Generally, the moral substance of liberty is this: that man is not meant merely to receive good laws, good food or good conditions, like a tree in a garden, but is meant to take a certain princely pleasure in selecting and shaping like the gardener. Perhaps that is the meaning of the trade of Adam. And the best popular words for rendering the real idea of liberty are those which speak of man as a creator. We use the word “make” about most of the things in which freedom is essential, as a country walk or a friendship or a love affair. When a man “makes his way” through a wood he has really created, he has built a road, like the Romans. When a man “makes a friend,” he makes a man. And in the third case we talk of a man “making love,” as if he were (as, indeed, he is) creating new masses and colours of that flaming material an awful form of manufacture. In its primary spiritual sense, liberty is the god in man, or, if you like the word, the artist.
[G. K. Chesterton, "The Free Man", A Miscellany of Men.]
