything 
 the boot is on the other leg, and you ought rather to com- 
 pensate me, seeing that, against my wishes, you have tried to 
 thrust down my throat a jargon of useless pedantry, which 
 you foolishly miscall "a liberal education." In addition to this 
 you have dinned into my ears a string of soulless, conventional, 
 and cast iron rules which you mis-call morality. How many 
 years, do you think, has it taken me to see through the folly 
 
7 he Natural Right to Freedom 103 
 
 of all this artificial nonsense ? A great portion of my life 
 has oeen spent in unlearning the huge mass of indigestible, 
 cumbersome, and unnatural rubbish that you in your over- 
 weaning self-conceit, have so heedlessly thrust upon me ; and 
 all the knowledge I possess that has ever been of the slightest 
 use to me, is not what you have crammed down my throat, 
 but what I have freely and spontaneously learnt for myself. 
 And as for these showery but decaying institutions with 
 which you have surrounded me, what use are they to me ? 
 I don't need them, and what is more, I don't want them. 
 My requirements are few and easily satisfied. These 
 ambitious institutions are only for those who lust after more 
 than nature requires, who love pomps, and meaningless 
 forms, and power tyrannously exercised over the weak ; 
 who admire one another, and flatter one another, and lie to 
 one another continually. But a simple life, lived according 
 to the laws of nature, needs not all this noisy flourish of 
 trumpets. These pretentious institutions are for other 
 people : they were never made for me or for the 
 likes of me. Therefore, as regards these I am in 
 no way whatever beholden to you : you made them 
 to please yourselves, not to help me, and it is sheer 
 hypocrisy for you to talk as if you did. As for what you 
 say about protection and law, it is not worth replying to. 
 The best system of law is that w r hich protects liberty ; but 
 this, O Athenians, is precisely what yours does not do, or I 
 should not now be standing here before you. There is one 
 more plea that you may set up. You may ask " How would 
 you have lived, Socrates, if we had not supported you with 
 our custom ? if we, the democracy of this august state, had 
 not kindly condescended to purchase your statuaries? AVell 
 maybe I should have done what you are now compelling me 
 to do. At least I should have been saved the trouble of all 
 this foolish trial, and to a philosopher time is but a small 
 
io4 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 object ; though truth will oblige you to confess that, in spite 
 of your boasted political power, you are all of you the 
 veriest bond slaves to it. But I suppose that even if you, 
 or rather some of you, had not condescended, out of the 
 deep love you bear towards me, to purchase my produce, I 
 could still have gone forth into the world and subsisted on 
 the fish, animals, or wild fruits that nature provides ; and if 
 you had not defaced the fair face of nature with this corrupt 
 city I might not have had to travel far. When you brag so 
 loudly about what you have given, you forget what you have 
 taken away. Yet the force of your argument may be broken 
 by a single question. Why did you purchase my goods at 
 all ? You wanted them, did you not ? You don't buy what 
 you don't want ? I shall not believe you if you say you do. 
 But if you wanted them, the service I rendered to you in 
 supplying them was as great as the service you rendered to 
 me in purchasing them. Consequently we are quits : I 
 cannot fairly boast to you, and you cannot fairly boast 
 to me. 
 
 I am forgetting another plea that you may urge. You 
 may say : " By living amongst us, O Socrates, you tacitly 
 agreed to obey our laws." I did nothing of the sort. 
 I tacitly agreed to respect your freedom, and I have respected 
 it. I tacitly agreed to treat you as I would like you to treat 
 me, and this I have all along faithfully observed. I am bound 
 by the moral law, but not by any absurd rule that you may 
 please to lay down. According to your argument, I should 
 be morally bound to walk about on my hands and knees, if 
 you, in your superior wisdom, passed a law commanding me 
 to do so. Such absurd reasoning is not worth refuting. 
 What would you think if I said to you : " By living in the 
 same city as myself, you tacitly agreed, O Athenians, to obey 
 my commands. I command you to let me alone ; therefore 
 you are morally bound to obey." You would very quickly 
 
7 he Natural Right to Freedom. 105 
 
 rejoin " We are not going to be slaves to you, O Socrates, 
 you are not numerous as we are, you are not in a majority." 
 But what has a majority got to do with the morality of a 
 command ? A majority is might, not right. The truth is, 
 you have no better ethical warrant fo: coercing me than I 
 have for coercing you. If I were strong enough I could 
 bully you ; you are strong enough to bully me, therefore you 
 do it. In point of fact, we both have the same right and no 
 more, the right to defend ourselves against aggression ; but 
 neither of us have any right to become aggressors. 
 
 And now, O Athenians, I have examined all the pleas 
 that you can possibly urge. I have endeavoured to show 
 that, neither singly nor jointly, do they afford the slightest 
 warrant for the destruction of that personal freedom which 
 you strike at through me. You have not even the plea that 
 the city, or, if you prefer it, the State, condemns me: at best 
 but a portion of the State does this ; and, until I condemn 
 myself, your condemnation, even on your own democratic 
 principles, is as imperfect and incomplete as a bridge without 
 its keystone. And the same glaring illogicality runs through 
 all your democratic laws. You boast that they are passed 
 by the State, that is, by everybody, by the whole people ; 
 whereas, in point of fact, if everybody agreed to what they 
 prescribe, there would be no need to pass them : what they 
 are passed to secure would be naturally and spontaneously 
 obtained without them. The only excuse you can now put 
 forward is the excuse of might, and every tiger, every beast 
 of prey, every irrational thing has this ignoble plea. You 
 seem to think that power justifies anything. But there is 
 something even better than power : the just and rational use 
 of power. And this just and rational use consists in allow- 
 ing the same liberty to others that you claim for yourselves. 
 The freedom that is good for one man, is good for all men ; 
 and what is good for all men, is equally good for one. 
 
io6 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 Democracy should be the very last form of government to 
 make distinctions in a matter of this kind. Do you serve 
 passion or reason ? Are you men or something lower ? It is 
 a small thing to fear the wagging of an old man's tongue ; 
 it is a small thing to hurry him out of the way a few years 
 before nature would take him ; it is a great thing, and an 
 evil thing, and a disastrous thing to strike at a principle on 
 which all human welfare depends ; a principle which every 
 man desires to see respected when his own interest is at stake, 
 however much he may on special occasions let his passions 
 blind him to the equal claims of others : a principle that is 
 wider than democracy, and the recognition of which will 
 grow clearer in other times and other climes, when the 
 misused power of this shallow and corrupt State has faded 
 like a momentary dream of night. 
 
 As for me, O Athenians, my duty is clear. To that which 
 is highest ; to that which I know best ; to that near friend 
 from which all my strength has come : to my own reason, 
 and to nothing else, is my sole allegiance due. You may 
 easily suppose that this supreme centre is much more to me 
 than the narrow bigotry of a noisy political crowd. I have 
 not followed truth all these years in order at last to meekly 
 close my lips through fear of the threats of an unprincipled 
 and decaying State. What seems to me to be true, my 
 reason bids me speak, and I shall not be silent at the 
 bidding of any man, or any set of men however powerful. 
 And now I have done. Your condemnation hurts me far less 
 than it injures the security of your own State. To me it 
 means but the loss of a few years at most : to you it weakens 
 the respect for a principle on which all your national health 
 and prosperity depend. Life for a philosopher is not 
 measured by length of days, but by clearness of mental 
 vision and rational obedience of the laws of things. It is 
 sufficient if a man live long enough to reconcile himself with 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 107 
 
 the order of nature ; for such reconciliation is peace, and to 
 those who know this peace, nothing that others can do will 
 ever come amiss. This body, these sensations and ideas, 
 these elements so curiously compounded together, are nQt 
 absolutely and unconditionally mine: they belong to universal 
 nature : with them I ha\v been permitted to fulfil a needful 
 part in the on-going of the cosmic process : now it is time to 
 give them back to that which gave them. It is impiety to 
 desire to hold them longer than the interest of the whole 
 requires. They are now wanted elsewhere ; and true piety 
 consists in asking nothing from the gods, but in cheerfully 
 obeying everything. Here, in this narrow pass between the 
 two silences, I have lived without hope and without fear ; 
 having found the peace that transcends hope and casts out 
 fear : the peace not given by men, but which a man gains 
 for himself through reason. In this supreme possession 
 consists the greatest good that time can know. Do you 
 imagine I would lose it by failing, at your bidding, to follow 
 the dictates of that to which it is due and on which it 
 depends ? What is life without the peace of obedience to 
 supreme reason? A short time, even if it be but a few days, 
 or hours, or moments, that is free from fear and remorse, is 
 better than endless years of cowardice and duty shirked. 
 In accepting life on your terms I should destroy what alone 
 makes life valuable. Death is far preferable to this. Do 
 you think I did not count all the risks beforehand ? You 
 measure life by the number of meals you can swallow : 
 I, by unyielding allegiance to what seems to me to 
 be true. I have taken my reward here already, beforehand, 
 and in spite of you, and I don't in the least mind 
 paying what I always knew I ran a risk of being 
 called upon to pay. I have lived my own life as a free 
 being : I have fully and perfectly expressed myself Thus 
 have I made sure of an achieved good ; for nothing can 
 
io8 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 make that which has been not have been. But as for such 
 creatures as you : you are always expecting but never 
 getting. Life to you is one long turmoil of vanity and 
 mutual admiration ; of restless fear qualified by equally 
 restless hope. Therefore to you I say ; forget not this : that 
 living rationally and in obedience to the laws of the Gods, is 
 infinitely higher than either hoping or fearing : it is 
 possessing : it is dwelling in the cloudless sunshine of an 
 ever present now."* 
 
 From Socrates branched cut the two great ethical schools of 
 antiquity, namely, the Stoics and Epicureans. We have given only the 
 Stoical side of the philosopher, as being best suited to the particular 
 circumstances of the case. It was his Stoicism, and not his Epicurean- 
 ism, that made the greatness of Socrates. The latter is dead and 
 forgotten : the former can never die. 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 109 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 IT may be said "Why run down society?'' That question 
 may be answered by another. " Why crack society up?" 
 Why seek to make a fetish of it, and attempt to use it to 
 bamboozle the individual soul out of its true self-allegiance ? 
 The individual can very well afford to let society alone, if 
 society will let him alone. When it won't, he generally finds 
 means in the long run to make it. Hitherto he has proved 
 more than a match for mere numbers, and he will not go 
 back on his record. Let him look on himself as a single 
 ship, surrounded on all hands by hostile fleets, which ever 
 seek either by stratagem or force to undo him : let him pour 
 in broadsides without ceasing, and when all the powder is 
 done, let him go down into that silence " where the wicked 
 cease from troubling and the weary are at rest." His only 
 friends are the laws of things : let him learn these, and trust 
 them, and obey them : then he need not care a straw for his 
 fellow-man's love or hate ; for then he will rest on something 
 more secure than humanity : on the truth that cannot change. 
 If the unit were indeed under all the enormous obligation 
 to society that the Socialist wants to make him believe he is, 
 there would be no need for all this unworthy parade, and silly 
 boasting about " our very noble selves." The very existence 
 of all these excuses for forcing what ought to come 
 spontaneously and would so come if it were deserved is 
 proof positive that society is rotten and corrupt at heart, 
 totally undeserving of the self-stulification that is so noisily 
 demanded in its name. When society is really worthy, it 
 
no The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 will not demand or force : it will neither boast itself about 
 obligations or listen to those who do. 
 
 But why an infallible social collectivity of this kind should 
 require so much forcible legislative regulation to keep it 
 straight, is not easy to see on the superstitionist's principles. 
 That which presumes to regulate everybody ought to be 
 above the law. There are plenty of gods which require a 
 fresh coat of paint occasionally; but a god that needs the 
 constant presence of an army of social police, to keep him 
 either from going to pieces or very seriously hurting himself; 
 a god that- even its own worshippers dare not trust alone; is 
 certainly the most wonderful deity this world has ever seen. 
 
 The great point is to knock all this cant about " other 
 people " solidly on the head. No man can be either free or 
 happy until he has done this ; and this once achieved, 
 nothing can enslave him more. The keenest dart of malice 
 glances unharmfully off him who knows the littleness of 
 humanity. But there is no need to run society down until 
 some knave begins to run it up. Its follies and vices need 
 not be mentioned by anybody until the collective embodi- 
 ment of these vices and follies is set up as an object of 
 worship and allegiance. Then it is time to speak. The 
 mask should then be torn off this filthy idol, so that it may 
 be seen to be what it really is : a noisy chattering mass of 
 vanity and corruption. The individual is just about as 
 much indebted to this thing, as it is indebted to him ; nay, 
 not as much if he happens to be a tolerant broad-minded 
 man, going about his business and leaving others to go 
 about theirs. The best people have always treated the 
 crowd better than it has treated them. The narrow- 
 mindedness and bigotry, the petifogging spying and prying, 
 the uncharitableness, and all the unspeakable meanness of 
 the crowd towards the unit, is well known. Mrs. Grundy is 
 not a deity either to love or to admire. A man is no more 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. in 
 
 morally bound to her than he is bound to a crew of wild 
 baboons. She is neither the source nor the centre of moral 
 duty. At best she is but a portion of the subject matter on 
 which the moral consciousness of each may work. Like the 
 rest of nature she is so much material for each man to 
 rationally regulate his life towards, not from fear but from 
 reason. A wise man will treat her according to her nature, 
 just as he will treat other facts according to their natures ; 
 varying his treatment as the subject matter varies, and never 
 stooping either to flattery or fear. And on this view, most 
 men have always endeavoured to act, however much they 
 may cant about "humanity," "fraternity," and all that 
 nonsense. This creed of reason is the common creed 
 of all men, the only creed that ever has worked or 
 ever will work. Fanaticisms and namby pamby 
 sentimentalisms come and go, but this creed remains. 
 Each man finds the moral law within himself, in 
 the inexorable logic of his own consciousness. He knows 
 that when he treats other rational beings differently from 
 what he, in their circumstances, Xvould wish to be treated, 
 he stultifies his own soul, and commits an injury against 
 that which is highest and noblest in himself the conscious- 
 ness of consistency, which is at once both perfect happiness 
 and perfect virtue ; is the greatest thing in life. He 
 knows, moreover, that this law is only binding so long as 
 people behave like rational beings, and that when they 
 begin acting towards him like wolves or tigers he is justified 
 in treating them as such. This is the only basis of morality, 
 laid within the centre of each individual soul ; independent 
 alike both of the external few and the external many ; fixed 
 and unshakable while time and understanding last. Duty is 
 the consistency of the reason with itself, the obligation it is 
 logically under of treating things which are equal to the 
 same thing as if they were equal to one another. Out of 
 
 H 
 
ii2 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 this logical obligation, this law of self-consistency, proceeds 
 what is termed our duty to society. A rational being will 
 treat other people well, not because they deserve it (can he 
 read their hearts so as to know this ? ) still less because they 
 have any right to command it, but because he desires other 
 people to treat him w r ell, and because he will not stoop to 
 stain his soul with the petty passions which prompt worse 
 treatment to others than he wishes for himself. In all 
 things the rational being acts for the sake of that inner peace 
 which self-consistency brings. He follows right for his own 
 sake, and not for the sake of others : he speaks truth for its 
 own -sake, and not for the sake of others : for he knows that 
 these are peace, and that their peace is better than the 
 approval of the whole world. Only that is worthy which a 
 man gives unto himself. Those who have this peace (not 
 established by society ; for how should that noisy vanity give 
 it ?) need neither fear or hope anything from others. 
 " From the contagion of the world's slow strain they are 
 secure." Nothing can touch or harm them more. They 
 are one with the universal harmony for ever. 
 
 As an example of the doctrine here enunciated take the 
 case of truth speaking. That falsehood is contrary to the 
 interest of the real and essential self, may be easily proved. 
 For when a man says or acts what he does not think, one 
 portion of his consciousness conflicts with another portion. 
 His body pulls one way and his mind another. Movement 
 stands up in open rebuke and accusation against thought. 
 The liar's consciousness of what really exists within is con- 
 tradicted by what his body represents to exist there. Thus 
 is he at strife with himself, and judged and condemned of 
 himself. It is as if his two eyes, which ought naturally to 
 move together as a single unity, moved in diverse directions, 
 the axis of one pointing up to the sky, that of the other 
 down to the ground. The liar is a walking mental squint, a 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 113 
 
 monster whose unnaturalness inevitably punishes itself. 
 Along with every falsehood there goes a lack of harmony, of 
 natural fitness, of .correspondence between the outside and 
 inside. The entire mental and bodily consensus does not 
 move and function as one complete and unified whole: there 
 is a continual jar and friction between the parts, as if the 
 Government did not proceed from a single centre. And 
 neither can it proceed from such a centre when a man 
 follows some external social standard of morality, and simply 
 lives to please and flatter others. The liar strives to live as 
 two beings, which differ from and misrepresent one another. 
 Hence the stream of his life gets into the habit of some- 
 imes flowing one way, sometimes another. The result is- 
 that he has to be constantly struggling to keep the two 
 spheres of his activity perfectly distinct, lest he should slip 
 and forget himself, and be imposed upon by his own false- 
 hoods ; as indeed he frequently is, and the more so in pro- 
 portion to the amount of falsehood that he indulges in. 
 His social self tends to run off with his individual self. The 
 part he acts humbugs and teases the part he thinks. What 
 he is in his closet is laughed at and rebuild by w^tat he is 
 amongst the crowd. All his imitations, Stad pretences, and 
 smirks, and smiles, and flatteries, come home to him when 
 he is with that from which nature will not let hirn get away, 
 socialize and communalize as he may. Then, when the 
 noise and confusion can be no longer kept up, the great 
 silence steals in and speaks to him. " What have you been 
 doing with that which I gave you ? Is Jit worth while to 
 gain the grins and flatteries of the whole world and stain 
 your own soul? Is it not better to live to the laws of 
 nature, and of your own nature, even if only for a moment, 
 than to bask in the smiles of all men for ever? Is not 
 truth enough, and the knowledge of it perfect peace? " 
 This is the only reason why a lie is wrong. It is unnatural, 
 
ii4 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 against the real nature of a rational being, against the inner 
 unity of reason, against the only strength a man possesses 
 that of intellect, of clear and distinct understanding, and of 
 consequent power of self-direction. Why do sinners lean on 
 priests ? Why do cowards lean on one another ? Because 
 the poison of social falsehood has taken away this self- 
 direction. The mind has become impure, and, therefore, 
 naturally gravitates to what is akin to itself. Only the sick 
 need a physician. And men make themselves sick with lies. 
 For the lie is the only producer of that internal disorder and 
 confusion which break up the harmony of the understand- 
 ing, and so prevents the understanding from seeing itself 
 perfectly reflected in that which clothes itself the speech 
 and action of its mortal coil. When the mind sees this' 
 reflection, it is self-satisfied, at peace, one with universal 
 nature. This peace, this oneness, is virtue ; for virtue is 
 truth. And truth is a good in itself. If only one being 
 existed in the universe, it would be equally good for that one 
 being. For such a being might just as easily mis-express 
 himself in acts, as social creatures do now mis-express their 
 real thoughts in words. The lie is a personal mis-expression, 
 and goes deeper than society or the good of society. 
 Although, as a matter of fact, it is only the fear of others 
 that frightens us into untruth. Society is the devil which a 
 wise man will always shame, let it shout and rave and cant 
 as it likes. Truth is its own reward. It is the health of the 
 soul, and health is good, whether other people know of its 
 existence or not.' The whole theory of social obligations 
 is radically false. A lie is not wrong because it misleads 
 others : a quicksand, a bog, a mirage, or a mist does this ; 
 yet they are not wrong : on the contrary they are perfectly 
 adapted to do what they do, are natural and complete after 
 their kind, are unblemished portions of the universal order. 
 No, the falsehood is wrong because it injures the man who 
 
The Nairn al Right to Freedom. 115 
 
 tells it. The only wrong there is about it is inside, not 
 outside. It makes a man imperfect after his kind'; that is, 
 after the manner of a rational being ; after the distinctive 
 and only essential nature of man : viz., that reason which, 
 being taken away, leaves only dust behind. Fancy a parent 
 telling his child that a lie is only wrong because it misleads 
 him (the parent), or because it misleads other parents, or 
 because it misleads " society." What a false, conventional, 
 and absurd basis of morals ! It directs attention to the mere 
 superficial shows of life, and away from that inner law of 
 mental consistency, which, " if men would obey with all their 
 hearts, their lives would be well." There is a more fixed 
 and solid basis of truth than " society." A lie is wrong 
 because it injures the health of that inner sovereign, which 
 ought to be kept pure in order that it may form an appro- 
 priate portion of a perfect cosmos, and so that it may clearly 
 see the laws of that cosmos, freely obeying them, therein 
 making itself one with eternal beauty. The deception of 
 others is a mere external and incidental matter, a something 
 not our own ; but the lie damages our own property, our 
 soul, the only thing that fortune cannot hurt. Deception of 
 others ! Leave them to look to that. What harm can your 
 lie do to their understandings, to the only worthy portions 
 of them ? Either they will discover the lie, or they won't 
 discover it. If they do, they will quickly cast it away ; if 
 they don't, it will never trouble them. " What the eye does 
 not see, the heart does not grieve for." It is nothing to be 
 deceived, nothing to be flattered : on these things the world 
 feeds and lives, always trying to make itself believe that it 
 enjoys the filthy garbage. Those who allow these things to 
 disturb them will never know peace. But it is everything to 
 deceive. When a man himself stoops to lying, he stains his 
 own soul with that which, when done by another, carries no 
 stain. And to those who have learnt to regard themselves 
 
n6 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 as a portion of nature, it is easier to speak the truth than to 
 tell a lie. For in speaking truth a man moves his body into 
 conformity with his understanding, and so progresses in the 
 natural direction; that is, in the direction in which the 
 general process of evolution is moving and ever has moved. 
 In the utterance of truth body and soul are absolutely 
 parallel. The whole thought and the whole expression fit 
 in perfectly with one another. There is no inner jar, no 
 discord whatever. In a word, there is that harmonious 
 working of the individual system which is eternally right and 
 good in and for itself, whether other people like it or not. 
 This is the real basis of morality. It is independent of 
 society, and yet if the conclusions that flow from it are 
 obeyed, nothing but profit can come to society. Nature has 
 not left every man as a mere beggar for Mrs. Grundy to 
 patronize, a mere thing that cannot live apart from the grins 
 and lies of "other people." She has so constituted each 
 man that his only duty is towards that most high reason which 
 she has placed within him. If he is faithful to this, he need 
 concern himself about nothing further. For then he lives in 
 perpetual harmony with the cosmic process, and moves with 
 this process towards that intellectual perception of law which 
 is its highest and most perfect consummation. 
 
 But in the socialist ideal all are to love all : everybody is to 
 be a friend to each, and each is to spread out his regard over 
 everybody. There will be no narrow exclusiveness, no 
 selfish preferences for private monopolies of the love that 
 equally belongs to all. How well this silly sentimentalism 
 works in practice has been humourously illustrated by the 
 poet GAY : 
 
 THE HARE AND MANY FRIENDS. 
 
 Friendship, like love is but a name, 
 
 Unless to one you stint the flame. 
 
 The child, who many fathers share, 
 
 Hath seldom known a father's care. 
 
'I he Natural Right to Freedom 117 
 
 Tis thus in friendship ; who depend 
 On many, rarely find a friend. 
 
 A Hare, who in a civil way 
 Comply'd with ev'ry thing, like GAY, 
 Was known by all the bestial train 
 Who haunt the wood, or graze the plain. 
 Her care was, never to offend, 
 And ev'ry creature was her friend. 
 
 As forth she went, at early dawn, 
 To taste the dew-besprinkled lawn, 
 Behind she hears the hunter's cries, 
 And from the deep-mouth'd thunder flies : 
 She starts, she stops, she pants for breath ; 
 She hears the near advance of death ; 
 She doubles to mislead the hound, 
 And measures back her mazy round ; 
 'Till, fainting in the public way, 
 Half-dead with fear, she gasping lay. 
 
 What transport in her bosom grew, 
 When first the horse appear'tl in view ! 
 
 Let me, says she, your back ascend, 
 And owe my safety to a friend. 
 You know my feet betray my flight ; 
 To friendship ev'ry burthen's light. 
 
 The horse reply'd, Poor honest Puss, 
 In grives my heart to see thee thuss : 
 Be comforted, relief is near ; 
 For all your friends are in the rear. 
 
 She next the stately Bull implor'd, 
 And thas reply'd the mighty lord : 
 Since ev'ry beast alive can tell 
 That I sincerely wish you well, 
 I may, without offence, pretend 
 To take the freedom of a friend. 
 Love calls me hence ; a fav'rite cow 
 Expects me near yon barley-mow ; 
 And when a lady's in the case, 
 You know all other things give place. 
 To leave you thus might seem unkind ; 
 But see, the Goat is just behind. 
 
 The Goat remark'd her pulse was high, 
 Her languid head, her heavy eye ; 
 My back, says he, may do you harm ; 
 The sheep's at hand, and wool is warm. 
 
 The Sheep was feeble, and complain'd 
 His sides a load of wool sustain'd : 
 
n8 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 Said he was slow, confess'd his fears ; 
 For hounds eat Sheep as well as Hares. 
 
 She now the trotting Calf addrcss'd, 
 To save from death a friend distress'd. 
 
 Shall I, says he, of tender age, 
 In this important care engage? 
 Older and abler pass'd you by ; 
 How strong are those ! how weak am I ! 
 Should I presume to bear you hence, 
 Those friends of mine may take offence. 
 Excuse me, then. You know my heart, 
 But dearest friends, alas ! must part. 
 How shall we all lament ! Adieu ; 
 For, see, the hounds are just in view. Fable L. 
 
 The ideal of the more extreme Socialist is communism. 
 All things are to be in common. As Mr. Morris once said 
 " Things are not to be yours or mine, but ' ours.' " It is not 
 possible : nature won't permit it. Fancy a man's hands, and 
 feet, and eyes being " ours " ! Perhaps the nearest approach 
 to consistent communism was made by Sir Isaac Newton, 
 when, in a fit of abstraction, he used his housekeeper's finger 
 for a tobacco stopper. It would be rather awkward, when 
 you wanted to use your hand, to find that your loving friends 
 were passing it about amongst them. But communism 
 never has washed among rational beings, and it never will. 
 It may do for a couple of moon-struck fools, but even these 
 soon get sick of it. The feelings and tastes of other people 
 are doubtless very interesting to other people, but they are 
 not and never can be everything to the unit. Society is not 
 my god, and neither, if you speak the truth, is it yours. 
 
 How refreshing it is, after reading all the modern cant 
 about taking the perverted feelings and tastes of society as 
 centres of moral allegiance, to turn to the pure ideal of 
 one of the few souls that have seen and rejected poor 
 vanities and gross superstitions of this world : "To receive the 
 impressions of forms by means of appearances, belongs even 
 to animals ; to be pulled by the strings of desire, belongs 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 119 
 
 both to wild beasts and to men who have made themselves 
 into women, and to a Phalaris and a Nero : and to have the 
 intelligence that guides to the things which appear suitable, 
 belongs also to those who do not believe in the gods, and 
 who betray their country, and do their impure deeds when 
 they have shut the doors. If, then, everything else is 
 common to all that I have mentioned, there remains that 
 which is peculiar to the good man, to be pleased and content 
 with what happens, and with the thread which is spun for 
 him ; and not to defile the divinity which is planted in his 
 breast, nor disturb it by a crowd of images, but to preserve 
 it tranquil, following it obediently as a god, neither saying 
 anything contrary to the truth, nor doing anything contrary to 
 justice. And if all men refuse to believe that he lives a 
 simple, modest, and contented life, he is neither angry with 
 any of them, nor does he deviate from the way which leads 
 to the end of life, to which a man ought to come pure, 
 tranquil, ready to depart, and, without any compulsion, 
 perfectly reconciled to his lot." M. ANTONINUS iii., 16. 
 
 Yes, the moral law is planted within, where neither States, 
 nor mobs, nor democracies, nor princes can reach. No man 
 can give this law to another man. No set of men can give 
 this law to another set of men. This law is more funda- 
 mental than the State. It rests ori that individual conscious- 
 ness which was before the State, and which will be when a 
 nobler and purer humanity has dissolved the State for ever. 
 
120 The Natural Right to Freedom 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ON pages 387-9 of his work on Individualism, Mr. 
 Wordsworth Donisthorpe has searchingly criticised 
 the theoretical basis of Individualism. Let us therefore 
 briefly examine his arguments, and, if possible, counter- 
 criticise the chief objections that are raised by him. 
 
 As illustrations' 'of the difficulty of solving practical 
 questions by means of theoretical conceptions, he gives the 
 following instances : 
 
 " A. I meet Smith in the desert ; he is in possession of a 
 splendid ruby worth ; 10,000. I knock him down, tie his 
 hands, rifle his pockets, and carry off the ruby. 
 
 B. Conditions the same. I hold a pistol to his head, 
 and demand the ruby : he hands it to me of his own free 
 will and accord, and I carry it off. 
 
 C. Conditions the same. Smith is dying of thirst; 
 I have a skin of water ; I threaten to leave him to perish 
 unless he gives me the ruby ; he hands it to me, and I ride 
 off with the ruby and the water also, and leave him to his 
 fate. 
 
 D. Conditions the same. The same bargain as in C. 
 I carry off the ruby, but give him the water as agreed on. 
 
 E. Conditions the same. I give myself out as an expert 
 lapidary ; I satisfy Smith that his ruby is only a fine but 
 common form of amethyst, worth about ;io; I buy it for 
 that price, and sell it for ^"10,000. 
 
 F. I meet Smith in London; he cannot find a purchaser 
 for his ruby at a high price ; meanwhile, I have learnt that 
 
7 he Natural Right to Freedom. 121 
 
 Jones is willing to give ;i 0,000 for such a ruby; I keep the 
 secret, and offer Smith ^1,000, which he accepts, whereupon 
 I sell the ruby to Jones for the full price. 
 
 G. I meet Smith in London; I do not know of any likely 
 purchaser, but I believe the ruby to be worth ,10,000; 
 I offer him ,5,000, which he accepts, and I carry off the 
 ruby, and eventually sell it for 10,000. 
 
 QUERY At what point does direct coercion end and 
 indirect begin ? At what point does my conduct cease to be 
 immoral ? At what point is it and ought it to be regarded 
 as illegal. 
 
 I know that A is a case of direct coercion ; I know that it 
 is immoral, and I know that it is and. ought to be illegal. 
 1 know that G is not a case of direct coercion ; I think it is 
 not immoral, and I know that under the English Law it is 
 not illegal, though the Roman Law provided a remedy, and 
 1 think the Roman Law was wrong, and the transaction 
 ought legally to stand. With respect to B, I know it is 
 immoral and illegal, but I am not quite sure about direct 
 coercion. With respect to C, D, E, and F, I cannot regard 
 them as cases of direct coercion. I consider C immoral and 
 illegal ; I consider D immoral, but doubt whether it should 
 be illegal ; I consider E immoral, and I think it should 
 probably be illegal ; I think F should not be illegal, and I 
 am doubtful of its immorality. And between any two of 
 these roughly-graduated instances scores of delicate shades 
 of unfairness could be drawn, concerning which it would be 
 impossible for the subtlest casuist to generalise. If this is 
 the case in so simple a matter as acquiring a ruby from its. 
 possessor, how can we expect to be able to deduce any 
 general rules as to private morals or State functions from a 
 single principle a priori ? I regard the attempt as futile ; 
 and I hold that only by the experience of generations can 
 any rough, practical working rules be arrived at that is to 
 
122 7 he Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 say, by a process of careful induction and verification." 
 
 *****&# 
 
 " According to him (Mr. Hubert Spencer) it is the duty 
 and eventual tendency of society to allow the widest liberty 
 to each of its component individual members compatible 
 with the equal liberty of all. Now there is here no form of 
 liberty excluded, not even the exercise of brute force ; ynless 
 the exclusion of the exercise of brute force is involved in the 
 term liberty. But is it ? And if so, are any other forms of 
 force excluded i.e., cunning, fraud, undue influence, etc. ? 
 Again, if so, can all these excluded forms be generalised 
 under some such class name as direct coercion ? 
 
 If not, the liberty of each, limited alone by the like liberty 
 of all, is a precise description of absolute anarchy. Says the 
 anarchist, ' You are free to do whatever you can do ; you are 
 free to kill me ; I am free to kill you. Your liberty to take 
 my goods is limited only by my liberty to keep them. All 
 is freedom equal freedom.' " 
 
 Now when applied to theoretical Individualism, the fore- 
 going argument, if it means anything at all, means that 
 because human conduct gradually shades downward from 
 force proper to the faintest degree of fraud, therefore the 
 a priori maxim : The widest liberty of each, compatible with 
 the equal liberty of all, is of no practical value as a guide 
 towards law making. Theoretical Individualism is futile, 
 deduction useless, and verified induction the only safe guide. 
 So much does the argument amount to, and as such let us 
 now examine it. 
 
 In the first place, then, it is well to point out that, if the 
 foregoing reasoning were sound, it would utterly destroy the 
 value, not only of the liberty maxim, but also the worth of 
 all general rules and principles whatsoever. For there never 
 yet was a general rule framed whose subject matter- the 
 cases to which it is intended to be applied does not shade 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 123 
 
 off in the manner described by Mr. Donisthorpe. Take, for 
 example, the maxim "Thou shalt not steal." Now the facts 
 to which it refers may be shaded outwards froirKhe taking of 
 ^ 1 0,000 to the plucking of a leaf in your neighbour's 
 garden. If anyone cared to be at the trouble, he could draw 
 up just as strong a case to prove that no practical guidance 
 can be derived from this "Single principle a priori" as 
 Mr. Donisthorpe has drawn up for the purpose of showing 
 the practical uselessness of the liberty formulae Take the 
 following instances : 
 
 My neighbour keeps a valuable fox terrier. 
 
 i st. Without receiving the slightest encouragement on 
 my part, the animal attempts to follow me to the nearest 
 town : but, knowing that it may easily get lost, I drive it 
 back to its home. 
 
 2nd. Facts the same ; but I quietly allow it to do what 
 it likes : it follows and is lost. 
 
 3rd. Facts the same : but I give it some very slight 
 encouragement ; it goes and is lost. 
 
 4th. Fucts the same : but I pat and caress it, and do all 
 that I cin to entice it to go along with me; it goes and is lost. 
 
 5th. Facts the same : but after enticing it to fol.'ow for 
 many miles, I take no further notice of it, and allow it to get 
 lost on the road. 
 
 6th. Facts the same : but after enticing it to follow to 
 the nearest town, I purposely lose it in the midst of a crowd. 
 
 yth. Facts the same : but when a stranger admires it, and 
 asks its price, I tell him that he can do as he likes with it ; 
 and I let him put a string round its neck and lead it away. 
 
 8th. Facts the same : but I do all that I can to help the 
 stranger in catching the dog. 
 
 9 th. Facts the same : but I take up the animal and offer 
 it to the stranger. 
 
 I0 th. Facts the same: but I tell the stranger he may 
 
124 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 have the dog for ^3 : he pays the money, and carries off the 
 animal. 
 
 QUERY Where does indifference end and theft begin ? 
 Where comes in the practical value of the a priori maxim : 
 "Thou shall not steal?": for certainly, in relation to any 
 particular concrete case or set of cases, this maxim also, just 
 like the liberty maxim already noticed, must be inevitably 
 and completely a priori in character ; since it inheres in the 
 very nature of a general rule, whatever its origin, to be always 
 a priori in relation to every separate fact to which it may be 
 sought to be appliecj. (For a fuller account of this see 
 pages 24-29 of the present book). 
 
 We may even go further, and show that what is called 
 induction, is really at bottom nothing but an aggregate of 
 separate deductions carefully summed up in a scientific 
 formulae. As a matter of fact, the human mind is only 
 capable of going through one kind of logical process, and 
 thus all the apparently different forms of reasoning are but 
 so many variations of the same tune, so many performances 
 of one and the same mental operation. In fact, any 
 argument that cannot be expressed in the form of a syllogism 
 (with its inevitable a priori major premise) is not truth but 
 worthless obscurantism. An example furnished by Geology 
 will throw into clearer light what is here contended for. 
 Let us then suppose that, by means of a boring instrument, 
 I pull up from beneath the surface of Hampstead Heath, a 
 lump of yellow earth, which, for convenience, I will call 
 Hampstead Clay. Here is my testing sample, serviceable 
 until experience gives a better. This I carry to different 
 parts of Middlesex ; at each place comparing it with other 
 lumps of clay obtained by means of the boring instrument 
 already mentioned. When I put a new lump by the side of 
 this first lump, I see that in all essential points the two 
 agree ; and I find, moreover, that the same agreement is 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom, 125 
 
 repeated every time a fresh boring enables the comparison to 
 be made. Now let it be assumed that I wish to generalize 
 this constantly repeated agreement of the new with the old ; 
 that I want to express it in some wide and all-embracing 
 form : in short, that I desire to raise it to the level of a 
 sweeping scientific induction. How am I to achieve such a 
 result ? By the sole aid of "rigid induction?" Not likely. 
 In ordej to build up my desired induction, I must employ 
 the deductive method, and without this method I cannot 
 advance a single step. How then am I to proceed ? There 
 is an a priori axiom in Euclid which says that "Things 
 which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another." 
 With the aid of this I can work. I apply it to my lumps of 
 clay, and by means of it I am enabled to construct my 
 experiences of those lumps into a useful scientific generaliza- 
 tion. For the second lump is like the first ; so is the third, 
 fourth, fifth, sixth, and thus on to the last. But, as we have 
 just seen, things which are equal to the same thing are equal 
 to one another. Therefore, to cut a long story short, 
 Middlesex possesses a large seam of Hampstead Heath clay, 
 or, if you prefer the term, " London clay," as the geologists 
 call it. Such is the inductive generalization deductively 
 arrived at. It is nothing more than a summation of a 
 number of separate deductive arguments, and that which is 
 true of it is equally true of every inductive generalization 
 whatsoever. " Rigid Induction " never was and it never 
 will be. 
 
 There is no need to apply this short and easy method with 
 the disbelievers m general principles, to each and every phase 
 of our complex human life. One or two examples will be 
 enough to show that Mr. Donisthorpe's reasoning destroys 
 all science and all morality at one fell swoop. 
 
 To begin with, take Mr. Donisthorpe's illogical statement 
 that case A "is immoral" How, on his own principles, can 
 
126 The Natural Right to Freedom 
 
 he know this? To say that a particular act is immoral, 
 implies a previous knowledge, as well as a previous classifica- 
 tion, of what are and what are not immoral acts. Suppose, 
 for instance, we said to Mr. Donisthorpe " How do you know 
 that it is immoral to knock a man down under the particular 
 circumstances you have mentioned ? " He would be obliged 
 to reply somewhat as follows " Unprovoked and non- 
 defensive interference with a man's person is immoral* This 
 is both unprovoked and non-defensive. Therefore it is 
 immoral." The wording of his argument might be different; 
 but the form would be the same, and would, consequently, 
 be equally a priori in relation to the particular case in 
 question. That is to say, the philosopher who despises all 
 a priori principles as being futile, would find himself obliged 
 to resort to them in order to prove the truth of his own 
 propositions. Let any person who thinks otherwise just try 
 to draw conclusions about particular events, without the aid 
 of a priori principles of one kind or another. He will find 
 that he cannot do so. He will find that at every step of his 
 reasoning he will be obliged to take for granted some general, 
 sweeping, and a priori maxim. The rigid inductionist is not 
 upsetting theoretical individualism : he is vainly kicking 
 against the nature of things, as expressed in the unalterable 
 laws of human thought. For what, after all, is an a priori 
 principle ? It is simply a formula, a general statement of 
 truths that have been previously recognized and verified. 
 The application of such a formula to a particular case is 
 what is called a priori reasoning. For example, I find by 
 experience that unsupported stones fall to the ground. The 
 consequence is, that when I come across a particular stone, 
 I apply to it this general experience of previous stones, 
 i.e., of things which in certain points resemble the present 
 stone, and, from the resemblance, conclude beforehand that 
 the latter, when unsupported, will also fall to the ground ; 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 127 
 
 since, as EUCLID says, " Things which mutually agree with 
 one another, are equal to one another." I am not, however, 
 absolutely sure that in this case they do altogether agree. 
 If I were sure of this, I should not need to go 
 through any time-taking process of reasoning at all ; 
 since the only function of the latter is to act as a guide 
 where absolute and instantaneous certainty is unattain- 
 able. So in this instance. Falling to the ground may be 
 just the one point in which the untried stone differs from all 
 the stones that have previously been tried. The untried stone 
 may impress me with most of the sensations imparted by the 
 tried stones, and yet I cannot be absolutely certain before- 
 hand that if 1 throw it up, it will also impress me with that 
 particular change in the order of my sensations which I call 
 falling to the ground. This last is just the one conclusion 
 that I am obliged to beg, and I beg it solely on the strength 
 or my a priority applied maxim. I think that I do not need 
 in this case to make any special experiment ; though, if I can 
 do so, I shall either re-verify or correct my past experience 
 of stones, and thus increase for future a priori application, 
 the value of the maxim which expresses it. But if I were 
 compelled to re-experiment in every new case, my a priori 
 reasoning would be altogether useless to* me : it would 
 perform no serviceable function in the economy of life ; for 
 its only value lies in the fact that it will tell me what, on the 
 assumption of a general uniformity in the happening of 
 events, is likely to happen in those new and untried cases 
 where practical experience cannot reach. In other words, 
 its only value consists in the very feature that Mr. 
 Donisthorpe denies it to possess ; namely, in its power of 
 beforehand guiding the conduct of practical life where 
 "careful induction and verification " cannot at the moment 
 reach. A priori reasoning is the long arm of the intellect 
 by which man is enabled to reach beyond present experience, 
 
128 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 and determine questions which cannot at the time be 
 absolutely verified by rigid induction at once a necessary 
 function and a natural limitation of a finite intellect. With 
 an infinite intellect reason would be unnecessary, and for 
 such a reality it could not exist. Man, a finite creature, 
 lives by consecutive thought, and thinks by means of the 
 steps in the time process of reason. But the infinite intellect 
 of an infinite reality could think instantaneously and 
 intuitively, without being hampered in the slightest degree 
 with this ratiocinative time-limitation; that is, without being 
 compelled to pass through the different mental stages of a 
 finite creature. For the last must, at least so far as it is a 
 practical being, think under the form of time ; the first can 
 only think under the form of eternity ; that is, in itself, and 
 so far as it is an infinite intellect. As a finite being, the last 
 must begin to think and cease to think. But the thought of 
 the first could never begin and can never end ; like that of 
 PLATO'S " eternal geometrician," it must always exist as the 
 infinitely perfect fulness of one everlasting now. And man, 
 in so far as his reason enables him to grasp abstract truth, 
 enters, so to speak, within the very portals of this vast 
 intellect's infinite light ; stands, as it were, on the steps of 
 truth's great white throne, and loses his personal limitations 
 in a form of thought that transcends personality ; and was, 
 and is, and is to be : the permanent, changeless attribute of 
 a reality in which all actualities and all possibilities are 
 always fully and completely realized. 
 
 Let us apply our a priori maxim to a practical concrete 
 case. I am travelling, we will say for the first time, through 
 a narrow mountain pass. Loose rocks and stones hang 
 above me on either hand. Naturally I conclude, but solely 
 on the strength of my a priori maxim, that I am in some 
 danger of being crushed ; though it is true I have never been 
 in this particular district before : therefore, of course, I have 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom* 129 
 
 not yet had any opportunity of rigidly examining and care- 
 fully testing each rock and stone separately, or even of 
 ascertaining how they gradually shade off from the most 
 dangerous looseness into absolute security. If any man 
 were to ask me at what point the danger began, and at what 
 point it ended, I could not for the life of me tell him. In 
 spite of all this, however, I go armed with a general a priori 
 principle; resting, it is true, upon previous experience, but 
 still general and a priori in relation to the present facts. 
 The practical rule that I am led to draw by seeking to apply 
 this principle, is keep well in the open^ and as far from 
 overhanging rocks as possible ; and never walk under the 
 latter unless you are absolutely forced. I admit that, owing 
 to the unevenness of the road, I cannot apply this rule as 
 well as I would : I therefore do the next best thing, and 
 apply it as well as I can. No doubt Mr. Donisthorpe does 
 precisely the same with whatever a priori maxims and rules 
 that he may find himself obliged to adopt : and we have seen 
 how, in the case of morality, he does, at least implicity if not 
 explicitly, adopt such maxims and rules. Why cannot he do 
 the same with those of liberty ? 
 
 There is no need to urge that the rule about liberty is 
 perfect, or that it can be applied without a varying degree 
 of qualification to all the difficult problems of life and 
 government. This is not the point. The point is this- 
 Is the rule in question rendered practically, worthless because 
 of its a priori character ? Th rule may be good or it may 
 be bad when looked at from some other point of view ; but 
 is it bad because of its a priori nature ? Mr. Donisthorpe 
 urges that it is ; and yet he bases his own arguments against 
 it, on conclusions that are equally general and a priori. 
 Now either a priori rules afford guidance or they don't 
 afford guidance. If they don't, then Mr. Donisthorpe has 
 no business to make use of such rules. If they do, he has 
 
130 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 no warrant for objecting to the liberty maxim on the ground 
 of its a priori character. 
 
 Perhaps Mr. Donisthorpe will deny that he does mak use 
 of a priori rules. Well, considering that he has written a book 
 on the a priori assumption that people will read it, there is 
 every appearance that he does. Possibly he will reply that 
 his assumption is not a priori: that it rests upon his 
 previous experience of the fact that people do read books. 
 Very likely ; but the a prioriness lies in the application of 
 this experience to the as yet new and untried case. As 
 Professor Stanley Jevons says : " knowledge may originally 
 be of an a posteriori origin ; and yet having been long in 
 possession, and having acquired the greatest certainty, it 
 may be the ground of deductions, and may then be said to 
 give a priori knowledge." 
 
 The mere fact that a rule is based on old induction, does 
 not make its application to future events any less a priori in 
 character. A priori means before experience, and certainly 
 Mr. Donisthorpe's speculations concerning the possible 
 readers of this book, were before experience. Not only so, 
 but they took for granted what no amount of induction can 
 demonstrate, because, as MILL himself was obliged to 
 admit, this something that is taken for granted is the 
 ultimate major premise of every inductive inference. I 
 mean the uniformity of nature. Mr. Donisthorpe's a priori 
 reasoning about his book may be stated thus " Incidental 
 variations apart, the same general order that has prevailed in 
 the past will continue in the future. In the past people 
 have read books. Therefore people will continue to read 
 books. Consequently there is at least a possibility of my 
 book getting read by some persons, although by how many is 
 of course quite another matter." 
 
 Now, it is difficult to avoid the obvious conclusion that 
 Mr. Donisthorpe did derive a very large amount of practical 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 131 
 
 guidance from the deductive application of his belief in the 
 uniformity of Nature as above set forth. Of course, as just 
 pointed out, he may reply that the belief expressed in such 
 maxims as these Nature repeats itself. The future will 
 resemble the past. The universe exemplifies law is not of 
 an a priori character, inasmuch as it rests upon past obser- 
 vation and experiment. But we have seen that the a priori- 
 ness of a maxim lies, not in its origin, but in its application. 
 In this application there is always a step taken beyond 
 experience, whether past or present. 
 
 How, for example, do I know that the sun will rise 
 to-morrow. The fact that it has risen only proves that it 
 has risen : it does not prove that it will rise. As the late 
 Professor Clifford pointed out in one of his essays, there 
 may, for anything we know to the contrary, be an upset in 
 the solar system at any moment. We have not yet 
 exhausted all the factors at work in that illimitable process 
 called the universe, and probably we never shall do so. 
 Yet we shall always continue to take the a priori rule about 
 nature's uniformity, as the basis of all our induction ; itself 
 undemonstrable by induction, because forming the indis- 
 pensible pre-requisite to every inductive process. Why we 
 should be placed under this necessity is impossible to tell. 
 Why an act of faith, a trust, a leap ot the mind into the as 
 yet non-existent future, should be at the very foundation of 
 all human reasoning, is more easily asked than answered. 
 Possibly the expectation of future uniformity on lines similar 
 to past uniformity, has been gradually built into the very 
 structure of the human mind by the long psychic process of 
 which that mind is the highest known phase. Bu, be this 
 as it may, the necessity that all men are continually placed 
 under of being guided by this a priori maxim, effectually 
 and for ever disposes of the argument than an a priori 
 principle, by reason of its deductive character, can afford no 
 
132 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 guidance to practical conduct. For if its a priori-ness 
 renders a deductive maxim worthless, then all reasoning 
 whatsoever is worthless; since all reasoning takes for granted, 
 and rests upon, the deductively applied maxim that nature is 
 uniform. 
 
 It is a very common custom with those who oppose the 
 application of general abstract principles to political 
 problems, to cry down every theory that is not exclusively 
 based upon what Mr. Donisthorpe calls " rigid induction." 
 Now I have not a word to say against induction. But I 
 contend that by itself, and apart from deduction, it is 
 utterly useless, both for theory and practice. Deduction is 
 just as necessary as induction, and in all sound reasoning 
 the two go together. Of course it is perfectly true that a 
 great deal of what is called deduction, is merely the applica- 
 tion of previous induction to new cases ; or at least it is the 
 application of what is generally termed "induction," to new 
 cases : though if the a priori maxim expressive of our belief 
 in nature's uniformity is necessarily implied and taken for 
 granted in each and every inductive process,, such a form of 
 reasoning as pure and simple induciion, that is, induction 
 involving no a priori element, is an absolute mental 
 impossibility ; as impossible to the mind as walking on air is 
 to the body. This however by the way. When, by means 
 of so-called " rigid " induction, we have brought a mass of 
 similar acts under one general and commanding proposition, 
 we may next begin to apply this proposition in detail to 
 particular instances, continually verifying it, and correcting 
 and modifying it from time to time as new experience 
 warrants. By the help, let us say, of the so-called inductive 
 method, Mr. Donisthorpe has discovered that knocking a 
 man down and robbing him is immoral. The consequence 
 is, that directly he sees Smith treated in this summary 
 manner, he applies his inductive generalization deductively. 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 133 
 
 and immediately infers that something wrong is going on ; 
 although, as a matter of fact, he is totally unable to trace out 
 all the particular evils, moral, mental, and physical, that may 
 arise from this particular interference with personal freedom. 
 That is to say, he applies the a priori method in classifying 
 his own special instances, and then objects to the theory of 
 liberty on the ground that it involves an a priori principle ! 
 And why ? Because, as we all know, it is so very difficult 
 to draw arbitrary lines and distinctions: in this strange world 
 things blend so confoundedly into one another. " Between 
 right and wrong not the thickness of a sixpence.'' Thus 
 argues the rejector of abstract principles. As if the very use 
 of distinctions did not consist in guarding us against 
 the evils to which this unfortunate blending would otherwise 
 lead us. Abstract rules are the lines of latitude and 
 longtitude which we draw across a perfectly lineless sphere. 
 The whole business of life consists in making useful 
 distinctions, and in being guided by them. And the happiest 
 man is he who can make the clearest distinctions. True, it 
 is difficult to make distinctions, but it is necessary. Take 
 the art of navigation, for example ; an art based entirely on 
 distinctions which in past times have been made with the 
 greatest risk and difficulty. Is the captain of a vessel to 
 throw this art aside on the ground that it is made up of a 
 mass of (to him at least) a priori maxims, which he can only 
 in part, and never at the moment of use, verify and modify ? 
 Why, this elaborate argument about one thing shading into 
 another would be seen through and laughed at 
 by any ordinary schoolboy. Everything shades into 
 everything else. Day blends into night : we cannot 
 absolutely point out the precise instant or stage where 
 the one begins and the other ends ; and yet we 
 can tell pretty well when it is light ; and to some extent we 
 can even trace the various degrees of dawn. Mr. Donis- 
 
134 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 thorpe, by implication, says that he cannot say exactly where 
 immoral actions end and where moral actions begin; and yet, 
 as we have seen, he does not scruple to classify certain acts 
 as immoral. Evidently, then, he must have got over the 
 difficulty somehow. He must have drawn the line some- 
 where. It never seems to strike him that if certain glaring 
 and typical acts are morally wrong, other acts may be treated 
 as wrong in proportion as they approximate towards these 
 typical cases. For example, if it is assumed to be wrong to 
 prevent a man from sowing his own corn, it would seem to 
 be equally wrong to steal the crop after it had grown up. 
 The theft is so nearly identical with the interference that 
 they may very fairly be treated in a somewhat similar 
 manner. And thus we may proceed from the most glaring 
 to the least glaring cases, modifying our treatment as our 
 cases recede further and further away from cases of direct 
 and unmistakeable aggression. Take an illustration. A 
 captain of a brig orders the man at the wheel to keep the 
 ship's head NNW. With a smooth sea and a fair wind this 
 is an easy matter. But there are times when the very- 
 opposite state of things prevails ; there are occasions when 
 the weather is so bad that the ship cannot be kept on a 
 straight course, let those who steer display what care they 
 will : the rule, therefore, cannot be perfectly carried out. 
 What should be the practical inference from this? That the 
 rule is useless ? That " rigid induction " should be 
 substituted for the general maxims of navigation ? That it 
 matters not which way the ship is steered ? Surely not ! 
 If the man cannot steer as straight as he would, let him steer 
 as straight as he can. Similarly with liberty. If law cannot 
 unravel all the intricacies of human conduct, let it in the 
 first instance protect against aggression, where aggression is 
 clear and real, lessening its action in proportion as injuries 
 are removed further and further away from the character of 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 135 
 
 real aggressions ; and carefully guarding itself against all 
 those seductive forms of over-legislation which sacrifice the 
 greater protection to the lesser, and defeat the ends of 
 government by carrying legal regulation into regions where 
 things are well fitted to regulate themselves. By this means 
 we should get a scale of protections roughly corresponding 
 to the varying degrees of injury which men inflict on each 
 other; with death and imprisonment for murder and violence 
 at the bottom, and fines for milder offences at the top. The 
 primary end of law should be the security of person and 
 property. This is the normal and only just function of 
 of government. For security is not merely the condition of 
 happiness : it is necessary to the very existence of men. To 
 no other rational purpose than the promotion of this can 
 force be used. For force is war, and the end even of war is 
 peace. That the natural fruction of each man's actions, 
 carried on without aggression upon others, should be secured 
 to him ; that the farmer should reap what he has sown ; that 
 the labourer should receive the wage he has contracted for ; 
 that the capitalist should get the interest which those who 
 have been advantaged by the use of his capital have agreed 
 to pay him : that there should be this general security for 
 all, whatever be their rank or station, is the very first of social 
 needs, and one which, being realized, all the rest will come 
 spontaneously of themselves wherever they are really useful. 
 In proportion as this primary need is unsupplied, social life 
 stops, and man sinks back into the savage State. For the 
 essence of social life is free exchange, and the essential con- 
 dition of this is perfect freedom for the exchangers, together 
 with perfect security for what they exchange. 
 
 Instead, therefore, of the State adopting the part of an 
 aggressor, using its powers of taxation and regulation in try- 
 ing to protect people against themselves, by allowing the 
 inefficient, the idle, and the vicious to shoulder their defects 
 
136 The Nahtral Right to Freedom. 
 
 upon the backs of the efficent, the intelligent, and the 
 virtuous ; let it be swift to give redress where real injury 
 has been done : but let it not waste and weaken its energies 
 in dissipating them over too wide a field, and in attempting 
 to suppress incidental evils by putting everybody into a 
 socialistic strait waistcoat. The power of government is 
 limited. It is a special form of activity adapted to do a 
 special thing. Being itself a form of brute force, it is fitted 
 for little else than to deal with brute force. In proportion, 
 therefore, as it goes in for these universal regulation and 
 taxation schemes, it neglects what it is fitted to do in order 
 to bungle what it is not fitted to do. In short, it becomes 
 a jack of all trades, and master of none. 
 
 In place of the liberty maxim Mr. Donisthorpe prefers 
 " the experience of generations." Good. But how are you 
 going to apply your experience, unless you generalize it? 
 That is, unless you gather it up under some convenient and 
 commanding statement ? Yet if you do this, all the 
 objections that you level against the liberty maxim apply 
 with equal force to your own generalization. You are con- 
 demning the a priori road while travelling upon it yourself. 
 Moreover, what right, on exclusively inductive principles, 
 have you to assume that " the experience of generations " is 
 of the slightest practical value ? If it served yesterday it may 
 not serve to-day or to-morrow, and to affirm that it will, is to 
 affirm the widest possible a priori maxim, namely, the 
 maxim which expresses our fixed belief in the permanent 
 uniformity of Nature. The fact is, these people who are so 
 fond of " rigid induction " are a priorist* in spite of them- 
 selves. Drag their propositions into the light, take these 
 propositions to pieces, and the rigid inductionists stand con- 
 victed of the very same sins that they so thoughtlessly con- 
 demn in others. Well might BISTAIT speak thus scornfully 
 of these extremely unphilosophic philosophers. 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 137 
 
 " There is no fixed principle in political economy. 
 
 That is to say, in plain language, 
 
 ' I do not know what is true or what is false ; I am 
 ignorant of what constitutes the general weal or woe ; I will 
 not give myself the trouble to find it out. The immediate 
 effect of each measure upon my personal welfare is the only 
 law which I consent to recognise.' 
 
 There are no such things as principles ! That is as if 
 you were to say that there are no such things as facts ; for 
 principles are only fae formula which result from an order 
 of well-attested facts." 
 
 The truth is that the principle of liberty, although used 
 apriority, although, like all general principles, obliged to 
 be so used when practically applied to conduct, is merely a 
 general statement of generations of inductive experiment and 
 observation. Except as being such, the principle in 
 question, as JOHN STUART MILL* so ably showed, would 
 have no value whatever. And precisely the same objections 
 that are urged against this principle may be urged against 
 any and every inductive generalization. Take again the old 
 case of gravitation. All unsupported bodies behave in a 
 special and uniform manner. I mentally separate this 
 feature from its concomitants, and then embrace it under 
 some general commanding statement. Here is induction 
 in full swing. But presently I begin to apply this statement 
 to particular cases : on the strength of it I proceed to affirm 
 that a particular body, say a cannon ball, will, under given 
 conditions, behave exactly as other and similar bodies have 
 behaved. I do not perhaps I cannot apply the inductive 
 method : it might be useful to do so ; and whenever con- 
 venient this method should be applied ; for only by its 
 constant use can our general maxims be verified : but the 
 
 * See his Essay on Liberty, the arguments of which have never 
 been disposed of. 
 
138 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 only value of induction lies in the fact that it enables us to 
 build up trustworthy generalizations which will serve to guide 
 us where the inductive method* cannot be used. The end 
 of induction is, in a certain limited sense, to enable us to do 
 without induction. 
 
 But to continue with the illustration of the cannon ball. 
 In affirming the deductive a priori, maxim that, under given 
 conditions, it, the ball, will fall to the ground, I go beyond 
 both past and present experience. Yet will it be said that 
 this a priori maxim affords no " rough practical working 
 rules ? " One rule it certainly affords, namely, " Keep out 
 of the ball's path." Well, now I come to deal with the 
 liberty maxim in a similar manner. The widest possible 
 observation, both present and past, has revealed the fact 
 that each human being, nay, each living thing, strives to the 
 utmost of its power to live its own life in its own way. 
 True, there are plenty of creatures, both human and non- 
 human, who, either singly or jointly, do their level best to 
 prevent other creatures living their lives in their own way ; 
 but never yet was any living thing known, which did not 
 ceaselessly endeavour, to the full extent of its powers, to carry 
 out its own motives, that is, live its own life in its own w\y. 
 This innate self-love is the very basis of all life, as well as of 
 all virtue; capable of improvement it is true: but planted by 
 nature far too deeply ever to be rooted up by the lies and 
 hypocrisy of communism. The socialist busybody, even 
 more than the individualist, unconsciously exemplifies this 
 fundamental and indestructible fact ; for the efforts of the 
 former to regulate others, are only the expression of his 
 intense dislike to being regulated himself. He objects to 
 the purely negative regulations which are necessary for 
 defending the freedom of his victims, and thus keeping his 
 own self-assertive and tyrannical proclivities within some 
 
 * Not a method free from deduction, as already shown. 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 139 
 
 sort of reasonable bounds. For no more self-assertive thing 
 lives than the canting seeker after political power. He needs 
 no bad arguments to sophisticate his soul, and thus 
 encourage him to hide his hypocrisy even from himself. 
 
 Of course it is perfectly true that this freedom, this scope 
 for the expression of motives, is frequently possessed in only 
 a very small degree by many unfortunate people ; but when 
 this is so, it will usually be found that the misfortune is 
 caused by other people enjoying an amount of freedom to 
 which they can give no title other than that of force or 
 fraud committed against their numerically or physically 
 weaker brethren. If this is not an argument in favour of 
 the liberty maxim, at least it is not an argument against it. 
 Might is no proof of right, though the former may 
 legitimately be used to defend the latter. 
 
