Andrew P. Peabody

“ When we say that he is perfectly just, pure, holy, beneficent, we recognize a standard of judgment logically independent of his nature. We mean that the fitness which the human conscience recognizes as its only standard of right, is the law which he has elected for his own administration of the universe. Could we conceive of omnipotence not recognizing this law, the decrees and acts of such a being would not be necessarily right. Omnipotence cannot make that which is fitting wrong, or that which is unfitting right. ”

“ Nor is there any department of conduct in which excess or deficiency is more painfully felt,—a redundance of compliments and assiduities tending to silence and abash the recipient, while their undue scanting inflicts a keen sense of slight, neglect, and injury.
Politeness must, indeed, in order even to appear genuine, be the expression of sincere kindness. There is no pretence so difficult to maintain as the false show of genial and benevolent feeling. The mask cannot be so fitted to the face as not to betray its seams and sutures. Yet kindness is not of itself politeness. ”

“ Men would labor only for the needs of the day, if they could not retain and enjoy the fruits of their labor; nor would they be at pains to invent or actualize industrial improvements of any kind, if they had no permanent interest in the results of such improvements. Then, too, if there were no protection for property, there could be no accumulation of capital, and without capital there could be no enterprise, no combined industries, no expenditure in faith of a remote, yet certain profit. Nor yet can the ends of a progressive civilization be answered by a community of goods and gains. ”

“ Fitness is the only standard by which we regard our own actions or the actions of others as good or evil,—by which we justify or condemn ourselves or others. Duty has fitness for its only aim and end. To whatever object comes under our control, its fit place, purpose, uses, and relations are due; and our perception of what is thus due constitutes our duty, and awakens in us a sense of obligation. To ourselves, and to other beings and objects, our fidelity to our relations has in it an intrinsic fitness; that fitness is due to them and to ourselves ”

“ He knows the most, who most fully comprehends the relations in which the beings and objects in the universe stand, have stood, and ought to stand toward one another. Moreover, as when we see a fitness within our sphere of action, we perceive intuitively that it is right to respect it, wrong to violate it, our knowledge of right and wrong is co-extensive with our knowledge of persons and things. The more enlightened and cultivated a nation is, then, the more does it know as to right and wrong, whatever may be its standard of practical morality. ”

“ Considerate courtesy, delicacy, and gentleness are essential parts of beneficence. There are very few so abject that they do not feel insulted and degraded by what is coldly, grudgingly, superciliously, or chidingly bestowed; while the thoughtful tenderness which never forgets the sensibilities of those whom it relieves, inspires comfort, hope, and courage, arouses whatever capacity there may be of self-help, and is often the means of replacing the unfortunate in the position from which they have fallen.
Beneficence has a much broader scope than the mere relief of the poor and suffering. ”

“ We cannot contemplate the tokens of his love in the outward universe, the unnumbered objects which have no other possible use than to be enjoyed, the benignity of his perpetual providence, the endowments and capacities of our own being, the immortality of our natural aspiration and our Christian faith and hope, the forgiveness and redemption that come to us through Jesus Christ, and the immeasurable blessings of his mission and gospel, without fervent gratitude to our infinite Benefactor. ”

“ It is true, indeed, that the choice of companions of doubtful virtue is often the first outward sign of vicious proclivities; while a tenacious adherence to the society of the most worthy not infrequently precedes any very conspicuous development of personal excellence; but in either case the choice of friends indicates the predominant springs of action, and the direction in which the character has begun to grow. So far then is man from being under the irresistible control of motives from without, that these motives are in great part the results and the tokens of his own voluntary agency. ”

“ There are crimes worse than murder. There are modes of moral corruption and ruin, whose victims it were mercy to kill. But while the murderer, if he escape the gallows, is an outcast and an object of universal abhorrence, no social ban rests upon him whose crime has been the death of innocence and purity, yet, if reached at all by law, can be compounded by the payment of money. ”

