"The incapacity for freedom can only arise from a want of moral and intellectual power; to elevate this power is the only way to counteract this want; but to do this presupposes the exercise of that power, and this exercise presupposes the freedom which awakens spontaneous activity. Only it is clear we cannot call it giving freedom, when fetters are unloosed which are not felt as such by him who wears them. But of no man on earth—however neglected by nature, and however degraded by circumstances—is this true of all the bonds which oppress and enthral him. Let us undo them one by one, as the feeling of freedom awakens in men’s hearts, and we shall hasten progress at every step. There may still be great difficulties in being able to recognize the symptoms of this awakening. But these do not lie in the theory so much as in its execution, which, it is evident, never admits of special rules, but in this case, as in every other, is the work of genius alone."
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Ch. 16 (tr. Joseph Coulthard)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Limits_of_State_Action
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The Limits of State Action
The Limits of State Action (German: Ideen zu einem Versuch die Grenzen der Wirksamkeit des Staats zu bestimmen) is a philosophical treatise by Wilhelm von Humboldt, which is a major work of the German Enlightenment. Though written in the early 1790s, it was not published in its entirety until 1852, long after von Humboldt's death in 1835. It was a significant source for the ideas that John Stuart Mill popularized in his 1859 book On Liberty.
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