Page:Earth-Hunger and Other Essays.djvu/181

 The tramp enjoys the true liberty of going and coming, which, in the case of the barbarian, is only apparent and delusive. He is free from the restraints of civilization. Whether he is free from the superstition and traditional servitude of mind which marks the savage, it is difficult to say—it does not belong to the definition of his case that he should be so free. To the extent, then, to which he is free to do as he pleases, he is so because, although born into civilized society and continuing in it, he has abandoned most of the blessings of civilization, and wins the rest only by begging, or taking them without rendering any equivalent. He must upon occasion endure hunger and cold like the savage man; he must endure outlawry, suspicion, and contempt; in some states he finds himself a criminal, in fact, a felon. In such cases he is not merely a drone or a neutral, still less is he a tolerated parasite; he is at war with society. That is to say, a certain small number of men can realize the dreamed-of poetical liberty of the barbarian by seeking it in the midst of civilization, if they will endure contumely to get it, and if they will sacrifice all the other blessings of civilization for it.