“ In every department of life, men stimulate one another toward a higher standard of endeavor, attainment, or excellence. What each does, his neighbor would fain outdo; what each becomes, his neighbor would fain surpass. It is only by perversion that this desire tends to evil. It finds its proper satisfaction, not in crushing, depressing, or injuring a rival, but barely in overtaking and excelling him; and the higher his point of attainment, the greater is the complacency experienced in reaching and transcending it. ”

“ But with the growth of ethical philosophy, and especially with the cultivation by the Stoics of the sterner and hardier traits of moral excellence, men learned that there was open to them a more perilous battle-ground, a severer conflict, and a more glorious victory, than in mere physical warfare,—that there was a higher type of manliness in self-conquest, in the resistance and subdual of appetite and passion, in the maintenance of integrity and purity under intense temptation and amidst vicious surroundings, than in the proudest achievements of military valour. ”

“ The common house is a mere lodging and feeding place. Society is sought elsewhere, pleasure elsewhere; and for the young and easily impressible there is the strongest inducement to those modes of dissipation in which vice conceals its grossness behind fair exteriors and under attractive forms. On the other hand, the well-ordered house affords to its inmates the repose, comfort, and enjoyment which they crave and need, and for those whose characters are in the process of formation may neutralize allurements to evil which might else be irresistible. ”

“ Revenge is the desire to inflict evil for evil. In principle it is always wrong; for the evil-doer, though he may merit transient anger and resentment, is not therefore placed beyond our benevolence, but is rather commended to our charity as one who may be reformed and may become worthy of our esteem. In practice, revenge can scarce ever be just. Our self-love so exaggerates our estimate of the wrong we receive, that we could hardly fail to retaliate by greater wrong, and thus to provoke a renewal of the injury. ”

“ Emulation is not envy, nor need it lead to envy. Among those who strive for superiority there need be no collision. The natural desire is to be, not to seem, superior; to have the consciousness, not the mere outward semblance, of high attainment; and of attainment, not by a conventional, but by an absolute standard; and this aim excludes none,—there may be as many first places as there are deserving candidates for them. ”

“ A bad law is to be obeyed for the sake of order; an immoral law is to be disobeyed for the sake of the individual conscience; and of the moral character of a particular law, or of action under it, the individual conscience is the only legitimate judge. Where the law of the land and absolute right are at variance, the citizen is bound, not only to withhold obedience, but to avow his belief, and to give it full expression in every legitimate form and way, by voice and pen, by private influence and through the ballot-box. ”

“ On the other hand, a despotic or arbitrary government may admit of abrogation only by force; and if its administration violates private rights, imposes unrighteous burdens and disabilities, suppresses the development of the national resources, and supersedes the administration of justice or the existence of equitable relations between class and class or between man and man, the people—the rightful source and arbiter of government—has manifestly the right to assert its own authority, and to substitute a constitution and rulers of its own choice for the sovereignty which has betrayed its trust. ”

“ The measure of beneficence, prescribed for us on the most sacred authority, “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them,” needs only to be stated to be received as authentic. It supplies a measure for our expectations also, as well as for our duties. We have a right to expect from others as much courtesy, kindness, service as, were they in our place and we in theirs, we should feel bound to render to them,—a rule which would often largely curtail our expectations, and in the same proportion tone down our disappointments and imagined grievances. ”

“ God, as possessing in infinite fulness all the properties which we revere in man, must ever be the worthy object of supreme reverence.
Gratitude, though it can hardly be disjoined from love, is seldom cherished for the same person in the same degree with love. We love our beneficiaries more than our benefactors. We love those dependent upon us more than those on whom we depend. The mother's love for her child is the strongest of human affections, and undoubtedly exceeds that even of the child for the mother to whom he owes every benefit and blessing under heaven. ”

“ But if I believe that under a fatherly Providence there can be no suffering without its ministry of mercy, no loss without its greater gain within my reach and endeavor, no hardship without its reflex benefit in inward growth and energy, then I can take and bear the inevitable burdens of this earthly life in the same spirit in which I often assume burdens not imposed upon me from without, for the more than preponderant benefit which I hope to derive from them. ”

