On Living The Good Life — Part I

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE FREE
Leroy Garrett

It is claimed that men are freest when they are most unconscious of freedom and that “the shout is a rattling of chains.” While it may be true that some of those who talk so much about freedom are but rattling the chains of their own bondage, it hardly follows that the freest people are the most unconscious of their freedom. This study not only assumes that man is to be conscious of the problem of freedom, but that he is to enter into the age-long struggle to obtain this cherished prize. “The history of the world,” Hegel writes, “is none other than the progress of the consciousness of Freedom.”

Studies on freedom are often so abstract and technical that the reader finds himself unable to work out a functional program of liberation. We must learn to avoid the fate of the proverbial ass who starved to death midway between two haystacks because he could not decide from which to eat. Freedom is largely a matter of making the right decisions. This study proposes to describe freedom and to give in detail what a free man is like. It seeks to do for freedom what the apostle Paul does for love in his letter to the Romans. Since freedom is a vital part of the good life this chapter will spell out the moral principles that are basic to freedom. It will also warn of the obstacles that must be avoided.

Recently the Institute of Philosophical Research completed six years of research on one idea —freedom! This illustrates the immensity of the subject. Freedom is always one of the most important subjects in any reputable philosophical system. It has challenged the greatest minds of history. Let this chapter, therefore, be thought of only in terms of an outline that may be filled in through a lifetime of study.

Kinds of Freedom

“The only freedom which deserves the name,” writes John Stuart Mill, “is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.” This is the freedom to do as one pleases. Over against this is the view that one is only free to do what he ought. Is a man free to abuse his body with narcotics or alcohol? Mill would say yes. No one has the right to forbid a man from doing what the man himself thinks is best, so long as his conduct does not interfere with the liberty of others. The terrific urge to prevent another person from making a “mistake” must be resisted, unless indeed persuasion can turn him from his course. Mill thinks one should warn the man who is about to walk across an unsafe bridge, but once the man has been informed and still chooses to endanger his life, there is nothing more one can do. Or is it true that one is free only to do what is right?

Some thinkers relate freedom to goodness. Philo argues that only the good man is free, and Cicero identifies goodness as freedom. Wisdom and freedom are also related. Jesus says, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” Can a bad man be a free man? Can one be ignorant and yet be free? Is a man free to commit such acts as suicide so long as he renders no in justice to another? These questions are enough to show us that there are different kinds of freedom. A man may be free in one sense and yet unfree in another.

1. Natural Freedom.

This is the liberty one has by virtue of being born human. Rousseau complains that though man was born free he is everywhere in chains. Aristotle on the other hand argues that some people do not have the nature of free men. He thought it both natural and necessary that some men be slaves, and so it is now unjust for such ones to be under the rule of a master. Jefferson referred to natural freedom when he wrote in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Natural freedom is the inherent ability to do those things that are characteristic of man —grow, reason, build, bargain, procreate, and choose between many alternatives. Man may not use this freedom or it may be denied him, but he nonetheless has it potentially. He is capable by nature of behaving as a free man. Both good men and bad men are free in this sense.

2. Social or Political Freedom.

This is the freedom Mill speaks of when he says that one should be free to do as he pleases so long as he does not jeopardize the rights of others. This includes the liberty to travel, to exchange ideas, to think for oneself, to choose one’s own vocation, to bargain, to vote, and many others. Bertrand Russell calls this “the absence of external obstacles to the realization of desires.” Thomas Hobbes puts it this way: “A free man is he, that in those things, which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindered to do what he has a will to do.” Social freedom may be thought of as the exercise of natural freedom that is controlled only by the necessary restraints of social order. Only the hermit can exercise his natural freedom without thinking of others. The hermit can swing his fists in the air whenever and wherever he pleases. The man in society, however, while free to swing his fists must keep them away from the other fellow’s nose. As one man put it, “The man may be free to swing his fist, but when his fist comes in contact with my nose, that is where his freedom ends and mine begins!”

Social or political freedom is circumstantial in that it depends upon external circumstances. If one is locked in jail he is no longer free in this sense. The poet may claim that “Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage,” but it is nonetheless true that bars and walls are among those external restraints that deny man of free social intercourse. The circumstance of bad government or corrupt political leaders will also restrict liberty. Or it may be an unfortunate marriage, poverty, lack of education, or poor working conditions that restricts one’s freedom.

