14. The Development of the German Soul

“What is freedom?” says the other. “The image that comes to my mind is a large, powerful machine. If I put the parts together so awkwardly and clumsily that when one part wants to move, it is hindered by the others, then the whole machine bends and comes to a standstill. The freedom of the individual parts” - note: the freedom of the parts of the machine! - ‘would consist in the best adaptation and composition of all.’ - To characterize human freedom, he says all this! ‘If the large piston of a machine is to run perfectly freely, it must be precisely adapted to the other parts of the machine. Then it is free...’ -— So, to know how man becomes free, one examines the machine! “... then it is free, not because it is isolated and left to its own devices, but because it has been carefully and skillfully integrated into the rest of the large structure. What is freedom? We say that a locomotive runs freely. What do we mean by that? We mean that the individual components are put together and fitted into each other in such a way that friction is kept to a minimum. We say of a ship that she cuts easily through the waves: how freely she sails, and mean by it that she is perfectly adapted to the strength of the wind. Set her against the wind, and she will hold and sway, all the planks and the whole hull will tremble, and immediately she is moored.” Now he shows that this applies to human nature as well as to machines, to the steamboat and so on: “It is only released when it is allowed to fall away again and the wise adaptation to the forces it must obey is restored.”