that growth an irreparable warp. And let us
repeat once more, in proportion as a community grows more complex in its
classes, divisions, and subdivisions, more intricate in its productive,
commercial, or material arrangements, so does this risk very obviously
wax more grave.

In the sense in which we are speaking of it, liberty is not a positive
force, any more than the smoothness of a railroad is a positive
force.[33] It is a condition. As a force, there is a sense in which it
is true to call liberty a negation. As a condition, though it may still
be a negation, yet it may be indispensable for the production of certain
positive results. The vacuity of an exhausted receiver is not a force,
but it is the indispensable condition of certain positive operations.
Liberty as a force may be as impotent as its opponents allege. This does
not affect its value as a preliminary or accompanying condition. The
absence of a strait-waistcoat is a negation; but it is a useful
condition for the activity of sane men. No doubt there must be a
definite limit to this absence of external interference with conduct,
and that limit will be fixed at various points by different thinkers. We
are now only urging that it cannot be wisely fixed for the more complex
societies by any one who has not grasped this fundamental preconception,
that liberty, or the absence of coercion, or the leaving people to
think, speak, and act as they please, is in itself a good thing. It is
the object of a favourable presumption. The burden of proving it
inexpedient always lies, and wholly lies, on those who wish to abridge
it by coercion, whether direct or indirect.

One reason why this truth is so reluctantly admitted, is men's
irrational want of faith in the self-protective quality of a highly
developed and healthy community. The timid compromiser on the one hand,
and the advocate of coercive restriction on the other, are equally the
victims of a superfluous apprehension. The one fears to use his liberty
for the same reason that makes the other fearful of permitting liberty.
This common reason is the want of a sensible confidence that, in a free
western community, which has reached our stage of development,
religious, moral, and social novelties--provided they are tainted by no
element of compulsion or interference with the just rights of others,
may be trusted to find their own level. Moral and intellectual
conditions are not the only motive forces in a community