3. Economic Freedom.

Economic freedom is the right to own what one gains by his labor. It is closely related to all other forms of freedom. The importance of money to the good life can here be stressed. One may be socially free to do many good things, such as enter college or travel the world, but may lack the financial ability to do so. It is obvious enough that limited finances is a great impediment to man’s freedom. Lack of funds can even threaten his sanity.

4. Physio-psychological Freedom.

This is the ability of the body and mind to do that which the person is otherwise free to do. This differs from natural freedom in that it has to do with the physical and mental ability to obey the will. Natural freedom has to do with inherent rights, while physical freedom refers to the corporeal ability to act. A cripple may wish to play basketball, but he is not physically free to do so. A dullard may wish for higher education, but he is not free to pursue it regardless of the financial and social advantages available.

Psychological freedom also has to do with one’s ability to choose his own course of action. How much is man “pushed from behind” by hereditary and environmental factors? Spinoza contends that man only thinks he is free psychologically, while in reality his actions are pre-determined by the thousands of factors that make up his personality, over which he has no control Can the whimpering child act other than as he is acting? Can the school bully do other than as he does? Man is a compound of needs, drives, urges, instincts. Each of these is related to many factors that reach far into his background.

Here we have a very real problem in the study of freedom. While the evidence demands that man be viewed in part by hereditary and environmental factors, he nevertheless possesses the power to choose between alternatives. Man has proved his ability to rise above both environment and heredity. While he is motivated by his desires, he is capable of choosing what desires he shall carry out. He may desire to smoke and drink with the gang, and he may desire to run with the varsity relay team. He is free to make his choice. Psychological factors will have their influence to be sure, but by his own will he casts the deciding vote.

5. Moral Freedom.

Here we have that kind of freedom that is essential to being a truly free man. It is for the most part the sense in which we use the term freedom in this study. To be free is to be morally free. While social freedom depends upon circumstances and physiopsychological freedom depends upon natural factors, moral freedom is spiritual and depends upon the acquisition of goodness and wisdom. Jesus says, “If the Son shall make you free, you are free indeed.” This is moral freedom. The man who is morally good is free because he is ruled by his better self. It is the moral man who is not enslaved to his passions and desires.

It is here that the poet can speak of the inadequacy of iron bars and cages. One may be morally free while in prison or on the rack. While the other freedoms are circumstantial or natural, moral freedom is acquired —either by one’s dedication to moral principles or by the grace of God, or both. In Christian terms moral freedom means to be free of sin. A free man in Christ is one in whom Christ lives anew. It is a matter of voluntary enslavement for the Christian. While he was a slave to sin, he is now a slave of Christ.

Moral freedom depends upon character and state of mind. This is why Cicero says, “It is character and not circumstance that makes for happiness.” This is true only to a degree. While a man on the rack may be morally free, he can hardly be happy. There is a measure of good fortune necessary to happiness, but it is character that is most important. Whitehead tells us that it was this “freedom beyond circumstances” that Plato groped for and that the Christians found.

Toward a Definition

From the foregoing account of the kinds of freedom it may be concluded that the following points are necessary ingredients of freedom as generally viewed:

(1) The ability to make one’s act his own. If I am free then my action must proceed from me and it must achieve something for me. It proceeds from my own self.

(2) The ability to be one’s own master rather than to be dominated by another. In the case of spiritual dedication the free man voluntarily submits himself to a power greater than himself.

(3) The ability to act as one wishes for his own good according to his own judgment and conscience.

(4) The ability to act as one ought according to the moral and spiritual principles that are acquired from his own search for truth.

Mortimer Adler observes that the free man is one “who has in himself the ability or power whereby he can make what he does his own action and what he achieves his own property.” Cicero concurs with this idea in pointing out that he who is free is one “whose enterprises and courses of conduct all take their start from himself and likewise have their end in himself.”

With these suggestions to work with we are ready to give our definition of freedom:

Freedom is the ability to act according to what one believes to be right, which is based upon one’s own concept of the Ideal Man, which results from his own search for moral and spiritual truths, all of which implies the inherent power to change one’s character by choosing those alternatives that will make him what he wants to become.

Basic to this definition is the implied warfare between the self and another. I am free when I do what I believe is right. I am unfree when dominated by anything outside myself. My definition is essentially that of moral freedom, which I believe to be the only real freedom. By this I mean one cannot be free unless he is morally free, despite the fact that there are different kinds of freedom. I am not morally free to do some things that I may be legally free to do. Too, I may be physically and economically free to do many things that I am not morally free to do.

