“Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”--This meaningless, but highly inflammatory statement of Rousseau’s is probably at the root of most of the misunderstanding that prevails to-day in regard to the subject of liberty. Just as people eagerly accept, without a moment’s thought, the lie that men are born equal, so they are only too ready to embrace a doctrine according to which they may lay claim to a sort of primitive, or natural freedom, which has been stolen from them by their rulers, their civilisation, or by invading hordes. On examination, of course, the proposition “men are born free” proves to be wholly and wildly fantastic. Freedom implies, one would suppose, the right, the capacity, and the opportunity to choose one course from another, one kind of life from another. But how much can a man really choose? At birth, for instance, all kinds of conditions are imposed upon the future adult--conditions which are bound to determine the whole of the principal events of his or her [p78] career,--over which there is no possibility of control whatsoever. It may be assumed, for instance, that a baby might like to choose its nationality and the language that it will speak in later life. Can it do so? It may reasonably be taken for granted that a baby might like to choose its parents, its brothers and sisters, and its other relatives. Can it do so? Its very constitution and health are dependent upon the kind of mother and father it has; its very happiness and success as an adult may depend upon the way in which it is treated as an infant. Has it any choice, any freedom, in regard to any of these matters? It is not fanciful to suspect that the baby might like to choose its particular form and features, its ultimate height as an adult, etc., etc. The most vital and important issues will hang upon this question of its face and form when it is grown up. But it has no power whatsoever to determine any one of these most vital and important conditions. An imaginative baby, realising the inexorable fate which hangs over certain gifts, certain endowments, and a particular sex, might regard it as all important to be able to select these freely. But the rigidity of natural law, the impossibility of controlling any of these matters, ordain that at birth a baby has all its important ultimate characteristics, and therefore all its proclivities, tastes, vices, virtues, and even aspirations settled for it. Its nationality, its language, its parents, its other relatives, its constitution, its degree of beauty, its stature, its physical and mental endowments, its sex,--all these things, upon which the [p79] figure it will ultimately cut in the world most surely depend,--are fixed by an iron necessity which allows of no choice, no preference,--aye, and scarcely any modification either. If this is freedom, then what does constraint, what does oppression mean?