We Are Born To Action And Whatever

Since Freedom Is Not A Fixed Thing That Can Be Grasped And Held Once For All, But A Growth, Any Particular Society, Such As Our Own, Always Appears Partly Free And Partly Unfree. In So Far As It Favors, In Every Child, The Development Of His Highest Possibilities, It Is Free, But Where It Falls Short Of This It Is Not.

So Far As Discipline Is Concerned, Freedom Means Not Its Absence But The Use Of Higher And More Rational Forms As Contrasted With Those That Are Lower Or Less Rational. A Free Discipline Controls The Individual By Appealing To His Reason And Conscience, And Therefore To His Self-respect; While An Unfree Control Works Upon Some Lower Phase Of The Mind, And So Tends To Degrade Him. It Is Freedom To Be Disciplined In As Rational A Manner As You Are Fit For.

It Happens From Time To Time In Every Complex And Active Society, That Certain Persons Feel The Complexity And Insistence As A Tangle, And Seek Freedom In Retirement, As Thoreau Sought At Walden Pond. They Do Not, However, In This Manner Escape From The Social Institutions Of Their Time, Nor Do They Really Mean To Do So; What They Gain, If They Are Successful, Is A Saner Relation To Them.

It Is Surely A Matter Of Common Observation That A Man Who Knows No One Thing Intimately Has No Views Worth Hearing On Things In General. The Farmer Philosophizes In Terms Of Crops, Soils, Markets, And Implements, The Mechanic Generalizes His Experiences Of Wood And Iron, The Seaman Reaches Similar Conclusions By His Own Special Road; And If The Scholar Keeps Pace With These It Must Be By An Equally Virile Productivity.

Each Man Must Have His I; It Is More Necessary To Him Than Bread.