16 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences. Arts and Letters. 



ily cast off. The unsuccessful man becomes untrustworthy 

 in his opinions. 



We care not to trace these limitations further, bui wish 

 rather to inquire how they leave the problem of liberty. So 

 profoundly are some minds impressed with these subtile and 

 overwhelming influences that human liberty sinks out of all 

 high estimate. Life seems but a painful beating of the 

 waves of the ocean by a .swimmer who must ultimately sink. 

 Constraining forces are of the most pervasive and insinu- 

 ating order; they are often nearest us when we think least 

 of them, and bind us most when we seem to ourselves most 

 free. 



Accumulative impressions, like those now brought forward, 

 require corresponding care in the search for compensatory 

 considerations or they quite confound the thoughts. We are 

 too much accustomed to think of liberty as the immediate 

 casting off of restraint, and as efficient, therefore, in the 

 degree in which this is accomplished. This is far from the 

 truth. The value of liberty lies in its power to work under 

 and with invariable and permanent forces. If liberty in- 

 volved mobility simply, it would lose its possessions as fest 

 as it gained them. The air is mobile, and for that reason its 

 distribution of parts has little interest. We can carve noth- 

 ing out of it and record nothing on it. Rocks are compar- 

 atively immobile, and immediately they become material in 

 many forms of work, while their distribution is an important 

 fact. If results followed on after vagrant wishes, choice 

 would gain apparent power, but would suffer immense loss. 

 The thing done would be as quickly undone, and the clash 

 of choices would be as idle as the collisions of winds. In- 

 deed, there can be but one Aladdin with his magic lamp. He 

 alone must be left to act on things fixed and permanent for 

 all but himself. A pair of them would subvert the world, 

 become spirits with invulnerable bodies who could settle 

 nothing in conflict. 



The resistance which surrounding conditions offer to lib- 

 erty represents the strength and tenacity of the material at 

 the service of the mind, and is a question simply of the right 

 degree. If the resistance is slight, the gains are slight; if 



