 Lastarria maintained that liberty consists in the exercise of various rights: the right to make decisions about one’s own person (personal liberty), the right to exercise one’s own intelligence and to examine received beliefs, the right to work and to acquire property, the right to associate with others, and the right to demand equality before the law (Lecciones, 5th Lesson). He was particularly concerned with freedom of religious worship. He held religion to be a fundamental idea in society but also an intimate and private one. Following the example of North America, he advocated the separation of church and State both in order to maintain the independence of the church in the carrying out of its spiritual mission and the neutrality of the State with respect to religious dogma. As many other Hispanic American liberals, Lastarria established a connection between freedom of thought and freedom of teaching: on his view, just as the State should abstain from favoring any religious doctrine in particular, the State should also refrain from imposing any political doctrine through official schooling. Though this view pushes towards the disappearance of official schooling, he granted that the State had a duty to finance basic schooling but should leave all other instruction in private hands.