The independent spirit of the borrower is not immediately lost. The servile spirit and conscious sense of bondage may not be felt at once. Likely the first sensation on receiving a loan is an elation bordering on ecstasy.
The poor man who is offered a loan is usually greatly delighted. There is hope of relief from the limitations and restraints that have been as a wall round about him. The loan seems to throw down these walls and give him an opportunity to secure greater results and achieve success. But the delight is transient and the sense of greater liberty is brief. The prison walls are down, but the debt holds him like a ball and chain. He has only exchanged one restraint for another worse; he has leaped from the pan into the fire. The spirit loses its hopefulness and independence and becomes servile and cringing.
Milton represents our first parents, after their first sin, as intoxicated in delight, but the consciousness of their degradation and shame soon followed. So the first sensation from a loan is of relief and hope; the future looks bright, but the sense of subjection to the lender is sure to follow.
He forfeits the free, independent, self-reliant spirit that scorns dependence upon any man. He only looks the whole world in the face, who owes no man a cent.