The bondage consisting in being a harem servant is incompatible with innate impulses of a stronger order; therefore, although the obedience to impulses of a stronger order also constitutes bondage, Napoleon, as a harem servant, would have longed for the freedom to fall into the bondage of his stronger impulses, because it was there that his “calling” lay. Reverting to the case of the young man A who became enamoured of a young lady B, we are confronted by a case that is somewhat different; because, although A was apparently “free” before meeting B, he nevertheless [p87] prefers the bondage of his attachment to B to his former freedom. Why,--obviously because his former apparent freedom, was freedom for nothing, a state of being constrained to nothing in particular, a lack of bondage to anything, which was tantamount to a lack of everything. He finds his strength on meeting B. He finds one of his powerful impulses taking possession of him. He is therefore happy, because, though he is in bondage, a vital impulse is directing his life, a necessity of his being has found a pursuit for him. If his cricket club now kidnap him and imprison him in the cricket field, in order to play in a cricket match, he will make a determined attempt to escape. He will endeavour to obtain freedom. Freedom for what?--Freedom from a bondage incompatible with the powerful impulses of his being, for the purpose of falling into a bondage compatible with the powerful impulses of his being. Has the “liberty” of our political agitators this meaning? Has it any meaning? We know that man can never be free. We have seen that from his very birth conditions are imposed upon him which direct his subsequent career as inevitably as railway lines direct the course of a train. Nothing that lives in finite conditions can be free. And no other conditions are known. Life even in the animal world means work, battle, struggle, the observance of certain very strict habits. Human life means work, the observance of social conventions; even the necessity of eating, drinking, breathing and performing the other bodily functions entails responsibility. [p88] Work may be altered, the particular social conventions of a nation may be changed; but it is merely a matter of altering one kind into another kind, exchanging one rule for another rule. What then does the political agitator mean when he offers “Liberty” to those whom he would induce to support or follow him? It has been seen that the only sense in which liberty as an idea bears any relation to reality, is when it signifies the opportunity that can be given to a man to enable him to exchange a bondage incompatible with his strongest impulses for a bondage that harmonises with them. Is this the meaning of the cry for freedom to-day? When the newspapers told us that the Great War was fought by us in the cause of “freedom”, is this the freedom they meant?