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…A character in which this disposition is strong may exhibit it in a masterful egoism almost as careless of the concerns of some others as it is of their opinions, in a disdain for consequences or recognition, in a compelling versatility of response, or in a gracious or impatient intrusion into the affairs of the less well endowed. But, of course, since what we are considering is intelligent conduct, there is nothing whatever to identify this disposition with self-gratification. Such a character may display it habitually or only on important occasions, but he will always be a somewhat finicky chooser insisting upon doing things his own way. In his capacity for taking the initiative whilst others are laboriously marshalling their resources or seeking supporters, and in his ability to take responsibility upon himself and "to go about his business as if he had not a friend in the world" (as Halifax portrays him), he may be recognized as a useful character to have about the place. Possessing more than others he can afford to lose more without becoming destitute. He is more likely to perish in some quixotic adventure than to die in bed; but, either way, he will have a death of his own as he has a life of his own.

Or this disposition may express itself in a modest and an unaggressive self-reliance, in a man's acquiescence in his own capacity for self-enactment, whatever it may be; and even quite humbly in a man's knowing how to belong to himself and a preference for being related to others in these terms. And it may go along with an undismayed acknowledgement and admiration of the superiority of others, an aristocratic recognition of one's own unimportance, and a humility devoid of humiliation. On the other hand, one who understands himself to be the messenger of a god, to be "illuminated" from above, or to be the voice of destiny, who denies having any thoughts of his own to give meaning to what he does or says, and thus absolves himself from all responsibility for his actions and utterances, is a character of a different sort; he has resigned the character of a human being and has contracted out of the conversation of mankind. He is either an angel or a lunatic.

But further, this disposition or sentiment in favour of self-direction in conduct may be endowed with a more strictly moral character. Self-direction may be recognized not only to be useful, to be a source of considerable happiness, and to make life more interesting or more entertaining for everybody, but to be also an important virtue. And where personal autonomy is thus given a place in a moral practice, conduct will be recognized to have an excellence simply in respect of its authenticity and perhaps to be, in part, justifiable in these terms. In Luther's "ich kann nicht anders" the emphasis is upon the ich which is not feeling or mere "conscience" but judgement springing from self-understanding, and we have no difficulty in recognizing it as a sketch of a justification for his action. Of course this may be exaggerated into an exclusive moral ideal, excellence in conduct being identified with this authenticity; but this is a corruption which every disposition recognized as a virtue is apt to suffer at the hands of fanatics. And further, personal autonomy has been construed (by Rousseau and others) as a hypothetical organic feeling of self-identity, dissipated in reflective consciousness and unable to survive in conduct inter hominess, or as the "idiocy" of idiots; and conduct springing from the self-understanding of an intelligent agent is, in consequence, declared to be necessarily unauthentic. But these and other such follies need not detain us.

What we have to do with, then, is a disposition to cultivate the "freedom" inherent in agency, to enjoy individuality, and added to this the disposition readily to concede virtue to this exercise of personal autonomy acquired in self-understanding. And we are concerned with them because this is a historic disposition notable not only in the moeurs of modern Europe but also reflected in the character attributed to states and the office attributed to governments.

But it would be a mistake to suppose that it first emerged in modern times. Like anything else in the modern European character this sentiment of individuality appeared there as a modification of the conditions of medieval life and thought. It was not generated in claims and assertions on behalf of individuality but in the gradual and intermittent dissolution, beginning perhaps in the twelfth century, of the self-contained seigneurial estate where choices, performances and responsibilities were circumscribed by an accepted prudential routine, of familiar relationships understood in terms of status and rarely extricated from the analogy of kinship, and of the powerful moral and religious orthodoxy which had been settling upon the Latin Christian world after the period of "conversion" was over. It displayed itself in the persons of younger sons making their own way in a world which had little place for them, of foot-loose adventurers who left the land to take to trade, of town-dwellers who had emancipated themselves from the communal ties of the countryside, of vagabond scholars, in the speculative audacities of Abelard, in venturesome heresy, in the lives of intrepid boys and men who left home to seek their fortunes each intent upon living a life for "a man like me," and in the relationships of men and women. It was reflected in the Latin and vernacular poetry of that memorable spring-time of the European spirit, in the singers and the songs of the Provenqal idiom and in the admired characters of the men and women celebrated in the Chansons de geste: the proud and reckless autonomia of Roland which makes Roncevalles a memorable event in the history of European moral imagination, and the note of his horn an imperishable utterance, echoing down the centuries. And it was expressed in the morality of the Christian Knight (Parzival or Gawain) whose calling it was not to win victories, but to show triuwe, fidelity, in every human situation.

The vicissitudes of this disposition in the following centuries make a long and intricate story; not of steady diffusion but of climaxes and recessions, of confidence and apprehension, of extension to activities thitherto untouched by it, of modest and of magnificent endeavours, but of mounting self-consciousness. It emerged in the resuscitated heresy of the Albigenses, and in the Christianity of St. Francis; Burckhardt (who may still be recognized as its most perceptive historian) has described how Italy in the thirteenth century swarmed with serious and trivial expressions of this disposition; it was celebrated heroically in the sagas of the north, dourly in the sordid transactions of the Nibelungen, defiantly in Aucassin's En paradis qu'ai je afaire?, and lyrically in the loves of Tristan and Iseult; it was translated by Occam into a philosophical theorem; it was crowned in the crowning of Petrarch in 1341; it is alive in the characters of Boccaccio, and the Canterbury pilgrims of Chaucer are engaging illustrations of the poet's maxim, "let they ghost thee lead"; it is expressed elegiacally in the poems of Villon, with Teutonic seriousness in the Meistersinger of Nuremberg, flamboyantly by Cellini, and profoundly in the devotions of Thomas a Kempis and of St. John of the Cross. It was both evoked and endowed in the extended use of money during these centuries, it was promoted by the disruption occasioned by the bubonic plague, it was parodied in the vast emotional and intellectual chaos of the fifteenth century, it receded before the craft guilds when they imposed corporate organization upon towns which had thitherto been associations of individuals, and the universities were less friendly to it when they became corporations of licensed teachers, servants of a curriculum.

Nevertheless, the early years of modern European history were distinguished by the confidence with which this disposition was embraced, the energy with which its intimations were explored, and the scale of the engagement. Every practical undertaking and every intellectual pursuit revealed itself as an assemblage of opportunities for self-enactment; even religion became once more a matter of choice. With some, no doubt this disposition was all that was left to them after the collapse or the destruction of communal life to which the emergence of states made so considerable a contribution; to pick it up as best they could was to make a virtue of necessity. But they floated on a rising tide; it was a moment when this disposition burned with "a hard gem-like flame" and it received its classic expression in theEssais of Montaigne and (more formally) in Charron's De la sagesse: a reading of the human condition in which a man's life is understood as an adventure in personal self-enactment. Here there was no promise of salvation for the race or prevision that it would late or soon be gathered into one fold, no anticipation of a near or distant reassemblage of a "truth" fragmented at the creation of the world or expectation that if the human race were to go on researching long enough it will discover "the truth," and no prospect of a redemption in a technological break-through providing a more complete satisfaction of contingent wants; there was only a prompting not to be dismayed at our own imperfections and a recognition that "it is something almost divine for a man to know how to belong to himself" and to live by that understanding. Augustine come again to confound both Gnostics and Pelagians. And these were the lineaments of that age d'or the birth of which Erasmus discerned in the confusions of his time and on which he congratulated the world, little knowing the revulsion it would evoke....