 Considered in its inductive aspect there are few scientific 
 generalizations that are wider or sounder than the liberty 
 maxim. The great claim is everywhere set up ; by tyrant 
 as much as by slave ; by rich as much as by poor ; by the 
 civilized as much as by savages, " Let us all have as wide 
 and ample scope for the free play of our respective activities 
 as we can get." Co-operation is no exception to this rule ; 
 for, so long as it remains free, it is only one of the many 
 forms in which the individual motives that make for joint 
 action, express themselves. And when it is not free it 
 necessarily expresses the personal motives of those who com- 
 pell it, be they in a majority or be they in a minority ; for 
 no numerical distribution of tyranny can alter the real truth 
 of things. A great deal ^ of our liberty consists in free 
 co-operation with our fellows for the joint supply of natural 
 individual needs ; and, in proportion as we become more 
 rational, this kind of co-operation will increase. For it is 
 based upon, and springs from, no unworthy terror inspired by 
 legal force ; but it rests upon a trust in the fixity of human 
 
140 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 reason ; on the mind's regard for principle ; on its respect for 
 the same freedom in others that it desires for itself : in short, 
 upon its innate and indestructible self-consistency. This is 
 the only true and lasting basis of real human co-operation. 
 There is no tyranny in it : there are no rotten politics in it. 
 It is a co-operation and yet a competition : a co-operation to 
 effect exchange ; a competition to produce more and ever 
 more, better and ever better articles of exchange. It is the 
 service of the highest, that is, of the reason whose obedience is 
 Duty. It is the following of the divinely implanted self- 
 interest lying at the root of every living thing, and moving all 
 things nobly and well ; the great indwelling impersonal god 
 of each, voiceless, lipless, tongueless, but never wearying in 
 its efforts to keep each living creature in the straight path of 
 duty ; and thus giving to each the peace which can come in 
 no other way. It is the comradeship of the great companion, 
 the never deceiving friend, which is each man's very self, 
 and which, if a man is wise, he will trust, alone, and love 
 above all this lying and canting world of men. In a word, 
 it is that healthy " selfishness " called business : the highest 
 and most god-like, because the most unhypocritical and 
 unsentimental of all forms of human activity : the free and 
 fearless competition of men as distinguished from the 
 wretched socialism of cowards : the voluntary co-operation 
 of exchange, as distinguished from the involuntary compul- 
 sion of collective theft : the vigorous rivalry of those who are 
 not afraid of facing that truth about themselves and their own 
 faculties which only a mutual measuring of blades can reveal; 
 who would rather know and suffer from their own weak- 
 nesses than be artificially shielded from the dangers of battle; 
 rather lose than be prevented from taking their chance of 
 winning ; rather be run through with an enemy's lance than 
 never enter the competitive lists of nature's great tournament : 
 who live only to do their duty in the station where Nature 
 
1 'he Natural Right to Freedom. 141 
 
 has placed them, ready, like true soldiers, to stand or fall in 
 the service of the highest, and take their rest when Nature 
 gives the signal ; having done the work she gave them to do, 
 and received its wages in the peace that comes by doing it. 
 
 For duty even the simplest and most trivial is a far 
 grander and nobler thing than any amount of greasy 
 "brotherhood," or "fraternity," or vapid sentimentalism of 
 that childish description : it is manhood ; it is courage ; it 
 is reason : it is the free spirit quietly going on its way, doing 
 the work that the eternal has given it to do, and telling all 
 fussy interferers and canting humbugs to clear out and go to 
 the deuce. Rivalry has no terrors to those who live for 
 duty. They are indeed mean and ignoble souls that object 
 to competition. For competition is duty : is doing the best 
 with the faculties that are given, and laying about with right 
 good will in nature's great battle field of life. Those sickly 
 sentimentalists who object to competition are like soldiers 
 who long to desert their posts, and run from the field 
 through fear of being beaten by better men. Wretched, 
 poor-plucked, low-bred creatures; they may escape for a 
 time, but in the long run they will be found out and swept 
 out. For competition will not be abolished to please them, 
 though it will improve as the competitors themselves 
 improve. As humanity gets nobler and braver, freer from 
 all this unworthy sentimentalism and unmanly cowardice, 
 competition will lose its more brutal aspects, and will 
 become a rivalry in taking pains to produce useful articles 
 of exchange; a rivalry in patience, carefulness, and fore- 
 thought; in sagacity, insight, ingenuity, and invention; in 
 wisdom and genius ; in strength of body and strength of 
 mind : a competition in the following of truth ; a competi- 
 tion in research, discovery, and generalization ; in clear 
 thinking and plain speaking ; in courage and highminded- 
 ness ; in real manhood, and in every human virtue. 
 
142 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 And now, leaving this digression, to proceed with the 
 reply to Mr. Donisthorpe. Curiously enough the very con- 
 tention that men have no right to this universally asserted 
 scope for the expression of motives, this liberty to live 
 according to the dictates of personal judgment : the very 
 denial of this right is itself an unconscious affirmation of it. 
 For the compulsionist's own arguments ; his putting of these 
 arguments before the reading public ; his efforts to get a 
 hearing for what he has to say, and, indeed, all his voluntary 
 actions, prove him to be implicitly claiming a freedom for 
 himself which he is explicitly denying for others. What he 
 denies in general he claims in particular, thus logically 
 hanging himself with his own rope. 
 
 Freedom, then, and the fullest possible freedom for each, 
 is a desirable fact ; since it is what each living creature 
 equally desires and always does its utmost to get But, it 
 may be urged, some people, being more intelligent than 
 others, and knowing better than others how to use freedom, 
 are entitled to possess more of it. This was the plea of the 
 old slave owners. It sounds weak to-day. It will be laughed 
 at to-morrow. Intelligence indeed ! Why, the use of 
 freedom, with its losses, gains, duties, and responsibilities, 
 is the only means by which the foolish can ever be trained 
 and disciplined by Nature into greater intelligence ; and the 
 only means through which such intelligence as now exists 
 has been slowly evolved. Slavery, of whatever kind, means 
 torpidity, stagnation, death. Liberty is the great teacher, 
 the only real school of character ; and, when it goes, the very 
 source and fountain of all human intelligence will be finally 
 dried up. Not even the ability required for governmental 
 work will remain. If, as MACAULAY well said, people are to 
 wait for freedom until they know how to use it, they will be 
 enslaved for ever; since only through exercise, with its school- 
 ing blunders and failures, can men ever learn the intelligent use 
 
7 he Natural Right to Freedom. 143 
 
 of anything. As well expect that people can learn the proper 
 use of heat without a few scalds and burns, as imagine that 
 the uses of freedom can be mastered without that excellent 
 process of trial and error which Nature has laid down as the 
 indispensable condition of all improvement. 
 
 It is evident, then, that scope for the expression of motives 
 is a freedom which all alike, either consciously or uncon- 
 sciously, claim for themselves, but which no one can 
 consistently claim more of for himself than he is willing to 
 allow to others. Is the whole matter to end here ? Is this 
 a question on which the human mind can rise to no general 
 and conduct-guiding truths? Is it to be concluded that, 
 whereas in other departments of knowledge it is possible to 
 express universal characteristics in the form of sweeping and 
 commanding generalizations, yet here it is impossible to 
 do so ? Is it to be said that on a thousand and one different 
 questions of science, of philosophy, and of morals, it is 
 possible to frame rules for human guidance, but that on the 
 question of liberty it is impossible to reach this consum- 
 mation ? Surely in this last matter we are not left in so 
 hopeless a condition ! Seeing that each individual person 
 implicitly claims the fullest possible freedom for himself, is 
 he not logically bound, so far as he is a rational being, to 
 allow the fullest possible freedom to all who are intellectually 
 one with himself ; that is to say, to all men ; inasmuch as all 
 men are one in this their intellectual and essential features ? 
 And if one man is so bound, are not all men so bound ? are 
 not all governments so bound ? For, as we have seen in the 
 earlier pages of this book, governments are only groups of 
 men. And if one man is bound to recognise the fullest 
 possible liberty for all, are not all men equally bound to 
 recognise the fullest possible liberty for one ? But if this be 
 so, what can express so universal an obligation as well as the 
 
144 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 maxim The fullest possible liberty of each, Hunted only 
 by the like liberty of all ? 
 
 Mr. Donisthorpe's contention that the carrying out of this 
 maxim will not exclude "even the exercise of brute force" 
 is very much like saying that the continuance of peace will 
 not. exclude war. When war begins peace ends : and when 
 equal liberty ceases ; when, that is, some people begin to 
 enlarge their own freedom by curtailing the freedom of other 
 people, the liberty maxim is no longer being universally 
 carried out. There is no longer equal freedom for all, but 
 freedom for some at the expense of others. 
 
 The language put by Mr. Donisthorpe into the mouth of 
 his imaginary anarchist reads very much like what a man 
 might say to his caged linnet. " You, my dear bird, are free 
 to do whatever you can do : you are free to kill me ; I am 
 free to kill you. Your liberty to put me in the cage is only 
 limited by my liberty to keep you in it. All is freedom, 
 equal freedom/'' 
 
 Equal freedom as between whom ? Equal scope for each 
 to carry out his own motives, when one, for instance, has got 
 ten massive chains wrapped round the arms and legs of the 
 other ? When one is in jail and the other at large ? When 
 one can say what he thinks and the other is gagged ? 
 W'hen one can fight and the other is prevented from doing 
 so ? Is this anarchy ? Well, it is certainly not individual- 
 ism : neither is it a consistent carrying out of the liberty 
 maxim. 
 
 Why ! dear me, such a state of things is not even a free 
 fight. Taking this sort of reasoning along with other remarks 
 of Mr. Donisthorpe's, it is evident that he thinks competition 
 necessarily excludes freedom. But does it? When two 
 people fight a duel, are not both equally free to run each 
 other through the body ? Are not both equally free to make 
 the best of whatever fighting qualities they may chance to 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 145 
 
 possess ? So it appears to me. But when one stealthily falls 
 upon the other, ties the arms of the latter, and then, after taking 
 away all his powers of defence, runs this helpless one through 
 the body, the case is altogether different. Whatever else it 
 may be, it is not a case of equal freedom. As a specimen 
 of Mr. Donisthorpe's inability to distinguish between a " free 
 fight" and a fight that is not free, take the following: "Even 
 now a strong man is permitted to take advantage of a weak 
 man by reason of his superior muscular force e.g., a porter 
 will snatch a situation at a railway station from one of 
 weaker build. [A porter can snatch nothing of the kind ; 
 for the situation does not exist, let alone belong to the 
 weaker porter, until the person who employs the stronger 
 porter thinks well to employ him. The " situation " is 
 merely the satisfaction of that person's wants, and that person 
 is free, if he thinks fit, to employ the weak porter, who, on 
 Mr. Donisthorpe's reasoning, would then have snatched the 
 situation from the strong porter. The whole transaction is 
 purely a matter of free consent and not of snatching at all.] 
 So a powerful navvy at piecework will earn a higher wage 
 than one that is weaker, and what is more, will force the 
 weaker man by competition in the labour market to accept a 
 lower wage than he could otherwise have commanded." 
 Basis of Individualism, page 19. 
 
 The same argument applies to the navvy. To take from 
 a man what does not belong to him is no more possible 
 under competition than under any other system. All that 
 fairly belongs to a man is freedom to exchange with those 
 who are willing to exchange with him. And he has this 
 same freedom whether he is employed or not. No man has 
 a right to a monopoly in any process of exchange. For 
 example, I want a bag carrying from Charing Cross to 
 Waterloo for i/-. Am I not to be free to exchange that 
 shilling for that bag-carrying just with whom I please ? or is 
 
146 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 some particular porter, or majority or minority of porters, to 
 be allowed to force me to employ them, whether I want or 
 not? Mr. Donisthorpe is a strange advocate of liberty. 
 If these are the kind of arguments that result from the 
 present legal " protection " of barristers, the sooner there is 
 Free Trade in this line of business, the better. 
 
 Mr. Donisthorpe fails to realize that if equal freedom 
 means anything at all it means equality of exemption from 
 interference. But can it be seriously maintained that when 
 one man is regulating another, or when one set of men are 
 regulatiug another set of men, all men are equally exempt 
 from interference ? Yet, if they are not, how can they all be 
 equally free ? 
 
 But what has now become of the " rigid induction " 
 which scorns every form of false a priorism ? Accord- 
 ing to Mr. Donisthorpe the fundamental proposition 
 of Individualism is equivalent to the Anarchist doctrine of a 
 free fight. He objects to a single and a priori principle on 
 the ground that it is too wide for practical guidance, and yet 
 from the equally sweeping maxim of the Anarchist he 
 manages to draw a rule which applies to every individual 
 man, woman, and child in the world ; a rule that all may 
 take as a guide, whether it guides them well or ill. In the 
 Individualist maxim " All men should be equally exempt 
 both from individual and collective interference " he fails to 
 find any guidance whatever : but from the Anarchist or free- 
 fight maxim, from " the good old rule, the simple plan, that 
 he should take who has the power, and he should keep who 
 can," he draws such practical rules as these: "You are free 
 to kill me ; I am free to kill you. Your liberty to take my 
 goods is limited only by my liberty to keep them." 
 
 It is not in the least degree surprising that those who 
 repudiate general and a priori maxims should yet be obliged 
 to use them. All rational human conduct is regulated by 
 
7 he Natural Right to Freedom. 147 
 
 a priori maxims of one kind or another, and all of them 
 more or less sweeping in their nature. Experience is a mere 
 chaos until it is gathered up and expressed under some wide 
 and all-embracing statement; some statement which expresses 
 what is uniform in the facts to which it refers, and which, 
 for this reason, may be relied upon as a safe and trustworthy 
 guide in new cases. Even the simplest domestic manage- 
 ment cannot be carried on without constant reference to a 
 handy stock of general principles. Indeed, the deductive 
 application of these principles is the chief business of life. 
 True, it is important that they should be frequently verified ; 
 but it is still more important that they should not be ignored. 
 "This egg will set hard if boiled for 10 minutes" is as much 
 an a priori statement as the maxim " The State will decay 
 in proportion as the liberty and property of one class is 
 destroyed in order to increase the liberty and property of 
 another class." The only difference between these two 
 maxims, is ; that whereas the first is an a priority applied 
 generalization of purely physical facts, the second is an 
 a priority applied generalization of well known laws of 
 human life and character. Are we to live in a universe of 
 law and yet never generalize and apply our knowledge of 
 such law? And when we do generalize and apply this 
 knowledge ; when, moreover, our generalizations correspond 
 to and accurately express the most universal and fundamental 
 facts of human nature, are we to be told that they are of too 
 a priori a character to be of any practical value as guides of 
 legislation? If, as has been already shown, self-assertion, 
 self-love, self-expression of motives, 'or whatever it may be 
 called, is the fundamental and indestructible root of all life, 
 not only human but non-human, then it follows that the 
 generalization which expresses this fact is the most funda- 
 mental and important of all human generalizations ; and, 
 this being so, its importance should be as fully recognised in 
 
148 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 the sphere of legislation as the fact to which it corresponds 
 is recognized in all the affairs of practical life. That is to 
 say, there ought to be the same reluctance on the part of 
 government to regulate large masses of men, as there is on 
 the part of one individual to regulate another. For this fact, 
 this self-expression, lies deeper than political power, and, in 
 the long run, that kind political power which seeks to ride 
 rough-shod over it, will pay dearly for its folly. There is a 
 mightier force in this world than even a political majority. 
 
 In point of fact, all intelligent human conduct, of which 
 government forms a conspicuous portion, is but the adaption 
 of means to ends, and is only possible in virtue of those 
 summarizations of past experience which are called a priori 
 maxims. Deductive reasoning is simply the practical 
 utilization of the capitalized observation and experiment of 
 all the past ; and when it is accompanied, tested, and 
 strengthened by present inductions, it gains in security and 
 value the more it is employed. To listen to some of the 
 denouncers of general principles, one would imagine that the 
 human mind is never safe, except when, to use a somewhat 
 vulgar analogy, it hops about on the single leg of induction. 
 The most curious thing about all this pooh-poohing of 
 abstract reasoning, is, that the very people who indulge in it 
 are themselves tarred all over with the brush of abstraction. 
 While loudly denouncing every kind of abstraction, or 
 general rule, they are carefully drawing deductive inferences 
 concerning the success of this or that measure, from a priori 
 maxims that only differ from other a priori maxims in the 
 fact that they rest upon comparatively few and comparatively 
 narrow observations ; and, at best, only upon the transcient 
 as distinguished from the permanent facts of human nature. 
 Evidently these people think that the more narrow and 
 superficial the base of a generalization is, the sounder and 
 more trustworthy that generalization becomes ; while the 
 
The Natiual Right to Freedom. 149 
 
 wider and deeper the base of a generalization is, the more 
 untrue and valueless does such a generalization become. 
 Superficial and temporary facts are of the utmost importance : 
 radical and indestructible laws are not worth considering ! 
 Take, for example, the ordinary clap-trap politician. This 
 gentleman, who cannot see an inch further than the votes of 
 his constituents, may be frequently heard scornfully running 
 down generalizations that are based upon the most thorough 
 and accurate analysis of human characters and motives, 
 generalizations which have stood the test of ages, and which 
 sum up the collective wisdom and experience of all mankind 
 this political gentleman, I say, will denounce these 
 important generalizations as mere abstract moonshine, while, 
 at the same time, he himself is using some equally abstract 
 theory of probabilities to enable him to forecast the party 
 results of the next parliamentary election. Yet abstract 
 theories -are valueless as guides of human conduct ! 
 
 When it suits his purpose Mr. Donisthorpe applies these 
 abstract theories as rigidly as anybody. According to him, 
 absolute violence "ought to be illegal." There, at least, is 
 a rule which he gathers from the application of one of his 
 own abstract principles. Yet, only a few words further on, 
 he tells us that he cannot see how we can deduce any 
 general rules as to " State action from a single principle 
 a priori" But if one person can deductively infer that a 
 certain act ought to be illegal, two can, three can; the particular 
 group of persons who at any moment happen to form a 
 government, can. Nay, more. By taking the most violent 
 aggressions as a fundamental basis, they can treat lesser 
 aggressions as illegal in proportion as these lesser 
 aggressions approximate towards the nature of the most 
 violent ones. Once recognise that a man's actions, together 
 with the unaggressively-obtained results of his actions, 
 should not be interfered with without his consent ; once 
 
150 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 keep the need for defending this fundamental position 
 clearly in view, and the sphere of law may be carefully 
 widened out from such a centre to meet lesser aggressions, 
 as well as the practical equivalents of lesser aggressions. If 
 it should happen that the system of law, established on this 
 basis, tended to become so elaborate and expensive as to 
 involve the committal of greater aggressions while seeking to 
 adjust the evils resulting from lesser aggressions as it very 
 easily might do then a recurrence back to first principles 
 would remedy the evil : and as the aggressions of man 
 against man became less numerous, the sphere of law could 
 be reduced at a corresponding rate. Thus, with the 
 improvement of human nature, government would slowly 
 sink down to ;7, and finally disappear altogether. 
 
 Under a more complete respect for individual consent, 
 there would always be one great check upon over-legislation. 
 In a regime where the legal power to take a man's earnings 
 without his consent did not exist, failure on the part of a 
 government to behave justly to all would mean lack of the 
 requisite funds for carrying on governmental work. With 
 respect for personal consent taken as the guiding principle 
 of all legislation, we should get a system of law, which, while 
 subserving the just claims of the majority, would cease to 
 inflict legal aggressions on the minority ; and, while protecting 
 the liberty of those who had not saved, would render it 
 impossible for them to pick the pockets of those who had. 
 Only when respect for consent is the fundamental principle 
 of legislation will that monstrous injustice disappear which 
 enables one man to b've by taxing another man. But it 
 seems that, for the present, average humanity can only read a 
 principle in the light of facts. Only through the enormous 
 public debts and excessive taxes of a growing socialism, shall 
 we at last learn the true meaning and importance of self- 
 sovereignty. 
 
7 he Natural Right to Freedom. 151 
 
 By taking this rule of protecting from injuries in propor- 
 tion as they approximate towards the character of direct 
 aggressions, we may get a rough answer to some of Mr. 
 Donisthorpe's puzzles. Thus, for example, if his neighbour 
 puts a piggery or an ash pit so close to Mr. Donisthorpe's 
 house that the latter is able to show that he already has, or 
 on probable reasoning is likely to be, injured by the nuisance, 
 it would be possible to have an efficient and prompt legal 
 machinery for giving redress where redress was really needed. 
 But the important consideration is, that the initiative in such 
 cases should lie upon the injured person, and not be taken 
 over by the forestalling hand of a cast iron official-coddling 
 system. The great care of law should be to avoid hindering 
 the growth of quick, intelligent, and self-reliant natures : 
 but this it utterly fails to do when it does away with the 
 necessity of personal initiative, and pets both intelligence 
 and dullness into the same equality of mental stagnation 
 by its anticipation of every personal need and regulation of 
 every individual life. (See pages 32 and 33 of this book). 
 
 The infliction of penalties should of course be regulated 
 by a sound knowledge of human character, and by the 
 important consideration that the end of law is not merely 
 the redress of particular injuries, but also the inculcation 
 so far indeed as force can inculcate anything of a general 
 respect among all for the liberty and property of each. 
 Justice would then be tempered, if not by mercy then at 
 least by a scientific knowledge of human nature, which 
 would be the equivalent of mercy ; and while the fullest 
 possible redress, compatible with these wider aims, would be 
 given to the injured,, due care would also be taken not to 
 over-exasperate the injurer, and thus leave his motives 
 unchanged for the better. 
 
 All these considerations, if duly taken into account, would 
 cause the law to be administered with a flexibility and 
 
152 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 moderation, and yet at the same time with an accuracy and 
 exactness, as nearly approaching ideal justice as it is possible 
 for human frailty to achieve. Of course, larger functions 
 and greater discretionary powers would have to be given to 
 judges and juries, cases would have to be dealt with more on 
 their merits ; yet not with less, but with greater regard to 
 those great ethical principles which are independent of 
 legislation, flowing as they do from the very structure of 
 the human understanding. 
 
 Many of the hampering restrictions of the present system 
 would have to be abolished. For example (to take one of 
 Mr. Donisthorpe's instances) the future labour of a bankrupt 
 might be taxed (i) in proportion to the loss the creditors 
 had sustained; (2) in proportion to the amount of fraud the 
 evidence proved the bankrupt to have been guilty of ; 
 (3) in proportion to the discouragement and incapacitation 
 that the tax would inflict upon him ; and (4) in proportion 
 to the deterring effect that the penalty would have upon the 
 general community. Only in some such way as this could 
 justice to each be made to square with justice to all. 
 
 All these considerations, embracing as they do the 
 generalized experience of the past, would have to be applied 
 a priority to each separate case, and inductively verified or 
 corrected by each new experience. 
 
 Another of Mr. Donisthorpe's difficulties has been partly 
 answered by himself. "Who [according to the liberty 
 principle] is the owner of a pawned watch?" This is a 
 question of property. Now, on page 92 of his book, 
 Mr. Donisthorpe has defined property as "a species of the 
 genus Use." But use and freedom of use are one and the 
 same fact. Consequently, property is a species of the genus 
 Liberty. Now liberty means the freedom of some particular 
 person or persons, and therefore property also means the 
 same. On page M4 of his book, Mr. Donisthorpe recognises 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 153 
 
 this implication. "The very notion of property involves 
 . . . . a distinct contemplation of two factors a thing 
 owned and a person owning." In the same way, liberty 
 involves two factors a set of movements and a person or 
 persons that do or may perform these movements. Thus, 
 the bundle of movements called ownership of a watch, 
 are performed, or may be performed, let us say, by 
 John Smith. We will assume that at 12 o'clock on 
 Monday morning the watch in question belonged to John 
 Smith. He obtained it without either forcibly or fraudu- 
 lently violating the liberty of his neighbours. For if this 
 can be shown to be not the case, then he, or some other 
 person, must have stolen the watch from its rightful owner, 
 since wrongful ownership necessarily involves its correlative, 
 rightful ownership ; and moreover, as we have seen, Mr. 
 Donisthorpe himself admits that ownership must be posited 
 somewhere. But ownership is merely a species of the genus 
 Liberty, a bundle of non-aggressive uses attached to a 
 particular person or persons, and limited by the non- 
 aggressive uses of his or their fellows. We will assume, 
 then, that at i o'clock on Monday afternoon John 
 Smith takes his watch to A.B., and agrees with the latter 
 that the watch shall remain in pawn until such time as 
 Smith shall pay down a certain sum of money for its with- 
 drawal ; but that if this sum of money be not paid before the 
 elapse of one year from the day on which the watch is pawned, 
 the article in question shall become the property of A.B. 
 Now assuming that the bundle of non-aggressive uses called 
 ownership originally and rightfully rested in Smith, it follows 
 that one of these non-aggressive uses consisted in lending or 
 giving the watch to A.B. It follows also that the placing of 
 limits upon the uses thus freely transferred to A.B. just as 
 much resided in the original bundle of uses as the mere 
 lending did; provided, of course, that A.B. assented to 
 
154 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 accept such limits. Consequently, when the dispute arises 
 and the question comes before a court " To whom does 
 this watch belong?" the answer given in accordance with 
 the liberty .maxim, would be " In so far as the bundle of uses 
 called ownership can be shown to have originally resided in 
 Smith, and in so far as A.B. fails to prove that these uses, or 
 any portion of them, have, under any or no conditions, 
 been freely transferred by Smith to him, the watch 
 belongs to Smith ; but in so far as A.B. can prove that 
 these uses, or any portion of them, have been transferred 
 to him, he himself having fairly fulfilled all the conditions 
 (if any) of the transfer, then the watch to this extent is 
 the property of A.B. Should there be a conflict of claims 
 after both sides had been fairly heard, should it turn out that 
 one portion of the bundle of uses still remained untransferred 
 by the original owner, then, if neither would forego his claim, 
 the watch should be sold for what it would fetch, and the 
 proceeds divided between the two claimants in proportion to 
 the number of uses that each had fairly established a claim 
 to. If the claims of other creditors still remained to be 
 considered, they would have to be made upon the separate 
 divisions of these proceeds. 
 
 It may be objected that this would make justice a matter 
 of great complexity. So is human life. 
 
 Another of Mr. Donisthorpe's difficulties is To what 
 extent should a principle be held responsible for accidents, 
 and for the injuries done by his agents. The reply is 
 Just so far as it can be shown that he has either explicitly or 
 implicitly agreed to be responsible for them. Implicit 
 agreements and it cannot be denied that a clear knowledge 
 of custom often amounts to an agreement of this character 
 would have to be very carefully dealt with, and ought not to 
 be enforced except on the clearest possible evidence. 
 Accidents are part of the discipline by which Nature teaches 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 155 
 
 men how to live, and it is to the advantage of all that each 
 should bear the share that fortune inflicts, and not be assisted 
 to force this share upon his neighbour simply because his 
 neighbour happens to be more wealthy than himself. Let 
 those who know their own strength be free to bear such of 
 other men's burdens as they may think fit, but let not one 
 man be legally helped to force his burden upon another man 
 without that other man's consent. 
 
 Another of Mr. I )onisthorpe's difficulties, and one that he 
 takes a lot of pains to elaborate, arises out of the evils which 
 he thinks may take place as the soil of a country gets more 
 and more occupied. Here the counter fact is ignored, that, 
 in proportion as the land of a country comes under cultiva- 
 tion, a greater variety and number of objects are produced, 
 which necessitate a corresponding increase of modifying and 
 carrying agencies. Consequently, the demand for such 
 agencies grows greater and greater. This being so, the real 
 difficulty is not so much one between separate land-owners, 
 who, as Mr. Donisthorpe points out, may quarrel about the 
 boundaries of their respective estates, as between farmers or 
 owners of the raw materials, and those whose business it is 
 to work up these materials into the finished products of an 
 infinitely varied civilization. Both these classes are, so far 
 at least as the opportunity of making exchanges is concerned, 
 mutually dependent on one another, and, as civilization 
 grows more complex, as the division of labour extends 
 further and further, that mutual dependence tends constantly 
 to increase. The application of the liberty principle to this 
 difficulty lies in securing justice for both parties ; as far, of 
 course, as limited human powers can secure it. On the one 
 hand, the law should see that the liberty of the man who 
 possesses the abilities needed for modifying the raw material, 
 is not violated by the owner of that raw material ; while on 
 the other hand, it should afford equal protection to the latter 
 
156 The Nahiral Right to Freedom. 
 
 as regards his own consent respecting the disposal of his own 
 property. Secure perfect free trade in land, and if the 
 working class don't then join their savings together for the 
 purpose of buying it up as it comes into the market, that 
 will be because they don't want it, or because their thriftless 
 habits have placed them in a position of comparative help- 
 lessness : and neither government nor any other human 
 contrivance will effectually save people from the conse- 
 quences of their own bad habits. 
 
 Another point, bearing .on this question; is the right of 
 way, of movement from place to place. The right to this is 
 as real as the right to private property. Therefore, under a 
 just social system, the realization of the latter right would 
 have to suffer such a deduction as would guarantee the 
 adequate carrying out of the former right. Under such a 
 system, private property would come to mean all that resulted 
 from the non-aggressive exercise of personal faculties, 
 whether in the way of production or exchange ; limited only 
 by the reasonable satisfaction of the right of movement from 
 place to place : a right equal in reality and importance to 
 the right of property, necessary to the obtaining of property, 
 as well as to the very existence of liberty ; and claimed by 
 property-owner and non-owner of property alike. 
 
 For it is perfectly clear that if private property is not 
 sufficiently limited to allow people to communicate with one 
 another, no market, no exchange, and, therefore, no society, 
 can exist. Suppose, for example, that no public road could 
 be constructed until all land-owners had freely consented 
 thereunto ; how, under such conditions, would it be possible 
 for people to get from place to place ? I do not deny the 
 right of property; but the right of liberty is equally real; and, 
 when the two rights come together, a reasonable compromise 
 must be made. It is as unreasonable to carry the principle 
 of private property to such an extent as to destroy all liberty, 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 157 
 
 as it would be to carry the principle of liberty to such an extent 
 as to destroy all private property. We should endeavour 
 to arrive at a state of things where both individual liberty 
 and private property are at such a maximum as is compatible 
 with the fullest possible existence of each. Neither can be 
 rightfully destroyed. With present human nature, we cannot 
 afford to let our means of communication wait until all 
 owners of private property freely consent to allow us to 
 communicate. The principle of liberty is wider than that of 
 property, for only by the free movement of human bodies 
 can property be acquired. 
 
 And besides the right of movement there is the right of 
 un-aggressive private appropriation of the uncultivated 
 surfaces, wild fruits, herbs, and roots that Nature produces. 
 The cranberry growing in the wild swamp belongs to no 
 num. But a man may fairly make it his own by being at the 
 trouble of gathering it. The prairie belongs to no man, but 
 a man may fairly make it his own by clearing and cultivating it. 
 Labour is the ultimate basis and justification of all property. 
 In fact, the right of a man to the un-aggressively obtained 
 results of his activities is only the logical extension of the 
 right of a man to himself. The man who ploughs up and 
 cultivates a piece of barren land, makes that piece of land 
 his own, just as much as the berry-gatherer makes the berry 
 his own ; although neither create a particle of raw material. 
 A fair system of property would be based on these 
 fundamental rights. But when all was done in this respect 
 that could in equity be allowed, it would still be possible for 
 those who had not cultivated the soil, to come trampling all 
 over the gardens of those who had, saying, in Mr. 
 Donisthorpe's words, "You may starve me out of existence, 
 but I may not shoot you out of existence." It is indeed 
 highly probable that even the most thorough carrying out of 
 the liberty principle would leave imperfect human beings 
 
158 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 with many grievances to grumble about. But we are mortal, 
 and it is for those who would base law on some other 
 principle, to work out an ideal system where imperfect beings 
 would have nothing to quarrel about. Assuredly, if we are 
 not to be bettered by moving towards liberty, it is hardly 
 likely that we shall be improved by going the other way. 
 
 In the foregoing paragraphs the attempt has been made to 
 show that Mr. Donisthorpe's objections to the liberty maxim, 
 on the ground of its deductive 6r a priori character, are of 
 very little value. First it was pointed out that the same 
 objections would upset all science and all morality ; in fact, 
 all those great and important principles now used for the 
 practical guidance of life. It was then shown that there is 
 an a priori element in all human reasoning ; .and one which 
 even the most thorough-going inductionist is compelled to 
 take for granted. It was further shown that each step in an 
 ordinary inductive process is only possible in virtue of those 
 scientific generalizations or statements of past inductions 
 which are called principles ; statements which, when applied 
 to- fresh experience, assume all the characteristics of a priori 
 rules or principles. It was also pointed out that, not only 
 are these a priori maxims of the highest value as guides of 
 human conduct, inasmuch as they embody and gather up 
 the observations and experiments of all present and past 
 generations, but that, without the light they throw upon 
 present problems, all our knowledge would have to be 
 re-learnt, and we should now be blindly groping in the midst 
 of universal darkness. It was then shown that what is called 
 the principle of liberty, is merely one of these important 
 generalizations, not inferior to any of them either in point of 
 moral urgency or efficiency of practical guidance ; being 
 based upon the widest and deepest natural fact, not merely 
 of human life, but of all life" the will to be, to do, to act" ; 
 the indestructible self-love, which is firm and fixed as the 
 
The Natutal Right to Freedom. 159 
 
 universe itself. A number of practical difficulties were then 
 taken, and it was shown that they could not even be 
 approached, still less settled, without the application of 
 definite and sweeping a priori rules not less abstract and 
 general than the liberty maxim. Then the solutions to which 
 the theory of liberty seemed to point were briefly and 
 imperfectly dealt with, and a rough assimulation of the 
 principle of property with the principle of liberty was finally 
 attempted to be made. 
 
 Mr. Donisthorpe may fairly be asked to say on what sort 
 of principle the difficulties that he mentions are to be settled, 
 if, as he urges, they are not solvable on the principle of 
 liberty. It is difficult to believe that he is serious when he 
 says that social problems can " only be worked out by rigid 
 induction." But if he can point out a method of dealing 
 scientifically with any problem whatsoever, that does not, 
 either implicitly or explicitly, involve one or more of these 
 very objectionable a priori maxims, there will be something 
 to be said for his "rigid induction." Let it be remembered 
 that there is here no attempt to deny the value of induction. 
 It is a most necessary part of the means by which truth is 
 ascertained; but when used by itself, and apart from 
 deduction, it looks (as before remarked) very much like a 
 man trying to run on one leg. 
 
 Mr. Donisthorpe makes great sport of those who, like the 
 Honourable Auberon Herbert, seek to rest the doctrine of 
 liberty on a teleological basis. " God," says the teleologist, 
 " specially intended that men should be free." How do you 
 know what He intended ? asks Mr. Donisthorpe. How 
 indeed ! To talk of an infinitely perfect existence intending 
 one thing more than another is to utter a contradiction in 
 terms.* To intend to do something, is to want something 
 
 A logical teleologist, such a one, for example, as the late 
 Mr. Mill, would rather have an imperfect designer, with the possibility 
 
 K 
 
160 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 that does not already exist; and to design, is simply to 
 employ the requisite means for getting this want satisfied. 
 But an infinitely perfect existence, by the very terms of its 
 definition, cannot lack or want anything. To such an 
 existence all things must be equally present. To such an 
 existence there can be no past and no future; no movements 
 towards future satisfaction, and no movements away from 
 present disatisfaction ; no suspensive interval during which it 
 hesitates between different alternatives, and no future 
 moment wherein it subsequently makes up its mind to have 
 this arrangement rather than that. With such an existence 
 subjective thoughts must be equivalent to objective realities; 
 the ideal must be the real : there can be no interval between 
 thought and thing, between conception and .realization : to 
 think must be to possess, and the infinite number and 
 variety of the thoughts of such an existence must make up 
 the entire extended and unextended universe.* Using an 
 
 of personal advantages in another life, than an absolutely perfect exist- 
 ence, such as SPINOZA preached, without this possibility. " Strictly 
 speaking," says the latter, " God does not love or hate anyone, for God 
 is not affected by any emotion of pleasure or pain." Ethics, part V., 
 Prop. XVIL, Cor. " He who loves God cannot endeavour that God 
 should love him in return." Prop. XIX. A cold shower bath for the 
 theological sentimentalist's ! They cannot bear it, although merely the 
 outcome of their own theory. 
 
 * According to SPINOZA this existence is unknowable to us save 
 through two of its attributes. " God is a Being consisting of infinite 
 attributes, whereof each one is infinite or supremely perfect after its 
 kind." Spinoza's Correspondence, Letter IV., Spinoza to Henry 
 Oldenburg. The two known attributes are thought and extension. 
 In the final analysis these two are one, for extension is but a form of 
 consciousness, a complex of sense impressions which can only be 
 conceived to exist in a mind (see Berkley's Treatise concerning the 
 Principles of Human Knowledge, and also his three dialogues 
 between Hylas and Philonous.) The scientific doctrine of the 
 unbroken parallelism between what are called mental and physical 
 states, between neurocis and physocis, although a good working 
 hypothesis, is not a matter- of experience, but merely an imaginary 
 association of a particular set of sense impressions, that is, of a particular 
 group of states of consciousness, with consciousness in general. Thus, 
 with each idea and each sensation of my neighbour's, I associate that 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 161 
 
 inadequate metaphor, this existence may be likened to a tree 
 which blossoms at an infinite number of points, spontan- 
 eously, simultaneously, necessarily, eternally. SPINOZA calls 
 it God or Substance indifferently, but it is entirely different 
 from what is generally meant by the first of these terms, 
 being, in fact, as far removed from the littleness of person- 
 ality, as the vastness of eternity is removed from the narrow- 
 ness of time. A comparison may serve to make what is here 
 meant a little plainer. The poet WORDSWORTH was in the 
 habit of falling into such deep reveries that for the moment 
 he lost the knowledge of who he was, what he was, and 
 where he was. As happens to a man in a dream, his 
 thoughts flowed spontaneously, and without will, from his 
 own nature, and the forms of time and space were for the 
 moment to him as if they did not exist. In just such a 
 manner does that extended and unextended consciousness 
 called the universe flow necessarily from the infinite existence 
 of which it is one of the infinite and eternal expressions. 
 Nature is the eternal dream of substance, the everlasting and 
 most real reverie of an infinite impersonal reality ; neither 
 made nor begotten, but proceeding, and unfolding itself 
 without will, or effort, or strain of any kind, in orderly variety 
 for ever and ever. Just as the conclusions of the exact 
 sciences flow necessarily from the premises laid down, so 
 does the whole universe flow necessarily from that eternal 
 existence of which it is one of the myriad expressions.* It 
 
 particular group of my own sense impressions (i.e. t of my own possible 
 states of consciousness) which I call his brain ; and he does the same 
 with me. So that ultimately the universe is simply the totality of actual 
 and possible states of consciousness, associated together in certain 
 definite ways, and exemplifying certain definite laws of sequence and 
 co-existence. 
 
 Some people have urged that the doctrine of an infinite number of 
 attributes does not necessarily belong to SPINOZA'S system. But an 
 infinitely perfect being must be perfect in an infinite number of ways. 
 To pin such an existence down to two attributes, would be to limit and 
 take away its infinite perfection. 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 is therefore absurd to ask why the universe exists, or why 
 any particular natural object exists that is contained in the 
 universe. On this theory of SPINOZA'S* there can be no will 
 or choice in the matter. The universe cannot help but exist, 
 and all things in it cannot help but be what they are, namely, 
 absolutely and supremely perfect in relation to Nature as a 
 whole. If one single item of the universe disappeared, the 
 whole of it would go ; just as the sylogism breaks down if 
 one of its terms be missing. To speak, then, of design in 
 connection with such an existence as this, is to utter arrant 
 nonsense. It is to reduce the eternal to the level of a mere 
 tinker ; a patching bodger of unsatisfactory material ; a 
 being subject to all the local conditions and limitations of 
 the cunning circumventing personal contriver the finite 
 modeller and shaper whose designs have no meaning apart 
 from the difficulties that they are intended to overcome. 
 Teleology is a puerile little conceit. As well say that the 
 twigs that simultaneously grow upon the tree, are each of 
 them specially designed by the tree, as talk of the phenomena 
 of this universe being designed by the infinite existence of 
 which they are the modes. As well urge that the thoughts 
 of a dreamer are designed by the dreamer, as predicate 
 design of the thoughts that are contained in the infinite 
 intellect of infinite reality. But there is no difficulty in 
 seeing how this notion of design has arisen. Human beings 
 have got so accustomed and adapted to many of the facts of 
 existence that they imagine these facts are there for their 
 special benefit. A mouse living in the middle of a cheese 
 would think the same about the cheese ; that is, if it could 
 think at all. All our notions being modified by nature to 
 square with her facts, many of the things that she gives us 
 are what we should give ourselves if we were consulted 
 
 * Not put forth as true, but as an alternative to Teleology. 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 163 
 
 before hand. We have got so used to them that we cannot 
 do without them. Thus we come to imagine that nature is 
 limited by intentions similar to our own. Just as our actions 
 are prompted by purpose so are hers. The notion, once 
 having taken root, is transplanted to every corner of the 
 universe. If the adaptations that happen to be useful to us 
 are prompted by purpose, so are all other adaptations ; and 
 if we can only find out what the purpose of each thing is, we 
 shall have solved the riddle of existence. The illusion 
 vanishes when we discover that the purpose is merely a re- 
 statement of the adaptation that it pretends to explain, 
 changing just as our knowledge of the adaptation changes, 
 and leading us no further than the barren conclusion that 
 each thing is designed to be just whatever it is thought to be, 
 and to do just whatever it is imagined to do. 'Tis a strange 
 conceit, this of putting ourselves at the back of nature. 
 Anyone looking at the nebulae just when it was forming into 
 a solar system would say that the final cause of the process 
 was the production of this same solar system. Anyone look- 
 ing at this solar system when its planets were falling into its 
 central sun, would say that its final cause was the genera- 
 tion of sufficient heat to dissolve the whole mass into another 
 nebulae. And thus the end, the purpose, the final cause, or 
 whatever it may be called, would be continually shifted from 
 place to place to suit the point of view of the speculator. 
 And why ? Because there is no particular finality in nature. 
 She is deeper and vaster and grander than purpose. She is 
 not limited like a cunning child who builds his tottering 
 castles in the sands of time. To her there is no time, no 
 end, no beginning. There is only eternal becoming. One 
 thing grows out of another : one phase passes into another 
 phase, that into another, and so eternally. 
 
164 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 . . . The clod I trample 
 Was the skull of Alexander, 
 And the waters of the ocean 
 In the veins of haughty princes 
 
 Once ran red. 
 
 And the dust clouds of the desert 
 Were the lips of lovely women : 
 Where are they, and they who kissed them ? 
 Power dies, and beauty passes, 
 Naught abides. 
 
 Where is Jamshyd, and his beaker ? 
 
 Solomon, and where his mirror? 
 
 Which of all the wise professors 
 
 Knows where Kaus and Jamshyd flourished 
 
 Who can tell ? 
 
 They were mighty, yet they vanished, 
 Names are all they left behind them : 
 Glory first and then an echo ; 
 Then the very echo hushes 
 
 All is still. 
 
 The doctrine of liberty would be in a poor plight if it 
 rested upon a false theory of Nature; a theory which 
 presumptiously attempts to wrest from the infinite its eternal 
 secret, and which may be, and indeed has been, used to 
 excuse every species of spiritual and temporal despotism that 
 this world has ever seen. But the doctrine of liberty needs 
 no assistance from a childish metaphysic. There is no 
 necessity to spoil a good cause by bad arguments. The 
 doctrine of liberty has its foundation in the very structure of 
 human reason. It is a logical consequence of our intellec- 
 tual beyig. Mr. Donisthorpe himself seems to recognize 
 this when he says that " the ultimate appeal [is] to our own 
 selves." It is : and we are so constituted thit we cannot 
 claim liberty for ourselves without at the same time claiming 
 it by implication for our fellows. The laws of human reason 
 are mightier than the minds which exemplify them, and 
 these laws inevitably involve both the individual and the 
 crowd in the tacit admission of what passion seeks either to 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 165 
 
 hide or deny. Whenever we ignore these laws our actions 
 unsay our words, and we involuntarily stand forth as the living 
 appeals for the liberty that we seek to destroy. This is the 
 unavoidable contradiction which for ever turns the laugh 
 against despotism. Produce the man who does not claim 
 the fullest possible liberty for himself ! He does it in acts 
 if not in words ; and those who are the readiest to enslave 
 others are usually the loudest in claiming freedom for them- 
 selves. There are laws of thoughts as well as of things, and 
 the conclusions that logically flow therefrom are equally im- 
 portant, equally binding upon all rational beings. In the long 
 run the penalties of ignoring them cannot be shirked. He 
 who enslaves another strikes at himself, for he commits an in- 
 consistency against his own understanding which stings and 
 rankles in consciousness, a perpetual accuser and rebuker 
 while life lasts. This law of rational consistency is what is 
 called the moral law, fixed and lasting as human thought, 
 ceasing only with the mental conditions on which it depends. 
 And inasmuch as man lives his life in consciousness ; 
 inasmuch as understanding is the very essence and defining 
 feature of his being; he who violates this law injures his own 
 mental habitation, and prepares a hell for himself to live in. 
 On a deeper and firmer basis than the laws of thought can 
 no ethical theory rest. The conclusions logically reared on 
 such a foundation reach wherever reason holds its sway; 
 and these conclusions must remain, with all their binding 
 force, until man finally abdicates his intellectual pre-eminence 
 among the creatures of the earth. 
 
 Before us Nature has placed an ideal of individual liberty. 
 Whether she has done this intentionally or unintentionally 
 cannot alter the fact. She has made the recognition of this 
 ideal a necessity of intellectual and moral growth. Upon 
 its gradual realization she has rested all morality, all happi- 
 ness, and all progress. She has made liberty at once the 
 
1 66 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 primary interest of all and of each, of the many and of the 
 few. For while all good things that can be obtained are 
 achievable through its recognition, nothing without it is 
 worth having. And this fact rests, not upon the experience 
 of a few persons only ; nor even on that of a particular 
 nation ; nor on that of one or two generations : but upon the 
 lives and actions of all men who live or have lived since the 
 human race begun. A generalization based upon such wide 
 data, expressing as it does the collective experience of an 
 entire race, cannot therefore be thrust aside as furnishing 
 no practical guidance to the law-maker. On the contrary, 
 there is good warrant for saying that the deductions logically 
 drawn from it, checked and verified by present induction, 
 and applied with that moderation without which no rule is 
 serviceable, may readily supply practical working guides to 
 both law maker and law respecter, to statesman and citizen 
 alike. This is certainly more than can be truthfully said of 
 that impossible and one sided method called " rigid 
 induction." 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 167 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 LET us now examine the plea that with so-called social 
 equality and official regulation, a happier and better 
 humanity would result. Even admitting that there may be 
 a small mite of truth in the argument that criminality and 
 poverty are casually related, and that the removal of the 
 latter would mean the almost total disappearance of the 
 former ; yet it is as certain as anything well can be in this 
 world, that no mere rearrangement of imperfect social units 
 could suddenly make all, or even many, bad people good. 
 He would be a clever conjurer indeed, who could, by mere 
 shuffling, change an _old pack of cards into a new pack. 
 True, a diminution of poverty might lessen the number of a 
 certain class of vices such for example as petty thefts and 
 infanticide provided that it could be effected in a legiti- 
 mate manner, say, by the growth of saving and investing 
 habits amongst the whole of the working class : an 
 impossibility as average human nature is now constituted 
 and likely to be constituted for thousands of years to come. 
 But more than this both reason and fact alike forbid us to 
 expect. A man must be either a blind fanatic or a great 
 fool who imagines that securing to everybody the 
 industrious and the lazy, the wise and the foolish all the 
 material and mental satisfactions that admit of division and 
 distribution, would effectually get rid of the murderer, the 
 ravisher, and the thief. Human passions are not appeased 
 in so simple a manner by a plentiful supply of warm cloth- 
 
1 68 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 ing and full stomachs rather the contrary.* The great 
 readers of the human heart knew this well. " I never 
 heard," said GOETHE, "of a single crime I might have not 
 committed." And when some one once asked GEORGE ELIOT 
 where she got the idea of one of her most diabolical 
 characters, she replied, " Here, in my own heart." Like all 
 other fanatics, the share and share alike worshippers have 
 not yet emerged out of mental fairy land, and are still 
 expecting a magic godmother, called social equality (or by 
 some other hollow and high-sounding name) to come and 
 change their pumpkins and rats into coaches and horses. 
 Superstition of one kind or another dies hard. Although 
 we live in a world of inexorable and universal law, we are 
 always expecting the miracle that never has and never will 
 come. Vicious people, and even moderately selfish people, 
 are not as a fact suddenly transformed into saints by altering 
 
 This appears to be born out by Dr. Leffingwell's new work on 
 Illegitimacy and the Influence of Seasons upon Conduct. Two 
 Studies in Demography. Maps and Diagrams. By A. Leffingwell, 
 M.D. 'Social Science Series.' (Sw.ui Sonnenschein and Co. 2s. 6d.) 
 The following facts are taken from a summary of it which appeared 
 in the Literary World for April ist, 1892 : Not only do we find that 
 the proportion of illegitimate births in England, Scotland, and Ireland 
 varies but slightly, the percent :ge of illicit progeny being 47, 8'2, 2'6 
 respectively. 
 
 If we take the unmarried iemale population of England and Wales, 
 Scotland, and Ireland for the decade ending 1887. we find that of every 
 thousand widows and spinsters the basiards born were 14, 21*5, and 4-4 
 respectively, and the fact that Scotland had thus the unenviable majority 
 of nearly 5 to I over Ireland is very remarkable when, as Dr. Leffing- 
 well's tables enable us to do, we compare the parts of the two countries 
 that afford, more or less, similar conditions of life. 
 
 Can we discover the proximate causes of the varied, but locally 
 constant, averages of bastardy ? Poverty, ignorance, and the contamin- 
 ation of great cities have often been put down as contributory. Bad 
 cottages in the country have almost by common consent been 
 pronounced as the evil. Let us see. 
 
 WHAT DOES IRELAND SAY ? 
 
 Two counties, Mayo and Down one on the bleak and barren coast 
 of the Atlantic, the other in prosperous Ulster each containing by the 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 169 
 
 the circumstances of their lives. A sick patient is not im- 
 proved by being taken out of a bed made of wood and put 
 into one made of gold. The profoundists of all moralists 
 saw this clearly, and in his tragedies we see vice facing it 
 out through prosperity and adversity, through good repute 
 and ill repute, until death cuts short the fight. Cataclysms 
 are as rare in the moral as the physical world. Here and 
 there, it is true, some JEAN VALJEAN there may be, with 
 almost every spark of human feeling trampled out under the 
 iron heels of hate and force ; who chances to meet a justice 
 that reaches down to the very depths of his nature, and fans 
 the feeble warmth that still remains into a steady flame that 
 lasts through life. But these cases are exceptional, and it is 
 because of their rarity that we notice them. And even if 
 there are many potential JEAN VALJEANS, there are few 
 actual Bishop MERVEILS ; so that the amount of vice the 
 latter can redeem is only as a drop in the ocean of iniquity. 
 
 census of 1881 about the same number of inhabitants, present a contrast 
 which is worth studying. That census enumerated four classes of 
 dwelling-houses. Houses of (he fourth class were defined as ' built o r 
 mud or perishable materials, with only one room and one window'; 
 homes, we may say, unfit for human habitation, and equalled only by 
 the dwellings of the most barbaric tribes. The third class included 
 houses of similar character but somewhat better built, of less perishable 
 materials, and containing more than a single room or a single window. 
 Houses somewhat superior to these constituted the remainder. Now in 
 1881, in County Mayo, more than three-fourths of the population were 
 occupying dwellings of the third and fourth class. In County Down 
 scarcely one-third of the people were equally impoverished. In Mayo 
 but a little over one-eighth of its surface is susceptible e\en to culti- 
 vation, and forty per cent, is either barren or bog. ... In County 
 Down, on the other hand, only eight per cent, of the land is intractable 
 to the husbandman ; and nearly half its total is actually under tillage. 
 Now how do these two sections of the same country differ in that 
 sentiment of morality which at least tends to prevent illegitimate births? 
 [Our author here gives details which we summarise.] In the decade 
 ending 1888, out of a total of 57,141 births in Mayo, only 322 were 
 bastards ; whilst in Down there were 3,084 out of 60,346, which, 
 reduced to the rate per thousand, shows that in Down there were 51*1, 
 and in Mayo 5*6. If we work this out in regard to the numbers of 
 
1 70 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 " No device," says Mr. LESLIE STEPHEN, " has hitherto 
 succeeded in making bad men good." If we could trace 
 the proportion of vice, of one kind or another, backward 
 along the line of human descent, we should be astonished at 
 the very slow progress of morality ; and at the difference 
 there often is between it and the civilization mentally 
 coupled with it. The production of the socially unfit, like 
 that of the naturally unfit, seems always to have gone on at 
 a comparatively rapid rate. To ask why this is so is like 
 asking why motion is in the direction of the least resistance, 
 or why water is wet. It is part of the evolution-process, an 
 indispensable condition of natural selection, and forms one 
 of those ultimate facts which can neither be ignored nor 
 explained. The average human character remains pretty 
 
 unm3rried and nubile women (between 15 and 45 years of age), the 
 number of illegitimate births to each 10,000 such women in Mayo 
 was n ; in Down, 90; in all Ireland, 44. 
 
 We cannot extend our survey to other countries. Suffice it to say 
 that observation in the poorer parts of Scotland, France, Italy, and 
 Switzerland serves to show that destitution, hunger, and chronic 
 wretchedness are not proved to be necessarily provocative of immorality 
 though, as our author observes, ' it would, perhaps, be too great a 
 stretch of scientific imagination to regard them as excitiments to vircue. 
 
 Education as a preventive seems to fare no better than improved 
 dwellings and the simplicity of rural life. In Europe, the countries 
 wherein popular education is widely diffused among all classes 
 Denmark, Scandinavia, Scotland, for example have a high average of 
 bastardy. Russia and Ireland, at the opposite pole in education, have 
 a low average. The Registrar-General reported of Scotland in 1862 
 that ' the counties which show the highest proportion of illegitimacy 
 are the counties which are in the highest condition as to education ; 
 whilst, on the other hand, the counties which produce the fewest 
 illegitimate births are those where education is at the lowest ebb.' Our 
 author adds that this still holds true, and cites Kirkcudbright as a 
 startling illustration of it. In Ulster education is far more diffused than 
 in Connaught, yet the decade 1879-1888 in the former province was 
 marked by four times the rate of illegitimacy found in the latter. 
 Finisterre is the least educated province in France, yet its illicit births 
 34 in i ,000 births are less than the rate for any county in Great 
 Britain. 
 
 Why is this? The reply is obvious. Nature teaches Duty: artificial 
 and false "education" unteaches it. In the \th Century for June, 
 
7 he Natural Right to Freedom. 171 
 
 much the same under the successive veneerings of culture 
 and refinement it puts on and throws off. It does change 
 though : there is a movement upwards and away from the 
 beast, but the process is slow ; perhaps it is all the more 
 sure and safe on that account. At bottom there is not so 
 much difference as is often supposed between the so-called 
 savage and his civilized master ; what there is is often any- 
 thing but flattering to the latter. The rule, so largely 
 exemplified elsewhere, shows itself here ; the most important 
 thing is the last to appear the longest in forming. The 
 heart of man changes as slowly as the everlasting hills, and 
 the evolution of a perfect race is the longest of all natural 
 processes. 
 
 The superficial character of the social reformer's psycho- 
 logical analysis is never more clearly shown than in this 
 childish theory that equalizing wealth by robbing PETER 
 and giving to PAUL, will promote better feelings between the 
 two parties. It would not even do this if the said PETER 
 had defrauded the said PAUL of the amount transferred 
 so utterly impotent is mere force to produce any moral 
 change still less would it do so when the amount con- 
 fiscated represented as in the majority of cases it would 
 do superior industry or intelligence. When all men work 
 alike, think and feel alike, and are equally endowed with 
 the same tastes, then it will be time for them to be all 
 remunerated alike ; but until that happy period arrives, the 
 inequalities of character must be matched by the inequalities 
 
 1892, the chaplain of Wandsworth Jail says that in England and 
 Wales (where compulsory cram has been extending its refining and 
 moralizing influence during a period of 20 years) " police statistics 
 are a striking confirmation of prison statistics, and the stat'stics of trials ; 
 and all of them point with singular unanimity to the conclusion that 
 crime during the last 30 years, for which we possess official returns, has 
 not decreased in gravity and has been steadily developing in magnitude." 
 Yet for years political liars have been telling of the great decrease of 
 crime caused by State cram ! 
 
172 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 of wealth and station; any other arrangement only achieves 
 equality at the expense of justice, and secures equal 
 possessions at the expense of unequal satisfactions. 
 
 Justice must be maintained. No man, and no number 
 of men, have any right to take the produce, or the monetary 
 equivalent of the produce, of another man or another set of 
 men without having first obtained the consent of the latter. 
 If, for example, A writes more readable essays than B and C } 
 the former, and not the latter, should alone be free to 
 dispose of the extra value therefrom arising. So evidently 
 think the writers of the Fabian Essays ; for although their 
 book has had an uncommonly large sale, they have never 
 yet offered to go shares with people whose inferior essays 
 don't sell at all. They know better. They know too well 
 what real equality is, to think seriously of practically 
 adopting the sham. However cheaply they may sentimenta- 
 lize about equality, and fraternity, and brotherhood, and all 
 that rot ; yet, when it comes to the pinch, they evidently 
 fail to see how, if they who wrote these essays have no right 
 to dispose in their own way of the extra value of such effu- 
 sions, some other person or persons, who did not write them, 
 can possess an ethical warrant both of disposal and confisca- 
 tion ; for under these circumstances the last two terms are 
 synonymous. They wisely illustrate the profound wisdom of 
 FREDERIC BISTAIT'S remarks " There is always this contra- 
 diction when we set out on a false principle. Its results 
 are in practice so absurd and so mischievous, that we are 
 forced to check ourselves. The punishment follows too soon 
 upon the error, and exposes it at once. But in matters of 
 speculative industry, such as these theorists reason upon, a 
 false principle may be followed a long time before they are 
 warned of its falseness by the complicated consequences to 
 which it leads ; and when at length these consequences are 
 revealed, they act according to the opposite principle, con- 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 173 
 
 tradict themselves, and seek to justify their change of front 
 by asserting that in- political economy there is no absolute 
 principle." 
 
 Fraternal equality is merely for writing about, and canting 
 about, and getting political power and cheap popularity by 
 means of. In this matter actions unsay words, and truth 
 gets expressed though lies are spoken. The only real 
 equality is within, not without, and it consists in an equality 
 of pleasure taken in diverse and unequal possessions. In 
 this, the only true sense, DIOGENES is equally as happy as 
 ALEXANDER, for his tastes are as perfectly gratified by life in 
 a tub, as ALEXANDER'S are by universal empire. 
 
 To imagine that we shall all form one happy family when 
 everybody is as well off in the eyes of social experts as every- 
 body else, is to ignore nearly the whole of the elements of 
 which the moral world is made up. At least 90 per cent, of 
 human vice grows out of the clashing of thoughts and 
 feelings, out of envy, jealousy, malice, hatred, and a host of 
 other evil passions. Will A cease to envy his neighbour the 
 private monopoly of a fine voice, when he is as rich or as 
 poor in other respects as his neighbour is. Will B fail to 
 hate the man who calls him a fool, and, what is worse, 
 proves it too, because they have both got the same share of 
 clothing, house, or rather workhouse, accommodation, use 
 of libraries, museums, schools, lavatories, dormitories, 
 refectories, &c., &c. Will nobody do anything, or say any- 
 thing, or think anything except what happens to fit in with 
 the tastes and thoughts and feelings of everybody? Will 
 there be no disappointed lovers, no discarded old maids or 
 bachelors, no unfaithful wives or husbands under the regime 
 of social equality ? Or will the Socialist, like PLATO, carry 
 out his theory to its logical conclusion, and not only equalize 
 the mere grub and board, but also all the pleasures of life 
 that now arise out of the personal relations of individuals ? 
 
174 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 We know that he supplements his elevating philosophy of 
 eating and drinking, by a sexual philosophy equally elevating ; 
 although, in deference to modern hypocrisy, he takes good 
 care to keep the latter well in the background : and small 
 wonder too, considering that the "Contagious Diseases Act" 
 is decency itself compared with the amount of regulation 
 that would be inflicted on individuals under a logical 
 Socialism. When the family life of the isolated home, and 
 all the responsibilities and duties that grow out of it, are 
 withered and destroyed by the blighting hand of State 
 Socialism ; the communal Phryne will throw off her mantle, 
 and stand in the open court of the world ; corrupt, but not 
 ashamed. When the State has assumed the duties of the 
 parent, the wife and husband will give place to the officially 
 sanitated and licensed Hetairse and her hundred lovers. 
 And as for the children well, in that ideal crowd the remark 
 of Prince KRAPOTKIN will become nominally appropriate : 
 " All children," says he, "are our children," and so they will 
 then falsely appear to be : for we shall not know them, and 
 they won't know us. A glorious ideal ! Children the 
 property of the community of everybody in general and 
 nobody in particular managed, trained, and controlled 
 by communal officials ; individual parents rendered 
 practically childless, deprived of the discipline in duty which 
 the training of their children gives, and their minds left to 
 grow the weeds of vanity and lust; the words father, mother, 
 brother, sister, rendered obsolete, or emptied of all intel- 
 ligible meaning ; a community of revellers in what CARLYLE 
 called "pigswash," its whole collective life a pitiless struggle 
 between the demons of desire and force. And this world of 
 collective orphans and childless parents is the goal of human 
 progress. This is "the far-off divine event to which the whole 
 creation moves." Could there be a greater libel upon all that 
 is best and highest in human nature? We thought we had left 
 
7 he Natural Right to Freedom* 175 
 
 materialistic Communism behind, and that although we had 
 come from the brute we were not destined to go back to it ; 
 we thought we were helping to evolve a complete man, and 
 not merely an intelligent animal, more cunning and more 
 corrupt than all the beasts of the field. If Socialism is sound 
 we were mistaken. 
 
