And thus Liberty as understood by “theorists of the first look,” or by those who in all ages have resisted arbitrary tyranny, belongs after all to the same principle with the civil or moral liberty of the philosopher. The claim to obey only yourself is a claim essential to humanity; and the further significance of it rests upon what you mean by “yourself.” Now if it is true that resistance to arbitrary aggression is a condition of obeying only ourselves, it is more deeply true, when man is in any degree civilised, that, in order to obey yourself as you want to be, you must obey some thing very different from yourself as you are. And it has been well pointed out [1] that the consciousness of civilised peoples is deeply alive to this significance of liberty, so that any work of self-improvement may be most effectively {145} presented to a popular audience as an effort to attain freedom by breaking the bondage of drink, for example, or of ignorance, or of pauperism. In spite of the objection that Freedom as thus represented is a mere metaphor, “the feeling [2] of oppression, which always goes with the consciousness of unfulfilled possibilities, will always give meaning to the representation of the effort after any kind of self-improvement as a demand for freedom.” We have followed the usual course of English thought, and the example of a writer whose caution equalled his enthusiasm, in admitting that the lower sense of the term Liberty is the literal sense, and that the deeper meaning may be treated as metaphorical. It is worth while to observe that the justice of this way of looking at the matter is very doubtful. It is because we know, however indefinitely, that our self has a reach beyond its daily needs, that arbitrary oppression becomes a thing to be resisted at the price of life itself. Herbert Spencer draws attention to the struggles of an animal which we try to confine, as a proof of the innate feeling of liberty. But the domesticated animal is the highest animal, or at anyrate not the lowest; while the man domesticated on similar terms is what we call a slave, because he has sold his liberty for his life. It is therefore in truth the sense of the higher liberty--the greatness and unity of life--that has communicated uncontrollable force to the claim for the lower; and if the fuller meaning is the reality and the lesser the symbol, it would be nearer the truth to say that the reality is the liberty of {146} a moral being whose will finds adequate expression in its life, of which liberty the absence of external constraint is only an elementary type or symbol. The claim of the dictionary-maker that the earliest or the average meaning is also the truest or the “proper” meaning of words has no foundation. [3] [1] Green’s _Principles_ p. 18. [2] _Loc. cit._ [3] Nettleship’s _Remains_, i. 27 and 30.