250 REV. W. R. INGE, D.D., ON FREEDOM AND DISCIPLINE. 



always the same authority ; and a man is not encouraged to 

 make a fool of himself " at his own risk," as William James, 

 that most characteristic American philosopher, would have 

 us do. 



Again, the supporters of Discipline often lay stress upon the 

 organic unity of mankind. The voice of authority is, they say, 

 the voice of the racial self, or of the national self, or of the Body 

 of Christ. I have already indicated a very limited sense in 

 which this claim may be admitted. No sensible man will under- 

 value the importance of racial experience. But, as I shall 

 show presently, when tradition is artificially exempted from 

 criticism, and still more when it is employed to promote the 

 interests of a corporation, whether secular or religious, it may 

 easily become the most formidable of obstacles in the way of 

 progress. The metaphor of a social organism is often abused. 

 The analogy between society and the human body is not to be 

 pressed too closely. The members of a social oiganism have a 

 value as individuals ; they have indefeasible rights against the 

 organization of which they are parts ; and above all, every 

 human being is a member of several social organizations, no 

 one of which can claim absolute rights over him. To make any 

 one social organism absolute is destructive not only of freedom, 

 but of morality, and of the purposes for which moral freedom 

 and moral judgment exist. 



We will now consider the case for Freedom. The first and most 

 obvious consideration is that repressive Discipline always 

 involves a curtailment of that self-determination which is one 

 of the highest attributes of humanity. It is, as Lucan says, 

 only the shadow of Liberty which we preserve if we resolve to 

 will whatever we are ordered to do. Zeus, says Homer, takes 

 away half a man's manhood when he makes him a slave. We 

 can illustrate this truth by the effects of domestication upon the 

 lower animals. Sir Samuel Baker considered that the wild- 

 boar, in a state of nature, is the bravest and most intelligent 

 of all animals. We have turned him into the tame pig, a proverb 

 for all the qualities that we despise. It is the same, in various 

 degrees, with the other animals which we have tamed. It 

 seems to be impossible to preserve any nobility of character in 

 a population which has been drilled and disciplined for genera- 

 tions. Treat men as machines, and you will turn them into 

 evil-minded machines, for man was not meant to be a machine. 

 For here also, as in the other extreme case of unchecked licence 