My definition also shows the place of moral and spiritual education in the struggle to be free. It implies that there is a moral order and that one can discover it through investigation. It provides for both reason and revelation in the search for truth. It appeals to the Christian ethic by its reference to ideal personality. It suggests that man is inclined toward the good by its reference to man’s natural ability to choose those values that will transform his character into his image of the ideal.

Basic Principles of Freedom

If we succeed in evaluating the idea of freedom we must determine what underlying principles support it. Why is freedom a good idea anyhow? Perhaps it is better for man to be unfree if there are no basic moral principles that uphold freedom. The following are ideas that we feel must influence both individual and social thinking if men are to be truly free.

1. The principle of the dignity of human personality.

This is the key that unlocks the box that contains many other keys. The poet David had this key when he realized that the answer to his question “What is man?” is that man was created “a little lower than God.” The sacredness of the human soul answers many questions. Prostitution is wrong because men and women are made in the image of God. Slavery is wrong because it degrades personality. Each of the Seven Deadly Sins is a disregarding of this principle. Pride is undue concern for the self to the neglect of others; covetousness is the over-stressing of the self as the expense of others; wrath is violence toward a person. Envy is hatred of the happiness of others while gluttony despises the soul by gorging the body. Sloth is the refusal to advance humanity by being indolent; it reaps without sowing thus violating the law of reciprocity. Lechery is the sin against the body of another for sexual gratification.

Freedom cannot exist among a people that do not hold human life sacred. Respect for self and others provides an atmosphere for freedom. One is free to develop his body and mind if he conceives of himself as part of God’s handiwork. If he respects the person of others he will also respect the feelings, rights and property of others.

2. The principle of individuality of personality.

This differs from the first principle in that it is especially conscious of the uniqueness of personality. It recognizes that men are to be dealt with individually rather than in categories. It is unfair to divide the human family into such classifications as liberals, conservatives, capitalists, communists. A person might be conservative about some things and liberal about others. He may be in between the categories that we arbitrarily set up. If I respect a man’s individuality I will deal with him on his own merits, and I will not insist that he identify himself with all the peculiarities of his party or church. Our fellow men should be viewed as persons, not as cogs in a political or ecclesiastic machine.

Each person is to be regarded a microcosm, a world all his own, with his own peculiar desires, needs, potentialities, and limitations. He is to be explored for his own worth and for his own unique contribution to society. If I make a man free I must recognize his separate integrity, realizing that his individual worth before God is not dependent upon his connection with family, church, or party. I have learned from my experience in the classroom that a student does not want to be judged by the standard set by a brother or sister who preceded him. There is that urgency to be one’s self. This is the pull of the free spirit within man.

This principle provides for both the slowness and awkwardness of growth. We must give men time to grow as well as encourage the growth. In the struggle to be free we must remember that people are at different stages of growth and that we must not expect the same of all people. A man is free when he is at liberty to grow and develop his potentialities with reasonable ease. He will not be afraid to make a mistake. He will have the feeling that people expect of him only that which is consistent to his own uniqueness as a person.

3. The principle that an individual has the right to the fruits of his own labor.

While this principle is especially related to economic freedom, it is also basic to all freedom. There are three possible views toward what a man gains through labor. One is the law of the jungle: it is mine if I can take it away from him. But this encourages consumption and discourages production, and it can only take us back to savagery. No free society can exist when men think in such terms. A second view is the law of communism: the government takes it and distributes it according to the needs of each. This demands that each man produce according to his ability and receive according to his needs. The claim is that everybody owns everything equally. The way to test this is for one to try to sell his share! The sin of communism in this regard is that the individual is swallowed up by the state. The state becomes master rather than servant. The third view is the principle that each man has the right to that which he produces. This is the principle of capitalism.

This view encourages charity, for a man has incentive to share when he has control over his own gains. It stimulates industry since a man may keep what he earns. There is something sacred about a man and his property, and there is a sense in which I am to think of his property as an extension of himself. His property is sacred in that it represents his own power to grow, learn, build and give. Stealing is wrong because it retards the growth that is dependent in part upon property and money. A free society will question the Robin Hood type of “welfare state” wherein the government takes it from those who have and distributes it to those who have not.

This principle would suggest that a man is not free if he covets what another man has earned, whether it be the man’s wallet, education or lawn mower. There are legal ways of stealing. The free man does not even want what belongs to another. This is why a free society’s best protection is the character of its people. The moral convictions of our neighbors do far more to preserve decency and order than a police force. People who value the dignity of labor do more for society than laws, bolts and locks.

