An extreme way of putting this view would be to say that law is made by the individual’s acceptance of it, that the essence of the law-making process, is the consent of interested minds. At points of marginal significance, that is, I think, true; and the consequences of the truth are obviously important. Authority, if my view is right, is always acting at its peril. It lives not by its power to command but by its power to convince. And conviction is born of consent for the simple reason that the real field of social action is in the individual mind. Somewhere, inevitably, the power to coerce that mind to ways of thoughts of which it does not approve, breaks down; man, as Tyrrell said, is driven on “to follow the dominant influence of his life even if it should break the heart of all the world”. That is the stark fact which conditions the loyalty any authority seeks to secure. At some point, it cannot be imposed but must be won from us. And the greater the degree in which it springs from that persuasion, the greater, also, is the success of authority in imposing its solutions. No power can ever hope for successful permanence, no power, either, is entitled to it, which does not make its way, in vital matters, through the channels of consent. From this two conclusions seem to me to flow. Ours is not a universe in which the principles of a unified experience are unfolded. It is a multiverse embodying an ultimate variety of experiences, never identical, and always differently interpreted. There is enough similarity of view to enable us, if we have patience and goodwill, to make enough of unity to achieve order and peace. But that similarity is not identity. It does not entitle us to affirm that one man’s experience can be taken as the representation of another’s. It does not justify the inference that I shall find what I most truly desire in the desire of another. I am not a part of some great symphony in which I realize myself only as an incident in the _motif_ of the whole. I am unique, I am separate, I am myself; out of these qualities I must build my own principles of action. These are mine only, and cannot be made for me, at least creatively, by others. For their authority as principles comes from the fact that I recognize them as mine. Into them, as principles, I pour my personality, and life, for me, derives its meaning from their unique texture. To accept the forcible imposition of other principles upon me, which I do not recognize as the expression of my experience, is to make of me who might be free, a slave. I become an instrument of alien purposes, devoted to an end which denies my self-hood. Law, therefore, as coercion is always an invasion of personality, an abridgement of the moral stature of those whom it invades. To be true to its purpose, it must reduce the imperative element to a minimum if it is to release creativeness and not destroy it.