at the
same time they hold firmly to their own proved convictions, until they
hear better evidence to the contrary. There is no anarchy, nor
uncertainty, nor paralysing air of provisionalness in such a frame of
mind. So far is it from being fatal to loyalty or reverence, that it is
an indispensable part of the groundwork of the only loyalty that a wise
ruler or teacher would care to inspire--the loyalty springing from a
rational conviction that, in a field open to all comers, he is the best
man they can find. Only on condition of liberty without limit is the
ablest and most helpful of 'heroes' sure to be found; and only on
condition of liberty without limit are his followers sure to be worthy
of him. You must have authority, and yet must have obedience. The
noblest and deepest and most beneficent kind of authority is that which
rests on an obedience that is rational and spontaneous.

The same futile impatience which animates the political utterances of
Mr. Carlyle and his more weak-voiced imitators, takes another form in
men of a different training or temperament. They insist that if the
majority has the means of preventing vice by law, it is folly and
weakness not to resort to those means. The superficial attractiveness
of such a doctrine is obvious. The doctrine of liberty implies a broader
and a more patient view. It says:--Even if you could be sure that what
you take for vice is so--and the history of persecution shows how
careful you should be in this preliminary point--even then it is an
undoubted and, indeed, a necessary tendency of this facile repressive
legislation, to make those who resort to it neglect the more effective,
humane, and durable kinds of preventive legislation. You pass a law (if
you can) putting down drunkenness; there is a neatness in such a method
very attractive to fervid and impatient natures. Would you not have done
better to leave that law unpassed, and apply yourselves sedulously
instead to the improvement of the dwellings of the more drunken class,
to the provision of amusements that might compete with the ale-house, to
the extension and elevation of instruction, and so on? You may say that
this should be done, and yet the other should not be left undone; but,
as matter of fact and history, the doing of the one has always gone with
the neglect of the other, and ascetic law-making in the interests of
virtue has never been accompanied either by law-making or any other
kinds of activity f