Apart from these unhappy individuals, then, if Rousseauesque freedom exist at all, it exists only between the hour of birth and the hour when the child first goes to school. We have seen that even this is untrue. But has it even a semblance of truth as a conclusion? Surely nothing could be clearer than the fact that even in those years freedom is as remote as ever; for quite apart from the reasons already adduced above, it will easily be seen that the infant is as much the victim of convention and form as any adult could possibly be. It has a home, its life is subjected to rules, to a time-table, it cannot eat or do what it likes, except within very well-defined limits severely imposed. “It can think what it likes,” somebody may object. But even this is not strictly true. Its thoughts are as much necessitated by its environment and its constitution as is its food. If it is born in England or France, for instance, it will be brought up to believe in “immanent justice,” in “equality,” in “freedom.” It cannot escape these imbecilities. They are its fate. It will be taught the inanity that “every man has a right to his own opinion,” and that “Britons never never never shall be slaves,”--whatever that means, if it means anything at all. Later in life it may claim the idea that “every man has a right to his own opinion” as its own. It will have forgotten how it could not help holding this idea, any more than it could help learning the English language. Rousseau then was talking nonsense when he said that men were born free; but both his reading and his education were so pool that it is doubtful whether he knew that he was talking nonsense. Apart from Rousseauesque freedom, however, has the word no meaning? It will be seen that, in the end, it has very little. Voluntary actions, or actions that are performed as the result of a free choice between two or more alternatives, are not known. They never occur. Even when they appear to occur, they are generally, if not always, associated with a weak or useless personality. Strong natures have no choice; they have no alternative; they have therefore no freedom. They are driven to their deeds by an iron necessity. If they speak or write, it is out of the fulness of their hearts. It is a phenomenon akin to the mechanical overflow of a flooded basin. If they go in search of big undertakings and of vast responsibilities, in order to shoulder them, it is because they have a store of accumulated energy which must discharge itself over a large area, over a large mass of material. When Napoleon took leave of his comrades in Egypt, before embarking on that gigantic enterprise, the reconstitution of anarchical bleeding and devastated France, he said: “I am going to drive out the lawyers.”