mancipation led him to resist the tide of
feeling which was, in fact, securing the first elements of emancipation
for the woman worker. He trusted at the outset of his career to the
elevation of the standard of comfort as the best means of improving the
position of the wage-earner, and in this elevation he regarded the
limitation of the family as an essential condition. As he advanced in
life, however, he became more and more dissatisfied with the whole
structure of a system which left the mass of the population in the
position of wage-earners, while the minority lived on rents, profits,
and the interest on invested capital. He came to look forward to a
co-operative organization of society in which a man would learn to "dig
and weave for his country," as he now is prepared to fight for it, and
in which the surplus products of industry would be distributed among the
producers. In middle life voluntary co-operation appeared to him the
best means to this end, but towards the close he recognized that his
change of views was such as, on the whole, to rank him with the
Socialists, and the brief exposition of the Socialist ideal given in his
Autobiography remains perhaps the best summary statement of Liberal
Socialism that we possess.

CHAPTER VI

THE HEART OF LIBERALISM

The teaching of Mill brings us close to the heart of Liberalism. We
learn from him, in the first place, that liberty is no mere formula of
law, or of the restriction of law. There may be a tyranny of custom, a
tyranny of opinion, even a tyranny of circumstance, as real as any
tyranny of government and more pervasive. Nor does liberty rest on the
self-assertion of the individual. There is scope abundant for Liberalism
and illiberalism in personal conduct. Nor is liberty opposed to
discipline, to organization, to strenuous conviction as to what is true
and just. Nor is it to be identified with tolerance of opposed opinions.
The Liberal does not meet opinions which he conceives to be false with
toleration, as though they did not matter. He meets them with justice,
and exacts for them a fair hearing as though they mattered just as much
as his own. He is always ready to put his own convictions to the proof,
not because he doubts them, but because he believes in them. For, both
as to that which he holds for true and as to that which he holds for
false, he believes that one final test applies. Let error have free
play, and one of two things will happen. E