Liberalism--I do not,
of course, refer in any way to the political party which makes this
profession--is essentially anti-traditionalism; its tendency is to
commit for trial any institution or belief that is brought before it. It
is the accuser and antagonist of all the fixed and ancient values and
imperatives and prohibitions of the Normal Social Life. And growing up
in relation to Liberalism and sustained by it is the great body of
scientific knowledge, which professes at least to be absolutely
undogmatic and perpetually on its trial and under assay and
re-examination.
Now a very large part of the advanced thought of the past century is no
more than the confused negation of the broad beliefs and institutions
which have been the heritage and social basis of humanity for immemorial
years. This is as true of the extremest Individualism as of the
extremest Socialism. The former denies that element of legal and
customary control which has always subdued the individual to the needs
of the Normal Social Life, and the latter that qualified independence of
distributed property which is the basis of family autonomy. Both are
movements against the ancient life, and nothing is more absurd than the
misrepresentation which presents either as a conservative force.
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