Chapter 15 free

An orator said, please tell us about liberty. He replied: By the gates, by the fires, I have seen you throw yourself down and worship your freedom, Like slaves bowing their knees before a tyrant, though they are ravaged by him. Alas, in the jungle of temples, in the shadow of the castle.I have seen the freest of you wear your freedom in shackles. My heart bleeds from my breast; for you are free only when you feel that the desire to seek freedom is also a bondage, only when you cease to call freedom an end and an achievement. When your days are not carefree, and your nights are not without hope and sorrow, you are free,

But when these things bind your life, and you rise above them, naked and free, you are freer. How can you rise beyond your day and night unless you break the chains that locked your noon in the dawn of your knowledge? Indeed, what you call liberty is the strongest of chains, though its links, shining in the sun, dazzle your eyes. Isn't it a part of yourself that you want to throw away in exchange for freedom? If that is a law that you wish to abolish, it is written on your foreheads by your hand. You cannot erase it, even if you burn the codes or pour the waters of the sea to wash the brows of the judges.

If it is a tyrant you wish to dethrone, see first if his throne in your hearts has been destroyed. For how can a tyrant rule over free and dignified men, if there is no despotism in their liberty, and no disgrace in their dignity? If that's an anxiety you want to get rid of, it's not imposed on you, it's your choice. If that is the fear you are trying to dispel, it is rooted in your heart, not in the hands of the object of the fear. Indeed, expectations and fears, aversions and treasures, pursuits and escapes, all of these are always embracing and running in your body, just like light and shadow are closely dependent on each other.

When the shadow disappears, the remaining light becomes the shadow of another light. Therefore, when your freedom is freed from its shackles, it will itself become a shackle to a greater freedom.