| On Freedom | |
| And an orator said, "Speak to us of Freedom." | |
| And he answered: | |
| At the city gate and by your fireside I have seen you prostrate yourself and worship your own freedom, | |
| Even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though he slays them. | |
| Ay, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the citadel I have seen the freest among you wear their freedom as a yoke and a handcuff. | |
| And my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfillment. | |
| You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief, | |
| But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound. | |
| And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights unless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding have fastened around your noon hour? | |
| In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains, though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle the eyes. | |
| And what is it but fragments of your own self you would discard that you may become free? | |
| If it is an unjust law you would abolish, that law was written with your own hand upon your own forehead. | |
| You cannot erase it by burning your law books nor by washing the foreheads of your judges, though you pour the sea upon them. | |
| And if it is a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed. | |
| For how can a tyrant rule the free and the proud, but for a tyranny in their own freedom and a shame in their won pride? | |
| And if it is a care you would cast off, that care has been chosen by you rather than imposed upon you. | |
| And if it is a fear you would dispel, the seat of that fear is in your heart and not in the hand of the feared. | |
| Verily all things move within your being in constant half embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape. | |
| These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling. | |
| And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light. | |
| And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom. |