Concerning Freedoms

Section 1.

Now what sort of question would first occur to two men descending
upon the planet of a Modern Utopia? Probably grave solicitude about
their personal freedom. Towards the Stranger, as I have already
remarked, the Utopias of the past displayed their least amiable
aspect. Would this new sort of Utopian State, spread to the
dimensions of a world, be any less forbidding?

We should take comfort in the thought that universal Toleration is
certainly a modern idea, and it is upon modern ideas that this World
State rests. But even suppose we are tolerated and admitted to this
unavoidable citizenship, there will still remain a wide range of
possibility.... I think we should try to work the problem out from
an inquiry into first principles, and that we should follow the
trend of our time and kind by taking up the question as one of "Man
versus the State," and discussing the compromise of Liberty.

The idea of individual liberty is one that has grown in importance
and grows with every development of modern thought. To the classical
Utopists freedom was relatively trivial. Clearly they considered
virtue and happiness as entirely separable from liberty, and as
being altogether more important things. But the modern view, with
its deepening insistence upon individuality and upon the
significance of its uniqueness, steadily intensifies the value of
freedom, until at last we begin to see liberty as the very substance
of life, that indeed it is life, and that only the dead things, the
choiceless things, live in absolute obedience to law. To have free
play for one's individuality is, in the modern view, the subjective
triumph of existence, as survival in creative work and offspring is
its objective triumph. But for all men, since man is a social
creature, the play of will must fall short of absolute freedom.
Perfect human liberty is possible only to a despot who is absolutely
and universally obeyed. Then to will would be to command and
achieve, and within the limits of natural law we could at any moment
do exactly as it pleased us to do. All other liberty is a compromise
between our own freedom of will and the wills of those with whom we
come in contact. In an organised state each one of us has a more or
less elaborate code of what he may do to others and to himself, and
what others may do to him. He limits others by his rights, and is
limited by the rights of others, and by considerations affecting the
welfare of the community as a whole.

Individual liberty in a community is not, as mathematicians would
say, always of the same sign. To ignore this is the essential
fallacy of the cult called Individualism. But in truth, a general
prohibition in a state may increase the sum of