expression of truth, the complex of social institutions is, as we have seen, very much more complete than the explicit ideas which at any given instant move any individual mind in volition. {124} CHAPTER VI. THE CONCEPTION OF LIBERTY, AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE FOREGOING SUGGESTIONS. 1. We have now seen that the problem of Self-Government may be regarded from a point of view other than that which presented it as a contradiction in terms. The contradiction depended on the absolute opposition between self and others which was embodied in the _prima facie_ idea of society; the result of which was that all increase of individuality and all assertion of self were at the first view hostile as regarded others, and liberty, the condition of individuality, became a negative idea, prescribing as it were a maximum of empty space, to be preserved against all trespassers, round every unit of the social whole. We saw that notions of this kind were pushed so far as to endanger the fundamental principle, according to which self-affirmation is the root of morality, and it was maintained that the ethical attitude essentially lay in the negation and limitation imposed by social life upon the natural tendency to self-assertion. [1] According to these ideas, the self in society is something less than, if it could so exist, it would {125} be out of society, and liberty is the arrangement by which, at a sacrifice of some of its activities, it is enabled to disport itself _in vacuo_ with the remainder. [1] Pp. 27 and 73.