4. The principle of liberality.

Here we have one of those fuzzy words that can be made to mean most anything, and yet when properly used liberality expresses an idea that is essential to freedom. The liberal mind recognizes that there is no possible way to allow a person to be right without also allowing him to be wrong. It may be correct that “error does not have the same right as truth,” but who is to determine what the truth is? The liberal man seeks to set others free so they may seek truth on their own. He believes in people and in their right to evaluate. Liberality encourages experiments. It is willing to make mistakes and then try again. It is not content with what has been. Aristotle was liberal in his willingness to differ with the teaching of his great teacher. “Dear is Plato, but dearer still is truth,” Aristotle would say to his own students. The liberal mind makes room for others to grow. It does not try to transform people by arbitrary means or fit them into dogmatic patterns.

5. The principle of revolution.

When one views the list of the world’s greats-Socrates, Galileo, Jesus, Paul, Savonarola, Luther, Darwin, Kant, Jefferson to name only a few —he sees that one common feature is that they were all revolutionists. Freedom is anarchic. It rebels against the pressures that confine men. Albert Schweitzer contends that “disdain for thinking” has created a spirit in the world that never lets man come to himself, for during his whole life man is subjected to influences “which are bent on robbing him of all confidence in his own thinking.” And so Schweitzer insists that men must be found who will “revolt against the spirit of thoughtlessness.” The free man is a rebel amidst the cult of conformity.

The revolutionist rebels against tyranny because of his philosophy of life affirmation. It is because of what he is for rather than against. The most important thing about man is what he believes. So few of our people have strong convictions because they have not shared in the great conversation. One principle of freedom is that men be willing to rebel against mediocrity and superficiality and to engage in the war of conflicting ideas. “Waging peace” is in this direction.

Obstacles to Freedom

The zoologists tell us that if a frog is placed in a pan of water which is slowly heated that the frog will stay there until it is killed by the boiling water, even though it could have jumped out in an early stage of the heating process. The frog is so easily adapted to its environment that it is unaware of the slight changes that eventually lead to its fate. People may act much like frogs. They are so controlled by the forces around them that every semblance of self-determinism is gone and freedom is lost. What are these forces that slowly but surely make us unfree?

1. The Herd Mind.

Man is largely a creature of impulse and of habit. He tends to take the course of least resistance. He follows the crowd. Even though Longfellow bids that he “Be not like dumb, driven cattle! Be a hero in the strife!” it is difficult for him to be a solitary figure amidst the crowd. Ordinarily man is an automaton. His words and deeds, moods and emotions, thoughts and ideas are determined by external forces. Man must find a different basis from which to act. This comes from within. He must pursue the inward way and thus grow from within. Radhakrishnan, the Hindu philosopher, says: “All growth is from within outwards. Spirit is freedom. True wealth is in being, not in having. A free mind is not a herd mind.”

This is what Francis Bacon calls “Idols of the Tribe.” These idols arise when men worship regularity and conformity. He thinks man’s greatest hindrance to freedom is “the dullness, incompetency, and deceptions of the senses.”

2. The Capsule Mind.

The “capsule thinker” is one who constantly tends to over simplify difficult questions by the use of stereotyped formulas. He is the man who has “the simple, unvarnished truth” or who can say, “the issue is plain and clear.” He is the brother who has all the answers. This is sometimes called “Potted Thinking” or even “Tabloid Thinking.” In any event it is stuffy and fuzzy, and it is a sure obstacle to the free mind.

3. The Biased Mind.

It is a mental bias which leads an individual to ignore some evidence and to over-emphasize other evidence. In the biased mind judgments are formed by emotional considerations. Prejudice is related to “wishful thinking” since a prejudiced person rationalizes in order to continue believing as he does.

What causes prejudice? Part of the answer is the love of ease and comfort and the consequent dislike of anything that threatens to disturb. Prejudice protects the quiet life. When people believe or do something a certain way for so long it becomes distasteful to deviate from the established routine. There is discomfort to non-conformity. We dislike being forced to think. Close ties breed loyalties that we are slow to disown.

The free mind on the other hand slays every temptation to stop short of complete knowledge. It is ready to destroy its own intellectual children if they are found to be false. It realizes that in any attempt to overlook inconvenient and disagreeable facts it will only deceive itself. But prejudice closes the open mind. It cannot face facts fearlessly and frankly. The biased mind is an obstacle to freedom in that it promotes intellectual dishonesty. Shallowness and superficiality are its children.

