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The Curve of the Rational Age 203individualistic in its origin, — it is not native or indispensableto the essence of the collectivist ideal. It is the individual whodemands liberty for himself, a free movement for his mind, life,will, action; the collectivist trend and the State idea have ratherthe opposite tendency, they are self-compelled to take up moreand more the compulsory management and control of the mind,life, will, action of the community — and the individual’s as partof it — until personal liberty is pressed out of existence. Butsimilarly it is the individual who demands for himself equalitywith all others; when a class demands, it is still the individualmultiplied claiming for himself and all who are of his own grade,political or economic status an equal place, privilege or opportunitywith those who have acquired or inherited a superiority ofstatus. The social Reason conceded first the claim to liberty, butin practice (whatever might have been the theory) it admittedonly so much equality — equality before the law, a helpful butnot too effective political equality of the vote — as was necessaryto ensure a reasonable freedom for all. Afterwards whenthe injustices and irrationalities of an unequalised competitivefreedom, the enormity of the gulfs it created, became apparent,the social Reason shifted its ground and tried to arrive at a morecomplete communal justice on the basis of a political, economic,educational and social equality as complete as might be; it haslaboured to make a plain level on which all can stand together.Liberty in this change has had to undergo the former fate ofequality; for only so much liberty — perhaps or for a time —could survive as can be safely allowed without the competitiveindividual getting enough room for his self-assertive growth toupset or endanger the equalitarian basis. But in the end thediscovery cannot fail to be made that an artificial equality hasalso its irrationalities, its contradictions of the collective good, itsinjustices even and its costly violations of the truth of Nature.Equality like individualistic liberty may turn out to be not apanacea but an obstacle in the way of the best management andcontrol of life by the collective reason and will of the community.But if both equality and liberty disappear from the humanscene, there is left only one member of the democratic trinity,