"Liberty and Equality."

Mr. William Dean Howell read from some of his published essays yesterday afternoon in the Fogg Lecture Room, his subject being "Liberty and Equality." He said in part: Liberty is not in itself a good; it is only a means for obtaining good. In its noblest, simplest terms liberty is self-sacrifice. This self-sacrifice begins with the first step in civilization and is the end of the savage's self-assertion. The earliest use that a citizen of a liberated state makes of his freedom is to give up some part of it for the common good. But the poor man knows he has less liberty than the rich man; till a man is independent he is not free. The man who is in want or in danger of want is not a free man, and the country which does not guard him against this danger is not a free country. How to secure every man in the means of livelihood is then the great problem to be solved.

Good society, in the eyes of some, fosters inequality. But this is not so, for the ideal within society is equality, and the better the society, the more it seeks equality. As society has extended its limits, equality has also spread. As far as we can conceive it or forecast it, the new condition, the equality of the future, will be the enlargement of good society till it comprises all humanity.