 The utter impotence of a collective and distributive social 
 equality, held together by collective force, and expressing it- 
 self in regulative officialism the impossibility of this promot- 
 ing either happiness or morality, becomes apparent when we 
 enquire wherein happiness and morality consist. Happiness 
 is the mental concomitant of free action, that is, of those 
 movements which argument the processes we classify as 
 living, in order to distinguish them from non-living pro- 
 cesses. It is the mental correlative of unimpeded organic 
 functional activity. Consequently, in proportion as this kind 
 of activity is interfered with, whether by extraneous personal 
 or non-personal action, in that proportion do its mental 
 correlatives decrease. Contrast the mental state of a child 
 running freely in the fields, with that of a child cooped up 
 for five or six hours a day in a stuffy school-room. And the 
 indirect results of force are precisely the same as the direct 
 results. Frightening people by threats of punishment into 
 doing what they don't want to do, fills their minds with 
 all kinds of painful pictures, and makes their conduct not 
 so much an attempt to achieve happiness as to avoid misery. 
 Every repressive law, however excusable it may be and legal 
 prevention of violence is not only excusable, but indispen- 
 sable lessens, in a greater or less degree, both the happiness 
 of the mind and the health of the body. Hence legislation, 
 with its police, judges, and prisons, is never a positive cause 
 of happiness ; at best it is but a clumsy method of preserving 
 intact those conditions of freedom, which leave individuals 
 an opportunity of finding and following their own happi- 
 
176 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 ness. The liberties of men may to some extent be secured 
 by law : the happiness of men can only be achieved by 
 themselves. It is often supposed that force holds society 
 together ; the exact opposite is the real truth. Just so far 
 as I force my neighbour, or am forced by him, just so 
 far are we at enmity with each other : we are separated 
 by an impassible barrier of mutual hatred and distrust. 
 Hatred is the great raison d'etre of force. An aggregate 
 of men held together by force is not a society : it is simply 
 a mechanical grouping of unsocial incompatibles, ready to 
 fall asunder as easily as a policeman and his catch directly 
 the hand of law leaves go. Men are social so far as they 
 are freely joined together by bonds of mutual interest : 
 they are unsocial so far as they are bound by law. All the 
 society there is, is founded on freedom, and in its nature 
 approximates, as ARISTOTLE says, more or less closely to 
 friendship. But Socialistic law is simply the hand of the 
 big bully at the throat of his enemy nay, often at that of 
 his friend. From this it follows that the growth of society, 
 as such, is necessarily coincident with the recognition of 
 individual liberty : that it implies the latter, and is utterly 
 impossible without it. To point out that, historically, 
 society has always been disfigured by coercion of one kind 
 or another, proves nothing until we are agreed upon what 
 society is. The disintegration of death invariably accom- 
 panies the integration of life there is nowhere a perfect 
 living organism but the latter is totally distinct from the 
 former, and is oniy itself so far as it is distinct. Similarly 
 with the free relations of uncoerced individuals, for which 
 " society " is the general term. These relations have always 
 coincided with force ; but they are totally distinct therefrom, 
 and are only social in so far as they are so distinct. State 
 regulation is the decaying or dead tissue that impedes the 
 life and growth of the " social organism." Social life only 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 177 
 
 begins where law ends, and every Socialistic addition to 
 the latter is a substraction from the former. It may be 
 said How about the restraint of criminals, does not that 
 indirectly increase social life ? No, it does not ; at best 
 it but prevents social life from being decreased. It has 
 no positive, but only a negative value. Only could it have 
 a positive value if it socialised the criminal ; but the fact 
 that it does not do so is notorious. I may stop this man 
 from picking a pocket : I cannot make him not want to 
 pick one. I may ward off his enmity : but I cannot by so 
 doing make him a friend. Nay, in" order to keep him at 
 bay, I am obliged excusably so, indeed to expend a 
 certain amount of force of unsociability and so part with 
 a portion of my social life in order to preserve the remainder. 
 In any case there is a loss, and the focible suppression of 
 criminality is always a victory that is only a little less terrible 
 than a defeat. Law is simply the pathology of diseased 
 Asocial tissue, and, like all pathological treatment, must dis- 
 appear with the improvement of health. One day man 
 will stand forth in the fulness of perfect health, mental 
 and physical, free alike from both doctors and quacks, 
 because exempt from the diseases on which they subsist. 
 
 But if it is easy to show that coercive legislation cannot 
 promote happiness, it is still easier to show that it cannot 
 further morality. Law is the attachment of penalties to the 
 non-fulfilment of certain prescribed courses of conduct ; or, 
 it may be, of rewards to their fulfilment. In either case its 
 tendency is non-moral. The man who behaves himself 
 because he is afraid of a real or fanciful bogie, is no more 
 moral than a dog that is thrashed into obedience ; and 
 neither is he moral who keeps straight in order to get 
 some real or imaginary sugar plum. What is morality ? 
 According to Socialists and here we will not introduce any 
 definition of our own it is useful conduct prompted by 
 
178 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 a desire to benefit others. But in the cases just given, the 
 happiness of others is never desired at all : the prompting 
 moHve is either to avoid some pain to self, or to achieve 
 some pleasure for self, and it is that alone ; the happiness 
 of others is not considered as an end at all ; there is not the 
 least pleasure taken in promoting it, or in seeing it promoted. 
 Moral conduct, on the other hand, say the Socialists, is 
 prompted by the prospective pleasure of seeing others happy. 
 The generous man gives simply for the pleasure he derives 
 in seeing others made more happy through his gift : so far 
 as there is any alloy of other desires, his action is non-moral. 
 And all moral conduct, we are told, is prompted by kindred 
 motives. From this it therefore follows that those who take 
 no pleasure in helping their fellows, but who have to be 
 coerced into doing so, are no more moral than steam engines. 
 Force only appeals to lowest motives : it turns men into 
 cattle and keeps them there. It does not even square with 
 the ethics of Socialism. 
 
 The non-moral and depressing tendency of law is clearly 
 seen when we inquire into the class of motives to which it 
 appeals. Its appeal is always either to fear or vanity; it may 
 frighten you into doing or abstaining from certain acts; or it 
 may bribe you into the required action or abstinence. 
 In either case it is stimulating, and therefore developing, that 
 side of our nature which lies below the plain of morality. 
 True, it may keep the sphere of non-moral activity within 
 certain roughly defined bounds, but as law, it cannot effect- 
 ually lessen that sphere ; for it is only over motives lying 
 within that sphere that it can have any leverage. Law 
 cannot make the unselfish more unselfish ; it cannot make 
 the selfish less selfish ; for its very success depends upon 
 stimulating their selfishness to the pitch required for produc- 
 ing action or abstinence from action. Selfishness and 
 unselfishness are like the two buckets of a well ; as one rises 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 179 
 
 the other sinks ; as one is stimulated and developed the 
 other is dwarfed and stunted. So that the spread of law 
 means the increase of the lower motives at the expense of the 
 higher the growth of weeds at the expense of flowers. 
 Hence it is desirable to have as little law as possible. Even 
 a Socialist ought to see this. 
 
 The deathward tendency of law is equally manifest. As 
 the attacher of pain to non-fulfilment of certain prescribed 
 actions, it fosters the less organic processes at the expense of 
 the more organic. As the attacher of a low kind of pleasure 
 (or rewards) it arrests the evolution of the higher and more 
 organic processes. Happiness, as SPINOZA pointed out, is 
 the mental correlative of augmented living processes. And 
 as thought and thing correspond point for point, augmen- 
 tation of one involving augmentation of the other, any 
 depression of happiness consequently implies a corresponding 
 depression of vitality. Pain has been defined as the gravi- 
 tation towards the non-organic ; pleasure the ascension 
 towards more complete life. Pain, according to Mr. 
 SPENCER, is the arrest of vitality ; pleasure is the increase of 
 vitality. It is perfectly evident, then, that to stimulate fear, 
 or rather pain, is to develope the less vital at the expense of 
 the more vital processes. This accounts for the miserably 
 subdued and spiritless character of all slaves. 
 
 Nevertheless Law may offer rewards, and so may increase 
 pleasure to the extent of their enjoyment. But what sort of 
 pleasure does it increase ? 
 
 Not the peace which comes from the consciousness of 
 having done duty for its own sake, that is, for the sake of 
 self-satisfying and harmonious co-operation with the illimit- 
 able cosmos ; not the calm recognition of rational fitness 
 with the universal order, obtained through having fearlessly 
 followed the dictates of individual reason : not this unique 
 and unalloyed joy; but something very different, namely, 
 
180 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 the poor restless vanity of knowing that somebody else either 
 is or pretends to be pleased with what you have done. 
 There is all the difference here between heaven and hell, 
 between the thanks of Nature and the inane grin of that 
 paltry, insignificant little travesty of Nature hypocritically 
 called "dear fellow-man." Pleasures differ in duration, 
 volume, and intensity ; hence it is legitimate to speak of 
 higher and lower pleasures, just as it is legitimate to speak of 
 more organic and less organic physical processes. For life 
 is not merely one process, but a consensus of processes, 
 some, namely, the governing and directing ones, moreimport- 
 tant to the maintenance of the consensus than others. 
 Therefore, it follows that the pleasures corresponding to the 
 increase of the more important vital processes, are of more 
 importance than others, and, consequently, anything that 
 developes the growth of the lower pleasures at the expense 
 of the higher, while it furthers pleasure, furthers the wrong 
 kind of pleasure. For the highest and most permanent 
 pleasure, if indeed such a term may here be used, is the 
 peace which comes by rationally employing each part of the 
 human system in such a manner as fits in with the general 
 order of things ; thus ever living in quiet oneness with the 
 laws of universal Nature. This by SPINOZA was called 
 "blessedness," by the Jews "holiness," and by the Stoics 
 " tranquility." Clearly a very different fact from that poor 
 fleeting excitement which is generally understood by the term 
 "pleasure." Other people may give you excitement, but 
 only yourself can give you peace. Only by despising a lying 
 social world, and living to eternal principles, is this last to be 
 had at all. 
 
7 he Natural Right to Freedom* 181 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 HOW does the doctrine of liberty apply to animals ? It 
 has been shown that the moral obligation to respect 
 our neighbour's freedom rests upon identity of intellectual 
 nature. You, as a rational being, strive to express your own 
 nature as fully and freely as you possibly can, therefore you 
 are logically bound to allow other rational beings to do the 
 same ; since things which are equal to the same thing are 
 equal to one another. " Do not to another (said 
 CONFUCIUS) that which thou would'st not have done to 
 thyself." This, as has already been said, is the great moral 
 law for rational creatures. It is good alike for male and 
 female, white and black, savage and civilized, rich and poor ; 
 for all sorts and conditions of people the wide world through. 
 It is at once both the unshakeable foundation and the 
 eternal safeguard of liberty, and never until the human 
 understanding itself goes, can this go ; can this fail to show 
 up clear and white through the darkest gloom. You would 
 be free ? Then respect the freedom of others. You would 
 have your own consent respected ? Then violate not that 
 of others. This is Individualism. How does it apply to 
 the animal world ? Let us see. 
 
 Now animals are only partly rational. Therefore the 
 principle can only partly apply. It does not apply to a stone 
 or a tree at all. It applies only in proportion as living forms 
 approximate in their nature towards reason. Taking this 
 qualification and ' applying it roughly, it seems, at least in 
 our opinion, to supply a rule which would lead us to con- 
 
1 82 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 elude, that although we are not morally bound to defend 
 animals as much as we are bound to defend men ; although 
 we are not bound to defend them from human interference, 
 yet we are bound to do what we can to make that inter- 
 ference as little as possible compatible with our food 
 necessities and the keeping down of animal over-population. 
 If I saw a man drowning a cat I should not interfere. The 
 act might be necessary. But if I saw a man deliberately 
 torturing the animal for the sake of what he pleased to call 
 the advancement of science, I should interfere. Why ? 
 Because I am under a moral obligation to do what I can to 
 prevent intelligent and sensitive creatures like myself from 
 being interfered with. And this obligation is strong in pro- 
 portion to the closeness of identity between myself and the 
 creatures interfered with. There is no other excuse for 
 government, and the evil is that such an excuse is needed. 
 Now animals, like myself, are intelligent. Like myself, they 
 can feel pain, and that severely ; " not to the same extent " 
 possibly, but to some extent. Therefore inasmuch, as they 
 possess the same kind of sensitive and intelligent nature, I 
 am to some extent bound to protect them : but not quite to 
 the same extent I admit. It is necessary that they should 
 be killed. It is not necessary that they should be tortured 
 in addition to being killed. Therefore I may reasonably 
 conclude that when interference is carried further than the 
 needs of human existence ; when, that is, animals are not 
 merely killed but deliberately tortured before being killed, 
 the obligation to protect them becomes imperative ; and I 
 am bound to do what little I can to fulfil that obligation. It 
 is true I cannot do much, but I am bound to do my best. 
 So is the State^ which is but a collection of Ps. Let us 
 again remember that obligation to protect liberty rests upon 
 identity of nature, and that it is strong in proportion 
 as the nature interfered with resembles our own. It is 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 183 
 
 strongest of all in the case of man, who, in so far as he is an 
 intelligent being, in our very self objectified. It is not quite 
 so strong in the case of animals ; these last are like our own 
 undeveloped nature looking to us for mercy and fair play. 
 The obligation is undoubtedly weaker. Still, it is amply 
 strong enough to justify us in doing what we can to keep 
 them out of the clutches of heartless devils who do their 
 abominations in the name of science. Yet there is little we 
 can do, for devils work in the dark. Animals have rights ; 
 weaker rights than our own, but still rights ; for they are 
 sensitive, and they are largely intelligent like ourselves. I 
 repeat that, as human nature is at present constituted, it is 
 necessary to kill them (in fact, nature herself does this if we 
 don't) ; but it is not necessary to torture them : and the 
 very fact that we are (at least in the case of tame creatures) 
 responsible for their existence, should cause us to be all the 
 more careful to make their short lives as free and happy as 
 possible while they last. The individual, or the community, 
 which would wish to purchase exemption from pain, or 
 length of life, at the expense of torture to helpless animals, 
 sinks below the brutes themselves. Nature has given to 
 each man his own share of the world's pain, and he who 
 would put that share, or any portion of it, upon other living 
 creatures, let him argue and reason as he likes, is a mean and 
 contemptible wretch. Such a one is less worthy to live 
 than the creatures he tortures. In fact he is not a man, and 
 whatever authority or learning he may possess counts for 
 nothing. As for the relief of human pain, which he pretends 
 to secure by torturing animals, it is not a thing we have any 
 right to obtain by such means. Human beings as a class 
 have brought all their aches and pains on themselves by 
 disobeying the laws of Nature, of conscience, and of reason. 
 Why, then, should animals as a class be tortured for what is 
 due to human folly, and what reason and common sense 
 
1 84 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 will eventually remedy ? Let us spend the time and energy 
 that we now waste on this monstrous and self-degrading 
 cruelty, in trying to obey the simple laws around and within 
 us. This the only right track. Let us confine our science 
 to the non-torturing methods of discovery (there is no limit 
 to the advantages of these methods), and if at present we 
 cannot cure all the ills that flesh is heir to without baking 
 cats, or boiling dogs, or similar practices, then let us wait 
 like rational beings until we can. Far worse and more 
 dangerous to society than any physical disorder is the cruelty 
 which these practices tend to increase. In the Paris 
 Hospitals vivisection has already led to experiments upon 
 human beings. Let it go on, and the medical profession 
 will lose all its ancient trustworthiness. No hospital will be 
 safe. No man will be able to trust himself or his family 
 with a doctor. When shall we learn that attempting to 
 decrease physical evils by increasing moral evils is ex- 
 changing gold for silver? Here we stand at the very 
 crown of Nature, armed with knowledge, and supplied 
 with ample opportunities for finding means to alleviate 
 human suffering, and yet we must descend to the level 
 of savages, and make ourselves comfortable by torturing 
 creatures that cannot help themselves \ Where is all our 
 boasted philosophy? We have a power of understanding, 
 which, when properly trained, enables us to endure pain. 
 The animals have not. We are more powerful than they. 
 Let us, therefore, treat them with that magnanimity with- 
 out which all power is vain. To bear pain sooner than 
 inflict it, is better than either health or length of days. 
 A race which cannot rise to this, is unworthy of the 
 high station to which Nature has called it ; its moral life 
 is its only true life, and if it attempts to go back from 
 this, it will rot off the face of the earth. Neither science nor 
 anything else can save it. 
 
1 he Natural Right to Freedom. 185 
 
 CHAPTER XIL 
 
 REQUISITE as the use of force occasionally is ;md 
 that there are circumstances where its use is necessary, 
 few people will deny yet it is always an evil, never in any 
 case a good. For it is a wrong in itself, just as a lie is a 
 wrong in itself. The passion that prompts it, namely, the 
 desire to do to another what one would dislike if done to 
 one's own person, is disagreeable and peace-disturbing in its 
 very essence. Even the defence of life, liberty, and property, 
 which is the expression of this passion in its mildest and 
 least unwarrantable form, is still destructive of the harmony 
 that prevails where reason has outgrown force, where duty 
 and love are one. That this is so, the practical daily 
 experience of almost all people will bear witness. Take, for 
 example, the ordinary domestic duties. How much satis- 
 faction there is when these are carried on spontaneously and 
 in obedience to the dictates of reason ; how much dis- 
 satisfaction when force has to be resorted to. The first state 
 is a positive and unalloyed good, a good in and for itself, 
 perfect and complete in each moment of its duration ; the 
 second state is a positive evil ; an evil in and for itself, what- 
 ever its material advantages may be : for it destroys that 
 harmony of reason, which is love ; mars that mutual respect 
 for differences of wants and tastes, which is charity ; and 
 impairs that joint supply of rationally recognized needs ; which 
 is duty. In the place of all these the use of force puts the 
 horrible grind of slavery, the external pretence of an inner 
 harmony which all parties know not to exist ; an outside lie ; 
 
1 86 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 a whited sepulchre that only covers burning hate and ever 
 seething inner discord ; the thin crust of a living volcano 
 which must run over at last. 
 
 In their domestic concerns men pride themselves on being 
 able to rule by reason rather than by force. Why? Because 
 in these matters they know by practical experience that 
 reason is a good in itself; force an evil in itself. Wherever 
 reason is, there is harmony and peace ; there is joint service 
 of natural law, and joint performance of the duties that arise 
 therefrom and rest thereon. But reason will not be driven. 
 It may be easily led by truth ; yet attempt to compel it, and 
 it changes immediately from an angel of light into a fiend of 
 darkness. This law runs right through the universe : even 
 an animal largely exemplifies it. \Vho, amongst that crowd 
 of fashionable people who know neither how to spend their 
 time nor their money, does not regret having to keep a dog 
 constantly chained up, as a sort of living ornament to the 
 importance of the premises ? W r e all know how much these 
 good people deplore the necessity under which they are 
 so unfortunately placed by the unavoidable circumstances of 
 their lot. We see the fact clearly revealed when, as is 
 frequently the case, the chained creature goes mad in conse- 
 quence of the considerate treatment it has received, and pays 
 its benefactors with a wholly undeserved and unexpected 
 bite. 
 
 How anyone can doubt that force is bad in itself, let its 
 natural results be what they may, is difficult, and, at first 
 sight, almost impossible to conceive. There is, however, 
 every reason for believing that such is here and there the case. 
 Men there are who are tyrants at heart and who love tyranny 
 as their native air. They may never have a public oppor- 
 tunity of exercising their despotic proclivities (it is fortunate 
 for the community when this happens) ; but when these men 
 have such an opportunity, those who come within reach of 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 187 
 
 their power need expect no justice and any amount of 
 cruelty. These men are the Calugilas and Neros of the 
 earth ; monsters whose efforts to do harm are only limited 
 by their powers. And they are absolutely beyond the 
 possibility of reform. Nothing can wash the blackness out 
 of their hearts. A man who believes that, under any circum- 
 stances whatever, the use of force is not something to be 
 greatly deplored, is a person to be shunned as a moral leper 
 and a social pestilence. However suave and polished the 
 external manners of such a man may be, within him there 
 dwells the devilish spirit of an inquisitor. His heart belongs 
 to the same species as that of the famous Persian despot, 
 who placed a man's own children before him on the dinner 
 table for him to eat, and asked him from time to time 
 whether he liked the seasoning. That such men even now 
 exist in the world is highly probable. Ever on the look-out 
 for place and power, ever seeking for excuses and justifi- 
 cations for their arbitrary conduct, they need no encourage- 
 ment from clever sophistry and public reputation, in order to 
 increase their powers for evil and strengthen their motives to 
 perform it. 
 
 Such encouragement, however, a well-known modern 
 writer has done his best to give them. In his work on 
 Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Sir J. FITZJAMES STEPHEN 
 urges that there are cases where the use of force is not an 
 evil in itself. The argument advanced is as clever and 
 specious as the cunningest Jesuit could wish for. If, 
 contends Sir J. F. STEPHEN, the object aimed at by those 
 who use the force is good, and if the compulsion they employ 
 is such as to attain it, and if, moreover, the good obtained 
 over-balances the inconveniences of the compulsion itself, 
 then on strict utilitarian principles, the use of such force 
 cannot fairly be classified as bad. Liberty, Equality, and 
 Fraternity, page 50. 
 
1 88 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 Now on a first glance most people will think that, granting 
 the three conditions just mentioned, it follows inevitably that 
 the conclusion drawn from them is perfectly logical and 
 irrefutable. Yet if all is true that has been said in the 
 beginning of this chapter about the inherent and intrinsic 
 evils of force, such a conclusion as Sir J. F. STEPHEN'S 
 cannot possibly be sound, however plausible it may look on 
 the surface. What is inherently and radically bad in itself, 
 cannot become good because something else is good. Take 
 an example. The preservation of the Roman State was good ; 
 or at least it was considered so by those best competent to 
 judge, namely, the Romans themselves. Does it therefore 
 follow that the rape of the Sabine women was also good, 
 because as a matter of fact it was calculated to achieve this 
 preservation, and in fact did achieve it; and because the 
 good thus obtained did, in the opinion of the stronger party, 
 or those who thought themselves best competent to judge, 
 over-balance the " inconveniences " of the compulsion itself? 
 This may be called an extreme case. Very likely. Only by 
 extreme and crucial cases can principles be fairly tested. 
 Judged by Sir J. F. STEPHEN'S criterion, the act in question 
 should have been an unmitigated gain all round, a perfect 
 and unqualified good. All the conditions he mentions were 
 realized, so far as they ever can be realized where force is 
 used. The strongest power judged and the strongest power 
 achieved. That ulterior evil which we can now see, those 
 living then could not see. We can see that such an act 
 largely helped to lower the character of what . was in its 
 best days by far the noblest race of people this world 
 has ever seen. For what could be better fitted to 
 make this race what it afterwards became ? a rapacious set of 
 pirates ; the wolf and terror of all independent communities. 
 There is even a greater good than power and dominion, 
 namely, the recognition of " natural right " ; the careful 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 189 
 
 respect for a man's own consent as regards the disposal of 
 his own person. Sir J. F. STEPHEN and those who think 
 with him, laugh at all this as nonsense. " Natural Right " 
 is a figment. One man has a perfect "right," if he can (or 
 better still, if he can pass a law to make matters look 
 respectable) to do just what he likes with another man. 
 And this other man has the same " right " to bully as much 
 as he can. Might is right. This is the great justification 
 of government. How beautifully it works. " Might is 
 right " says the despot. " Exactly : and here it is boxed up 
 in this machine " says the nihilist, " how do you like the looks 
 of it ? " " No, no, not that might, but my might " rejoins 
 the despot, " my might is the only genuine one." " To the 
 devil with your might " says the other, " you have taught me 
 that might is right and now you think I should not better 
 the instruction. Don't grumble like a fool at your own 
 darling child. I am the logical outcome of your teaching. 
 You see in me the exemplification of a law that laughs at 
 expediency and crushes all expediency mongers. Enjoy 
 your own handiwork. Either might is right or is it not : if 
 it is, my might is as right as yours : if it is not, your might is 
 as wrong as mine. Humbug that out of the way if you can. 
 You will just as soon get rid of the axioms of EUCLID. If 
 your's is the genuine might, then, of course, it will prevail : 
 if it isn't well, to put it mildly, it won't prevail ; and, in my 
 humble opinion, it does not deserve to prevail. The only 
 way to prove whether it is genuine or not, is to gently test it ; 
 and this is precisely what I propose to do by means of this 
 pretty box. It is not beautiful ? Hark how it ticks ! Your 
 beloved might almost in a nutshell ! Might is right, you 
 know. We agree : so good bye and a pleasant journey 
 sky-ward, or atom-ward, or hell-ward ; for you certainly look 
 sad and heavy enough to sink to your own congenial region. 
 You have played the devil's game, my dear sir, and I'll see 
 
i go The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 to it that you shall not be cheated out of the devil's 
 wages." 
 
 To return, however, to the instance of the Sabine women. 
 It is not difficult to see why, notwithstanding all its sub- 
 sidiary advantages, the act in question was still a radical 
 and unexpungable evil. It was an evil because it broke up 
 that rational harmony which is the only good, because good 
 in and for his own sake, and which can only exist where 
 personal consent is always carefully and logically respected. 
 Liberty is the indispensible condition of this harmony : force 
 is its certain destruction. True it is, as WALT WHITMAN 
 says, that liberty promises nothing. It has no need to do 
 so, for it is an ever present good of itself, an empty vessel 
 filled with the peace of the infinite ; and the strength of all 
 things flows into it for evermore. 
 
 It may be said that such an instance of the use of force is 
 never likely to occur again. As a matter of fact it already 
 exist in essence in continental cities, and our own police 
 supervisorship of prostitution is but a modified form of it. 
 The truth is, when the principle of liberty is once ignored, 
 all distinctions between right and wrong go by the board. 
 The first law of ethics is a careful respect for the free con- 
 sent of your fellow man. Begin breaking this law and 
 where are you to stop ? State Socialists are fully intending 
 to push Sir J. F. STEPHEN'S personal violation principle to 
 exactly the same length as the Romans did ; for we find 
 Mr. B. SHAW, one of the leaders of the Socialist move- 
 ment, telling us in his new book on Ibsen, that under the 
 Social Democratic State, an " able-bodied " woman may be 
 called upon to bear children to the "State," just as a 
 slavish conscript soldier is expected to fight for the 
 State when ordered. Whether refusal will mean being 
 shot as a rebel or deserter, we are not informed: 
 neither are we told whether the women will be graciously 
 
7 he Natural Right to Freedom. 191 
 
 permitted to choose the fathers of their children ; or whether, 
 so as to save "society" from being imflicted with the 
 children of unsociable fathers, the State will choose for 
 them ; or, what would be better still, will itself act in that 
 necessary capacity. This is the logical outcome of State 
 regulation. No wonder that Socialists like Mr. RITCHIE 
 should be so highly delighted with Sir J. F. STEPHEN'S book. 
 It furnishes them with a number of plausible sophistries 
 that not all their talents put together could ever manufacture 
 for themselves. 
 
 In point of fact this principle (or no principle) can be 
 used to justify anything. Take for instance the case of 
 American slavery. We have only got to assume that the 
 southern slave party were the stronger party, that they 
 believed slavery to be a good institution, that the legal com- 
 pulsion employed was calculated to uphold it, and that the 
 good obtained over-balanced the evils ; and slavery suddenly 
 appears as a blessing in disguise, a credit to, and a beauty of, 
 civilization. For we must bear in mind that Sir J. F. 
 STEPHEN'S principle involves two distinct facts or groups of 
 facts; namely, a person or persons compelled, and a person or 
 group of persons compelling him or them ; and it leaves the 
 judgment as to whether the compulsion is desirable or not 
 desirable, entirely in the hands of the latter. If the compellors 
 think that slavery is right, it is right : there is no other court of 
 appeal ; and the fact that it violates the harmony of reason 
 counts for absolutely nothing Some subtle Italian might 
 have concocted this principle, so utterly worthless is it for 
 good, so terribly potent for harm. There is no surer mark 
 of moral corruption in a State than the spread of such an 
 unprincipled principle as this. 
 
 But it may be said " You use force in self-defence : why 
 do you use it if it is wrong ? " The reply is easy. We use 
 it as the lesser of two evils, but never as a positive good. 
 
 M 
 
192 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 When force is used against us, the circumstances thrust upon 
 us are such that we have either got to snuff out or be snuffed 
 out, and we reluctantly prefer the former. 
 
 In peace, there's nothing so becomes a man, 
 
 As modest stillness, and humility : 
 
 But when the blast of war blows in our ears, 
 
 Then imitate the action of the tiger ; 
 
 Stiffen the sinews,, summon up the blood, 
 
 Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage 
 
 Then lend the eye a terrible aspect ; 
 
 Let it pry through the portage of the head, 
 
 Like the brass cannon ; let the brow o'erwhelm it, 
 
 As fearfully as doth a galled rock 
 
 O'erhang and jutty his confounded base 
 
 Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean. 
 
 Now set the teeth, and stretch the nostril wide ; 
 
 Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit 
 
 To his full height ! 
 
 Take a simple illustration. When passing through a lonely 
 place, you are set upon by a man who seeks to kill you. 
 Now if anything is good, surely the preservation of your own 
 life is so. And if any means are calculated to achieve this 
 most desirable end, surely Ihe putting of the man hors de 
 onibat constitutes such means. And if ever the good 
 obtained over-balances the " inconveniences" of obtaining it, 
 surely the preservation of your own life does this. Self- 
 preservation, you know, is the first law of Nature. Yet, is it 
 not plain, that in spite of all the gain, the force involved in 
 getting it is still an evil. And when you see your enemy 
 lying crushed on the ground, do you not feel very much like 
 what the Duke of Wellington is said to have felt after his last 
 victory that to win is only one degree less of an evil than 
 to lose ? Which is better : peace or war ? Is it better to 
 pass through life in the harmony of reason, than in the 
 discord of compulsion ? necessary as the latter is in extreme 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom, 193 
 
 cases. Possibly even Sir J. F. STEPHEN would think it more 
 desirable that we should voluntarily read, mark, learn, and 
 inwardly digest his arguments, than that they should be 
 crammed down our throats in the State Schools ; and this 
 notwithstanding the many additional advantages that would 
 come to them by way of compulsory reading. 
 
 In Sir J. F. STEPHEN'S argument the truth here contended 
 for is cleverly hidden by a judicious use of words. When 
 strictly accurate words are inserted the argument talks utter 
 nonsense. " If the object aimed at is good, if the compul- 
 sion employed is such as to attain it, and if the good obtained 
 over-balances the inconveniences [evils] of the compulsion 
 itself, I do not understand how upon utilitarian principles 
 the compulsion can be bad \evif]." The only point here 
 raised is "When are the evils of compulsion out-balanced 
 by the evils that would exist if the compulsion were absent?" 
 Sir J. F. STEPHEN'S principle contains no rule which will in 
 the least degree help us to answer this crucial question. 
 Yet here is precisely the point that the State Socialist ought 
 to deal with : it is just the point, however, which he finds it 
 most convenient to shirk. He much prefers Sir J. F. 
 STEPHEN'S vague and inconclusive position. "I think," 
 says the latter, " that Governments ought to take the respon- 
 sibility of acting upon such principles, religious, political, 
 and moral, as they may from time to time regard as most 
 likely to be true." Yet if the three conditions stated in 
 Sir J. F. STEPHEN'S argument are any good at all, they 
 should point to some definite direction, some direction that 
 is nearer right than some other direction or directions, and 
 towards which it is desirable to move at any time', for 
 neither government nor anything else can stand still, and 
 must always be moving either towards or away from liberty. 
 What is wanted is a clear guiding principle, and these 
 conditions supply nothing. The reason of their failure is not 
 
1 94 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 far to seek. They are attempts to justify force, and force as 
 such is utterly irrational, and knows no definite direction. 
 They are unprinciples trying to masquerade as principles, 
 and they justify nothing precisely because they justify 
 everything. There is no principle when liberty is rejected, 
 when the free consent of your fellow-man is violated, and the 
 condition of unreason preferred to the condition of reason. 
 You may fight and squabble amongst yourselves respecting 
 whose particular form of compulsion shall prevail ; whether 
 it shall be Sir J. F. STEPHEN'S Caesarism or Cardinal 
 MANNING'S Ultramontanism ; whether it shall be Professor 
 HUXLEY'S endowment of a scientific priesthood, or Mr. 
 HENRY IRVING'S establishment of a State theatre ; whether 
 people shall be compelled to pay for " Free " Libraries, or 
 " Free " Schools, or both ; whether the temperance fanatic 
 shall stop the beer drinking, or his vegetarian brother the 
 meat eating : but anything even so much as approaching the 
 nature of principle, is entirely out of the question ; for the 
 first of all human principles is a loyal and ungrudging respect 
 for the free consent of your fellow-man, and when that goes 
 all the rest go with it. In a political struggle of this elevated 
 kind, it matters very little which dog gets the bone ; for 
 nothing that has the very remotest connection with principle 
 is in the least degree involved. Wise men look on such a 
 spectacle with patience : they see force bringing its own 
 reward, and the storm following closely upon the heels of 
 those who have sown the whirlwind. It is the political 
 carrying out of such pernicious "principles" as those 
 advocated by Sir J. F. STEPHEN, that prompts desperate 
 and misguided men to burn down cities, assassinate kings, 
 and blow up houses of parliament. For the doctrine that 
 might is right, is one of those infernal lies, which excuse 
 nothing, and seem to justify everything. 
 
 How handy this doctrine is for every would-be tyrant m ay 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 195 
 
 be seen by applying it to one of the schemes just mentioned, 
 namely, the State Endowment of a Scientific Priesthood. 
 Science is a good thing, and the best thing for human 
 welfare ; therefore people must be taxed to support its 
 professors, and bullied into swallowing whatever these 
 infallible men may think well to prescribe. Such, when put 
 shortly, is the plea of the scientific despot. "The end 
 justifies the means." " Let us do evil that good may come." 
 So said the old priests for hundreds of years ; but then in 
 their case the argument was unsound. What they tried to 
 thrust down the throats of the people was bad in itself : what 
 the scientific professors would enforce is good. The latter 
 say so, and they are the only fit and proper judges of what is 
 scientifically best, both for themselves and for everyone else. 
 They are the only disinterested men who have the welfaie 
 of their fellows sincerely at heart. The religious priest is a 
 fraud : the scientific priest is an honest reality. It is said 
 that two of a trade never can agree, and this no doubt helps 
 to explain much of the bitterness that frequently arises out 
 of disputes between ecclesiastically-minded scientists and 
 ecclesiastically-minded religionists. Here are two crafty old 
 grown-up babies eternally squabbling for one teat. The 
 religious humbug has it, and the scientific humbug wants it. 
 " Go away " says the latter to the former, " you have had 
 a quite long enough innings. I am now the only right and 
 proper parasite to suck at this. You are a mere vendor of 
 exploded lies, but I sell eternal truth." At this the wide- 
 awake outsiders (who know that whichever wins, they will be 
 in for a plucking) exchange a knowing wink ; but the simple- 
 minded, ever agape for change and novelty, noisily chorus 
 " Hear, hear." It is the same old game. Some disinterested 
 lover of his dear fellow-man wants to live, not upon the pure 
 milk of human kindness, which flows spontaneously wherever 
 liberty is, but upon the deadly narcotic of State endowment ; 
 
196 The Natural Right to Freedom* 
 
 a drink that contains no energizing power, and speedily 
 drugs all enterprizing originality out of those who are weak 
 enough and foolish enough to take it. This deadening 
 tendency of State coddling is well known, and even those 
 who desire it not infrequently admit the fact. " All great 
 men" says VOLTAIRE "have either been formed before the 
 institution of academies, or at least without any assistance 
 from them. Homer and Phidias, Sophocles and Apelles, 
 Virgil and Virtruvius, Aristo and Michael Angelo, belonged 
 to no academy ; Tasso met with no other advantages besides 
 a few ill-grounded criticisms from that of La Crusca ; nor 
 was Newton indebted to the Royal Society of London for 
 his discoveries in optics, gravitation, the doctrine of integrals, 
 and chronology. Of what use then are academies? To 
 keep alive the flame which great geniuses have kindled." 
 
 And nothing less untrue has ever been said in favour of 
 State endowments. Yet how utterly untrue it is, none knew 
 better than him who wrote it. Did the State endowment of 
 Christianity keep alive the flame of Christ's teaching? 
 VOLTAIRE is never tired of telling us that it did not do so. 
 It buried that teaching under a huge black mass of falsehood 
 and corruption, and put over Europe a devilish despotism 
 which lasted more than a thousand years. And the same 
 effect will again follow from the same cause. Power and 
 privilege will as easily corrupt science as they corrupted 
 religion. Human nature is as weak to-day as it was a 
 thousand years ago. Under a scientific priesthood, instead 
 of the mind alone being the plaything of official tyranny ; 
 both body and mind would become as clay in the hands of 
 the scientific inquisitor, who would torture at his pleasure, 
 not only tame and wild animals, but infants, children, and 
 even men and women : in fact, the 'infirm, the sick, the 
 vicious, and all the friendless, would fall into this devil's 
 clutches, and there would be no one to say a word for liberty, 
 
The Natmal Right to Freedom. 197 
 
 or to st\nd up in defence of personal rights. A religious 
 despotism is bad enough, but a scientific despotism would 
 be ten thousand times worse. "Hands off" is the right 
 word for these power-seeking knaves. 
 
 We have already had a sample of something very much 
 like the endowment of science, namely, the endowment of 
 philosophy. In the time of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus 
 the revenues of the Roman State were used to pamper a 
 crew of canting imitators of the Stoic philosophers. Just as 
 the fat, sleek, slimy, crawling, parsons of to-day pretend to 
 follow Christ, so these Roman pets pretended to follow 
 Zeno and Cleanthes and Seneca and Epictetus. The 
 parallel is complete. These sham Stoics were " the pillars 
 of the State," just as our own sham Christians are the props 
 of our State : the former did not save the Roman Empire 
 from going to the dogs, although the well intentioned but 
 deceived Marcus hoped that they would do so ; and neither 
 is the latter likely to perform a similar service for our State. 
 RENAN says that the only genuine thing about these 
 endowed philosophers was the cloak they wore. Apply this 
 to our chartered representatives of Christ. These philoso- 
 phers retailed everything but produced nothing : they com- 
 mented upon and disputed about what the real Stoics had 
 said; but not a shadow of their own originality did they 
 ever put forth. The wrong of compulsion took all soul out 
 of them. For why forage and prog in the rough and 
 difficult fields of new truth, when you can stay at home and 
 safely depend on a snug income from kind papa every- 
 body's purse ? These sham .Stoics, like our sham Christians, 
 went in for their material interest. They canted without 
 limit, and lived liked respectable citizens on what they 
 managed to get without the consent of those who paid. 
 They were legalized receivers of stolen goods, and the wrong 
 of which they constituted one of the forms, could not and 
 
198 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 did not live. And it won't live when science stands upon 
 it. What will happen will be this : All orginality will die, 
 and instead of having nen of genius like DARWIN and 
 SPENCER, we shall get a contemptible lot of creatures who 
 will do nothing but wrangle and commentate upon what the 
 real founders of science have said. All clearness and truth 
 will be buried beneath a colossal pile of meaningless jargon 
 and silly pedantry. The result will be that State science, 
 like State religion, will quietly settle down into well-fed 
 bodily torpor and imbecile intellectual stagnation. 
 
 Of course this does not necessarily imply that these State 
 pampered scientists would do absolutely nothing. But the 
 probability is that they would make no further mental 
 progress. As Professor HUXLEY himself admits, they would 
 be most likely to content themselves with always polishing 
 np the guns and never going into battle. Still, they might 
 do something for the material comfort of those who were 
 gently compelled to do everything for them, something for 
 the general good of society as a whole, or at least for " the 
 happiness of the greatest number." They might manage to 
 bake alive a few thousand cats and dogs every year, and 
 vivisect some hundreds of homeless pauper babies ; all for 
 the general good, you know, all the outcome of the purest 
 and noblest motives : and they might also find time to write 
 long and elaborate articles in the Review s> in order to prove 
 these gentler methods to be both practically beneficial and 
 morally right. Without doubt the nation that establishes a 
 scientific priesthood in its midst, will never escape its well 
 merited reward. 
 
 What the doctrine of liberty says on this question is short 
 if not sweet. If science cannot swim in the open competi- 
 tive world, if its own intrinsic advantages are not sufficient 
 to persuade the general public to support it in a fair and 
 voluntary way, if, in a word, it cannot attract the earnings of 
 
The Natutal Right to Freedom. 199 
 
 the free citizen, then let it sink : there is something far better 
 than science ; namely, perfect economic freedom for every 
 individual, either to give or refuse to give to what is not 
 necessary to the defence of liberty and property to what is 
 not a part of the true and normal function of government. 
 
 As already pointed out, there is no need to urge that 
 force should never be used. What is wanted is some 
 guiding principle for approximately determining when it is 
 wise to use it. That principle the doctrine of liberty alone 
 supplies. To the question " When are the evils of com- 
 pulsion outbalanced by the evils that would exist if the com- 
 pulsion were absent ? " it replies " When force, or fraud 
 which is the equivalent of force, is used against those who 
 have not used it : this is the time to interfere ; for only at 
 this point is compulsion adapted to do its proper work, 
 namely, the repression of compulsion." Here we get a 
 principle which is entirely independent of numerical 
 majorities and mere political powers ; a principle which is 
 as good for one man against the tyranny of two men, as for 
 two men against the tyranny of one man ; as good for 
 30,000 men against 20,000, as for 20,000 against 30,000. 
 
 Probably no one has stated this central position of Individu- 
 alism better than Mr. H. A. TAI^E. Speaking of the legiti- 
 mate functions of the State in his Socialism as Govern- 
 ment^ an essay which appeared in the Contemporary 
 Review for October, 1884, that writer says : 
 
 " Let us try to define its limits. After the turmoil of 
 invasions and conquest, at the height of social disintegration, 
 amidst the combats daily occurring between private parties, 
 there arose in every European community & public force, 
 which force, lasting for centuries, still persists in our day. 
 How it was organized, through what early stages of violence 
 it has passed, through what accidents and struggles, and into 
 whose hands it is now entrusted, whether temporarily or for 
 
200 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 ever, whatever the laws of its transmission, whether by 
 inheritance or election, is of secondary importance ; the 
 main thing is its functions and their mode of operation. 
 Substantially, it is a mighty sword, drawn from its scabbard 
 and uplifted over the smaller blades around it, with which 
 private individuals once cut each other's throats. Menaced 
 by it, the smaller blades repose in their scabbards ; they 
 have become inert, useless and, finally, rusty; with few 
 exceptions/ everybody has now lost both the habit and the 
 desire to use them ; thenceforth, in this pacified society, the 
 public sword is so formidable that all private resistance 
 vanishes the moment it flashes. This sword is forged out 
 of two interests ; its efficacy was first needed against similar 
 blades brandished by other communities on the frontier; 
 and next, against the smaller blades which bad passions are 
 always sharpening in the interior. People demanded pro- 
 tection against enemies without and ruffians and murderers 
 within, and, slowly and painfully, after much groping and 
 many retemperings, the hereditary union of persistent 
 energies has fashioned the sole arm which is capable of pro- 
 tecting lives and property with any degree of success. So 
 long as it does no more I am indebted to the State which 
 holds the hilt ; it gives me a security which, without it, I 
 could not enjoy; in exchange for this security I owe it, for 
 my quota, the means for keeping this weapon in good con- 
 dition ; any service rendered is worth its cost. Accordingly 
 there is between the State and myself, if not an express con- 
 tract, at least a tacit understanding, analogous to that which 
 binds a child to its parent, a believer to his church, and on 
 both sides this mutual understanding is clear and precise. 
 The State engages to look after my security within and 
 without; I engage to furnish the means for its doing so, 
 which means consist of my respect and gratitude, my zeal 
 as a citizen, my services as a conscript, my contributions as 
 
7 he Natural Right to Freedom. 201 
 
 a taxpayer ; in short, whatever is necessary for the mainten- 
 ance of an army, a navy, a diplomatic organization, civil and 
 criminal courts, a militia and police, central and local 
 administrations ; in brief, a harmonious set of organs, of 
 which my obedience and loyalty constitute the aliment and 
 the blood. This loyalty and obedience, whatever I am, 
 whether rich or poor, Catholic, Protestant, Jew or Free- 
 thinker, royalist or republican, individualist or socialist, I 
 owe in honour and in conscience, for I have received their 
 equivalent. I am very glad that I am not vanquished, 
 assassinated, or robbed. I pay back to the State exactly 
 what it expends in machinery and oversight for keeping 
 down brutal cupidity, greedy appetites, deadly fanaticisms, 
 the entire howling pack of passions and desires of which, 
 sooner or later, I might hecome the prey, were it not con- 
 stantly to extend over me its vigilant protection. When it 
 asks repayment of its outlay, it is not my property which it 
 takes away, but its own property which it resumes, and 
 in this light it may legitimately force me to pay. On con- 
 dition, however, that the State does not exact more than 
 my liabilities and this it does when it oversteps its original 
 engagement ; when it undertakes some extra material or 
 moral work that I do not ask for ; when it constitutes itself 
 sectarian, moralist, philanthropist, or pedagogue ; when it 
 strives to propagate within its borders, or outside of them, 
 any religious or philosophic dogma, or any special political 
 or social system ; for then it adds a new article to the 
 primitive pact, for which article there is not the same 
 unanimous and assured assent that existed when the pact 
 was first completed. We are all willing to be secured 
 against violence and fraud ; outside of this, and on almost 
 every other point, there are divergent wills. I have my own 
 religion, my own opinions, my habits, my customs, my 
 peculiar views of life and way of regarding the universe. 
 
202 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 Now, this is just what constitutes my personality, what 
 honour and conscience forbid me to alienate, that which the 
 State has promised me to hold harmless. Consequently 
 when, through its additional article, it attempts to regulate 
 these in a certain way, if that way is not my way, it fails to 
 fulfil its primordial engagement and, instead of protecting 
 me, it oppresses me. Even if it should have the support of 
 a majority, even if all voters, less one, should agree in 
 entrusting it with this supererogatory function, were there 
 only one dissentient, this one would be wronged, and in two 
 ways. In the first place, and in all cases, the State, to fulfil 
 its new task, exacts from him an extra amount of subsidy 
 and service; for every supplementary work brings along 
 with it supplementary expenses; the budget is over- 
 burdened when the State takes upon itself the procuring 
 of work for labourers or employment for artists, the 
 maintenance of any particular industrial or commercial 
 enterprise, the giving of alms, and the furnishing of 
 education. To an expenditure of money add an expend- 
 iture of lives, should it enter upon a war of generosity or of 
 propagandism. Now, to all these expenditures that it does 
 not approve of, the minority contributes as well as the 
 majority which does approve of them ; all the worse for the 
 conscript and the tax-payer if they belong to the dissatisfied 
 group ; whether they like it or not the collector puts his hand 
 in the tax-payer's pocket, and the sergeant lays his hand on 
 the conscript's collar. In the second place, and in numerous 
 cases, not only does the State take unjustly over and beyond 
 my liability, but, again, it uses unjustly the money it extorts 
 from me in the application of this to new constraints. Such 
 is the case when it imposes on me its theology or philosophy, 
 when it prescribes for me or interdicts a cult, when it 
 assumes to regulate my ways and habits, to limit my labour 
 or expenditure, to direct the education of my children, to fix 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 203 
 
 the prices of my wares or the rate of my wages. For then, 
 in support of its commands or prohibitions, it enacts against 
 the refractory light or serious penalties, all the way from 
 forfeiture of political or civil rights, to fine, imprisonment, 
 exile and the guillotine. In other words, the crown I do not 
 owe it, and of which it robs me, pays for the persecution 
 which it inflicts upon me. I am reduced to paying out of 
 my own purse the wages of my inquisitors, my jailor and my 
 executioner. A more glaring oppression could not be 
 imagined ! Let us take heed of the encroachments of the 
 State, and not allow it to become anything more than a 
 watch-dog. Whilst the teeth and nails of other guests in the 
 household have been losing their sharpness, its fangs have 
 become formidable ; it is now colossal, and it alone still 
 keeps up the practice of fighting. Let us supply it with 
 nourishment against wolves ; but never let it touch the 
 peaceable folks around the table. Appetite grows by eating ; 
 it would soon become a wolf itself, and the most ravenous 
 wolf inside the fold. The important thing is to keep a chain 
 around its neck and confine it within its own pale." 
 
 That is the real fact of the matter. Socialism is a case of 
 the shepherd turning wolf. Force is war and the end of war 
 is peace. Liberty at least as compared with sheer 
 brute force is peace, and the end of legitimate force 
 is to keep this peace as far as possible intact. But a network 
 of Socialistic laws and taxes is a perpetual war; a war carried 
 on and established in the name of government ; a war raging 
 within that very fold wherein men only live in order that they 
 may be free from war. The end of this " principle " is not 
 the preservation, but the destruction of society. 
 
204 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 ANOTHER of Sir J. F. STEPHEN'S points shall now be 
 dealt with. On page 124 of his Liberty ', Equality, 
 Fraternity, he discusses the social expediency of having a 
 system of State Paternalism for the special protection of 
 female virtue. This, of course, goes directly in the teeth of. 
 Individualism. According to the liberty doctrine, the adult 
 woman should be no more protected than the adult man. 
 Both male and female should be equally insured against 
 aggression, and both left equally free to do whatever does 
 not involve aggression upon others. Moreover, both should 
 stand on an equal footing with regard to frauds, breakings of 
 contracts, and compensations in proportion to losses 
 sustained. In short, there should be perfect equality 
 between the sexes before the law, and precisely the same 
 justice should as far as possible be dealt out to both. This 
 is the all-round application of the equal-liberty maxim. 
 Evidently Sir J. F. STEPHEN does not agree with it. He 
 puts the following case for the purpose of proving that it will 
 not do when woman are concerned -"A number of persons 
 form themselves into an association for the purpose of 
 countenancing each other in the practice of seducing women, 
 and giving the widest possible extension to the theory that 
 adultery is a good thing. They carry out their objects by 
 organizing a system for the publication and circulation of 
 lascivious novels and pamphlets calculated to inflame the 
 passions of the young and inexperienced. The law of 
 England would treat this as a crime. It would call such 
 
'Ihc Natural Right to Freedom. 205 
 
 hooks obscene libels, and a combination for such a purpose 
 a conspiracy. (L. E. F., page 124). 
 
 Now it is quite clear that the only point here at issue is 
 purely one of persuasion and in no sense one of force. The 
 most virtuous woman must succumb to superior force, but 
 only the naturally vicious woman need succumb to persuasion, 
 or, as Sir J. F. STEPHEN prefers to call it, " seduction." 
 There is no dispute as to whether women should be protected 
 against brute force. In this respect they stand on exactly 
 the same footing as men. The question is : Should they 
 also be shielded against persuasion ? Should they be 
 shielded against that which they are free to follow or avoid, 
 just as their own inclination dictates ? Should they be 
 treated as pampered hot-house plants? or should they be 
 treated as free, self-reliant, and intelligent human beings? 
 Is it well to let them grow in the open air of freedom? or is 
 it better to dwarf and stunt them in the close atmosphere of 
 State Paternalism ? In a word, should we aim so that they 
 may one day become women, obeying their own clear 
 perceptions of truth and right from love of truth and right, 
 and not from fear ; or should we endeavour to keep them 
 the vain, helpless, empty-headed creatures that they now so 
 frequently are ? The present condition of women is one of 
 the most discouraging sights that this world presents. 
 Prevented by the paternalisms of the past from developing 
 in their own way, from freely following the line of their 
 natural inclinations, they have taken to childish and 
 unnatural vanities ; thus cursing man with an amount of 
 folly and expense that nothing can fully compensate for. 
 
 Looked at from the point of view of expediency, the 
 forcible prevention of " seduction " is decidedly bad. It 
 makes a corrupt human nature more corrupt still. When 
 men are not allowed to persuade, they will compel. This is 
 precisely what they already do. You drive prostitution off 
 
206 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 the streets, and as a result virtuous women are outraged in cabs 
 and railway carriages. Magnificent exchange ! The innocent 
 suffer because the guilty are "protected." The river of vice 
 is diverted from its natural course, and as a consequence it 
 flows just where it is least expected. My dear sir, you don't 
 understand human nature. Let it alone so long as it keeps 
 its hands off. It will then find its own most congenial 
 channels, and will thus punish itself with its own 
 vices. Instead of forcing itself upon the unseducable, 
 it will find the course easier to content itself with the 
 seducable ; undoubtedly an evil, but a lesser evil 
 of the two. Don't attempt to be its conscience, for 
 you won't succeed. Strike down its hands, but don't 
 seek to close its mouth or tie up its pen. If you do, you 
 will sooner or later deeply regret your action. You will find 
 that you cannot both defend liberty and dictate morals. 
 You cannot serve two masters; namely, freedom and 
 paternalism. In the long run one must be sacrificed to the 
 other ; and the more you go in for one, the less you will be 
 able to go in for the other. Defend the right at all costs, 
 for this is just ; but leave the res'- to conscience, and trust 
 and fear not. 
 
 VThis question of freedom is the real question, and the 
 present English law, of which Sir J. F. STEPHEN evidently 
 approves, simply plays with it ; neither firmly dealing with 
 it, nor yet letting it alone. The Orientals lay hold of the 
 matter more boldly, and produce at least an external if not 
 a real conformity. Would Sir J. F. STEPHEN and those 
 who think with him like to see the virtue of women as well 
 protected in England as it is in Turkey for example ? 
 Would they like English virtue to be as genuine as Turkish 
 virtue? This is all that the logical carrying out of pro- 
 tection will give them. 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 207 
 
 Women should be protected against the seductive 
 persuasions of unprincipled men, or, what amounts to the 
 same thing, against the moral contagion of unprincipled 
 books. Good. To be logical, therefore, or at least to be 
 effectual, every man should be compelled to wear horse 
 bluffs over his eyes, and walk about with a gag between his 
 teeth. For books and pamphlets are mere flea bites, as 
 compared with the play of eyes and the power of words. 
 Indeed in point of fact, the force of the latter grows with the 
 growth of law. In the old Arabian towns, for example, the 
 attempt was made to preserve female virtue by force of law. 
 What was the result ? The men and women conspired to 
 defeat the law, and they did defeat it. There was far more 
 vice than there would have been if no law had ever existed. 
 Eyes and words undid everything. Clearly, then, there 
 should be a law for dealing with them, should there not, O 
 most solemn and wise understanders of human nature ? 
 Some cynic might suggest that even more drastic measures 
 should be taken for protecting female virtue ; beginning, 
 say, with the circuit judges and so proceeding down the 
 social scale. This gentle treatment was partly adopted in 
 the East, but, for greater security still, the Orientals also 
 took another course, and either muffled up or locked up 
 their precious embodiments of female chastity. They were 
 logical, but we are not. This " protection " resulted in 
 their not being able to trust themselves to look on women, 
 and in women not being fit to be trusted to be looked upon. 
 Glorious result of paternalism in matters sexual ! A women 
 need only lift her veil before a man, in order to cause the 
 latter to fall head over ears in love with her. Healthy state 
 of things, was it not ? A noble zeal to try and bring it 
 about in this country by Act of Parliament ! 
 
 What a pity we cannot so arrange matters that no pocr 
 creature should ever again be subject to the seductive 
 
 N 
 
208 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 temptations of this wicked wicked world. Why, for 
 example, is there no law to deal with such an evil case as 
 the following : 
 
 " A set of young noblemen of great fortune and hereditary 
 influence, the representatives of ancient names, the natural 
 leaders of the society of large districts, pass their whole time 
 and employ all their means in gross debauchery. Such 
 people are far more injurious to society than common pick- 
 pockets, but Mr. MILL says that if any one having the 
 opportunity of making them ashamed of themselves uses it 
 in order to coerce them into decency, he sins against liberty, 
 unless their example does assignable harm to specific people. 
 It might be right to say, ' You the Duke of A. by extrava- 
 gantly keeping four mistresses, set an example which 
 induced your friend F. to elope with Mrs. G. and you are a 
 great blackguard for your pains, and all the more because 
 you are a duke.' It could never be right to say, ' You, the 
 Duke of A. are scandalously immoral and ought to be made 
 to smart for it, though the law cannot touch you.' " 
 Liberty, Equality \ Fraternity ', page 131. 
 
 Think of the moral strength of friend F. and Mrs. G. A 
 worthy pair for us all to be taxed for ! Well deserving of 
 State officials to look after their morals and keep them 
 straight ! How delighted we ought to be to have the 
 honour of paying taxes in order that the very wisely-selecting 
 husband of Mrs. G. may have a morally weak woman per- 
 petually tied round his neck as a sort of nether millstone. 
 Freedom, you see, discovers truth, therefore down with it. 
 What a sad pity that enough liberty should exist to enable 
 the unfortunate Mr. G. to see that he had married a creature 
 who felt she must go wrong because somebody else had gone 
 wrong (query : would she cut off her own finger if somebody 
 else performed such an act ?) Those who have wives that 
 don't need protecting ought to be pleased to pay for the 
 
7he Natural Right to Freedom. 209 
 
 protection of those who are not so fortunate. And as for 
 those who have no wives at all well, they ought to be 
 doubly pleased. So that paternalism, you see, is a clear 
 gain all round ; and not least so for the judges, whose 
 honourable duty it is to sit upon all the wicked husbands, 
 wives, mistresses, &c., &c., that a wicked world contains. 
 
 But putting ridicule aside, and coming to the facts; it may 
 be shown that even on grounds of mere expediency, all this 
 paternal protection against persuasion, or, as Sir J. F. STEPHEN 
 prefers to call it, " seduction," is worse than useless. Of 
 course, as already pointed out, when the persuasion descends 
 into compulsion, the liberty maxim applies. You have a 
 moral right to defend yourself, and you have a right to pay a 
 government to defend you. The validity of personal self- 
 defence is the only warrant for that collective defence of 
 persons which is the normal function of government. But 
 seduction is quite another matter ; altogether up another 
 street, as the " vulgar " prefer to put it. You have a right 
 (if you can) to persuade a woman, just as she has a right to 
 persuade you ; but you have no right to compel her. Leave 
 that for the judge or the policeman ; they do it nobly and 
 well. Her person is her own. It does not even belong to 
 the infallible State, or even to its very virtuous judges; and, 
 morally speaking, she ought to be perfectly free to lend that 
 person just to whomsoever she pleases, when she pleases, and 
 how she pleases. As a simple matter of fact she always has so 
 disposed and always will so dispose of herself, in spite of all 
 the judges and all the State officials in the world; and nobody 
 but a born fool would ever think of trying to hinder her from 
 doing so. Tis a sad waste of valuable time and trouble, 
 and the only people who get anything out of it are the 
 officials of police and the paid administers of "justice." As 
 an example of what is here meant two facts shall be 
 mentioned. In England the law orders the police to abolish 
 
2io The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 all "immoral houses," and so well do these honourable 
 gentlemen perform their delicate work, that whenever a 
 a " swell " cannot find one of the above-mentioned houses, 
 all he has got to do is to "ask a policeman"; and, for a 
 small " tip," the latter will promptly direct him to the best 
 establishment in the neighbourhood, the most respectable 
 place that money can hire ! There is one interesting fact 
 for the lovers of legal bullying. Here is another. The 
 police, who are paid by the tax-payers to stop the immoral 
 conduct of immoral women, are also paid by the women 
 themselves to allow that immoral conduct to go on. Frail 
 humanity is set to look after frail humanity, and this is the 
 sublime result. It is not confined to any special class or 
 locality. It runs right through the entire social system. 
 The judge walks out of a Nottingham brothel into the court 
 of justice, and there cants like a parson about the fearful sin 
 of adultery. This is the substitute for laissez faire in sexual 
 matters : this the improvement on equal liberty for all ! 
 O long-suffering tax-payer, don't you feel proud to pay for it ! 
 See how well your private morals are being looked after ! 
 A more absurd farce was never played than this disgustingly 
 hypocritical attempt to keep men and women moral by Act 
 of Parliament. Such hothouse pampered virtue would not 
 be worth preserving, even did it exist ; but it does not exist 
 and it never will exist, for it is an absolute moral impossibility. 
 The truth is, all these preposterous laws have been built up 
 around women by man ; and in order to keep her weak and 
 helpless, a mere plaything in his hands, a slave that he may 
 own and dispose of just as he pleases. If compulsion could 
 produce virtue, women ought to have reached perfection 
 long since. But what has she reached ? A mixture of 
 vanity, falsehood, and conventionality, the furthest remove 
 from virtue that it is possible for an intelligent being to 
 make. Noble high-souled outcome of State Paternalism. 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 211 
 
 Well might the legendary lady of the glass box say to the 
 two eastern princes " Men had better put no restraint upon 
 women, and it would be the means of preserving them 
 chaste." 
 
 The morality of woman, like that of man, no more depends 
 upon legislation than it depends upon the will of a being 
 who dwells up in the dog star. Virtue comes from within, 
 not from without ; it is born rather than made, and to it there 
 is no royal road. A woman's virtue rests entirely and 
 exclusively upon her clear appreciation of her own personal 
 self-interest. Whatsoever is less than this, is not virtue, but 
 only untried weakness, and likely to fall just when it ought 
 to stand. Rational self-knowledge, and that alone, is power. 
 Talk of a woman being " seduced " out of her virtue. Why, 
 it is the most absurd nonsense that can be uttered. She 
 cannot be robbed of what she has not got. And if she has 
 no clear knowledge of herself, if she does not understand and 
 live to serve her own self-interest ; if, in a word, she does not 
 know how to love herself, she has no virtue; for virtue is self- 
 love and self-love is virtue. Those who preach the opposite 
 doctrine want to get something out of her. Intelligent self- 
 love only hurts the envious, the covetous, the greedy, mean, 
 and contemptible socializers of this world. Outside intelli- 
 gent self love there is and there can be no basis for morality. 
 With rational self-love goes obedience to the laws of Nature ; 
 comes in slavery to the wants of man ; goes self-guidance 
 and self-reliance ; goes all that is morally worth having. 
 And in their place what is obtained ? The grins and nods 
 and toys of men who whisper to one another what a poor 
 simple fool you are, who tell all your ways and merits to each 
 other, and who will at last, when your beauty has gone, leave 
 you like a second Nana to die alone, without even the 
 consolation of the virtuous outcast that at least you have 
 loved yourself, and that in so doing you have known the 
 
212 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 infinite love wherewith the eternal loves those who so love 
 themselves that they live only to know and obey its laws. 
 If there is one mnxim, which, being acted upon, would do 
 more than all the laws that the wisest men can frame, to 
 raise woman to her right relation to man, and make her 
 really and truly free ; it is this : Love yourself, serve the laws 
 of own maternal nature, your true nature, and treat man 
 only as a means to that service ; for this noble self-love is 
 the unshakeable rock of your strength, and so long as you 
 stand on this, neither smooth-tongued flatterers nor whining 
 sentimentalists can ever prevail against you. Look on man 
 only as a condition of your duty to your own nature, and let 
 your relation to him be a mutual exchange of duties between 
 equally free and equally self-reliant beings. Obey that inner 
 reason, which is grander and nobler than any amount of gush- 
 ing sentiment, and without which there can be no freedom 
 from your present weakness and worse than childish instability. 
 It is only envy and lust for power that say " Love others ; 
 serve society; live for humanity," and all that twaddle. As 
 if this emotional slavery had not already been disastrous 
 enough. Your self-love cannot hurt the self-contained, or 
 those who live in harmony with the universal order. It only 
 rebukes the passion-driven slave who, despising the clear 
 voice of reason, covets what does not exist for him, bit 
 exists solely for the carrying out of those laws of Nature, for 
 the performance of those maternal functions which society 
 did not make, and which it can never unmake. 
 
