ABSTRACT
A social machinery is built and kept in running condition to cope adequately, seasonably, and economically with ongoing needs and with emergencies that may arise at any moment. It is due to such machinery that a sick man finds a hospital, a doctor, and the medicines he needs. A social machinery can be kept only at the cost of much individual freedom. Positive freedom, animal and god-like, means unimpeded satisfaction of desire. The most desirable good from the point of view of the absolute subject reveals itself to be a dreadful source of evil when its impact on the subjectivity of other men is taken into account. Since a life entirely devoid of animal or god-like freedom would be a dull and miserable affair, there are luckily animal and god-like qualities one can cultivate without making oneself a nuisance, and without stopping anybody else from cultivating them.
