Part II, Chapter XXI, 1

OF THE LIBERTY OF SUBJECTS

Liberty, or FREEDOM, properly means the absence of opposition—by opposition I mean external impediments to motion—and applies no less to irrational and inanimate creatures than to rational ones. Whatever is tied up or enclosed so that it can move only within a certain space, bounded by the obstruction of some external body, we say lacks the liberty to go farther. So too with living creatures confined or restrained by walls or chains, and with water contained by banks or vessels when it would otherwise spread into a wider space: we commonly say that they are not at liberty to move as they would without those external impediments. But when the impediment to motion lies in the constitution of the thing itself, we say that it lacks not the liberty but the power to move, as when a stone lies still or a man is confined to his bed by sickness.

According to this proper and generally accepted meaning of the word, a FREE MAN is “one who, in the things his strength and intelligence enable him to do, is not prevented from doing what he wills.” But when the words free and liberty are applied to anything other than bodies, they are misused; for what is not subject to motion is not subject to impediment. Thus when we say, for example, that the way is free, we do not mean that the way has liberty, but that those who walk it can pass without obstruction. When we say a gift is free, we mean not that the gift has liberty but that the giver was not bound by any law or Covenant to give it. Likewise, when we speak freely, the liberty belongs not to the voice or pronunciation but to the speaker, whom no law has bound to speak otherwise. Finally, the expression free will implies no liberty of the will, desire, or inclination, but only of the person, whose liberty consists in encountering no obstruction when doing what he wills, desires, or inclines to do.

Fear and liberty are consistent. When a man throws his goods into the sea for fear that the ship will sink, he still acts willingly and may refuse to do so if he chooses. It is therefore the act of a free man. So too a man may pay his debt only for fear of imprisonment: since no one prevented him from withholding payment, his was the act of a man at liberty. In general, all acts men perform in Common-wealths for fear of the law are acts they had the liberty to omit.

Liberty and necessity are also consistent. Water has not only the liberty but the necessity of descending along its channel. So too with actions men perform voluntarily: because they proceed from the will, they proceed from liberty; yet because every act of a man's will, every desire and inclination, arises from some cause, and those causes form a continuous chain whose first link is in the hand of God, the first of all causes, they proceed from necessity. To anyone able to see the connection of those causes, the necessity of all men's voluntary actions would be manifest. God, who sees and orders all things, sees that man's liberty to do what he wills is accompanied by the necessity of doing what God wills, neither more nor less. For though men can do many things God does not command and of which he is therefore not the author, they can have no passion or appetite for anything unless God's will is the cause of that appetite. If his will did not ensure the necessity of man's will and of everything depending on it, human liberty would contradict and obstruct the omnipotence and liberty of God. This will suffice, for our present purpose, on the natural liberty that alone is properly called liberty.

But as men, to attain peace and thereby preserve themselves, have made an artificial man called a Common-wealth, so too they have made artificial chains called civil laws. By mutual Covenants they have fastened one end of these chains to the lips of the man or assembly to whom they have given sovereign power, and the other to their own ears. These bonds, though weak in themselves, may nevertheless hold because breaking them is dangerous, not because it is difficult.

It is only in relation to these bonds that I shall now speak of the liberty of subjects. Since no Common-wealth anywhere can regulate every action and word of its people, as that is impossible, it necessarily follows that in every matter the laws leave unregulated, men have the liberty to do what their own reason suggests will profit them most. If we take liberty in its proper sense as bodily liberty, freedom from chains and prison, it would be absurd for men to clamor, as they do, for a liberty they so plainly enjoy. Again, if by liberty we mean exemption from laws, it is no less absurd for men to demand a liberty that would give every other man mastery over their lives. Absurd as it is, this is precisely what they demand, not knowing that laws have no power to protect them without a sword in the hands of a man or men to enforce them. The liberty of a subject therefore lies only in what the sovereign has left unregulated: the liberty to buy and sell and otherwise contract with one another, to choose their own home, diet, and livelihood, to bring up their children as they think fit, and the like.

