It dooms us all to fight out the battle of life upon the lines of our nurture or our early choice, and to make the best of a pursuit that disagrees, because there is no other for which we are fitted and it is too late to begin again.
Dewey reflects on how our early choices and upbringing shape our life's struggles and pursuits.
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Freedom presented itself as an end in itself, though it signified in fact liberation from oppression and tradition.
Nor can the liberating and confirming results of public action be construed to yield a wholesale idealization of states in contrast with other associations.
The easiest way out was to go back to the naked individual, to sweep away all associations as foreign to his nature and rights save as they proceeded from his own voluntary choice, and guaranteed his own private ends.
The idea remains barren and empty save as it is incarnated in human relationships.