ster. The pigs were
Cedric's, but Gurth too would get his parings of them. Gurth had
the inexpressible satisfaction of feeling himself related
indissolubly, though in a rude brass-collar way, to his fellow-
mortals in this Earth. He had superiors, inferiors, equals.--
Gurth is now 'emancipated' long since; has what we call
'Liberty.' Liberty, I am told, is a Divine thing. Liberty when
it becomes the 'Liberty to die by starvation' is not so divine!

Liberty? The true liberty of a man, you would say, consisted in
his finding out, or being forced to find out the right path, and
to walk thereon. To learn, or to be taught, what work he
actually was able for; and then, by permission, persuasion, and
even compulsion, to set about doing of the same! That is his
true blessedness, honour, 'liberty' and maximum of wellbeing: if
liberty be not that, I for one have small care about liberty.
You do not allow a palpable madman to leap over precipices; you
violate his liberty, you that are wise; and keep him, were it in
strait-waistcoats, away from the precipices! Every stupid, every
cowardly and foolish man is but a less palpable madman: his true
liberty were that a wiser man, that any and every wiser man,
could, by brass collars, or in whatever milder or sharper way,
lay hold of him when he was going wrong, and order and compel him
to go a little righter. O if thou really art my _Senior,_
Seigneur, my _Elder,_ Presbyter or Priest,--if thou art in very
deed my Wiser, may a beneficent instinct lead and impel thee to
'conquer' me, to command me! If thou do know better than I what
is good and right, I conjure thee in the name of God, force me to
do it; were it by never such brass collars, whips and handcuffs,
leave me not to walk over precipices! That I have been called,
by all the Newspapers, a 'free man' will avail me little, if my
pilgrimage have ended in death and wreck. O that the Newspapers
had called me slave, coward, fool, or what it pleased their sweet
voices to name me, and I had attained not death, but life!--
Liberty requires new definitions.

A conscious abhorrence and intolerance of Folly, of Baseness;
Stupidity, Poltroonery and all that brood of things, dwells deep
in some men: still deeper in others an unconscious abhorrence
and intolerance, clothed moreover by the beneficent Supreme
Powers in what stout appetites, energies, egoisms so-called, are
suitable to it;--these latter are your Conquerors,