 Intelligent self-interest, then, and not legal paternalism, 
 is the only real salvation for women. And what is the true 
 self-interest of a women ? It is exactly the same as that of 
 a man, precisely the same- as that of every living creature in 
 the universe. She is adapted to live in a certain way, that 
 is to say, to perform certain functions ; and in living in this 
 way, and in performing these functions she, just like every 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 213 
 
 other living creature, achieves her own self-interest, and is 
 healthy and happy therein. What are these functions ? 
 The mere structure of her outward form proclaims them 
 with stentorian voice. No need to go to Girton College to 
 learn what they are. Plainly- and without any gloss ; they 
 are the conception, birth and training of children, in con- 
 formity to the laws of Nature, and by means of that domestic 
 and only natural organization ; the home : the family circle : 
 the highest and purest flower of the infinite. Well might a 
 modern American writer, in speaking of this normal and 
 self-forming organization, say that " the holiest altar beneath 
 the stars is a home that love has built, and the grandest 
 sight in all the wide universe is the fireside ; round which 
 gather father, mother, and children." This the Socialist 
 seeks to forcibly sweep away, professing to put in its place a 
 hollow sham called " brotherhood." No knowable fathers 
 and mothers ; no real brothers and sisters : only the herd : 
 yet " brotherhood ! " What an infernal lie ! It would not 
 work. The same duty-shirking spirit which led the units of 
 democracy to shove their personal responsibilities upon the 
 homeless crowd, would lead that same ignoble crowd to 
 shirk the burden of maintaining its orphaned children. 
 The human race would come to an end, and the beasts 
 would deservedly survive over a collection of wretches 
 infinitely lower than themselves. This is the social 
 democrat's ideal, " glowing (so we are informed) with the 
 hues of hope." Shall I tell you what a logical and con- 
 sistent Socialist is ? He is a man who tries to be worse 
 than an animal. He is a Christian who will not bear his 
 cross. He is a soldier who is too cowardly to do his duty. 
 He is a father who throws his children upon the com- 
 munity. He is a husband who disowns his wife and family 
 for a promiscuous crowd. In a word he is a moral retro 
 gressionist, a shuffler out of every personal duty, out of 
 
214 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 every personal responsibility. His ideal is the painted 
 misery of the streets. His dwelling place is a universal 
 orphanage full of parentless children, and childless parents ; 
 and his highest object in life is to drag humanity down to 
 something lower than the dogs. 
 
 The true function of woman is the training of her own 
 children, jointly with the father of those children : this is the 
 only system that accords with Nature ; for what can be more 
 natural than that the two people who have brought the 
 children into the world should also train them for the 
 world? And what can be more unnatural and confessing 
 than that many fathers and many mothers, and also many 
 who are not such, should join in the performance of a duty 
 which Nature has constituted in such a manner that it is 
 most peacefully and harmoniously carried out by two ? As 
 a simple matter of fact the commune is not and cannot be 
 the parent of children. Each child is the result of two 
 and only of two people. In his politics ARISTOTLE 
 tells how, in certain communities, where the practical 
 lie of communism was adopted, this fact could not 
 be hidden : particular children were seen to closely 
 resemble particular people. Nature works through 
 efficiency and need, and in this relationship two only are 
 efficient, two only are needed. So my dear communist, my 
 rather too chummy " comrade ! " you who envy every man 
 and every woman that is happier than yourself ; you are not 
 wanted because, don't you see? you are not needed; 
 Nature rules you out for ever. Go and burn in your own 
 envious hell ! or, if you prefer it, go and dream about 
 Mahomet's paradise: you will never make that a going con- 
 cern in this world of duty and responsibility ; no not even 
 with the help of such a poet as Mr. WILLIAM MORRIS, or 
 such a novelist as Mr. EDWARD BELLAMY. By the side of 
 your piggish philosophy of indiscriminate lust and equal 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. .21-5 
 
 promiscuity, may be placed the wiser thought of SPINOZA 
 " Meretricious love, that is, the lust of generation, arising 
 from bodily beauty ; and generally every sort of love, which 
 owns anything save freedom of soul (freedom from emotions 
 in so far as they are passions) as its cause, readily passes 
 into hate ; unless, indeed, what is worse, it is a species of 
 madness ; and then it promotes discord rather than 
 harmony. As concerning marriage, it is certain that this is 
 in harmony with reason, if the desire for physical union be 
 not engendered solely by bodily beauty, but also by the 
 desire to beget children and to train them up wisely ; and, 
 moreover, if the love of both, to wit, of the man and of the 
 women, is not caused by bodily beauty only, but also by 
 freedom of soul." 
 
 The natural functions of women, then, lie inside the 
 family (not inside the State barracks, my liberty-loving com- 
 pulsionist !) In proportion as she fails to perform these 
 functions she stulifies herself and passes unperfected through 
 this world of time. For, like all other living creatures, she is 
 a part of universal Nature, and can only become happy by 
 obeying its laws. True self-interest and true obedience to 
 Nature are one. A reality mightier than ourselves sways 
 and moulds our lives; hence as EMERSON says, we have 
 only a necessitated freedom : but necessitation by the best 
 is freedom from the worse ; and that best is willing obedi- 
 ence to natural law, is the peace of acquiescence in what 
 the mystic calls the will of God : a motive which destroys 
 unrest, arranges all things well, and brings good for ever out 
 of evil. In this way it is that women, through the rational 
 performance of her natural functions, achieves her own 
 highest self-interest, makes herself an efficient link in the 
 chain of things : joining together the hands of those who 
 span the bridge of time ; and thus proving her natural 
 virtue in so doing. In this way she satisfies the real needs 
 
216 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 of her nature, and comes into harmonious co-operation with 
 the universal order. And just so far as she clearly under- 
 stands all this, just so far as her knowledge of it is 
 undarkened by vanity and fear and passion, just so far is 
 she full of virtue ; since virtue is understanding and under- 
 standing is virtue. For her to understand her own nature, 
 and freely endeavour to follow out her own self interest in 
 conformity to the laws of the universe of which she forms a 
 part, is for her to reach the true blessedness of perfect 
 natural virtue. This is no external thing : it lies not in the 
 flattery and admiration of contemptible and unmanly men. 
 Not even her own husband can give it to her ; and she does 
 not exist for him ; but both exist for that highest of all 
 Nature's productions, viz., the family, the clearly marked and 
 perfectly distinct sanctuary of the home. Strange that the 
 Socialist should render needful the repetition of such simple 
 and fundamental truths in a country like England ! But he 
 evidently knows the degeneration of the people on whose 
 growing corruption he builds up his power. 
 
 Through this rational performance of her natural functions, 
 or through the endeavour to find the appropriate conditions 
 for performing them ; for in both cases the motive is the 
 same, and is a pure and healthy motive ; woman lives in the 
 serene and calm atmosphere of truth, at one with universal 
 nature, enthroned in the light of her own understanding, 
 above the sway of passion's storm, a thing enskied and 
 sainted, and as impervious to the persuasions and seductions, 
 either of bad men or bad books, as a rock of granite or a 
 block of ice. This alone is virtue. It is the strength of 
 eternal reality working within the individual soul. It is the 
 fusion of the finite with the infinite ; the grand, stately 
 nobility of Nature's uncorrupted purity, the iron granite of 
 her elect ; and while no amount of external tinkering can 
 produce it, nothing can destroy it when it once really exists. 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 217 
 
 It is not the product of to-day or of yesterday. It is no new 
 patent honour, bought with golden unction and grovelling, 
 time-serving servility. In it live and move the honesty and 
 truthfulness of countless generations, of all who lived by the 
 great religion of duty, eschewed luxury, did their work, and 
 now rest for ever in the silent home of death. 
 
 But what is needed in order that woman may attain to 
 this ? A lot of cramping laws " which seem to keep her up 
 but drag her down ? " a lot of babyish protection against 
 persuasion and seduction ? a legal thrashing of young sparks 
 to suit all who think with Sir J. F. STEPHEN ? Nonsense ! 
 nonsense ! But guarantee her complete individual freedom, 
 and then she will gradually learn to take care of herself. 
 Surely this is better than Paternalism ! Do you want to be 
 surrounded by women who cannot be trusted to look on 
 every truth, however fair or however dark ? cannot be trusted 
 to hear all things, and see all things in this many-sided 
 human life, and yet remain pure as light, stainless as a star ? 
 If you do, you are not a man ; you are not even a child : it 
 is difficult to say what you are. Get rid of all this silly, 
 cowardly namby-pambyism, and have a more robust faith in 
 liberty. The same condition that makes for manhood also 
 makes for womanhood. Where would you be but for liberty? 
 Surely you at least can be trusted with freedom ? But are 
 you the only trustworthy person in the world ? We think 
 not. Therefore beside your miserable whine over the Duke 
 of A, and his friend F, and Mrs. G, and the four shocking 
 mistresses, may be placed the wiser remedy of TENNYSON'S 
 Princess 
 
 "The woman's cause is man's : they rise or sink 
 Together, dwarf 'd or godlike, bond or free : 
 For she that out of Lethe scales with man 
 The shining steps of Nature, shares with man 
 His nights, his days, moves with him to one goal, 
 Stays all the fair young planet in her hands 
 
218 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 If she be small, slight-natured, miserable, 
 How shall men grow ? 
 
 Leave her space to burgeon out of all 
 Within her let her make herself her own 
 To g<ve or keep, to live ar.d learn and be 
 All that rot harms distinctive womanhood. 
 For \\oman is not undevelopt man, 
 But diverse : could we make her as the man, 
 Sweet Love were slain : his dearest bond is this, 
 Not like to like, but like in difference. 
 Yet in the long years liker must they grow, 
 The man be more of woman, she of man ; 
 He gain in sweetness and in moral height, 
 Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world ; 
 She mental breadth, nor fail in child ward caie, 
 Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind ; 
 Till at the last she set herself to man, 
 Like perfect music unto noble words ; 
 And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time, 
 Sit side by side, full-summ'd in all their powers, 
 Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be, 
 Self-reverent each and reverencing each, 
 Distinct in individualities, 
 
 But like each other ev'n as those who love. -. \[ 
 
 Then comes the statelier Eden back to men : 
 Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and calm : 
 Then springs the crowning race of human-kind. 
 May these things be ! " 
 
 Assuming, then, that self-love based upon an intelligent 
 knowledge of the laws and needs of her own nature, and also 
 upon a knowledge of her relation to universal nature, is the 
 only sound foundation of female virtue, we may now proceed 
 to apply this to the cases given by Sir J. F. STEPHEN. For 
 what, according to him, is the purport of all these unprin- 
 cipled persuasions and abominable books ? these most 
 shocking things which, as a respectable member of society, 
 he would very mucb like to see rigidly suppressed ? It may 
 be expressed in a single sentence They are designed to 
 induce women to sacrifice her much larger and deeper 
 maternal instincts, to her much smaller and weaker sexual 
 
The Natutal Right to Freedom. 219 
 
 instincts. Of course this description only refers to the 
 average woman ; not most assuredly to the unnatural and 
 exceptional creature who will never go straight, legislate and 
 protect her as you may. The latter would corrupt even the 
 chief judge himself. These books and seductions, then, are 
 intended to make women in general into lop-sided creatures, 
 unnatural monsters, slaves of tempestuous passions, 
 shirkers of natural duty, and mere fleshy excitements 
 for the gratification of man's lust. Such is Sir J. F. 
 STEPHEN'S proposition when fully expressed and generally 
 applied. And it is perfectly correct. The fact cannot 
 be disputed. To use a vulgar expression, "it is as 
 plain as a pike-staff." This is, or was, the evident aim of 
 such books as Mrs. ANNIE BESANT'S Laiv of Population. 
 I say " was " because I have recently heard that this last 
 book is now withdrawn from circulation, the lady having 
 lately changed her views on the subject. She may have 
 changed back again since then, though ; so earnestly does 
 she search for truth. This, however, is immaterial to the 
 argument. The same evil intention is equally manifest in 
 Dr. KNOWLTON'S Fruits of Philosophy, and in another work 
 of a similar description, viz., The Elements of Social Science, 
 a still more evil design is manifested. In this elaborate 
 work parents are strongly urged, on grounds of utility, to train 
 up their sons and daughters in an artificial and unnatural 
 system of self-stulification ; a growth of lust at the expense of 
 maternity ; of passion at the expense of reason; of sensuality 
 at the expense of understanding : in short a devilish and 
 infamous something called " Malthusianism," a very hell- 
 broth of filth and lust. These books are just about as bad 
 as they can possibly be ; for, unlike the mere sensationalism 
 of romance, which seeks to amuse without convincing ; they 
 seek to convince without amusing : thus aiming to under- 
 mine the very intellect itself, by dressing their falsehoods up 
 
22O The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 in scientific phraseology, and cunningly posing as the faithful 
 exponents of irrefrangable truth. ZOLA disgusts : these 
 books persuade. 
 
 Yet, bad as they are, what harm can they possibly do to 
 the naturally virtuous? Who are they likely to injure? Why, 
 just those thoughtless vanities who don't know how to love 
 themselves ; who live to " make others happy," as the cant- 
 ing Socialists put it ; who prefer the securing of external 
 approval, to the simple joy of following internally prescribed 
 duty ; and who never as much as try to understand their 
 own nature, and the real position they occupy in the natural 
 order of things. These staggering moths will always manage 
 to find some burning flame to singe themselves in, scheme, 
 and coddle, and contrive, and protect, and look after them 
 as you may. But no women who properly understands her 
 own interest ; the natural correlation of her sexual and 
 maternal instincts ; the tremendous power of the latter as 
 compared with the former, and the terrible way in which 
 they revenge themselves when tampered with ; will fail to 
 foresee the evil she is likely to bring to herself in seeking to 
 gratify the first while trying to frustrate the gratification of 
 the last. The virtuous woman understands the organic 
 harmony of all the parts of her nature, and the sin she com- 
 mits against herself in abnormally developing some of these 
 parts while abnormally stulifying others. She understands 
 that every organ of the human body is adapted to perform a 
 definite and intelligible function, in the performance of 
 which it fits in with the rest of the universe, and thus works 
 * harmoniously with the whole system of Nature. She under- 
 stands that the only natural and intelligible function of the 
 sex-relations, is the continuance of the human race ; in 
 short, is natural duty ; and that in proportion as these 
 relations are used for pleasure as an end apart from duty, 
 the laws of Nature are disregarded, the plain dictates of 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom 221 
 
 reason disobeyed, and all manner of evils and discords begin 
 to creep in. Of course this description does not apply to 
 the modern fine lady, whose one great aim in life is to cut 
 the flower of pleasure off the root of duty, and so enjoy the 
 former while escaping the latter. This unnatural monster, 
 the unhealthy fruit of a society sick unto death, may be seen 
 flouncing about in silks and satins, admiring and being 
 admired ; while somebody else, some coarse grained hired 
 servant, is employed to suckle, nurse, and train up her 
 children ; and solely in order that this worthless piece of 
 modern " respectability " may have all this world's pleasures 
 and none of its duties. This ignoble excrescence of a 
 rotting civilization in no new phenomena. Just the same 
 kind of artificial monster wallowed in the inordinate luxury 
 and rank social corruption of decaying Rome. From such 
 as she largely comes the ruin of States and the fall of 
 Empires. The brand of eternal shame lies on all such, and 
 they are not worth having patent protective laws passed, in 
 order to keep them in possession of a purity that they never 
 possessed. Let them work out their own destruction. 
 Theii's is a breed that can very well be spared. No judge 
 can improve them, and it is utterly useless for him to try. 
 It would not even be wise to prohibit their newly acquired 
 habit of thronging the law courts, in order to gorge them- 
 selves with all the garbage of modern divorce. With each 
 generation they will get worse, and no human power can 
 stop their downward course. 
 
 There is not a bit of use in passing stringent laws for pre- 
 venting these, and such as these, from listening to evil per- 
 suasions and reading bad books. They will listen, and if 
 nobody speaks they will do the work themselves : they will 
 read bad books ; or if they don't read them, they will write 
 them : which comes to pretty much the same thing. You 
 could not protect them if you would : and if you are wise 
 
2 2 2 The Natural Right to Ft eedom* 
 
 you would not if you could. They only tend to fill the 
 State with bad and unnatural types like themselves, and the 
 sooner their growing viciousness rots them out of existence 
 the better for the " commonweal." 
 
 Note the conclusion here arrived at. The natural woman 
 does not need looking after : the unnatural woman is not 
 worth looking after. Take which horn of the dilemma you 
 please : either is fatal to Paternalism : both make for 
 freedom. Those women who have natural virtue will never 
 be taken in either by bad men or by bad books ; while those 
 women who have not natural virtue are certain to fall : if 
 not in their own generation, then in the weaker generations 
 that they help to propogate. For the more they are pro- 
 tected, the more morally weak will they tend to get : conse- 
 quently, the longer their fall is delayed, the greater will it be 
 when it does come. If Nature does not get rid of them 
 individually she will get rid of them collectively. Nothing 
 that is artificial shall stand. What dare not be left perfectly 
 free to face every truth : yes, and every lie also, is doomed 
 sooner or later, to certain destruction. The morally weak, 
 because artificially protected community, is as sure to come 
 down with a crash in the day of trial, as cowardice is to flee 
 when danger threatens. You cannot ultimately save the 
 worthless, and under freedom the worthy can always save 
 themselves. 
 
 Of course you may partly keep temptation back for a 
 time ; but when you do so, that which you protect .either 
 rots away of itself, through sheer want of moral exercise ; or 
 else it goes to pieces on the very rock that you want it to 
 avoid. The untried strength at last ceases to be strength at 
 all. The soldier who is never permitted to risk himself even- 
 tually loses the power of meeting danger when it really comes. 
 What profit is theie in being paternally protected into moral 
 cowardice ? What a false and ignoble view of life ! Tempta- 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 223 
 
 tion is the wrestling ground of the soul ; the arena wherein 
 it fights itself into strength and courage : not, indeed, with- 
 out many a bruise and many a fall : but the struggle is 
 noble : it is the very plot of life's play ; .and without it the 
 world would be but one dull monotony of torpid conven- 
 tionality and vapid sentimentalism. Both morally, 
 physically, and intellectually, life is a struggle for existence ; 
 and those who fear to take up this struggle, or dread allow- 
 ing others to take it up, are so unutterably mean, so 
 cowardly, base, and contemptible, that all the languages of 
 men lack words sufficiently strong to describe and denounce 
 them as they deserve. 
 
 If law could prevent female vice, it would have done so in 
 Imperial Rome. Nowhere was it more needed, assuming, 
 that it was ever required anywhere. Yet, as a matter of dry 
 historical fact, it could do nothing, and did do nothing. 
 Corruption went on until the entire social fabric came to the 
 ground. Indeed the legal attempt to suppress vice only 
 resulted in the creation of more vice still. The judges 
 themselves committed the very vices they tried people for. 
 And, curiously enough, they committed these vices with the 
 guilty parties that they ought legally to have punished. 
 Immoral women bought themselves off by lending their 
 persons to these worthy judges. In touching pitch the 
 latter became defiled. " More sin " says SENECA " was 
 committed in absolving than in acting the crime. 
 He that was guilty of adultery, divided adulteries; 
 and he was not secure of his life until he had made 
 his judges like unto himself" (Epistle xcvii.) And 
 NIEBUHR tells how, although the most stringent regula- 
 tions were passed to restrain female vice, yet that vice grew to 
 such a pitch, that the best men eschewed marriage, took their 
 slaves for mistresses, and avoided the Roman ladies as a 
 pestilence. Such was the remarkable improvement- on 
 
224 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 letting things alone, such the practical outcome of the appli- 
 cation of Sir J. F. STEPHEN'S draconian theories. If there 
 is little to be said in favour of freedom, there is still less to 
 be said in favour of tyranny. 
 
 What must inevitably result from this artificial, and at best 
 only temporary, propping up of weakness, this special 
 exempting of women or men either, for the argument 
 applies all round from temptation, may in some degree be 
 shown by analogy. In a certain forest, let us say; some 
 few trees here and there are too weak to stand the rough 
 winds that are constantly blowing. Therefore branches are 
 taken from the strong trees in order to prop up the weak 
 ones. The result is that the latter grow for a time and 
 propagate. As time goes on, however, an ever greater and 
 greater proportion of weak trees appear. The consequence 
 is that more and more branches are taken from the strong 
 trees to be used for propping purposes. At last all the 
 strong trees have disappeared : the whole forest is propped 
 up ; and the propping business cannot be carried on any 
 longer. But now the props begin to rot, and there is nothing 
 strong wherewith to replace them. Then the storm comes, 
 and beats upon that forest, and great is the fall thereof. It 
 would have been cruel to have let the weak trees go to the 
 wall, through their own weakness. It was kinder to so 
 regulate matters that all eventually perished. 
 
 The best way to cure a sore in the body politic is to drive 
 it in. Get it out of sight, like bad drainage, as soon as you 
 possibly can. What matter so long as nobody sees it, and 
 things look snug and respectable on the outside ? The lie, 
 you know, is the only safe thing ; it works well, washes well, 
 and, above all things, is eminently politic and expedient. 
 Not one of your silly and unpractical rules about freedom 
 and self-ownership will go down like this does. No, no, 
 drive the social evil in, and keep on driving it in ; until at 
 
7 he Natural Right to Freedom. 225 
 
 last the entire social system is one mass of corruption. 
 Surely, my a priori friend, with your eternal talk about 
 truth and freedom ; you would never be* so cruel as to 
 destroy the livelihood of that honest, disinterested, and pains- 
 taking gentleman, the political quack, the great social 
 spouter ; the man who knows far better than the gods 
 themselves how all the business of this world should be 
 regulated. 
 
 The truth is thai no matter how much you paternally pro- 
 tect and regulate them, those women who don't understand 
 themselves, their natural duties, and the place they occupy 
 in the order of things ; those poor vain flabby creatures who 
 have no intelligent self-love, no moral back bone, and who 
 live to obey passion before reason ; they always have and 
 they always will suffer: no quack will ever succeed in 
 effectually shonjing them up, nor is it desirable that he 
 should succeed. They are "fair game" for the Roman 
 Judge, the Catholic Priest, the Ritualist Parson, and the 
 State Official.* Those who cannot look after themselves always 
 get looked after in one way or another by this or that kind and 
 disinterested protector. You see, the great object of our lives 
 should always be to aim at a state of things in which no 
 body looks after himself, and trusts to himself; but in which 
 everybody look after everybody else, and trusts everything to 
 " other people." Altruism, you know, is the thing : egoism 
 is false and unnatural. God is not within you, but outside 
 in the crowd of other "yous." It is wicked for you to love 
 best that of which you are alone sure ; namely, your own 
 existence : it is only right for you to love best that of which 
 
 The latter gentleman does not even need to be at the trouble of 
 seducing his victims. Only the other day an undiscoverable Russian 
 official outraged a girl in prison, and then hung her ; in order to make 
 people believe that she had killed herself. Now and again even the 
 outside public get a glimpse into the Socialist's glorious paradise of State 
 Officialism. 
 
226 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 you are not quite so sure, that which is purely a matter of 
 inference from^your own existence ; namely, the existence of 
 " other people": for you may be certain they love you: when 
 they say so they cannot lie. Thus, you see, the foundation 
 of egoism is less certain than the foundation of altruism. 
 The former is doomed to disappear before the latter. The 
 sentimentalist says so, and therefore there can be no mistake 
 about the fact. In the altruistic future, I shall live for you, 
 and you will live for me. We shall both "live for others." 
 O how sweet these dear words sound ! We shall do nothing 
 for the sake of ourselves : that would be too sinful. I shall 
 wash you and you will wash me. I shall feed you and you 
 will feed me. I shall digest for you and you will do the same 
 for me. We shall serve as mutual looking glasses to each other, 
 and we shall admire one another, and grin at one another 
 sociable-like, you know and sit on the sands of time, 
 lovingly combing each other down with crabs and cockle 
 shells. What a pity both of us will be dead long before the 
 sin of selfishness at last dies out of the human heart. Well, 
 we must be content to enjoy in anticipation what we are 
 helping to bring about "for others." "For others!" how 
 nice it sounds ! It is nobler to serve "others" than to serve 
 the truth and reason that the Eternal has planted in our souls. 
 
 To return, however, from this slight digression to the 
 question of propped-up morality. 
 
 Take Sir J. F. STEPHEN'S last quoted case. Probably it 
 would have been better for the noble lord and his four 
 mistresses, so very properly and righteously condemned by- 
 Sir J. F. STEPHEN, to have been clapped up in Holloway 
 Jail. They would at least have had a chance of becoming 
 moral then. For morality is not purity of heart, but mere 
 external conformity. Other advantages might also have 
 followed. The four mistresses might have found a new 
 master in the person of their virtuous jailor for, manifestly. 
 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom] 227 
 
 all people who take up the business of regulating and looking 
 after other people, are virtuous : there can surely be no 
 question about this well known fact. And the wealth of the 
 noble lord might have enabled him to purchase a new 
 mistress in the person of his jailor's wife or daughter : for 
 there are few things that money will not buy in this highly 
 moral and respectable world. The outside public would 
 thus have been effectually " protected " against a very very 
 shocking example. O most sad and shocking ! Moreover, 
 what is better still, both the inquisitors of vice and all other 
 perfect people, would have been saved from the trouble of 
 having to set these wicked miscreants a good example. 
 For, manifestly, the force of written law is stronger than the 
 force of unwritten example, copy-book headings to the 
 contrary notwithstanding. These vicious persons would 
 therefore have become virtuous ; since virtue is not that 
 moral strength which triumphs over temptation, but is rather 
 that moral weakness which needs protecting against tempta- 
 tion. At any rate there would have been more work for 
 those worthy gentlemen who live upon the paternal regulation 
 of grown up children : and that would have been a great 
 gain to the wealth, and, above all, to the "respectability" of 
 the general community. This is far nobler and more 
 desirable than liberty. Will liberty fill a belly? Will it 
 secure position and power and pelf for social busybodies ? 
 Will it provide work for State paternalists ? No. Away 
 with it then. It does not agree with us. 
 
228 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 WHAT a puerile superstition this State paternalism is. 
 No amount of State protection can save folly and 
 vanity from getting their true wages in the long run. The 
 universe is absolutely and immutably just ; its wheels grind 
 slow but nothing ever escapes them. Nature lias managed 
 for millions of ages to get along without all these virtue- 
 keepers and petifogging little god-almighties, and she will 
 manage to preserve human virtue after she has effectively 
 weeded every one of them out. The naturally virtuous 
 woman, like the naturally virtuous man,* needs none of 
 Sir J. F. STEPHEN'S hot-house pampering. Defend her 
 from physical force and she will laugh at ZOLA and Mrs. 
 BESANT. The former will inflame her passions just about as 
 much as a dirty little boy who plays with the mud in the 
 gutter. The latter she will merely pity as one of the many 
 sad pervitions of a decaying civilization. But, of course, the 
 naturally weak woman, who does not know how to love her- 
 self, whose virtue is only a childish vanity that delights in 
 pleasing other people ; the woman who cants about the self- 
 sacrifice of living for others, and takes the wishes of outsiders 
 as her sole standard of duty ; such a woman is bound to 
 come to grief. She is like a ship without ballast, and wreck 
 
 In a popular review somebody urges that it is a pity that young 
 men should be subjected to temptation of s'reet solicitation. Cannot 
 law protect them from it ? Protect who ? Not the morally strong. 
 Not the right type. No, but the morally weak ; that is to say, the 
 wrong type. As if temptation were not Nature's only means of select- 
 ing the sheep from the goats. 
 
7 he Natural Right to Freedom. 229 
 
 she will in some storm or other, patch and bodge her as you 
 may. How are you to protect such a creature as this from 
 temptation ? Is it possible to lock every man up, and then 
 to employ all the women as jailors? Most effectual arrange- 
 ment. And what would it all be for ? To have seduceable 
 women artificially preserved ? Are they worth artificially 
 preserving ? If they cannot swim in a free sea, let them sink. 
 Let them go on being subject to temptation. There is no 
 other way in which they can learn wisdom. But there is no 
 need to treat them as Sir J.. F. STEPHEN, and those who 
 think with him, would have them treated. There is no need 
 to behave towards them as the Socialist's great and perfect 
 god "society" so frequently does. There is no need to 
 follow the example of a " Christian " world's uncharitable- 
 ness, and push these women further and further into that 
 mire with which they are already partly soiled. A wise man 
 will carefully avoid these mean and unworthy methods, these 
 false and hollow extremes. He will leave Nature and the 
 natural consequences of sin to teach these women what is 
 right ; and, in the words of one who had sounded all the 
 heights and depths of human nature, who knew " how very 
 weak the very wi ;<: are, how very small the very great are," who 
 was able to look with calm intellectual charity on all the sinful 
 passions of this weary, self-torturing world; he will say to 
 these unmanly and contemptible hypocrites, these wolves in 
 sheep's clothing, these self-righteous people who flatter and 
 fawn and lie continually, and whose inner life is one mass of 
 filthy corruption ; he will say to these and to all such as 
 these " Let him that is without sin cast the first stone 
 at her." 
 
 Most of these inquisitive lookers-after their neighbour's 
 morals call themselves Christians, and pretend to be 
 " reforming " the world in the name of Christ. Now, 
 without going so far as to say who are followers of Christ ; 
 
230 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 it is easy to see who are not such followers. These people 
 are not. Is it likely that the prophet of Nazareth would 
 have employed police to kick and knock and hustle women 
 about in the public streets? would he have employed judges 
 to send them to jail simply for doing what they liked with 
 their own personal property ? Was that the way he reformed 
 the Magdalen? The truth is, Christ reformed by the 
 magnetism of virtue : his self-called followers first curse with 
 the deadly magnetism of their passions ; and then bully and 
 kick their victims, in order, if possible, to hide their own 
 shame. Christ made his light to shine before men ; and 
 men followed the light freely ; but in these so-called 
 Christians there is no light : nothing but darkness visible, 
 where peace and rest can never dwell. His name is on their 
 lips, but their hearts are far from him. Inwardly they hate 
 and fear him. These shams dare no more face the teacher 
 they profess to follow, than lovers of lies dare face lovers of 
 truth. If they knowingly met him in the flesh they would 
 slink away like night owls before sunrise : so longingly do 
 they look forward to the " coming of their dear Lord." Like 
 the Scribes and Pharisees of old, they would be too fearful 
 of hearing themselves described as the smiling, conventional, 
 sociable whited sepulchres, that, in their secret hearts, they 
 well know themselves to be. 
 
 It was a true saying of SPINOZA'S, that evil is not ov :rcon e 
 by force, but by love and high-mindedness. Tho e wLD 
 love virtue spread virtue, and it never did and ne< er can 
 spread ir. any other way. The kingdom of hell, no more 
 than the kingdom of heaven, is to be taken by violence 
 Love of virtue and personal example are the only effectual 
 police of this world. Virtue is contagious. It "catches on" 
 as the vulgar say. Those who p )ssess it are free, free in the 
 only true sense ; for they are no longer passion's slaves. 
 And being free themselves : having been made free by truth ; 
 

 The Natural Right to Freedom. 231 
 
 that is, by the clear knowledge of the laws of their own 
 nature and of universal nature, they envy not the freedom of 
 others ; so that no vile lust for power over others dwells 
 within them : for they know that the supreme power of this 
 world ; the very king of kings and god of gods ; is truth, is 
 the calm passionless recognition of the facts and laws of 
 things. They know that before this power the might of evil 
 cannot stand. Hence are they without fear ; for faith in the 
 moralizing power of truth casteth out all fear. Therefore 
 they are not shaken by the fullest and freest expression of 
 vice. They desire such freedom. They want to know where 
 vice is. They had rather it existed outside than inside a 
 prison. They know that it is only improved by the know- 
 ledge of truth, and that only a free creature can bear to hear 
 and receive truth. In a word, they recognize freedom as the 
 indispensible condition of virtue and truth ; despotism the 
 certain parent of falsehood and vice; and they work for 
 liberty only for the sake of the truth and virtue that they see 
 to rest upon it. 
 
 But the fussy respectable " Christians " of our day and 
 generation entirely ignore this simple fact. The founder of 
 their creed, however, did not ignore it. In him the love of 
 virtue was real : in them it is a mere pretence. Hence do 
 they seek to hide their own deficiencies by raising a hue and 
 cry over the deficiencies of others. They are so busy 
 screaming about the motes in their neighbour's eyes, that 
 they have no time to pluck the beams out of their own. 
 Instead of striving to free their own souls from all the envy, 
 hatred, malice, and uncharitableness that fill these souls even 
 to overflowing, they prefer to make themselves look virtuous 
 by wantonly kicking and bullying a lot of ignorant women : 
 or, if they don't do the work themselves, they employ some- 
 body else to do it, which, if anything, is the more contempt- 
 ible method of the two. 
 
232 The Natural Right to Fieedom. 
 
 These sham Christian coercionists, with their eternal 
 cant about respectability, and their perpetual whine over the 
 vices of others ; assuredly these people are no followers of 
 Christ. He was as opposite to them as light is to darkness. 
 Between him and his canting followers there is not one single 
 point in common. He never countenanced their lie of legal 
 force for curing moral evils ; used by them in preference to 
 the force of personal virtue and personal example. He 
 preferred the straight and difficult path to the crooked and 
 easy one. He never believed in their irrational and futile 
 attempt to bully the vicious and the morally weak into a 
 hollow pretence of conventional virtue. He was no canting 
 conventionalist. Living ever from within, he knew the 
 inwardness, the essential spontainity of all true virtue. 
 Individualistic with that eternal strength, of which every 
 form of Individualism is the living and fearless expression, 
 he clearly saw the supreme value of personal liberty, and, as 
 long as he could do so, enjoyed it for himself. He never 
 bowed to the crowd, but, following Nature's clear inner light, 
 walked a free individual being through this vile enslaving 
 world. The poet SHELLEY gives a tiue and individualist 
 description of him in the following words 
 
 A power from the unknown God, 
 
 A Promethean Conqueror came 
 
 Like a triumphal path he trod 
 
 The thorns of death and shame ; 
 
 A mortal Shape to him 
 
 Was like the vapour dim 
 
 Which the orient Planet animates with light. 
 
 He recognized that only the free act is the moral act. He 
 never invoked the aid of the State. No accursed lust for 
 external pomp and power ever stained his soul. He lived 
 neither to found spiritual nor temporal despotisms : these 
 wretched contrivances were the work of knaves who came 
 afterwards, The arms he fought with were not of flesh and 
 
7 he Natu)al Right to Freedom. 233 
 
 blood ; all his victories were won in the unseen, in the inner 
 kingdom of the soul, in its timeless realm of peaceful silence; 
 where abstract reason sits enthroned as light of lights and 
 lord of lords. Little cause was there for him to seek the aid 
 of physical force : he at least needed no help from the strong 
 arm of the law : for, having within himself the love of virtue, 
 he conquered evil with that love : he always argued and 
 persuaded ; never bullied nor compelled : those he won 
 yielded gladly, obeying the truth that they could not help 
 seeing ; and thus gaining for themselves an inner peace, that 
 the world can neither give nor take away. He loyally 
 respected the consent of his fellow-man, even as he wished 
 his own consent to be respected. He never authorized that 
 despotic, inquisitorial, and grasping organization of mental 
 and moral stagnation called a Church. He was no officiou 
 busybody. Yet the modern compulsionists have the 
 audacity to claim him as one of themselves, as an aider and 
 abettor of their worthless and unprincipled work. They go 
 about hawking the canting, meaningless phrase " Christian 
 Socialism." A more monstrous falsehood was never sought 
 to be foisted upon the memory of any man. Christ was no 
 shallow-brained politician, no believer in mere social lading 
 and teeming; no admirer of the coercionists cunning external 
 shuffling of dead mechanical puppets. He knew that man 
 does not live by bread alone, and he thought the free" life of 
 the soul, however short, far better than the enslaved life of 
 the body, however long. In this he was a thorough Stoic. 
 He appealed to the reason and not to the belly. He put 
 principle before comfort, and recognized virtue as something 
 far higher and nobler than any amount of material pleasure. 
 He was no narrow, soulless utilitarian, measuring morality by 
 its effect upon "the general happiness." He knew of a 
 worthier life than that of living " for others," namely, living 
 for truths which are greater than "others/' Therefore he 
 
234 The Natural Right to Freedom* 
 
 never once flattered the democracy of his day and generation. 
 Whatever else he might be, he was certainly no social 
 democrat. A social democrat could not consistently have 
 said what he did about the family " And they twain shall 
 be one flesh.'' There is a doctrine that will disagree with 
 the canting incarnation of envy, let him explain and modify 
 as much as he please. No, no, the whole life of Christ was 
 one continual assertion of individuality, one long and patient 
 struggle for freedom to speak, to teach, to act ; not in slavish 
 obedience to "other people," but in response to individual 
 reason and individual conscience. A more practical instance 
 of Individualism the world has never seen. If ever there 
 was a man who heartily repudiated all forms of convention- 
 alism and social dictation, that man was Christ. He was 
 the boldest inovator that ever lived. Looking on the 
 civilization of his own day and generation, he saw it to be a 
 lifeless and mechanical external show, a hollow conventional 
 lie ; rotten, weak, and as certain to break down as the 
 pretentious artificiality in which we of this nineteenth 
 century now vegetate. He saw the depth of degradation to 
 which the mechanical following of the mosaic official rule of 
 thumb had brought moral life ; and, in the face of the entire 
 State, he dared to maintain the sound doctrine that morality 
 is not obedience to external law, but to internal obligation, 
 to the inner light of reason and of conscience ; and that, 
 above all things else, it is the calm inner peace which such 
 obedience brings. With the Stoic he recognized that " the 
 kingdom of heaven is within " and that, though a man may 
 fulfil every letter of the conventional law, he may yet never- 
 theless be as far removed from true blessedness as the lowest 
 and blackest of criminals : further, indeed, from paradise than 
 the condemned thief hanging on the shameful cross. The 
 individualism of this teaching cannot be mistaken. In the 
 place of social, Christ planted, natural virtue. In the place 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 235 
 
 of utilitarian public expediency he put eternal and unchange- 
 able principles. He penetrated below the degrading slavery 
 of conventional mechanics and into the free realm of that 
 divine reason ; some ray of which exists in the soul of each : 
 that god-like nobilfty which eternally protests against all that is 
 mean and cowardly and base and unworthy of itself, and out 
 of which shall yet ;irise the perfect manhood of a free .and 
 fearless race. Speaking in the name of this nobility, whose 
 highest expression he was, Christ in effect said "Thou 
 shalt not merely act well : thou shalt be well : thou shalt be 
 noble With the nobility and purity of truth. Therefore above 
 all things be free and stainless within. Thou shalt not hate 
 any man ; for this can never under any circumstances be 
 right. That it is wrong is an eternal truth of reason. And 
 the same applies to every human passion. All are base, 
 ignoble, and unworthy of the light that dwells within. Thou 
 shall not envy, thou shalt not lie, thou shalt not lust : they 
 are eternally wrong in themselves, and no social advantages 
 can ever make them right. That they are wrong is as certain 
 as that the inner angles of a triangle are equal to two right 
 angles ; for in their very nature and essence they war against 
 the peace of a rational being, and they are only wrong 
 because they do this." Deeper than such profound analysis 
 philosophy cannot penetrate. Sounder basis of morals will 
 never be discovered. Agains*" this rock all utilitarian and 
 social-expediency falsehoods shall ever break in vain. For 
 allegiance to external rulers, for the slavery of living to please 
 other people, Christ substituted the effort to achieve personal 
 purity of heart. Seek ye first the kingdom of inner peace 
 and its righteousness. Moses said do this : Christ said be 
 this. For what profit is there in succeeding in pleasing 
 others by staining your own soul ? Holiness ; the purity of 
 self ; the only real self-interest ; the natural, innate, arid 
 organic selfishness of being true to individual reason and 
 
236 The Natural Right to Freedom* 
 
 individual conscience; the fearless resolve to please God 
 rather than man : this was the essence of what Christ taught. 
 And this is that true and eternal Individualism, which is the 
 indispensible condition of all real happiness, and without 
 which nothing great was ever achieved. If you have the 
 fixed inner peace of this, said in effect Christ, you possess 
 true blessedness. And he was absolutely and eternally 
 right. This truth nothing can ever shake. It is independent 
 of theological dogma. Down to the very end of time will it 
 go ; giving patience to the oppressed, and strength to those 
 who walk through the valley of the shadow of death. 
 
 And what resulted from teaching so purely unconven- 
 tional ? 
 
 Everybody, or nearly everybody, was offended. For the 
 world hates nothing so bitterly as truth. Knowing itself to 
 be a lie, it curses the light ; yet, like a devil, it believes in 
 the light and trembles. In the mirror that Christ held up 
 to it, it saw itself found out and condemned. In looking at 
 the natural man, the healthy expression of uncorrupted 
 nature, it became conscious of its own artificiality and false- 
 ness, its own inner rottenness and corruption. The 
 " Society " of Christ's day and generation could not bear to 
 hear the plain facts he told them about themselves. He 
 knew them, and they knew that he knew them. Never 
 before or since has the wickedness of the human heart been 
 so searchingly exposed. Envy and hatred rose up against 
 rebuke. Falsehood and hypocrisy revenged themselves. 
 Scribes and Pharisees, chief pr'ests and rulers, high and low, 
 wealth and democracy : all united against this objectionable 
 person : neither orders nor classes could stand such a radical 
 reformer ; one that dared to tell them to reform their own vile 
 hearts : even Barabbas the robber was less dangerous to the 
 " commonweal " ; for at least he had the consideration to 
 spare a race of canting liars the terrible sight of truth. 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 237 
 
 Therefore the individual perished ; hut the spirit of 
 individual freedom remained. Stronger and stronger is this 
 spirit destined to grow, and through it shall worthier 
 generations of the earth be blessed. 
 
 In spite, however, of these well known facts, the Christian 
 compulsionists still put forward the preposterous statement 
 that the founder of their creed was a Socialist like unto 
 themselves. It is a palpable falsehood. Whatever else 
 Christ might be, he was first and foremost an uncom- 
 promising Individualist, a believer in personal right, a 
 respecter of personal consent, and a worker for individual 
 liberty. This was the very essence of him. All the rest is 
 what a superstitious world has elaborately built up around 
 his memory. That world first sacrificed him on the smoking 
 altar of its never sleeping hate, and then, with characteristic 
 egotism, invented the transparent fiction that he had lived 
 and died solely for its benefit, and to save it from the sweep 
 of inexorable justice. This lie is only one more added to 
 the mighty pile. Christ no more died for the world than 
 Socrates had done before him. The world was never worth 
 either living or dying for. And as for saving it from going 
 to hell ; why, it is there already, and burning continually in 
 the seething caldron of its own passions ; its envy, hatred', 
 avarice, covetousness, and uncharitableness. No, no, Christ, 
 like Socrates, died for something far higher and nobler than 
 this low herd of "other poeple," namely, for truth's sake, for 
 conscience sake, and for right's sake ; for the eternal Law 
 within him. He lived and died for the dictates of abstract 
 reason. He dared to say and do what he thought to be 
 right. He served divinity before humanity. Therefore, above 
 all things he was an Individualist: and the noblest, truest, 
 and purest Individualist that ever passed through time. 
 He lived and died for principle, and when men are liker 
 unto him, there shall be no slavery known. 
 
238 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 IT is to the sl^am followers of Christ, that a great deal of 
 the cant about female vice, and nearly all the legal 
 coercion of women, is due. Sir J. F. STEPHEN'S plea for 
 suppressing obscene literature, and for punishing those who 
 seduce women, is only one of the many expressions of this 
 respectable but utterly false and conventional Christianity. 
 According to this superficial creed, the best cure for moral 
 evils is immoral force. Purity of heart, freedom from envy, 
 hatred, and lust, is to be fostered by knocking people about 
 or locking them up. One lot of people are to be made 
 better by having another lot of people set to spy upon them, 
 follow them about, and see that they behave themselves like 
 "respectable" citizens. This is the view taken by a group 
 of inquisitive busybodies who call themselves a Vigilance 
 Society. These people are so perfect in themselves that 
 there is no need for them to look after their own morals ; 
 hence they have lots of time and leisure in which to look 
 after the morals of other people. Fitting, is it not ? They 
 must be careful not to fall into the error of the pious priests 
 of old, who so well looked after their neighbours' morals that 
 at last they lost their own. 
 
 This spying and " protecting " system may be respectable: 
 it is certainly not scientific. These sham Puritans never 
 stop to ask themselves how Nature is to get rid of her 
 immoral types, if these types are so " protected " that the 
 conditions of illimination are artificially and arbitrarily 
 destroyed. For is it not as plain as sunlight that the 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 239 
 
 suggestions of bad books, and the persuasions of unprincipled 
 men, are the only effectual means by which morally weak 
 women are either weeded out, or corrected into better, or at 
 least less bad behaviour? For, if they adopt Mrs. BESANT'S 
 unnatural method for making easy the unlimited gratification 
 of lust, they tend to leave no posterity behind to continue 
 their vices. And the more they do adopt either this or any 
 other similarly intentioned practice, the more will they tend 
 to adopt it ; since, the check of risk being taken away, the 
 more will their sexual instincts grow by exercise at the 
 expense of their maternal instincts ; until at last, like an 
 unnatural modern Frenchwoman, they will live for little else 
 than to gratify lust and escape maternity. Under these 
 circumstances, and just in precisely the same way as the 
 frivolous creatures across the channel, they will surely and 
 effectually efface themselves. Nature will not keep such 
 corrupt types in her realm, and their illimination is as certain 
 as that twice two are four. For the universe is constituted 
 in such a manner that only natural duty can thrive in it. 
 Whatever diverges from the narrow path of natural duty 
 must and will go down the broad road to destruction. 
 Nothing can dodge the methods of eternal reality, not even 
 the tricks of a scientific Malthusian, not even the safeguards 
 of a modern "Free" Lover. Well may EMERSON say that all 
 things are moral. The processes of Nature are more effectual 
 than the laws of men. The wages of sin is death what can 
 beat that ! Leave vice alone, and it burns itself out in the 
 long run : artificially tinker and fiddle with it, and you spread 
 its subtle poison everywhere : you give it far too much 
 importance ; and you yourself will get corrupted with it at 
 last ; for are you not a mortal being, liable as the weakest to 
 fall headlong into the filth that you are so furiously stirring 
 up ? What a short-sighted and needless course you adopt. 
 The very things that Nature would gradually get rid of, you, 
 
240 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 by your patent fences and embankments, artificially preserve 
 and prolong ; and yet, in the long run, you still have to leave 
 to Nature, the slow illimination of that subtle and inner evil, 
 which is too vast, and too deep, and too cunning, and too 
 potent for any human authority to suppress. My very 
 religious and moral despot, you are not yet God Almighty, 
 and, what is more, you never will be. Look to your own 
 morals, or as sure as you are a living man, you will be bound 
 to lose them some fine day or other : that is, of course, if 
 you have any to lose a point by no means so certain as you 
 would have us believe. 
 
 To continue the argument about unprincipled books and 
 unprincipled persuasions. We have seen that Nature is well 
 able to clear out the vicious type of woman. Indeed, if she 
 had not always been clearing off this type, the human race 
 must long since have come to an end ; as, in fact, it will do 
 in proportion as the Malthusian's " lust made easy " comes 
 into fashion.*- To proceed, however, with the other 
 
 * Take France as an instance. French statesmen are coming to 
 think that even " the horrors of war" caused in consequence of the 
 pressure of population, are less dreadful than national extinction. And 
 there is no standing still. A nation must grow or diminish. Ultimately 
 it is the fertility of its people that makes it grow, pushes it forward, 
 wins its battles, spreads its empire, and plants its flag in every clime. 
 The Malthusian says "We will remedy this : we will cause men to love 
 one another like brothers: we will abolish war by checking the 
 pressure of population." Poor sentimental fool: he is abolishing his 
 own nation, and making room for seme other that will know better 
 than to follow h's self-effacing doctrine. This gentleman appeals to 
 the most ignoble sentiments. He talks like a whining Quaker 
 about the " horrors of war." He points for example at the pile 
 of dead heaped up- on the field of Waterloo. Wh it a pity all those fine 
 fellows were cut off in the prime of life ! What a pity echoes 
 sentimentalism ! They might have lived longer but for war, might 
 have died in their beds ; of drunkenness, of gluttony, and of a score of 
 other vices. But they died doing their duty ; they could not die in a 
 Letter way, and they might have died in a worse. Was it not a pity ? 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 241 
 
 alternative. Now if these books, or these persuasions, lead 
 women to gratify their passions without adopting the 
 Malthusian's patent checks, the natural result of such 
 gratification will teach them the meaning of duty in a far 
 healthier, truer, and more effectual manner than any amount 
 of artificial State protection could ever do. In either case 
 Nature is well capable of looking after the matter, and there 
 is no need, either for the infallible judge, or for the still more 
 infallible policeman. 
 
 Thus, Nature, or, if you prefer it, the course of things, 
 either effaces or corrects the immoral. We may be pretty 
 sure, that if this were not the case, the human race would 
 long ago have "bust up," as the Yankee bluntly puts it. 
 Humanity would never follow duty at all if it were not forced 
 to do so. There is no dodge that it has not resorted to for 
 evading the lan r of its being. But underneath all its glitter- 
 ing lies and cunning shifts works a mightier power than itself. 
 Its hand is forced in spite of all its apparently successful 
 cheating, and it will be forced, until at last the great lesson 
 is learnt, that duty is the only good, that virtue is its own 
 reward, and that, in their highest reach, the intellectual love 
 which prompts to duty, and the abstract reason on which 
 duty rests, are identical. Looking in the far future we may 
 see a race made up of men and women with whom duty is 
 everything ; who have become rational parts of Nature in 
 every thought and word and deed ; who move calm and 
 passionless to the fulfilment of each natural duty : pure in 
 heart ; tranquil in mind ; perfect in form ; fairer to look on 
 than the lilies of the field ; clothed with no artificial aids, 
 
 Had they lived ten thousand years they could not have done more than 
 their duty, and they ought not to have done less. What poor stuff 
 sentiment is. If a man does his part in her universal order, what 
 matter how soon Nature relieves him? All this cant about the 
 horrors of war rests upon a false and mean view of human life. 
 
242 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 but glowing with the beauty of continual health ; living and 
 dying as gods, because constantly filled with the peace of 
 a rational acquiescence in things ; one with the universal 
 harmony through life and death : -obeying the inner 
 dictates of supreme leason and dwelling always in its shadow- 
 less light. Such, at least, was the ideal of the old Stoics, 
 and even if it never be realized by the race, the individual 
 movement towards it is a present unqualified personal gain. 
 The gospel of natural duty is peace now and for all the 
 future ; but the gospel of artificial pleasure is misery and 
 death to the end of time. 
 
 If the women whom Sir J. F. STEPHEN is so very eager to 
 protect, only knew what State protection, as logically carried 
 out by the State Socialist, really means for them, possibly a 
 few of them would be not so ready to accept it ; corrupt and 
 unnatural as they are in their civilized state. For it means 
 the destruction of what little individual freedom they have 
 with such great difficulty been able to get ; the taking away 
 of and pauper training of their children by indifferent State 
 officials ; the official inspection of their persons, in order to 
 see if they are in a fit and proper condition to be ordered or 
 forbidden to breed paupers for the "State" to bring up; the 
 destruction of their home life and the reduction of them to 
 the level of mere cattle for the strongest and of course the 
 male political party of the moment to drive about and 
 supper up. We fully believe that some of them would welcome 
 this arrangement, or, in fact, any other patent contrivance 
 that would re eve them from the burden of their natural 
 duties, and give more scope to the play of their mischief- 
 making propensities and inordinate follies and vanities. 
 But we very much doubt whether they would be gainers in 
 the long run. If individual liberty is to the interest of man, 
 it is still more to the interest of woman. The great political 
 superst tion that might is right has always kept her down, 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 243 
 
 
 
 and as long as it exists it always will do so. There is no 
 principle in it, no manliness, no fair play, no honour, no 
 respect for personal right or for individual differences of taste, 
 feeling, and choice. It is the brute force of numbers ; it is 
 the insensate mob trampling on all the flowers of life, and 
 turning the whole world into a howling wilderness of home- 
 less brigands and unprincipled political pirates. In a word, 
 it is social democracy ; the very worst form of government 
 that the mind of man can conceive, because the government 
 which places the directing power in the hands of those least 
 fitted to direct well. Under this system woman would 
 become a mere political bribe, bought with the votes of 
 electors, and sold by scheming politicians to whichever 
 party happened for the moment to carry the most votes. 
 As "wife "and "mother "she would be voted hither and 
 thither by her unrecognizable children, and the unnatural 
 prostitute would possess the same political power as herself. 
 Under such conditions all her personal property and power 
 of individual choice must go. The majority of unnatural- 
 living people would dispose of the minority of natural-living 
 people. The many who loved personal irresponsibility, who 
 followed pleasure, and preferred throwing the results of their 
 actions upon the "State," that is upon " everybody," would 
 dispose of the few who tried to follow natural duty, and lived 
 to keep themselves pure and unspotted from this low and 
 corrupt world. There can be no doubt that the Socialists 
 are quite correct in saying that the home must be abolished. 
 It could not exist under their system. The State would 
 select and arrange everything. Men and women could not 
 be allowed individual choice, for, if so favoured, they would, 
 as now, consider only themselves, and "selfishly " leave the 
 dear brotherly majority out in the cold. This selfishness no 
 honest and logical Democracy could put up with. Personal 
 choice could not be allowed ; it is altogether too natural and 
 
244 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 individualistic. Woman, that is, individual woman, would 
 thus be forced to become a mere means for gratifying the 
 lust of the whole "State." The "State" would look after 
 her ; deprive (or kindly relieve) her of her children ; would 
 bring those children up, not to please her, but to please the 
 dear brotherly majority ; and the result, as ARISTOTLE so 
 clearly points-out in his Politics, would be that no father and 
 no mother would be able to say, except through a certain 
 undisguisable resemblance, which were their own children ; 
 no child which was its own mother or father : all would be 
 one filthy mass of State-regulated promiscuity; natural virtue 
 would have disappeared, and the world would have become 
 full of childless parents and orphaned children. Everybody, 
 having been relieved of parental responsibilities, would think 
 only of individual pleasures, and would leave his or her 
 personal duty to everybody else. The result at last would 
 be that what was not done by one would be done by none, 
 and the whole social system would eventually break into 
 pieces. 
 
 How well the politicians are likely to treat women, may- 
 be judged from the fact that already these politicians are 
 doing all they possibly can, by factory acts and other drastic 
 means, to shut women out of the labour market ; and, what 
 is still more mean and contemptible, these politicians are 
 trying to prevent women from exercising any political 
 power in their own defence; although, as rate and tax 
 payers, the latter are as much entitled to have votes as the 
 men are. Of course, as just pointed out, there is no divine 
 or moralizing power in votes. At best they simply mean 
 the many goats disposing of the few sheep. " Social 
 salvation by political majorities " is the silliest cry that 
 human folly ever raised. 
 
 But justice knows no distinction of sex and you cannot 
 in common fairness withhold from one tax-payer what you 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 245 
 
 have already given to another. This question of individual 
 liberty will not be settled by votes or by majorities ; make 
 no mistake about that. There is a mightier force in the 
 world than number ; namely, the power of those who love 
 principle and are prepared to stand by it let come what may 
 come. Freedom was not voted into existence and 
 eventually it won't be voted out of existence. The day will 
 come when those who believe in principle, will have their 
 eyes opened to what Democracy really means : when they will 
 see that it means the forcible destruction of that very fact which 
 all legitimate force-organizations exist to defend, namely, 
 the home, the only natural plant that grows within the 
 artificial desert of civilization. When this discovery is 
 made, when this issue is raised, a more substantial argu- 
 ment will be used than the politician's childish count of 
 envious block heads. Men and devils will stand face to 
 face, and those who would take the kingdom of free 
 individual choice by violence, will be hurled into everlasting 
 silence. 
 
 But this will not be yet. The family will not, at least on 
 a large scale, be openly attacked in our time, and what 
 comes after will be for others to deal with. Our business is 
 to say what we think, defend what we believe to be best, 
 and never care a straw whether we win or lose. The 
 latter rests not with us. Our preference for the monogamic 
 family r js the same as our preference for Nature. The 
 family is best because it is the most natural, and Nature 
 never takes up more elements or factors than are needed 
 for carrying on a given function. What goes beyond need 
 only hinders, confuses, and encumbers. Two many cooks 
 spoil the broth. If you have a complete upper and lower 
 jaw, you don't want " other people " to masticate your food 
 for you. You can afford to bid them clear out, or go to the 
 devil. If insatiable and covetous envy wants indiscriminate 
 
246 The Natural Right to Freedom 
 
 communism, let it pay for it : under freedom there will 
 always be characters to suit all tastes ; not even excluding 
 those modern imitators of the virtuous Athenian 
 Democracy our loving and accommodating " comrades."* 
 But nature abhors all this needless luxury, and for the con- 
 tinuance of the race, requires only a communism of two. 
 What oversteps this is not Nature, but that greedy socialistic 
 luxury which is a blind irrational abuse of Nature. The 
 true Adam and Eve are sufficient unto themselves under all 
 circumstances. Where they are nothing is lacking to the 
 carrying out of that calm, passionless life of simple duties, 
 which is perfect peace ; which beggars all the restless 
 artificial excitements and empty pleasures of a deceitful out- 
 side crowd : and if both are wise they will ignore canting 
 sentimentalists, and gently blow out the brains of all 
 communistic intruders. True natural love can only exist 
 between two people, and when more than two are present 
 its harmony is utterly broken up. and destroyed. All charm 
 goes when the " community " are thrust into the business. 
 The very essence of love is something greater and deeper 
 than a vague desire for the general, conventional, and 
 artificial herd : it is a desire for nature in the simplest, most 
 true, and least confusing form. It is a desire for oneness~with 
 one, and happy reliable separateness from all the disgusting 
 deceit of the many, whom it is as impossible to know as it is 
 unreasonable to trust. Love is the yearning of the human 
 soul for the simple life of Nature, for its long lost peaceful 
 Eden, which it strives and strives so often in vain to build 
 up in the midst of the great social waste called civilization. 
 The Socialist considers this to be selfish : his own mother 
 was selfish because she did not lend herself out to the whole 
 
 * The " beauties " of Athens were not young women but young 
 men. Even in this healthy business the comrades were not equal. 
 Some were in more general request than others. 
 
The Nairn al Right to Freedom 247 
 
 community, or to some members of it appointed by State 
 authority ; because she was mean enough to let envious and 
 covetous people stew in their own juice. Well, if this is 
 selfishness, the more there is of it the better. Of such is the 
 kingdom of Heaven. Nature may be selfish, but at any rate 
 her clear distinctions are better than envy and all the 
 miserable confusion that it means. She may not live to suit 
 " other people," but at least she lives to the plain truths, 
 simple needs, and clear personal duties of human life. The 
 family is all that is needed for continuing the race. It is a 
 perfectly natural, distinct, and definite organization, 
 thoroughly adapted to perform its needful function ; whereas 
 communism is a hopeless confusion of irrational pigs, a 
 crowding and crushing together of all the worst passions in 
 human nature. It does not even rise to the level of the 
 morality of the higher animals. It is a system under which 
 the human race would very soon come to an end. For 
 when everybody repudiated his or her personal responsibility, 
 when all natural duties were thrust upon that silly 
 abstraction called the "community," these duties would 
 never get properly fulfilled at all ; for if it is not right for the 
 parents to fulfil these duties, how can it be right for those 
 who are not the parents ? The result of this system would 
 be a wild scramble for pleasure, ending in a hellish 
 pandemonium of passion and death. That this should come 
 of itself would be bad enough, but that it should be forced 
 on by majority tyranny, would be infinitely worse. The true 
 attitude of Power is " Hands off." Let free personal 
 consent carry social development in the natural direction ; 
 in the direction of that yet more complete respect for 
 personal consent which is at once reason, harmony, and 
 peace. The doctrine of liberty teaches that, if let alone, 
 the family is a flower which grows and flourishes of itself. 
 All it requires is a sufficiently strong defensive organization 
 
248 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 to strike down those who would pluck it up by force, or 
 trample it out under the iron heel of officialism. In short 
 it needs just the same security from aggression as is needed 
 by the individuals of which it is composed : no more and no 
 less. And, in point of fact, the whole apparatus of defence, 
 both external and internal, exists entirely for guaranteeing 
 this most requisite security. Army, Navy, Police just serve 
 the purpose of keeping at bay those who would destroy both 
 that private property which is requisite for the home's exist- 
 ence, and that freedom of association which gives sufficient 
 scope for the individuals who care to undertake the respon- 
 sibility of carrying on such an institution. The bristling 
 spikes of these organized forces are the prickles that defend 
 the wild rose of Nature, and before the State Socialist has 
 succeeded in trampling that flower in the mud of Democracy, 
 he will be deservedly impaled upon those sharp and glittering 
 points. We may be pretty certain that Nature will prove 
 herself the stronger in the long run. Instinct may seem to 
 be circumvented for a time, but it reasserts itself at last. 
 The Socialist thinks that with the assistance of all the scum 
 of the country and this scum is not confined to any 
 particular class he will be able to gradually vote away the 
 only natural fact in human life. First he will educate the 
 children, then he will feed them, then clothe them, then look 
 after them altogether, from the first to the last day of this 
 mortal life. In this way he expects to effectually undermine 
 the home, by destroying the need for its existence. In this 
 manner he hopes to abolish Individualism and plunge the 
 country in a slavish state-regulated communism. And if 
 votes were the only forces in the world, he might succeed ; 
 but they are not, and sooner or later, something harder than 
 paper, will be passed through both him and his ballot box. 
 - Doubtless the moral protectionist will ask " What has all 
 this got to do with me? I am no Socialist. I want to 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 249 
 
 protect the home, not to abolish it." Then let it alone. 
 Afford it no more protection than you give to the individuals 
 that compose it, namely, the ordinary protection against 
 physical force and fiaudulent aggression. Either it can grow 
 under freedom or it cannot. If it can, there is no need to 
 coddle it up. If it cannot, the sooner it goes the better ; 
 for them it is not adapted to the highest state of healthy 
 human life. We feel as certain that, if let alone, it will grow 
 of itself as we do that promiscuity, under the same 
 conditions, will die out of itself. The home exists to 
 thoroughly perform a natural and needful function. 
 Promiscuity exists to half perform, and therefore to stulify, 
 a natural function : as carried on in obedience to Malthusian 
 rules, it is in sexual matters what the beastly epicureanism 
 of the degenerate Romans was in matters of eating and 
 drinking ; fo : the end of food is digestion ; but these last- 
 mentioned [ eople did not eat to digest : they stuffed to 
 repletion, an 1 then by thrusting a feather down the throat, 
 brought all jack again, and once more commenced the 
 stuffing process. Fair types were they of the modern 
 Malthusian pig. The home, so long as it carries on its 
 normal function, is the expression of a truth; but promiscuity 
 is the expression of a lie. The first frankly accepts and 
 honestly seeks to carry out a fundamental law of Nature : 
 the second merely trys to dodge this natural law; thus living 
 to pleasure and shirking duty. There can be little doubt as 
 to which will stand. The women who, following the advice 
 of the sublime PLATO, and of his imitator, the modern social 
 democrat, let themselves out to the lust of the general 
 community, tend to cut both themselves and their posterity 
 off the face of the earth. Yet we cannot prevent them if we 
 would ; we ought not if we could. They are the right people 
 to disappear ; and if they had not always ended by effacing 
 themselves there would be no human race to-day. The 
 
250 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 moral protectionist says "No, no, let them be artificially 
 preserved, put walls round their lives in order that they may 
 be shielded from temptation." My dear sir, temptation is 
 the best thing that can possibly happen to them; for it finds 
 them out, and it clears them out. Do you want the State 
 to be crammed with them ? so crowded that they will burst 
 all your artificial walls like strips of tissue paper, and swamp 
 in their onward rush what little virtue still remains in the 
 world ? Yours is Indeed a short sighted policy, fitter for the 
 nursery than the Senate. Give them plenty of rope, and 
 they will soon enough hang themselves. But by your 
 paternal regulation and inquisitive supervision, you introduce 
 the thin end of a wedge which the Socialist will drive in until 
 he has reduced all sex relations to one uniform and degrading 
 State slavery. 
 
