Page:Essays and studies; by members of the English Association, volume 1.djvu/202

 freedom', of the isolated individual. But this, so far from being contrary to his rational will, his true freedom, is in truth the very means of securing them; and it is the only means. It is not until the reign of order is established and established it can never be save by compulsion that the rational will finds the conditions which are necessary to its growth. In applying compulsion, therefore, we are replacing the false freedom by the true. We are not thwarting, but fostering, the rational will; and that is the only will of which it is right to take account.

Here is the doctrine of the heaven-sent Hero with a vengeance. All that Carlyle had to do was to strip it of the qualifications with which it is only just to remember that Fichte surrounded it; to translate it from the language of