WOMAN AND FREEDOM IN WHITMAN 387 
and he would do “away with themes of war! away with war 
itself! . . . And in its stead speed industry’s campaigns,” 
and in the work to be done, “For every man to see to it that 
he really do something, for every woman too.” 
A writer has said, if ever any class on earth has had cause 
to revolt, it is woman, be the causes of her limitations from 
many factors, or what you please. In simplest terms, it may 
be asked, what is to be gained by this revolution ? The answer 
is Freedom. Freedom is the end which revolution and revolt 
through truth have in view. It is a liberation from all the 
chains which are holding back the human being from greater 
expansions of mind and soul. By Freedom is meant a state 
wherein all the shackles from preconceived ideas of the rights 
and wrongs of a question, are cast aside; when the being 
stands unhampered to view each question on its own merits, 
to let each concept to which the human mind is open work 
out through a sequence to its logical conclusion; where the 
individual’s action need not necessarily be one with the full 
possibilities of the conceptional outgrowth, but where the in¬ 
dividual may partake of equal actional with theoretical liberty 
if so he or she desires. In Freedom each being must stand 
alone, and the conduct of another cannot be prescribed by 
you or by me. 
Freedom is also a state wherein we are surely not free to 
give ourselves up to unbridled passions, license, and vices. 
For once we have resigned our own leadership into their law¬ 
less hands, we can call ourselves free no longer; but we be¬ 
come enslaved men and women. Perhaps the man and woman 
ruled by even the noblest themes, lose in their devotion to 
any one absorbing idea something of the essence of liberty. 
Any enslavement thus becomes incompatible with Freedom. 
Freedom also does not mean restrictions which condemn 
and kill the energies and activities from and to the higher 
nature. To be free means a just use of all functions and all 
powers leading to a fine and unfolding future of individuality 
and race. In one sense perhaps we can never obtain perfect 
freedom, but the freest man or woman is the one who main¬ 
tains an equilibrium amidst the contending storms of desires. 
