Page:Earth-Hunger and Other Essays.djvu/169

Rh It follows that the civilized man has a measure of liberty under the natural conditions of life. He constantly exaggerates the measure of this liberty and boasts of it too much, for it is really only a little elbow-room which has been won; but his condition is not the constrained necessity of the savage man. The civilized man has also developed power of intelligent reflection and rational choice. Leaving aside all controversies of the metaphysicians on this point, we may simply observe that the civilized man has the power to choose his ends in a higher degree than the savage possesses any such power, and he has also immeasurably extended the range of his activities, and so the possibilities of his choice. Liberty of disposition of his powers is worth, to the civilized man, incalculably more than to the savage. It appears, then, so far, that liberty is the endowment of the civilized man, and that he needs only to go on and use it; but further study will show altogether different aspects of the matter. There is no good on earth that comes gratuitously—there is always a price to be paid. The price of liberty is liberty. The civilized man is born into ties and bonds which either do not exist for the savage man, or are very light for him. The ties of family are arbitrarily strong on some of the middling grades of civilization; in the lowest grades they are generally very loose. Among civilized peoples they form bonds which create duties and obligations constraining liberty. The inheritance of civilization brings burdens and duties to those through whom it comes; it entails duties also to that civilized state, by whose institutions the inheritance is preserved and its descent guaranteed. The civilized man is born into a whole network of restraints which the savage does