4. The Diverted Mind.

The diverted mind is sidetracked from the things in life that matter most. In Plato’s Protagoras the point is made that one owes much more to his soul’s health than to bodily health, and that there is greater peril in buying knowledge than in buying meat and drink. Plato shows how Socrates complains when young Hippocrates thoughtlessly subjects his mind to the influence of Protagoras the Sophist. Socrates feared that the Sophist would divert Hippocrates’ youthful mind in unwholesome directions. The apostle Paul had the same fear in warning young Timothy to “Avoid the godless chatter and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge, for by professing it some have missed the mark as regards the faith.”

The diverted mind has “missed the mark” as to what in life is most worthwhile. It spends itself upon the passing values. It is opposed to freedom in that it lacks purpose, meaning and direction. It is a mind confused over mixed values. It is a propagandized mind in that it listens to the heresy that a man’s life consists in the abundance of the things that he possesses. It is the brainwashed mind in that it has tolerance only for orthodoxy. It is a standardized mind in that it refuses to go beyond the narrow confines of group thought.

5. The Uninformed Mind.

John Locke believed that man’s freedom can be measured by his reason. While Plato argued that the ignorant man is immoral, Locke contends that a man’s ignorance enslaves him. Locke sought to sweep away the cobwebs from man’s mind so that he might think. He gives three answers to the question as to why men reason so poorly: (1) Most people do not reason at all; (2) Man feels before he thinks (emotionalism); (3) Man’s intellect is limited by partiality —“We see but in part and we know but in part.” The way out in intellectual education. The free mind is the informed mind. It is flexible in that it can go beyond formal rules in its search for basic principles. It is cosmopolitan in that it avoids prejudice, narrow-mindedness and provincialism.

Ignorance is perhaps the greatest of all barriers to freedom. People are ignorant of their rights. Sometime back a research agency polled the public on the Bill of Rights and found that one out of four had never heard of it and two out of four could not identify it. A similar survey revealed a woeful ignorance of the Declaration of Independence. Our provincialism can be seen in our ignorance of the United Nations. Many people cannot name their representatives to Congress and have never sent a letter to Washington. Even more serious is our ignorance of the world at large. We do not understand the oriental mind. The great world of books is ignored by a large majority of our people, including those who pass through our school systems. Consequently we do not know what we are for. We are a nation without well-defined moral, political and social purposes.

The sober warning of George F. Kennan is in order here:

With no highly developed sense of national purpose, with the overwhelming accent of life on personal comfort and amusement, with a dearth of public services and a surfeit of privately sold gadgetry, with an educational system where quality has been extensively sacrificed to quantity, and with insufficient social discipline even to keep its major industries functioning without grievous interruptions —if you ask me whether such a country has, over the long run, good chances of competing with a purposeful, serious, and disciplined society such as that of the Soviet Union, I must say that the answer is “no.”

Characteristics of the Free Man

Now that we have considered those factors that contribute to man’s becoming unfree, we shall here list those qualities that characterize the free man.

1. The free man follows the dictum of Socrates that “the unexamined life is not worth living.”

In the face of death at the hands of the state Socrates could say “No evil can befall a good man.” He would agree with Philo, who wrote a book on Every Good Man Is Free, that only the virtuous man is truly free. Socrates taught that virtue comes through knowledge through self-examination. One must realize how little he knows. “I know nothing,” Socrates would say, and he insisted that the foolish man is one who thinks he is wise. The ideal of culture and education is to ‘know thyself,” which means that through self-realization one comes to know why he behaves as he does.

Socrates taught that virtue is an innate propensity in mankind, a natural endowment to every man, and that men will behave virtuously once they see themselves as they really are. But it takes courage to do this. Men are confused about what they consider truly worth while. They do not understand their desires, for the things they work for the hardest often prove to be unsatisfactory. So man must reject the false standards of society, overrule the ignorance and superstition of his shallow way of life, and open his soul to the revelation provided by the moral order of the universe. By means of vigorous examination of the inner man a person brings his soul into harmony with the moral order of the universe. This is what Plato calls justice. It is what we call freedom.

2. The free man behaves with integrity of action.

By this we mean that he makes his acts his own. He does what he does in an utterly authentic manner. He is not a “party man” in that he is drawn to think and act in conformity to the crowd to the neglect of his own inner sense of justice. He is not an “organization man” in that he loses his own uniqueness and spontaneity in the labyrinth of bigness. On the other hand he is not “an ugly American” in that he forgets that he is a member of an important team or becomes indifferent to the rules of the game. While he knows the fine art of standing alone, he also ranks friendship and cooperation high in his system of values.