 This reasoning will be more clearly understood when 
 applied to right down professional prostitution. Some 
 short-sighted people would, if they could, abolish the latter 
 by Act of Parliament. Fortunately there is no need to pro- 
 ceed to such extremity, even were it possible to do so, 
 which, indeed, it is not, as all who know anything of the 
 subject are well aware. When let alone these prostitutes 
 are always tending to abolish themselves, and if, like the 
 Shakers, they were not constantly recruited from outside ; 
 if, that is to say, they did not form, as it were, a sort of 
 human Niagara over which lapses from the true type are 
 constantly being hurled into racial destruction, their class 
 would speedily disappear from the face of the earth. They 
 exemplify that continual falling away of the bad from the 
 good which is indispensible to the health and continuance 
 of the latter. Women, in so far as they adopt prostitution, 
 do not leave any posterity. Nature, the just but pitiless, 
 has got her iron grip at the throats of all these poor 
 unnatural people, and she curses them with unfruitful 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 251 
 
 impotence in proportion as they become vicious. So that 
 in attempting to legally wall in the would-be vicious, and in 
 trying to make them artifically virtuous, you are striving to 
 keep going the bad type that Nature is doing all she can to 
 illiminate. You won't succeed. It would be the worst 
 thing that could happen to the human race if you did. 
 Observe how much better Nature acts ! Prostitutes as a 
 type constantly tend to clear themselves out. Therefore, 
 those who use them also tend to clear themselves out, as a 
 type, in proportion, of course, as they do use them. Conse- 
 quently, in so far as you succeed in keeping prostitutes, and 
 those who use them, from coming together, you artificially 
 preserve the wrong type in the field : instead of tending to 
 die out, both tend to marry and leave behind a morally 
 weak posterity. So that in the next generation you have a 
 larger crop of viciously-inclined people, and, the same 
 process going on generation after generation, a point must 
 eventually be reached when the viciously-inclined people 
 have become too numerous for the virtuously-inclined 
 people to be able to look after : then ; as happened in the 
 2nd Charles's days, and after the fussy puritans had played 
 out their little god-almighty game ; with a crash down comes 
 all your elaborate coercion system, and the last state of 
 your morally nursed society turns out to be worse than the 
 first. Don't you see that your draconian method takes 
 account only of one generation? It is too narrow. It 
 thinks only of making things look respectable just for the 
 present moment ; whereas it ought to think of the whole 
 human race, which has got to wag on for ages yet to come, 
 and cannot so wag unless its bad variations are always per- 
 mitted to efface themselves by freely indulging in their own 
 vices. My friend, you cannot forcibly stop viciously- 
 inclined people from going to the deuce if you would, and if 
 you were wise you would not if you could. 
 
252 The Natural Right to Freedom 
 
 CHAPTER XVI, 
 
 BUT you may probably say " What are we to do in a case 
 - like this ? Here are two people who have contracted 
 to fulfil certain natural and important responsib : lities. This 
 woman has six young children. This man is the father of 
 them. The marriage is virtually broken, and neither of the 
 parties to it will carry out the tacit contract that they made 
 with the children by bringing them into the world." 
 
 The reply to this is obvious. Let the man be charged 
 with the support of the children he has caused to come into 
 the world ; that is, of course, in cases where he can afford to 
 pay. The^woman has fulfilled her part of the agreement in 
 bearing the children : let him fulfil his part in keeping them. 
 But go no further than this. Do not spread the evil by 
 thrusting it upon people who are not responsible for it. By 
 so doing you only encourage it. The more you make it easy 
 for people to put their offspring upon the community, the 
 more cases of this kind will you get (as witness the result of 
 the old Poor Law) : until at last you will bankrupt your 
 State with fatherless and motherless children. In short, you 
 will kill with over kindness to the immoral and gross injustice 
 to the moral. For it is monstrous that any man should be 
 compelled to keep children that are not his own. Such an 
 arrangement in the long run means national death. 
 
 " But how about Divorce." The whole theory of divorce 
 is false. What free consent hath joined together, let not law 
 put asunder. If it breaks of itself you are not responsible, 
 and you cannot make it hold together against the consent of 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 253 
 
 its units. Treat it simply as a matter of contract ; not as a 
 matter of proprietary right, justifying the compulsory tying 
 of people two together in a hard and fast knot of mutual 
 torture. 
 
 Divorce is based upon the theory that people can have 
 property in each other. This undoubtedly is a remnant of 
 slavery and leads to more harm than good. The only wise 
 course is to treat marriage in the same mjinner as other 
 contracts. Leave people perfectly free to make and break 
 their sexual agreements ; but when anyone can satisfy a jury 
 of his (or her) peers that, through the breaking of a sexual 
 agreement, he (or she) has been unjustly treated, let 
 compensation be given in proportion to the injury received, 
 and in proportion to the injurer's ability, to pay it. Each 
 case could then be tried on its own merits ; just as breach of 
 promise is dealt with now. People could not be compelled 
 to dwell together. The spirit as well as the letter of 
 agreements could be fully taken into account. Loss could 
 be estimated, not from an idealist's point of view, but from a 
 similar point of view to that of the loser himself (or herself) 
 a most important consideration and one we nearly always 
 forget. In this way it would be possible to make some 
 approximation to justice correspond to each case. Orders 
 could be made respecting the maintenance of children. 
 Compensation could rise from nil to an indefinite sum, and 
 the maximum of justice could in some degree be secured 
 with a minimum loss of individual liberty. Add to this, 
 that as the general sentiments regarding marriage became 
 less material, the compensations would diminish in amount, 
 and as personal independence became more real, the need 
 for them would disappear. Thus, as theoretical and 
 practical Individualism spread amongst the people, the 
 negative regulation of marriage would gradually disappear 
 along with all other negative regulations ; and a social 
 
254 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 condition would at last be reached when there was neither 
 positive nor negative regulation, either of marriages or of 
 other human relations. 
 
 The capital objection to the Divorce Court is, that it is 
 merely a legal convenience for sentimental and therefore 
 utterly unprincipled people. It encourages a bad moral 
 type. Take, for example, the following disgusting farce 
 copied with modifications from a popular weekly newspaper. 
 It appears (to cut short a long preamble) that a certain 
 John Smith of Cape Town, had a wife who, while on a visit 
 to England, met with a certain Henry Jones. "She at once 
 wrote back to her husband, and told of meeting the latter in 
 London, frankly acknowledging an affection she had formed 
 for him. Smith evidently thought this a merely platonic 
 affection, and, I guess, had good reason to think so, for he 
 wrote her that if she loved Jones to come back to Cape 
 Town and obtain a divorce. She did this, and as soon as 
 the divorce was granted the invitations for her marriage to 
 Jones were sent out. The bridegroom was in town during 
 the divorce proceedings. Smith was invited to the wedding, 
 and he accepted. He appeared on that evening dressed 
 faultlessly, and having on his arm a lady of rare beauty. 
 The wedding over, the new Mrs. Jones introduced her new 
 husband to her former one, and Smith in turn represented 
 the lady on his arm as Mrs. John Smith ! He had been 
 married quietly to her as soon as the divorce was granted. 
 Smith would make no outward sign, but the episode broke 
 his heart. He went to Australia, and Jones to India. I 
 have never heard from Smith since. The places and men 
 that knew him know him no more, and I do not know 
 whether he is living or dead." 
 
 Here is only one out of many similar cases, and the 
 point raised is this : Why should sentimental people of this 
 description be provided with a special contrivance for 
 
7 he Natural Right to Freedom. 255 
 
 legalizing and making " respectable " each one of their very 
 strange and utterly unprincipled sexual magnetisms ? It is 
 just as absurd to provide means for encouraging them as it 
 would be to provide means for preventing them. Let them 
 alone ; only holding them responsible for such real and 
 practical losses as the breakings of their engagements, or the 
 neglect of their children (when they have any) can be clearly 
 proved to have caused. 
 
 The real truth is that the evils which arise, not indeed out 
 of marriage itself (for this last, when undertaken for the 
 rational performance of its only natural and legitimate 
 function, namely, the continuance of the human race, is free 
 from passion) but out of the envious passions so frequently 
 dwelling in the hearts of those who marry, cannot be got rid 
 of by law, let the people who set up as " brother's keepers " 
 legislate and regulate as they please. Law can do a little 
 for justice : it can do nothing for morality. Somebody 
 objects that the principle here advocated applies as well to 
 prostitution as to marriage. Well, what if it does ? The 
 contention here set up is, that compensation for breach of 
 contract should be determined by two considerations : first, 
 the extent of the injury : second, the ability of the injurer to 
 compensate. If the injury can be shown to be great, it 
 matters not whether the agreement is for one night, for ten 
 years, or for life. This meets the case advanced by the 
 objector. A prostitute is a human being, with a perfect 
 right to arrange her own sex relations, and as much entitled 
 to justice as the purest women in the land. Let us face 
 this question as a judge, not an advocate. Take an 
 example. A (a rich man) agrees with B (a known pro- 
 stitute) to pay her 100 at the end of one year's services, 
 He gets the services, and refuses to pay. In the meantime, 
 the prostitute has spent ^50 on her own maintenance, and 
 has (according to all reasonable computation) lost ^80 or 
 
 Q 
 
256 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 from chance customers. The swindler con pay, but 
 won't. Well, I think a just court would do its best to make 
 him. Now let us take another case. A (a rich man) 
 marries B (a girl of 1 8), lives with her for 6 years ; causes 
 her to forego the learning of some craft or business by 
 which she might maintain herself ; promises everything ; 
 agrees to everything ; can find no ground of complaint ; and 
 yet, simply because he happens to see his " affinity " (or 
 fancies he sees it), runs off and leaves her without any 
 means of livehood, and with four helpless children to main 
 tain. I cannot help thinking that a just court would give 
 her as much compensation as possible ; more than that is 
 beyond finite power. Human justice is limited. It cannot 
 square every twopenny-halfpenny squabble. But glaring 
 cases of fraud could be dealt with, and should be dealt 
 with. 
 
 To this the sentimentalists object that the price of "love" 
 is not hard cash but love. Very likely. And the price of 
 service is what has been agreed upon for the service. What 
 has justice got to do with love ? What has fair play got to 
 do with a lot of maudlin foolery ? Let us keep close to the 
 concrete facts. Marriage, whatever else it may be, is an 
 agreement on the part of a woman to perform those services 
 for a man which enable him to carry out the perfectly normal 
 function of continuing the human race : and it is an agreement 
 on the part of a man to supply certain maintenance in 
 exchange for those services. When viewed thus the relation 
 of law is clear. Let justice compensate for breach of these 
 contracts, whether the breach be on the part of the man or 
 on the part of the woman. Let it compensate in proportion 
 to the loss of the injured, and in proportion to the ability 
 of the injurer to compensate. Now marriage and prostitution 
 are not so different as sentimentalists would have us believe. 
 True, there is a distinction, but not one that justice as such 
 
. 7 he Natuial Right to Freedom. 257 
 
 can take any account of. Vice is often virtue in the wrong 
 place : it is the abusive extension of natural functions and 
 natural duties beyond what uncorrupted human nature needs. 
 The present case is a good illustration of this truth. 
 Marriage is prostitution reduced to its fewest possible terms; 
 prostitution is marriage expanded indefinitely beyond what 
 is required for uncorrupted bodily needs. " Immoral 
 contracts " exclaims the sentimental objector to prostitution. 
 My dear sir, all passion is immoral ; a perfect life would not 
 have a trace of it. Marriage, in its present imperfectly 
 managed state, is only a lesser evil than prostitution, because 
 it gives less encouragement to the lower side of human 
 nature, and allows more scope for the development of the 
 higher. All passion is evil ; it is the only evil in life, just as 
 understanding is the only good, the only joy, the only 
 strength, the only fact that neither the few nor the many can* 
 take away. 
 
 I may add that I am in favour of diminishing legal 
 adjustment for breaches of contract all along the line. What 
 we ought to do, is gradually to lead people to depend upon 
 themselves, and not even upon judges and juries. But 
 this cannot be done by making clean sweeps here and 
 there just according to the caprice of sentiment. All 
 revolutionary methods are unscientific, and always pro- 
 ductive of more harm than good. Why in the name of 
 reason should we sweep away all compensations for 
 breaches of contract for bodily services, and leave other 
 forms of compensation flourishing as much as ever ? I 
 say, gradually lessen all along the line. Let us put senti- 
 ment aside once and for ever and look steadily at facts. 
 What we want is more intellect and less emotion ; less 
 sentiment and more justice. Justice must not be made the 
 plaything of our tastes and fancies. When we enter its 
 
258 The Natural Right to Freedom, 
 
 holy temple even love must be left behind ; there under- 
 standing should alone worship in the pure light of reason. 
 Justice can make no distinction between the loss of one 
 person and that of another. In its sight the prostitute 
 and the wife, the murderer and the saint, are equal. It 
 pronounces not who is, and who is not immoral ; what 
 is and what is not an immoral bargain ; it does not praise 
 and blame : it gives measure for measure of the imper- 
 fections of human nature, and treats a devil as fairly as 
 a god. Let us apply it to marriage, to prostitution, to 
 everything, but let us apply it in slowly diminishing 
 amounts. Let us treat human nature fairly, not turn up 
 our noses at its " immorality " and drive the despised and 
 abused away with a phrase about "immoral bargains." 
 No bargains made in the light of truth are immoral ; the 
 passions they express often are, but not the mere bargains 
 themselves. The best way to improve men and women, is 
 not to preach at them, not to coerce them, not to despise 
 them and call them immoral, but to give them simple justice 
 and leave the rest to Nature and their own consciences. 
 
 But, replies one of the sentimental objectors to 
 monogamy : " If I understand him (the advocate of 
 monogamy) correctly, he means that an ill-assorted couple, 
 who may have married young, should pretend to love, or 
 try to love, or force themselves to appear to love one 
 another, or at all events should go through life as though 
 they did really love one another, out of difference to the 
 ideal. My advice to them would be to dissolve partnership 
 and seek their several affinities elsewhere, and then live up 
 to the ideal. A slave to an ideal is I think as pitiable as any 
 other slave. 
 
 This shall now be dealt with. 
 
 As to whether people should pretend to love, I don't think 
 they should pre-tcnd anything. .They should treat each 
 
The Natural Rig j it to Freedom. 259 
 
 other justly, fairly, considerately, mercifully, with a firm 
 determination always to speak and act the truth to one 
 another, and to fulfil the engagements they have made with 
 one another. Not, indeed, for one another's sake, but for 
 the sake of something far higher and holiej/; for truth's sake, 
 and for right's sake. Let them do this, and they won't even 
 think whether they love one another : their paltry 
 personalities will be transcended and merged in a higher, 
 wider, and more intellectual love : a love of that infinite im- 
 personality which works through them and through the 
 ages, towards the more rational life of a nobler and freer 
 race. Like two stars that obey one central sun, they will 
 then move together in perpetual harmony, and will unite the 
 sweetness of childhood with the strength and reason of man- 
 hood and womanhood. The idea of running about the 
 world seeking after " affinities " will never present itself to 
 their minds. I thought ARTEMUS WARD had laughed that 
 nonsense out of all sane people's respect. If anyone wants 
 to see the misery and confusion to which "affinity" leads, 
 let him read Mr. HEPWORTH DIXON'S book on Spiritual 
 Wives, Talk about the evils of married life ! they are 
 trifles to this hot-bed of lust and pain, of envy, jealousy, 
 excitement, and despair. My advice is, stick to your 
 engagements : be a slave to honour, rather than fancy : 
 bear with one another : remember that no injuries can in 
 the least degree hurt your only true and intellectual self; 
 they only hurt you in so far as you let yourself down to the 
 level of passion. What truth can indifference or cruelty 
 deprive you of ? what law can it prevent you from seeing ? 
 Can it prevent you returning justice for injustice ; openness 
 for false dealing; reason for passion, and order for con- 
 fusion ? The true goods of life are imperishable, and 
 neither the indifference nor hate of others can touch them. 
 It takes years to know and get used to people, therefore put 
 
260 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 patience before comparison. Habit will produce the most 
 lasting affinity. You might spend a lifetime in hunting that 
 will o'-the-wisp " affinity," and then never find it. Indeed, 
 in an exclusively sensual sense there is no such thing. For 
 sensual demands in their very nature are irregular, uncertain, 
 unstable. There is no simultaneousness in their occurrence 
 in any two people. When they are present in one, they are 
 absent in another ; at the moment when they are strong in 
 one, ihey are weak in another. To make their agreement 
 the end of married life, is simply to go down into a hell of 
 confusion and contention. The only true, healthy, peaceful, 
 and lasting affinity of human beings is reason. There is 
 nothing more profitable to one human being who is governed 
 by reason, than another human being who is also governed 
 by reason. Just as the upper and lower jaw fit in with and 
 are mutually serviceable to each other, so, a man that is 
 governed by reason, and a women that is also governed by 
 reason agree with and are mutually useful to one another. 
 For reason and reason alone is the foundation of virtue ; 
 and love, when properly understood, is but the natural and 
 spontaneous harmony of virtue with virtue, of truth with 
 truth, of honesty with honesty ; and of the constancy, 
 courage, and highmindedness which these imply, with the 
 same great and holy facts in another. True love is the 
 divine calm of reason agreeing with that which is akin to 
 itself. There is no passion in it. It is light without fire : 
 it is god-like, grand, and pure. But passion is an unprofit- 
 able dross that, among low base natures, has somehow got 
 mixed up with the gold. Its only wages are mutual distrust, 
 fear, and confusion. From this burning slavery of passion 
 spring falsehood, deceit, fraud, hate, envy, adultery, murder 
 and death. But those who serve reason are free from all 
 this wretched bondage, are capable of loving without covet- 
 ing, and of either marrying or abstaining from marriage ; for 
 
The Natiiral Right to Freedom, 261 
 
 they know that human life is a sphere of high and noble duties 
 and not a low hell of base sensual pleasures : thus are they 
 really free because the clear knowledge of truth has made 
 them free. Hence they freely perform the simple, natural 
 duties of life, in the pure atmosphere of intellect and true 
 liberty ; and with the quiet restful strength of those whose 
 souls are too great and brave to bow down to the slavery of 
 any passion, however seductive. They are few in number but 
 they form the very salt of this earth, and with their dis- 
 appearance the last remnant of nobility goes out of human 
 race. 
 
 The calm and peaceful " affinity " of reason is inde- 
 pendent of sex and lust, and no one need break their agree- 
 ments or plunge into a sex slavery in order to find it. The 
 fact is there is not a rag of argument that can be advanced, 
 either in favour of promiscuity, or of "affinity," or of 
 continually changing partners in order to find comfortable 
 " mates." All the arguments point just the opposite way. 
 How many changes would it take to get use to anyone ? 
 No, stick to principle, and let sentiment go. So far as my 
 own observation of bad marriages goes, I am inclined to 
 believe that their supposed evils spring solely from passions 
 and vanities that would bring misery anywhere, and with 
 anyone, because, indeed, these passions are misery in them- 
 selves : their so-called results are but the outward smoke of 
 inward fire. VOLTAIRE, whose writings are far too keen and 
 rational to be appreciated by this maudlin and pampered 
 generation, made a true remark when he said that " nothing 
 violent is lasting." People begin by worshipping each other 
 as gods, and end by cursing each other as devils. What is 
 wanted is, not a lot of silly love dreams, or longings for 
 affinity, but calm, sensible, good-tempered, charitable reason 
 all .the way through. With this, marriage will be happy ; 
 without this, nothing will be happy. 
 
262 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 The fact is, that if people follow reason and' truth as far 
 as they see them, if they try to do justice and love mercy, 
 they will get loved in return ; not indeed for their own 
 transient sakes, but for the sake of what is lasting and 
 satisfying and complete. All the love worth having will 
 come to them, and will be as fixed and lasting as the things 
 out of which it arises and on which it rests. In this sense 
 love grows out of duty : it is a kind of intellectual sympathy 
 which all honest souls feel for those who follow reason rather 
 than passion. It is the joint recognition of the eternal. 
 Real love has nothing whatever in common with the Free 
 -Lover's blind lust after sexual "affinity," and the more it is 
 confounded with this the more hopeless will both marriage 
 and everything else become. 
 
 The secret of success in marriage, as, indeed, the secret 
 of success in all things human, is natural, healthy common 
 sense, without a tincture of vanity or passion ; a quality 
 which is much less common than its name would lead one 
 to suppose. More than the whole world is this worth, and 
 wherever it is there is the kingdom of heaven established 
 upon earth. 
 
 The sentimentalist tries to make a strong point about 
 slavery to an ideal. The reply to this is very easy. A man 
 who follows his reason is not a slave, for his reason is him- 
 self. But a man who loves promiscuity, or who spends his 
 time in a discontented and miserable search after an 
 impossible sexual "affinity," certainly does not follow his 
 reason ; he follows his lusts : he does not even reach the 
 level of ordinary every-day sense. He gets into the habit of 
 regarding all the women he has known, as certain non- 
 afrlnities ; and all the women he has not known, as possible 
 affinities. Thus he lives in a state of perpetual unrest and 
 unsatisfied desire, with eyes of envy and lust continually 
 resting upon his neighbours, and thoughts ever tending 
 
'I he Natural Right to Freedom. 263 
 
 downwards towards disorder and confusion. Poor creature ! 
 perhaps his true " affinity " is in the South Sea Islands, or 
 in the planet Mars. How can he ever know he has got the 
 right one ? And every new " affinity " that he gets will 
 necessarily feel greater doubt and distrust for so fickle and 
 unmanly an epicurean. And he will feel the same towards 
 the affinities that have broken their marriages in order to live 
 with him. For there is no secure anchorage for the human 
 soul except in principle ; no peace, no lasting happiness : 
 nothing but doubt, despair, and fear eating at the very core 
 of the heart continually. He needs an eternity to search and 
 test in, and then another eternity in which to live up to his 
 ideal. He is like a man hunting after a perfect house to 
 live in. My advice to such a one is not "seek affinities 
 elsewhere," but "reflect and come to your senses," and if 
 you cannot do that, tie a stone round your neck and jump 
 into the sea. If you cannot live rationally and with patience 
 in this world, with such people as you have elected to live 
 amongst, clear out of it as soon as possible. Don't take 
 your unreason and lust from place to place, from life to life ; 
 offending all, quarrelling with all, and making a blight 
 wherever you go. My dear sir, the keynote of life is 
 something far grander than the " pleasure " of an effeminate 
 Epicureanism : it is the duty of a free, fearless manhood. 
 
 Does the sentimentalist mean that the losses frequently 
 arising out of broken marriage contracts should receive no 
 sort of legal adjustment whatever ? Of course it is perfectly 
 true that when the law attempts to compel two people to 
 live together it steps beyond its power. In the case of 
 breach of promise it acts with more common sense. To me 
 it seems evident that when breakings of contract practically 
 amount to interferences with freedom, there is good warrant 
 for the law stepping in to adjust the losses consequent upon 
 such interferences; although here, as elsewhere, all the 
 
264 The Natural Right to Freedom, 
 
 difficulties of protection should be duly weighed against its 
 advantages. 
 
 Look at this practical case : A man, we will suppose, 
 marries a girl, and, growing tired of her in three months, 
 turns her adrift on the world. What has happened ? On the 
 one side a life-long loss has been sustained, and on the other 
 side an agreement has been made to balance that loss by a life- 
 long service. There is nothing at all unreasonable in such a 
 contract. When we remember that marriage is so much 
 more important an affair to a woman than it is to a man, 
 and that the breaking of the marriage contract causes a 
 great loss to her, while it scarcely affects a man at all, we 
 cannot wonder that law has stepped in. It must be remem- 
 bered that no amount of female liberty can possibly shift the 
 burden of marriage off the woman's shoulders. So long as 
 individuality, probability of male parenthood, and parental 
 responsibity, are valued higher than promiscuous 
 communism, just so long will the breaking of the marriage 
 contract be a most serious loss both to the woman and to 
 the race. THIERS has worked this out well in his book on 
 The Rights of Property. He points out that the general 
 regard for the sacredness of the marriage contract is 
 coincident with the growth of civilization, and that, in 
 proportion as the contract is generally and widely broken, 
 nations lose their vigour and inevitably decay. During the 
 declining years of Rome it was common for the wife to pass out 
 of one home into another. (See also Seneca "De Beneficus" 
 book iii, chap, xvi.) And one of the clearest proofs of 
 Athenian degeneration was afforded in the spectacle of female 
 companions of light morals, called Hetairia, who loosened the 
 bonds of social life and injured the honest home customs of 
 the old times. It is hardly too much to say that the luxury 
 and materialism which inevitably settle down into sexual 
 communism, is the rock on which every ship of civilization 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom 265 
 
 has hitherto been wrecked. We see this well exemplified 
 to-day in the decline of French literature and in the general 
 decay of the French nation. And there are very conspicuous 
 signs that the disintegrating process is well at work here. 
 All the different forms of educational Socialism which mean 
 at bottom a repudiation of all personal parental duties are 
 so many instances of the fact. The continual increase in the 
 number of divorce suits points to the same truth. 
 
 I think that what I have stated about the loss resulting to 
 women where the marriage contract is broken will generally 
 be admitted. Such being the case, we have got to ask 
 whether, taking all things into account, it is always advisable 
 to allow this loss to be on the female, and not on the male. 
 The adjustment of the losses resulting from a broken 
 marriage must always be a difficult matter. But are we to 
 say that no such adjustment shall be attempted ? If, for 
 example, it is right to make a Railway Company bear the 
 loss resulting from non-fulfilment of contract, is it not equally 
 right to make the man who throws a life-long loss upon a 
 woman, bear at least a portion of that loss ? If it is legitimate 
 to legally adjust injuries resulting from contract breaking 
 anywhere, is it not important to do so here ? Suppose the 
 evils to the woman in the very nature of the case especially 
 so to her are increased by the presence of children. Is 
 there not then another justification for the law acting? 
 Here a tacit agreement has been made on the part of two 
 responsible people to maintain certain helpless human beings. 
 Either the children must starve, be kept by voluntary effort, 
 or some person or persons must be compelled to keep them. 
 No\v if compulsion is to be applied at all, who, in the name 
 of justice, should be the first on whom it should fall? 
 Surely, the persons who alone are responsible for the exist- 
 ence of the children. If contract is fairly enforcible any- 
 where, it is so here. But on what grounds should it be so 
 
266 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 enforced, if not on the fact that a contract has been entered 
 into by two people, to render themselves liable to bring 
 children into the world ? And, in order to make this fact 
 perfectly clear, it is necessary that such a contract should be 
 legally drawn up and signed before witnesses. At least 
 some means are needed to prevent fraud. 
 
 In Scotland it is sufficient for two people to verbally agree 
 before witnesses, that they freely take on themselves the 
 duties and responsibilities of marriage. In the absence of 
 this the law^ would have very little data by which to justify 
 its protection of the rights of women and children, both of 
 whom are in a manner rendered more or less helpless by 
 marriage. 
 
 Without something in the nature of a contract the door 
 would be opened to a great deal of confusion and difficulty 
 in the settling of disputes and the apportioning of burdens. 
 
 Moreover, when it is remembered that the loss a woman 
 sustains through the breaking of the marriage contract, is 
 life long, the conclusion is inevitable that the agreement on 
 the part of the man to insure her against that loss should be 
 considered binding as long as the woman is burdened by the 
 results of the man's relationship towards her. 
 
 The most practical and efficient way in which this agree- 
 ment can be enforced, is for the law to compel the man to 
 maintain the woman in proportion as she can prove that the 
 marriage has prevented her from maintaining herself, to 
 maintain the children until they can maintain themselves, 
 and to refuse to recognise any new agreement so long as 
 both of the parties to the first agreement live. The 
 sentiments of the community, together with the ordinance of 
 Nature herself, have made 90 per cent, of the burden of 
 marriage to fall upon woman ; consequently, when the 
 marriage contract is broken, the legal adjustment should be 
 so framed that the male side of the agreement shall bear at 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 267 
 
 least an equal portion of the burden. Even married women 
 who are without children, are generally injured by the 
 breaking of the contract, and still more is this almost certain 
 to be the case when children are born. Of course a great 
 deal of discretion would have to be exercised, just as is 
 already the case with breach of promise. But if contract 
 laws are needed anywhere they are needed here ; if only on 
 grounds of justice to women and children. 
 
 As for the Divorce Court, there is no excuse for its exist- 
 ence. When two people marry they enter into an agreement 
 which has distinct and life-long relations and consequences ; 
 not only are they themselves directly affected, but, in case 
 children are born, others are also directly affected. No 
 subsequent conduct on either side can alter this. Conse- 
 quently it is as absurd for the law to recognise new 
 obligations before the old ones are fulfilled, as for people to 
 enter upon such new obligations. Broadly speaking, the 
 marriage agreement extends to something more than the 
 whims and fancies of the two people who enter upon it. 
 Both have generally made themselves responsible for the 
 parental control of children. This being so, when the law 
 recognises a second marriage, with new interests and duties 
 distinct from the first one, it fails in its protection of the 
 children resulting from the first one. All things considered, 
 there is a strong balance of advantages to the public, and 
 much better protection afforded to women and children, 
 when the law only goes so far as to recognise the first 
 marriage (as long as the two parties to it live), to adjust the 
 losses sustained through the breaking of it as equitably as 
 possible, and to afford no sort of encouragement to 
 promiscuity by divorce courts. When people marry they 
 take each other for better or worse ; and there is no reason 
 why the law should encourage them to regret their bargains. 
 
268 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 But the sentimental people never so much as attempt to 
 deal with the practical side of this question. When it is 
 pointed out to them that it is a common case for a man to 
 run off and leave his wife with the full burden of the group 
 of children that he has agreed to support, all they reply is 
 that the law cannot make a true marriage. Who said it 
 could ? If I fail to fulfil an important business contract, 
 the law cannot make a true contract, but there is one thing 
 it can do : it can make me responsible or at least partly 
 responsible for the losses I have caused. Where possible 
 it ought to do just the same with marriage. Let us 
 remember that we are dealing with actual humanity, and not 
 with Utopia. It may well be, as one sentimentalist says, 
 that "in any same condition of society no girl would under- 
 take the responsibility of bearing children without making 
 some provision for them." But as applied to present con- 
 ditions this is pure romance. In the case of 99 out of every 
 100 marriages, young women have not a heap of capital to 
 lay out on prospective children. Their only capital is them- 
 selves. As Mr. W. DONISTHORPE, well puts it on page 384 
 of his Individualism, " I do not see what the State has got 
 to do with either sanctioning or preventing marriage or 
 divorce, except in so far as it is the duty of the State to 
 enforce the fulfilment of a contract, or the payment of 
 reasonable damages for the breach thereof. When a pre- 
 possessing woman marries young on the terms of a life- 
 partnership, and is put away at the age of fifty, and the 
 partnership dissolved against her will, her capital (so to 
 speak) having in the meantime been exhausted for the good 
 of the firm, it seem? but just that, as her youth and beauty 
 cannot be returned to her, some compensation should be 
 made for breach of contract." Here is an Individualist who 
 seems to have grasped the practical bearings of the question : 
 very different in his argument from the Utopian romancing 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 269 
 
 of sentimentalists. Arguing that the pleasures of marriage 
 are equal for the two sexes, one of ihe sentimentalists, slips 
 in this very amusing sentence " I say without hesitation that 
 putting on one side the pains and responsibilities of 'child- 
 bearing, the debit and credit side balance," which is very 
 much like this remark '* I say without hesitation that barring 
 that trifling matter of ;i 0,000 I am as well off as you." 
 The sentimentalist's psychology is as defective as his reason- 
 ing. After making such an admission as the above he 
 argues that the pleasures are as great to one sex as to 
 another. As if, with present defective human nature, the 
 thought of such tremendous consequences, could make no 
 mental difference to those who risk such consequences. By 
 all means let us avoid sentiment and favouritism, but let us 
 have the truth. Nature herself has made the pleasures, to 
 all but the few who live only for duty, very unequal indeed, 
 and no dreaming about what may be can alter facts. 
 
 Let it be remembered that I am not arguing that law can 
 make true marriage. What contract can it make true, I 
 should like to know ? All that law ran do, is to make those 
 who break the contract, bear the losses resulting from such, 
 breaking ; and bear those losses in proportion as they have 
 caused them, and in proportion to their ability to bear 
 them. This is not making marriage compulsory ; neither is 
 it compelling people to live together: it is merely making one 
 person bear the loss of such frauds as he (or she) can be 
 shown to have committed against another person. As an 
 anonymous writer well says : " There is no system so moral- 
 izing as that which leaves men free, but holds them strictly 
 and sternly to the full consequences of their conduct." 
 
 And now I come to deal with some of the sentimentalist's 
 arguments in favour of polyandry and polygamy. He argues 
 that a general laxity in sexual relations is " a most desirable " 
 thing, because it will tend to get rid of the population 
 
270 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 difficulty. Fortunately the Individualist quoted previously 
 has partly replied to this. Criticising the sexual come-and- 
 go-as-you-please Utopia of Mr. MORRIS'S News from No- 
 where, Mr. DONISTHORPE says "First of all the population 
 question is not solved, but glozed over. We are told that 
 the population is about the same in two hundred years as it 
 is now. Since, at the present rate of increase, it may be 
 safely assumed that in one century it will have at least 
 doubled itself, it is clear that in the following century it will 
 have to halve itself. But let that pass. Perhaps the 
 Revolution of 1952 will dispose of thirty millions ; and this 
 again may account for the number of crows, ravens, and 
 other co rvidae which frequent Kensington Forest. The real 
 question is : How, in an age of universal plenty, and 
 indeed luxury, and with freedom in the sexual relation 
 accepted as natural and becoming, is an enormous 
 increase of population to be prevented ? It would certainly 
 be a pity to spoil a pretty river landscape by a vision of 
 some Neo-Malthus stalking about with the A mantis 
 Pharmacopoeia in his knapsack. If the writer is serious, it 
 is his duty to expound this point." Personal Rights 
 Journal, Aug. 1891, page 80. 
 
 The sentimentalist may of course reply that Mr. MORRIS'S 
 looseness does not go low enough. We know as a matter 
 of fact that when polyandry gets very gross the population 
 does diminish. But why ? Because citizens have reached 
 such a degree of physical and mental decay that they are 
 absolutely unable to keep up their numbers. France is fast 
 getting to that state : but the growing rottenness does not 
 appear to have increased " the general happiness " rather 
 the contrary. The fact is that " lust made easy " never has 
 and never will lead to anything but national decay and final 
 extinction. Gild and gloss the fact over as you please, but 
 there is no getting away from it. And the reason is obvious. 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 271 
 
 Human nature is made up of two elements a lower and a 
 higher and what the sentimentalist calls u variety " only 
 develops the lower at the expense of the higher. That 
 commanding and distinguishing feature of man, the reason, 
 has only been got by the minimization of the sensual 
 elements, occurring pari passu with the maximization of 
 the rational elements. But in proportion as the animal 
 appetites are whetted and developed by " variety " 
 they grow at the expense of the intellect, and the 
 light of this world sinks lower and lower into the steams 
 and mists of a gross animalism, infinitely worse and more 
 corrupt than that of the animals themselves. You cannot 
 have it both ways. Either the intellect must grow at the 
 expense of the beast, or the beast must grow at the expense 
 of the intellect. Herein lies the supreme advantage of 
 monogamy : it is the minimization of sensuality and the 
 reduction of the latter to the fewest possible terms compat- 
 ible with the continuance of the race. At the same time it 
 is also the clearest and least confusing condition of natuial 
 duty. Not only so, but the long term of the monogamic 
 relation builds up a joint interest and a joint sense of duty, 
 together with an intimate knowledge of the deeper and more 
 mental side of human life of the undertone of this world 
 of " the still sad music of humanity " all of which power- 
 fully help to transfigure lust into love ; to tranquilise human 
 character, and to lift men and women into a higher and 
 purer atmosphere, where love merges in duty ; where both 
 man and woman may dwell together in one light; bound by 
 no other tie than a mutual sense of allegiance, not to 
 another that is poor and paltry but to something greater 
 than themselves; to that ideal of purity and duty which alone 
 makes life worth living, and men and women worthy to live it. 
 Can the same be said of those butterfly relationships known 
 as polyandry and polygamy ? Look around in the world and 
 
 ft 
 
272 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 in history. Are not polyandrical and polygamic peoples 
 noted for the shallow and sensual views they take of every- 
 thing? Their hop-skip-and-jump connections do not allow 
 them time to see anything more than the mere husks and 
 shows of things. Look again at France. Look at its life 
 as reflected in its literature ! Polyandry and polygamy 
 have only time to know the senses : the intellect and the 
 heart are almost sealed books to them. We see the effects 
 of a laxity in sexual relations well exemplified in lives of 
 Eastern kings. " Hardly an Eastern ruler addicted to the 
 enervating practice passes middle life without these signs 
 branding his very countenance, ensues lassitude, disgust, 
 weariness with everything ; ensues neglect of State affairs ; 
 then corruption, revolt, ruin or assassination." 
 
 The curse of promiscuity is that no sense of duty and 
 responsibility go with it. It is a mere arrangement for 
 gratifying people whose concupiscence is stronger than their 
 sense of duty, and it inevitably leads to a confusion of 
 relationships and every form of sexual degradation. Its 
 effect upon the female portion of the community is to destroy 
 parental feelings and love of children, and to replace 
 them by a shameless erotomania. For it is an absolutely 
 certain and well known fact of life, that the most sensual 
 women are those least possessed of any natural love for 
 children. Here again the growth of the lower means the 
 death of the higher, and the effect upon the race is most 
 disastrous. As pleasure comes in, duty goes out ; and the 
 innocent are made to suffer for the accursed lusts of a 
 corrupt duty-shirking race. Loving brotherhood and 
 sisterhood destroy dutifid fatherhood and motherhood. 
 No wonder that the sentimentalists should enlarge on the 
 advantages of sending children away from home, and should 
 point out that in proportion as this is done the parents 
 can indulge in the dutyless "pleasures " of polyandry, &c., 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 273 
 
 the school master acting in loco parentibus* How 
 unselfishly natural and pure ! The ideal of these free lovers is 
 simply a mixture of mutual admiration society, and 
 Mahometan paradise, where pleasure will be everything and 
 duty nothing. If they think the world is going to settle 
 down in that trough they are greatly mistaken. The whole 
 tendency of Nature, as exemplified in the law of evolution, 
 is towards the minimization of sensuality, and the max- 
 imization of intellectuality ; and this general tendency won't 
 stop because modern civilizations are rotting to pieces with 
 their own vices. The wages of those who shirk duty shall 
 be individual and national death for ever. Nations have 
 deserted monogamy before to-day, and they have paid the 
 penalty for so doing. Compare the Roman people in the 
 period of their promiscuous corruption their polygamy, 
 polyandry, incest, and sodomy ; for among decaying 
 civilizations this noble family of virtues always hangs 
 together with the earlier days when the marriage bond was 
 held sacred. From the sacredness of this bond "was 
 derived the pure and lofty character of the ancient Roman 
 Matron. At Rome it was not by clever and fascinating 
 courtesans, such as Aspasia and Thais, but by wives and 
 mothers, such as Lucretia and Volumnia of the legends, 
 such as Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, in actual 
 history, that noble wishes and heroic thoughts were inspired 
 into the hearts of men. The chastity and frugality of the 
 women found an answer in the temperance and self-devotion 
 of the men." Was it not always so, and will it not always 
 remain so ? All the old civilizations tell the same tale. 
 What was the effect of promiscuity in Athens, in the 
 Assyrian and Babylonian empires, in Judea and in Egypt ? 
 decay : this result never fails. When humanity has once 
 risen to a certain elevation of moral life, it cannot go back 
 to its lower customs and yet retain its former strength and 
 
274 The Natural Right to Freedom* 
 
 integrity." Temperance is strength, and no custom so much 
 promotes temperance as monogamy. 
 
 According to the sentimentalists lust and love are the 
 same. I don't believe it. I don't believe that it is lust 
 which a mother and father feel for their children. The 
 highest fact in life is not lust, and has nothing in common 
 with lust. What a black infernal lie is this doctrine about 
 love being lust ! It shows what those who propound it are 
 really made of : miserable souls, they are their own scourges 
 and tormentors. They will always be known and their lives 
 despised by all truly rational beings. 
 
 Of course it may well be that if, as the sentimentalists 
 contend, love is simply eros, it may pass away very quickly. 
 Evidently it does so in their case. All that these low base 
 natures care about, is getting comfortably rid of the duties 
 that they have freely contracted to fulfil. " Free " Love 
 indeed ! rather the self-accursing passions of set of smirking 
 admirationists and lying hypocrites. Well may they confuse 
 lust with love. They desire nothing higher than their own 
 shame. But there is another sort of love a love of fulfilling 
 duty in proportion to the closeness of the relationship out of 
 which that duty springs. And, seeing that marriage is the 
 most intimate of all relationships, there is nothing at all 
 anomalous in its duties being more important or longer 
 lived than others, or even in their lasting through life. 
 That a rational being should always feel bound to do all he 
 or she can for the intellectual and moral advancement of a 
 person so close as wife or husband necessarily must be, is 
 not in the least degree surprising: rather is it surprising 
 when rational beings act otherwise. It was a wise remark of 
 St. Paul's, that " he who loves his wife, loves himself; " for 
 an honest wife grows to be the very flesh of her husband's 
 flesh, bone of his bone, and blood of his blood. Permanent 
 marriage has grown with the reason of the race, with the 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom* 273 
 
 development of the sense of duty, and it will only grow more 
 secure as humanity becomes more rational. Promiscuity is 
 the past, not the future, of humanity, Those who wish to 
 justify polyandry and polygamy will have to re-write history. 
 They will have to re-interpret the teaching of evolution ; for, 
 if there is one thing that evolution more clearly teaches than 
 another, it is that the tendency of the ages is towards the 
 maximization of the intellect and the minimization of the 
 beast in man. They will have to do something more than 
 destroy what one of the sentimentalists calls " religious dead 
 dogmas." They will have to show that the Character with 
 which those dogmas are associated, is not the ideal life to 
 which the irresistible process of things is bringing the human 
 race -an ideal of duty, of courage, of strength and endurance, 
 of purity, and of love, with which nothing modern has any- 
 thing to compare. And when they have done all these 
 things it will then be time enough to dream of polyandrical 
 and polygamic heavens. 
 
 In duty, and not in promiscuity, lies the true solution of 
 the population question. Promiscuity means the develop- 
 ment of those very instincts to which over-population is due, 
 and although, when gross enough, it may depopulate a race 
 out of existence (as it seems to be doing in France), yet it 
 effects no movement towards temperance and self-control, 
 and, consequently leaves humanity as much at the mercy of 
 the Malthusian law as ever. When, in consequence of their 
 piggish promiscuity, the decaying communities have dis- 
 appeared, the surviving communities take up the problem of 
 self-control at as great a disadvantage as ever. The sensual 
 side of human life has still got to be mastered, and this 
 mastery has only been rendered more difficult by the back- 
 slidings of the past. Why have the promiscuities of the past 
 not solved the population question ? Because they have 
 gone the wrong way about it. Instead of developing self- 
 
276 The Nahwal Right to Fmdom* 
 
 control, they have developed self-gratification i have 
 consequently rotted to pieces, and left the problem to be 
 solved by stronger races, The real solution for a race, 
 which wishes to retain its intellectual and moral strength, 
 lies in the gradual growth of the temperance promoted by a 
 strict monogamy. In proportion as monogamy and temper- 
 ance grow side by side, the population question tends to 
 solve itself ; and in proportion as surviving communities are 
 thrashed by the lessons of the past into greater and greater 
 intellectuality and less and less corruption, a balance will be 
 reached between " the amount of food and the number of 
 mouths to be fed." Not only so, but the right types will be 
 spread at the expense of the wrong types. We cannot 
 circumvent Nature, but we can follow the lessons that our 
 reason gleans from her facts. One of her greatest lessons is 
 temperance and self control. " Lust made easy " simply 
 means national death.* 
 
 * Since writing the foregoing we have seen Mr. Grant Allen's essay 
 in the " Universal Review " on " THE GIRL OF THE FUTURE." We 
 can only make a few remarks on it. " The Girl of the Future " is pre- 
 cisely the same corrupt, dishonest, and unnatural creature as the Roman 
 lady to whom allusion has been already made. She lives both as a 
 " woman ; " that is. to say as a prostitute ; and as a mother : for in Mr. 
 Grant Allen's philosophy the sex relations are used both for pleasure 
 and duty ; i.e. : abused in lust and used in continuing the race of 
 lusters! This noble creature constantly uses herself as a "woman" 
 but, by reason of her deep love of the human race, she only allows her- 
 self to have children by athletes, poets, scientists, philosophers, or at 
 least by the very best men that she can find. In other words she 
 exercises more judgment and discrimination in selecting the fathers of 
 her children, than she does in the promiscuous bestowal of her ordinary 
 sexual favours. While constantly living as a "woman" (not as a 
 possible mother, but as a perverted prostitute) she only acts in the 
 capacity of a race-continuer with certain specially picked men. For 
 example, one " woman" may have one child by a Newton, another by 
 a Gothic, another by a Shelley, and so on to the end of the chapter. 
 In this manner the race will be both purified and improved ! Sublime ! 
 is it net? There is, however, just one slight hitch. How half-a-dozen 
 separate fathers are to all do their fatherly duties by the children of one 
 woman we are not informed. Would they all live in one house ? Or 
 would they take it in turns to make periodical visits ? If so, would 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom* 377 
 
 CHAPTER XVIL 
 
 PERHAPS someone will say " But this is not perfect 
 liberty." Of course it is not. Perfect liberty cannot 
 be jumped into all at once. It must be approached slowly 
 and surely. Sudden revolutions are the quack remedies of 
 fools. Wise men prefer growth, and they don't much mind 
 how slow it is, so long as it only proceeds in the right 
 direction : that is, towards and not away from liberty. 
 Liberty is a plant that our generation shall never see the 
 perfect flowering of. Its rearing is the work of ages : its sap 
 is the blood of martyrs : by death it grows : but some day it 
 shall give life to all the nations of the earth. 
 
 Between the State socialists who would deprive woman 
 and man too for that matter of all individual choice ; who 
 would simply leave her at the mercy of the political majority 
 and its army of official inspectors : between the aims of these 
 worthy people and the methods of grandmotherly protectors 
 like SIR J. F. STEPHEN, there is only the alternative of equal 
 
 they not be likely to come into conflict with the crowd of ordinary, 
 everyday, and unparental lovers ? those necessary to the constant use 
 of the woman as a "woman?" But now look at the arrangement 
 under another aspect. A Newton, being one of the best of breeding men 
 is everywhere in great request, and has fifty different children by fifty of 
 the " best " women. Now how is he to do his duty towards this vast 
 crowd of offsprings ? Mr. Grant Allen says that this condition of things 
 will mean "a fine time" for the best men. We fancy it would be a 
 terribly bad time for the children of such men. The mothers would be 
 prostitutes and the fathers patronizers of prostitutes. All would be 
 living for the purpose of indulging in the widest possible sensuality and 
 shirking (heir parental duties to the greatest possible extent. Here, 
 according to a recent divorce case, is a sample of the effect of sensuality 
 upon parental duty "She (a girl 8 years old) then gave some painful 
 evidence against her mother as to what occurred in a railway carriage 
 when the co-respondent was with them. A handkerchief had been 
 
278 The Natural Right to Freedom 
 
 liberty, of political and social individualism, of impartial all- 
 round defence of personal liberty and private property. All 
 that is needed is a fair field and no favour, equal freedom 
 for each separate unit of the social aggregate to develope in 
 his or her own way, to earn whatever can be earned without 
 aggressing upon others, and to dispose of the property so 
 obtained in any manner that does not interfere with the 
 equal freedom of all. Those who accept this principle are 
 logically bound to admit, that neither socially nor politically 
 can there be the slightest distinction between women and 
 men. 
 
 If we accept this position we are able to see the absurdity 
 of attempting to suppress bad books and unprincipled 
 persuasions in the supposed interests of female virtue. It is 
 like depriving your judges of the evidence on which they are 
 to adjudicate. For if women and men too, for, as already 
 pointed out, the argument applies equally to both are riot 
 to be allowed to read and hear these evil things, how shall 
 they be able to say whether or not such things are deserving 
 
 placed over her eyes and she was told not to remove it. Her brother 
 Harry, 7 years of age, said that his sis'er made a communication to 
 him and he told his father. Mr. Grant Allen informs us that this 
 low, unmotherly and unfatherly sensuality has already begun 
 amongst us. Possibly it has. But this only proves the rank 
 and rotten condition of modern civilization. There is. how- 
 ever, something else also growing up amongst us a social convulsion 
 that will probably make short work of some of these womanly, 
 motherly, pure, and honest women ; these deep lovers of the human 
 race ; these respectable prostitutes and their hundreds of high souled, 
 fatherly patrons. Mr. Grant Allen notes George Eliot as a forerunner 
 of " The Girl of the Future." A most unfortunate example. Her 
 letters, so full of groanings over self-made troubles, clearly prove this 
 woman to have been one of the most unhappy people that ever lived. 
 Misery is stamped upon her face. And necessarily so, for the only 
 foundation of happiness is moral courage ; and this is just what George 
 Eliot lacked. She could not even bear to see what hostile critics said 
 about her own books. Truth was too strong for her tender nerves. 
 Undoubtedly a clever woman, but not great with the highest greatness 
 the nobility of allegiance to principles, and conformity to those great 
 laws of Nature which no human being can ignore and yet be happy. 
 
ZThe Natural Right to Freedom. 279 
 
 of suppression ? And if they are to be so allowed, then will 
 they have the power of suppression already in their own 
 hands. They can shut the books and ignore the persuasions, 
 A more effectual means of suppression is not possible, and 
 any other method is neither just nor expedient. 
 
 What type of woman are the moral protectionists trying 
 to produce? Are they ambitious to be surrounded with 
 poor flabby creatures that cannot be trusted to read a 
 volume of Zola, see a nude figure, look at a forbidden 
 picture, or hear and reject the persuasions of unprincipled 
 men ? Do they want to have the world always filled with 
 the same leaning willows as it is filled with at present ; or 
 would they not prefer to see a race of Imogens and Isabellas, 
 a race of women in whom virtue is natural, organic, 
 indestructable, infinitely nobler than any gilded social 
 slavery can ever become, however pretentious and dazzling 
 it may appear to superficial minds ? Such a race liberty 
 alone can give. For it insures woman against her only 
 enemy, namely, force ; allows her to grow to her full height, 
 and thus acheive by her own effort her own complete 
 self-development In artificially shielding her against bad 
 books and evil persuasions, you shut her out from that 
 knowledge of the human heart which is her only real and 
 effectual protector. Thus you give her a one sided view of 
 life and cause her to be misled with dangerous half-truths. 
 You weaken her understanding by depriving it of a large 
 portion of its needful subject matter. You put beyond her 
 reach those materials out of which she could construct a 
 lamp wherewith to safely guide herself in the midst of 
 shadows, and in those desolate places where there is 
 no one to put her in the right way, or defend her against the 
 thousand and one dangers of a lying, corrupt, and violent 
 world. You find her weak and you prefer to keep her weak. 
 Strange and unnatural taste ! For there is no virtue in 
 
z8o The Natural Right to Freedom* 
 
 weakness, and strength is born nowhere outside the risk and 
 competition of freedom, By your silly paternal protection 
 you deprive her of a large and most requisite portion of 
 truth ; for there is no truth the knowledge of wh i 'ch is not 
 also a strength. If, by your external tinkering, you could 
 alter the human heart, there might be some excuse for your 
 conduct. But this you know you cannot do ; and yet you 
 do not scruple to try to deprive weakness of that heart- 
 knowledge which is its only real protection : you take away 
 its eyes, and then thrust it adrift in the midst of a rock-girt 
 stormy sea. Don't you see that woman, like man, needs to 
 know as much of human nature as she possibly can ; if only 
 to enable her to protect herself against her self-constituted 
 and hypocritical protectors ; infallible and perfect as these 
 last always pretend to be. Your method is as short-sighted 
 as it can well be. By your drastic measures you frighten, let 
 us say, the unprincipled man so much, that he neither opens 
 his mouth to seduce, nor plies his pen in the production of 
 bad books. Why, it is the very worst thing you could do. If 
 you had only let htm alone he would have discovered him- 
 self. Everybody would have been able to know who and 
 what he was, and what he had living inside Inm. He would 
 have hung out his own danger signal, and all who loved 
 peace would have carefully shunned him as a very pestilence 
 of sin and wickedness. Thus he would have found his own 
 level and have been known by all the world for what he 
 really was. But, by your short-sighted legal bullying, you 
 force him to play the hypocrite, you encourage him to hide 
 his innate sinfulness until such time as he is able to get 
 power behind it ; and thus, by infinite cunning, he is able to 
 pass with his unchanged heart into the very citadel of your 
 power. By means of the same crafty tricks which, at most, 
 would only have enabled him to seduce a few morally weak 
 women, write a few bad novels, or paint a few objectionable 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom, 281 
 
 pictures, he is able to cheat the whole body of electors, and 
 thus become possessed of a power that he is absolutely 
 certain to abuse. In this way he becomes a "protector," a 
 wolf set to look after the sheep, an Angelo or a Judge 
 Williams, condemning and lusting after that which he con- 
 demns. A really splendid result of force, is it not ? Yet 
 every despotism does and must exemplify it. For it is a law 
 of human life that wrong increases wrong, and that only by 
 right can wrong ever be overcome. All aggressive force of 
 this kind is a species of lying. It says : " This evil is in 
 human nature, but human nature shall not know anything 
 about it. We will carefully hide it away. Only our own 
 perfect and uncorruptable souls shall see it." My dear sir, 
 truth will not be hidden away in this pharisaical and 
 cowardly manner, and the attempt to cover it up by means 
 of a practical lie only poisons and degrades your own soul. 
 It is there, within you, and out it will come when you least 
 expect and desire it. Meet it boldly in the open : it cannot 
 prevail over anything that is worthy and noble. Liberty at 
 least reveals the truth, though that truth may oftimes be hard 
 and bitter to bear. But protective force tries to hide away 
 this truth, this only hint and warner of the bogs and quick- 
 sands of life, this stern god that moral cowards dare not look 
 upon and live. Yet force cannot destroy or change this 
 truth. The result is that, while ostensibly protected, the 
 weak are really left helpless ; utterly devoid of the inner light 
 of eternal reality, and therefore passion-led and ready at any 
 moment to fall headlong into the very trap that the He of 
 force is professedly intended to save them from. Thus are 
 they cheated and misled ; and in the place where they are 
 told to look for protection, they come only to find evil 
 flourishing with greater power and authority than ever. 
 
 "They are not careful considerers of human things," 
 wrote one that was no encourager of vice, " who imagine to 
 
282 The Natural Right to Freedom, 
 
 remove sin by removing the matter of sin. Though ye take 
 from a covetous man his treasure, he has yet one jewel left, 
 ye cannot bereave him of his covetousness, Banish all 
 objects of lust, shut up all youth into the severest discipline 
 that can be exercised in any hermitage, ye cannot make 
 them chaste that came not thither so. Suppose we could 
 expel sin by this means; look how much we thus expel of sin, 
 so much we expel of virtue. And were I the chooser, a 
 dram of well-doing should be preferred before many times 
 as much the forcible hindrance of evil-doing. For God sure 
 esteems the growth and completing of one virtuous person 
 more than the restraint of ten vicious." 
 
 As a case of unwarrantable interference with the freedom ' 
 of the press, take the foolish attempt to suppress " The 
 children of Adam" in WALT. WHITMAN'S Leaves of Grass. 
 This portion of the book was deemed by "competent 
 judges " to be unfit for the general public to read. Why ? 
 Because the reading of it would be likely to inflame hnman 
 passions. Of course " competent judges " have no passions ; 
 they cannot be contaminated ; but ordinary mortals like you 
 and I can. We are poor, weak, fallible creatures : competent 
 judges are not : they are the pure in heart ; and it must be 
 confessed that they look like what they are. " The children 
 of Adam " would send you down the broad road to 
 destruction : it would not hurt a government official ! 
 Social equality in modern Democracy ! " The mother and 
 her equal brood ! " Admire the equality, my dear comrade ! 
 it is a fair sample of what your official nurses would allow 
 under the social democratic State. They might treat the 
 bellies all alike though that's doubtful but they would 
 think twice before applying the same rule to the minds. 
 Expediency would come in here. If people got too wise 
 the whole official system might collapse, and if such an 
 event were to happen all the laws of Nature would cease to 
 
7 he Natural Right to Freedom. 283 
 
 exist ; the universe would come to an end forthwith. 
 
