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Page 27
I affirm that to persecute ideas is like persecuting light, air,
electricity, or the magnetic fluid.
Ideas escape all persecution. When repressed they explode like powder.
LESSON XXXVIII
FALSE NOTIONS OF LIBERTY
People talk of liberty as if it meant the liberty of doing what a man
likes. The only liberty that a man should ask for is the privilege of
removing all restrictions that prevent his doing what he ought to do.
I call that man free who is able to rule himself. I call him free who
has his flesh in subjection to his spirit; who fears doing wrong, but
who fears nothing else.
I call that man free who has learned that liberty consists in obedience
to the power and to the will and to the law that his higher soul
approves. He is not free because he does what he likes, but he is free
because he does what he ought.
Some people think there is no liberty in obedience. I tell you there
is no liberty except in loyal obedience. Did you ever see a mother
kept at home, a kind of prisoner, by her sick child, obeying its every
wish and caprice? Will you call that mother a slave? Or is this
obedience the obedience of slavery? I call it the obedience of the
highest liberty--the liberty of love.
We hear in these days a great deal respecting rights: the rights of
private judgment, the rights of labor, the rights, of property, and the
rights of man.
I cannot see anything manly in the struggle between rich and poor; the
one striving to take as much, and the other to keep as much, as he can.
The cry of "My rights, your duties," we should change to something
nobler. If we can say "My duties, your rights," we shall learn what
real liberty is.
LESSON XXXIX
THE VOICE
A good voice has a charm in speech as in song. The voice, like the
face, betrays the nature and disposition, and soon indicates what is
the range of the speaker's mind.
Many people have no ear for music; but everyone has an ear for skillful
reading. Every one of us has at some time been the victim of a cunning
voice, and perhaps been repelled once for all by a harsh, mechanical
speaker.
The voice, indeed, is a delicate index of the state of mind.
What character, what infinite variety, belongs to the voice! Sometimes
it is a flute, sometimes a trip-hammer; what a range of force! In
moments of clearer thought or deeper sympathy, the voice will attain a
music and penetration which surprise the speaker as much as the hearer.
LESSON XL
THE INTREPID YOUTH
It was a calm, sunny day in the year 1750; the scene a piece of forest
land in the north of Virginia, near a noble stream of water.
Implements for surveying were lying about, and several men composed a
party engaged in laying out the wild lands of the country.
These persons had apparently just finished their dinner. Apart from
the group walked a young man of a tall and compact frame. He moved
with the elastic tread of one accustomed to constant exercise in the
open air. His countenance wore a look of decision and manliness not
usually found in one so young.
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