How many of us are carbon copies of our environment? Is there the real “me” in my life? When I think and act is it my unique self at work? When I am in a gathering of friends do I respond with a kind of “social pre-determinism,” always acting and talking according to the demands of my group, or does my uniqueness sometimes break forth in the likeness of a reactionary or a revolutionist? Many of us are reformers at heart. It is in man to improve his lot and to find better ways of thinking and acting. Why do we not dare to be different?

Authenticity of conduct is not a matter of laws or constitutions. It is not attained by means of arbitrary rules from without, but by a realization of the divine order within oneself. This is the true standard by which one can direct his unique self. When this rule is followed the frustrated mother who punishes her child because others think he should be punished will be free to act according to her own judgment. When the true self breaks through even the straight-laced religionist may find himself really enjoying a good joke or a thrilling movie. Uniqueness of self and holy humor go well together. By behaving authentically one finally comes to the place where he can laugh at himself and even utter that ineffable sentence “I was wrong.” He just might be able to admit to himself how important money and sex are in his life!

3. The free man can see the shades of gray between the black and the white.

He does not seek security in absolutes. He avoids the fallacy of oversimplification. He realizes that the human family has after all learned very little and that the certainties of life are but few. The liberal mind sees that almost nothing is wholly black or wholly white and that most of life’s values are varying shades of gray. Man is a mixture of good and bad. To err is very human. The free man does not expect too much of his fellows and he provides ample room for the human dimension. Nor does he expect too little, for like the psalmist of Israel he believes that man has been created but little lower than God.

The unfree man is impatient of the in-between relationships. Things must be right or wrong, good or bad, open or shut. He must be certain! Russia must be all wrong while the United States must be all right. Our side is white, the other side is black! He is not equipped to move out into the world of in-betweens. His security is in being right. Many of these enslaved minds find mental satisfaction in their conviction that everyone is in error but themselves. This is an esoteric feature of some religious groups. The sectarian mind presumes to have some priority on truth, while the liberal mind somehow feels that the whole truth is always somewhat beyond his fingertips. Religious and political partyism thus becomes a refuge of little and unfree minds.

The free man accepts life as difficult. He does not deceive himself into believing that most things are only two-valued. While it is true that lights are either off or on and that the car either starts or it does not, it nonetheless follows that most of life is multivalued. The kids watching TV sometime divide the cowboys into good and bad according to the color of the hat or the thickness of the beard. We oversimplify when we measure life’s values in such fashion. We must not be like the woman who argued that she was “only a little bit pregnant.”

Our English language and American culture are partly responsible for our inability to see the gray. We have been taught to think in opposites —love and hate, tall and short, good and bad, hero and villain, clean and dirty. All the Indo-European languages tend toward this rigid dichotomy. In the oriental languages a multi-valued approach is easier. The Chinese think of tall as a modification of short, top and bottom as mutually complimentary, and little and big as complements of each other. This may make it difficult for the Russians to place communism and capitalism before the Chinese as a two-valued choice. The Russians, like ourselves, are prone to this kind of thinking, but the oriental mind has learned from its rich and ancient culture to see the gray between black and white. The Chinese is less hurried. He does not feel that he must decide now. This is a trait of the free mind. But we Americans feel that it is easier to act than to think, and so we superficially evaluate the things that matter most. This breathless way of life makes us unfree. As free people we learn to labor and to wait.

4. The free man integrates himself with the social order.

It is the unfree man who moves only in the small world of the self. The liberated man thinks of himself as a part of all he meets. He is not afraid to drive down stakes in his environment and count himself a permanent fixture in society. He has joined the human race. While he may believe in the Christian doctrine that the Children of God are but “sojourners and pilgrims” in this world, he also believes that Christians are citizens on earth as well as in heaven and that they are to leave the world better than they found it. Christians are to be the light of the world, but the light is effective only when it is held high amidst the darkness. They are to be like salt, but salt loses its preserving power if it is not in close contact with that which is to be preserved. Christians often overlook two important words in the Golden Text: “God so loved the world that he gave his only son …” It is through integration of the self with the world that one comes to love it. Insight comes through involvement. The great fact of Christianity is that God involved himself in the human drama. The theologians call this the immanence of God. In this involvement God gave himself.

