How many of those who believe they aspire to something definite and real when they aspire to “freedom,” fully understand the limitations of their ideal? How many of them really possess stronger impulses than those that actually find expression in their daily work? Some people might reply, “very few.” I reply that the number of men and women to-day, who yearn for freedom vaguely, fretfully, and insistently, because they realise dimly that they seek a kind of bondage in which their stronger impulses would have more scope, is very much greater than is generally supposed. One of the results of the industrial revolution, and of the vast increase of mechanical [p89] appliances and machinery generally, has been the creation of occupations by the hundred thousand, which are in every way besotting, heartrending, and depressing. Sometimes it is their asinine simplicity and their monotony, that destroy the heart of those employed in them, frequently it is their extreme disagreeableness, noisiness or unhealthiness. The particular objection that is common to almost all of them, however, is that the natural impulses which most strongly animate a human being at his work, the impulse to make “a good job” of the task he is occupied upon, the impulse to excel his neighbour in his skill, care or foresight, the impulse to earn the praise of those for whom he is producing the work, the impulse to improve day by day in his own speciality and to derive fair profit from this improvement,--all these natural impulses scarcely ever get an opportunity of expressing themselves in the whole of the week’s round; and when the weekly wage is received, it is felt that it has been earned by a species of prostitution rather than by an occupation of which the wage-earner can justly feel proud. This, as I understand it, is the fundamental meaning of the cry for freedom to-day. In any case it is the only meaning it can have. For freedom in the sense of non-relation, non-dependance, absence of duties, absence of work, and absence of responsibilities or conventions, is utterly impossible. Not only is it utterly impossible to-day, but it has always been impossible. Even animals in a state of nature cannot achieve that condition.