 Yet, looking at the question seriously, where is the real 
 gain in suppressing this morbid bit of poetry ? this sensual 
 Gloat of an unnatural mind; this trailing of art through the 
 dense mists of the stews ; this poetic phallic worship of 
 pleasure as an end apart from duty : this double distilled 
 essence of all the sensual gluttony, the coarse gorgeings and 
 stuffings and lickings, of whole generations of that low herd 
 of two-legged pigs called demos or democracy ? A tempta- 
 tion is removed out of the way, the truth about a particular 
 man's nature is hidden; the morally weak are kept for a little 
 longer on their legs : but the exercise ground of virtue, 
 scope for the play of moral judgments, of right and natural 
 preferences, is proportionately curtailed : there is more 
 external conformity but less internal strength. Nay, even 
 this needs qualifying. The temptation is not really removed. 
 -It is only transfered from the general public to the official 
 bureau : that is, to the most corrupt and easily tempted 
 crew in the whole community. Do you think they won't 
 amuse themselves with it, thinking it all the more pleasant 
 because forbidden ? Do you think they won't talk about it 
 to their friends, or even smuggle away a copy for their 
 favourite mistresses to read ? Don't you see that your 
 " suppression " means the pouring of a ton of filth into what 
 ought to be a fountain of social purity ? The disease is 
 driven from the skin to the heart, from where it can be seen 
 and avoided to where it cannot be seen, and therefore 
 cannot be avoided. Magnificent remedy ! If left exposed 
 to the free air of criticism it works itself out : truth over- 
 throws it : but your "suppression" keeps it in, and puts it 
 where truth cannot get at it. Is this the way to preserve 
 the " social" organism " in a healthy state ? Why ! you are 
 only making bad worse. You are soiling the hands of your 
 own nurse. The infallible directors of conventional morals 
 
284 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 read another exciter of their unbitted passions ; that is to 
 say, their lust for flesh is added to their lust for power. A 
 great gain, is it not ? The morally weak outsiders are 
 possibly for a time shielded from the last straw which would 
 have broken their rotten backs, and so have enabled their 
 friends to find out a little sooner what they were really made 
 of. A foul-minded poet is expurgated and made to appear 
 what he is not. He professed to be a lover of Nature. But 
 " the children of Adam " prove him to have been a lover of 
 pervertion ; an admirer of the unnatural abuse of Nature's 
 means of racial continuance, in the passionate worship of 
 pleasure as an end in itself, that is to say, as something more 
 than a mere motive or hint towards the rational performance 
 of natural functions and the intelligent service of natural law. 
 He wrote about the excess-created excitements of these 
 irrationally-used means of racial continuance, just as a 
 glutton might rave over the pleasures of his poor abused 
 stomach, or as a wine bibber would dilate on the tastes of 
 his artificially-stimulated palate. He dealt with part of a 
 natural process as if it were distinct from the whole.* He 
 
 * This is absolutely certain in the case of his poem to a prostitute, 
 where he indulges in a ghastly gloat over the pleasure he imagines him- 
 self about to get at the expense of the health and strength of this poor 
 unnatural creature. He may have been a poet : he was certainly not a 
 man. Said one who had more knowledge of human nature in his little 
 finger than this wretched spawn of Democracy had in his whole body : 
 
 " Call it not love, for Love to heaven is fled, 
 
 Since sweating Lust on earth usurp' d his name : 
 Under whose simple semblance he hath fed 
 
 Upon fresh beauty, blotting it with blame ; 
 Which the hot tyrant stains, and soon bereaves, 
 As caterpillars do the tender leaves. 
 " Love comforteth, like sunshine after rain, 
 
 But lust's effect is tempest after sun : 
 Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain, 
 
 Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done. 
 Love surfeits not ; lust like a glutton dies : 
 Love is all truth ; lust full of forged lies. 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom 285 
 
 isolated the beginning from the end, the seed from the fruit, 
 the love from the duty that naturally grows out of it. He 
 knew so little about Nature that he imagined an organ to 
 exist rather for special excitement, than for the general, 
 calm, and constant health which comes with the rational use 
 of each separate part of the human system for its true and 
 natural function. In sexual matters he preached the false 
 philosophy of living to eat, instead of the true philosophy of 
 eating to live. If he had rapturized over people who used 
 their eyes for some other function than seeing and their ears 
 for some other function than hearing, the world would have 
 seen through all the unnatural falseness of him ; for then he 
 would have appealed to the supreme and only worthy human 
 attribute, viz., reason : but he preferred to appeal to what is 
 the infirmity of reason, namely, passion ; and he prostituted 
 the poetic art in an unprincipled attempt to undermine what 
 little natural virtue stills struggles to live among men. Of 
 course there here comes in the lust-worshipper's paltry 
 excuse that poetry should deal in everything. No it should 
 not. It should not deal in lies. Truth is the highest, and 
 before it every form of art must bow. The beautiful is the 
 true, and the true alone the beautiful ; therefore all sound 
 art is moral, is the expression of immutable laws and eternal 
 principles, is a vehicle of the light that shall never go out, 
 and which to know is peace. When the poet dresses out 
 pleasure as if it were higher than duty, he lies against the 
 nature of things, he stulifies and degrades his own art, he 
 mocks at the reality that gave him life. Every organ in the 
 human body has a definite function; and when any organ is 
 used for either more or less than its true function, it is grossly 
 abused, all the pleasure-seekers in the world to the contrary 
 notwithstanding. The end of life is not sensual pleasure, 
 but peace, tranquility, blessedness ; harmonious oneness 
 with the universal order : is dwelling in the white cloudless 
 
286 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 calm which comes from following duty. The summum 
 bonum is not fire, but light : not passion, but reason. And 
 those who understand and obey Nature rightly become free 
 from all this poetically gilded lust; for they then see that love 
 is reason, is the joy of knowing the abstract, is the bound of 
 the soul at the recognition of Nature's perfect uniformity : 
 in this manner they rise far above all unhealthy excitements 
 of the flesh and dwell continually in the stormless constancy 
 of her never changing laws. Such intellectual love WHITMAN 
 failed to represent : it was foreign to his low corrupt nature. 
 His book is the sensual language of democracy set to music. 
 It is the song which a devil sings to the many who go down 
 the broad road to national destruction. In one shape or 
 another the filth of sensuality is on nearly all that WHITMAN 
 wrote. He cannot even walk through the spring woods 
 without lusciously tasting the steam and wet of the leaves. 
 He is in the universe at large just what, low bred people are 
 in a cook-shop. One after another he lifts the various 
 natural objects to his tongue, and then loudly gushes over 
 the separate flavour of each. His descriptions of natural 
 scenery, when compared with those of a refined nature like 
 SHELLEY, sound little better than the slobberings of a pig 
 beside the song of a nightingale. He is vulgarity gushing 
 forth in rythm. He is the life of the body raised above the 
 life of the intellect. He is reason sacrificed to sensation. 
 He does not mentally enjoy the universe as a calm, rational, 
 and intellectual being should, standing always erect on his 
 feet, and with the sunlight of truth playing around him : he 
 runs about on all fours, licking, tasting, and sloaming over 
 everything. He gushes about his unmanly feelings much in 
 the same spirit as some greedy creature of the slums, who 
 dips into the treacle jar, and then exclaims with rapture 
 " Oh my ! ain't it delicious ! " With other poets sensuality 
 is part of the necessary expression of a many-sided truth : 
 
7 he Natural Right to Freedom. 287 
 
 with WHITMAN it is the plot of the play, the very body and 
 substance of nearly all that he wrote. Well might one of his 
 blind and sentimental admirers say that when she read him 
 his words roused such strong feelings in her that for the 
 moment her heart almost seemed to cease beating. Glorious 
 tribute to the intellectual strength of both poet and admirer ! 
 A mere sensationalist at best he was : a teacher and type of 
 that unnatural sham "the modern man." He may fitly 
 stand for the poet of Democracy, tarred with its filthy brush, 
 and all the music and rythm in the world cannot hide his 
 coarse and innate morbidness. In short, " The children of 
 Adam " prove all his parade about Nature to have been but 
 one hollow sham, and show him up as a mere whitewasher 
 of corruption, a devil's advocate, a gloater over flesh for its 
 own sake, a low grovelling unclean soul, a poet who knew 
 less of Nature and of the moral purity which is one with 
 Nature, than does many a poor and uneducated Irish girl, 
 who, though living in the barest possible surroundings, and 
 knowing nothing of the fine arts of a false civilization, yet 
 keeps the peace of purity in her soul and the joy of health in 
 her body. 
 
 The Children of Adam is probably the most unprincipled 
 attempt to gild and decorate an infernal lie, in such a 
 manner as to make it look like an eternal truth, that the 
 wickedness of the human heart has yet sunk down to. The 
 theory upheld and expressed in this low class of literature, 
 is as false and bad as it can possibly be ; as contrary to the 
 dictates of right reason, as passion is contrary to peace. 
 Yet you cannot afford to forbid or persecute it; such a 
 course is not merely unjust, but also highly inexpedient : for the 
 more you treat it thus, the more sympathisers and adherents 
 will you be gaining for sin. The public will naturally think you 
 are afraid of what you feel to be true. Adopt a wiser expe- 
 dient. Follow a bolder course. You need not fear that such 
 
288 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 a monstrous theory will ever ultimately prevail against reason. 
 The worthiest people will always despise it. All the wisest 
 and noblest sons of men have ever seen through and exposed 
 this foul and diabolical lie, and all the truth and wisdom yet 
 to be will but confirm that which has gone before. 
 Let the morbid sin of sensuality be painted in any colours 
 that the vicious please, and the soul of man will still recog- 
 nize the falseness of it ; the shameful individual degradation 
 and the certain racial extinction to which it inevitably leads. 
 The law of man's being is not sensual pleasure, but right 
 reason. This he is slowly but surely coming to see, and 
 nothing that these foul-minded poetsand novelists can produce 
 will in the least degree be able to alter the general course of 
 human progress. Upon the irrational life of the flesh the 
 eternal has pronounced continual extinction. Man does not 
 live by agreeable feelings but by supreme reason ; by 
 the peace of its holy purity. For him there is no 
 good distinct from duty. To revel in ail manner of 
 sensual pleasures; to run about the universe as WHITMAN 
 pictures, always thirsting after everything ; with lolling tongue 
 licking up all the sweet dust and ashes that lie in one's 
 path: smacking lips and crying with this wretched poet 
 Oh! Oh! Oh! continually; to lusciously enjoy, dwell upon, 
 and constantly gloat over the seductive sins of the flesh: in 
 a word, to soak the soul in the stickey reason-drowning sugar 
 of an aesthetic materialism this ideal of life is no more 
 likely to finally prevail than the solar system is likely to 
 break up into ten thousand separate pieces. It cannot 
 prevail ; and for the simple reason that the entire teaching 
 and tendency of things is against it. The key note of Nature 
 is not this luscious enjoyment : at is quiet obedience to the 
 laws of things; it is the right and rational use of each and 
 every part of the human system in the service of the whole 
 universe: that is to say, in such a manner as to work in 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 289 
 
 rational harmony with that vast cosmic order of which this 
 short human life is but one of the infinitissimal fragment. 
 
 When looked at in the light of scientific truth Nature 
 does not say "follow your lusts and sensually enjoy yourself." 
 She speaks the stern, cold language of stoicism, and protests 
 alike against all the needless sociability, the gross sensuality, 
 and the unprincipled utilitarianism of all the different varieties 
 of a degraded modern epicureanism. She says " Follow 
 your reason and mortify your passions. You cannot serve 
 two masters. You must either walk up 'to the light or down 
 to the darkness. You no more than other creatures can 
 stand still. Always reason and never sensuality is the 
 condition of your forward progress. It may weU be, as these 
 debased sensualists are never tired of repeating, that mind 
 and body are in the most intimate correspondence 
 [The grand plea of WHITMAN'S admirers] ; but this fact 
 is no excuse for sin, rather is it the best of all possible 
 reasons for avoiding sin. With a rational being, the life 
 that is lived - T /Vj the flesh, ought never to be lived for the 
 flesh: since this sin against the light means the contracting 
 of habits which make flesh master and reason slave, drag 
 heaven down to hell, and so bring to ignominy the only 
 god-like attribute of man. The closer the connection 
 between body and mind, the greater the need for so disci- 
 plining the former that it may be a quiet and obedient 
 servant to the latter and so absolutely under the control of 
 the divinity that dwells within it. The true and lasting 
 interest of man, as man, as a rational animal, is not an 
 effeminate and degrading slavery to pleasure, but life-long 
 service to the dictates of right reason. Let him love the 
 light and hate the fire. The two are never indistinguishable. 
 There is an unchangeable right and an unchangeable wrong 
 -n the world which no accidents of time and place can ever 
 
290 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 alter. Never is it right to love sensual pleasure; neither to 
 love anything except duty, or the part that reason points out 
 for the soul to perform in my universal order. Under no 
 circumstances, for example, is it right to lie, because never is 
 it to the true interest of an intellectual being to wilfully 
 misrepresent what dwells within itself: there is always the 
 choice of silence; and the momentary peace of faithfulness 
 to inner reality is greater than endless years stained with so 
 much as a single falsehood; greater than life either for self 
 or others. Be as catholic as you like in what reason 
 approves, but never for a moment countenance what it 
 condemns. For you, as a chooser between what makes for, 
 and what makes against, the purity and strength of your 
 own reason, there is and must always be a lower and a 
 higher, a moral and an immoral course cf conduct. All acts 
 are not profitable to a rational soul. Nothing is profitable 
 except reason and the peace that obedience to reason gives. 
 The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing, 
 nor the heart with loving, nor the mind with understanding. 
 But only is their satisfaction in the reason which passes 
 understanding; only is there peace in the divine flash of 
 intuition, which not merely sees that things are, but sees 
 also the invariable laws that things exemplify; and in so 
 doing partakes of the perfect, everlasting harmony of my 
 eternal being. This rational harmony is greater than plea- 
 sure, and that it may grow from strength to strength, from 
 height to height, and from glory to glory, is the only worthy 
 object in human life. This is the intellectual crown of 
 manhood; and to minister unto this exist all sensations and 
 all mere objects of sense : for the whole sensible world is 
 but as an altar whereon the white light of reason may gleam ; 
 pure, calm, and free from every shadow of lust and passion. 
 Therefore, if you would possess much of this calm, live ever 
 in the present recognition of my laws. Never worship the 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 291 
 
 low herd's gross lust of sensual pleasure. Sensuality is 
 not natural to you. It is an infirmity that has been thrust 
 upon you by generations of base, corrupt and irrational 
 human beings. But for the wilful sins a self-accursed race, 
 you might always have lived in my changeless calm; but for 
 a miserable and hypocritical society's devilish disobedience of 
 natural -laws, you might be one with me in all things. But 
 for generations of gluttons, drunkards, liars, and adulterers, 
 your nature might be as perfect and free from passion as 
 mine is. But for disobedience to the dictates of right-reason, 
 there would be no sin, and no misery the child of sin. 
 There would be something better than the fleeting pleasures 
 of this low, corrupt, vanity-seeking herd ; for there would be 
 perfect inner strength and peace, unbreakable and eternal 
 harmony like unto mine. Therefore [and here let it be 
 remembered that we are only expressing what, whether rightly 
 or wrongly, seems to us to be the plain teaching of Nature to 
 each one of her children] I say to you, ignore the crafty devices, 
 and lies, and hypocracy of others: let no mocking mask of flesh 
 come between you and my peace: follow my laws: slave not 
 to please a bad, rotting social world ; but live to know and 
 obey my truth : and this long lost peace you shall again find. 
 " Be pure and free within, and entangle not thy heart 
 with any creature" For in your relation to me lies the 
 only real and never-deceiving comradeship. In me there is 
 no mockery, or flattery, or falsehood. I never change and 
 my strength is always sufficient for duty. Who lives to me 
 as to his all, is warmed within with the fire of my eternal youth : 
 his soul does not grow old, and the pure unalloyed happiness 
 of childhood never departs from him. See what I have done 
 for you ! By an endless process of evolution, reaching down 
 infinitely deeper than this base human herd, I have given 
 you the possibility of freedom and self reliance, in so forming 
 your true nature that it can never, without your own consent, 
 
292 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 become the rrental slave of other minds, that is to say, led 
 by mere external opinion, and so made to swallow all 
 the foolery that cunning knaves are only too ready to 
 thrust down the gaping throats of the general herd. I have 
 given you a separate mind and a. separate body, thus well 
 walling in your soul against the hate and meanness of 
 everybody; against the worst that others can either say 
 or do. For no power in all the wide universe can make 
 you stain your soul with a lie, or compel you to believe 
 anything that appears to be contrary to the reason that I 
 ave given you. Therefore obey my laws; be brave with 
 my strength; present a front of iron to the canting crowd: 
 this is your duty: this is the part 'you are naturally adapted 
 to play as a soldier in the battle of time; soon for you to be 
 closed in the sleep of eternity : and thus you shall give to 
 yourself a joy that nothing external can either impart or 
 destroy. I am your general, speaking to you through the 
 voices of reason and of conscience the capitalized wealth of 
 reason. To obey my orders is no difficult matter, it requires 
 only the patient use of your own faculties in the service of your 
 own true interest as a rational animal; for your own personal 
 interest and the obedience of my laws are inseparably and 
 eternally one. Therefore eschew all luxuries and with them 
 every form of sensual pleasure. Never eat for the sake of 
 eating, or drink for the sake of drinking: clothe only for 
 health: never follow bodily appetite for its own sake: but 
 have a conscience satisfying reason for all that you do, 
 and bend all things in the service of reason ; that is to say, 
 in obedience to the clear recognition of my laws. It is 
 amply enough if you just keep body and soul together until 
 I require to take them back into myself. This is both 
 natural duty and natural piety combined, and all beyond 
 this is sin, not only against the harmony of my universal 
 order but also against your own interest as a rational portion 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 293 
 
 of that order. Every sensual pleasure is wrong; for it 
 injures the true and essential nature of a rational being, and 
 defiles the inner purity of reason's habitation. Live to 
 make your body content with simple and easily obtained 
 objects, and your mind reconciled to the truth of my 
 unchanging laws. Have I not given you the sunlight and 
 the air, the woods and fields and streams, the rocks and 
 seas, the contrasts of night and day, of summer and winter ? 
 have I not covered the floor of your dwelling place with 
 flowers, hung its roof with gleaming fires, varied its unifor- 
 mity with the glories of sunrise and sunset and mingled 
 with its music the peaceful stillness of dawn and twilight ? 
 These riches are free; without money and without price. 
 What is all that men have ever done for you, compared with 
 what I have done ? These sociable sycophants, abject slaves 
 to one another's fantastical tastes and shallow opinions, who 
 follow their passions, hate truth, and care not for me or my 
 laws : these base creatures are but as atoms in my immensity, 
 but as momentary sand builders in my infinity. What is 
 there amongst even their best products that is worth so 
 much as a glance in comparison with my beauty ? Their 
 highest and purest ideals are but imperfect pictures 
 of^vhat would be now if only my laws had always been obeyed. 
 Their grandest works of art grow old and fade like a 
 garment; all the gorgeous colouring lies at the mercy of 
 time : their temples, together with the creeds that are taught 
 in them, moulder into dust and are swallowed up in darkness : 
 all they can boast of is borrowed without acknowledgment 
 from me; and even while they hold it, it melts like snow in 
 their hands: they are always false and corrupt, but I am 
 trustworthy and real : my loveliness is everlasting : my youth 
 cannot fail : the joy of my impersonal presence never cloys. 
 Therefore look ever towards me and my peace : live without 
 passions in order that your mind may always be clear and 
 
294 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 brisk to recognize my laws; for the strength that comes from 
 me is only to be possessed by those who in all things are 
 guided by reason. Subdue lust : renounce sensual pleasure: 
 and my peace shall come and dwell within you. You shall 
 be gathered into my universal harmony, you shall live and 
 move as one with me in all things; and the white passionless 
 calm of my everlasting light shall be with you and remain with 
 you always. What is there that a false, heartless, and corrupt 
 social world can give you in the place of this ? Not as man's 
 restless vanities. and trumpery shows give, do I give unto 
 thee : these paltry and unreal things come and go with fortune? 
 and all who love them live and die the miserable bond- 
 slaves of time: but the peace that is obtained by obedience 
 to my laws, is absolutely secure : like my own perfect exist- 
 ence, it transcends time, and no power either in heaven 
 or on earth shall ever destroy or mar its beauty." 
 
 Such is and has ever been the plain teaching of Nature, 
 both through reason and conscience, that " seed of reason 
 planted in every race of men." 
 
 " Age to age with hoary wisdom 
 
 Speaketh thus to men." 
 
 Against this universal truth neither literary obscenity nor 
 other forms of modern corruption will finally prevail. "This 
 is natural reason itself, encompassed about with great dark- 
 ness yet still retaining power to discern the difference 
 between good and evil, true aud false, although it be unable 
 to fulfil all that it appro veth, and enjoy eth no longer the full 
 light of the truth, nor soundness of its own affections." 
 
 If ever there was a case for suppression, The Children of 
 Adam was certainly one. But suppression even in this 
 extreme instance would have been both wrong and impolitic. 
 It would have shut out the knowledge of a truth; for though 
 WHITMAN, a professed lover of natural truth, undoubtedly 
 Sang up a foul and unnatural lie, yet it is true that he did 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 295 
 
 so; and to know how he did this is a truth that must in the 
 long run make for righteousness, since truth cannot be the 
 enemy of truth. Let us face every truth, and fear not. 
 Successful suppression would only have resulted in preven- 
 ting the world at large from knowing what WHITMAN really 
 was and what devil he had burning inside him. Each human 
 mind (if such a metaphor may be allowed) is of a certain 
 average temperature, ranging from the starlit calm, the perfect 
 stillness of eternity, down to the raging fires of passion's 
 hell, where the worm of insatiable lust writhes in ceaseless 
 agony. We now know in what circle of the inferno to class 
 the great prophet of modern Democracy. Let all who 
 admire him wallow in his mud, and thirst continually after 
 his " jellies " and u roots " and all those other fleshy idols 
 which he had not the pluck even to call by their right 
 names; so utterly degraded and unnatural did he instinc- 
 tively feel his foul poetical gloat to be.* There is no need 
 to suppress him: he suppresses himself. Although a liar 
 against nature, he is still a truth so far as he represents the 
 type of some of her worst and most corrupted specimens. 
 It is well to see and know these specimens. There is no 
 wisdom in compelling the devil to hide his cloven foot. 
 Nothing is more dangerous than an expurgated, respecta- 
 blized, and whitewashed devil. Let us not be so foolish as 
 to drive the goats into the necessity of appearing as sheep. 
 By just so much as you suppress the exhibition of literary 
 obscenity, so much do you prevent the outward manifesta- 
 
 * "Why not use milder expressions?" Bad teaching can only be 
 exposed in strong words. Where there is freedom to teach evil, there 
 must be equal freedom to denounce evil. What would the founder of 
 Christianity have said if he could have read the Children of Adam. It 
 was to destroy the evil over which this bad poet gloats, that he lived 
 and suffered and died. In this sense he bore, as all noble natures have 
 born, the burden of that wickedness which such people as Whitman 
 seek to make heavier for others yet to come. The powers of language 
 fail to brand these people as they deserve. Hell is too good for them. 
 
296 The Natural Right to Freedom 
 
 tion of Nature's infinitely varied truth. If such evil dwelt 
 within the mind of WHITMAN, the same may dwell inside the 
 minds of others. A wise man, who trusts in themvinciblepower 
 of truth, will be only too glad for his friends to see this evil. 
 It cannot hurt what is good, and what is not good deserves 
 no artificial protection. The power of men and women to 
 live well is solely dependent upon their clear perceptions of 
 the facts and laws of the inner and outer universe. Now 
 human wickedness is a part of the universe. Therefore 
 people will be liable to be weak in proportion as they are 
 shut out from a knowledge of this wickedness. Innocence 
 is not strength. Exemption fum temptation is not virtue. 
 Mental cowardice is not the blessedness of the pure in heart. 
 Therefore we say to the coercionists Have a more robust 
 faith in freedom. Genuine virt .ie has no fear, and no evil 
 that ever was or ever will be can destroy it. There is not a 
 single aspect of human depravity that it may not freely look 
 at, and grow yet stronger with looking. In fact, temptation 
 is the indispensible condition of its development ; and will 
 ever remain so, until it arrives at that height of perfection 
 when duty is all in all, when the right path is never 
 departed from, and when, therefore, by the pure only those 
 things are desired which are pure. True knowledge is no 
 enemy to true virtue, and nothing that lies without, or in the 
 mind of another, can of itself corrupt a healthy mind. So that 
 there need be no fear, however the wicked may scheme and 
 burn and rage. These last fight in the darkness of passion, 
 but virtue strikes in the light of reason. She dwells aloft, 
 always impregnable on the eternal rock of truth. This high 
 citadel of moral purity no hnman power will ever take; for 
 there is no external force in all the wide universe that can 
 compel the mind to voluntarily sin against itself. Violence 
 and frauds, flattering lies and gilded lusts cannot enter there. 
 Within this sphere nothing that defiles will ever be able to 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 297 
 
 come. Here dwells the perfect peace which saints call 
 heaven. Here is the inner eye, the spotless lens, through 
 which truth's clear vision is seen. Hence, to the glance of 
 the healthy mind, the morbid sensationalisms of corrupt 
 writers show up in all their true proportions, foul and 
 distorted in nature but utterly powerless to mislead. Good 
 is stronger than evil, and it only needs a fair field and no 
 favour for ultimately achieving a perfect triumph over sin. 
 There is no wisdom in walling it in, or trying to shore it up 
 with useless laws. It can stand by itself. Let it be open 
 to all the breezes of heaven; aye, and of hell too. It cannot 
 be shaken. From the serene height of its own perfect 
 calm, the passion-freed soul may look on every one of this 
 world's truths and never suffer loss. This divine peace is 
 virtue, is the star-like crown of a well used liberty. And seen 
 from this eminence, all things, even those most foul and bad ; 
 all the heats and discords of time's unrestful dream ; become 
 as notes in a great hymn whose fulness fills eternity, and 
 blend like music with the perfect harmony of infinite reality. 
 In the white radiance that surrounds this throne there is no 
 shadow: here everything is viewed in its due proportions, 
 all misgivings vanish, and the world is seen to be the theatre 
 of an absolutely unerring justice : evil is found to exist only for 
 the minds that think it ; as one of the myriad forms of infinite 
 existence ; necessary to Nature's complete perfection ; and 
 unconsciously working well for ever. 
 
298 The Natural Right to Freedom, 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 NOW let us apply what has been said about WHITMAN 
 to one or two less objectionable books. Take Nana, 
 a book judged by the authorities to be unfit for public 
 circulation, and on that account recently suppressed. Now 
 it seems to us that every thoughtful person who read this 
 book will be bound to admit that, in spite of all its weari- 
 some nauseousness, it yet puts before the reader a class of 
 people whom it is an advantage to know something of. For 
 there can be little doubt that such people do really exist in 
 the world, and, therefore, to know the marks which distin- 
 guish them, is to possess the means of avoiding them. So 
 far as it accurately described these debased people ZOLA'S 
 book was useful. There is an advantage in being able to 
 see what sort of kites hover around one. This ZOLA tells 
 you without any sort of gloss or whitewash. He deals in 
 bad material, but at least he tells the truth about it. He 
 does not gush and gloat over it as WHITMAN does. He has 
 not become altogether rotten with the poison of Democracy. 
 Unlike the poet just dealt with (who evidently needs pickling 
 in thick ribbed ice for a few million years) he never loses 
 his head in an insane rant over low fleshy excitements. 
 He put's before the reader a lot of miserable people, who, 
 like the Socialists, Communists, and " Free " Lovers, are for 
 ever worrying about what does not belong to them, and what, 
 in the very nature of the case, can never peaceably be shared 
 out or enjoyed in common. These people are the sorriest 
 specimens of mutual covetousness that ever supplied matter 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 299 
 
 for novel writing. Yet however bad they may be, they 
 cannot do real harm ; for, the truth being told about them, 
 they serve as moral helots to all thinking readers. Our own 
 conviction is that a person may gain much tranquility of 
 mind through reading about such enslaved wretches. He 
 (or she) may be strengthened in the conviction that all flesh 
 is grass, and that for its own sake it is not worth the snap 
 of a finger. The getting rid of this illusion, this mutual- 
 admiration between the sexes, this miserable slavery to 
 particulars, to animated dust and potential ashes, is true 
 liberty, is freedom from passion, is peace. By telling im- 
 portant though disagreeable truths, ZOLA helps to put his 
 readers into a position for obtaining such a peace : and in 
 this world nothing is got for nothing. We cannot under- 
 stand how any sensible person can do otherwise than profit 
 from the reading of his books. He assists people to get 
 that moral strength which comes from grasping the nettle of 
 evil firmly, and there is no strength like this. Those who 
 have the moral power that comes from a clear knowledge 
 of sin, may laugh in face of all humanity; for then they can 
 never be swayed by either the beauty or the wit of any man 
 or of any woman. In clearly seeing both the evil and the 
 good of human life, they learn to know and love that grand 
 dispeller of every illusion, that breaker of every fleshy idol, 
 that damper of all sentimental cant and mutual admiration : 
 the truth, namely, that everything beyond duty is an infernal 
 iie, a snare that promises everything and gives nothing; a 
 primrose path to intellectual death in passion's hell. And 
 through this knowledge they become so at one with the 
 eternal granite of absolute reality, that nothing short of 
 omnipotence can either break or bend their souls. Thus 
 do they achieve that firm condition of wise, self-satisfied 
 calm, so well described by BUDDHA in these words 
 " Whosoever, either now or after I am dead> shall be a 
 
300 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 lamp unto himself and a refuge unto himself, betaking 
 himself to no external refuge, looking not to anyone besides 
 himself as a refuge, even he among my disciples shall 
 reach the very topmost height" It is at any rate concei- 
 vable that a thoughtful reader, so far from being injured 
 with reading Nana and similar books, might be led to make 
 the following profitable but unsociable reflections. "This 
 sort of thing will never agree with me. I love myself and 
 the calm of social freedom too well to mix up in a boiling 
 mess like this. .1 am no saint, but I believe in number one, 
 and number one says so long as you know how to keep 
 yourself pure and unspotted from the world, you are free: 
 you have the liberty and happiness of a natural and untamed 
 creature; "The Kingdom of God is within you": you live in the 
 inner calm of your own silent, eternal home : that from which 
 you came, and to which you are soon to return again, quietly 
 " bearing back the divine within you to the divine in the 
 universe." Is it worth while to destroy this peace for the 
 sake of a few toys of worthless dust, a few grins, a few smiles, 
 and a pack of lies? Which is the best: that which you give 
 to yourself, or that which others give to you? So long as 
 you rise above the lusts of the flesh the poisons distilled 
 and gratuitously presented to you by " dear fellow man," i.e. 
 by all the loving " brotherhood " that lived before you so 
 long as you do this, you have a joy that no woman and no 
 man, and no crowd of such can ever impart; no, not if you 
 loved and served them for eternity. You possess the 
 harmony of reason, the peace that passes understanding, the 
 silence that no chattering society of hypocrites can ever 
 break, and which outweighs the glory of kingdoms and of 
 empires, and of worlds. For if you know how to love 
 yourself, your very self, and not the empty soap bubbles 
 that others run so madly after, you shall never be alone, you 
 shall always stand in one with infinite reality, united in the 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom, 301 
 
 star-lit calm, the passionless, white and pure light which 
 others, by reason of their smoking passions, are seldom 
 permitted to see: the perfect impersonal peace which the 
 world calls God, and to which only after long ages of restless 
 hopes and fears shall it at last come into possession." 
 
 In suppressing such books as Nana the law hides away 
 some of truth's most useful moral lessons. Of this there is 
 no doubt. The good is here suppressed with the evil. For 
 never can a book be written so as to make the worse appear 
 the better reason. Passion is an evil in itself, a burning and 
 consuming flame. Dress it up in as many gorgeous colours 
 as you please, build around it the most magnificent palaces 
 that human imagination can conceive; yet is it still the same 
 worm that dieth not, the same fire that is not quenched. 
 Not even Mr. William Morris can make it look^beautiful. 
 You may put on it the mantle of pleasure, bu^can you make 
 it wear the robe of peace? No more than j^ou cari make 
 the inner angles of a triangle equal to three right angles. 
 The nature of things won't let you. The success of what is 
 evil in itself (that is, in a human mind) has never been 
 portrayed because it is impossible to portray it. The attempt 
 goes against the grain of reason, and every intelligent reader 
 sees through such a transparent lie the moment it is uttered. 
 As well try to create a fire without combustion, as seek to 
 palm off passion as an angel of light. The thing never has 
 washed and it never will. And writers like ZOLA knows the 
 laws of human nature too well to try on such a dodge. In 
 Nana, for example, the heroine is obliged to teach against 
 herself. She reveals the devils grin that fate always keeps 
 in pickle for those who " live for others " rather than for the 
 great ethical principles which flow from supreme reason. She 
 teaches the result of being too sociable. There, in 
 the final chapter, she lies on her death bed, broken 
 down with kindness to others, dying for the " service 
 
302 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 of man." She is alone. Where are all those "others." 
 What ! not one to hand her a drink of cold water ? 
 Bah ! they have got what they wanted. Sociability 
 is played out and of no further use; and now its elements 
 are hunting, and canting, and simpering, and grinning, and 
 lying, in fields and pastures new. She had no rational love 
 for herself, and they have none for her. She lose her self- 
 respect, became a practical communist, and she got the 
 reward which, in one form or another, every one who lives 
 for others, sooner or later does get : the laugh of the clay 
 idol that has been worshiped; the devil's grin: the stinging 
 mockery of a lying worthless world. Those who have loved 
 the world, feel this ; but on those who have not, it falls like 
 drops of rain on granite rocks. Virtue is its own reward; 
 rational self-love always pays itself. A man had better be 
 hated and despised of the whole world, than become the 
 poor broken down sentimentalist who lives for others, forgets 
 the laws of abstract reason, and does not even know how to 
 love himself. When self-love goes, when, that is, the service 
 of your own abstract reason goes, you are clean bankrupt, 
 the inside of you is ripped out, and at best you are become 
 but a poor puling milksop for every passing knave to grin 
 and nod at.. 
 
 Take Sappho ', a fruit also forbidden, and on that account 
 all the more hunted after and relished by those who collect 
 such stuff. For, regulate him as you will, the two legged pig 
 will always manage to find some kind of congenial garbage to 
 root his nasty snuffing nose in. In Sappho there is another 
 moral lesson. The poor deluded fool, the hero of the play, 
 who has had the misfortune to become enslaved by a very 
 seductive but rather too sociable piece of dust, stands (in 
 the last chapter) on the sea shore, watching his pretty painted 
 butterfly sail lovingly off with a former lover. There is the 
 devil's grin for him. It is inevitable. Passion must suffer. 
 
7 he Natural Right to Freedom. 303 
 
 Things have an indestr actable polarity: they will only work 
 together in one way; and for man nothing lower than reason 
 is in any sort of harmony or conformity with them. . Only 
 reason moves smoothly and peacefully through this world. 
 Only in so far as a man follows the dictates of his own 
 reason, of the god within him, does he here and now reach 
 perfect blessedness; absolute oneness with that of which 
 reason is the highest known expression. All things work 
 together for good with those that follow their own reason, 
 put duty first, ignore passion, aud cast all sentimental cant 
 about others to the four winds of heaven. 
 
 Now does any rational man believe that the great moral 
 truths of this world, the constantly verified conclusions of 
 all time, the inevitable and intuitive distinctions between 
 the divine peace of virtue and the miserable unrest of 
 oassion: does anyone really fear that these unshakeable 
 truths can be so much as pin-pricked, let alone overthrown, 
 by either the unmanly gushings of depraved poets or the 
 coarse obscenity of sensational romance writers ? AVhoever 
 dreads to look on any or all of the evil of this world, is 
 corrupt already; for the only strength of virtue is not 
 ignorance, but contempt for known vice. Let there be the 
 same freedom for immorality that there is for morality. Let 
 the sword of justice be held evenly between the two, in order 
 that both may do as they please, so long as neither prevents 
 the pleasing of the other. Let force be used to suppress 
 force, and moral example be employed to counterwork 
 immoral example. Those -who advocate any other course 
 distrust the light and fear the darkness. They prefer the 
 sham of conventionality to the jreality of nature. But those 
 who really love truth cannot fear liberty; for they know that 
 the latter is the indispensible condition of the former. Let 
 virtue and vice stand face to face: the former need never 
 dread a fair encounter. There is no need to turn passion 
 
 T 
 
304 Xhe* Natural Right to Freedom* 
 
 into a skulk, and thus add the vice of deceit to the vice of 
 lust. Fire burns safest in the open air. Let us all see and 
 know where it is. When once clearly viewed in the open, 
 it condemns itself. Restriction only gives it a false and 
 enticing glamour. " That which has so mnch fuss made 
 about it must be certainly very important, and is surely very 
 pleasant," such is the conclusion that force helps to 
 encourage. Suppression is a self-destructive policy, and it 
 must break down terribly in the end. It is the surest 
 possible proof of weakness in high places and helps to give 
 some colour of probability to that statement in The maiden 
 tribute of modern Babylon, that " Princes, Nobles, Judges, 
 Legislators, Magistrates, and Police are implicated in atro- 
 cious licentiousness." (Tnese saints make up the agency 
 of legal moral reform.) Only the weak minded try to hide 
 unpleasant truths about human nature. For they feel within 
 themselves a something that responds to the evil without 
 them. They are filled with combustable material and infla- 
 mable gas; hence they dread the presence of matches. 
 They are magnetic with tumultuous possibilities of vice; 
 therefore they dare not look on the magnets that would 
 be likely to attract them: consequently they judge others to 
 be as. weak as themselves, and the result is a repressive 
 system of foolish and short-sighted laws. They are morally 
 bankrupt; therefore, everybody else is in the same predica- 
 ment. They need walling in : consequently, so do all other 
 people. For is it not a great good to have the world filled 
 with morally weak because artificially protected saints? 
 Surely MILTON was in error when he wrote "As the state 
 of man now is; what wisdotq. can there be to choose, what 
 continuance to forbear without the knowledge of evil. He 
 that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and 
 seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and 
 yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true wayfaring 
 
The Natural' Right to Freedom. 305 
 
 Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, 
 unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees 
 her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal 
 garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. 
 Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring 
 impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial and trial 
 is by what is contrary. That virtue therefore which is but 
 a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the 
 utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is 
 but a blank virtue, not a pure; her whiteness is but an 
 excremental whiteness; which was the reason why our sage 
 and serious poet SPENSER, whom I dare be known to think 
 a better teacher than SCOTUS or AQUINAS, describing true 
 temperance under the person of GUION, brings him in with 
 his palmer through the cave of MAMMON, and the bower of 
 earthly bliss, that he might see and know, and yet abstain. 
 Since therefore the knowledge and survey of vice is in this 
 world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and 
 the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can 
 we more safely, and with less danger scout into the regions 
 of sin and falsity than by reading all manner of tractates 
 and hearing all manner of reason ? And this is the benefit 
 which may be had of books promiscuously read.* Truly, 
 these restless protectionists very loudly proclaim what kind 
 of infirmities they suffer from As a class they will assuredly 
 have their reward. For all human typeo that dare not look 
 on every side of truth, are doomed to slow but inevitable 
 extinction. Truth is to the mind what exercise is to the 
 body: those who are too weak to bear its full blaze will rot 
 
 * MILTON'S Areopagitica. In the words just following upon this 
 passage, Milton argues that if we mean to do away with the literary 
 occasion for vice, we must suppress the Bible, the writings of the 
 Ancient Fathers, the Classics, and a mass of other literature. The 
 argument is strong, but so obvious that there is no need to deal with 
 it here. 
 
306 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 off the face of the earth ; and the sooner they go the better. 
 For if the knowledge of vice, or the sight of evil example, 
 is calculated to break the moral back-bones pf these respec- 
 table shams; then, the more they are left to the tender 
 mercies of liberty, the quicker will the world be i id of its 
 useless encumbrances. The fiercer the fight in the moral 
 world, the greater the temptations offered to all, the mightier 
 and purer will be the moral and intellectual strength that 
 survives. Virtue, to be virtue, must be robust like the 
 valour of a true soldier; not weak with the weakness of 
 dangers officially removed, but invincible with the strength of 
 unshielded competition, and temptation fairly faced and 
 overcome in the open field. To fall in this battle is a clear 
 proof of unfitness to wear the crown of manhood, or to have 
 any part or lot in the freer and purer and stronger race that 
 is to be. 
 
 It is not virtue that these cowardly people feel to be in 
 danger, but the moral weakness that fears the sight and 
 knowledge of vice. It is not the true teaching that is likely 
 to suffer by freedom, but the showery hypocrites who have 
 not followed the true teaching. These people know that 
 temptation will find them out; and they don't want to be 
 found out; ti ey want to remain eminently " respectable." 
 Artificial virtue, ever in search of an equally artificial reputa- 
 tion, is always preaching down vice ; natural virtue is ever 
 content with itself: it knows that vice can never injure what 
 is genuine, and what is not genuine it does not deem to be 
 worth a special legal protection. Vice cannot undermine 
 true virtue: it only persuades those who want to be 
 persuaded. Unnaturalness can never outbalance natural- 
 ness. Where truth is, all lies break down, however cunningly 
 they may be decked out with toys and ornaments and silly 
 affectations. When men see the lie against nature placed 
 side by side with the truth of conformity to nature, they 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 307 
 
 know the difference between right and wrong ; between the 
 wicked and the virtuous of this world: they know that there 
 is a lower and a higher, however much these sensual minded 
 devils may grin and gloat and sneer. What, for example, 
 does all the beauty and all the knowledge, and all the 
 eloquence of an ASPASIA amount to when placed beside the 
 simple natural virtue of a VOLUMINA? Gilt and tinsel, paint 
 and powder, looking-glasses and presents ; and smiles of 
 flattering liars : and dust and dirt and ashes, and outside 
 sociability seeking to hide innate indestructible loneliness. 
 When nature appears the foul abusers of nature are undone. 
 Example breaks their spell far more effectually than any 
 amount of sympathy-creating punishment could ever do, 
 even though it should last until Doomsday. Who, let us 
 ask such shallow brained whitewashers of prostitution as 
 Mr. GRA.NT ALLEN: who, if he could choose, would not 
 rather be the son of an honest VOLUMINA than the 
 son of a filthy lying ASPASIA ? Which type of 
 character, by following natural duty and avoiding 
 unnatural sensuality, makes most for the future greatness 
 of the human race? Which adds most of strength 
 and real happiness to its own day and generation? Could 
 all the unnatural beauties, all the cultured mistresses and 
 clever prostitutes, that live, ever have lived, or ever will live, 
 consistently say anything so true and powerful in their 
 influence for good, as those words about her son CORIOLANUS 
 put by SHAKESPERE into the mouth of VOLUMINA, the 
 highest type of motherhood and the grandest woman in 
 literature, -"'When yet he was but tender-bodied, and the 
 only son of my womb; when, youth with comeliness plucked 
 all gaze his way; when, for a day of king's entreaties, a 
 mother should not sell him an hour from her beholding; 
 I, considering how honour would become such a person; 
 that it was no better than picture-like to hang by the wall, 
 
308 The Natural Right to Freedom* 
 
 if renown made it not stir, was pleased to let him seek 
 danger where he was like to find fame. To a cruel war I 
 sent him; from whence he returned, his brows bound with 
 oak. I tell thee, daughter, I sprang not more in joy at 
 first hearing he was a man-child, than now in first seeing he 
 had proved himself a man." When vice and virtue can 
 both be looked upon, when one is no more favoured than 
 the other, when both enjoy equal freedom, the former has 
 not a word to say for itself; it sees and knows itself to be 
 the lie it is. All the advantage it has is due to the 
 oppression that is put upon it by short sighted people, an 
 oppression which enables it to pose as injured virtue, and 
 thus appear to the shallow minded in the guize of an angel 
 of light. Legal bullying creates for it an amount of 
 sympathy that gives to it a strength far greater than the 
 force brought to bear against it. Let it alone, and it will 
 injure only itself, or at best what is only akin to itself. 
 Truth and virtue are secure against every possible attack 
 of vice, for the power of the latter is always weaker than 
 that of the former. What, for example, can all the evil 
 suggestions, all the passion-rousing romance, all the morbid 
 poetry, that ever has been or ever will be written, make 
 against the eternal truth of these thoughts on passion from 
 " The song Celestial " the " Mahabharata " of India. 
 
 Mighty of appetite, 
 
 Sinful and strong is this ! man's enemy ! 
 As smoke blots the white fire, as clinging rust 
 Mars the bright mirror, as the womb surrounds 
 The babe unborn, so, is this world of things, 
 Foiled, soiled, enclosed in this desire of flesh, 
 The wise fall, caught in it ; the unresting foe 
 It is of wisdom, wearing countless forms, 
 Fair, but deceitful, subtle as a flame. 
 
 Translated from the Sanscrit by EDWIN ARNOLD. 
 
7he Natural Right to Freedom. 309 
 
 The attempt to suppress only makes bad worse.* It adds 
 the vice of hypocritical secrecy to the vice of pruriency 
 You dictate to people what books they shall read and how 
 they shall personally conduct themselves, and they pay you 
 out by doing on the sly what is far less dangerous when 
 done openly. Don't you see that freedom from dictation 
 enables outward conduct to demonstrate what dwells inside 
 the heart, and thus forms the surest possible safeguard of 
 all real morality? Under liberty the wicked are known and 
 rejected by their fruits; but, in preventing them from showing 
 these fruits, in frightening their sins into holes and corners, 
 you destroy the only conditions of selection, and so make vice 
 and virtue appear equally respectable. As you cannot force 
 wickedness out of the heart, the next best thing is to allow 
 such freedom of conduct as will allow the heart to reveal its 
 own wickedness, which it will be sure to do if only let alone. 
 This state of things gives the maximum of safety in giving 
 the maximum of reality. But the " respectable " result of a 
 patent coercion system is at best only what the vulgar call 
 " top show," and all the same old vices are being carried on 
 with greater relish than ever underneath the deceitful surface 
 of outside conventionalism. The kind of stuff that you 
 prohibit is still read, and read with greater gusto and eager- 
 ness than before. Forbidden fruit is the sweetest always. 
 You stop, let us suppose, the open sale of a particular book. 
 But can you stop people talking about the subject matter 
 of which that book is made up ? Don't you see that you 
 are liable to drive what would pass off in the form of a 
 morbid literary feast, into a real and practical -evil. You 
 stop the outward flow of ideas towards distant and imagina- 
 tive objects, and, as a consequence, these ideas take an inner 
 direction towards near and unimaginative objects : thus 
 causing greater evil still. In other words, by preventing, the 
 ideal gratification of morbidness, you indirectly encourage 
 
310 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 its real gratification. Evidently you don't understand human 
 nature. If you did, you would see that these books are the 
 least evil channels through which its youthful infirmities can 
 be worked off. Let it read as many as it likes, and in this 
 manner it will get a knowledge of the evil that is in the 
 world, without at the same time necessarily becoming 
 enslaved to bad practical habits. Thus it will be able to 
 retain both moral purity and clearness of understanding; 
 knowledge of evil and indifference to evil; strength of mind 
 and health of body. 
 
 Again, can you hinder young people from wondering why 
 they should be forbidden from reading such books ? Can 
 you pass a law that will put down the morbid curiosity which 
 you have thus artificially raised? Don't you see you are 
 putting a fictitious value on worthless rubbish. You are 
 manufacturing a secret, and in so doing are inevitably 
 directing everybody's attention to it. You make a marvel 
 and a wonder of sin, and naturally everybody runs to see 
 what it is like. Better have treated it with silent contempt. 
 If you had shut your mouth it would have found its own 
 level in the world of things, and that: level would not have 
 been a very high one. But you, in your wisdom, prefer to 
 place it upon the highest pinnacle and advertisement of 
 notoriety. You come down on the " Fruits of Philosophy' 1 '' 
 and thus put the knowledge of the existence of such a book 
 before every man and woman, and every boy and girl, in the 
 land. For half a century before you made such a fool of 
 yourself, that book had scarcely sold at all; but directly you 
 ventured to put your finger upon it, directly you tried to 
 stop it from selling, it sold in thousands, nay, in tens of 
 thousands. Wise despot ! How well you understand human 
 nature ! You could not think of leaving your wife and 
 daughters at the mercy of truth, that is, of a knowledge of 
 the- evil that exists in the world. This would be unfair to 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 311 
 
 them. They might know too much about the facts and 
 laws of the social system in which they are obliged to live; 
 and the less they know of these facts and these laws, the 
 stronger, wiser, and more self reliant will they become. 
 Ignorance is power. Innocence is power. Knowledge and 
 understanding are weakness: sure and certain plungers in 
 every vice and in every crime. This is what you think. 
 Therefore as a respectable member of society you call upon 
 the government of the day to extend its protecting arm 
 round your family, in order that your household may be 
 kept artificially and conventionally pure. Why indeed 
 should not your moral property be specially protected from 
 temptation ? Surely its genuineness deserves every care. 
 No doubt the next move that you will make, will be to have 
 a law passed for " suppressing " all the young students who 
 visit your mistress's villa during your own loving perfor- 
 mance of family duties. For ought not all your property 
 to be kept equally free from tarnish? Conventionality, you 
 know, is the thing. Brass is not gold, but it does very well 
 to " keep up appearances." Unfortunately, however, it 
 won't always retain its colour. And neither will your legaily 
 protected family. For want of moral exercise, through lack 
 of opportunity to distinguish between good and evil, its 
 moral muscles will relax and run to waste ; its unsharpened 
 intellectual guard will rust and sleep ; its power of moral 
 discrimination will die slowly away: und just when you think 
 you have made everything safe, your wife will run off with 
 your dearest friend while your daughter elopes with the 
 coachman. 
 
 My dear Sir, the truth is that what you want is a law 
 which shall be able to change the human heart, and no 
 government can put such a contrivance together. You know 
 well enough that this is the root of all evil, and that, in spite 
 of the silly and shallow sentimentalisms about the natural 
 
312 The .Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 goodness of humanity, it is deceitful above all things and 
 desperately wicked. Yet it improves in proportion as you 
 allow it more freedom. It is frequently conquered by 
 justice and loyal respect for freedom, but never by force. 
 My dear Sir, get rid of this superstitious worship of force. 
 You will find that you have sufficient to do to morally direct 
 your own life. Is it not enough if you yourself are pure ? 
 Why should you worry about the purity of your wife and 
 family, or of your noble mistress ? That is their business, 
 not yours. Their conduct cannot hurt you: and your 
 conduct cannot hurt them. Only what is in the soul injures 
 the soul. Up-grown persons are not responsible to you: 
 you are not God Almighty. Why do you fear? Is not 
 your example, combined with the unanswerable arguments 
 and solemn wisdom that constantly fall from your lips, 
 enough to outweigh the influence of any number of bad 
 books, or seductive but wicked men ? Have you no moral 
 force in yourself ? or can you only carry on " home rule " 
 by means of the indirect helps of the common informer ? 
 Evidently this is the very sad state of the case, or why this 
 helpless, puling cry for law ? Your plea is your own confes- 
 sion. You are not respected. You have no persuasive 
 power. You cannot rule by the noble force of intellectual 
 and moral greatness. There is no god dwelling within 
 your soul; therefore you reign only by permission of the 
 devil of external coercion. Your empire won't last. Your 
 family instinctively know you for the humbug you are. 
 You live in a nest of conventional lies. You are cheated 
 and deceived continually. The members of your household 
 are always glad when they see the back of you. They like their 
 prison best when its jailor is away. Their love is hypocrisy. 
 Their caresses are simply the hard mechanical grinding of 
 dust against dust. Their endearing words are wind and 
 smoke merely. They would be glad to see you dead and 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 313 
 
 buried, if only they were sure you would leave them plenty 
 to live upon. For instinctively they know you to be a 
 miserable coward that dare not face the risks of trutk and 
 freedom; and although they may not be able to put what 
 they feel into intelligible words, yet somehow it gets 
 expressed indirectly; it weighs you and condemns you as 
 you deserve. You love power better than freedom, force 
 better than trust; and like all tyrants you are cursed with 
 the doubts and fears that tyranny always brings. You 
 cannot square your interest with truth, therefore you think 
 that tiuth ought to be squared with your interest. You 
 cannot bear the. full blaze of heaven's light, therefore you 
 cry to the law to shade you from it. Thus you expect more 
 than human power can achieve. Learn to take a more 
 modest view of things. Be content with your own virtue. 
 Remember that evil is only to those who think evil. Why 
 should the sight of this picture, for example, trouble you 
 more than it troubles a child who does not understand its 
 meaning ? Because your virtue is conventional. You are 
 worse than you were when a child. You are rotten within, 
 and as far as possible removed from the soul's kingdom of 
 purity and peace. Well may you fear truth. You cannot 
 see that it is not what entereth in, but what cometh out, that 
 defileth ; and that no fact however vile can corrupt a man 
 unless he chooses to let it. My dear Sir, be bolder and 
 more trusting. Be a man. Leave the whole world and the 
 facts of the whole world ever open to the free observation 
 and reflection of all. Recognize that truth is the only 
 teacher, the only moralizing power in the universe, the only 
 real and effectual purifier ; and trust that in the clear 
 atmosphere of freedom, others may at last learn to be as 
 perfect as yourself. 
 
 The fact is that the family-protection scheme is just as 
 shallow as all the other compulsory schemes for propping 
 
314 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 up morally weak types. There is only one really efficient 
 moralizer of the family, namely, the free example of the 
 parents: this outweighs all preaching and all compulsion, 
 however cunningly administered by soulless formalists or 
 vicious State bullies. But if the parents are too immoral to 
 moralize their own offsprings by means of personal example, 
 then, it is very clear that their blood is bad and vicious . 
 they are a corrupt and unsurvivable breed ; and the same 
 vicious blood that is in them must also be in their, offsprings : 
 therefore, their viciousness, and the viciousness which their 
 example encourages in their basely-blooded offsprings, is 
 Nature's own most effectual and beneficient method of 
 clearing out a corrupt and undeservable stock. The children 
 will inevitably be filled with the same blood as the parents. 
 Consequently, it is most desirable in the interests of the 
 human race to come, that when this blood is vicious and 
 all vice is ultimately a question of blood its own viciousness 
 should be left perfectly free to clear it out as quickly as pos- 
 sible. Temptation is the environment which selects the bad 
 blood from the good. The latter does not succumb to it : the 
 former of course does. The bad only attracts the bad. 
 Whoever heard of a thorough-bred bull-dog being tempted 
 away from its duty? This does not lie in the nature of the 
 beast No, it is not the thorough-breds that fall into vice, 
 and through vice into racial extinction : it is the curs that do 
 this, and the more effectually they extinguish themselves 
 with their own vices, the better for the posterity which they 
 thus save from being burdened with their vicious and 
 corrupt natures. The purest breed will survive: the corrup- 
 test breed will 'perish. In no other way can nature keep 
 the race going on from generation to generation : in no other 
 way can she prevent humanity from dying off the face of the 
 earth. The other day a woman who takes a natural pride 
 in her children, pointed out to us a woman who shamefully 
 
The Nairn al Right to Freedom. 315 
 
 neglects hers. .At first we were staggered by the fact. But 
 presently we remembered that the neglectful woman was 
 only after all neglecting her own bad, vicious blood ; that is 
 to say, she was neglecting just the particular type that ought 
 least to be protected, and so unconsciously helping to clear 
 a bad type out of existence. The partial evil was a universal 
 good. The individual lost but the race gained. 
 
 " Yea, but Thou knowest even to find 
 a place for superfluous things, 
 and to order that which is disorderly, 
 and things not dear to men are dear to Thee 
 
 Thus dost Thou harmonise into One all good 
 and evil things, that there should be one 
 everlasting reason of them all." 
 
 Properly understood everything is a question of breed, of 
 blood, of race. Purity is a strength not given by law but by 
 nature. Surround it with as many temptations as you please, 
 and it will not fall into them; and for the simple reason that 
 they will not appear pleasant to it : they will not square with 
 its tastes : to use a vulgar expression, it will simply turn its nose 
 up at them, just as a well-bred dog will only growl at people 
 who seek to bribe it away from its defensive duties by cun- 
 ningly offered pieces of meat Nature cannot be overcome. 
 Purity cannot be defeated. See how this truth is exemplified 
 in the matter of drink. Here is one man surrounded on every 
 side with exciting alcoholic drinks. But they make no im- 
 pression upon him. So far as drink is concerned he 
 possesses the strength of natural purity: that is to say, there 
 is no corruption- inside him for the drink to appeal to and 
 work upon. But here is another man who will walk miles 
 out of his road simply in order to get a glass of beer. Why 
 this difference in people? It is a difference of breed, of 
 blood, of race: the most radical and the most indestruc- 
 tible of all differences. No law can touch it, for it does not 
 
316 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 belong to time but to eternity. It is a nobility not given 
 by man, but by nature. It is equally real whether clothed 
 in rags or ermine, whether dwelling in a palace or a hovel, 
 and to, its seed the future of this world inevitably belongs. 
 This is a nobility which beats your monkey-faced, penny 
 paper collar, lardy dar swellish noble lord, who fawns upon 
 and flatters the democracy for the sake of political power 
 and public applause, and it will live and flourish when all 
 such miserable toadies and shameful sycophants have reaped 
 their well deserved rewards. 
 
 And now to sum up the arguments contained in the last 
 few chapters. It has been shown that just as compulsion 
 only produces hypocrisy in the sphere of religion, so it only 
 produces conventionality in the sphere of morals. Both are 
 equally unnatural and equally fatal to the present health and 
 future continuance of the race in which they occur. The 
 only strength of men and women is naturalness; the only 
 weakness unnaturalness. Naturalness is purity of mind and 
 purity of body, is the spontaneous and truthful correspon- 
 dence of individual human nature with universal cosmic 
 nature. O thou eternal and impersonal one, thou awe-inspi- 
 ring infinite of infinites, let me live to thee, and to thee 
 alone, and so be at peace with thee in all things and at all 
 times. This is naturalness, this is strength, is the piety and 
 health of the crowning race of human kind. This is the 
 last grand creed of men to be. Those who are capable of 
 embracing it require no protective compulsion to keep them 
 from falling: they can stand without being propped up: 
 those who are not capable of embracing it are assuredly bad 
 types; unworthy of being propped up; unworthy of being 
 artificially kept in the field; and well deserving to be left to 
 viciously efface both themselves and the debased generations 
 that flow from them. For where is the sense of protecting the 
 posterity of the bad ? If the bad are not worth propping 
 
7 he Natural Right to Freedom. .317 
 
 up neither are those bad descendants who take after them. 
 What would be thought of a dog breeder who propped up 
 all his worst bred dogs on the false supposition that in so 
 doing he was protecting the badly bred posterity of those 
 bad bred dogs ? Why, the fool would simply be helping to 
 fill 'he world with curs. He would be more like a cur than 
 his own dogs. Yet this method of procedure is setiously 
 defended by thinking people, more especially in its applica- 
 tion to drunkenness. The latter vice, so they say, is not 
 purely self-regarding: it injures posterity. Yes, but whose 
 posterity does it injure ? Not the posterity of the strong, 
 healthy, and natural types ; not the posterity of those who 
 are likely to leave desirable and survivable offsprings. No, 
 but the posterity of those who are not likely to leave 
 survivable types ; and whose vices, if only let alone, will 
 eventually end in their own most desirable effacement. The 
 wages of virtue is certain survival. Here is a law of nature 
 that cannot be altered. Those who see it can well afford to, 
 trust in liberty and have no fear. 
 
 Moreover, what warrant has posterity given to anybody, 
 or to any number of bodies, to stop the drinking of the base 
 individual booser ? Of course if the poor fellow, in one of 
 his drinking fits, attempts to nobble me on the head. I have 
 a right to defend myself, namely, the right of my own 
 existence and of the self-defence which that natural right of 
 existence carries with it. I have a right to act on behalf of 
 what exists, or to pay others to act for me; but I have no 
 right to act on behalf of what does not exist, and 
 what, in fact, may never exist at all: for, so far as I can 
 prove to the contrary, before the drunkard can injure his 
 unsurvivable posterity, if he should happen to have any, 
 the whole system of the heavens and the earth may 
 break up and be reformed in the twinkling of an eye. 
 Suppose, however, that this last event does not happen. 
 
318 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 Will stopping the poor man from getting drink make him 
 not want to get it? make him not a weak flabby temptable 
 creature, ready and itching to fall into another sin , in place 
 of the removed drink? Is he likely to be made any better 
 by being rendered savage? The very fact of his falling 
 away from temperance into habits of drinking proves 
 him to be a weak and unsurvivable type, which nature 
 is doing her level best to get rid of by means of this 
 very vice of drinking ; and which she will manage to 
 get rid of by means of some other vice if the tap is 
 stopped : perhaps a vice that will be more violent and 
 more dangerous to virtuous and peaceable citizens. 
 The vice of drink is bad, but there are worse vices, 
 and, if the tap is stopped, viciously inclined people will 
 manage to find those worse vices out. Ah ! my blind, silly, 
 busy, fools; if you could see the inside as well as you can 
 the outside of life, you would at once penetrate below all 
 this hollow conventionalism, and see that internal heedance 
 to the vicfous inclination is what alone kills; and that the 
 man who merely strives to gratify that inclination is as much 
 on the high road to extinction, both individually ind racially, 
 as he who is in the present act of gratifying it by beastly and 
 unmanly over-drinking. He who looks on a glass of beer to 
 lust after it, and to use it for anything more than the temperate 
 sustentation of his own body, has injured himself already: 
 for it is not the beer which injures, but the wicked lust for 
 the beer: that burning and consuming fire which injures 
 and destroys the fine living tissues of the human system. 
 This doctrine is not in the science primers, but it is more 
 true than a lot of what is. 
 
 The foregoing of course assumes that the vice of over- 
 drinking must go on from generation to generation. But it 
 is not absolutely bound to do so. Even a bad breed may 
 turn from its unnatural courses and survive. Indeed, whole 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 319 
 
 families have been known to become temperate, simply 
 through seeing the evil effects of drink displayed in the 
 individual vice of one or two members. Openly seen truth 
 alone has power to really moralize. Vice tends to counter- 
 work itself if it is only left sufficiently free and open for 
 those to see it who are likely to profit by seeing it. But 
 hide it out of sight, in (say) such asylums as were mentioned 
 on page 61 of this book, and all its moralizing influence 
 will be entirely lost to just those who really need such 
 influence. 
 
 It may be asked " Have not the sober to bear the results 
 of drunkenness ? " They have under the socialistic system, 
 but not under the individualistic system. Under the latter 
 they are as far as possible safeguarded against the direct 
 aggressions of the drunkard, and not taxed to safeguard either 
 him or his debased posterity against the natural and inevi- 
 table consequences of vice. Of course it is true that the 
 drunkard's own debased descendants cannot be provided 
 with a new set of ancestors; but individualism affords a 
 chance even to them : for under liberty they are always free 
 to profit by experience, and turn from inherited viciousness 
 and survive: and if they fail to do so their bad type will 
 gradually die out in the struggle for existence. How far 
 legal propping up of drunken types is likely to protect 
 posterity was discussed on page 61 of this book. 
 
 Under liberty the way of salvation is always open. Let 
 an unnatural type turn from its unnaturalness and it shall 
 survive. The majority of types, however, never do turn. 
 The universe seems like a system of natural election. Many 
 are called but few chosen. This is the fact of the matter, 
 whether we like it or not, and to sneer at it is simply to 
 mock the eternal. Better recognize and act upon it like 
 rational beings, that is, freely and for the sake of the peace 
 which such action brings. No survivability can be conferred 
 
320 'The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 by Act of Parliament. The survivable type is the naturally 
 rational type; the type that neither smirking "lovers," nor 
 obscene books, nor exciting liquors can persuade into the 
 paths of unnaturalness. Such a type is well able to look 
 after its own morals. It can always face the infinitely varied 
 temptations of a truth-exposing freedom with an equal 
 mind, making a right use of appearances, and employing 
 each part of human nature in the rational performance of 
 those natural functions to which each part is naturally and 
 unalterably adapted: the body in healthy sustention of itself 
 and in individual, honest, truthful, unconfused, monogamic 
 self-continuance of its race; the mind in the discovery of 
 truth : and both in harmonious co-operation with the universal 
 order of nature as a whole. And the life of such a type is not 
 a life of self-denial. To mortify the flesh and live to the soul 
 is to indulge in true self-expression : is the real and natural 
 luxury. It is to exchange fire for light. It is to lose the lowest 
 but find the highest, A life ever replete with joy unspeak- 
 able ; free from passion and full of peace, free from 
 lust and full of love. " What love ? " do you ask ? Not 
 the love of fair faces and deceiving, laughing eyes. Not 
 the grinning mockery of lying masks. Not the love which 
 is blind, but the love which sees with the clearness of a 
 light that never goes out; the love which is one with reason 
 and obedient to the voice of conscience. The love which 
 looks through the eyes of God. Not the love of humanity, 
 but the love of that vast reality which infinitely transcends 
 this babbling ant-hill of vanity and confusion. The love 
 that lives in heaven. The love which is self-centred because 
 resting in a reality with which self is eternally one. The 
 calm, contained, passionless love, standing fixed and un- 
 changed as eternity, pure as light and stainless as alpine 
 snow. The peaceful patient love, which, quietly and unti- 
 ringly working in the service of abstract principles 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 331 
 
 that rest upon an immortal base, is content to regard 
 mortals, not for their own transient sakes, but only as 
 as parts and expressions of something far more worthy than 
 they. The love that is enslaved to nothing that belongs to 
 time, but, dwelling always in the secure blessedness of its 
 eternal home, 
 
 " sees the children sport upon the shore 
 
 and hears the mighty waters rolling evermore.'* 
 
 In a word, that unshakeable natural piety called by SPINOZA 
 " the intellectual love of God " " a love towards a thing 
 immutable and eternal, whereof we may really enter 
 into possession"; which cannot "be denied with those 
 faults which are inherent in ordinary love; but may grow 
 from strength to strength, and may engross the greater part 
 of the mind, and deeply penetrate it." 
 
