DEVELOPMENT OF LIBERTY 171 



modern times notions of liberty have spread very 

 rapidly. To self -consciousness liberty can make a 

 special appeal. The recent revolutions in Turkey, 

 Persia, and China were inspired by a conscious 

 desire for self-assertion which was felt by large 

 numbers of the population. However ineffective, 

 it was at least a new element in the feelings of the 

 East. We still hold that children must obey their 

 parents, servants their masters, and that all are 

 constrained by the laws of their land ; but society 

 no longer supports the absolute power of the father 

 over his children, of the master over his slave, 

 of the despot over his subjects. Liberty, that is 

 to say, spontaneity of will, appears to be gradu- 

 ally weakening the chains of habit. And habit 

 itself, it must be remembered, is not an hereditary 

 despotism, differing in this respect from directive 

 instinct. Our habits are contracted by ourselves, 

 and it is possible for us to change them. By 

 habit, moreover, we can gain deliverance from, 

 so to speak, inherited enslavement. For by its 

 help we may control the impulsive instincts 

 which survive as the mainsprings of our actions 

 and emotions, and, by facilitating behaviour that 

 is good, strengthen ourselves to resist the tempta- 

 tions of evil. 



With a great price man has obtained this 

 measure of freedom : he has paid for it in count- 

 less years of degrading error into which, in his 

 liberty, he has drifted. Mistaking images of the 

 memory for visions of the supernatural, he has 

 concluded that the material world has a spiritual, 

 or shadowy, counterpart, with which he is in 

 communication through the counterpart, or 

 " double," of himself. It seemed unreasonable 

 that either the substance or the shadow should be 

 subject to annihilation : death accordingly ap- 

 peared to be an unnatural termination of activity, 



