Abstract

Each human being is the best judge of what is most conducive to his or her own self-preservation, whether this be considered strictly as security of mere life, or as comfortable self-preservation, or as the pursuit of happiness. Liberty is just a means to this end, but a means so necessary, so pervasive, so paramount, that it most resembles an end in itself. The ambiguity of modern liberty—this oscillation between end and means—may be a theoretical liability or weakness, but it largelyaccounts for its prodigious dynamism.