Yet we must not suppose that this liberty abolishes or limits the sovereign's power over life and death. For I have already shown that nothing the sovereign representative does to a subject, on whatever pretext, can properly be called injustice or injury, because every subject is the author of every act the sovereign performs. Thus the sovereign never lacks the right to do anything, except insofar as he himself is subject to God and thereby bound to observe the Laws of Nature. It may therefore happen, as it often does in Common-wealths, that a subject is put to death at the sovereign's command although neither wrongs the other, as when Jephthah had his daughter sacrificed. In that case and others like it, the person who dies had the liberty to perform the act for which he is nevertheless put to death without injury. The same holds for a sovereign prince who puts an innocent subject to death. Though his deed is against the Law of Nature because it violates equity, as was David's killing of Uriah, the injury is done not to Uriah but to God: not to Uriah, because Uriah himself gave David the right to do as he pleased; but to God, because David was God's subject and the Law of Nature forbade him all wrongdoing. David himself made this distinction plain when, repenting of the deed, he said, “Against you alone have I sinned.” In the same way, the people of Athens, when they banished the most powerful men in their Common-wealth for ten years, believed they committed no injustice. They never asked what crime a man had committed, but what harm he might do. Indeed, they ordered the banishment of a person they did not even know in advance: each citizen brought to the marketplace an oyster shell inscribed with the name of the person he wanted banished, without formally accusing him. At times they banished an Aristides because of his reputation for justice; at others a scurrilous jester like Hyperbolus, for the amusement of it. Yet no one can say that the sovereign people of Athens lacked the right to banish these men, or that an Athenian lacked the liberty to jest or to be just.

The liberty so often and honorably mentioned in the histories and philosophy of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and in the writings and speech of those who learned all their politics from them, is not the liberty of individual men but the liberty of the Common-wealth. It is the same liberty each person would have if there were no civil laws and no Common-wealth at all; its effects are the same as well. Among men without a master there is perpetual war, every man against his neighbor; there is no inheritance to pass to a son or expect from a father, no ownership of goods or land, no security, but full and absolute liberty for every individual. Likewise, among states and Common-wealths that are independent of one another, every Common-wealth—not every person—has absolute liberty to do what it judges, through the man or assembly representing it, to be most conducive to its advantage. But these states also live in a condition of perpetual war, poised for battle on their borders, their frontiers armed and cannon pointed at their neighbors on every side. The Athenians and Romans were free—that is, their Common-wealths were free—not because any individual had liberty to resist his representative, but because their representative had liberty to resist or invade other peoples. To this day the word LIBERTAS is written in large letters on the towers of the city of Lucca; yet no one can infer from this that an individual there has more liberty, or more exemption from service to the Common-wealth, than in Constantinople. Whether a Common-wealth is monarchic or popular, the freedom remains the same.

It is easy for men to be deceived by the attractive name of liberty and, lacking judgment to distinguish the two, to mistake the right belonging to the public alone for their private inheritance and birthright. When this error is reinforced by the authority of respected writers on the subject, it is no wonder that it breeds sedition and changes of government. In these western parts of the world, we have come to take our views on the establishment and rights of Common-wealths from Aristotle, Cicero, and other Greek and Roman writers. Living in popular states, those men derived these rights not from the principles of nature, but copied them into their books from the practice of their own popular Common-wealths—just as grammarians describe rules of language from the practice of their time, or rules of poetry from the poems of Homer and Virgil. Because the Athenians were taught, to discourage them from wanting a change of government, that they were free men and everyone living under a monarchy was a slave, Aristotle therefore writes in his Politics (lib.6.cap.2): “In democracy, liberty is to be assumed; for it is commonly held that no man is free under any other government.” Like Aristotle, Cicero and other writers based their civil doctrine on the opinions of the Romans, who were taught to hate monarchy first by the men who deposed their sovereign and divided the sovereignty of Rome among themselves, and afterward by those men's successors. Through reading these Greek and Latin authors, men since childhood have acquired a habit, under the false appearance of liberty, of favoring tumults and licentiously calling their sovereigns' actions to account, and then calling those critics to account in turn, at such a cost in blood that I think I may truly say nothing was ever bought so dearly as these western regions have bought the learning of the Greek and Latin languages.

