even define them theoretically, and keep them distinct? Is the opposite of a false view always true? Is it not much rather often (and always in some spheres) just as false?’; and to both, ‘So long as you refuse to read metaphysic, so long will metaphysical abstractions prey upon you.’
Or to put the same thing in a slightly different way. We all want freedom. Well then, what is freedom? ‘It means not being made to do or be anything. “Free” means “free from.”’ And are we to be quite free? ‘Yes, if freedom is good, we can not have too much of it.’ Then, if ‘free’ = ‘free from,’ to be quite free is to be free from everything—free from other men, free from law, from morality, from thought, from sense, from—Is there anything we are not to be free from? To be free from everything is to be—nothing. Only nothing is quite free, and freedom is abstract nothingness. If in death we cease to be anything, then there first we are free, because there first we are—not.
Every one sees this is not the freedom we want. ‘“Free” is “free from,” but then I am to be free. It is absurd to think that I am to be free from myself. I am to be free to exist and to assert myself.’ Well and good; but this is not what we began with. Freedom now means the self-assertion which is nothing but self-assertion. It is not merely negative—it is also positive, and negative only so far as, and because, it is positive.
‘I am to assert myself and nothing else, and this is freedom.’ So far as this goes we quite agree; but it tells us scarcely anything. I am to assert myself, but then what action does assert myself; or rather, what action does not assert myself? And if I am to assert nothing but myself, what can I do, so as to do this and nothing but this? What, in short, is this self, the assertion of which is freedom?
‘My self,’ we shall hear, ‘is what is mine; and mine is what is not yours, or what does not belong to any one else. I am free when I assert my private will, the will peculiar to me.’ Can this hold? Apart from any other objection, is it freedom? Suppose I am a glutton and a drunkard; in these vices I assert my private will; am I then free so far as a glutton and drunkard, or am I a slave—the slave of my appetites? The answer must be, ‘The slave of his lusts is, so far, not a free man. The man is free who realizes his true self.’ Then the whole question is, What is this true self, and can it be found apart from something like law? Is there any ‘perfect freedom’ which does not mean ‘service’?
Reflection shows us that what we call freedom is both positive and negative. There are then two questions—What am I to be free to assert? What am I to be free from? And these are answered by the answer to one question—What is my true self?
