vigorous innovators. Yet law and order are
always hostile to innovations, and innovators are almost always, to
some extent, anarchists. Those whose minds are dominated by fear of a
relapse towards barbarism will emphasize the importance of law and
order, while those who are inspired by the hope of an advance towards
civilization will usually be more conscious of the need of individual
initiative. Both temperaments are necessary, and wisdom lies in
allowing each to operate freely where it is beneficent. But those who
are on the side of law and order, since they are reinforced by custom
and the instinct for upholding the _status quo_, have no need of a
reasoned defense. It is the innovators who have difficulty in being
allowed to exist and work. Each generation believes that this
difficulty is a thing of the past, but each generation is only
tolerant of _past_ innovations. Those of its own day are met with the
same persecution as though the principle of toleration had never been
heard of.
"In early society," says Westermarck, "customs are not only moral
rules, but the only moral rules ever thought of. The savage strictly
complies with the Hegelian command that no man must have a private
conscience. The following statement, which refers to the Tinnevelly
Shanars, may be quoted as a typical example: 'Solitary individuals
amongst them rarely adopt any new opinions, or any new course of
procedure. They follow the multitude to do evil, and they follow the
multitude to do good. They think in herds.'"[3]
[3] "The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas," 2d edition,
Vol. I, p. 119.
Those among ourselves who have never thought a thought or done a deed
in the slightest degree different from the thoughts and deeds of our
neighbors will congratulate themselves on the difference between us
and the savage. But those who have ever attempted any real innovation
cannot help feeling that the people they know are not so very unlike
the Tinnevelly Shanars.
Under the influence of socialism, even progressive opinion, in recent
years, has been hostile to individual liberty. Liberty is associated,
in the minds of reformers, with _laissez-faire_, the Manchester School,
and the exploitation of women and children which resulted from what
was euphemistically called "free competition." All these things were
evil, and required state interference; in fact, there is need of an
immense increase of state action in regard to cognat
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