If degenerate tendencies actually manifest themselves, the main thing to be done is to take note of them as early in the individual’s life as possible, and to attempt to counteract them by a suitable change in the social environment. I need hardly point out that it is now believed that such counteraction is much more practicable than was formerly supposed, or mention that many beneficent institutions and other enterprises exist which aim to secure it. And if, as must always be the fact in a considerable proportion of cases, the person remains so distinctly and persistently below the standard of character and conduct that it is clearly inexpedient to leave him at large, the rational treatment of him is evidently a decent isolation, which shall prevent him from propagating his degenerate traits through either heredity or social influence. CHAPTER XII FREEDOM THE MEANING OF FREEDOM—FREEDOM AND DISCIPLINE—FREEDOM AS A PHASE OF THE SOCIAL ORDER—FREEDOM INVOLVES INCIDENTAL STRAIN AND DEGENERACY. Goethe remarks in his Autobiography[107] that the word freedom has so fair a sound that we cannot do without it even though it designate an error. Certainly it is a word inseparable from our higher sentiments, and if, in its popular use at the present day, it has no precise meaning, there is so much the more reason why we should try to give it one, and to continue its use as a symbol of something that mankind cherishes and strives for. The common notion of freedom is negative, that is, it is a notion of the absence of constraint. Starting with the popular individualistic view of things, the social order is thought of as something apart from, and more or less a hinderance to, a man’s natural development. There is an assumption that an ordinary person is self-sufficient in most respects, and will do very well if he is only left alone. But there is, of course, no such thing as the absence of restraint, in the sense of social limitations; man has no existence apart from a social order, and can develop his personality only through the social order, and in the same degree that it is developed. A freedom consisting in the removal of limiting conditions is inconceivable. If the word is to have any definite meaning in sociology, it must therefore be separated from the idea of a fundamental opposition between society and the individual, and made to signify something that is both individual and social. To do this it is not necessary to do any great violence to accepted ideas of a practical sort; since it is rather in theory than in application that the popular view is objectionable. A sociological interpretation of freedom should take away nothing worth keeping from our traditional conception of it, and may add something in the way of breadth, clearness, and productiveness.