II
Lord Acton’s definition of liberty, already quoted, as “the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes to be his duty against the influence of authority, custom and opinion,” suggests that the test of the quality and measure of liberty in a particular community, lies in its attitude to and its treatment of dissent—or to put it in another way, its treatment of minorities. And it is plainly true that the freedom of the mind is a pure fiction except it be freedom to dissent from the common acceptances of the community. Speaking generally, the common tendency is toward the suppression of dissent especially if it be of a radical type, in all kinds of communities, democratic or otherwise. In some cases, the suppression is dictated by the obvious requirements of an authoritarian polity, in which case it is systematic and deliberate; but this is on the whole less dangerous than the informal and unorganised suppression or opposition which springs out of the mental inertia of the multitude, the lethargy which is bred of hatred of change, and especially out of the prejudice which is easily and successfully generated in the minds of the ignorant by those whose interests would be imperilled by change. It is only by a recognition of the social significance and value of dissent, and the important part it has played in historical progress, that we are likely to reach a proper understanding of the true democratic attitude to it. In the history of religion, it is plain that dissent has almost always proved to be the organ of advance, and if not of advance, at least of a saner balance of religious faith and practice; and it may be said with not a little assurance that whether in church or state, the dissent that has gained a reasonable following has been evoked by the need of vindicating some natural right or emphasising some truth or fact of experience which was neglected or obscured in the traditional syntheses. It may still further be stated, that whereas dissent has been denounced by its contemporaries as disruptive and hostile to social solidarity, it has in point of fact been the product of a larger social vision than that current in the existing conventions. Dissent has usually been created by the desire to broaden the basis of human fellowship.
This will be seen by an appeal to the mental outlook of the dissenter. Of course every dissenting movement has been hampered and prejudiced, and its ideals muddied by the adhesion to it of temperamental rebels, and the type of crank which gathers around any standard of revolt, just as the opposition to dissent has been degraded by its readiness to accept the help of “lewd fellows of the baser sort.” But when one penetrates to the core of the movement in the mind of its chief exponents we find ourselves in a peculiarly pure and stimulating air. The great historical rebels have almost invariably been actuated by a social passion.
Some day perhaps a competent student may give us a work upon the psychology of the rebel. That there is something typical about the mentality of the great rebels may be gathered even from a cursory reading of a few obvious biographies. There is usually an abnormal mental sensitiveness combined with great physical restlessness, a keen craving for comradeship, combined with fondness for solitude and lonely meditation, a vivid perception of present evils together with a passion for a future which should restore some ancient simplicity, a tendency—once the first step in revolt has been taken,—to broaden the rebellious front to include other issues, a frequent admixture of integrity of character with a certain irregularity of conduct. Yet this is only the psychological basis; and the real differentia of the true rebel lies in the character of the occasion which crystallises his mental make-up into a definite course of action.
Disraeli used to speak of the “two nations” which inhabited England. These were the privileged people and the disinherited. But that is a phenomenon peculiar neither to England nor to the modern world. It is the great permanent line which divides the human race from top to bottom into two classes. We belong either to the exploiting race or the exploited, are either top dogs or under-dogs. The Greek cities with all their emphasis upon freedom yet thought of it as the prerogative of the few. “There were vague beginnings of a new ideal in Athens, but even in Athens personal liberty such as is now connected with the word ‘democracy’ was confined to a very small percentage of the population.”[[22]] The remainder were women and slaves upon whose subordination the entire social order rested. The line of division has not always been political or economic. In our own time the acute sense of disinheritance has been the main-spring of the feminist movement. In religion especially the cleavage has been conspicuous. The Reformation controversy about the layman’s rights to receive the chalice in the Sacrament was at bottom a repudiation of the tradition of a privileged caste; and every considerable reformation of religion has involved a challenge to priestcraft on the part of a disinherited laity.
[22]. G. D. Burns, Greek Ideals, p. 76.
