Man, thou hast a social spirit, and art deeply indebted to thy kind: Therefore claim not all thy rights; but yield, for thine own advantage. Society is a chain of obligations, and its links must support each other; The branch can not but wither, that is cut from the parent vine. Wouldst thou be a dweller in the woods, and cast away the cords that bind thee, Seeking, in thy bitterness or pride, to be exiled from thy fellows? Behold, the beasts shall hunt thee, weak, naked, houseless outcast, Disease and Death shall track thee out, as bloodhounds in the wilderness: Better to be vilest of the vile, in the hated company of men, Than to live a solitary wretch, dreading and wanting all things; Better to be chained to thy labour, in the dusky thoroughfares of life, Than to reign monarch of Sloth, in lonesome savage freedom. Whence then cometh the doctrine, that all should be equal and free?-- It is the lie that crowded hell, when Seraphs flung away subjection. No man is his neighbour's equal, for no two minds are similar, And accidents, alike with qualities, have every shade but sameness: The lightest atom of difference shall destroy the nice balance of equality, And all things, from without and from within, make one man to differ from another. We are equal and free! was the watchword that spirited the legions of Satan; We are equal and free! is the double lie that entrappeth to him conscripts from earth: The messengers of that dark despot will pander to thy licence and thy pride, And draw thee from the crowd where thou art safe, to seize thee in the solitary desert. Woe unto him whose heart the syren-song of Liberty hath charmed; Woe unto him whose mind is bewitched by her treacherous beauty; In mad zeal flingeth he away the fetters of duty and restraint, And yieldeth up the holocaust of self to that fair Idol of the Damned. No man hath freedom in aught, save in that from which the wicked would be hindered, He is free toward God and good; but to all else a bondman.