People are always asking, “Do you think that the world is moving toward an authoritarian system of government? Do you think that philosophy is moving toward a new anti-idealistic realism ? Do you think that art is moving toward futurism or dadaism or “hermitism”? and so on.

I call this kind of question “meteorological”: it is like asking, “Do you think that it is going to rain today? Had I better take my umbrella?”

But moral, intellectual, esthetic and political problems are not things outside ourselves, like rain or fine weather; they are within ourselves and for that reason there is no sense in asking what is more or less likely to happen. We need solely to make up our own minds and to act, each one according to bis understanding and his capacity.

You will permit me also to state that, among the insults today offered to liberty, none seems to me more gross than that implied in the question whether the liberal system is to be preferred to the authoritarian system.

It reminds me of the story of a man who went to a friend and said: “I was given a slap in the face today, what do you advise me to do about it?” and the friend replied, “Why, if it was given to you, keep it.” It is evident that a man who asks advice about his personal dignity has already actually renounced it.

The choice between liberty and suppression of liberty is not on the same plane as a choice between things of different values, one of which may reasonably be preferred to the other—the first means human dignity and civilization, the second the debasing of men until they are either a flock to be led to pasture, or captured, trained animals in a cage.

Coming to our own times, I see the future that liberty promises always as a beacon; I do not see any light in the future promised by authoritarianism. In the past, under the forms of theocracy, of........

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