ON THE FREEDOM OF SUBJECTS

Liberty, or freedom, properly means the absence of opposition. By opposition I mean outside obstacles to movement. The word applies to animals and lifeless things as much as to rational beings. When something is tied up or surrounded so that it cannot move beyond a certain space because another body blocks it, we say it is not free to go farther. We say the same about animals confined by walls or chains. We say it about water held in by banks or containers when it would otherwise spread farther: they are not free to move as they would without those outside obstacles. But if the obstacle to movement lies in a thing's own makeup, we do not say it lacks freedom. We say it lacks the power to move. A stone lying still and a person confined to bed by illness are examples.

In the proper, ordinary meaning of the word, a free person is "someone who is not prevented from doing what he wants to do, when he has the strength and ability to do it." But it is a misuse to speak of freedom in anything other than bodies. Something that cannot move cannot be stopped from moving. So when we say, for example, that a road is free, we do not mean the road itself has freedom. We mean people can walk along it without being stopped. When we call a gift free, we mean not that the gift is free but that the giver was not required by law or covenant to give it. When we speak freely, the freedom belongs not to our voice or pronunciation but to the person, who is not legally required to speak differently. Finally, the term 'free will' does not show that a person's will, desires, or inclinations have freedom. It means the person has freedom to do what he wills, desires, or feels inclined to do, without anything stopping him.

Fear and freedom can coexist. Someone who throws his goods into the sea because he fears the ship will sink still does so willingly. He could refuse if he wanted. He is therefore acting freely. Sometimes a person pays a debt only because he fears prison. Nobody stopped him from keeping the money, so that too is the act of a free person. In general, people in commonwealths are free to omit any actions they perform because they fear the law.

Freedom and necessity can coexist as well. Water is free to flow down a channel, yet it must flow down it. The same goes for voluntary human actions. They arise from people's will and are therefore free. Yet every act of will, desire, and inclination has a cause. Those causes form an unbroken chain whose first link is in the hand of God, the first cause of everything. Thus these actions also arise from necessity. Anyone who could see the connections between the causes would clearly see that all voluntary human actions are necessary. God sees and orders everything. He also sees that a person's freedom to do what he wants goes together with his necessarily doing exactly what God wills, no more and no less. People can do many things God does not command, and God is not therefore the author of those things. But they cannot have a feeling or appetite for anything unless God's will causes that appetite. If his will did not make the human will necessary, and with it everything depending on that will, human freedom would contradict and obstruct God's unlimited power and freedom. That is enough on the natural freedom that is the only proper kind of freedom, for our present purpose.

To gain peace and preserve themselves, people have made an artificial person called a commonwealth. They have also made artificial chains called civil laws. Through mutual covenants, they have fastened one end of these chains to the lips of the man or assembly they have given sovereign power. They have fastened the other end to their own ears. The bonds are weak in themselves, but the danger of breaking them, even if breaking them is easy, can make them hold.

It is only in relation to these bonds that I now discuss the freedom of subjects. No commonwealth in the world can regulate everything people do and say. That is impossible. It follows that when laws do not regulate an action, people are free to do whatever their own judgment suggests will benefit them most. If we use 'freedom' in its proper sense of bodily freedom, meaning freedom from chains and prison, it is absurd for people to clamor for a freedom they so plainly have. If we instead mean exemption from laws, it is just as absurd for people to demand the freedom that would allow everyone else to control their lives. Yet that is what they demand. They do not realize laws cannot protect them unless a person or group has a sword to enforce them. A subject's freedom therefore lies only in matters the sovereign has left unregulated. People are free to buy, sell, and make other contracts with one another; to choose where to live, what to eat, what work to do, and how to raise their children; and to make similar choices.

