ABSTRACT
Along with “love,” among the much abused words of language are “freedom,” “liberty,” “equality.” They are loud in emotional resonance and men will fight for them, but (as one citizen said of the Monroe Doctrine), although prepared to die for these words, men remain uncertain as to what precisely they mean. Lincoln lamented that no good definition of “liberty” existed. 1 We may say precisely the same of “equality”; and largely for the same reasons. Despite the contributions of the great Greeks, men (it may be suspected) do not really want to define these words too closely, lest they lose emotional steam.
