n is agreeable
and deprivation painful. The whole world would in vain gainsay this
point; every sensation is personal. My suffering and my enjoyments
are not to be contested any more than my inclination for objects which
procure me the one, and my dislike of objects which procure me the
other. There is, therefore, no arbitrary definition of each one's
particular interest; this exists as a fact independently of the
legislator; all that remains is to show what this interest is, and what
each individual prefers. Preferences vary according to race, time, place
and circumstance. Among the possessions which are ever desirable and
the privation of which is ever dreaded, there is one, however, which,
directly desired, and for itself, becomes, through the progress of
civilization, more and more cherished, and of which the privation
becomes, through the progress of civilization, more and more grievous.
That is the disposition of one's self, the full ownership of one's body
and property, the faculty of thinking, believing and worshipping as one
pleases, of associating with others, of acting separately or along with
others, in all senses and without hindrance; in short, one's liberty.
That this liberty may as extensive as possible is, in all times, one of
man's great needs, and, in our days, it is his greatest need. There are
two reasons for this, one natural and the other historical.--

By nature Man is an individual, that is to say a small distinct world
in himself, a center apart in an enclosed circle, a detached organism
complete in itself and which suffers when his spontaneous inclinations
are frustrated by the intervention of an outside force.

The passage of time has made him a complicated organism, upon which
three or four religions, five or six civilizations, thirty centuries
of rich culture have left their imprint; in which its acquisitions are
combined together, wherein inherited qualities are crossbred, wherein
special traits have accumulated in such a way as to produce the most
original and the most sensitive of beings. As civilization increases, so
does his complexity: with the result that man's originality strengthens
and his sensitivity become keener; from which it follows that the more
civilized he becomes, the greater his repugnance to constraint and
uniformity.

At the present day, (1880), each of us is the terminal and peculiar
product of a vast elaboration of which the diverse stages occur in this
order but