Liberty Again Defined.

DEAR LIBERTY: — Let me suggest that your new subscriber who says that "perfect liberty is perfect obedience to natural law" probably had the element of choice in his mind, although he did not put it into words, and meant to state that perfect liberty is voluntary obedience to natural law. Obedience not voluntary would not be perfect, and would not be liberty.

It seems to me that Liberty is neither the mother nor the daughter of Order, but the equal mate, the woman of the union of which Order is the man, the product of the offspring of the two being harmonious society of integral individuals.

F. S. C.

[It is more than likely that "F. S. C." is right in regard to our new subscriber. Knowing or man, we felt confident at the time that his meaning was not accurately expressed by his statement. Nevertheless his omission afforded a good opportunity to emphasize an important distinction, and we improved it. But even if his meaning was just what "F. S. C." thinks it was, he was not strictly correct. Liberty is not obedience, compulsory or voluntary, any more than it is disobedience, compulsory or voluntary. Nor is it even the actual choice between obedience and disobedience. It is simply and solely the freedom and power to choose. And as long as moral philosophers of the Free Religious stamp (among whom we include neither "F. S. C." nor our new subscriber) keep on trying to conceal this, the true idea of Liberty, behind such misleading phrases as the "liberty to do right" and such hackneyed and irrational discrimination as that between "liberty and license," we do not mean to often lose a chance to bring it to the light.

As for "F. S. C.'s" sexual distinction between Liberty and Order, we take very little stock in it except as a very pretty and handy figure of speech. The woman's rights people have long maintained that "there is no sex in virtue." We go farther, and doubt if there is any sex in virtues. That Liberty and Order so greatly advance each other by action and reaction that they may be regarded, in one view of the case, as almost cognate principles is not denied; but we insist that, in their relation to modern progress, Liberty comes logically first, and that Order is a result. "F. S. C." unwittingly admits the correctness of our position when he describes the offspring as "a harmonious society of integral individuals." A harmonious society of integral individuals is precisely what we mean by Order; and, if "F. S. C." has a different view of Order, it must be a very narrow one. The logical priority of Liberty to Order cannot be too strongly urged while nine-tenths of the professed friends of Order are pushing schemes to establish it by violations of Liberty. It was for this reason that we chose the grand motto which constitutes the heading of our paper. — EDITOR LIBERTY.]