-or, at lowest,
to cramp--the spontaneous development of social life. National and
personal freedom are growths of the same root, and their historic
connection rests on no accident, but on ultimate identity of idea.

Thus in the organic conception of society each of the leading ideas of
historic Liberalism has its part to play. The ideal society is conceived
as a whole which lives and flourishes by the harmonious growth of its
parts, each of which in developing on its own lines and in accordance
with its own nature tends on the whole to further the development of
others. There is some elementary trace of such harmony in every form of
social life that can maintain itself, for if the conflicting impulses
predominated society would break up, and when they do predominate
society does break up. At the other extreme, true harmony is an ideal
which it is perhaps beyond the power of man to realize, but which serves
to indicate the line of advance. But to admit this is to admit that the
lines of possible development for each individual or, to use a more
general phrase, for each constituent of the social order are not limited
and fixed. There are many possibilities, and the course that will in the
end make for social harmony is only one among them, while the
possibilities of disharmony and conflict are many. The progress of
society like that of the individual depends, then, ultimately on choice.
It is not "natural," in the sense in which a physical law is natural,
that is, in the sense of going forward automatically from stage to stage
without backward turnings, deflections to the left, or fallings away on
the right. It is natural only in this sense, that it is the expression
of deep-seated forces of human nature which come to their own only by an
infinitely slow and cumbersome process of mutual adjustment. Every
constructive social doctrine rests on the conception of human progress.
The heart of Liberalism is the understanding that progress is not a
matter of mechanical contrivance, but of the liberation of living
spiritual energy. Good mechanism is that which provides the channels
wherein such energy can flow unimpeded, unobstructed by its own
exuberance of output, vivifying the social structure, expanding and
ennobling the life of mind.

FOOTNOTE:

[9] An absurd misconception fostered principally by opponents of
equality for controversial purposes.

CHAPTER VII

THE STATE AND THE INDIVIDUAL

We have seen someth