Baron Arthur Ponsonby Ponsonby

“ Under the Burgundian dukes the people of the Netherlands had managed to retain self-government, firmly clinging to their liberties, and at no price would they consent to become a province of Spain. No two peoples could have been more opposite in character—Spain quite behind the age, bigoted, superstitious, violently Catholic, cruel and aristocratic; and the Netherlands, full of life and activity, the rival of Italy in art and learning, ready to go ahead and adopt all the advanced and enlightened thought of the Reformation. ”

“ Tolstoy, from seeing war, formed his very strong opinions against it. He became from that time one of the most passionate apostles of peace. He saw how much that is splendid is sometimes brought out in people who face the terrors of war, but, on the other hand, he saw its fearful uselessness, the waste of noble human beings, the suffering it causes everywhere, and the destruction, in some, of all human feeling. “It is not suffering and death that are terrible,” says Tolstoy, “but that which allows people to inflict suffering and death.” ”

“ The world is learning slowly to respect liberty of conscience, to admire sincerity, to detest intolerance, and to stamp out the spirit of persecution. We are beginning to understand that a really religious nature may exist apart from any profession of faith in any particular set of doctrines. And no sensible man now would condemn as wicked and irreligious a courageous thinker who fought throughout his career for freedom and independence of thought, and refused to alter his convictions to please others or even to save his own life. ”

“ By l’infâme he meant intolerance, bigotry, superstition, persecution, and all the hideous evils that blighted the true spirit of religion. It was l’infâme that enforced the doctrines of religion by fire, torture, and imprisonment, it was l’infâme that encouraged oppression and tyranny; it was l’infâme that was the barrier to liberty, progress, and enlightenment; and l’infâme was Voltaire’s lifelong enemy. He did as much as any one to combat this evil spirit. ”

“ When we think that burning people at the stake for their religious beliefs, hanging them for sheep-stealing, putting women to death for petty thefts, or working small children in mines were considered right, when we remember that these inhuman laws were regarded by the patriot of the time as the will of God, and the people who wished to see them altered as disloyal to their rulers, we may be a little less bitter against the reformer of the present day: the man who sees that there are still many unjust laws and conditions even in his own country, and who has the courage to say so. ”

“ The only crime is for man to act inhumanly to man. A change of heart is what Tolstoy pleads for, and every man and woman, he says, can do something to help, by example and having a purpose in life. “For life,” he says in a letter to his son, “is a place of service, and in that service one has to suffer at times a great deal that is hard to bear, but more often to experience a great deal of joy. But that joy can only be real if people look upon their life as a service and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal affairs.” ”

“ Mazzini, the man of ideas; Garibaldi, the man of action; and Cavour, the statesman. The man of action and the statesman are likely to get the most credit when the great decisive actions in the final stages of a successful revolution take place. But the work of the reformer, who in the earlier and more difficult times sees a spark of light in the darkness and proceeds patiently, with the whole weight of public opinion against him, to preach, educate, and prepare the ground, is certainly more difficult and in some ways perhaps even more admirable. ”

“ It was Tolstoy’s profound sincerity and his warm heart that made people love him. They saw how passionate was his wish to make the world a better place, how he hated small, mean things, and worshiped goodness and truth. He had immense courage, and fame or the praise of men by the time he was middle-aged meant nothing to him. ”

“ We should not have realized that beside his charming qualities, his great understanding of men, his gentleness and generosity, there lay heroic qualities of endurance, devotion, and courage. That he should not by nature have been an ascetic, despising amusements, good food, and fine clothes, and the lighter side of existence, but an aristocrat, easygoing, enjoying possessions and the beauty of life, and with some human weaknesses, only draws us more closely to him, for it makes us understand the struggles and difficulties he had to overcome in himself in order to do what he did. ”

“ A good many of us admit that riches do not bring happiness, and that they undoubtedly increase our responsibilities and make us less free, but we all fail to act up to our beliefs, and continue to wish for more money in order to have a larger house, more servants, more clothes—and thus, as Thoreau says, we become “the tools of our tools” and the slaves of our own helpers and servants; in fact, these things are a hindrance to our development. “Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.” This is one of Thoreau’s maxims. ”

“ Andersen had a great gift of satire, which in some cases may be rather bitter and unkind, but in Andersen’s it could not possibly offend people. He laughs at the world, and at people’s foibles in such an amused, kindly spirit, though he does show up most clearly the absurdity and emptiness of such things as riches and power, which believe that everything is within their grasp. ”

“ It was arranged by his family that he should be a doctor, like his grandfather; but as he grew up and began to think deeply about everything he saw around him, he became appalled at the cruelty and wickedness and frivolity of the society in which he lived, and his mind was filled with doubts and misgivings. Poets, players, fools, court flatterers, knights, pages, scholars, and fair ladies were entertained in the great red-brick castle of Ferrara, and below in the dark dungeons lay, confined and chained, prisoners who had incurred the Duke’s displeasure. ”

“ But a resident at Rome in 1568, which is just about the time we are dealing with, wrote: “Some are daily burned, hanged, or beheaded; the prisons and places of confinement are filled, and they are obliged to build new ones.” The independence, the secrecy, and the far-extended power of the Inquisition made it formidable and terrifying while it lasted. The hideous cruelty and savage barbarity of its methods render the story of the Inquisition one of the blackest pages of the history of the world. ”

“ Garrison in his campaign against slavery was not going to tolerate any half-measures; if a thing was a sin, then it should not exist another day: it was real anguish to have to think of the sufferings of these poor people, and he could not rest or be happy for a moment so long as injustice and such a barbarous state of things existed. Therefore, the immediate freedom of the negro was the only thing to strive and live for. Here he and Lundy disagreed—not as to the evil of slavery, but on the question of the best way to put an end to it. Lundy was not so extreme as Garrison. ”

“ At a period when Europe was one broad battlefield, when wars were raging between races, between nations, and between religious sects, and hatred, misery, cruelty, and torture were filling the world with horror, and in a country that was suffering more than any other from these fearful evils, was born a man who, in spite of the darkness around him and in spite of the overwhelming forces which seemed to be subduing mankind, set to work to save civilization from ruin and to establish law and reason in the relations of nations. ”

“ For both recognized no authority but a man’s own heart and conscience, both set themselves to the task of rousing people to a better understanding by moral persuasion, both detested force.
It is easy to say that Tolstoy was vague, unpractical, and even absurd in the things he taught. Some people think he was quite mistaken; those who honestly believe in force and government by a few privileged people must naturally think so. Tolstoy was very extreme, but what he did was to give people a higher, more spiritual ideal, to show them that life may be a noble thing. ”