In learning this lesson man finds his freedom. Liberation comes through voluntary enslavement. It is the man who loses his life that finds it. The apostle Paul gives us the pattern for freedom when he says “I am ready to spend and be spent for your souls.” Herein is the sense of urgency so vitally needed in place of our hands-in-pocket attitude. The free man is a man of conviction. He is excited over such ideas as democracy, justice, happiness, immortality, liberty, and God. He is alive to the world around him and counts himself a part of its problems and possibilities.

There is a sense in which the free man is a troubled man. He is concerned with the plight of his fellows, whether it be the millions of alcoholics or the millions of illiterates. In terms of the Aristotelian ethic he looks upon the man in trouble as his other self. He believes with Elton Trueblood that “the cultivation of an uneasy conscience” is essential to the preservation of decent society.

5. The free man has the will to grow.

He believes in soul growth. He will let no man or institution retard his growth. He refuses to sell out to professionalism or institutionalism. For the most part he is an independent, choosing to stand alone rather than to sell his birthright for a mess of pottage. He is first of all a citizen of the world. His brothers and sisters are those who do the will of God. He is afraid of isms. He may belong to a political party, but he avoids partyism. He may be an American, but he shuns Americanism. He does not believe in provincialism. The isms dwarf and shrivel the spirit. The free man is a “delegate-at-large” in the human struggle for a respectable world. He shares in the fellowship of all those who suffer irrespective of race, color or creed. He is dedicated to the alleviation of human misery and the liquidation of ignorance. His soul grows by exercising itself in a philosophy of life affirmation.

In his Essay on Liberty John Stuart Mill points out that God did not create the soul to be cramped and dwarfed, but that he gave “all human faculties that they might be cultivated and unfolded.” He further states that God takes delight when man grows close to the ideal that he ordained for him. Mill’s conception of freedom is that it provides man opportunity to develop according to his capacity. To hinder this growth is to enslave man. To encourage this growth is to free him. Mill speaks of the mutuality of this process: the more one develops himself the more capable he is in encouraging the growth of others, and the more he does this the more he is worth to himself.

6. The free man is a disciplined person who is inwardly directed toward a definite goal.

I am not free to sit before an organ and play the compositions of Bach for the simple reason that I have not disciplined myself in that direction. The Stoics argued that through self-discipline one gains the self-knowledge that makes it possible for him to fulfill his function in the grand design of the universe. One famous Stoic, Epictetus, was a slave and yet he contended that discipline made him a free man. One anecdote relates that when his angry master was twisting his leg Epictetus calmly said, “You will break my leg,” whereupon the master twisted until the leg broke. To this Epictetus rejoined with equal calm, “Did I not tell you so?” Diogenes, another Stoic, lived in a tub so as to express his apathy for things of the flesh, and he carried a lantern around in his search for a real man, illustrating that a truly self-contained man is almost impossible to find.

The Stoics teach us a needed lesson in stressing that man must limit his desires to matters within his control. Virtue is a condition of the will and should be pursued for its own sake. It is character, not circumstances of position and wealth, that makes one happy. One must be indifferent to those desires that cannot be satisfied. And is one ever satisfied with his measure of earthly goods? To the Stoics those things beyond one’s control are irrelevant to the good life, for the virtuous man finds within himself all that is necessary to achieve happiness. We cannot control events but we can control attitudes. It is not what happens to us that counts, but rather what we think about what happens.

The man who can direct his life from within, chart his course by the control of his passions and desires, is the free man. He who is driven to behave according to the dictates of the forces outside him (pleasure, money, fame, social approval) is unfree. This means that the free man will place restrictions upon himself, a kind of voluntary enslavement; while the unfree man has restrictions placed upon him by others. The free man controls the circumstances in his life; the unfree man is controlled by circumstances. The free man is master over things; the unfree man is enslaved to things.

Both the free and the unfree are intoxicated. The unfree man is drunk on the things of the flesh. He has such passion for things outside himself that his senses are dulled to things of the spirit. The free man is like Spinoza, “the God-intoxicated man,” who chose to grind lenses in his attic workshop rather than compromise his convictions and occupy the chair of philosophy in a great university. He was inebriated with what he called “the intellectual love of God.” So the senses of the free man become somewhat deadened to the appeals of the flesh.

The Christians were told by Paul that as free men in Christ they were not to be drunk with wine, but to be “filled with the Spirit.” This is spiritual inebriation. So the free man is stimulated from within; the unfree man from without.

How to Be Free

Inasmuch as all that we have said is in essence a lesson on how to be free, we shall conclude with only a few further suggestions on how to make freedom work.

