Adjustment Necessary to Liberty
I used to teach my classes in the university that liberty was a matter of adjustment and I was accustomed to illustrate it in this way; when you have perfectly assembled the parts of a great steam engine, for example, then when it runs, you say that it runs free; that means that the adjustment is so perfect that the friction is reduced to a minimum, doesn’t it, and the minute you twist any part out of alignment, the minute you lose adjustment, then there is a buckling up and the whole thing is rigid and useless. Now to my mind, that is the image of human liberty; the individual is free in proportion to his perfect accommodation to the whole, or to put it the other way, in proportion to the perfect adjustment of the whole to his life and interests.
Take another illustration; you are sailing a boat, when do you say that she is running free, when you have thrown her up into the wind? No, not at all. Every stick and stitch in her shivers and you say she is in irons; nature has grasped her and says: “You cannot go that way;” but let her fall off, let the sheet fill and see her run like a bird skimming the waters. Why is she free? Because she has adjusted herself to the great force of nature that is brewed with the breath of the wind. She is free in proportion as she is adjusted, as she is obedient, and so men are free in society in proportion as their interests are accommodated to one another, and that is the problem of liberty.