old ideal of individual liberty. The second
question is how far the modern mind is committed to such egalitarian
ideas as may be implied in Socialism. The third is whether there is
any power of resistance in the tradition of the populace itself. These
three questions for the future I shall consider in their order in the
final chapters that follow. It is enough to say here that I think the
progress of these ideals has broken down at the precise point where
they will fail to prevent the experiment. Briefly, the progress will
have deprived the Capitalist of his old Individualist scruples,
without committing him to his new Collectivist obligations. He is in a
very perilous position; for he has ceased to be a Liberal without
becoming a Socialist, and the bridge by which he was crossing has
broken above an abyss of Anarchy.

CHAPTER VI

THE ECLIPSE OF LIBERTY

If such a thing as the Eugenic sociology had been suggested in the
period from Fox to Gladstone, it would have been far more fiercely
repudiated by the reformers than by the Conservatives. If Tories had
regarded it as an insult to marriage, Radicals would have far more
resolutely regarded it as an insult to citizenship. But in the
interval we have suffered from a process resembling a sort of mystical
parricide, such as is told of so many gods, and is true of so many
great ideas. Liberty has produced scepticism, and scepticism has
destroyed liberty. The lovers of liberty thought they were leaving it
unlimited, when they were only leaving it undefined. They thought they
were only leaving it undefined, when they were really leaving it
undefended. Men merely finding themselves free found themselves free
to dispute the value of freedom. But the important point to seize
about this reactionary scepticism is that as it is bound to be
unlimited in theory, so it is bound to be unlimited in practice. In
other words, the modern mind is set in an attitude which would enable
it to advance, not only towards Eugenic legislation, but towards any
conceivable or inconceivable extravagances of Eugenics.

Those who reply to any plea for freedom invariably fall into a certain
trap. I have debated with numberless different people on these
matters, and I confess I find it amusing to see them tumbling into it
one after another. I remember discussing it before a club of very
active and intelligent Suffragists, and I cast it here for convenience
in the form which it there assumed. S