1. Freedom lies in being bold, not cautious.

Robert Frost makes this statement in a film presentation issued by Encyclopedia Britannica. Realizing that boldness sometimes leads to trouble, Frost went on to say, “Liberty is brightest in a dungeon.” It is the eager life that puts boldness before caution. This led William James to say, “Whenever a process of life communicates an eagerness to him who lives it, there the life becomes truly significant.” James insists that in the good life “there is the zest, the tingle, the excitement of reality.” It is only the eager life that is worthy of being called important, James says. Be free by being bold! Be important by being free!

2. Freedom comes through the formulation of ideals.

In his Polarity Louis W. Norris points out that “freedom that grows should embrace ideals which release the resources of the self.” He further observes that “the self determines for itself its richest nature when it explores all the meanings it may bring into its experience.” Man is to fix his eyes upon ideals. Whether it be in education, agriculture, science or business there is the ideal to which he looks. He can see his ideal self, that which he is capable of becoming. The resources of the self are released through self examination. They are frustrated through self deceit. One gains freedom by holding to the ideals envisaged during his finest hours. Paul’s ideal was the Christ. Plato’s ideal was universality. These men gained freedom by building their lives around their best experiences.

3. Freedom is gained by living in the presence of free men.

History tells us of many free men with whom we can live in the wonderful world of books. In no realm has liberty of thought or action been attained without the toil and suffering of the pioneer. Sherwood Eddy once published a book entitled Makers of Freedom in which he observes that the best way to appreciate the price of freedom is the study of the lives of those who fought for it. In this book Eddy tells the story of William Lloyd Garrison, who as a newspaper editor fought slavery for 35 years at a time when slavery was regarded as a divine institution. He was responsible more than any other man for creating a national sensitivity against the system that eventually led to its downfall.

Eddy also recounts the lives of Martin Luther, Francis of Assisi, Booker T. Washington, Susan B. Anthony, John Wesley and others as makers of freedom. Each student of history can make up his own list of the world’s liberators. The important thing is to live with such men. Harry Overstreet once told me that he was not the same person after his own encounter with Socrates. “Socrates did something to me,” he said. Later when he was to leave on a world tour Dr. Overstreet wrote to me, “When I walk the streets of Athens I’ll say hello to Socrates for you!”

The one thing better than the study of history is to help make history. There are causes that need our help and there are many free people in our day who are dedicating their lives to these causes. We can live in the presence of the best by casting our lot with them.

4. Freedom comes through building a new set of habits.

We shall here enumerate the four essential habits given by William James for keeping the mind free and alive:

(1) Always look for the alternatives. If one is tied to a dogma he can see no alternative. There is no further thinking for him to do. His mind checks out. He is unfree to explore. So the first new habit is to look for an alternative on every important question that arises, whether political, economic, medical, educational or religious.

(2) Do not take the usual for granted. Be suspicious that there may be better ways of doing things, whether it be running a school system or studying for a final examination. Familiarity breeds conformity. Alexander Pope describes our predicament with the usual when he says, “Yet seen too oft, familiar with its face, we first endure, then pity, then embrace.” If we do something long enough, we not only decide it is right, but that anything else is wrong.

(3) Make conventionalities fluid again. We love the conventional. It makes it possible for us to write some things off without further ado. Conventionalities are all right so long as they are servants and not the master. While they are helpful in reducing the frictions of life, they must not become ends in themselves, They were once fluid. Let’s keep them that way.

(4) Imagine foreign states of mind. This is perhaps the best freedom-making habit of all, and it is probably the most difficult. It is not easy to put ourselves in the place of the other person or to see ourselves as others see us. Can the busy parent see himself in the place of his adolescent daughter? Can the American view communism as it is seen by a Russian? Can the segregationist feel the frustration of a negro child who walks by the newly built white school to attend “the school for negroes” down below the tracks? And can the negro sense the fear the white man has of the changes he feels are being forced upon him?

To imagine foreign states of mind not only calls for sympathy and sensitivity, but even empathetic imagination, which is the deepest of all human needs. It calls for flexibility of mind. It demands of us that we move out into the lives of others. Our environment becomes sacred because it is a shared experience. Life becomes good when we make it less difficult for someone else. Harry Overstreet tells of the old sea captain who gave his recipe for the free mind —“limber, loving, and a little loony.”

And so it is. The good life is free. It is limber. It is loving. And measured by the usual it may even be a little loony.

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Leroy Garrett is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Director of Lilly Endowment Project for Superior Students, MacMurray College, Jacksonville, III.