He is a man who has entered
upon life to do "what he jolly well likes." This, in fact, is the
illusion suffered by the fils de famille . We know the reason why: in the family
circle, everything, even the greatest faults, are in the long run left
unpunished. The family circle is relatively artificial, and tolerates many acts
which in society, in the world outside, would automatically involve disastrous
consequences for their author. But the man of this type thinks that he can
behave outside just as he does at home; believes that nothing is fatal,
irremediable, irrevocable. That is why he thinks that he can do what he likes.
An almighty mistake! "You will go where you are taken to," as the
parrot is told in the Portuguese story. It is not that one ought not to do just
what one pleases; it is simply that one cannot do other than what each of us has
to do, has to be. The only way out is to refuse to do what has to be done, but
this does not set us free to do something else just because it pleases us. In
this matter we only possess a negative freedom of will, a noluntas. We can quite
well turn away from our true destiny, but only to fall a prisoner in the deeper
dungeons of our destiny. I cannot make this clear to each of my readers in what
concerns his individual destiny as such, because I do not know each of my
readers; but it is possible to make it clear in those portions, those facets, of
his destiny which are identical with those of others. For example, every
present-day European knows, with a certainty much more forcible than that of all
his expressed "ideas" and "opinions," that the European of
to-day must be a liberal. Let us not discuss whether it is this or the other
form of liberalism which must be his. I am referring to the fact that the most
reactionary of Europeans knows, in the depths of his conscience, that the effort
made by Europe in the last century, under the name of liberalism, is, in the
last resort, something inevitable, inexorable; something that Western man to-day
is, whether he likes it or no.
