Thomas Fowler

“ The Understanding, before the entrance of simple ideas, is like a dark room, and external and internal sensation are the windows by which light is let in. But when the light has once penetrated into this dark recess, the Understanding has an almost unlimited power of modifying and transforming it. It can create complex ideas, and that in an infinite variety, out of its simple ideas, and this it does chiefly by combining, comparing, and separating them. ”

“ But, where the moral feelings are not strong, and still more where they are almost in abeyance, I fear that the theory that virtue and happiness are invariably coincident will hardly be supported by a candid examination of facts. To some men, I fear it must be acknowledged, present wealth and power and dignity are more than a sufficient recompense for any remorse which they may continue to feel for past greed or lack of candour or truthfulness. These considerations will serve to shew the immense importance of moral education, alike in the family, the school, and the state. ”

“ For you make my life, since I have had your friendship, much more valuable to me than it was before." "If I were now setting out in the world, I should think it my great happiness to have such a companion as you, who had a relish for truth, would in earnest seek it with me, from whom I might receive it undisguised, and to whom I might communicate freely what I thought true. ”

“ The rules supplied by the logic in vogue lend no aid in the examination of principles. He who takes the wrong road wanders the further from his goal, the further he goes. The syllogism is, from the very nature of the case, incompetent to prove the ultimate premisses from which it proceeds. The only hope, therefore, of those who wish to establish knowledge on a firm basis is in a logic which shall be competent to examine these higher generalisations or first principles from which the various sciences start, that is to say, in a true induction. ”

“ But why, it may be asked, should not a man accept a bribe, if, on other grounds, he would vote for the candidate who offers it? Simply, because he is encouraging a practice which would, in time, deprive Parliament of most of its more competent members, and reduce it to an oligarchy of millionaires, as well as degrading himself by a sordid act. To receive a present for a vote, even if the vote be given conscientiously, is to lend countenance to a practice which must inevitably corrupt the consciences, and pervert the judgment, of others. ”

“ What impels me to do an action when I know it to be right, is partly obedience to the will of God, hope of His rewards, and fear of His punishments; partly a natural appetite, impressed on me as on all other objects, to seek good, and to seek the greater good rather than the lesser. That two or more inconsistent modes of thought are implied in these answers I am aware. But Bacon and his generation had not yet reached that stage in the history of ethical speculation when thought on these subjects was clear and consistent. Bacon still regarded ethics as the 'handmaid' of theology. ”

“ When philosophy was almost synonymous with the arid discussion of scholastic subtleties, he wrote so as to interest statesmen and men of the world. At a time when the chains of dogma were far tighter, and the penalties of attempting to loosen200 them far more stringent, than it is now easy to conceive, he raised questions which stirred the very depths of human thought. And all this he did in a spirit so candid, so tolerant, so liberal, and so unselfish, that he seemed to be writing not for his own party or his own times, but for the future of knowledge and of mankind. ”

“ As pointed out long ago by Aristotle, the suicide wrongs the state rather than himself. Where a man is still able to do any service to the state, in either a private or a public capacity, he is under a social, and, therefore, a moral obligation to perform that service, and, consequently, to withdraw from it by a voluntary death is to desert the post of duty. This consideration, of course, holds only where a man's life is still of value to society, but it should be pointed out that, where this ceases to be the case, many other considerations often, and some always do, intervene. ”

“ To be learned in the lump by other men's thoughts, and to be in the right by saying after others, is the much easier and quieter way; but how a rational man, that should inquire and know for himself, can content himself with a faith or a religion taken upon trust, or with such a servile submission of his understanding as to admit all and nothing else but what fashion makes passable among men, is to me astonishing. ”

“ As his contribution to science rests on his perception of the greatness and variety of nature, so his contribution to politics rests upon his perception of the complexity of human society. In politics, as well as in science, he found himself too much in advance of the times to secure a following. Some men would have grown misanthropical, and would have abandoned the thankless task in despair. It was alike the strength and weakness of Bacon's character which prevented him from doing this. ”

