Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - The Socialist Movement.pdf/142

 138 Indeed, liberty in a society becomes a department of duty, not of right, because individual activity can so easily become anti-social and destructive. Consequently, liberty is less a matter of breadths, than of heights and depths and of infinite extensions ahead. The liberty of a boat on a river is not to go hither and thither from bank to bank as the whim of the helmsman directs, but to keep its course according to the rules.

From this view, one cannot blot out the fact that liberty ultimately must depend on human quality. The good man alone is free, and the good man is he who is conscious of his social obligations. "Take my yoke upon you" has been the advice of every great ethical teacher to men in search of liberty. Every restraint upon human activity, every form of restrictive legislation, is not wise, and is not Socialism. For restraint and law are but means towards ends and must accept the test which the complete Socialist theory itself must accept: Is it rational? Is it necessary? Is it a contribution to a wider freedom? But certain it is that when liberty is at last found—if that treasure is ever to be found by unhappy man—it will be in an organised state with just laws and a well-devised system of mutual protection and aid.

And there is one other aim which pilgrim man seems to be seeking to which reference must be made. Underlying the aphorism