quately expressed in terms which his fellows can understand;
and just as his essential humanity lies deeper than all distinctions of
rank, and class, and colour, and even, though in a different sense, of
sex, so also it goes far below those comparatively external events which
make one man figure as a saint and another as a criminal. This sense of
ultimate oneness is the real meaning of equality, as it is the
foundation of social solidarity and the bond which, if genuinely
experienced, resists the disruptive force of all conflict, intellectual,
religious, and ethical.

But, further, while personal opinions and social institutions are like
crystallized results, achievements that have been won by certain
definite processes of individual or collective effort, human personality
is that within which lives and grows, which can be destroyed but cannot
be made, which cannot be taken to pieces and repaired, but can be placed
under conditions in which it will flourish and expand, or, if it is
diseased, under conditions in which it will heal itself by its own
recuperative powers. The foundation of liberty is the idea of growth.
Life is learning, but whether in theory or practice what a man genuinely
learns is what he absorbs, and what he absorbs depends on the energy
which he himself puts forth in response to his surroundings. Thus, to
come at once to the real crux, the question of moral discipline, it is
of course possible to reduce a man to order and prevent him from being a
nuisance to his neighbours by arbitrary control and harsh punishment.
This may be to the comfort of the neighbours, as is admitted, but
regarded as a moral discipline it is a contradiction in terms. It is
doing less than nothing for the character of the man himself. It is
merely crushing him, and unless his will is killed the effect will be
seen if ever the superincumbent pressure is by chance removed. It is
also possible, though it takes a much higher skill, to teach the same
man to discipline himself, and this is to foster the development of
will, of personality, of self control, or whatever we please to call
that central harmonizing power which makes us capable of directing our
own lives. Liberalism is the belief that society can safely be founded
on this self-directing power of personality, that it is only on this
foundation that a true community can be built, and that so established
its foundations are so deep and so wide that there is no limit that we
c