The Two Everlasting Empires: Necessity & Free Will,
Part 5 to blupete's Essay
"On Liberty"
"Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness; on the confines of the two everlasting empires, necessity and free will." (Thomas Carlyle.)To be free is no guarantee to life. One can be perfectly free, as a castaway, on an island: without food, water or shelter. One would be free, alright; and soon dead. But, I should add, one would be just as dead if one were in a land of plenty but tied down hand and foot to the ground. With freedom one is able to make his own way in the world, though the way may well lead to his destruction.
Freedom is the choice given, fundamentally, to act or not to act; but, in any event, one is bound to accept the consequences of his free choice. One has but little choice to go forth and to find food and seek shelter. The attending work and tribulation is not an encroachment on that person's freedom. The work and tribulation may be lessened, by a considerable amount, if people voluntarily collect themselves together into classes, usually as dictated by the laws of the natural economy.13
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