It is the clear perception of this circumstance—the subordination of that mass which we commonly designate “the people,” the appeal of a disinherited class, of “the army of workers,” as Lord Morley said, “who make the most painful sacrifices for the continuous nutrition of the social organisation,” which constitutes the decisive factor in shaping the rebel’s mind and course of life. It sometimes happens that a combination of circumstances throws the need of the disinherited into sharp relief, and the ensuing ferment creates the leader ad hoc, as it were. The disintegration of the old feudal bonds in England liberated the social discontent which roused John Ball and made him the inspirer of the Peasants’ Revolt. Dr. Lindsay in his History of the Reformation tells us of the existence of an active and wide-spread evangelical piety in Germany long before the Reformation, and it was the sharp contrast between the spiritual hunger of the people and the barren externality and corruption of mediæval ecclesiasticism, at last brought to a head by Tetzel’s peddling of indulgences, that precipitated Luther’s crisis and with it the Reformation. The crisis in the early development of Kansas undoubtedly marked a stage in John Brown’s development. But whether we may be able or not to trace decisive occasions of this kind in the life of the rebel, the common mark of the rebel mind is a passion for the common people. It has been said of Rousseau that “it was because he had seen the wrongs of the poor not from without but from within, not as a pitying spectator but as one of their own company, that he by and by brought such fire to the attack of the old order and changed the blank practice of the older philosophers into a deadly affair of ball and shell.” Similarly Professor Dowden says of Shelley that “it was the sufferings of the industrious poor that especially claimed his sympathy; and he thought of publishing for them a series of popular songs which should inspire them with heart and hope.”[[23]] Tolstoi, according to Romain Rolland, had for the labouring people a “strange affection, absolutely genuine,” which his repeated disillusionments were powerless to shake. Sometimes, as in the case of Glendower, Mazzini and “nationalist” rebels generally, it is not the case of a disinherited class but of an oppressed nation which shapes the rebel’s course. The great rebel in every case is made by the lure of the disinherited.
[23]. Dowden, Life of Shelley, p. 437. The “Songs and Poems for the Men of England,” were published in 1819, after Shelley’s death.
But it is not only compassion for the disinherited which moves the rebel, but a profound faith in their power to work out their own salvation. The appeal to the people has been of the essence of rebel policy. The Peasants’ Revolt in England was stimulated by John Ball’s doggerel verse, which was specially intended to stir discontent. “Wyclif,” says John Richard Green, “appealed, and the appeal is memorable as the first of such a kind in our history, to England at large. With an amazing industry, he issued tract after tract in the tongue of the people itself.” He wrote “in the rough, clear homely English” of the ploughman and trader of his day. The Tractarians of a later date were only imitating their great Oxford precursor when they went distributing their tracts from door to door. But Wyclif did not confine his popular appeal to tracts. His order of “poor preachers,” “whose coarse sermons and long russet dress moved the laughter of the clergy, formed a priceless organisation for the diffusion of their master’s teaching.” John Brown addressed his propaganda at an early stage to the negro; and it is hardly doubtful that his hopes chiefly centred at last upon a general rising of negroes in support of his campaign. Long before, John Hus had carried his appeal to the Bohemian people, as Arnauld of Port Royal, convicted of Jansenism at the Sorbonne, designed to place his case before the French. Pascal’s Provincial Letters were deliberately composed as an appeal from the ecclesiastics to the public. The great emphasis upon public preaching during the Reformation was derived from this same faith in the efficacy of popular appeal. It is sufficiently well known to need no further remark than the reminder that in this way the rebel has made important contributions to the literary as well as the social and religious history of his people.
The paradox of the rebel, then, is this, that while he has been assailed as a subverter of social order, his own driving force has been a social sense quicker and broader than that of his orthodox contemporaries. He attacked the existing social organisation only to break down walls that hindered fellowship. He heard the call of the disinherited and it became in his heart a call to lead them into that heritage of opportunity of which they were cheated by the cupidity and cunning of the great. He assailed the Bastilles of constituted authority, and battered hoary institutions that people might—at this point or that—come into their own. He sought to fling out wide the frontiers of privilege that the poor and the outcast might come into a world of larger life.
Mr. Wells has recently told us that “from the first dawn of the human story” man has been “pursuing the boundary of his possible community.” But the prime agent of this pursuit has been the dissenter. Dissent has proved itself to be the growing point of society. Yet the dissenter has been stoned and hanged by his contemporaries. Must it ever be so? Is there no conceivable social order in which it shall be unnecessary to treat the moral pioneer as a criminal? As yet we have not achieved it. Our limit hitherto has been a kind of toleration rather grudgingly accorded so long as the dissenter does not disturb us over much. But no society will ever be truly free until it has reached the point not only of frank toleration but of the serious encouragement of dissenting opinion. For dissent is after all only a manifestation of the “elan vitale” of a living society; and it should be greeted with a cheer. A society incapable of dissent or of tolerating it has entered upon its last phase.