liberty are those which speak of man as a creator. We use the word "make"
about most of the things in which freedom is essential, as a country walk
or a friendship or a love affair. When a man "makes his way" through a
wood he has really created, he has built a road, like the Romans. When a
man "makes a friend," he makes a man. And in the third case we talk of a
man "making love," as if he were (as, indeed, he is) creating new masses
and colours of that flaming material an awful form of manufacture. In its
primary spiritual sense, liberty is the god in man, or, if you like the
word, the artist.

In its secondary political sense liberty is the living influence of the
citizen on the State in the direction of moulding or deflecting it. Men
are the only creatures that evidently possess it. On the one hand, the
eagle has no liberty; he only has loneliness. On the other hand, ants,
bees, and beavers exhibit the highest miracle of the State influencing the
citizen; but no perceptible trace of the citizen influencing the State.
You may, if you like, call the ants a democracy as you may call the bees a
despotism. But I fancy that the architectural ant who attempted to
introduce an art nouveau style of ant-hill would have a career as curt and
fruitless as the celebrated bee who wanted to swarm alone. The isolation
of this idea in humanity is akin to its religious character; but it is not
even in humanity by any means equally distributed. The idea that the
State should not only be supported by its children, like the ant-hill, but
should be constantly criticised and reconstructed by them, is an idea
stronger in Christendom than any other part of the planet; stronger in
Western than Eastern Europe. And touching the pure idea of the individual
being free to speak and act within limits, the assertion of this idea, we
may fairly say, has been the peculiar honour of our own country. For my
part I greatly prefer the Jingoism of Rule Britannia to the Imperialism of
The Recessional. I have no objection to Britannia ruling the waves. I