They said to each other: our consciences, our thoughts, our labour are oppressed and exploited by men who have imposed themselves on us by violence or trickery. Some of them forbid us to love God and pray to him otherwise than according to their formula; others require us to study God, man, and nature according to their books, imprisoning our thoughts within the iron circle of their systems by forbidding us on pain of death to break it; still others, after these have enchained our souls, enchain our bodies. They require us to live attached like a plant to the place of our birth, and there they exercise their privileges to seize the greater part of the fruits of our labour and sweat. Let us burst asunder, even at the risk of our lives, these bonds which bruise us; let us demand, for all, both the liberty of the soul and that of the body; let us claim, for all, the natural right to believe, to think, and to act freely – and our sufferings will be at an end. Will our souls not be satisfied, once we have obtained for them free access to the immaterial realm – the ability to sail the immense and marvelous ocean of the mind, without being held back by the iron cable of an imposed system? Will our physical needs not be entirely met, once the material realm is freely open to us – once no fetters forbid us to bring our labour and exchange its products over the entire surface of this fertile earth with which providence has generously endowed us? Let us become free, and we will be happy! » The Utopia of Liberty, Gustave de Molinari.
