After examining, in the first part, the human facts that ground the doctrine of liberty, we now turn to history. For freedom is not simply a set of facts but a historical construction. The conditions of human liberty are stronger and more numerous today than they were in the earliest ages of human history. To understand why freedom is a project for the 21st century, we must trace how it has been built, how it has become increasingly practicable, and why it was so difficult to exercise in antiquity.

There has always been debate on this subject, and the French liberal tradition of the 19th century produced one of its most illuminating exchanges. Germaine de Staël (1766-1817), in her opposition to Napoleon, coined the memorable phrase: "Freedom is ancient, and despotism is modern." As if Bonaparte's practice of power were a novelty that had disrupted an age-old tradition of liberty. Benjamin Constant took the opposite view, and, in our judgment, the more correct one. Freedom in earlier centuries, and in antiquity in particular, was neither real nor complete. A long line of 19th-century liberal thinkers extended this analysis, demonstrating that the historical conditions of the past were not conducive to full liberty, and that, on the contrary, each passing century, with its technical improvements and economic transformations, has made freedom more practicable and more firmly grounded in the facts of modern life.

The history of freedom has always been accompanied by myths, and two of the most famous deserve our attention.

The first is Jean-Jacques Rousseau's myth of the bon sauvage, which introduces the idea that freedom, autonomy, independence, and the full plenitude of human power are to be found in the past. This is the eternal golden age, shared by philosophers and religious thinkers across the centuries: the conviction that humanity has fallen from an original state of perfection. The liberals of the 18th century, at the time of Rousseau himself, and then through the Revolution and the entire 19th century, systematically countered this false idea. The actual conditions of existence in primitive societies bear no resemblance to the idyll of the noble savage.

The second myth is that of the social contract, the notion that society was founded by a primitive agreement among free individuals. But the elements necessary for such a contract were lacking at the supposed time of its creation: a developed language, the very conception of a society beyond the family. Society is not a voluntary creation born of conscious agreement; it exists from the outset as a natural condition of human existence. One does not create a society; one is born into one. These are historical contradictions and errors that the liberals identified, and that allow us to develop a more accurate view of the history of liberty.

How are we to understand self-ownership in prehistoric or ancient epochs? In these societies, as travelers of the 18th and 19th centuries also confirmed when they encountered archaic societies still surviving in remote regions, the child was the property of the father. He had absolutely no liberty until the age at which he could bear arms and provide for himself. The woman, likewise, was considered the property of her husband or her father; she could be sold, given as inheritance, or exchanged as a material good.

The Abbé de Saint-Pierre explained this situation by the extreme weakness of productive power at the time. Production was limited to hunting, fishing, and gathering; security was nonexistent. There was an imperative need for adult male support. If a woman wished, as the Abbé put it, to "taste freedom" and flee her encampment, she would face certain death in the wilderness, for there was no independent productive capacity available to her. One simply could not create conditions that did not yet exist.

In the same way, the individual was entirely subjected to the tribe. A set of rules governed every action, including the most personal. The private sphere that we define today as a space of freedom did not exist. These societies practiced the systematic sacrifice of individuals considered incapable or weak: abortion, the sacrifice of widows and the elderly were regular practices, often sanctioned by laws and religions. The circumstances that explain all of this are, first, an ungrateful and unproductive nature, making it extraordinarily difficult to obtain resources and wealth in the earliest ages of human history. There were also climatic hazards and dangers from other tribes; security simply did not exist. One was completely subject to the vagaries of nature, far more so than today, when hazards can be anticipated and solutions found to mitigate their effects. The combat for life, against the natural world and against competing tribes, was conducted without any particular protection, without security at the scale of tribes or nations.

Private ownership of land was equally impossible to establish. The productive activities of the time required vast common territories. The hunt for buffalo or elephant, for instance, could not be conducted within an enclosed terrain of two hectares. Nomadic life was a necessity, not a choice. Pastoral peoples, by definition, could not attach themselves to a fixed, small plot of private property.

This communal ownership should not be confused with communism in the ideological sense. The land was common within the tribe, within the family or the group of families, but it was considered the property of that group. There were significant conflicts between tribes; no one imagined that the entire earth was the common property of all. These groups behaved like animals defending their territory. But this was not private property linked to the individual; it was a collective adaptation to the conditions of production.

Charles Dunoyer (1786-1862), in his remarkable work L'industrie et la morale considérées dans leurs rapports avec la liberté (1825), and later in De la liberté du travail (1845), showed that freedom is a progressive construction. We are freer in industrial societies than in feudal societies, freer under feudalism than under ancient slavery, and freer under slavery than in prehistoric times. But what was prehistoric man free to do? Nothing, because human existence was subject to every conceivable constraint.

The absence of security was a fundamental obstacle to freedom of action. Why act, why undertake, when the fruits and effects of one's actions are constantly compromised by danger? The omnipotence of custom further prevented any real liberty. Given the lack of security and the overwhelming number of hazards, it was judged better to impose a direction on man than to leave him with his feeble lights amid circumstances too difficult for individual judgment. The great mass of the population submitted to custom, perhaps less willingly among the elite, but broadly and thoroughly, because the circumstances demanded it.

Could freedom of thought be exercised in such conditions? The development of intelligence requires daily cultivation through education and observation. But how could intelligence be mobilized when production depended principally on brute force? The productive activities of early societies relied on physical strength to obtain the necessities of survival, and there was little scope for intellectual contribution.

Technical innovations transformed this equation fundamentally. The steam engine is an emblematic example: it belongs to a series of tools, machines, and technological improvements that, from the Middle Ages to the present, have allowed freedom of thought to become a practical reality. Consider the comparison between a porter, who transfers goods by the strength of his back, and a locomotive driver. These two occupations do not require the same human dispositions. The latter permits a far more complete development of intellectual capacities and a genuine acquisition and exercise of freedom of thought.

These are the historical elements that explain the progressive development of liberty. In the lessons that follow, we will examine the specific circumstances that made freedom increasingly possible, and how it has imposed itself, step by step, as the governing principle of modern societies.