ABSTRACT
Freedom is a concept that has meaning only in a subjective sense. A person who is in complete harmony with his culture feels free. He accepts voluntarily the demands made upon him. He does not feel them as imposed upon him. They are his natural reactions to the events of daily life. Obedience to a ruler, law, or custom is not exacted but rendered freely. More complex societies embrace classes with different privileges and functions, and different standards of behaviour. The relations between the classes may be so institutionalized that the restraints imposed upon each of them are accepted as a “natural” arrangement. The consciousness of restraint, and hence the concept of freedom, cannot arise where there is no conflict between the wishes of the individual and his freedom of action. Interference with the freedom of action or the personal comfort of an individual by fellow-tribesmen may occur even in the simplest societies.
