WHAT IS CIVIL LIBERTY? 301 



Herein, lies the curse of socialistic schemes when viewed from the 

 side of the supposed beneficiary. They are a bait to defraud him 

 of his liberty. I do not see how the German accident and work- 

 man's insurance can fail to act as a law of settlement, thereby, 

 under a pretense of offering the workman security, robbing him 

 of his best chance of improving his position. Still, the cases 

 where a man incurs his own servitude for the sake of his own 

 privilege are not as bad in some respects as those in which some 

 have privileges for which others bear servitudes. 



The modern jural state, at least of the Anglo-American type, 

 by its hostility to privileges and servitudes, if not by direct ana- 

 lytical definition of its purpose, aims to realize the above defini- 

 tion of liberty. It is the one which fills our institutions at their 

 best, and the one which forms the stem of our best civil and social 

 ideals. If all privileges and all servitudes are abolished, the indi- 

 vidual finds that there are no prescriptions left either to lift him 

 up or to hold him down. He simply has all his chances left open 

 that he may make out of himself all there is in him. This is indi- 

 vidualism and atomism.* There is absolutely no escape from it 

 except back into the system of privileges and servitudes. The 

 doctrine of the former is that a man has a right to make the most 

 of himself to attain the ends of his existence. The doctrine of 

 the latter is that a man has a right to whatever he needs to 

 attain the ends of his existence. If the latter is true, then any 

 one who is bound to furnish him what he needs is under servi- 

 tude to him. 



The fact, however, is rapidly making itself felt that this civil 

 liberty of the modern type is a high and costly thing. A genera- 

 tion which has been glorying in it and heralding it to all the 

 world as a boon and a blessing, to be had for the taking and to be 

 enjoyed for nothing, begins to cry out that it is too great for 

 them ; that they can not attain to it nor even bear it ; that to be a 

 free man means to come up to the standard and be it ; and that 

 it is asking too much of human nature. They want somebody to 

 come and help them to be free. It has always been so. Men 

 have failed of freedom not because kings, nobles, or priests en- 

 slaved them, but because liberty was too high and great for them. 

 They would not rise to it. They would submit to any servitude 

 rather. Therefore they got servitude. 



The strain of civil liberty is in the demand which it makes on 

 the whole mass of the people for perpetual activity of reason and 

 conscience to re-examine rights and duties, and to readjust their 

 equilibrium. Civil liberty is not a scientific fact. It is not in the 



* The writer of an otherwise good book (Rauber, " Urgeschichte des Menschen," ii, 291, 

 fg.) indulges in an extraordinary screed against the atomists. He reaches the conclusion 

 that fate is the state. To me it seems that fate is one's father and mother. 



