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In THE LIBERTY OF A PEOPLE’S VITAL ENERGIES is given the whole chapter from which these four paragraphs are taken.
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What is liberty?
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I have long had an image in my mind of what constitutes liberty. Suppose that I were building a great piece of powerful machinery, and suppose that I should so awkwardly and unskilfully assemble the parts of it that every time one part tried to move it would be interfered with by the others, and the whole thing would buckle up and be checked. Liberty for the several parts would consist in the best possible assembling and adjustment of them all, would it not? If you want the great piston of the engine to run with absolute freedom, give it absolutely perfect alignment and adjustment with the other parts of the engine, so that it is free, not because it is let alone or isolated, but because it has been associated most skilfully and carefully with the other parts of the great structure.
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What is liberty? You say of the locomotive that it runs free. What do you mean? You mean that its parts are so assembled and adjusted that friction is reduced to a minimum, and that it has perfect adjustment. We say of a boat skimming the water with light foot, “How free she runs,” when we mean, how perfectly she is adjusted to the force of the wind, how perfectly she obeys the great breath out of the heavens that fills her sails. Throw her head up into the wind and see how she will halt and stagger, how every sheet will shiver and her whole frame will be shaken, how instantly she is “in irons,” in the expressive phrase of the sea. She is free only when you have let her fall off again and have recovered once more her nice adjustment to the forces she must obey and cannot defy.
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Human freedom consists in perfect adjustments of human interests and human activities and human energies.
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Notes
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buckle, be out of adjustment; distort by bending.
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piston, the disk or short cylinder of wood or metal, fitting closely with the tube in which it moves up and down, used in steam engine or pump to impart or receive motion by means of a piston rod.
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alignment and adjustment, arrangement in a line or lines, until the parts are in the positions that they ought to assume.
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locomotive, the piece of powerful machinery that he has been using as illustration; any engine that moves about by the operation of its own mechanism, as a steam engine, for example.
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skimming … with light foot, gliding along the surface of the water smoothly and easily.
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the great breath out of the heavens, the wind or breeze.
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Throw her head up into the wind, turn the ship around so that the head of the ship will be directly against the direction of the wind.
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“in irons,” in nautical language, incapable of coming about or filling away—said of a sailing vessel when, in tacking, she comes up head to the wind and will not fill away on either tack.Irons is here used in the sense of iron fetters, chains, or shackles, which prevent the ship from moving about freely.
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in the expressive phrase of the sea, in the expressive language used by sailors; in expressive nautical language.
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fall off again, swing around again within being held to a course by the helm; swing freely again.
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nice, precise; exact; minutely accurate.
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Questions
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1. Is human freedom individual or social?
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2. Are you satisfied with Mr. Wilson’s illustrations of freedom?
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3. Are obedience and service compatible with liberty?
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参考译文
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【作品简介】
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《论自由》一文选自伍德罗·威尔逊所著《新自由》，纽约道布尔戴·佩奇出版公司1919年出版。
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【作者简介】
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