 This is the only real safeguard against vice; this the 
 conqueror of sin and resister of temptation. By means of 
 this love, humanity refinds the purity of its early years; when 
 it ran free and unstained in the sun-lit fields of youth; when 
 the world was fair, and from every flower and every tree a 
 friendly joy looked forth; when passion was not and lust 
 was not; when the soul, fresh and clear as the summer sky, 
 rejoiced continually in its own self-satisfying intellectual 
 health, and thought not of all the sins and vicious, unnatural 
 pleasures of a bad, base, hypocritical, human race. By means 
 of this love, so cold and pure, so closely akin to the deep 
 white stillness of death, mortality is born again "of water 
 and of the spirit,"; the child's heart comes back to its own ; 
 and, the wisdom of age uniting with the restored purity of 
 youth, there results a strength to resist temptation that is at 
 once peaceful, restful, and yet active and invincible. No 
 state conventional slavery can give this strength. It is the 
 outcome of individual liberty, and in an atmosphere of social 
 despotism it must die out of the world for ever. . 
 
322 The Natural Right to 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 A FEW words now on the relation of personal freedom 
 to labour, trade, and commerce. From all that has 
 now been written, it will easily be seen that the application 
 of the principle of individual liberty to industrial exchange, 
 logically and inevitably leads to thorough going, all-round, 
 and complete free trade; that is to say, to such an unregi- 
 mentalized state of things as equally allows each individual 
 unit, not only to co-operate or to abstain from co-operating 
 with other units whenever and wherever he thinks it to his 
 interest so to do, but also (that is, of course, if he cares to 
 enter on such a hazardous campaign), either to beat his 
 fellow unit or be beaten by him in the risky business of 
 industrially ur commercially supplying human wants and 
 tastes, so far as they are expressed through the unfettered 
 exchange of a perfectly open market, where all buyers are 
 equally free to buy or not to buy, and all sellers 
 equally free to sell or not to sell, just accordingly as the 
 private reason of each, operating upon the particular circum- 
 stances of each separate transaction, may lead them to agree 
 or not to agree to traffic away either the labour or the 
 property that, as privately owning and personally choosing 
 units, they are justly warranted in disposing of on such 
 terms as are mutually agreed upon between them. 
 
 As might be readily anticipated, the Socialists and semi- 
 Socialists have the strongest possible dislike to this very 
 much for them too radical kind of freedom. They are trade- 
 protectionists of the most irreconcilable type; pledged to 
 support every one of the exploded economic fallacies of the 
 past; working for and representing the interests of the 
 
7 he Natu)al Right to Freedom. 323 
 
 industrially inefficient ; and ever seeking to " protect " the 
 latter against the naturally unwelcomed rivalry of superior 
 labour or better talent : since it is plain as a pike staff that none 
 but the inefficient need any special protection against the 
 rigour of industrial competition: if, for example, I feel confi- 
 dent that I can write a more saleable novel than my neighbours 
 I certainly don't want any "protecting"; but if I do not feel 
 confident of this: why then, I may begin to think that 
 industrial competition is a very mean and selfish arrange- 
 ment, inasmuch as it fails to make the dull writer as com- 
 fortably off as the brilliant one, and that protection is the 
 all-powerful justice of man which successfully outwits and 
 counterworks the blind justice of God. Protection is a 
 magnificent institution for the fool; for enabling him to get 
 the same wages as the man of talent : only God or Nature 
 has once and for ever decided that the wages of folly shall 
 not in the long run equal the wages of talent, and if man 
 can repeal that decision he will deserve all that he gets by 
 doing so, whether what he gets turns out to be worth having 
 or not. If, for instance, I could obtain a monopoly in novel 
 writing, what a price I should have to charge for novels ! if 
 only to keep back the press of custom ! 
 
 Where does the cry of protection come from? From 
 inefficiency, from cowardice, from the base dishonesty which 
 objects to reap the fruits of its own inferiority, and covets 
 to forcibly collar the fruits of somebody else's superiority. 
 Sift the arguments of protectionists to the bottom, find out 
 who the people are that want protecting, and it will be seen 
 that only by inferiority is this cowardly and unmanly plea 
 put forth. Efficiency wants no propping up. Industrial 
 struggle is at once both the condition and the opportunity 
 of the really efficient man, and the more there is of it the 
 more will efficiency flourish and inefficiency come to grief; 
 as, indeed, what can be more fit and just than that the latter 
 
324 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 should "get the worst of it ?" since, in this great battle of life, 
 somebody must loose ; somebody must go to the wall in 
 this universal and irrevocable struggle for existence. 
 
 Let us meet fact face to face. Either the Darwinian law 
 is a truth, or it is not; if it is, then we may rest assured 
 that it will not be dodged : no, not by all the combined 
 powers of human wisdom, let alone by those of human 
 folly and industrial inefficiency. 
 
 While the individualist on his part has much to urge 
 against protection, the state socialist on his side is equally 
 emphatic in denouncing what he regards; and whether 
 rightly or wrongly shall presently be considered; as the 
 necessary and unavoidable evils of free trade. In fact, 
 curiously enough, the upholder of protection urges against 
 his opponent, that free trade, if not checked by state 
 regimentation, inevitably results in the bringing about of the 
 very condition of things which it is supposed to render 
 impossible, and which, indeed, it is specially designed to 
 guard against ; namely, monopoly, or the concentration of 
 wealth and of the means of production in the hands of a 
 few privileged persons. This objection is worth considering. 
 The protectionists say that among other evil consequences 
 of free-trade, are dividend collaring syndicates, limited 
 companies, rings, trusts, and similar devices for helping the 
 idle few to live upon the sweat of the industrious many, 
 Such is their main contention; and if it were really valid, 
 not merely against the partial free-trade as at present 
 existing, but also against the complete free-trade that ought 
 to exist, it would indeed be formidable, and individualists 
 might justly be warranted in laying down their arms and 
 quietly surrendering their case. But, inasmuch as it leaves 
 out of consideration the well-known fact, namely, that these 
 objectionable monopolies arise, not in proportion as 
 exchange is really free, not in proportion, that is to 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 325 
 
 say, as individuals are simply defended from the aggressions 
 of their neighbours without at the same time being aggressed 
 against by the unjust regimentalism of a bureaucratic 
 tyranny; but, on the contrary, just in proportion as indi- 
 viduals are regimentalized, restricted, and " protected " by 
 special legal enactments which specially favour one unit at 
 the expense of another unit, or one group at the expense of 
 another group : inasmuch, I say, as it fails to notice this 
 most important fact, such a contention will have little weight 
 with those who know anything at all of the real facts and 
 laws of industrial and commercial life. 
 
 Let us, however, now see what may, with more detail and 
 greater particularity, be said in reply to this socialistic con- 
 tention that free trade is a creator of special monopolies ; 
 that is to say, of monopolies over and above what each man, 
 fully enjoying equal liberty of action and equal security of 
 property, can get through the unaggressive, or, what is the 
 equivalent of the unaggressive, namely, the unfraudulent, 
 exercise of his own private faculties : for certainly the 
 private monopoly of one's own faculties is a monopoly which 
 must be assumed as a starting point from which to deduce 
 every other kind of property whatsoever, and is, in fact, 
 unavoidably implied and practically asserted by even the 
 socialist himself. This last is a mighty truth, and it is 
 destined to break the back of Socialism. These 
 hands ; these eyes ; these brains (if there be any) : 
 all these bodily and mental parts, are yours : the crowd of 
 fools and knaves around you did not make them ; they 
 could .not make them, though they experimented for 
 ever and a day : of course it is true that two particular 
 individuals sowed the seeds of them : but even those 
 two particular individuals did not and could not 
 cause those seeds to germinate : nothing that dwells in time 
 can achieve such an end as this ; only the infinite existence 
 
326 The Natural Right to Freedom, 
 
 in which we live and move and have our being can do it : 
 and this dwells not in time, but in eternity ; which it fills as 
 one great, silent, everlasting now. Humanity indeed sows 
 the seeds of life, but that vast cosmic process which includes 
 and works in and through all lives and all worlds, alone 
 gives the increase. Therefore, my reader, whoever you may 
 be, always remember that you own your own cosmically- 
 given self, together with all your varied faculties, be they 
 great or be they small, by a right not human but divine ; 
 since humanity did not and could not of itself determine 
 whether you should ever have existed at all. Humanity may 
 call spirits from the vasty deep, but they are not bound to 
 come when it calls for them. That response comes from a 
 mightier magician than humanity. There is in you an 
 elemental base that never began and will never end, and 
 your life is the outcome of all that has been going on since 
 long before a single mortal existed in the world. Ah ! my 
 poor sentimental conventionalist ; so much led of the nose 
 by the humbug of other people ; if you did but realize it, 
 you are no child of the darkness of this low race of ruined 
 blood, but one of the sons of heaven's stainless purity ; 
 bound in social slavery to no filthy herd of sociable Yahoos, 
 but joined only in free, loving allegiance to the light of 
 reason and of conscience which shines within you, and 
 justified in serving that light by fearlessly defending your 
 own interest to the very last, and setting at defiance all the 
 frothy humbug of a lying, canting world. Dieu defend le 
 droit. Aye, and in the long run against all odds. The 
 Eternal Reality, from which comes all strength to endure 
 and all courage to fight and all victory in the fight, gave you 
 a separate interest in giving you a separate body and a 
 separate mind. Stand with it or fall with it like 
 a man ; not meanly, but nobly and as becomes the most 
 right and just of all causes : the cause of truth as it 
 
2 he Natural Right to Freedom. 327 
 
 is in nature and in human nature : the cause" of 
 private property and of individual liberty. Laugh to scorn 
 all these envy-prompted snearers at self-interest': when 
 boldly met they always collapse like the poor flabby 
 creatures they are. Strike down their lies while 
 strength is given you ; live to the truth of nature, which is 
 eternal ; despise every form of unmanly sentimentality from 
 the very bottom of your soul, and do all things solely for 
 the sake of what is worthier and higher than humanity : 
 move upward to the light, serenely and calmly, like a rational 
 being who minds no man, and leaves curs to rage and 
 gnash their teeth in vain ; and you shall no longer walk in 
 the miserable bondage of social darkness, but shall enjoy 
 that glorious liberty which is one with individual duty, and 
 which is only known and possessed in all its perfect, self- 
 satisfying fullness by the reason-enfranchished sons of 
 light. 
 
 Undoubtedly there is about the socialist's objection to 
 free trade, made on the score of its supposed monopolistic 
 tendency, a certain degree of surface-plausability which 
 gives to it at least the appearance of truth. The socialist 
 points out that under the present regime ; which, by the 
 way, is neither a socialistic regime nor an individualistic 
 regime, but a mixture of the two ; capital is largely con- 
 centrated in the hands of comparatively few individuals, 
 many of whom do nothing but luxuriate, while considerable 
 numbers of the real workers drag out a miserable existence 
 on starvation, or next to starvation, wages. The fact is 
 undeniable ; but it is a very poor argument against free 
 trade and in favour of legislative expropriation. For, apart 
 from the important consideration that the wealth of the few, 
 
328 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 notwithstanding the imposing appearance it makes in the 
 hands of the limited number who now hold it, would 
 amount to very little when distributed over a million-headed 
 proletariat ; there stands the other great truth, which the 
 Socialist always finds it convenient to ignore, viz., that this 
 very concentration complained of is largely due to legislative 
 enactments. Centuries of legislative premiums upon 
 unthrift, accompanied by centuries of protective and 
 monopolist laws specially framed for the express purpose of 
 bolstering up and enriching particular classes and for helping 
 the individuals that compose such classes to pile up capital 
 into large heaps, have at last produced, not certainly 
 inequality itself that is Nature's own ordination but the 
 artificial, unnatural, and cruel inequality which stands out 
 so palpably before us to-day as one of the crowning 
 disgraces of modern civilization. The Individualist, there- 
 fore, as such, is not concerned to defend the modern 
 capitalistic regime, resting to so large an extent, as it does, 
 upon ages of class legislation, political favouritism, and 
 special protection of this or that interest at the expense of 
 other interests evils, bear in mind, which form the very 
 essence of Socialism, and which do and must increase in 
 proportion as the salary and pension absorbing bureaucracy 
 of the social democratic state grows at the expense of 
 liberty and free trade. 
 
 All that the individualist, as such, is bound by his 
 position to justify, is real, all-round, impartial, and thorough- 
 going laissez faire or Free Trade ; that is to say, the most 
 just, impartial, and effectual means by which capital can be 
 distributed and profits equalized that we are able to 
 conceive. Of course, as just pointed out, even under the 
 most perfect Free Trade, there would still be inequality ; 
 but it would be more real, and less artificial ; more the out- 
 come of inner difference, and less the result of external 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 329 
 
 compulsion ; more caused by the free expression of Nature's 
 indestructible process of variation (which works for ever in 
 successive individual lives) and less due to the arbitrary 
 tyranny of political majorities or political minorities. For 
 if there is one feature of the present order more conspicuous 
 than another, it is that the gulfs mind we say the gulfs 
 between wealth and poverty are almost entirely caused, not 
 by the industrial competition which the Socialist, uncon- 
 sciously and unavoidably exemplifying that sublime irony 
 with which the Eternal Reality treats all those who kick 
 against its laws, is now politically competing to remove ; 
 but by the destruction of that competition through arbitrary, 
 unscientific, undiscriminating legislation and shallow-brained, 
 heartless, official rule of thumb : a destruction which does 
 not and, indeed, cannot destroy competition ; but which 
 merely substitutes one kind of competition ; and that one of 
 a very much more demoralized and unscrupulous character, 
 in the place of another kind \ to wit, a miserable competitive 
 struggle for power and pelf on the part of a set of blatant 
 political liars and greedy, luxury-loving officials, in the place 
 of a competition among capitalists and labourers for higher 
 or securer rates of interest, or more satisfactory conditions 
 of employment. But for the Socialist's and semi-Socialist's 
 constant interferences with and restrictions upon trade, the 
 various degress of private wealth would gradually shade into 
 each other, just as the various degrees of private talent and 
 industry now already do, and, indeed, always have done, 
 and always will do. But for political aggressive regi- 
 mentalism there would be none of these sudden and abrupt 
 social contrasts. In fact, we find that in proportion as 
 industrial competition is unrestricted by the State, these 
 unbridged contrasts tend to dissappear, and the freer trade 
 is allowed by the State to be, the more does personal wealth 
 tend to correspond with personal talent or personal industry, 
 
330 The Natural Right to Freedom 
 
 and this last kind of correspondence is the nearest possible 
 approximation to justice as between man and man that 
 finite human power can achieve. For infinite reality alone, 
 whose knowledge is wider than the heavens and more 
 searching than the lightning ; such super-human reality 
 alone can see with sufficient clearness to apportion to each 
 according to the conscince of each. Man is not a god to 
 his fellow-man, and thanks to that which, be it what it may 
 (and only a god could know it in all its perfect fullness) is 
 certainly infinitely more mighty than humanity, he never 
 will be : for even if he were the infinite, he would still fall 
 infinitely short of the Infinite; of Infinites, which is God. 
 Therefore he must be content if he can establish and main- 
 tain such a state of freedom from fraud and aggression for 
 each and all, that material reward goes according to material 
 success, and not necessarily according to moral merit : in 
 short, a state of things in which he who wins the race gets 
 the prize, and is free to dispose of it as generously or as 
 ungenerously as he pleases ; although in point of fact the 
 slowest runner may [or may not} have put forth the greatest 
 effort to win : for this last, namely, moral merit, can only be 
 seen by a Reality to which the secrets of all hearts are open, 
 and which silently rewards those who live to love and serve 
 it, not with the noisy praise and trumpery baubles that men 
 prize, but with the cool inner peace whose home is the ever- 
 lasting light that never yet shone on sea or land, yet which 
 is, and was, and is to come, as the last impersonal glory of 
 those who, disdaining all human sympathy, have faced and 
 fought life's competitive battle right bravely and well, not 
 for base humanity's sake, but for right's sake and for truth's 
 sake, and because clearly recognizing that whatever is 
 according to Nature is right and true, .and that whatever is 
 right and true is worth doing for his own sake alone. There 
 is indeed a glorious peace where those soldiers who faithfully 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 331 
 
 serve under the standard of eternal right and eternal truth 
 shall at last rest from a soldier's duty ; where, freed from all 
 sorrow and all pain, they shall be calm and still, lost in the 
 Eternal's infinite light for ever more. 
 
 The marked manner in which protective restrictive legis- 
 lation builds up special monopolies for big capitalists, by 
 hindering the healthy, experiment-promoting, and therefore 
 progressive and economy-furthering tendency of the rivalry of 
 smaller capitalists, has been well and clearly illustrated in a 
 recent number of that able advocate of individual liberty, 
 The Personal Rights Journal. As the illustration there 
 given serves to show up the foregoing contention in the light 
 of facts, it shall be quoted. Referring to our present most 
 unjust and expensive banking monopoly the writer says : 
 
 "The cheque stamp .... acts as a differential 
 duty against such institutions as the Cheque Bank and in 
 favour of the Money Order Office, and prevents the extension 
 
 of the cheque system to small amounts The 
 
 large bankers do not want cheques for small amounts to 
 come into use, as this would lead to the breaking down of 
 the quasi-monopoly of banking which at present exists, and 
 to a large growth of banking industry on a more modest 
 scale than that of Lombard Street. Just as the paper duty 
 kept the manufacture of paper in the hands of a few large 
 firms, and its repeal led to a wide diffusion of the trade 
 among small capitalists and the cheapening of paper, so does 
 the cheque stamp act as a dam against the flood of small 
 capitalists in the direction of the issue of cheques; and its 
 repeal would bring about an enormous increase in the use 
 of cheques, probably developments of the cheque system 
 which are undreamt of now, and a considerable economy in 
 
332 The Natural Right to Freedom, 
 
 the use of money. .... Of course, . . . . 'the 
 City ' and the Post Office would fight strenuously for their 
 artificial privileges." 
 
 But this is only one out of thousands of similar aud 
 equally striking instances that might be given. The fact is, 
 arbitrary official curtailments of industrial freedom and of 
 personal initiative and enterprize; with consequent blocking 
 out of cheapening improvements and inventions; as well as 
 legal monopolies of every order and description, have been 
 poisoning the springs and distorting the channels of trade 
 for many centuries. They ramify throughout the whole 
 length and breadth of the entire industrial world, and directly 
 or indirectly injure all industries; for even those that are 
 not directly interfered with, suffer in their purchases by 
 reason of the artificially increased prices or officially deter- 
 iorated products of those that are interfered with : since the 
 different trades and industries so closely hang together, and 
 have their separate interests so intimately related, that an 
 injury to one means an injury to all. 
 
 On every hand there are expensive, production-limiting, 
 and enterprize-restricting enactments, which to a large extent 
 drive trade out of the hands of those who cannot comply 
 with them, and therefore to a proportionate extent make it 
 a legally protected monopoly for those who can. This is 
 well exemplified by the present bloated condition of many 
 of our brewing firms (to say nothing of the poor rubbishy 
 stuff that a long dammed up monopoly enables them to 
 palm off upon the vitiated tastes of a swilling public.) The 
 land of Free Trade is literally crammed with close corpora- 
 tions expressly manufactured by Act of Parliament. There 
 are monopoly-creating (because industrial-competition restric- 
 ting, and, therefore, industrial experiment and improvement 
 hindering) regulations of Mines, of Ships, of Railways and 
 Canals, of Education, of Manufactures and Trades, of 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 333 
 
 Professions, of Sanitation, of Recreation, of commerce in 
 Alcohol, of Working Class Dwellings, and of Land and 
 Houses.* Without reckoning Professions, there were, be- 
 tween the years 1870 1888, no less than 60 Acts of 
 Parliament, passed for the express purpose of regulating 
 either one or other of the various interests that have just 
 been mentioned.t All these enactments are based upon the 
 old exploded fallacy that non-aggressive and non-fraudulent 
 transactions can, on the whole, be better regulated by arbi- 
 trary State Officialism, than by flexible private contract and 
 voluntary arrangement; always alterable and modifyable 
 from time to time, as the latter is, according to the changing 
 dictates of the mutual self-interests of those who are directly 
 
 * For the argument against the special regulation of house builders 
 see pages 32-33. It applies to all kindred legislation. 
 
 t The Liberty and Property Defence League, an association for 
 resisting Over-legislation, for maintaining Freedom of Contract, and for 
 advocating Individualism as opposed to Socialism, irrespective of Party 
 Politics (Central Offices : Westminster Chambers, 7, Victoria Street, 
 London, S.W.)- opposes legislation of this kind on the following 
 grounds : Against paternal enactments for Mines, this League urges that 
 they are " Contributions to a State Code for the regulation of the 
 mining industry, with the effect of lessening the sense of personal 
 responsibility among mine owners and of promoting an unwarranted 
 confidence in Government inspection." It objects to paternal laws for 
 Railways and Canals on the grounds that they are ' ' encroachments by 
 the Board of Trade upon the self-government of private enterprise in 
 railways, and successive steps in the direction of State railways." To 
 similar measures for Manufactures and Trades it objects that they "are 
 invasions by the State of the self-government of various industries and 
 curtailments of freedom of contract between employers and employed." 
 State Paternalism in Education it describes as being "based on the 
 assumption that it is the duty of the State to act in loco perentis : 
 this is a contribution to a growing code State education which by being 
 suppliedat less than the market value, is bringing about the extinc- 
 tion of voluntary systems and " free trade " in education, and their 
 replacement by a universal State monopoly after the manner of the 
 French Lyc6es : [as also are all] measures for enabling the application 
 by local authorities, out of the rates, of the system of State regulation to 
 the higher branches of technical instruction.*' Paternalism in Sanitation, 
 etc., is described as " Resting on the presumption [surely a false one] 
 that the Slate is the best guardian of the individual's health. Pater- 
 
334 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 concerned in the real work of production or distribution. 
 This expensive cast-iron tyranny rests upon the preposterous 
 assumption that State Paternalism is best, not. merely for 
 this or that particular individual, or for this or that greedy 
 class, but equally so for the entire community; not only for 
 one or two coddled up generations, but also for all the 
 generations tkat yet may be. The principle underlying this 
 five minutes expediency legislation has been, tried over and 
 over again in the past, both in this and other countries, but 
 always in the long run with the same disastrous results. 
 Now however that the masses have unwisely been given so 
 large an extent of sham political power every scrap of 
 which shall presently be taken away from them this bad 
 principle comes to the front once more, loudly paraded by 
 shallow mob-flatteries and place-seeking demagogues as an 
 infallible pill for curing all the ills that mortal flesh is heir 
 to. Even men who ought to know better, and in fact do know 
 better, allow themselves to be dragged along its fatal path 
 towards the yawning gulf that waits to swallow up both mobs 
 and inob worshippers, in order to make room for the real 
 "power that shall be established when the Statesman has 
 tried his last lie, and the farce of representative folly is 
 played out for ever. That power is not power of votes, nor 
 of the knaves who buy them; it is the power of something 
 
 nalism in the matter of Working Class Dwellings is " objected to on 
 the ground that it will result in costly and abortive schemes promoted 
 by municipalities for the supply of rate-aided dwellings, to the detriment 
 of the efforts now being successfully directed to that end by private 
 enterprise." Paternal laws for dealing with Land and Houses are " all 
 measures tending in a greater or less degree to the confiscation of pro- 
 prietary rights, the suppression of freedom of contract, and the substitu- 
 tion of State regulation in the management and transfer of land steps in 
 the direction of absolute " land nationalisation," in the place of qualified 
 individual ownership." [See appendix lo .Socialism in England 
 (1888 and 1889) by the Earl of Wemyss, Price id., Published by the 
 Liberty and Property Defence League, 7, Victoria Street, London, 
 S.W.] 
 
The Natmal Right to Freedom. 335 
 
 that cannot fawn or lie; it is the arbitration of an instrument 
 behind which moves the pitiless strength of the eternal; it is 
 the last and just resource of superiority and talent against 
 greedy clamorous mediocrity: it is the power of the sword; 
 wielded by genius in the formation of the absolute yet free 
 empire of the future. Do you think that liars, and cowards, 
 and demagogues, and smiling plausable knaves, and men of 
 showy promises, and the blind sodden crowds that believe 
 in them, are the real masters of this world ? No: and never 
 will be while the laws of nature hold. 
 
 The loss to wholesale and retail consumers is only a 
 portion of the evil that the official restriction of industrial 
 competition causes. The working class as a class suffer 
 through being deprived of employment which they would 
 otherwise have got. For employment depends upon pro- 
 duction, and nothing is more fatal to production than the 
 official curtailment of industrial competition, which, by 
 fettering the scope for private initiative, and by compelling 
 industry to run in officially-prescribed cast-iron grooves, 
 needlessly increases the cost of production all along the line.* 
 The greatest possible amount of competition compilable 
 with freedom from aggression or from fraud which is the 
 equivalent of aggression, is necessary to the maximum 
 bringing out of every useful order and degree of human 
 faculties, as well as of all those varied improvements which 
 result from the exercise of such faculties ; and without new 
 and constantly improved improvements, made continually 
 on the top of old improvements, it is utterly impossible 
 for production to keep pace with the ever augment- 
 ing demand, both for employment and for articles of con- 
 sumption, of an ever increasing population. One illustration 
 
 * Take Factory Acts ; which, as Mr. BRADLAUGH shows on pp. 45-54 
 Labor and Law (Yovfer, 28, Stonecutter Street, E.C.)> nd Mr. PLATT'S 
 on pp. 71-75 Poverty (Simpkin & Co.) have driven an enormous amount 
 of trade to foreigners. They increase cost of production, raise paces, 
 lower wages, create monopoly, increase taxes, and drive trade abroad. 
 
336 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 shall be given in order to make this point perfectly 
 clear. If some of the old methods of production were 
 to be reverted to now ; let us say, to take a concrete case, 
 the old fashioned hand-mill for grinding corn ; the cost of 
 production would at once become so great that few con- 
 sumers would be able to purchase more than a very small 
 quantity of corn, and many, probably the majority, would 
 not even be able to do that. The consequence of this rise 
 in the cost of production would be that corn manufacturers 
 would only be able to produce a very small quantity of corn, 
 and this they would have to sell at an enormous price to 
 cover the cost of time taken in production, which last, in its 
 turn, would be obliged to be conducted upon a much smaller 
 scale : so that the result would be that thousands of workmen 
 would be thrown out of employment, and millions of people 
 brought to starvation. 
 
 And precisely the same reasoning applies all along the 
 line. For without improvements ever succeeding upon im- 
 provements, there would be no possible means of keeping 
 up with the growing demands of a growing population ; and 
 without industrial competition, keenly and incessantly 
 carried on within the just limits of exemption from aggression, 
 and from fraud the equivalent of aggression, there would 
 be no improvements, because there would be no adequate 
 motives for producing them : since a producer never knows 
 what he can do, or how much more cheaply or efficiently 
 he can produce, until he is put to it by the spurring 
 experiment-prompting competition of determined and 
 clever rivals ; that is to say, until he is left to sink 
 with his own weakness, or swim with his own strength 
 in the open markets of the industrial world. In 
 proportion as he is "protected" against hostile industrial 
 competition, or harassed in his industrial movements to an 
 extent over and above what exemption from fraud and 
 
'The Natural Right to Freedom. 337 
 
 aggression requires, in that same proportion is he either 
 encouraged to remain in a state of stagnant non-improve- 
 ment, or discouraged from going to the increased trouble 
 and expense of adopting new and improved methods of 
 production. For just so far forth as he is protected from 
 the rivalry of his neighbours, just so far forth is he relieved 
 from the necessity of having to be continuallyon the look 
 out for those new improvements and inventions which are 
 calculated to enable him to beat his rivals in the business 
 of successfully attracting the custom of outside consumers 
 (to such extent, that is, at such custom is expressed through 
 an open market) : and just so far forth as he is harassed and 
 restricted in his movements by arbitrary official rule of 
 thumb, so far forth is all heart taken out of him, because 
 the possibility of acting upon the conscientious promptings 
 of his own individual judgment is to a large extent destroyed : 
 and a man won't put forth extra special effort, even for his 
 own interest, let alone for that of others, when he is pre- 
 vented by official slavery from freely acting on the dictates 
 of his own private recognition of whatever seems to him to 
 be most just and fit under the particular circumstances that 
 he may happen to find himself placed in. 
 
 All this, indeed, is so plain that those who run may read. 
 The truth is, the competitive carrying on of industrial 
 production, cr of industrial distribution, for the custom- 
 attracting supply of the world's market, is in itself 
 such a difficult and delicate operation, that it is 
 absolutely impossible for those who are engaged in 
 it to enjoy more freedom than is good, both for furthering 
 their own interests in particular and increasing commercial 
 wealth in general : since, as a simple matter of fact, the 
 latter is but the wealth of the fittest commercial survivals 
 in the industrial struggle for existence as carried on among 
 adults whose fitness to survive is proved by the degree of 
 
338 The Natural Right to Freedom, 
 
 commercial success that they are able to achieve under such 
 competitive conditions as are so far as possible limited by 
 exemption from aggression and from fraud the equivalent o r 
 aggression. 
 
 If governmental agencies were more enterprizing than 
 private agencies, there might then be something to be said 
 in favour of protection. But we know from experience that 
 the very reverse of this is the real state of the case. Govern- 
 mental activity is the worst kind of activity that we have 
 any knowledge of, barring, of course, right down criminality. 
 The case for private enterprize as against state enterprize is 
 well put by M. TAINE in the essay referred to on page 199 
 of this book. He says : 
 
 " If we now take into consideration no longer the direct 
 but the indirect interest of all; if, instead of looking to men, 
 we concern ourselves with their works; if we regard human 
 society as a material and spiritual workshop, the perfection 
 of which consists in its being the most productive and 
 economical, and as well furnished and well managed as 
 possible; from this point of view again, with this secondary 
 and subordinate aim, the domain of the State is scarcely less 
 limited; very few new functions are to be attributed to it; 
 nearly all the rest had better remain in the hands of inde- 
 pendent persons, or of natural or voluntary associations. 
 Contemplate the man attending to his own affairs, an 
 agriculturist, a manufacturer, a merchant, and observe his 
 earnestness and devotion to them. His interest and pride 
 are both involved. His own welfare, and that of those 
 around him, is at stake, his capital, his reputation, his social 
 position and advancement; while, on the other side, he has 
 to face want, ruin, social degradation, dependence, bank- 
 ruptcy, and the hospital. In the presence of this alternative 
 he keeps close watch on his affairs and becomes industrious. 
 His business keeps his mind on the stretch, even when a-bed 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom, 339 
 
 or at his meals; he studies it, not afar off, speculatively, in a 
 general way, hut on the spot, practically, in detail, in all its 
 bearings and relationships, constantly calculating difficulties 
 and resources, with such sharp insight and special informa- 
 tion, that for any other person to try to solve the daily 
 problem which he solves, would be impossible, because 
 nobody could possess or estimate as he can the precise 
 elements which constitute it. Compare with this unique 
 devotion and with these peculiar qualifications the ordinary 
 capacity and languid uniformity of an administrative head- 
 clerk, even when an expert and honest. He is sure of his 
 salary, provided he does his duty tolerably well, and this he 
 does when he is occupied during official hours; let his papers 
 be correct as the rules and traditions of his bureau demand, 
 and nothing more is asked of him. If he conceives any 
 economical measure, or any improvement of his branch of 
 the service, not he, but the public, an anonymous and 
 vague impersonality, reaps all the benefit of it. Moreover, 
 why should he care about it, since his project or reform 
 ends in a report that finds its resting-place in a pigeon-hole? 
 The machine is too big, too complicated, too unwieldly, too 
 clumsy, with its rusty wheels, its " ancient rights and acquired- 
 situations," to be reconstructed, just as one pleases, like a 
 farm, a warehouse, or a foundry. Accordingly, he gives 
 himself no further trouble in the matter, and, on leaving his 
 bureau he thinks no more of it, but lets things go on auto- 
 matically, just as it happens, in a costly way and with 
 indifferent results. Even in a country of so much probity 
 as France [! ! !] it is calculated that every enterprize managed 
 by the State costs one quarter more and brings in one quarter 
 less than when entrusted to private hands. Consequently, 
 if work were withheld from individuals in order that the 
 State might undertake it, the community would suffer a loss 
 of one-half when the accounts came to be balanced. 
 
340 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 Now this is true of all spiritual or material labour, not 
 only of agricultural, industrial, and commercial products, 
 but also of works of science and of art, of literature and 
 philosophy, of charity, of education and of propagandism; 
 not only when the motive power is egoistic, like personal 
 interest and vulgar vanity, but likewise when a disinterested 
 sentiment is involved, like that which prompts to the dis- 
 covery of truth or the creation of beauty, to the spread of a 
 faith or the diffusion of convictions, religious enthusiasm or 
 natural generosity, affection on a broad or on a narrow basis, 
 in one who embraces all humanity or one who devotes 
 himself wholly to his friends and kindred. The effect is the 
 same in both cases, because the cause is the same. Where- 
 ever individual energies are free, the motive force is always 
 enormous, almost infinite, because the source of it is a living 
 spring which flows at all hours and which is inexhaustible. 
 The mother thinks constantly of her child, the savant of his 
 science, the artist of his art, the inventor of his inventions, 
 the philanthropist of his endowments, Faraday of electricity, 
 Stephenson of his locomotive, Pasteur of his microbes, De 
 Lesseps of his isthmus, Sisters of Charity of their poor. 
 Through this peculiar concentration of thought man derives 
 every possible advantage from human faculties and surroun- 
 dings; he himself gets to be a more and more perfect 
 instrument, and moreover he fashions others; he daily 
 reduces the friction of the powerful machine which he 
 controls and of which he is the main wheel; he increases its 
 yield; he economizes, maintains, repairs and improves it with 
 a capability and success that nobody questions in short, 
 he fabricates in a superior way. But this living spring, to 
 which the superiority of the product is due, cannot be 
 separated from the producer, for it consists of his own 
 affections and profoundest sentiments. It is useless without 
 him; out of his hands, in the hands of strangers, the fountain 
 
7 he Natural Right to Freedom, 341 
 
 ceases to flow and production stops. If, consequently, a 
 good and large yield is wanted, he alone must have charge 
 of the mill; he is the resident owner, the one who sets it in 
 motion, the born engineer, installed and specially designed 
 for that position. In vain may attempts be made to turn 
 the stream elsewhere; it results simply in a stoppage of the 
 natural issue, in a dam interfering with useful channels, a 
 haphazard change of current, not only without gain but with 
 loss, the stream subsiding in swamps, or running to waste and 
 undermining the steep banks of a ravine. At the utmost, 
 the millions of buckets of water forcibly taken from private 
 reservoirs, half fill with a good deal of trouble the great 
 central artificial basin in which the water, low and stagnant, 
 is never sufficient in quantity or force to move the huge 
 public wheel that replaces the small private wheels doing 
 the nation's work. 
 
 Thus, even regarding men merely as manufacturers, in 
 treating them simply as producers of what is valuable and 
 serviceable, with no other object in view than to furnish 
 society with supplies, and to benefit consumers, the private 
 domain comprehends all enterprizes undertaken by private 
 individuals, either singly or associated together, through 
 personal interest or personal taste. This suffices to ensure 
 their being better managed than by the State; it is by virtue 
 of this that they have devolved into their hands." 
 
 There can indeed be little doubt in the mind of anyone 
 who understands human nature, even though it be to ever 
 so slight an extent, that no man can know how to manage a 
 business half as well, and, in the end, half as advantageously 
 for the general public, as he whose own personal interest is 
 specially at stake in the business. Only he who wears the 
 shoe knows where it pinches. In this most important and 
 difficult operation of competitively meeting the demands of 
 consumers; in so far, that is, as those demands are expressed 
 
34 2 The Natural Right to Freedom, 
 
 through an open market ; there are a thousand and one nice 
 considerations, that are constantly arising out of the 
 continually varying conditions of commerce and of industry, 
 which none but those competitively engaged in the real 
 business of production or distribution can be in any sort of 
 position to properly estimate or act upon. Therefore any 
 attempt on the part of a stupid external legislature, or on 
 that of an equally stupid, because legislatively appointed, 
 bureaucracy, to interfere with those who have all these 
 intricate and risky considerations to take into account, is a 
 procedure that must on the whole and in the long run be 
 productive of greater loss than gain. This conclusion is not 
 only sound a priority r , but all known facts point to its 
 truth. Indeed, hundreds of years of widely extended and 
 infinitely diversified experience have demonstrated to us that 
 there is no force anywhere to be found in governmental 
 bureaucratic monopoly, which is at all capable of doing the 
 work of private interest operating under conditions of free 
 industrial competition, and therefore continually stimulated 
 to renewed exertion, as well as kept constantly on its mettle, 
 by the ever present possibility of individual loss through 
 commercial failure. Ir dividual want, or, if you prefer it, 
 private self-interest, is the spring of all human effort, and 
 industrial effort is only put forth in proportion as individual 
 want is felt, and in proportion as the results of the 
 individual efforts which spring from such personally felt 
 want are permanently secured to those individuals who put 
 them forth : that is, of course, in so far as the said efforts are 
 of a purely unaggressive character, and are carried on without 
 interfering with the carrying on of other equally unaggressive 
 efforts. Security is as necessary as competition. Out of 
 the last proceeds the individual want in the absence 
 of which there would be no adequate stimulus to effort, and 
 out of the first grows up that most indispensible confidence 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 343 
 
 which makes each individual feel it to be worth his while 
 to make an effort. We are speaking, of course, of industrial 
 effort, and not of any other kind. We know very well that 
 in one form or another, effort can no more be suppressed 
 than competition can be suppressed. Both have their roots 
 irremoveably fixed in an eternal rock against which the moan- 
 ing waves of sentimentality shall for ever break themselves 
 in vain. In proportion as the results of the unaggressively- 
 carried-on industrial efforts, whether efficient or inefficient, 
 of each separate individual, aie governmentally, and there- 
 fore arbitrarily, appropriated and distributed in such a 
 manner that each individual receives in return for them/not 
 what they would fetch through exchanges contracted for 
 under conditions of equal exemption from aggression for 
 each and all, but simply what some political majority or its 
 politically appointed agents for the time being may fancy 
 or pretend to fancy them to be worth, in that same pro- 
 portion will each individual cease to put forth industrial 
 efforts, and will commence to put forth non-industrial ones ; 
 these last (to be sure) being of all kinds and degrees, from the 
 pleasing lies of a political campaign to the bitter truths of a 
 military one: from demagogic revolutionary agitation to 
 dynamite and assassination. Has not the encouraging 
 transformation already begun, and is it not progressing most 
 beautifully ? When the fruits of his own industry, so far as 
 carried on without aggression upon his fellows, are not perfectly 
 secure to the labourer, it pays him better to compete by 
 fighting than by working. That each adult should as far 
 as possible always receive just what the unaggressive expres- 
 sion of his own nature brings him under a regime of 
 voluntary contract as distinguished from a regime of com- 
 pulsary status, be the amount so obtained much or be it 
 little : that each, we repeat, should get no more and no less 
 han this, is of the very essence of justice as between man 
 
344 Th* Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 and man ; forming, as it does, the primary and indispensible 
 condition of all industrial production, as well as of all com- 
 mercial exchange. Of course it is perfectly true that this 
 simple and unsentimental principle of justice is difficult to 
 defend, especially for the cowardly and base ; but failure to 
 defend it will not go unrewarded : when man is too base to 
 do his duty, Nature is well able to deal with him : and the 
 more pronounced his unfaithfulness to the right, the greater 
 will his reward be when it does come. As surely as there 
 are stern unalterable laws of things, there is and shall be 
 justice in this world for the cowardly and the base. The 
 power of truth is stronger than that of falsehood. The 
 simple courage of a r?al manhood which lives and works for 
 truth, is mightier than the shallow lie of a shameful and 
 unnatural brotherhood, and the day is coming when the 
 former shall drive out the latter like chaff before the storm. 
 In the long run it will be found that abstract principles can- 
 not be sneered and laughed at with impunity ; that loving 
 trust of the Eternal, in the infinite intellect of which all 
 sound principles are based, is greater than trust of humanity ; 
 that faithful allegiance to truth for its own sake, and for the 
 sake of nothing lower, is more potent than crowds or 
 majorities, or than all that such can ever manage to achieve. 
 The strongest power in this universe is not the power of 
 numbers, but is the power of One that cannot be numbered, 
 and against which the envious baseness of humanity shall 
 always measure its finite strength in vain : this power is the 
 power of the Infinite of Infinites ; it is the power that men 
 call God : the reality wherein " we live and move and have 
 our being," and where love finds its only worthy resting 
 place in the silent depths of everlasting peace. 
 
 The very life and soul of trade is freedom ; for trade, as 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 345 
 
 such, is free exchange, and therefore whatever lessens 
 freedom to an equal extent lessens both scope for the 
 contracting of mutually-judged advantageous exchanges, as 
 well as encouragement to contract such exchanges. The 
 ideal of protection is a single individual producing everything 
 for himself and exchanging nothing for what others produce; 
 so carefully fenced in and protected by special restrictions 
 that nobody can compete against him, while at the same 
 time he can compete against nobody. Certainly under this 
 unselfish arrangement there could be no heartless elimina- 
 tion of the less efficient producers by the more efficient 
 ones. For where there is no industrial competition, where, 
 that is to say, each separate competitor is not left ; so far at 
 least as any kind of compulsory provision or regulation is 
 concerned; to stand or fall solely on the merits of his own 
 industrial talents, no mutual measuring of separate industrial 
 strengths is possible: inasmuch as the only effectual test of 
 truth in matters industrial, namely competition, is destroyed: 
 just as the only effectual test of truth in matters militant, 
 namely militant competition, would be destroyed if the 
 struggle of real war could be abolished. 
 
 The truth about every form of strength, human or non- 
 human, is proved by' struggle, just as the truth about gold 
 is proved by fire. Indeed the highest can be brought forth 
 into the light by no other way. Nothing for nothing. God 
 helps those who help themselves. 'Tis an old but ever- 
 lasting gospel, crushing sentimentality to the end of time. 
 What is best must be paid for with the heaviest price. This 
 is the eternal law of an inexorable justice which no finite 
 power can ever alter, and he is only a fool who either desires 
 or attempts to alter it; for it is according, not merely to 
 human nature but also to universal nature, and whatever is 
 really this cannot be radically changed. You may change 
 the form of life's struggle for existence, but you cannot 
 
346 The Natural Right to Freedom, 
 
 destroy the fact: there it is in spite of you, going on against 
 you whether you will or no, coldly treating all your unmanly 
 crocodile tears with the pitiless contempt they so richly 
 deserve; and in attempting to abolish it you only drag 
 humanity away from the higher forms of competition and 
 once more plunge your fellows into those lower because 
 more slavish forms, out of which, with so much pain and 
 difficulty, they have been slowly but surely up-growing. The 
 penalty for opposing the laws of nature is retrogression, the 
 reward for obedience is progress. If you won't take the risk 
 and responsibility of going forward, you shall have the loss 
 and degradation of going backward. Stand still in a com- 
 fortable brotherly stagnation you shall not. There is justice 
 but no more than justice for sentimentalists. If you are too 
 cowardly to compete on the plain of freedom you shall 
 compete on that of slavery. In any case you shall either 
 compete or be competed against; either, beat or be beaten 
 to the end of the chapter. Your impious cowardice deserves 
 nothing better, and it is well treated in getting nothing 
 worse. 
 
 You are put into a world of competition and you object 
 to compete. Nature gives you near and real duties and you 
 despise them as being too hard and " selfish," continually 
 calling upon " society" to supply you with sham ones in their 
 place; as if society were stronger than nature, and the shallow 
 lies of social convention capable of smothering out of sight the 
 real distinctions of natural truth. Lover of darkness and con- 
 fusion ! hater of purity and light ! Character most mean and 
 base! When the mask of canting " brotherhood " is torn 
 off, what are you after all but a devil's advocate of the 
 envious hell in which you live? and into which if possible 
 you would plunge the whole human race. A contemptible 
 shirker of the real issue, you see plainly enough that in a 
 world like this, where the normal function of the benevolent 
 
7 he Natural Right to Freedom. 347 
 
 instincts is the parental supply of the real needs that are 
 constantly arising out of the naturally and not viciously 
 caused [as is so frequently the case wi;h adults] helplessness 
 of individually begotten and individually brought up off- 
 spring, men must necessarily compete, if only in order that 
 each, in proportion to his strength, may get the requisit 
 private means for adequately fulfilling those natural parental 
 duties, which, without any doubt whatever, are privately and 
 not socially contracted, and which, whether individually 
 recognized as such or not, are never the collective 
 entailment of any existing society, but always the consciously 
 brought on consequences of the conduct of particular indi- 
 viduals; and should in a natural and just order of things be 
 personally fulfilled by the particular persons who bring 
 them on. You see this plainly enough, and yet you still go 
 on canting about brotherhood and whining like a fool over 
 competition ; although you know very well that competition 
 can never be abolished until natural individual duty is 
 abolished also, and that universal brotherhood in your bad 
 impure sense can only be established on the ruins of indi- 
 vidual parenthood, and a lying conventional socialism 
 bought at the expense of real manhood and real womanhood. 
 It is not human selfishness that you are crying out so loudly 
 against, but truth as it is in nature. You cannot stomach 
 real natural distinctions : they are too undemocratic to go 
 down. Well do you know that so long as they are recognised 
 in society there is no standing ground for you and your 
 unnatural system. Therefore you are not so much at war 
 with selfishness as with innocence. Your great heart is so 
 very, very sociable that you envy the helpless child its own 
 mother's love. You think, and rightly too, that the more 
 love the mother bestows on her own her own in a sense in 
 which it cannot possibly belong to the crowd the less she 
 will have left for the " brothers;" the pure, virtuous unen 
 
348 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 vying brothers. It is the poor bird's nest that you hate, 
 O serpent with the oily tongue. Nay, you are too generous ; 
 much too generous. You "love " men and women so 
 much that you would rob children of their natural rights; 
 thus perverting and misdirecting the benevolent instincts 
 by taking them out of their true natural sphere, to cast 
 them like pearls before an incestuous herd of grown-up 
 Yahoos, who, of course, will be far too brotherly and unsel 
 fish to individually know and personally appropriate their 
 own children out of the common orphanage, so as to be 
 able in their own \vay to do their own duties. This is the 
 end of all your dear brotherly cant a universal practical lie 
 robbing every individual child of its natural right to the 
 individual love and duty of its individual parents. Well 
 may you denounce individualism. It is too plain and true 
 to agree with your corrupt tastes. Your poor blood is 
 bankrupt; you belong to a played-out stock; the strength of 
 nature is taken away from you : and you must and shall be 
 cleared off by a better and stronger and purer type that is to 
 be. Rest assured that the future of this world is not for a 
 filthy lying crew of cowardly duty-shirking Yahoos, let them 
 sentimentalize and equalize and brotherize as much as they 
 please. No, it is for men and women, and for real mothers and 
 fathers, who are honest enough to know and acknowledge their 
 own ; who have sufficient nobility in them to honestly respect 
 individually-contracted natural distinctions : to live to truth 
 as it is in nature; compete without passion for the private 
 means to properly fulfil the personal duties which grow out 
 of, and rest, not upon changing artificial conventions, but 
 upon unalterable natural facts; always looking for their 
 reward, not to the worthless flattery of a crowd of incestuous 
 "brothers" and "sisters," but to the perfect peace of that 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom, 349 
 
 infinite Reality which is wider than personality, and to love 
 and live for which is to possess a strength that is more than 
 life and stronger than death. 
 
 The only effectual test of truth as regards industrial 
 strength or fitness is free competition, carried on under such 
 conditions as make industry profitable to those whose 
 superior qualities, whether physical or mental, enable them 
 to compete well; and unprofitable to those whose inferior 
 qualities only permit them to compete ill. As already 
 pointed out, these conditions are two, namely, exemption 
 from aggression and from fraud the equivalent of aggression. 
 The fittest in an industrial sense are those who manage to 
 succeed most when competing under these two conditions; 
 so far, that is, as such conditions can be realized in a society 
 made up of imperfect human beings: and the unfittest are 
 those who succeed least or not at all under such conditions. 
 The realization of these two conditions, so far, of course, as 
 they can be realized, is that human justice which constitutes 
 the indispensible primary requisite to the continuation of 
 the human race, and which, in proportion to its non-realiza- 
 tion, necessarily leads to that race's deterioration and finally 
 to its extinction. For man lives and continues his kind by 
 means of what his industrial skill is able to wring from the 
 forces of nature, and therefore, inasmuch as he cannot stand 
 still in a comfortable brotherhood of everlasting stagnation, 
 and must always be either going backwards or forwards, it 
 is necessary to his progressive continuance a.5 a species that 
 those individuals who are best adapted to succeed under 
 the conditions of industrial life; that is to say, those who 
 are most skilful or most efficiently laborious under a regime 
 
350 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 of exemption from aggression and from fraud the equivalent 
 of aggression, should be continually advantaged by their 
 superior fitness, while, at the same time, those who are not 
 adapted to succeed under these conditions should be corres 
 pondingly disadvantaged by their unfitness: in order that 
 the fittest may constantly thrive and constantly propogate 
 their fitness to succeeding generations, and the unfittest just 
 as constantly dwindle and their type die out in nature's 
 irrevocable struggle for existence. 
 
 Hard, cold, and unsentimental as this conclusion may 
 seem to be, there is no escape from it. It is as certain as 
 that the inner angles of a triangle are equal to two right 
 angles. In fact it simply expresses a fundamental law of 
 nature; inexorable and irrepealable as gravitation. Through- 
 out the world of living forms each highly developed species 
 is preserved from generation to generation of its racial life 
 by the constant elimination of such of its mature units as 
 are least adapted to cope with the difficulties of their 
 environment, and thus preserve themselves under the 
 particular competitive conditions in conformity to which 
 the species whereunto they belong is necessitated by its 
 position in the evolutionary process to live, so long, that is 
 as it remains the same species: and if it evolves into some 
 other species, then, unless it sinks to a very low degree of 
 vitality indeed, it merely passes from one set of competitive 
 conditions to another, very much akin to the first in point of 
 severity. So that from moment to moment of a highly 
 evolved specie's adult existence, it is simply a varying 
 summation of such of its adults as have managed to preserve 
 themselves in the great struggle for existence. In short, it 
 is merely a collection of selfish self-survivals, surviving and 
 holding its own as a species precisely because a sufficient 
 number of its units are individually surviving and holding 
 their own as individuals. Self-interest supplemented by tha 
 
The Natu>al Right to Freedom. 351 
 
 parental self-continuance which is but an extended form of 
 the same egoistic tact; being, indeed, absolutely necessary 
 to complete self-expression and self-development; is the 
 fundamental basis of its collective life, and its only strength 
 is the strength of the successful survivals that go to make 
 it up. 
 
 For example, and to take a concrete case, the race of 
 flying fish is constantly kept on the go as a race of flying 
 fish by the continual elimination of such of its adult units 
 as are least sw'ft to escape the jaws of the pursuing dolphin. 
 These "slow coaches," together with those members of their 
 posterity that " take after them," and bad blood naturally 
 takes after bad blood constantly tend to die out by reason 
 of the severity of their eliminating environment; and but 
 for this most necessary process of elimination, all the 
 members of the flying-fish tribe would sooner or later lose 
 their present swiftness. The perpetual elimination of their 
 weak adults is the indispensible condition of the survival of 
 their strong adults, and the strength of their tribe is simply 
 the strength of its strongest adult survivals. About this 
 conclusion there can be no doubt whatever. For if the 
 weak adults were not constantly killed off by the dolphin, 
 they and their weak offspring would eat up the food required 
 by the strong adults, as well as by the offspring of the strong 
 adults; and would thus thrive and increase at the expense 
 of the latter. On no other terms could they by any possi- 
 bility be preserved; since the food supply of any given 
 species is always at any given time limited either in amount 
 or in get-at-ableness : nature being, in fact, but a vast whole 
 of parts which are so intimately related that what is given here 
 is taken from there, and what this species gains that species 
 loses. [The brown rat occupies England, but only by eating 
 up the food supply of an earlier occupier, namely the black 
 rat; thus "eliminating" the latter out of "house and home." 
 
 w 
 
352 The Natural Right to Freedom, 
 
 The Anglo Saxon does the same with the North American 
 Indian. So much gained so much lost: the law is absolute 
 and nothing shall ever successfully dodge it.] If (to continue 
 the previous argument) it were possible, generation after 
 generation, to artificially preserve the slowest flying-fish by 
 benevolently safeguarding them against the cruel jaws of the 
 unsentimental dolphin, and by giving them and their off- 
 spring a constantly increasing portion of the limited natural 
 supplies that would otherwise have been used in sustaining 
 the swiftest ones; thus making the slowest ones and the 
 offspring of the slowest ones as well or better off than the 
 swiftest ones and the offspring of the swiftest ones ; the race 
 of flying-fish would at last become so slow and sluggish that 
 it is questionable whether it would eventually possess suffi- 
 cient energy to swallow enough food to "keep body and soul 
 together:" whether, indeed, this "protected" race would 
 not ultimately get very much into the lively condition of the 
 famous pampered dog, which grew so shockingly lazy with 
 perpetual coddling that at last he had the conscience 
 to "lay him down to bark." It might, however, escape 
 falling to this depth of weakness by stopping short at the 
 parasites: fallen " comrades " that were once higher up in 
 the battling ranks of life, but which, like the self-sacrificing 
 officials of a loving state paternalism, have to a large extent 
 escaped the severity of the general struggle for existence, by 
 fastening their mouths to, and sucking like greedy bags 
 upon, the devoted skins of those more highly developed 
 creatures, which, not only for the sake of their own bags, 
 but also for the sake of the bags that suck at them, have 
 still as much as ever to face life's great competitive struggle 
 in all its dire severity. 
 
 This, ot course, is taking for granted that such a piece of 
 benevolent foolery could be practically carried out. In point 
 of fact, however, it would be absolutely impossible to carry 
 
'Ihc Natural Right to Freedom. 353 
 
 it out. The food supply of any given species being limited, 
 and the natural fecundity of any given species being in 
 excess of its food supply, it follows that in the absence of a 
 rigorous eliminating process, which puts an effectual check 
 upon over-population by constantly nipping off the weakest 
 and least fit types ; that is to say, those unfortunate ones 
 which, in accordance with an irrepealable process of variation, 
 happen to vary in the direction of non-adaptiveness to effi- 
 ciently cope with the difficulties of their environment; an 
 increasingly deplorable state of general poverty would soon 
 be reached, wherein more and ever more mouths constantly 
 appeared than food wherewith to fill them. In proportion 
 as this point was approached all the members of the species 
 would either be obliged to die of starvation, or else the 
 strongest variations and whatever brotherly contrivance be 
 adopted, no two things in nature can ever be made exactly 
 equal, either in strength or in any other quality would have 
 to declare war and forthwith commence competing on their 
 own account against the weakest, in order to get hold of this 
 limited food supply, and by means of it selfishly continue 
 their race (and not the race of the weakest) from successful 
 parent to successful offspring; from surviving generation to 
 surviving generation. Is it not mean, O my canting senti- 
 mentalist, on the part of the gods, to have so constituted 
 this universe that life's race is to the swift and the strong, 
 and shall be so for ever and for ever? Is it not cruel to 
 have so framed the great laws of things that hard cold truth 
 about nature is mightier than floods of sentimental cant? 
 and that with this truth for their watchword and their 
 strength, the strong and brave in days to come, shall strike 
 down you and your shallow falsehoods with all the stern 
 justice of a power that makes for right and for liberty, and 
 whose strong ones cannot fail ? 
 
 To be sure, it is true that the weakest, or at least some o 
 
354 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 them might vary in such a way as to be able to live upon a 
 different kind of diet: but they could not possibly succeed 
 in dt)ing this in the absence of competition; for every 
 successful variation is only enabled to be successful in virtue 
 of the fact that its unsuccessful opponents have been driven 
 out of the new competitive field on which it enters. Unless 
 a varying creature becomes a mere parasite, it must sustain 
 itself by living upon the food that other creatures previously 
 lived upon : consequently those unfortunate " other crea- 
 tures" must have been gently obliged to clear out of "house 
 and home " in order to leave enough elbow room for their 
 fitter successor. And even by becoming a parasite, a 
 creature does not in reality evade the competitive law, or 
 get beyond the reach of the struggle for existence. It only 
 seems to do so. For in any case it must surfer with the 
 higher competing creature, on whose skin it fastens itself 
 and whose blood it sucks; just in the same way as American 
 State Officials surfer with the particular government whose 
 good or evil fortune they have elected to share. Moreover, 
 the eliminating process plays upon parasites in another way. 
 Those particular parasites that cause least loss to their host, 
 will, in the natural course of things, inevitably survive over 
 those that cause most loss. On no other terms cojld a 
 balance of life be maintained. There is no living thing in 
 this world that is not directly or indirectly influenced for 
 good or ill by the process of natural selection, or, as it may 
 otherwise be termed "the constant survival of the fittest to 
 live in life's universal struggle for existence." 
 
 In short, inefficient types must be eliminated by the 
 struggle for existence, which, by constantly clearing off the 
 unfit, leaves just sufficient food for the selfish sustentation 
 and mean, unsociable self-continuance of the fit. 
 
 There is but one way of avoiding competition, and that is 
 by falling down, down, down, in the scale of life, until at last 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 355 
 
 you are lost in the darkness of eternal death. Yet even in 
 this ignoble descent, you will not; at any rate not until you 
 have reached a state of absolute extinction; escape the great 
 law of competition: for all the way down you will be obliged 
 to compete with the creatures that were once below you. 
 The king may become a beggar; but only by competing 
 against beggars for the gifts bestowed on such; and every 
 little bit of private property that he puts into his mouth 
 without the brotherhood's permission, will inevitably call 
 forth the never sleeping envy of his fellow beggars. Better 
 have remained a king, fearlessly fighting for the just and the 
 true, striking down all liars and hypocrites without stint, and 
 so moving firmly up life's rugged steep towards the peace 
 that dwells in light. 
 
 " In the world's great battle field, 
 
 In the bivouac of life, 
 Be not like dumb, cattle driven ; 
 
 Be a hero in the strife." 
 
 The lower you go down, the nearer you get to the highest 
 ideal of Democracy; for the glorious goal of this movement 
 is a boundless mass of structureless mud, every portion of 
 which is equally level with and exactly like every other 
 portion. Sink to this and you shall know no more trouble- 
 some competition. For only when all are equally lost in 
 the mire, will the inferior give over envying the superior, and 
 devils cease to conspire against the unshakable throne on 
 high. Crawl on your belly; put your head level with your 
 feet: that is the only real meaning of Democracy. 
 
 Now apply the foregoing considerations to the human 
 species; a species that is as much a part of nature, and as 
 much bound to exemplify her laws as any other species. 
 Bear in mind that no two individuals of this species are 
 
356 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 exactly alike, either in point of mental or of physical effi- 
 ciency ; that, in fact, there is greater industrial inequality and 
 diversity, i.e., greater individual differences of power to 
 increase or improve production, displayed in this species 
 than in any other: inequality and diversity progressively 
 becoming more pronounced as we ascend in the scale of 
 life, and less pronounced as we descend. Indeed, incidental 
 degenerations apart, the general process of evolution is, and 
 always has been, towards ever greater and greater inequality; 
 ever more and more marked diversity of personal traits and 
 industrial potencies. This diversity is individuality : it makes 
 each one somebody instead of nobody; a distinct person 
 instead of a mere number in a flock of sociable, brotherly 
 sheep; a man instead of a fool; an individualist instead of a 
 communist: and towards it works the process of the suns. 
 
 Beavers are industrious; so are ants; so are bees: but 
 then, as compared with men, these curious clockwork 
 machines are all of them so extremely alike: instinct and 
 not reason guides them; and the industrial efficiency of one, 
 if not equal is at any rate very similar to another : therefore 
 they can afford to be chummy, and go in for a good lot of 
 the " share and share alike " business without much risk of 
 swamping their ship with worthless cargo, or breaking their 
 backs with lazy brotherly baggage. For this enviable security, 
 however, they pay a heavy price in the total deprivation of 
 everything in the nature of strongly marked individuality or 
 variety, which, by the way, having never possessed, they 
 never miss. Who would think of distinguishing one bee by 
 the name of Mr. Smith, and another by that of Mr. Jones? 
 No : they are either all Smith or all Jones, and " as like [or 
 unlike] as two peas." They make magnificent communists, 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 357 
 
 but there are no Shakespeares or Miltons among them: nay, 
 not even a few professional traders upon envy to stir up the 
 dull monotony of their mechanical existence. 
 
 With human beings, however, the case is entirely different. 
 Man, so far as he is an efficient unit of his species, and, 
 above all, a fitting citizen of that " eternal city " made up of 
 men and beasts and birds and flowers and suns and worlds 
 a universal brotherhood far grander and worthier than any 
 number of loving brothers- is not worked by the blind 
 mechanic of instinct, but by the supreme light of reason. 
 He is strong, and naturally fitted to survive in the struggle 
 for existence, in proportion to the degree of his rationality: 
 he is weak, and unfitted to survive in that struggle, in 
 proportion to the degree of his irrationality; that is to say, 
 in proportion to the extent of his slavery to sensuality, and 
 to passion the child of sensuality. For the strength of man 
 is not darkness but light, not flesh but soul, not humanity 
 but divinity. In him there is only one fact that is pre-emi- 
 nently divine, inasmuch as this fact alone brings him into 
 peaceful harmony with the divine in the universe. This fact 
 is reason. Through reason he becomes one with the infinite 
 intellect of infinite reality: no longer the slave of time or of 
 time's base entanglements, but free with the unconditioned 
 freedom of an existence, which, because acting eternally 
 according to the inherent necessity of its own nature, is 
 eternally unbound by any foreign cause. Reason is the 
 crowning glory of his manhood, its peace is the peace that 
 passes all his ordinary understanding, ajud the white stillness 
 of its purity is the divine end of his being. Through reason 
 lie re-born into that true liberty which no State can either 
 give or take away; that liberty which is the foundation of all 
 other liberties, and without which all other liberties are 
 vain the perfect freedom from lust and passion, the loving 
 service of the light for the sake of the light and for no other 
 
358 The Natural Right to Freedom, 
 
 sake: the liberty of the Kingdom of God which is within the 
 soul of man. 
 
