[20]. Upon the broader effects of the economic factor of property rights upon liberty, see pp. 246f.
It is further to be noted that industrial conditions circumscribe the mind in another more subtle and probably more dangerous way; for a man may assert—and indeed men have often done so—his liberty of thought, and so save his mind even at the risk of starvation. The evolution of the machine industry has been in a direction which continually decreases the activity of the mind. It requires no more than habituation to a routine process which makes no demand for initiative and independent judgment on the part of the worker. This is apt to lead to a mental inertia which accords well with that bondage of the person which the wage system entails; and this is no doubt the reason (at least in great part) of the general apathy of large masses of the workers in the past to progressive industrial movements. And so long as there is ample and easy opportunity for those parts of the physical and nervous organism which have laid inert through the working day to strike a balance of expenditure with the rest—in the drinking-shop or elsewhere—there seems to be no reason why a large proportion of the workers should not sink into a permanent helot class. We are apt to forget that the progressive elements of the labour movement have not hitherto constituted or represented by a great deal the total mass of the working population; and there has been a real menace to the growth of liberty involved in the possibility that the apathetic elements of the working class might be hardened into a virtual serfdom. For the presence in any society of a permanently unprivileged and disabled element which is condemned in perpetuity to do its menial work is the undoing not only of liberty, but at last of the society itself.
The problem of liberty resolves itself therefore into that of the liberty of the mind. The coming achievement of economic independence is due largely to the circumstance that the Trade Unions have afforded a sanctuary for intellectual freedom against the danger of encroachment upon it by the system of private capital and the conditions of the machine industry.[[21]] It must, however, be remembered that the freedom of the mind is dependent on factors other than external; and chiefly upon the capacity to use mind in coherent and purposeful ways. A mind capable of such use will not long remain bound. This aspect of the problem belongs properly to the sphere of education; and it is in that setting only that it can be profitably handled. At this point our concern is with the external conditions of mental freedom.
[21]. It is worth noticing that on the other hand, the growth of the machine industry has itself indirectly co-operated in this process. “It follows as a consequence of the large and increasing requirements enforced by the machine technology that the period of preliminary training is necessarily longer, and the schooling demanded for general preparation grows unremittingly more exacting. So that, apart from all question of humanitarian sentiment or of popular fitness for democratic citizenship, it has become a matter of economic expediency, simply as a proposition in technological efficiency at large, to enforce the exemption of children from industrial employment until a later date and to extend their effective school age appreciably beyond what would once have been sufficient to meet all the commonplace requirements of skilled workmanship.” (Thorstein Veblen, The Instinct of Workmanship, p. 309.) This educational process has had consequences beyond those immediately sought. The quickening and enlargement of mind which have followed even the very inadequate education hitherto provided in the common schools, have made a very considerable contribution to the movement for economic emancipation.
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.