It is not only true that most people entirely misunderstand Freedom, but
I sometimes think I have not yet met one person who rightly understands
it. The whole Universe is absolute Law. Freedom only opens entire
activity and license _under the law_. To the degraded or undevelopt--and
even to too many others--the thought of freedom is a thought of escaping
from law--which, of course, is impossible. More precious than all
worldly riches is Freedom--freedom from the painful constipation and
poor narrowness of ecclesiasticism--freedom in manners, habiliments,
furniture, from the silliness and tyranny of local fashions--entire
freedom from party rings and mere conventions in Politics--and better
than all, a general freedom of One's-Self from the tyrannic domination
of vices, habits, appetites, under which nearly every man of us, (often
the greatest brawler for freedom,) is enslav'd. Can we attain such
enfranchisement--the true Democracy, and the height of it? While we are
from birth to death the subjects of irresistible law, enclosing every
movement and minute, we yet escape, by a paradox, into true free will.
Strange as it may seem, we only attain to freedom by a knowledge of, and
implicit obedience to, Law. Great--unspeakably great--is the Will! the
free Soul of man! At its greatest, understanding and obeying the laws,
it can then, and then only, maintain true liberty. For there is to the
highest, that law as absolute as any--more absolute than any--the Law of
Liberty. The shallow, as intimated, consider liberty a release from all
law, from every constraint. The wise see in it, on the contrary, the
potent Law of Laws, namely, the fusion and combination of the conscious
will, or partial individual law, with those universal, eternal,
unconscious ones, which run through all Time, pervade history, prove
immortality, give moral purpose to the entire objective world, and the
last dignity to human life.