. . . Thus it is said that a
man has a free mind, that he enjoys great liberty of mind, not
only when his intelligence is not disturbed by any external
violence, but also when it is neither obscured by intoxication,
nor changed by disease, nor kept in impotence by lack of
exercise.
M. Dunoyer has here viewed liberty only on its negative
side,--that is, as if it were simply synonymous with FREEDOM
FROM OBSTACLES. At that rate liberty would not be a faculty of
man; it would be nothing. But immediately M. Dunoyer, though
persisting in his incomplete definition, seizes the true side of
the matter: then it is that it occurs to him to say that man, in
inventing a machine, serves his liberty, not, as we express
ourselves, because he determines it, but, in M. Dunoyer's style,
because he removes a difficulty from its path.
Thus articulate language is a better instrument than language by
sign; therefore one is freer to express his thought and impress
it upon the mind of another by speech than by gesture. The
written word is a more potent instrument than the spoken word;
therefore one is freer to act on the mind of his fellows when he
knows how to picture the word to their eyes than when he simply
knows how to speak it.
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