You will want
a den to work in, and peace, and light--no more,--in absolute need; if
more, in anywise, it will still not be liberty, but direction,
instruction, reproof, and sympathy. But if you have no individuality, if
there is no true character nor true desire in you, then you will indeed
want to be free. You will begin early, and, as a boy, desire to be a
man; and, as a man, think yourself as good as every other. You will
choose freely to eat, freely to drink, freely to stagger and fall,
freely, at last, to curse yourself and die. Death is the only real
freedom possible to us; and that is consummate freedom, permission for
every particle in the rotting body to leave its neighbor particle, and
shift for itself. You call it "corruption" in the flesh; but before it
comes to that, all liberty is an equal corruption in mind. You ask for
freedom of thought; but if you have not sufficient grounds for thought,
you have no business to think; and if you have sufficient grounds, you
have no business to think wrong. Only one thought is possible to you if
you are wise--your liberty is geometrically proportionate to your folly.
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