"Precisely," Lawanne returned, "and cared to pay it--for all he got."
"That's what it is to be a man and free," Myra observed. "You can go
where you will and when--live as you wish."
"It all depends on what you mean by freedom," Lawanne replied. "Show
me a free man. Where is there such? We're all slaves. Only some of us
are too stupid to recognize our status."
"Slaves to what?" Myra asked. "You seem to have come back in a
decidedly pessimistic frame of mind."
"Slaves to our own necessities; to other people's demands; to burdens
we have assumed, or have had thrust upon us, which we haven't the
courage to shake off. To our own moods and passions. To something
within us that keeps us pursuing this thing we call happiness. To
struggle for fulfilment of ideals that can never be attained. Slaves
to our environment, to social forces before which the individual is
nothing. It's all rot to talk about the free man, the man whose soul
is his own. Complete freedom isn't even desirable, because to attain
it you would have to withdraw yourself altogether from your fellows
and become a law unto yourself in some remote solitude; and no sane
person wants to do that, even to secure this mythical freedom which
people prattle about and would recoil from if it were offered them.
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