The Twilight of the Idols · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
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“The kind of freedom I do _not_ mean....”[6]—In an age like the present, it simply adds to one’s perils to be left to one’s instincts. The instincts contradict, disturb, and destroy each other; I have already defined modernism as physiological self-contradiction. A reasonable system of education would insist upon at least one of these instinct-systems being _paralysed_ beneath an iron pressure, in order to allow others to assert their power, to grow strong, and to dominate. At present, the only conceivable way of making the individual possible would be to _prune_ him:—of making him possible—that is to say, _whole._ The very reverse occurs. Independence, free development, and _laisser aller_ are clamoured for most violently precisely by those for whom no restraint _could be too severe_—this is true _in politics,_ it is true in Art. But this is a symptom of decadence: our modern notion of “freedom” is one proof the more of the degeneration of instinct.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.