[1] _Man v. State_, p. 15. Cf. Seeley, _Introd. to Political Science_, p. 119: “Perfect liberty is equivalent to total absence of government.” I have attempted to point out the fallacy of this in a way applying to its practical and everyday meaning in my essay on “Liberty and Legislation,” in the volume of essays called _The Civilisation of Christendom_.
Thus, when Professor Huxley speaks of “self-restraint as the essence of the ethical process,” [1] while “natural liberty” consists in “the free play of self-assertion,” we see how the whole method of approaching social and ethical phenomena is turned upside down unless the paradox of self-government is conquered once for all. The idea that assertion and maximisation of the self and of the individuality first become possible and real in and through society, and that affirmation and not negation is its main characteristic; these fundamental conceptions of genuine social philosophy [2] can only be reached through a destructive criticism of the assumptions which erect that paradox into an insoluble contradiction.
[1] _Evolution and Ethics_; pp. 27 and 31.
[2] For the Greek, it is society which is natural, positive, and promotive of man’s individuality. See ch. ii. above.
5. We may now restate the essence of the problem of self-government as it presents itself to the thinkers whom we have been reviewing. On the assumptions which they accept, the annihilating criticism of self-government in the first chapter of Mill’s Liberty is indeed irresistible. He begins by pointing out that in times of political immaturity, { 74} the conception of political liberty consisted in setting limits to the power which the ruler, considered as an independent force opposed in interest [1] to his subjects, should be suffered to exercise over the community. But as it was found possible, in a greater and greater degree, to make the ruling power emanate from the periodical choice of the ruled,
“some persons began to think that too much importance had been attached to the limitation of the power itself. _That_, it might seem, was a resource against rulers whose interests were habitually opposed to those of the people. What was now wanted was, that the rulers should be identified with the people; that their interest and will should be the interest and will of the nation. The nation did not need to be protected against its own will. There was no fear of its tyrannising over itself.”