Man was free, not because there was no God, but
because it needed a God to set him free. By authority he was free. By
authority the craftsmen of the guilds were free. Many other great
philosophers took and take the other view: the Lucretian pagans, the
Moslem fatalists, the modern monists and determinists, all roughly confine
themselves to saying that God gave man a law. The mediaeval Christian
insisted that God gave man a charter. Modern feeling may not sympathise
with its list of liberties, which included the liberty to be damned; but
that has nothing to do with the fact that it was a gift of liberties and
not of laws. This was mirrored, however dimly, in the whole system.
There was a great deal of gross inequality; and in other aspects absolute
equality was taken for granted. But the point is that equality and
inequality were ranks--or rights. There were not only things one was
forbidden to do; but things one was forbidden to forbid. A man was not
only definitely responsible, but definitely irresponsible. The holidays
of his soul were immovable feasts. All a charter really meant lingers
alive in that poetic phrase that calls the wind a "chartered" libertine.
Lie awake at night and hear the wind blowing; hear it knock at every man's
door and shout down every man's chimney.
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