caused by thought than the flow of a river is caused by the bubbles that reveal its direction to an
onlooker. For my part, I believe that the truth lies between these two extremes. Between ideas and
practical life, as everywhere else, there is reciprocal interaction; to ask which is cause and which
effect is as futile as the problem of the hen and the egg. I shall not waste time upon a discussion of
this question in the abstract, but shall consider historically one important case of the general
question, namely the development of liberalism and its offshoots from the end of the seventeenth
century to the present day.
Early liberalism was a product of England and Holland, and had certain well-marked
characteristics. It stood for religious toleration; it was Protestant, but of a latitudinarian rather than
of a fanatical kind; it regarded the wars of religion as silly. It valued commerce and industry, and
favoured the rising middle class rather than the monarchy and the aristocracy; it had immense
respect for the rights of property, especially when accumulated by the labours of the individual
possessor. The hereditary principle, though not rejected, was restricted in scope more than it had
previously been; in particular, the divine right of kings was rejected in favour of the view that
every community has a right, at any rate initially, to choose its own form of government.
Implicitly, the tendency of early liberalism was towards democracy tempered by the rights of
property. There was a belief--not at first wholly explicit--that all men are born equal, and that their
subsequent inequality is a product of circumstances. This led to a great emphasis upon the
importance of education as opposed to congenital characteristics. There was a certain bias against
government, because governments almost everywhere were in the hands of kings or aristocracies,
who seldom either understood or respected the needs of merchants, but this bias was held in check
by the hope that the necessary understanding and respect would be won before long.
Early liberalism was optimistic, energetic, and philosophic, because it represented growing forces
which appeared likely to become victorious without great difficulty, and to bring by their victory
great benefits to mankind. It was opposed to everything medieval, both in philosophy and in
politics, because medieval theories had been used to sanction the powers of Church and king, to
justify persecution, and to obstruct the rise of science; but it was opposed equally to the then
modern fanaticisms of Calvinists and Anabaptists. It wanted an