We may say broadly that free thought is the best of all the
safeguards against freedom. Managed in a modern style the emancipation
of the slave's mind is the best way of preventing the emancipation
of the slave. Teach him to worry about whether he wants to be free,
and he will not free himself. Again, it may be said that this
instance is remote or extreme. But, again, it is exactly true of
the men in the streets around us. It is true that the negro slave,
being a debased barbarian, will probably have either a human affection
of loyalty, or a human affection for liberty. But the man we see
every day--the worker in Mr. Gradgrind's factory, the little clerk
in Mr. Gradgrind's office--he is too mentally worried to believe
in freedom. He is kept quiet with revolutionary literature.
He is calmed and kept in his place by a constant succession of
wild philosophies. He is a Marxian one day, a Nietzscheite the
next day, a Superman (probably) the next day; and a slave every day.
The only thing that remains after all the philosophies is the factory.
The only man who gains by all the philosophies is Gradgrind.
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