But this freedom does not remove or limit the sovereign's power over life and death. As I have already shown, nothing the sovereign representative does to a subject, on whatever grounds, can properly be called an injustice or injury to that subject. Each subject has authorized every act of the sovereign. The sovereign therefore always has the right to act, except where he himself is God's subject and must obey the Laws of Nature. A sovereign power may order a subject put to death, as Jephthah had his daughter sacrificed, and neither person wrongs the other. In that and similar cases the person put to death was free to perform the act for which he is killed without having been wronged. The same applies when a sovereign prince kills an innocent subject. Such an act breaks the Law of Nature because it is against fairness, as David's killing of Uriah was. But David wronged God, not Uriah. He did not wrong Uriah because Uriah himself had given David the right to act as he pleased. He wronged God because David was God's subject and the Law of Nature forbids all wrongdoing. David confirmed this distinction when he repented, saying, "Against you alone have I sinned." Similarly, when the people of Athens banished their most powerful citizens for ten years, they did not think they were acting unjustly. They did not ask what crime a person had committed, only what harm he might do. They even ordered the banishment of people they had not yet identified. Each citizen brought an oyster shell to the marketplace with the name of the person he wanted banished, without actually accusing that person. They sometimes banished an Aristides for his reputation for fairness, and sometimes a crude joker like Hyperbolus as a joke. Yet nobody can say that the sovereign people of Athens lacked the right to banish them, or that an Athenian lacked the freedom to make jokes or be fair.

The freedom so often praised in the histories and philosophy of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and by people who have learned all their politics from them, is not the freedom of individuals. It is the freedom of the commonwealth. That is the same freedom each person would have if there were no civil laws or commonwealth at all. Its effects are the same too. Among people with no common ruler, there is continual war between neighbors. No one has an inheritance to pass to a son or expect from a father. There is no ownership of goods or land and no safety, though each individual has complete freedom. Likewise, when states and commonwealths are independent of one another, each commonwealth, not each person, is completely free to do what it judges most helpful to itself. By 'it judges' I mean what the man or assembly representing it judges. These commonwealths, however, live in a state of continual war, always on the edge of battle. Their borders are armed and their cannons point toward all their neighbors. The Athenians and Romans were free in the sense that their commonwealths were free. This did not mean any individual was free to resist his own representative. Their representatives were free to resist or invade other peoples. To this day, the word LIBERTAS is written in large letters on the towers of the city of Luca. Nobody can conclude from this that an individual there has more freedom, or more exemption from serving the commonwealth, than an individual in Constantinople. The freedom is the same whether a commonwealth is ruled by a monarch or by the people.

But the appealing word 'freedom' easily deceives people. Through poor judgment, they confuse a right belonging only to the public with their own private inheritance and birthright. When respected writers on the subject reinforce this mistake, it is no surprise that it leads to rebellion and a change of government. In the western parts of the world, we learn our ideas about the establishment and rights of commonwealths from Aristotle, Cicero, and other Greeks and Romans. They lived in popular states. They did not derive those rights from the principles of nature. Instead, they copied them into their books from the practice of their own popular commonwealths. Grammarians likewise describe the rules of language from current usage, and the rules of poetry from the poems of Homer and Virgil. Athenians were taught that they were free people and everyone under a monarchy was a slave, to keep them from wanting a change of government. So Aristotle writes in his Politics,(lib.6.cap.2) "In a democracy, freedom must be assumed, because people commonly think nobody is free under any other government." Like Aristotle, Cicero and other writers based their teaching about civil government on Roman opinions. Romans were first taught to hate monarchy by those who deposed their sovereign and divided the sovereignty of Rome among themselves, and later by their successors. Reading these Greek and Latin writers, people have from childhood become used to favoring riots and recklessly challenging what their sovereigns do, under the false appearance of freedom. They then challenge those who challenge the sovereigns. So much blood has been shed that I think I can truly say nothing has cost these western parts of the world more dearly than learning the Greek and Latin languages.