Slavery appeared as an invention of the would-be-free. It was a
brilliant flash of genius of a seeker after freedom. However, it
became a boomerang. By multiplication and hereditary transmission, the
inferiority and the number of the slaves created a new overwhelming
problem for the superior few, the upper crust of the free. At last the
problem grew into the problem of problems, the problem of government,
that threatened all freedom, as an epidemic disease threatens even
the most healthy. Government, at first organized for conquest and
subjugation, had to change its character until it became more and more
to consist of experiments in a new social machinery that would free
somebody of the incubus. So through the centuries, one technique of
liberty after another was tested in the laboratory of experience.

But always the attempts are so muddled, because the problem is not
grasped. Muddledom is the essence of the slave-soul. And the
essence infiltrates and poisons the whole atmosphere in which the
would-be-free think and act. Kings' heads are chopped off, a whole
class is guillotined, reform movements come and go, the masters fight
every inch of their retreat, and pile stratagem upon stratagem, device
upon device, to retain their spoils.

The democratic formula of freedom for all comes to the fore. So at
last universal suffrage is introduced as the panacea. Freedom seems
within grasp. Now it looks as if a method and an objective have been
hit upon, that will lead both the free and the enslaved out of their
mutual bondage, and release the handcuffs which have bound them
together. All the trial and error tests to which history had subjected
institutions appeared to culminate in the formula that would
automatically yield Liberty. The French wanted a little more and added
Equality and Fraternity. The Americans put it quite definitely as the