“ James, “Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, is guilty of all,”—not that he who commits a single offence through inadvertency or sudden temptation, is thus guilty; but he who willingly and deliberately violates the right as to matters in which he is the most strongly tempted to wrong and evil, shows an indifference to the right which will lead him to observe it only so long and so far as he finds it convenient and easy so to do. ”

“ Far better is it to make literal truth the unvarying law of life, and then to rest in the assurance that, should an extreme case present itself, the exigency of the moment will suggest the course to be pursued. Yet, in ethical strictness, falsehood from one self-conscious person to another cannot be justified; but we can conceive of circumstances in which it might be extenuated. There are no degrees of right; but of wrong there may be an infinite number of degrees. One straight line cannot be straighter than another ”

“ A life-time is none too long for a life's work. Hence the fitness, and therefore the duty, of a careful economy of time. This economy can be secured only by a systematic arrangement of one's hours of labor, relaxation, and rest, and the assignment to successive portions of the day, week, or year, of their appropriate uses. The amount of time wasted, even by an industrious man who has no method or order in his industry, bears a very large proportion to the time profitably employed. ”

“ The soul that seeks to know, is thus in constant agitation. But happiness consists in imperturbableness of spirit, that is, in suspense of judgment; and as it is our duty to promote our own happiness, it is our duty to live without desire or fear, preference or abhorrence, love or hatred, in entire apathy,—a life of which Mohammed's fabled coffin is the fittest symbol. ”

“ Nor yet can benevolence account for the love of knowledge. Many, indeed, make their attainments the property of others, and are zealous in diffusing their own scientific views, or in dispensing instruction in their own departments. But there are also many solitary, recluse students; and it may be doubted whether, if a man who is earnestly engaged in any intellectual pursuit were shut out entirely from human society, and left alone with his books or with nature, his diligence would be relaxed, or his ardor abated. ”

“ There is a certain charm in good faith and honesty, even when on the side of wrong and vice; and it is his perfect frankness, self-complacency, nay, self-praise, in a sensuality which in plain prose would seem by turns vapid and disgusting, that makes Horace even perilously fascinating, so that the guardians of the public morals may well be thankful that for the young the approach to him is warded off by the formidable barriers of grammar and dictionary. ”

“ Kindness alone cannot produce sympathy. In order to feel with another, we must either have passed through similar experiences, or must have an imagination sufficiently vivid to make them distinctly present to our thought. This latter power is by no means necessary to create even the highest degree of kindness or of pity; and among the most active and persevering in works of practical beneficence, there are many who feel intensely for, yet but faintly with, the objects of their charity. ”

“ We can conceive of the treatment of actions under various aspects, as wise or unwise, agreeable or disagreeable, spontaneous or deliberate; but by the common consent of mankind, at least of the civilized and enlightened portion of mankind, the distinction of actions as right or wrong is regarded as of an importance so far transcending all other distinctions, as to render them of comparatively little moment. Therefore Moral Philosophy confines itself to this single distinction, and takes cognizance of others, only as they modify this, or are modified by it. ”

“ Now if a man will not put and keep himself under the government of conscience, it concerns him at least to remain under the control of reason, which, if it do not compel him to do right, will restrain him within the limits of expediency, and thus will insure for him reputation, a fair position, and a safe course in life, even though it fail of the highest and most enduring good. ”

“ But the Christian, so far as he consents to receive the obvious and undoubted import of Christ's mission and teachings, must regard all men as, in nature, in the paternal care of the Divine Providence, in religious privileges, rights, and capacities, on an equal footing. With this view, he cannot but perceive the fitness, and therefore the obligation, of many forms of social duty, of enlarged beneficence, of unlimited philanthropy, which on any restricted theory of human brotherhood would be neither fitting nor reasonable. ”

“ It may seem to a conscientious man a worthy enterprise to vindicate and rescue from its evil associations an amusement or indulgence in itself not only harmless, but salutary; and there may be an equally strong sense of right on both sides of a question of social morality falling under this head. The joyous side of life must be maintained. The young, sanguine, and happy will at all events have recreations, games, festivities, and of these there is not a single element, material, or feature that has not been abused, perverted, or invested with associations offensive to a pure moral taste. ”