[1] Hdt., v. 78.
(c) The connection, we said, between juristic and political liberty should be observed at this point. It is merely an example of what we shall find throughout, that the apparently negative has its roots and its meaning in the positive, and, in proportion as its true nature becomes evident, its positive aspects become explicit. There is no true security for juristic liberty apart from political {137} liberty; and it has constantly been the infraction of juristic liberty that has been the origin of the demand for a share in highly positive political duties and functions. Mere protection for person and property may seem an easy thing to define and maintain with just a little goodwill; but the questions when, how, and in what sense it is to be maintained involve the positive character of the political system, and there is no ultimate security unless that system is moulded by the whole compass of individuality which society contains.
(d) Recurring then to the literal or elementary sense of liberty, as the absence of constraint exercised by one upon others, we may admit that, in going beyond it, we are more or less making use of a metaphor. [1] We are passing from the idea of non-constraint pure and simple to the idea of more or less moulding and selection within the powers and activities of the self. It is true, indeed, and must be maintained as a fundamental principle, that the “higher” liberty is also in fact the “larger” liberty, presenting the greater area to activity and the more extensive choice to self-determination. [2] But this larger development remains within a positive general character, and if more alternatives are open, there are also, by that very fact, more which are closed. We cannot wholly exhaust the new meaning of liberty as applied to the law-abiding and moral life of a {138} conscientious citizen even by changing the negative into the positive, and saying that, whereas mere juristic freedom was only freedom from constraint, political freedom means freedom to act. The higher sense of liberty, like the lower, involves freedom from some things as well as freedom to others. And that which we are freed from is, in this case, not the constraint of those whom we commonly regard as others, but the constraint of what we commonly regard as a part of ourself. Here is the reason for saying that, when we speak of liberty in the higher sense, we must be admitted to be speaking metaphorically. [3]
[1] In this and the following section I have made great use of Green’s discussion in the first chapter of the Principles of Political Obligation.
[2] Perhaps I may refer on this head to “Liberty and Legislation” in my Civilisation of Christendom (Sonnenschein).
[3] But see below, p. 145.
In the straightforward sense of the word, we saw, I am free when I am not made the instrument of another person’s will through physical violence or the threat of it. The subtle questions which may arise with regard to due or undue degrees of influence, by which I may become the instrument of another’s mind, with more or less willingness on the part of my own, are here disregarded. I am assumed to be acting freely so long as I follow the inclination of my mind, apart from any painful conflict forced upon it by the prospect of physical interference with its belongings.
But from the earliest ages of ethical reflection, a further sense has been ascribed to the term liberty. It has been pointed out by moralists and philosophers—first, perhaps by Socrates and Plato—that the condition of man as to being himself is fundamentally affected not only by the power to do what he likes without constraint, but by the nature of that which he likes to do. The human {139} mind, it is explained, is never wholly at one with itself, and the common phrases “self-mastery” or “self-control” are adduced by way of presenting what we spoke of above as the ethical paradox of self-government. [1] The mind, then, is treated by a metaphor as if it were two or more persons; and the term liberty, which applies prima facie to the non-constraint of one person by another, is applied to the non-constraint of something within an individual mind by something else within it. Now, apart from further scrutiny, it does not appear why the term liberty, when thus applied, should mean anything of ethical value. As Plato observed, in a passage [2] from which the current use of all these phrases is probably derived, it seems absurd at first sight to speak of self-control as a distinctive predicate of certain states of mind. For surely, within the mind, that which is controlled must be of the nature of self no less than that which controls it, so that, in saying that I have self-control, I am saying that I am self-indulgent; in saying that my mind is free, I am at the same time saying that it is a slave. Within certain limits this paradox represents a truth, and the ethical rank of the elements which coerce and are coerced may be quite oppositely estimated. We may think fit to call ourselves free either when love conquers reason or when reason triumphs over love. Still, as Plato proceeds to point out, the general adoption of the metaphor, the fact that we think and call ourselves “free” or “self-controlled” or “fully ourselves” in some cases and not in others; and that we do not in each of {140} these cases regard the opposite attribution “slave,” “self-indulgent,” “not ourselves” as equally true with the former, indicates that some substantial fact is forcing itself upon us through the metaphor in question. It is the same problem as that which Professor James has wittily stated when he points out that “the sluggard, the drunkard, the coward never talk of their conduct in that way (i.e. as conquering their impulses and temptations) or say they resist their energy, overcome their sobriety, conquer their courage, and so forth.” [3]
[1] P. 55.
[2] Republic, 430 E.