t a love of perfection.

It will have been observed that justice and freedom are complementary,
for he who is just liberates, and he who is free receives justice.
Together they constitute the basis of all the higher relationships
between men, of a progressive society, and of the whole constructive
movement which we call civilization.

But it is possible to construe justice and freedom only negatively, as
meaning that the individual is to be allowed to go his way in peace.
Such a misconception is formalistic, in that it rests on a failure to
recognize the providence or fruitfulness of justice. The virtue of
justice lies not in its disintegration of society, but in its enabling
the members of society to unite upon the highest plane of endeavor.
Justice is a method wherewith men may profit collectively, and in their
organized effort, from a sum of enlightenment to which every individual
contributes his best. _Anarchism_ rests in the negative protest
against {108} conformity; forgetting that the only right to liberty is
founded on the possession of a reasonableness that inclines the
individual to the universal; and forgetting that the only virtue in
liberty lies in the opportunity for union and devotion which it
provides.

There is a more restricted form of anarchism in _scepticism_ which
attaches finality to differences of opinion, and overlooks the fact
that these very differences must be regarded as converging approaches
to the common truth. For men can differ only in the presence of
identical objects which virtually annul their difference. To be free
to think as one pleases cannot but mean to think as truly as possible,
and so to approach as closely as possible to what others also tend to
think.

But a larger importance attaches to that mild variety of anarchism
which is commonly called _laissez-faire_, and which Matthew Arnold
calls British Atheism or Quietism. The reader will recall Arnold's
quotation from the _Times_:

It is of no use for us to attempt to force upon our neighbors our
several likings and dislikings. We must take things as they are.
Everybody has his own little vision of religious or civil perfection.
Under the evident impossibility of satisfying everybody, we agree to
take our stand on equal laws and on a system as open and liberal as is
possible. The result is that everybody has more liberty of action and
of speaking here than anywhere else in the Old World.

{109} And from Mr. Roe