MORALITY VERSUS LIBERTY 
15 
for the greater misfortune of the stupid societies that have faith in 
their doctrines. 
[The fault of the moralist is not, properly speaking, that of 
requiring the compression of individual attractions, and their sub- 
ordination to the public weal or social order ; but of stopping at 
this point, instead of criticising the social sphere and seeking to dis- 
cover and organize an order capable of conciliating individualities 
and passional attractions, and to obtain a general maximum rather 
than a minimum of satisfactions. 
The most rigid moralist will not contend for any repression of in- 
dividual will or attraction, except on the ground of its inconsistency 
with the liberties of others, or with one’s own liberty in other res- 
pects : the most rampant advocate of passional liberty cannot ob- 
ject to this, a given state of society being the fixed term. The 
essential difference then between the civilized moralist and the de- 
fender of the passions, is that the former considers social convention 
to be the fixed term by which the individual soul must be tried, 
and to which its passions must be cut down, while the other con- 
ceives of the soul as the fixed term by which social relations should 
be calculated, and to the development of whose attractions its 
order must be conformed. 
Thus it may be wrong for an individual in the present state of 
society, to violate the marriage vow and form a new relation, though 
this may be essentially the truest thing for all parties immediately 
concerned ; it may be wrong on account of the scandal and injury 
to the parties by the intervention of civilized law and morality, but 
this does not prevent the advocate of passional liberty from protest- 
ing against laws and codes of morals that impertinently assume to 
control the liberty of individual action in affairs of passional affinity. 
He traces here to the arbitrary social convention the true cause of 
mischief. — Tr.] 
The Hunter is the strong man who claims only by his right and 
his arm, submits to the yoke of no tyranny, who prefers death to 
slavery, who abdicates the enjoyment of none of his natural rights 
but in virtue of a contract freely consented. It is the man of na- 
ture, the vigorous pioneer, who abominates the steam-engine and the 
repugnant labor of the factory. His vast lungs breathe indepen- 
