an place to the extent of the building. Liberty then becomes not so
much a right of the individual as a necessity of society. It rests not
on the claim of A to be let alone by B, but on the duty of B to treat A
as a rational being. It is not right to let crime alone or to let error
alone, but it is imperative to treat the criminal or the mistaken or the
ignorant as beings capable of right and truth, and to lead them on
instead of merely beating them down. The rule of liberty is just the
application of rational method. It is the opening of the door to the
appeal of reason, of imagination, of social feeling; and except through
the response to this appeal there is no assured progress of society.

Now, I am not contending that these principles are free from difficulty
in application. At many points they suggest difficulties both in theory
and in practice, with some of which I shall try to deal later on. Nor,
again, am I contending that freedom is the universal solvent, or the
idea of liberty the sole foundation on which a true social philosophy
can be based. On the contrary, freedom is only one side of social life.
Mutual aid is not less important than mutual forbearance, the theory of
collective action no less fundamental than the theory of personal
freedom. But, in an inquiry where all the elements are so closely
interwoven as they are in the field of social life, the point of
departure becomes almost indifferent. Wherever we start we shall, if we
are quite frank and consistent, be led on to look at the whole from some
central point, and this, I think, has happened to us in working with the
conception of 'liberty.' For, beginning with the right of the
individual, and the antithesis between personal freedom and social
control, we have been led on to a point at which we regard liberty as
primarily a matter of social interest, as something flowing from the
necessities of continuous advance in those regions of truth and of
ethics which constitute the matters of highest social concern. At the
same time, we have come to look for the effect of liberty in the firmer
establishment of social solidarity, as the only foundation on which such
solidarity can securely rest. We have, in fact, arrived by a path of our
own at that which is ordinarily described as the organic conception of
the relation between the individual and society--a conception towards
which Mill worked through his career, and which forms the starting-point
of T. H. Gr