moderate parties, including the Girondins, but with their extermination it disappeared for a
generation from French politics. In England, after the Napoleonic wars, it again became influential
with the rise of the Benthamites and the Manchester School. Its greatest success has been in
America, where, unhampered by feudalism and a State Church, it has been dominant from 1776 to
the present day, or at any rate to 1933.
A new movement, which has gradually developed into the antithesis of liberalism, begins with
Rousseau, and acquires strength from the romantic movement and the principle of nationality. In
this movement, individualism is extended from the intellectual sphere to that of the passions, and
the anarchic aspects of individualism are made explicit. The cult of the hero, as developed by
Carlyle and Nietzsche, is typical of this philosophy. Various elements were combined in it. There
was dislike of early industrialism, hatred of the ugliness that it produced, and revulsion against its
cruelties. There was a nostalgia for the Middle Ages, which were idealized owing to hatred of the
modern world. There was an attempt to combine championship of the fading privileges of Church
and aristocracy with fence of wageearners against the tyranny of manufacturers. There was
vehement assertion of the right of rebellion in the name of nationalism, and of the splendour of
war in fence of "liberty." Byron was the poet of this movement; Fichte, Carlyle, and Nietzsche
were its philosophers.
But since we cannot all have the career of heroic leaders, and cannot all make our individual will
prevail, this philosophy, like all other forms of anarchism, inevitably leads, when adopted, to the
despotic government of the most successful "hero." And when his tyranny is established, he will
suppress in others the self-assertive ethic by which he has risen to power. This whole theory of
life, therefore, is selfrefuting, in the sense that its adoption in practice leads to the realization of
something utterly different: a dictatorial State in which the individual is severely repressed.
There is yet another philosophy which, in the main, is an offshoot of liberalism, namely that of
Marx. I shall consider him at a later stage, but for the moment he is merely to be borne in mind.
The first comprehensive statement of the liberal philosophy is to be found in Locke, the most
influential though by no means the most profound of modern philosophers. In England, his views
were so