3. Liberty, as understood by the writers who were discussed in ch. iii. of the present work, is related to the State much as Nature, in the mouth of story-telling theory, is related to civilised society. We saw that Seeley in his _Introduction to Political Science_ [1] lays it down that “perfect liberty is equivalent to total absence of government.” And this no doubt fairly represents our first notion of the matter, when cleared of the limitations imposed upon it by practical life, which {134} limitations--really a first hint of the truth--we are apt to mistake for mere sophistications and imperfections. We noted in Rousseau the surviving contrast between natural liberty on the one hand and civil or moral liberty on the other, and we observed that the expanding idea of what was natural could not be prevented from covering the ground of the civil or moral life. The thread of connection, or rather the ferment of expansion, we found to be, in the case of nature, the idea of self-origination. That was natural which came of itself. [1] Seeley, quoted p. 91 above. _(a)_ In the simple ideal of liberty, as equivalent to the absence of all government--for we must not forget that it is an ideal, obtained by neglecting the facts of life which run counter to it--there is clearly embodied a claim which commands our respect. The claim is so self-evident and so convincing to average human feeling--Mr. Spencer would indeed say, with some truth, to animal feeling in general--that its precise nature is seldom stated in distinct language. We have assumed above that the root of it lies in the claim to be ourselves. But it is safer to take it in the shape which it actually has for the average consciousness, and this is the negative shape, as a claim to be free from constraint. [1] If we ask, “What is constraint?” the answer is founded on the current distinction between myself and others as different minds attached to different bodies. It is constraint when my mind is interfered with in its control of my body either by actual or by threatening physical {135} violence under the direction of another mind. A permanent and settled condition of such constraint, by which I become in effect the instrument of another mind, is slavery. And it will not lead us far wrong if we assume that the value put upon liberty and its erection into something like an ideal comes from the contrast with slavery. The ideal of positive political freedom presupposes more complex experiences. But Homer already knows that “Zeus deprives a man of half his manhood when he becomes a slave.” [1] We must assume, I suppose, that in Seeley’s sentence “Government” = “Constraint,” or its _vraisemblance_ is lost.