f imagination. His boasted
liberty is nothing, if there is a single point where he is under
constraint and bound. It is education that must give back liberty to
man, and help him to complete the whole idea of his nature. It ought,
therefore, to make him capable of making his will prevail, for, I repeat
it, man is the being who wills.

It is possible to reach this end in two ways: either really, by opposing
force to force, by commanding nature, as nature yourself; or by the idea,
issuing from nature, and by thus destroying in relation to self the very
idea of violence. All that helps man really to hold sway over nature is
what is styled physical education. Man cultivates his understanding and
develops his physical force, either to convert the forces of nature,
according to their proper laws, into the instruments of his will, or to
secure himself against their effects when he cannot direct them. But the
forces of nature can only be directed or turned aside up to a certain
point; beyond that point they withdraw from the influence of man and
place him under theirs.

Thus beyond the point in question his freedom would be lost, were he only
susceptible of physical education. But he must be man in the full sense
of the term, and consequently he must have nothing to endure, in any
case, contrary to his will. Accordingly, when he can no longer oppose to
the physical forces any proportional physical force, only one resource
remains to him to avoid suffering any violence: that is, to cause to
cease entirely that relation which is so fatal to him. It is, in short,
to annihilate as an idea the violence he is obliged to suffer in fact.
The education that fits man for this is called moral education.

The man fashioned by moral education, and he only, is entirely free. He
is either superior to nature as a power, or he is in harmony with her.
None of the actions that she brings to bear upon him is violence, for
before reaching him it has become an act of his own will, and dynamic
nature could never touch him, because he spontaneously keeps away from
all to which she can reach. But to attain to this state of mind, which
morality designates as resignation to necessary things, and religion
styles absolute submission to the counsels of Providence, to reach this
by an effort of his free will and with reflection, a certain clearness is
required in thought, and a certain energy in the will, superior to what
man commonly possesses in active l