CALIFORNIA

THE FOUNDATIONS OF

LIBERTY

INTRODUCTORY

'HE partisan or extreme man is one who selects at

THE

will certain of the facts or truths of the matter with which he is called upon to deal, and ignores others which, for whatever reason, are less agreeable to him. Truth is generally to be found in a just balance. This balance obviously cannot be maintained if we assert our own predilections and proceed to pick and choose among the facts. The facts we select will all be of one type, and all restraint arising from the presence in our minds of the correcting or balancing truths having been lost, we shall proceed to extremes of foolishness, the only limit to which will be the strength of the partisan's energy or the condition of his sense of humour. Such persons having nothing to consider more solid or more permanent than their own desires, are often subject and always liable to violent oscillations of opinion, and in the process of selecting a new set of truths will frequently go direct from one extreme to the other.

It is as though the truth or Aristotelian "mean" were the apex of a triangle, with the related "untruths' or "extremes" at the angles of the base, so that he who falls from Truth can pass directly from one

extreme to the other without passing through the "mean" on the way-that is to say, without ever arriving at Truth.

The Truth, however, is not a mere compromise between its opposite aspects or component ideas, nor is it their sum or their mixture. As water is more than its elemental gases, and a song than its several notes, so is Truth more than those things into which it can be analysed.

There are two chief ways in which "extremism " or passionate, unjust, unbalanced opinion is injuriously affecting modern politics.

On the one hand we have partial and conséquently extreme and partisan views as to the fundamental and essential Nature of Man. Some will have it that he is only a Mind in conflict with unreality, or with a "matter" which is purely evil; others that he is wholly material, or at any rate wholly conditioned by his material environment.

The former of these schools may become a political danger in the distant future, but the latter are already a danger.

The second is intimately connected with this, and concerns the partial, ill-considered, and passionate views, which are everywhere rife, as to the relation of the Individual to the Society.

To take first the popular views as to the relation of Man to his material environment.

There is at present a certain more or less unphilosophic reaction against materialism-that is to say, as that is popularly conceived and acceptedexpressing itself hazily in the various forms of occultism, and among the upper classes from time to

time in a so-called Buddhism, and indeed in a great variety of ways. But the movement or tendency is expressed with much more definite intention in the dogmas of the various sects, of which the Christian "Scientists" might be taken as typical.

These modern reactionaries for the most part regard matter as lawless, or purely subjective, or illusory, and as wholly or mainly evil, or at any rate the source of evil; while the social aspect of the individual and the dependence of his moral and physical well-being upon his social environment are among them greatly minimised.

Such people, however, it is needless to say, do not at present constitute a political danger, and their case need not here be dwelt upon.

But the opposite extreme or materialistic conception of Man is of grave political import.

The political evil of_materialism lies in the atheism or agnosticism involved in it; for atheism and agnosticism sap the moral foundations upon which all Society is based. And so, perhaps, it might seem better, instead of speaking of a materialistic view as the political danger of the day, to ascribe the danger to a popular atheism or agnosticism. But this is largely a question of names, because among the populace agnosticism is for all practical purposes materialism, and has its origin and its end in an indifference to, and elimination of, all that is ultra-physical, and a willing surrender to the dogma that the Substance of the universe, whether that be Absolute or not, is the only thing with which Man, as they have limited and defined him, can have any concern. Furthermore, there are persons who, consciously or unconsciously, are influenced by

materialism (and who are a political danger in proportion to the strength of that influence), who yet could not possibly be described as atheists; and to describe them as "atheists who are partly theists" is not so fitting as to speak of them as theists who are in some measure influenced by materialism.

We only know of matter through our own bodies, where we see it, as it were, from within. The notions we entertain of matter will therefore depend on the assumption we make concerning our own Nature-that is, the Nature of Man. Were it otherwise, and the only means of attaining to a materialistic or agnostic view of things lay in pursuing the painful paths of arduous scientific research and profound philosophic meditation on the subject of Matter and Reality, we might be delivered from any alarm as to this creed ever becoming in the least degree popular. But the usual materialistic views as to Man and his material nature are by no means the result of elaborate study and cogent reasoning, nor, on the other hand, do they spring from the soil of faith, conscience, and moral discipline. They are, on the contrary-whether in the fashionable world or among the populace-the result of gratuitous one-sided assumptions made by the individual, which involve, neither at the time of making them nor subsequently, any moral effort or intellectual ability. They are suggested by pride and passion, and when once made open the door to every destructive political influence. Busybodies of a certain type are not slow to perceive this, and diffuse among the people in various ways materialistic propaganda, not, as is affected, with a philosophic or scientific aim, but with the purely political intent of resolving into dust those

transcendental ideas which are the life and inspiration of human society.

Associated with and depending upon these materialistic views of the Nature of Man, there remains as the second menace to all that is of permanent value in social and individual life, the extravagant ideas which are now everywhere so acceptable on the subject of the relation of the individual to the Society.

On the one side there is the pure Socialistic conception, and on the other the extreme Individualistic and Anarchistic; both the Socialistic and Individualistic conception being wide of the Truth, and indeed about equally so.

As to the anarchistic attitude, it must be remarked, in passing, that while the anarchistic policy is undoubtedly a development of Socialism—perhaps its only logical issue-yet the immediate aims of the two parties are, for all practical purposes, diametrically opposed; so much so that Anarchism may be regarded as having assimilated the essential theories of materialistic Individualism.

It becomes necessary at this point to state what in this book is meant by an Individualist. At present the term Individualism is universally employed merely to connote the various political opinions which are not described as Socialistic; so that Individualistic now means nothing more than anti-Socialistic. So it happens that Individualism connotes many opinions which are mean and base and possessed of no ethical or religious foundation, but are founded rather upon inductions based upon observations of the brute creation. The doctrine of "each one for himself," which