analyze certain political terms as "principles" and rules of conduct. Of these "principles" the most important historically is Liberty or Freedom. Liberty, as a dictionary word, means a condition in which human impulses are not obstructed; and as a rule of political conduct the doctrine that such obstruction should not take place. The psychological facts, therefore, on which the usefulness of the principle of Liberty depends consist of the results which follow from the obstruction of human impulses. Obstruction in a modern society does not, of course, always, or generally, mean the physical impossibility of satisfaction; I use it here as a quantitative term, meaning such a degree of interference as in fact prevents a man from acting on any particular impulse at any particular moment. The results of obstruction may be divided into immediate psychological reactions, such as anger or humiliation; and more permanent effects, such as changes of a man's character by the strengthening of some impulses and the weakening of others.

The most important fact about our immediate reaction to the obstruction of our impulses is that the reaction depends more on the nature of the obstructing cause or agent, than on the nature of the obstruction. This fact is not as a rule indicated in the definitions of Liberty given in books on politics. Mr. Sidney Webb, for instance, defines personal liberty as "the practical opportunity that we have of exercising our faculties and fulfilling our desires." Mr. Webb's use of the word is for many non-political purposes both legitimate and convenient. When a man says, "I shall be at liberty to see you next Thursday" one does not need to enquire whether 1 Webb, Towards Social Democracy (1916), p. 7.

it is a person or a thing which prevents him from seeing you earlier. But this use does not help to explain the enormous force of Liberty as a political principle. Common usage refuses to say that the liberty of a Syrian peasant is equally violated if half his crops are destroyed by hail or locusts, half his income is taken by a Turkish tax-gatherer, or half his working hours are taken for roadconstruction by a German or French commander; because human obstruction of our impulses produces in us, under certain conditions, reactions which are not produced by obstruction due to non-human events. The reactions to human obstruction take the form, first of anger and an impulse to resist, and then, if resistance is found to be, or felt to be, useless, of an exquisitely painful feeling of unfreedom; and similar reactions do not follow non-human obstruction. Wounded self-respect, helpless hatred, and thwarted affection, are, that is to say, different psychological states from hunger and fatigue, though all are the results of obstructions to the carrying out of our impulses. When Shakespeare wishes to describe the ills which drive men to suicide he gives,

The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

and does not mention the want of food and clothing from which he must himself have suffered during his first wanderings from Stratford.

Common usage, again, does not treat all human hindrances to our impulses as being, in the same sense, violations of liberty; and here also common usage is based on

important psychological facts. The special feeling of unfreedom only arises when the hindrance is felt to be inconsistent with those normal human relationships, to which, in the environment of primitive society, our instincts correspond. If a man is prevented, either by the woman herself or by some other human being, from possessing a woman who does not love him, he does not feel unfree in the same sense that a man does who is denied access to a woman who loves him, or from whom a faithful wife is taken by force or fraud. When Ahab tries to rob Naboth of the vineyard which he has planted, and Naboth resists, Ahab may fail, or Naboth may fail; but the resentment of Naboth-or any of his early-human or anthropoid ancestors-is different from that of Ahab; Naboth will feel, and Ahab will not feel, the "oppressor's wrong.' Mr. Webb's definition does not explain why, when certain Germans pleaded, on the strength of their text-books, that in "exercising their faculties and fulfilling their desires" by invading Belgium they were realizing their nation's liberty, and that the Belgians in defending themselves were doing no more, the world treated their plea as either paradoxical or hypocritical. Even in the highly artificial economic environment of modern society, a propertyless workman only feels "unfree" or "enslaved" when he believes that his want of property is due to the deliberate action of men who are thereby violating the normal conditions of human society. The inhabitants of a country where (as in America fifty years ago) private property in land or railways is taken as a matter of

2 "We claim only the free development of our individuality, and are only fighting against the attempt to throttle it" (Deutsche Reden in schwerer Zeit, Pastor Troeltsch, p. 27).

course, do not feel unfree if they are, in respect of land or railways, propertyless. As soon as they begin to ascribe their exclusion from any particular kind of property in the means of production and distribution to "capitalism," or "exploitation," or "robbery," they do feel unfree; and the control of that kind of property then becomes a question of political and social liberty. But the fact that the same kind of economic disadvantage may be felt at one time to be due to our normal environment, and at another time to be due to the abnormal action of our fellow human beings, does not mean that the presence or absence of the feeling of unfreedom is not important. The socialist who argues that freedom of speech or religion is of no value in an economically unequal community, and the authoritarian who argues that an increase of material comfort outweighs any degree of deprivation of political liberty, both make the same psychological mistake; and the world has during the years 1914-1920 paid heavily for that mistake.

This connection between the principle of Liberty and the normal course of human instinctive behavior under primitive conditions is especially important when the feeling that our liberty has been infringed arises out of the obstruction of those coöperative instincts which among men and some other gregarious mammals regulate common decision and common action. A man does not instinctively feel unfree if he finds himself following another in urgent coöperative action after having had a fair chance of himself claiming the lead, any more than a hunting dog, who has vainly called on the pack to turn to the left, feels any lasting resentment when he is following a more dominant leader to the right. Where the need of coöperative

action is recognized, both common speech and psychological analysis treat the essence of unfreedom as consisting in the denial of "free speech" and a fair hearing in discussion or a vote in decision. "Patient merit" suffers the agony of humiliation if spurned by "the unworthy." If the meritorious man had a half-belief that the competitor for whom he was rejected was fairly chosen he would find it difficult to work himself up even into a sham-passion of humiliation.

It must be remembered, again, that human beings are not a gregarious species in the same way, or to the same degree, as are the ants or the bees; our normal instinctive course leads to intermittent coöperation for certain special needs, and not to constant coöperation for all needs. The conditions under which coöperative action takes place without creating the feeling of unfreedom are, therefore, both qualitative and quantitative; the stimulus must be such as normally to arouse the instinct of coöperation; and the coöperation must not last so long as either to tire that instinct, or to leave other uncoöperative instincts too long unsatisfied. If, owing to a generally-believed danger of invasion, the inhabitants of a democratic community are required for a year or two to submit to a “state of siege" they do not feel unfree. If they are required to do so, even by a majority of their fellows, when they do not believe that there is danger they do feel unfree. Or if the foreign or domestic policy of their country is so managed that, like the noble families in ancient Sparta, or the ordinary inhabitants of pre-war Germany, they always believe themselves to be in danger, and are always required to live in a state of siege, they will nevertheless in time come to feel "fed up" and unfree, from the excess of coöpera