ocracy that
overshadows half of Asia and of Europe. But it may be urged, on the
other side, that liberty is not the sum or the substitute of all the
things men ought to live for; that to be real it must be circumscribed,
and that the limits of circumscription vary; that advancing civilisation
invests the State with increased rights and duties, and imposes
increased burdens and constraint on the subject; that a highly
instructed and intelligent community may perceive the benefit of
compulsory obligations which, at a lower stage, would be thought
unbearable; that liberal progress is not vague or indefinite, but aims
at a point where the public is subject to no restrictions but those of
which it feels the advantage; that a free country may be less capable of
doing much for the advancement of religion, the prevention of vice, or
the relief of suffering, than one that does not shrink from confronting
great emergencies by some sacrifice of individual rights, and some
concentration of power; and that the supreme political object ought to
be sometimes postponed to still higher moral objects. My argument
involves no collision with these qualifying reflections. We are dealing,
not with the effects of freedom, but with its causes. We are seeking out
the influences which brought arbitrary government under control, either
by the diffusion of power, or by the appeal to an authority which
transcends all government, and among those influences the greatest
philosophers of Greece have no claim to be reckoned.

It is the Stoics who emancipated mankind from its subjugation to
despotic rule, and whose enlightened and elevated views of life bridged
the chasm that separates the ancient from the Christian state, and led
the way to freedom. Seeing how little security there is that the laws of
any land shall be wise or just, and that the unanimous will of a people
and the assent of nations are liable to err, the Stoics looked beyond
those narrow barriers, and above those inferior sanctions, for the
principles that ought to regulate the lives of men and the existence of
society. They made it known that there is a will superior to the
collective will of man, and a law that overrules those of Solon and
Lycurgus. Their test of good government is its conformity to principles
that can be traced to a higher legislator. That which we must obey, that
to which we are bound to reduce all civil authorities, and to sacrifice
every earthly interest, is that i