Liberty

By Woodrow Wilson

What is liberty?

I have long had an image in my mind of what constitutes liberty. Suppose that I were building a great piece of powerful machinery, and suppose that I should so awkwardly and unskillfully assemble the parts of it that every time one part tried to move it would be interfered with by the others, and the whole thing would buckle up and be checked. Liberty for the several parts would consist in the best possible assembling and adjustment of them all, would it not? If you want the great piston of the engine to run with absolute freedom, give it absolutely perfect alignment and adjustment with the other parts of the engine, so that it is free, not because it is let alone or isolated, but because it has been associated most skillfully and carefully with the other parts of the great structure.

What is liberty? You say of the locomotive that it runs free. What do you mean? You mean that its parts are so assembled and adjusted that friction is reduced to a minimum, and that it has perfect adjustment. We say of a boat skimming the water with light foot, “How free she runs“,” when we mean, how perfectly she is adjusted to the force of the wind, how perfectly she obeys the great breath out of the heavens that fills her sails. Throw her head up into the wind and see how she will halt and stagger, how every sheet will shiver and her whole frame will be shaken, how instantly she is “in irons,” in the expressive phrase of the sea. She is free only when you have let her fall off again and have recovered once more her nice adjustment to the forces she must obey and cannot defy.

Human freedom consists in perfect adjustments of human interests and human activities and human energies.

Notes:

buckle up 系上安全带 被绑在一起

piston n. 活塞

locomotive n. 火车头，机车

the great breath out of the heavens 这里指风

“in irons,” 航海术语，表示船无法行动，像被铁链等锁住一样

佳句翻译：

常言道：船行水面犹如凌波微步，“看它乘风破浪，多么自由！”也就是说，船能完美地借用风力，与海风协同一致，进而迎风远航。当逆风而行时，船时而停滞在浪头，时而摇曳于风中，每一块船板都和船体一起颤抖摇晃，为风所困。只有待风平浪静，她能再次与外力协同一致，这时她才算是自由了。

作者简介：

伍德罗·威尔逊（1856—1924），美国政治学学者、历史学家，第一次世界大战期（1914—1918）任美国总统。