“ People ought to have sufficient mental independence to ask themselves what will be the ultimate effects of subscribing their money, and, if they honestly believe that those effects will be pernicious or of doubtful utility, they ought to have the courage to refuse it. There is no good reason, simply because a man asks me and I find that others are yielding to him, why I should subscribe a guinea towards disfiguring a church, or erecting an ugly and useless building, or extending pauperism, or encouraging the growth of luxurious habits, or spreading opinions which I do not believe. ”

“ That man is richest whose estate is in a growing condition, either in land at farm, money at interest, or goods in trade." "Money exported in trade is an increase to the wealth of the nation; but spent in war and payments abroad, is so much impoverishment." "We may labour to hedge in the Cuckoo, but in vain; for no people ever yet grew rich by policies, but it is peace, industry, and freedom that brings trade and wealth, and nothing else." ”

“ Bacon might well be called the British Socrates. Even had his individual precepts been utterly worthless, many men must have owed their first impulse to the study of nature, or to independent investigation in general, to the terse and burning words, issuing, as it were, from the lips of an irresistible commander, with which he urges them to the work. ”

“ A man, to save the honour of his regiment, may impair the efficiency of an army, or, to promote the interests of his college or school, may inflict a lasting injury on education, or, to protect his associates, may withhold or pervert evidence, or, to aggrandize his trade, may ruin his country. It is the special province of the moralist, in these cases, to intervene, and point out how the more general is being sacrificed to the more special interest, the wider to the narrower sentiment, morality itself to a point of honour or etiquette. ”

“ To sound every question to the bottom, never to allow our convictions to outstrip our evidence, to throw aside all prejudices and all interests in the pursuit of truth, but to hold the truth, when found, in all charity and with all consideration towards those who have been less fortunate than we—these are the lessons which, faithfully transmitted through two centuries by those who had eyes to see and ears to hear, he has bequeathed to us and our posterity. ”

“ It is a plain duty to society, that men should not exercise political power, unless they have some knowledge of the questions at issue. The amount of this knowledge may vary almost infinitely, from that of the veteran statesman to that of the newly enfranchised elector, but it is within the power of every one, who can observe and reason, to acquire some knowledge of at least the questions which affect his own employment and the welfare of his own family and neighbourhood, and, unless he will take thus much pains, he might surely have the modesty to forego his vote. ”

“ Thus, if a man has incurred physical suffering, or braved the penalties of the law or the ill word of society, in pursuance of a course of conduct which he deemed to be right, he looks back upon his actions with satisfaction, and the more important the actions, and the clearer his convictions of right and the stronger the inducements to act otherwise, the more intense will his satisfaction be. But no such satisfaction is felt, when a man has sacrificed his convictions of right to avoid physical pain, or to escape the penalties of the law, or to conciliate the goodwill of society ”

“ Were they merely the delusive visions of an old man's fancies, or had he really formed wider conceptions of science, and pictured to himself more precise and fertile methods of reaching it? The sciences, it is needless to observe, have grown vastly since Locke's day; the methods of scientific research are far more numerous, more accurate, richer in their results. Had Locke, in his thoughts at this time, at all anticipated the courses which inquiry and knowledge have since taken? ”

“ If some 'simple' and 'innate' idea of right, or some universal sense, were the test of morality, then we might expect that the moral decisions of all men would be uniform, or, at least, approximately uniform; if, on the other hand, there were no test at all, or, what amounts to much the same thing, a merely personal test, then we might expect that the moral judgments of mankind would vary arbitrarily according to the disposition and temperament of each individual man. ”

“ I ought not to dismiss this book without noticing Locke's remarks on the necessity of Parliamentary Reform. "To what gross absurdities the following of custom, when reason has left it, may lead, we may be satisfied when we see the bare name of a town, of which there remains not so much as the ruins, where scarce so much housing as a sheepcote or more inhabitants than a shepherd is to be found, sends as many representatives to the grand assembly of law-makers as a whole county numerous in people and powerful in riches." ”

“ If there is such a rule, it must be derived from some external considerations, and, if there is no such rule, then morality must be, to a large extent, a matter of prejudice, fancy, and caprice. Now I conceive that there is a simple mode of ascertaining whether there is any test of actions other than the merely subjective determinations of our own minds, or, in other words, whether there are any reasons or external considerations by which the mind guides itself in its decisions on matters of conduct. Do our moral opinions merely vary, or do they grow? ”