It is easier to convert most people to the need for allowing their
children to run physical risks than moral ones. I can remember a
relative of mine who, when I was a small child, unused to horses and
very much afraid of them, insisted on putting me on a rather rumbustious
pony with little spurs on my heels (knowing that in my agitation I would
use them unconsciously), and being enormously amused at my terrors. Yet
when that same lady discovered that I had found a copy of The Arabian
Nights and was devouring it with avidity, she was horrified, and hid it
away from me lest it should break my soul as the pony might have broken
my neck. This way of producing hardy bodies and timid souls is so common
in country houses that you may spend hours in them listening to stories
of broken collar bones, broken backs, and broken necks without coming
upon a single spiritual adventure or daring thought.
But whether the risks to which liberty exposes us are moral or physical
our right to liberty involves the right to run them. A man who is not
free to risk his neck as an aviator or his soul as a heretic is not free
at all; and the right to liberty begins, not at the age of 21 years but
of 21 seconds.