The whole Universe is absolute Law. Freedom only
opens entire activity and license _under the law_. To the degraded or
undevelopt--and even to too many others--the thought of freedom is a
thought of escaping from law--which, of course, is impossible. More
precious than all worldly riches is Freedom--freedom from the painful
constipation and poor narrowness of ecclesiasticism--freedom in
manners, habiliments, furniture, from the silliness and tyranny of
local fashions--entire freedom from party rings and mere conventions
in Politics--and better than all, a general freedom of One's-Self
from the tyrannic domination of vices, habits, appetites, under which
nearly every man of us, (often the greatest brawler for freedom,) is
enslav'd. Can we attain such enfranchisement--the true Democracy, and
the height of it? While we are from birth to death the subjects of
irresistible law, enclosing every movement and minute, we yet escape,
by a paradox, into true free will. Strange as it may seem, we only
attain to freedom by a knowledge of, and implicit obedience to, Law.
Great--unspeakably great--is the Will! the free Soul of man! At its
greatest, understanding and obeying the laws, it can then, and then
only, maintain true liberty. For there is to the highest, that law
as absolute as any--more absolute than any--the Law of Liberty. The
shallow, as intimated, consider liberty a release from all law, from
every constraint. The wise see in it, on the contrary, the potent Law
of Laws, namely, the fusion and combination of the conscious will, or
partial individual law, with those universal, eternal, unconscious
ones, which run through all Time, pervade history, prove immortality,
give moral purpose to the entire objective world, and the last dignity
to human life.
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