divorced from and indifferent to the public, he is precisely the man in whom the interests of society center; for he is the man whose work could not easily, perhaps could not possibly, be duplicated.
From this point of view, then, the self-expression and self-development of the individual are inseparably connected with the performance of functions having a generally social nature. Where, then, does the individual's liberty lie? Evidently in escape from the circumstances which are most likely to hinder such performance. A new theory of liberty, therefore, founded upon the view of individuality just sketched, must find the essence of bondage in these hindrances. Since liberty implies self-expression, and since self-expression implies the performance of social functions, the failure to perform such a function will itself be bondage and the negation of individuality. Thus bondage is identified with precisely that isolation and particularity by means of which the earlier liberals had sought to define liberty. The theory dovetails easily into the distinction between the sensitive and the rational self, bondage belonging to the former and freedom to the latter. The sensitive self is private and particular; the rational self is social, objective, and free.
In Professor Bosanquet's presentation, the theory is developed around what he calls the actual will as opposed to the real will.[1] The feeling of a conflict of selves, of which one represents a higher level of moral achievement, is, of course, a common phase of moral experience. The moral struggle is envisaged as the effort of the better self against the hindrance placed in its way by the lower. Since true self-expression cannot lie in following the path of least resistance, since it requires the following of the harder but better way, liberty cannot be mere status. It lies in the achievement of a definite and affirmative individuality by taking one's place in the objective order of social action. Institutions and laws, therefore, represent the real will of the individual, that which his better self requires for its being, while the actual will is the more immediate, but also the more casual,
- ↑ Op. cit., Chapter VI.
