Thus, it is not merely a matter of caution, it is in the highest degree wise, to test every yearning and every demand for freedom, even in one’s own breast, with the practical question, “What for?”--“What is the strongest impulse that would find expression if the bondage of the present task were exchanged for the bondage of a new occupation?” Only those who can answer that question satisfactorily, only those who feel that they would increase the fullness of their lives, and thus add to the sum of beauty and happiness in the world, have any right to “freedom,” or have any understanding of the only sense in which the idea of freedom can have some meaning. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 16: But even this amount of freedom in the mediocre is limited by the fact that the mediocre cannot choose a means of livelihood in which super-mediocre endowments would be necessary.] [Footnote 17: Collected Writings. (London: A. C. Black). Vol. I., p. 194.] [Footnote 18: See _Considerations on Representative Government_, Chapter VII., par. 4:--“There is not equal suffrage when every single individual does not count for as much as any other single individual in the community. But it is not only a minority who suffer. Democracy thus constituted does not even attain its ostensible object, that of giving the powers of government in all cases to the numerical majority. It does something very different; it gives them to a majority of the majority, who may be, and often are, but a minority of the whole. All principles are most effectually tested by extreme cases. Suppose then that in a country governed by equal and universal suffrage, there is a contested election in every constituency, and every election is carried by a small majority. The Parliament thus brought together represents little more than a bare majority of the people. This Parliament proceeds to legislate and adopts important measures by a bare majority of itself. What guarantee is there that these measures accord with the washes of the majority of the people? Nearly half the electors, having been out-voted at the hustings, have had no influence at all in the decision; and the whole of these may be, a majority of them probably are, hostile to the measures, having voted against those by whom they have been carried. Of the remaining electors nearly half have chosen representatives who, by supposition, have voted against the measures. It is possible therefore, and not at all improbable that the opinion which has prevailed was only agreeable to a minority of the nation, through a majority of that portion of it whom the institutions of the country have erected into a ruling class.”] [p95] CHAPTER V SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM “There is at the present day too great a tendency to believe that it is impossible to resist the progress of a new idea.” Disraeli’s speech on the Compensation for Disturbance Bill. (August, 1880).