 The end, then, of man's existence, and indeed, the only 
 real strength of his life, being reason, and not instinct, or 
 passion, or sensuality, or anything of that inferior character; 
 it follows that those political conditions which give the widest 
 possible scope for the exercise and growth of reason, and 
 consequently for the survival of the most rational human 
 types and variations over the least rational ones, are the 
 indispensible conditions both of man's existence as a rational 
 being and of his progress towards the light and away from 
 the darkness. As already implied, these conditions neces- 
 sarily involve the greatest possible security for the unaggres- 
 sively obtained property and the unaggressively carried out 
 self-continuance of the former types and variations, because 
 otherwise the irrational types and variations would soon 
 swamp out the rational ones, and so the human species 
 would come to an end. 
 
 These conditions are themselves prescribed by reason, 
 and, as already pointed out, they are two, namely, exemption 
 from aggression and from fraud the equivalent of aggression : 
 so far, of course, as such primary requisites can be realized 
 in a world made up of imperfect human beings. There is 
 the same divine law for the species as for the individual ; and 
 just as the only strength of the unit is a loving obedience to 
 the dictates of supreme reason, so the only strength of the 
 race is a faithful, unyielding maintainance of those impartial 
 conditions of justice that supreme" reason prescribes. More 
 than all and above all is justice ; higher than affection or 
 friendship, than pity or generosity : for even at best these 
 things are only human; whereas justice is divine: these 
 things rest upon the mutable personal feelings of finite 
 beings ; but justice is based upon a wider, deeper, and more 
 secure foundation : not upon the bounded, inconstant 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom, 359 
 
 sentiment of man, but upon the infinite, impersonal, and 
 immutable intellect of God. 
 
 Justice, then, being first, we, so far as we see and under- 
 stand this truth, are under the first of obligations to defend 
 it for all rational beings whatsoever, just as readily as we 
 would defend it for ourselves ; since all beings are constantly 
 one and naturally act together so far as they are governed 
 by the dictates of supreme reason, though in perpetual 
 disunion so far as governed by anything else : one in the 
 everlasting light of infinite reality, but for ever divided in the 
 never ending darkness of mere finite humanity. These most 
 high dictates were by the Stoics called the " will of God " 
 working in the soul of man, and on joint obedience to them 
 such philosophers- rested what they regarded as the only true 
 and lasting brotherhood : true and lasting because based, 
 not upon the love of perishable humanity, but upon the love 
 of eternal reality ; not upon the love of men for men, but 
 upon the love of men for God.* A similar idea is in the 
 New Testament " For whosoever shall do the will of my 
 Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, 
 and mother." 
 
 * In obedience to the dictates of right reason the Stoics identified 
 s*lf-interest and the interest of others. The only good is reason, and 
 men may share and obey it in common without coming into conflict; 
 but this is true of no material things. Says EPICTETUS : "For universally 
 be not deceived, nothing is so dear to any creature as its own profit. 
 Whatsoever may seem to hinder this, be it father or child or friend or 
 lover, this he will hate and abuse and curse. For nature hath never so 
 made anything as to love aught but its own profit : this is father and 
 
 brother and kin and country and God 
 
 Therefore, if a man place in the same thing both profit and holiness, 
 and the beautiful and fatherland, and parents and friends, all these 
 things shall be saved ; but if he place profit in one thing, and friends 
 and fatherland and kinsfolk, yea, and righteousnees itself some other 
 where, ail these tilings shall perish, for profit shall outweigh them. For 
 where the I and the Mine are, thither, of necessity, inclineth every 
 living thing: [" Where your treasure is there will your heart be also "] 
 if in the flesh, then the supremacy is there ; if in the Will, it is there ; 
 if in outward things, it is there. If, then, mine I is where my Will is 
 
360 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 This, it need hardly be said, is an entirely different 
 brotherhood from that towards which modern Socialists 
 either consciously or unconsciously move. This is a 
 brotherhood in truth and duty ; a brotherhood of those who 
 strive to live according to Nature, and keep clear her natural 
 distinctions of real relationship; a brotherhood in purity 
 and the love of purity : not a low promiscuous hell where 
 there is to be no manhood and no womanhood, and no scope 
 for such ; where life is to be one continual falsehood ; where 
 every single child born into the world will be practically 
 orphaned in being severed from its true individual parents, 
 to be lost, a poor, nameless, homeless, abused misery in the 
 
 [where reason is], thus only shall I be the friend I should be, or the son 
 or the father. For my profit then will be to cherish faith and piety and 
 forbearance and continence and helpfulness ; and to guard the bonds of 
 relation. But if I set Myself in one place and Virtue some otherwhere, 
 then the word of EPICURUS waxeth strong, which declareth that there 
 is no Virtue, or, at least, that Virtue is but .conceit. Through this 
 ignorance did the Athenians and Lacedaemonians quarrel with each 
 other, and the Thebans with both of them, and even now the Romans 
 with Getae ; and through this yet earlier wars of Ilion arose. Paris was 
 the guest of Menelaus ; and if anyone had seen how friendly-minded 
 towards each other they were, he would have disbelieved anyone who 
 said they were not friends. But a morsel was flung between them a fair 
 woman, and about her there was war. And now when you see friends 
 or brothers that seem of one mind, argue nothing frcm this 
 concerning their friendship ; nay, not if they swear it, not if 
 they declare that they cannot be parted from each other. For in the 
 ruling faculty of a worthless man there is no faith ; it is unstable, 
 unaccountable, victim of one appearance after another. But try them, 
 not, as others do, i f they were born of the same parents and nurtured 
 together, and under the same tutor ; but by this alone, wherein they place 
 their profit, whether in outward things or in the will. If in outward 
 things, call them no more friends than faithful r steadfast or bold or 
 
 free ; yea, nor even men, if you have sense But if 
 
 you hear, in sooth, chat these men hold the good to be there only where 
 the Will is, where the right [and rational] use of appearances is, then be 
 not busy to enquire if they are father and son, or brothers, or have long 
 companied with each other as comrades ; but, knowing this one thing 
 alone, argue confidently that they are friends, even as they are faithful 
 and upright. For where else is friendship than where faith is, where 
 piety is, where there is an interchange of virtue and none of other things 
 than that ? " 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 361 
 
 vile social crowd, there to have palmed off on it that devil's 
 lie of the divine PLATO, namely, that it is the child of the whole 
 incestuous community, when, in fact, every sociable devil 
 will know full well that it is utterly impossible under any 
 circumstances whatever for any human offspring to be the 
 result of more than two individual parents. And all this sin 
 against truth, all this outrage upon innocence, for what? 
 Why, merely in order that a race of slimy twining serpents 
 may be helped to shirk their natural duties, have their bellies 
 constantly gorged with pigswash, and their lusts continually 
 satiated with universal incestuous "brotherhood." Which 
 is the true brotherhood ? that of lies or that of truth ? 
 that of natural duty or that of sociable confusion ? that of 
 men or that of devils ? To which belongs the future ? 
 
 Just in proportion as our fellow beings are rational and 
 self-governing, we ourselves as equally rational, self-governing 
 beings, unavoidably claiming in the very fact of our own self- 
 governance as much individual freedom as we can unaggres- 
 sively and therefore rationally obtain, are logically and 
 morally bound, under certain penalty of sin against the light 
 of reason that shines within us \ as well as inevitable loss in 
 the long run of the liberty we enjoy ; to see to it that our 
 fellow beings shall be perfectly free to do anything and every- 
 thing that does not either aggress upon or defraud others ; 
 this non-aggressive and non-fraudulent behaviour on their 
 part being, indeed, itself the only possible proof that, at any 
 rate in their relations with the rest of the world, such beings 
 are rational : and, whatever our own private suspicions may 
 be, we are not warranted in treating people as different from 
 what they seem until we have clearly proved them to be so ; 
 or justice is not governed by doubts and fears, but by facts. 
 Among men who are freely governed by reason, non-- 
 aggressive and non-fraudulent people ought always to be 
 
362 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 perfectly free to go peaceably from place to place; thus 
 quietly following what the reason of each inwardly assigns as 
 the duties of each, and in this manner spontaneously 
 obeying the god that Nature has planted within them rather 
 than the Demos which she has placed without. It is not in 
 any sense just that such people should be compelled to live 
 as so many mere puppets, to be continually ordered hither 
 and thither like slaves who exist solely for the sake of carry- 
 ing out every new fad or crotchet that a set of narrow- 
 minded fools and their equally narrow-minded mobs of noisy, 
 half drunken voters may think likely to promote " the 
 common good"; that is to say, the good of their own greedy, 
 envious desires, and low, sensual, duty-shirking inclinations. 
 This may be sound Democracy ; certainly it is all that can 
 ever be expected from what the Iron Duke truly described as 
 the "aristocracy of blackguards:" but it is not fair play: it is 
 condemned by reason, and the time will come when a 
 stronger and cooler force than Democracy shall summarily 
 put down all who practice and grow fat upon it. Non- 
 aggressive and non-fraudulent people should be perfectly 
 free to buy and sell, to give and receive, to contract and 
 arrange, without let or hindrance either on the part of State 
 officials or on that of the power and place-seeking quacks 
 who appoint them. Liberty-and-property-respecting citizens 
 should be free to get and keep whatever they can get so long 
 as they abstain from aggressing against or defrauding 
 others. They should also be free to manage and 
 manipulate, and lend to others either with or without 
 interest or pay agents to do it for them all objects which 
 they have either unaggressively or unfraudulently obtained; 
 proof positive to the contrary being required for each 
 individual case before they are deprived of anything that 
 they may own. Of course the same also applies to the 
 monkery equivalents of all unaggressively obtained objects. 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 363 
 
 In fact people should always be free to deal with their own 
 
 in any manner that does not demonstrably aggress upon 
 
 other real personages then living: since, looked at in the 
 
 light of justice, aggression implies an actual act, done to a 
 
 real person who is known to be actually injured thereby, and 
 
 not a possible act supposed to be done to a line of posterity 
 
 which may never exist at all: moreover, human justice has 
 
 quite enough to do to deal with real injuries, without attempting 
 
 the endless task of redressing imaginary ones, whose influence 
 
 may easily be supposed to extend " to the last syllable of 
 
 recorded time." No man should be dispossessed of any 
 
 property that he may hold until he can be clearly proved to 
 
 have got such property either by force or by fraud, 'and until 
 
 the particular person or persons from whom it has been so 
 
 obtained can be severally and distinctly pointed out. If this 
 
 simple and obvious principle were constantly recognized as 
 
 it ought to be recognized, not even the very beginnings of 
 
 socialism would ever be able to begin; and the vague, 
 
 impersonal accusations of the enemies of private property 
 
 would continually be treated with all the contempt they 
 
 deserve. For the sentimental objector to private property, 
 
 when looked squarely in the face, affords the strongest 
 
 possible argument against himself, and is then clearly seen 
 
 to be the thorough paced humbug he undoubtedly is. 
 
 Nature herself takes a silent ironical pleasure in making a 
 
 fool of him. Here is a person with private hands buried in 
 
 private pockets, with a private skull full of private emptiness, 
 
 loudly denouncing by means of a private voice the awful 
 
 selfishness of private property. Folly is too inexpressive a 
 
 term for this creed but to continue with the main point. 
 
 Liberty and property respecting individuals should be free 
 
 to exchange their own unaggressive activities, or the unaggres- 
 
 sively obtained results of their activities (on just such terms 
 
 as they can unaggressively arrange) for the unaggressive 
 
364 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 activities, or the unaggressively obtained results of the 
 activities, of other individuals: and they should also be 
 perfectly free; if, that is, they are so minded; to do all this 
 mutual exchanging business solely for the sake of their own 
 private profit; in order that they may spend or invest such 
 profit in any manner that the reason given them by nature 
 tells them is best calculated to specially further their own 
 private interests, and thus enable them to unaggressively 
 preserve or unaggressively continue their own individual 
 lives in their own individual ways. Such real freedom will 
 not in the slightest degree whatever hinder them from being 
 just as generous as they may severally feel inclined: and it 
 is absolutely impossible for any human creature to be more 
 than this; since generosity is not in the amount given, but in 
 the will to give, and in that alone; the good will being the only 
 good, and the evil will the only evil, that exists or ever can 
 exist for human life. Under liberty there would be ample 
 scope for every Socialist to be as sociable as he pleased, but 
 always at his own expense and never at that of -his 
 neighbour. \ Real freedom will never prevent people from 
 co-operating amongst themselves for just such ends and 
 with just such persons as the separate inner judgment of each 
 co-operator seems to individually warrant each in specially 
 furthering; while, at the same time, it will not compel any 
 man to assist in any form of association that his own private 
 judgment condemns, or help, either with labour or labour's 
 equivalents, any person or persons whose aims do not meet 
 with his full, complete, and conscientious approval.^ Real 
 freedom will always provide that no human being, however 
 obscure and insignificant, shall be compelled to extend 
 either help or property to anybody against the 
 natural grain either of his heart or of his judg- 
 ment , and consequently against the only efficient 
 strength that nature has given him. The desire for unwilling 
 
7he Natural Right to Freedom. 365 
 
 help is the thoughtless want of a shallow-pated fool; 
 for, in point of fact, such assistance would not be truly 
 worth having ; could not, indeed, be a real gift at all ; 
 inasmuch as, through being forced against the grain of 
 individual character, it could not proceed from a spontaneous 
 and therefore a generous motive. How clearly SHAKESPERE 
 saw that a practical recognition of this most obviously 
 unalterable law, affords the only solid foundation of human 
 strength, is shown by the words he imagines Henry V. to 
 have said to his soldiers on the eve of Agincourt : 
 
 " He, which hath no stomach to this fight, 
 Let him depart, his passport shall be made, 
 And crowns for convoy put into his purse : 
 We would not die in that man's company." 
 
 X.This most just freedom, in proportion to the settled 
 permanence of its security, alone affords sufficient scope to 
 each man for making a rational self-choice between good 
 and evil, as the latter appear, not in the distorted atmosphere 
 of his artificially stimulated hopes and fears, but in the 
 clear light of his natural, unintimidated judgment, which is 
 his own by nature to respect and follow, and never 
 to surrender into any person's keeping, or into the 
 keeping of any crowd of persons, however large or 
 however threatening. In providing such ample scope for 
 rational choice, this freedom secures intact the indis- 
 pensable condition of true manhood : a far higher 
 and holier fact than any quantity of sentimental brotherhood, 
 being, indeed, a real, strength-giving relation to the infinite 
 reality from which all strength comes ; and not a false, soul- 
 destroying bondage to mere finite, time-serving humanity, 
 which, being in its finite life only so much dust and ashes, 
 has of itself no abiding strength, but only failure and death 
 continually. Freedom is the very breath of manhood's life ; 
 for this life is the free, loving service of reason for its own 
 
366 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 sake, for the sake of the divine, ever present peace that is one 
 with it, and which a man may possess without being enslaved 
 by any external force whatsoever ; either the sham force of 
 votes or the real force of bayonets : either the quackery of 
 to-day or the medicine of to-morrow. 
 
 Finally, under real freedom there would be as much 
 security for private property as scope for the private carrying 
 out of rational motives. In fact, equal freedom would be 
 worthless without equal security ; and, properly understood, 
 the second is the logical correlative of the first. No true 
 freedom can exist where all who have unaggressively or 
 unfraudulently obtained property are not always perfectly 
 free to privately possess and dispose of such property 
 without being interfered with or dictated to by their neigh- 
 bours. Equal freedom involves equal exemption for each 
 and all from any arbitrary interference with whatever they 
 may hold that cannot be clearly disproved to have been 
 obtained without aggression or without fraud the equivalent 
 of aggression. This does not destroy the right of a man to 
 get about from place to place so long as he does not 
 perceptibly interfere with, damage, destroy, or appropriate 
 the property of his neighbours. Of course, as repeatedly 
 insisted on, such perfect freedom as this is an ideal, and can 
 only exist where all are mutually respecting both one 
 another's unaggressive conduct and the unaggressively 
 obtained results of such conduct [see bottom of page 40]. 
 Immediately one man or one group of men compulsively or 
 fraudulently obtain what another man or another group of men 
 have obtained without compulsion and without fraud, the 
 state of equal freedom ; that is, the state of equal exemption 
 from human interference with whatever has been unaggres- 
 sively and unfraudulently obtained, is manifestly broken; the 
 complete egg has suffered a most damaging fall, and no 
 human power can fully restore to it its original perfection. 
 
7 he Natural Right to Freedom. 367 
 
 There then only remains to make the best of a bad job. 
 Those who follow unreason have got to be dealt with 
 as irrational beings, and with as little sacrifice of their 
 freedom as is compatible with the securing of the maximum 
 of freedom for those who follow reason. In fact, just 
 government only exists to defend the rational against the 
 irrational. That is the true meaning of it; that the true 
 end of it; that its only legitimate function, and, just in 
 proportion as it fails therein, it is on the sure and certain high 
 road to destruction. True government is an unaggressively 
 and unfraudulently exercised liberty, and an unaggressively 
 and unfraudulently obtained property, defence league; resting, 
 not upon compulsory taxes, but upon voluntary contribu- 
 tions, and some day such a league will defend justice all 
 over the world. As an example of unjust destruction of 
 equal freedom, take the following A unagressively and 
 unfraudulently picks up some pebbles on the sea shore, 
 unagressively strings them together so as to form a necklace; 
 and then unaggressively places that necklace round the 
 neck of the freely-consenting B: but C, observing the toy, 
 and envying B the possession of it, takes it away by force 
 from the person who had fairly, because unaggressively, 
 obtained it. Cle^ly a destruction of equal freedom in the 
 matter of private property. It applies to every kind of 
 unsociable socialistic confiscation, and under a regime of 
 equal justice such miserable acts of dishonesty would 
 be treated with the swift punishment they so richly 
 deserve. Under such a regime all rational beings 
 would enjoy a real equality, for each would be equally 
 secure (so far as human power could achieve it for him) in 
 the private possession of all unaggressively and unfraudu- 
 lently obtained property; whether such property amounted 
 to ten pence or ten million pounds; and equally free to 
 dispose of it in any manner that did not plainly aggress 
 
368 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 upon others. This is true equality, for it is equality before 
 just law; and in proportion as it is sternly and resolutely 
 carried out, all justly, because unaggressively and unfrau- 
 dulently, obtained private property will be as secure from 
 the political confiscations of unprincipled Socialists as from 
 the busy fingers of common thieves This is the justice 
 that is one with freedom and the freedom that is one with 
 justice. This is the polity dictated by that supreme reason, 
 the light of which, though dwelling in man, is yet infinitely 
 higher and wider than he ; which constitutes his only real 
 and lasting strength; and which, in years to come, shall lead 
 him out of the poor, blind, sentimental slavery wherein he 
 now seems almost lost, and bring him into the free, fearless 
 manhood of nature's crowning race. You say "Ah! but 
 this polity is at present losing ground." What of that? It 
 has lost ground before, but always in the long run gained 
 more than it has lost. It loses for the years but wins for 
 the ages. Are not the civilizations of to-day freer than the 
 older ones? They have advanced further into the light, 
 and now they go back into the darkness. What of that? 
 Let them go. They deserve their fate. Who trusts in the 
 strength of the Eternal need have no regrets and no fears. 
 Let him only do his duty and his soul shall be at peace in 
 the perfect fulness of God. Truth will conquer at the last. 
 The human race is wider than any civilization, than any 
 number of civilizations, however pretentious and corrupt; 
 and through this race there works a mightier power than legis- 
 lation : a power that is one with every star and every world 
 throughout the universe. With this power rests the destiny of 
 humanity; and this power makes, not for the sentimental 
 injustice of socialism, but for the rational justice of indi- 
 vidualism : not for the slavery of man to his neighbours, but 
 for the freedom of man from his neighbours: not for the 
 life which is lived for the sake of what is human, but for the 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 369 
 
 life which is lived for the sake of what is divine. The false 
 brotherhood of socialism is behind: the true manhood of 
 individualism is before; and, though particular individuals 
 and communities may go back to be lost in that dark, 
 hellish confusion of all clear, natural distinctions, yet the 
 bravest and noblest of the human race do not go back; but 
 the movement of Nature herself bears them ever forward 
 and upward towards thepurity, truth, and duty of freer days to 
 come. Cowardice does not finally win in this world : falsehood 
 does not win : shirking of natural duty does not win: cant does 
 not win: bribery does not, trading upon the envy, greed, 
 covetousness, and lust of the base multitude does not. In 
 the long run this polity of justice, this creed of individualism, 
 will survive over all that is mean and base and unmanly ; 
 over all the shallow, frothy speeches and time-serving 
 policies of that blatant sham called modern democracy. It 
 may fail with this nation or that empire, because they are 
 too weak to carry it out, and because their weakness is 
 dragging them down, first into slavery, then into extinction ; 
 but with the best and strongest of the human race it will 
 not fail: and it will not fail because it cannot fail: and it 
 cannot fail because the ever more and more complete 
 carrying of it out is the necessary and irremovable condition 
 of racial survival: and because that race which most perfectly 
 carries it out will triumph over every other race in the great 
 struggle for existence. And that race will do this solely 
 through getting rid of those base irrational types which are 
 not adapted to conform to the indispensible conditions of 
 human survival; that is, to the conditions of liberty and of 
 justice which is one with liberty. All socialistic races will 
 be sunk with the weight of their own unjustly and artificially 
 preserved rubbish; their irrational types, who hate reason 
 and obedience to reason, and who, therefore, are devoid of 
 the strength of reason. For what constitutes fitness in 
 
37 The Naticral Right to Freedom. 
 
 humanity, except obedience to the dictates of reason? that 
 is, to the moral laws of the Eternal? And what determines 
 in the last resort whose race shall survive and whose shall 
 not? Not a finite humanity but an infinite reality. Those 
 who rest on humanity shall break down. Those who rest 
 on sentiment shall break down. But those who rest on the 
 truth of that Eternal Power which wields .the heavens and 
 the earth, and works through all lives and all beings, shall 
 not break down. To them belongs the future of this world. 
 From them shall spring the crowning race of human kind. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 The end, then, of life is reason, or rather, the divine peace 
 that a loving service of reason gives. And the fullest possible 
 scope for the play of reason is equal liberty for every kind 
 of unaggressive or unfraudulent activity: this involves, as 
 already shown, an equal security for the results of such 
 activity. Man has a natural right to this real and secure 
 freedom because he has a right to do right; not from fear, 
 but from love: because his true nature is rational, the Eternal 
 Reality having given him an inner divinity, the image of 
 that Reality's own infinite intellect, to love and serve all the 
 days of his life; a pure and holy light enabling him to 
 distinguish right from wrong, and follow the former while 
 avoiding the latter, freedom being the condition of his freely 
 doing so; that is to say, of his doing so from a motive of 
 love which is free from the fear of human punishment. This 
 love unites him in oneness with the Eternal, and so makes 
 him truly free in that perfect exemption from the constraint 
 of foreign causes which the Eternal alone possesses. The 
 same love also takes away the slavery of his passions, makes 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 371 
 
 him pure, and gives unto him the calm, passionless activity 
 of the one, the only existence: the great impersonal, awe- 
 inspiring infinite of infinites: the reality which men call God, 
 but which in all its perfect fulness can never be known to 
 mortal beings. 
 
 These conditions of freedom and of security the correlative 
 of freedom, so far as they can be realized, guarantee that 
 all shall have an equal scope for making a rational use of 
 their separate and diverse faculties; that is, for rationally 
 competing with one another in mental, moral and physical 
 strength, and by so doing bringing out to the fullest possible 
 extent the separate individualities of each: not, indeed, for 
 the sake of the material things or the fickle human 
 sympathies that perish, but for the sake of the peace of duty 
 that does not perish. For the sake of this peace all human 
 actions, from the greatest to the smallest, may always and 
 at all times be equally done; and those who live In this 
 peace enjoy a companionship that is more than social, that 
 is cosmic : that is more than human, that is divine. High 
 as the heavens are above the earth is thi:: peace above the 
 restless social life of man. 
 
 This, it maybe said, makes life one continual competition. 
 Well, what if it does ? Those who have peace within do 
 not mind the storm without. Those who love what is 
 eternal do not pine for the love of what belongs to time. 
 Does competition prevent a man from doing his duty? from 
 making the most of each circumstance that presents itself? 
 and from doing this in accordance with the dictates of his 
 own reason ? of the light that shines within him ? This 
 miserable whine over competition sinks modern life below 
 the level of ancient paganism. A man must compete, and 
 he cannot serve both his own reason and the sentiments of 
 others. " If I counsel honourably " said CHRYSIPPUS " I 
 shall offend the citizens, and if basely, the Gods." It is the 
 
372 The Natural Right to Ficedom. 
 
 part of a coward to run down necessary war. However 
 fiercely rages the battle, a man can always do his best, and 
 for his own sake strike the hosts of darkness with such 
 strength as he has got. The strongest can do no more, the 
 weakest should do no less. He who only uses one talent 
 well is equal in the sight of the infinite intellect of infinite 
 reality to him who uses ten talents no better, and far fuller 
 of peace than he who uses twenty talents badly. " But in 
 this struggle some must fail if others succeed." None need 
 fail in securing the peace which comes by doing the duty 
 which reason prescribes; and those who secure this peace 
 are above the losses of time; its stings and disappointments 
 cannot prick them more: to them it matters not whether 
 they succeed or fail; for in any case they have their reward, 
 and at last but go out of the present peace that is into the 
 eternal peace that shall be. Having fought, though possibly 
 only as a common soldier, in the great fight of truth, they 
 pass into its everlasting light and become one with it for ever. 
 But it is not absolutely necessary that life should be all 
 competition. On the contrary, it is indispensibly requisite 
 that one side of it should always as far as possible be 
 uncompetitive; and this simply in order that a sufficient 
 number of strong, healthy competitors for stocking and 
 replenishing life's great arena may be constantly supplied. 
 Here we come to the very foundation stone of Individualism : 
 here w r e strike the keynote of its polity: and here we shall 
 be able to sum up what that polity is, on what it rests, and 
 what it means : only premising beforehand that all we are 
 about to say merely describes nature, and truth as it is in 
 Nature; and refers not in the remotest possible degree to 
 that shameless, impious lie called modern civilization : a lie 
 which is fast going down the broad road to long deserved 
 destruction, there to suffer the vengeance of a powder whose 
 laws can never be mocked and scorned with impunity. 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 373 
 
 There is one human relation into which competition does 
 not naturally enter; namely, true, natural, pure and honest 
 individual parenthood: a relation by means of which, so far 
 as life is lived to truth as it is in nature, each individual 
 that comes into the world is carefully trained for fearlessly 
 competing in the great struggle of adult competition. Out 
 of this relation, and just in proportion as it is at once both 
 absolutely voluntary and absolutely pure, spring all those 
 sterner virtues which alone make life worth living and men 
 and women worthy to live it. From hence comes nothing 
 that is cowardly or base, nothing that is frivolous or paltry; 
 no puling sentimentalism or stifling, poisonous cant: no 
 miserable prostitution of manhood before the flesh and dust 
 of outside humanity. Here is, or rather was, the sacred 
 birthplace of honour and of chivalry, of courage, purity, and 
 highmindedness; of all that ever made or ever can make 
 real nobility. All gone out of these Yahoos; out of high 
 and low, of aristocracy and democracy alike; but not gone 
 out of Nature : and some time in the future they shall rise 
 again, to shine starlike and clear as they never shone before. 
 
 It is mainly for the sake of securing a free scope for this 
 relation, and for the virtues bound up with it, that the polity 
 of individualism is formulated; is advocated, and will be 
 advocated; is weakly and imperfectly carried out now, but, 
 as surely as truth is truth, will be more firmly and thoroughly 
 carried out by the braver hearts and stronger hands of days 
 that are to come. Why will it be carried out? Because 
 man, so far as he is a rational being, is bound to serve truth: 
 because those who serve truth, however few they may be in 
 number, are stronger than those who serve falsehood; 
 because the fittest must survive; and because the constitu- 
 tion of things is such that whatsoever either directly or 
 indirectly seeks to establish the universal lie and the 
 universal defilement of communism, is bound sooner or later 
 
374 'fht Natural Rigftt to Freedom. 
 
 to be met face to face, and crushed out as mercilessly as 
 vipers are treated by those whose business it is to destroy 
 them. In a word, because there is a right which is above 
 all expediency, and a power that makes for truth and purity, 
 against which no lie can in the end prevail. 
 
 The real nature of man being reason, there is a natural 
 order of relations corresponding to that reason; in short there 
 is a true order of things corresponding to the reason in man 
 which is capable of knowing truth : an order which, though 
 it may not be completely known in the intellect of any 
 particular man, is always completely known in the infinite 
 intellect of God; of which man's intellect is but a part, 
 bearing, indeed, about the same relation to God's intellect 
 that any point in an infinite line bears to the line itself. In 
 this sense God is truth as well as love, and only those who 
 live to the truth can know the love. To live to truth is 
 purity, and love is the child of purity. 
 
 There is, then, a true order or cosmos corresponding to 
 the reason of man as part of the intellect of God, and the 
 only normal function which a rational being, as such, performs 
 in this order, consists in living in rational harmony with it: 
 but this he can only do by keeping clear, so far as lies in 
 his power, the distinct relations in which the various facts 
 contained in this order naturally and necessarily stand 
 towards one another. So far as he clearly distinguishes 
 these relations and knows them as they are known in the 
 infinite intellect of God, so far as he bears himself calmly 
 and rationally towards them, constantly endeavouring to 
 deal with them without being swayed by any passion, but 
 always with a desire to preserve his own true, rational nature 
 as pure as it is at its best; so far does he do what may 
 be termed right, because so far does his own intellect grow 
 into line with that of God. Thus does he become one with 
 God, and with his own true nature as part of God; thus, to 
 
'Ihc Natural Right to Freedom. 375 
 
 use a Shakesperian phrase, does he grow into eternal lines 
 with time; thus, as SPINOZA says, does he come to view 
 everything under the form of eternity; and thus does he live 
 harmoniously with the truth of that natural order of facts 
 which is one of the infinite expressions of an infinitely infinite 
 reality. In the same way, through rational oneness with 
 what is divine, he also obtains the freedom of an existence 
 which, being everything, cannot be constrained by foreign 
 causes ; and so dwells in the peace of those who prove their 
 love of God by living to truth as it is in Nature. 
 
 From this it follows that, inasmuch as living to truth is 
 the measure of reason, and living to falsehood the measure 
 of passion, and of the impure darkness of passion's life; man 
 must necessarily endeavour in virtue of his very rationality, 
 and just in so far as he is rational, to live under conditions 
 where the highest possible degree of truth respecting the 
 natural relations in which the facts that make up Nature 
 necessarily stand towards one another, is clearly and perma- 
 nently manifest. For in proportion as a rational being 
 encourages any conditions involving falsehood; involving 
 confusion and misexpression respecting natural relations; 
 involving the obscuring of the clear distinction of things as 
 they are in Nature ; such a being mars the purity of its own 
 rationality, sins against its own light, against what is divine 
 within it, and sinks in life's scale towards darkness and destruc- 
 tion. All this is self-evident. For reason being the only strength 
 of man, being, indeed, the strength of God in man, it is only 
 strong and itself in proportion as it endeavours to see and 
 live by those relations as they really are in Nature, and not 
 as they may be hidden by passion, or falsely made to appear 
 by unnatural, though it may be very brotherly and sociable, 
 arrangements. The life of reason is the life lived according 
 to the clear distinctions of things as they are in Nature, that 
 is, according to truth; and this is purity: and purity is the 
 
376 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 clear-sighted strength of man. This fact is writ large on 
 every page of history; in every sphere of human life. How 
 well it was exemplified in the history of the Jewish race! 
 So long as that race remained pure, it conquered; striking 
 down hosts of foul, impure breeds like corn before the 
 sickle; clearing them out root and branch, as they deserved; 
 for they were adopting communism: and there is an eternal 
 justice which will not allow that monstrous sin to survive 
 in the struggle for existence. 
 
 In no figurative, but in a most literal sense, purity of breed 
 was to those early Jews a god of battles and a lord of hosts ; 
 as it was to the early Romans: as it was not to the later 
 Romans ; as it was not to the later Jews : as it shall be to 
 Nature's crowning race, whose empire of freedom and of 
 justice shall reach from pole to pole. 
 
 The reasonableness of life according to Nature, or rather 
 to truth as it is in Nature, and, therefore, as it is in the 
 infinite intellect of God, constitutes the ethical foundation 
 of Individualism : and on this basis is reared the individualistic 
 polity, so far, of course, as Individualism has a polity; and, as 
 pointed out on page 16, if human nature were perfect, no polity 
 would be needed, for then truth and purity would be all in 
 all, and man's lost Eden found again. But human wicked- 
 ness renders a polity necessary, and will render one necessary 
 for ages yet to come. There are well-intentioned and bad- 
 intentioned in the world, and, as someone well says, " the 
 good are few." There are people who love truth and to live 
 to it, and there are people who hate it with an exceeding 
 bitter hatred, who look on natural duty as a bondage, and 
 seek by every possible means, both social and political, to 
 shuffle out of it, and shove it on to the backs of others. 
 Men and women there are who love darkness rather than 
 light, because their aims, however much sugared over with 
 cant, are evil and sensual and devilish. In a word, there 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 377 
 
 are those who delight in the service of unreason, of worldly 
 pleasure, and sociable vanity, and lust, and passion ; caring 
 nought and thinking nought of all the shameful falsehood 
 and confusion that such service inevitably causes. But not- 
 withstanding this the true nature of man is and always must 
 be rational. As a species he cannot and will not go back 
 into the darkness: he must move upward towards the light; 
 and whatever foul and evil thing ventures to obstruct his 
 forward march will sooner or later be mercilessly trampled 
 beneath his feet. 
 
 Now Nature, in evolving this as yet imperfectly developed 
 human species, has evolved three naturally distinct and 
 separate spheres for the play of the activities of man in so far 
 as he is a rational being, and three special kinds of activity 
 corresponding to them. First, she has evolved a non- 
 competitive sphere, wherein, if there is life lived according 
 to the truth as it is in Nature, and as it is known in the 
 infinite intellect of God, individual man may naturally and 
 truthfully continue himself as a being naturally separate from 
 other men, and endowed by Nature with separate powers of 
 self-continuance. This is called the family ; and although, 
 as our pure-minded preachers of the gospel of brotherly love 
 are so extremely delighted to see,* it is now in this and 
 other countries fast going to ruin on the vanities and luxuries 
 of a false, hollow sociability ; yet in a future race it will 
 survive to see the death of that old serpent, material 
 communism, and rise to its true purity and perfection when 
 the morally, mentally, and physically bankrupt nations of a 
 shabby genteel civilization have consumed both themselves 
 and their posterity in the seething caldron of their shameful 
 and mc-st unnatural corruptions. 
 
 * Fabian Essays, pages 134 and 146 
 
378 The Natural Right to Freedom 
 
 One sphere for the activity of man, then, in proportion as 
 he is rational and a lover of truth as it is in Nature, is the 
 family : a purely paternal and non-competitive institution 
 when in a healthy condition, which it invariably is in a rising 
 empire, and invariably is not in a falling one. For example, 
 the power of the Roman Empire was built upon the purity 
 of the family life, and with the spread of communism that 
 power declined, and finally went to pieces. While barbarians 
 were attending to their individual natural duties, the men and 
 women of Rome were neglecting theirs to wallow in the gilded 
 filth of truth-obscuring lust, and at last the sword of Nature's 
 inexorable justice fell upon the shameful lie of communism. 
 
 Outside the non-competitive family Nature has evolved 
 another sphere for the play of man's faculties so far as they 
 are governed by reason, namely, a competitive sphere of an 
 exchanging or non-aggressive character, where, as was shown 
 on page 104, a man may rationally compete with other men 
 on a footing of personal independency, for the purpose of 
 unaggressively securing the requisite means for efficiently 
 carrying on his natural function of self-continuance ; that is 
 to say, for the end of maintaining his family, which he 
 naturally, and just so far as he is rational, prefers should be 
 his own, and not in any sense whatever that of his very dear, 
 chummy, but sometimes envious and covetous " brother." 
 This miserable selfishness on his part is exactly what makes 
 competition with his sweet " brothers " so just and necessary. 
 For God, or Nature, will not for long permit him to tell his 
 children the infamous lie that they are not the children of a 
 particular father, but of the whole herd of Yahoos : God or 
 Nature sooner or later stamps this lie out ; and, therefore, so 
 long as he is bound to live to the truth, he cannot expect his 
 " brothers " to co-operate for the purpose of providing him 
 with the means for having a private family, which they shall 
 help to support in order that he may have the sole and 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 379 
 
 exclusive monopoly of getting. This is not just and it does 
 not wash. Says Mr. W. HEPWORTH DIXON in the second 
 volume of his amusing and instructive work on Spiritual [!] 
 Wives " The very first conception of a Socialistic State is 
 such a relation of the sexes as shall prevent men and women 
 from falling into selfish family groups. Family life is 
 eternally at war with Socialistic life. When you have a 
 private household you must have personal property to feed 
 it, hence a community of goods, the first idea of a Socialistic 
 State, has been found in every case to imply a community of 
 children [already people in the East End of London are 
 agitating for the feeding and clothing of their, or the State's [!] 
 children out of the rates and taxes] and to promote a 
 community of wives. That you cannot have Socialism with- 
 out introducing Communism is the teaching of all experience, 
 whether the trials have been made upon a large scale or on 
 a small scale, in the old world or in the new. All the 
 Pentecostal and Universal Churches have begun their career 
 with a strong disposition towards that fraternal state in which 
 private property is unknown. Some have travelled along 
 that line, adopting all the conclusions to which the journey 
 led them, while others have turned back in alarm on seeing 
 that the fraternal theory was at war with all the sacred 
 traditions of home. The Shakers found their societies on 
 the ruins of family life. The Mormons, in order to save 
 their family life, have been forced to give up their inclination 
 towards a common property in the Lord. The Princutes of 
 Spaxton have to renounce their old ways of thinking when 
 they place their feet in the Abode of Love. The Bible 
 Communists (or Free Lovers) found their logical term in the 
 doctrine, which they adopted, of a common right in goods 
 and wives. [A " complex marriage " they call it. Accord- 
 ing to the supplement to Chambers' Encyclopaedia, the 
 founder started " Bible Communism " with his mother and 
 
380 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 family.] All the social reformers who have striven to 
 reconcile the family group with the general fund have failed, 
 though some of these reformers, like the pioneers at Brook 
 Farm, were men of consummate abilities and unselfish 
 aims." 
 
 Outside the non-competitive family, and outside the 
 non-aggressively competitive sphere of exchange, Nature has 
 evolved another competitive sphere for the activities of man 
 as a rational being, living, as in the present imperfect state 
 of human development he must live, in the midst of beings 
 who are often anything but rational. This is not of a non- 
 aggressive character, and therefore the activity corresponding 
 to it is only legitimate when undertaken, not for purposes 
 of confiscation or enslavement, but solely in order to defend 
 or carry outward those eternal principles of justice (and of 
 freedom as being one with justice) which are dictated by 
 the supreme reason of the infinite intellect of God, and 
 behind which the strength of God moves in the arm of man: 
 for that strength in relation to man is the purity of reason, 
 and fearless, unflinching following out of reason's dictates. 
 By means of the activity corresponding to this 3rd sphere, 
 man may defend, keep clear, and widen ever further and 
 further outward, both the ist sphere for truthful, monogamic, 
 self-continuance, and the 2nd sphere for unaggressively 
 competing amongst his dear brothers for the private means 
 of carrying on a most selfish, though perfectly natural and 
 truthful self-continuance ! 
 
 Paternalism, Industrialism, Militaryism : Self-continuance, 
 Self-support, Self-defence. These are the three correlated 
 spheres evolved by Nature in evolving the rational activity 
 of man as individual continuer, individual exchanger, and 
 individual defender. The perfectly separate and distinct 
 maintainancc of them enables him to selfishly live according 
 to the truth as it is in Nature; not for the sake of his dear 
 
7 he Natural Right to Freedom. 381 
 
 brother, but for the sake of the truth and purity which are 
 worthier than any number of brothers, however dear: for 
 the sake of obedience to supreme reason, and for the sake 
 of the perfect peace that such obedience gives. The polity 
 of Individualism consists in keeping these three spheres 
 perfectly distinct, and solely by securing free play for the 
 natural activities corresponding to each. If allowed to be 
 distinct from one another they will simultaneously stand 
 and strengthen each other with the strength of truth : but if 
 compelled to become confused they will simultaneously fall 
 with the weakness of falsehood ; of unfaithfulness to truth 
 as it is in Nature and in God. All history proves this. 
 What ruined Rome and Athens and Sparta ? What ruined 
 Babylon and Judea? W T hat ruined every dead and buried 
 lie? Confusion. Confusion of clear distinctions as they 
 are in Nature. What is destroying the loud, showy lies of 
 to-day? The same deadly poison. A lie cannot stand and 
 it won't stand. Does it deserve to stand in the presence of 
 eternal justice, and in the light of the infinite intellect of 
 God? which sees all things and knows all things that go on 
 in this infinite universe. As an instance of the effect of 
 confusing these clear distinctions of Nature, take the case of 
 Sparta. In Nature the paternal sphere is for children, and 
 the competitive sphere for adults. The latter sphere clears 
 off the bad adults, and the former gives the children 
 a chance of coming to manhood, and proving whether they 
 can or cannot successfully compete. Such is the general 
 law, and if it were not so no highly evolved species could 
 survive; for the bad types, the variations in the direc- 
 tion of unfitness, would swamp everything. Well, 
 the Spartans tried to reverse this natural order. They 
 introduced paternalism among the adults. That is, they 
 tampered with the natural \ rocess which clears off the bad 
 adults, and of course then found themselves under the 
 
382 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 necessity of trying to get rid of their bad variations in an 
 artificial manner. They killed off all their apparently weak 
 children, and practiced brotherhood by lending their wives 
 about amongst one another; for naturally, as they loved 
 their children less they loved their brothers more: what was 
 given to the impurity of humanity was taken from the purity 
 of God : the seemingly weak young were gently hurled into 
 a mountain cave, and the brothers and sisters honeyed and 
 made love, as Hamlet well puts it, " all over the nasty sty." 
 They all went to the devil. They undertook the work of God, 
 and failed. 
 
 Such is the polity of Individualism. It is not founded in 
 brotherhood, or in humanity, or in sentimentalism, or in 
 sociable hypocrisy, or in anything of that description ; but it 
 is founded in Nature, in the truth of Nature, and therefore 
 in the truth of God ; whose visible expression Nature is. 
 Even amongst some of the higher living forms the rudiments 
 of this polity are clearly manifest. For example, according 
 to Mr. H. SPENCER, "An eye-witness affirms that among 
 rooks, a pair which steals the sticks from neighbouring nests 
 has its own nest pulled to pieces by the rest." Suppose, 
 however, that instead of this harsh policy being applied to 
 the socialistic rooks, an opposite policy was adopted. 
 Suppose that all those rooks which made the worst nests 
 were pitied for being so deucedly hard up, and kindly 
 assisted by a majority of the rookery to take as many sticks 
 from the best nests as they thought necessary for making 
 good the deficiencies caused by their own mental, moral, or 
 physical inequalities : suppose that all the slovenly, scamping, 
 dirty, shirky rooks ; all the good-natured, spendthrift rooks ; 
 all the unthrifty rooks ; all the idle ones ; all the fraudulent 
 ones ; all such as neglected, ill-used, or starved their badly- 
 blooded progeny to indulge in drink and debauchery and 
 other unnatural pleasures : suppose that all these, and the 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom. 383 
 
 offsprings of all these, were provided with sticks compulsively 
 taken from the best nests and remember that the best is 
 rare, and must in the very nature of the case be in a 
 minority what would be the natural outcome of such a 
 polity if it were only persisted in for a few generations? 
 Why, as was implied in the argument given on page 224, the 
 rook species would soon all go to the devil. Yes, every man 
 jack of them, every mother's son among them. It could not 
 miss but be so. But suppose a wiser policy was adopted. 
 Suppose that separate nests for separate pairs of rooks were 
 abolished as being selfish, uneconomical, and unsociable ; 
 suppose that all the sticks of the different nests were taken, 
 some to form a young rook's public nursery, where the 
 promiscuously empoisoned young of every separate rook 
 would be lost in the throng of the young of other separate 
 rooks ; suppose that some sticks were taken to form a public 
 vivisection establishment, where all the young ones that were 
 apparently weak in body, though possibly strong in intellect, 
 could be lovingly and tenderly experimented upon (yea, even 
 as a father pitieth his children) for the spread of science and 
 the good of rooks in general ; suppose that other sticks were 
 set apart for the purpose of public libraries, and picture 
 galleries, and museums, and theatres, and schools all free 
 as stolen rates and taxes can make them and dormitories 
 and refectories where all the chummy adult rooks could love 
 the impurity of one another better than the purity of their 
 collectively orphaned young ones : what would be likely to 
 be the outcome of this profound polity ? The fact is, my 
 dear, loving brother, rooks are wiser than you are. They 
 are nearer to God. They are not a brood of vipers, canting 
 and lying in the sight of heaven, and trying to shove their 
 young ones on to one another. See how selfishly they 
 monopolize their own ! Each pair knows its own and takes 
 a natural pleasure in doing its natural duty by its own. 
 
 V 
 
384 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 Who ever saw them go to balls or parties ? Who ever knew 
 them hire nurses to do what they should do themselves? 
 Who ever heard of them sending their young away almost 
 broken-hearted to a soul-corrupting boarding school. There 
 in the light of heaven, and of that still higher heaven, which 
 is natural duty, they personally, parentally train their young, 
 until training is no longer needed. And shall not man do 
 the same ? But the training of his young takes the greater 
 part of his life-time ; and when he has finished this duty, he 
 has achieved the peace which duty gives, and may calmly 
 look towards the day when that which gave shall take back ; 
 so that what has been serviceable in the part may be equally 
 so in the whole. And his love and his duty will live on 
 through all the ages in his children, and in his children's 
 children to the very end of the world. 
 
 Paternalism, Industrialism, Militaryism. Each in its place 
 in the trinity of Individualism. The first of these three 
 spheres indicate man's duties in the other two; his duties, 
 not to his fellow man, for he has no duties to anything lower 
 than God, but to truth as it is in Nature, and as it is in the 
 infinite intellect of infinite reality. For, as already shown, 
 man must, so far as he is a rational being, live in accord 
 with truth; since rational life is itself but conformity to truth. 
 Therefore, so far as he is rational, he must live by performing 
 the duties which are necessary to rational life. As a separate 
 selfish self-continuer he must endeavour, by marrying an 
 honest woman: if, indeed, such a rarity can be found among 
 sociable Yahoos; to possess and train up his own children, 
 and he must not try to palm either them or the education 
 of them upon those who, so far as he knows, have had 
 nothing to do with the getting of them. Even rooks have 
 sense to see this. As it is in the natural order of things for 
 intelligent individuals to look after themselves, so it is in 
 the same natural order for them to look after the continu- 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom, 385 
 
 ances of themselves. Therefore individual man is naturally 
 bound to get what he can to support his own family, so long 
 as he does not go against his own true nature, which is 
 reason; that is, so long as he does not confiscate or defraud 
 unto himself what is due to the unaggressive activities of 
 other men. Reason compels no man ta live irrationally, 
 and there is no reason why a man should live at all unless 
 he can live rationally, and with due respect for meum and 
 tuum 
 
 Out of the duties of provision grow the duties of defence. 
 So far as a man is rational he must defend both himself and 
 his family which is part of himself. If anybody interferes 
 with his wife and children, he must die like a lion or a tiger 
 in their defence : he must make no bones about it : for to 
 act otherwise would be to die to reason, and therefore 
 to God, and to the light of God within him. 
 
 And however brief may be a true man's fight, he necessarily 
 lives longer than the coward : for at least he lives until he 
 dies (and who can do more?) whereas the coward dies 
 before he does die; and lives in the living death of darkness 
 to God, and to the light of God, which is reason. The true 
 man always remains himself and retains his true rational 
 nature to the last, but the false man loses all, and yet lives 
 on in the torture of that loss. Therefore as a soldier man 
 must defend both the sphere for continuing himself 
 and the sphere for unaggressively providing the means 
 for so doing. This last may be only a small county, 
 or it may be an empire; but so long as it is the place 
 where he and his own are not interfered with, the same 
 reasoning equally applies. He must defend his home and 
 his liberty, or else freely pay others to do it for him. But 
 he should do it always freely and because it is according to 
 reason, and good and true and right for its own sake. His 
 sword should be drawn by a free man, and it should be 
 
386 7 he Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 made of good steel because paid for out of free contribu- 
 tions, not made of bad steel because paid for out of 
 compulsory contributions. It should be neither wielded 
 by begrudging conscript hands, nor bought with money 
 stolen out of begrudging conscript pockets. It should be as 
 free as the old sword of chivalry; and some day such a 
 sword will be drawn, and those who draw it will establish 
 liberty and justice in every corner of the globe. 
 
 Just as it is according to reason that a man should look 
 after, and defend without flinching, his own interest, so it is 
 equally according to reason for him to defend the unaggres- 
 sively acquired property and family which are necessary to 
 his own complete and rational self-expression. Here are 
 implied his three spheres of duty. The more he does his 
 duty in the paternal or non-competitive sphere, the more he 
 and his will survive over those who don't: the more he does 
 his duty in the non-aggressively competitive sphere, the more 
 he and his will survive over those who don't: the more he 
 does the same in the aggressively competitive sphere the 
 more will he achieve the same result. The fittest fathers, 
 the fittest exchangers, and the fittest soldiers will survive; 
 and the unfittest will go to the wall. And why should they 
 not ? 
 
 What in the long run will this survival mean ? A free 
 world without walled cities or closed ports; or restrictive 
 tariffs; or interferences with unaggres ive activities; or inse- 
 curity for the results of such activities : a world where men 
 may go from town to town, from city to city, from port to 
 port, and from land to land: where, if things are not doing 
 well in one place, a man will be free to try better luck in 
 any part of the globe. In short, it will mean a real individual 
 liberty together with a real security for private property. 
 And under the polity of which it will be the embodiment, 
 the natural resources of all climates and all soils will be 
 
The Natural Right to Freedom, 387 
 
 freely developed to an inconceivable extent. Under this 
 polity man will be able to render unto Caesar the things that 
 are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's. For 
 what is Caesar's ? Respect for individual liberty and private 
 property, which Caesar exists to defend. And \vhat is God's? 
 The free and unaggressive use of the faculties which God gives. 
 Such is individualism. It is the natural unity of the 
 triple life of man, as free continuer, free exchanger, and 
 free defender. It is the harmonious combination of 
 his three spheres of natural duty. These three spheres, 
 like the three sides of a triangle, necessarily invohe one 
 another, and the health of the 2nd and 3rd depends 
 entirely on the health of the first. The home makes or 
 mars everything. When good and pure it wins in the 
 competition of industry, and it wins in that of war. The 
 Roman Empire, for example, grew so long as its home life 
 was good, stopped growing when that life became bad, and 
 went to smash when it became too bad. Nature is too just 
 to posterity to continue to give either offspring or power to 
 the bad. When you laugh at her she laughs back at you, 
 and her laugh is the crushing irony of God. Unnatural 
 Frenchmen felt that irony at Gravelotte, and at Metz, and 
 at Sedan. "Betrayed" Yes, and by their own impurity: 
 and now going to the devil of extinction through the same 
 fatal cause. Their dream of universal, industrial and military 
 empire is ended. The realization of that dream is reserved 
 for a purer breed. For just in proportion to the purity of 
 the individualistic monogamic family there grows up the 
 need for and incentive to useful production; and also at the 
 same time the need for and incentive to that legitimate 
 defence and extension of freedom for exchange which is 
 necessary to efficient production, ^and without which the 
 true maximum of production cannot be reached, or the 
 wealth of all proportionately increased. It is no mere jingo 
 
388 The Natural Right to Freedom. 
 
 saying that " trade follows the flag." The flag opens out 
 new ground, abolishes protection, and firmly establishes 
 freedom for unaggressive industrial exchange. If it does 
 not it ought to do, and that flag which most perfectly does 
 so, will survive over all others in the struggle for existence. 
 But that flag will have to truthfully represent purity of breed. 
 In propoition to the purity of the family life, free exchange 
 and free production will grow from more to more ; and just 
 in so far as this natural growth takes place, the circle of 
 steel in which alone such free activity may with present 
 human nature be securely carried on, will widen outward 
 and outward, until at last, in the far future, the 
 flag of one free empire waves on every land 
 and on every sea. This is no Utopia; but the 
 inevitable result of a natural process of things: a consequence, 
 in fact, of the on-going of that universal order to which the 
 whole human race naturally and organically belongs. All 
 events make for it. It is coming with the hours and the 
 years and the centuries; coming though ages may roll away 
 before it is fully realized, and all existing states deservedly 
 perish in their short-sighted tyrannies, ignoble vanities, 
 luxuries, follies, and corruptions wide as deep.^ The most 
 real of ideals; there it exists, high in the light of what to 
 time seems future: a true Imperium et Liberia* ; a true 
 embodiment of " a polity in which there is the same law for 
 all, a polity administered with regard to equal rights and 
 equal freedom of speech; the idea of a kingly government 
 which respects most of all the freedom of the governed." 
 There, white and clear, radiant with the beauty of a divine 
 human nature's perfect peace, it waits silently and securely, 
 till justice shall unite with power, and the purity of Christ 
 and the genius of Caesar rule from the single throne of the 
 single empire of that free earth which is to be the end. 
 
NOTE TO PAGE 6. 
 
 Reason is limited only in this sense : namely, that it can no more 
 avoid drawing certain conclusions from certain real or imaginary 
 premises as, for instance, that in so far as A is equal to B and B to C, 
 ju-t so far i-, C equil to A ; than water can avoid exemplifying the laws 
 of fluids, or unsupported bodies avoid falling to the ground. Although 
 to us reason appears to be an ul imate, an unconditioned, and, given the 
 requisite subject matcer, a spontaneously self-legislative process, yet it 
 has a necessity of its own, which cannot be explained by reason, 
 beciuseit is bofomed in what a finite can never know, namely, the 
 infr iiely infinite fulness of God : i.e., because its base is not in time but 
 in eternity. This necessity is the sa-ne in all men, and all a gumenta- 
 tion is but this symbolized necessity calling unto itself; that is to say, 
 is but light within seeking for li^ht without, and seldom finding any- 
 thing mi re than love of darkness and fear and hatred of what is higher; 
 seldom finding the light which alone makes tru/i kinship: of course, 
 always finding any amount of "pathological liking," as KANT well 
 describes that low sentimentalism which is everywhere as cheap and 
 nasty as the dirt it is on a level with ; but seldom finding glad 
 recognition <<f the moral law that reason alone sees : and consequently 
 not often finding " a practical love, resulting from maxims of conduct, 
 aa-1 not from ebullitions and overflowings of the heart." What is this 
 moral law; this Categorical Imperative; this ''Word" which "was 
 with God"; this " life" which " was the light of men " and "shineth 
 in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not?" Simply the 
 universal law of justice, than "duly to praise" which "there is no 
 greater glory for men or gods." A rational as such, and consequently 
 a man in so far as he is rational, must treat each thing with which it 
 has to deal, according to each thing's clearly perceived na ure ; for 
 example, men as men, brutes as brutes, inanimate things as inanimate 
 things; varying the treatment with the variations of the natures dealt 
 with : for this kind ol conduct is the only possible witness of reason, 
 which in us is at once both spontaneously pr xticai and inexorably 
 imperative. To a rational, considered wholly as such, must gives 
 ought', and therefore in so far as a irun is rational, he can because he 
 ought ; since whit must happen most assuredly can happen. In fact, 
 the appeal to reason is but the proving of the rational must, and is 
 consequently but the bringing to light of the ethical ought ; 
 and therefore is the imposition of a real, because a binding, 
 obligation upon the true and rational nature of man. In other words, 
 a true ethic is solely and simply an appeal from the \z.\'\-\\Ae personal 
 feelings of base humanity to the immutable and imperative logic of the 
 infini e, and therefore the impeisonal, intellect of God. This is why, 
 to a rational as such, it is impossible to prove that duty, or obedience to 
 supreme reason, ought to be done, without at the sam j time proving 
 th it it must be done. For in a rational there are no impediments to 
 this obedience ; because in such a nature love moves with reason, and 
 fear is not : ail the oars, so to speak, pull some way and every stroke 
 brings nearer to the light. To a rational there is but one love, namely, 
 the love of God, a unique regard consisting largely of joy at being so 
 constituted as to be absolutely free, because independent of all slavery 
 to mere human feeling, and therefore capable of acting upon the dictates 
 
of a pure and supreme reason for the sake of the simultaneous peace 
 which such conduct never fails to give. This love moves as firmly to 
 duty as the magnet to the pole. Without it the bare dictates of reason 
 are utterly powerless to regulate conduct ; since men have not this love 
 because they obey the dictates of reason, but they obey those dictates 
 because they have this love. Love and duty are one in God alone, and 
 this oneness is the essence of all real freedom. For so far as a man 
 acts from love of what is free and unconditioned he has the freedom of 
 that with which his love makes him one. Thus it is th\t only through 
 the love of God are men freed from the miserable bondage of 
 sentimentalism. Whosoever has this love needs no comrades ; he is 
 never alone ; for he has the companionship of the Eternal, and the 
 peace of eternity dwells in him and he in it. From the foregoing it 
 follows that in so far as we are rational we must treat other rationals 
 as we ourselves would like to be treated; for in so far as men are 
 rational they are our very selves objectified. The golden rule is but a 
 necessary deduction from the universal moral law of reason, the 
 Categorical Imperative valid for all rationals under all circumstances 
 Trent each thing according to its clearly perceived nature. But pre- 
 cisely the same Imperative which gives the golden rule for the treatment 
 of rationals, forbids it for the treatment of irrationals. For example, 
 " Treat each thing according to its nature " does not mean treat a wild 
 irrational mob to a good champagne supper, it rather means " Disperse 
 such a mob in the most effectual way possible, so as to make an 
 efficient example for the millions of irrational beings who are only kept 
 in some sort of respect for justice through fear, their second nature." 
 
 NOTE TO PAGE 53. 
 
 The only intelligible meaning of freedom is exemption from inter- 
 ference, and this was all that was given to slaves. In this sense, an 
 ignorant man who is not interfered with, is as much exempt from 
 interference ar a wise man who is also not interfered with. To be sure, 
 the ignorant man may not be able to make the same "use of appear- 
 ances," but he is equally free to make what to him seems the best use, 
 and therefore to do his duty. The wisest cannot be freer than this, nor, 
 in fact, have a higher joy than this. And the same argument applies to 
 food. An empty-bellied man who is not interfered with, is as free in 
 the only intelligible meaning of freedom, and is as exempt from inter- 
 ference as a full-bellied man who is also not interfered with ; and he is 
 equally able to do his best with the difficulties of his lot, thoivgh, of 
 course, when judged externally, this best may only seem a poor best. 
 As for what " reason assigns as desirable ;" all it assigns is that a man 
 shall do his best under any circumstances, to the end of furthering his 
 own interest as a rational being, and, above all, as a part of that 
 infinite re3lity to which he belongs. Considered as such a part there 
 are times when reason tells a man to make the best use of life : there 
 are other times when she tells him to make the best use of inevitable 
 death. Under freedom both can be done well and for the sake of the 
 true interest of a rational being. If a man is exempt from the 
 interference of others he is free, and all the food in the world cannot 
 make him more so, 
 
to population, notwithstanding enormous growth of reformatory and 
 industrial schools, for "whatever the prisons have lost these establish- 
 ments have more than gained." " Grave offences against women and 
 children have almost doubled within the last 30 years." Even if the 
 growing practice of substituting fines and bail in place of imprisonment, 
 be left out of account, " the fact still remains that crime, as judged by 
 the growth of the prison and the reformatory and industrial school 
 population, has become more prevalent in the last two decades. The 
 Increase of Crime. By the Chaplain of H.M. Prison, Wandsworth. 
 Nineteenth Century, June, 1892. Statistics given. 
 
 NOTE TO PAGE 193. 
 
 In other words, if one set of evils, to wit, those of compulsion, hold 
 in check another set of evils, namely, those which would exist if com- 
 pulsion were absent, then it follows that the first set cease to be evil and 
 become good. As if a lesser of two evils could suddenly change its 
 nature, immediately something greater than itself is removed. As if a 
 little monkey ceases to be a monkey when he has knocked a bigger 
 monkey on the head. The policeman may be a lesser evil than the 
 burglar, but what man in his senses will say it is not an evil to have to 
 be beholden to the former ? 
 
 NOTE TO PAGE 351. 
 
 " Bad blood naturally takes after bad blood." Heredity is of course 
 qualified by variation, but it is impossible to tell beforehand which 
 direction the latter will take : whether towards morality or depravity. 
 You force, let us say, what you consider a neglected child away from its 
 debased parents, clothe it in fine linen, and feed it well every day. 
 Even if it turns out respectable, you are only encouraging the parental 
 neglect of natural duty ; a general evil which far outbalances any special 
 gain, seeing that it strikes at the root from which all duty grows. The 
 real parents may be bad, but then they are the real parents, and, 
 compared with them, you are only a sham. Encouraging them to 
 neglect their duties wi'l not in the long run improve either them, their 
 posterity, or the world in general. Of course it may find employment 
 lor an army of spies, who illegally break into the houses of the poor, 
 and take away children to be officialy farmed and trained up in herds 
 and droves of dozens together. But this is infinitely worse than bad 
 parenthood. Many of the rich people who support this expensive 
 system, grossly neglect their own natural duties, and then set spies to 
 watch whether the poor fulfil theirs. O the hypocrisy of it ! One grain 
 of real personal virtue outweighs it all. 
 
 NOTE TO PAGE 386. 
 
 To be properly carried out this polity requires the whole world for its 
 theatre, and behind it a force sufficient to put down all aggressions 
 against individual liberty and private property, to maintain equal lasting 
 security, prevent the imposition of hostile tariffs, and keep clear an open 
 scope for the easiest possible exchange of all exchangeable things in 
 every corner of the globe. This involves a military, naval, and police 
 power, maintained entirely out of voluntary contributions, and resting, 
 not on the shallow lie of political votes, but upon the practical, com- 
 petition tested, truth of proved strength of arms ; and determined to 
 have fair play all round, and no nonsense and no political humbug 
 anywhere. This is the just Csesarism of the years to come, when our 
 blatant Democracy shall get its wages. 
 
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