246 REV. W. R. IXGE, D.D., ON FREEDOM AND DISCIPLINE. 



his work assigned to him. Order is not better than freedom ; 

 but anarchy may destroy freedom more effectually than a habit 

 of obedience. So perhaps my prejudice in favour of discipKne 

 in political and social life may counterbalance my prejudice 

 in favour of liberty in the world of thought. But I want to 

 speak without prejudice, as one ought to try to do in dealing 

 with a great and serious problem. And I know, in spite of what 

 I have just said, that the difficulty cannot be solved by leaving 

 thought free and subjecting all the outward life to authority. 

 For all discipline requires some kind of intellectual and moral 

 sanction ; and no repressive government has been able to enforce 

 itself without curtailing free thought and free speech. In 

 Germany a pastor who ventured to say that God is not the 

 special God of the German nation was likely to be deprived 

 of his cure of souls. 



The case for Discipline and Authority against Liberty rests 

 partly on the continuity and value of racial experience, and 

 partly on the natural inequality of human beings. There is 

 a strong presumption that any custom, whether of acting or 

 thinking, which has survived for a long period, meets some 

 actual human need, and tends to promote the survival or the 

 happiness of the species. The gains of knowledge and experience 

 which have lifted human societies out of savagery are mainly 

 empirical, sometimes almost accidental ; and they are precarious. 

 They may be and sometimes are lost. Hence arises the necessity 

 of placing them under the protection of consecrated authority, 

 which it is impious to defy or even to criticize. Almost all 

 barbarous societies are held together in this way. The whole 

 system of tahu has no other foundation. Some of its pro- 

 hibitions are or once have been useful, the majority palpably 

 absurd. There is no possibility of separating the wheat 

 from the chaff, because criticism is strictly forbidden. The 

 more we know of primitive societies, the more astonished we 

 shall be at the mass of vexatious and ridiculous rules which a 

 savage has to obey. If an inventive barbarian makes the door 

 of his hut a little wider than is customary, he does so at his 

 peril. More things are verboten to the savage than to the 

 Prussian. And yet a strong case may be made out for keeping 

 society under this kind of discipline. The most stable and 

 indestructible polities have been held in chains by tradition. 

 And those nations which have shown unusual intellectual courage 

 and readiness to try new experiments of aU kinds, such as the 



