in
each instance between freedom and equality. In these cases, however, we
were dealing with the relations of one man with another, or of one body
of men with another, and we could regard the community as an arbiter
between them whose business it was to see justice done and prevent the
abuse of coercive power. Hence we could treat a very large part of the
modern development of social control as motived by the desire for a more
effective liberty. The case is not so clear when we find the will of the
individual in conflict with the will of the community as a whole. When
such conflict occurs, it would seem that we must be prepared for one of
two things. Either we must admit the legitimacy of coercion, avowedly
not in the interests of freedom but in furtherance, without regard to
freedom, of other ends which the community deems good. Or we must admit
limitations which may cramp the development of the general will, and
perchance prove a serious obstacle to collective progress. Is there any
means of avoiding this conflict? Must we leave the question to be fought
out in each case by a balance of advantages and disadvantages, or are
there any general considerations which help us to determine the true
sphere of collective and of private action?

Let us first observe that, as Mill pointed out long ago, there are many
forms of collective action which do not involve coercion. The State may
provide for certain objects which it deems good without compelling any
one to make use of them. Thus it may maintain hospitals, though any one
who can pay for them remains free to employ his own doctors and nurses.
It may and does maintain a great educational system, while leaving every
one free to maintain or to attend a private school. It maintains parks
and picture galleries without driving any one into them. There is a
municipal tramway service, which does not prevent private people from
running motor 'buses along the same streets, and so on. It is true that
for the support of these objects rates and taxes are compulsorily
levied, but this form of compulsion raises a set of questions of which
we shall have to speak in another connection, and does not concern us
here. For the moment we have to deal only with those actions of State
which compel all citizens, or all whom they concern, to fall in with
them and allow of no divergence. This kind of coercion tends to
increase. Is its extension necessarily an encroachment upon liberty, or
are the el