Goldwin Smith

“ Our early histories, sciences, poetries, and theologies are all false, yet they comprehend by far the major part of human thought. Priesthoods have ruled the world by deceiving our tender souls, and yet they command our most enduring reverence. Where, then, do we discover that any law of universal nature prefers truth to falsehood, any more than oxygen to nitrogen, or alkalies to salts? So habituated have we become to assume that truth-telling is a virtue, that nothing is more difficult than to tell how we came to assume it; nor is it easy of proof that it is a virtue in an unrestricted sense. ”

“ Let the main object of association be ever so important, must there not be always, to preserve discipline and beat the enemy, a terrible sacrifice of conscience and of freedom of opinion? Is not legislation, on the most vital subjects, apt to be governed, not by regard for the public good, but by the exigencies of the conflict and the necessity of keeping up the ministerial steam, or raising an agitation to drive opponents from power? ”

“ Even in its best estate, when there are organic issues, issues which create genuine enthusiasm and raise the combatants above the meanness of faction, is party a good government? Is not the possession of power and place always present as a motive warping the conduct of the leaders on national questions? Does not sheer passion always rage among the rank and file? Is not corruption an almost indispensable instrument of party organization? ”

“ In no ancient writer is there to be found a protest like his against the oppression of the weaker races. But to get this sensible, warm motion to lose itself in a mere generalization, whether the generalization be humanity, animality—which for all that we can see has just as good a claim as humanity—or simply evolution, and to be content with the prospective welfare of this generalization instead of thinking about its own, does seem to us absolutely impossible, unless it be in the case of a very extraordinary temperament, or during the brief continuance of an artificial mood. ”

“ So, at least, thought that eminent agnostic who pronounced the eighteen centuries of Christianity a retrogression from the happy and scientific age of Tiberius, and by that strange burst of antitheistic frenzy showed that we may have to be on our guard against a fanaticism of hostility to religion as well as against a fanaticism of religion.
The opinion of those who are confident that no moral disturbance is coming, but, on the contrary, a great and universal improvement in morality, might have more weight with us if we were sure that their eyes were turned in the right direction. ”

“ The House of Lords is not a Senate, nor a second Chamber, in the sense in which the term is practically employed by the architects of new constitutions. It is an estate of the realm: it is a privileged order having an interest of its own separate from that of the nation at large, and defending its own interests, which are necessarily those of privilege, and therefore of reaction, by resisting every measure of political change as long as it is safe to do so. Of its revising precipitate legislation in an impartial sense no instance can be found. ”

“ Spencer most truly says, bad in every way; but how many are there who must either do too much work or starve! It is not healthful to be on the wintry Atlantic clinging to the frozen shrouds, to pant all day beside the fiery furnace, to be delving in the dark mine, to be sitting as a cab-driver exposed to all weathers, to be toiling as a farm-laborer with overtasked sinews from dawn to dusk. Of the labor which is the lot of most men, and in which their lives are almost entirely spent, very little is, like that of the artist, relieved by any sense of enjoyment ”

“ If the woman has had her disabilities, she has also had her privileges. War has spared her; for, if in primitive times she was made a slave, this was better, in the days before sentiment at least, than being massacred. And her privileges have been connected with her disabilities. If she had made war by her vote, she could not have claimed special respect as a neutral, nor will she be able to claim special respect as a neutral if she makes war by her vote hereafter.
In the United States the privileges of women may be said to extend to impunity, not only for ordinary outrage, but for murder. ”

“ They make him happy, according to the only measure of happiness which he can conceive; and if he is cautious, as a sagacious voluptuary will be, they need not diminish his vitality, they may even increase it both in duration and intensity, though they may play havoc with the welfare of a number of victims and dependents. He may successively seduce a score of women without bad consequences to himself. Why is he doing wrong? In the name of what do you peremptorily summon him to return to the path of virtue? In the name of altruistic pleasure? ”

“ It is time that the form of government should, if possible, be settled, and the political revolution brought to a close; the prolongation of the struggle, with all the appeals to passion and other sinister motives which it involves, is seriously affecting character and collecting difficulties round the government of the future, while a deeper and more momentous revolution, in the religious and social sphere, threatens the stability of civilization, and demands with increasing urgency the attention of the world. ”

“ It is still a necessity to woman in the countries where the primitive type of society remains. What would be the fate of a female Bedouin, if she were suddenly invested with woman's rights and emancipated from the protection of her husband?
That the present relation of women to their husbands literally has its origin in slavery, and is a hideous relic of that system, is a theory which Mr. Mill sets forth in language such as, if it could sink into the hearts of those to whom it is addressed, would turn all affection to bitterness, and divide every household against itself. ”

“ Any one who is tolerably well informed ought to be ashamed to represent them as the contrivances of male injustice. It is not on one sex only that the relics of feudalism have borne hard.
The exclusion of women from professions is cited as another proof of constant and immemorial injustice. But what woman asked or wished to be admitted to a profession fifty or even five-and-twenty years ago? What woman till quite recently would have been ready to renounce marriage and maternity, in order that she might devote herself to law, medicine, or commercial pursuits? ”

“ Why should not a good Chancellor of the Exchequer act in harmony with a good Home Secretary notwithstanding a difference of opinion about the church establishment or the extension of the franchise? Why should the country be prevented by that difference from availing itself of the administrative capacity of both? And why should not each be free to vote as a member of the legislature, in accordance with his personal opinion? ”

“ Mill, seeing that the man is the stronger, seems to assume that the relations between man and woman must always have been regulated simply by the law of the strongest. But strength is not tyranny. The protector must always be stronger than the person under his protection. A mother is overwhelmingly superior in strength to her infant child, and the child is completely at her mercy. The very highest conception that humanity has ever formed, whether it be founded in reality or not, is that of power losing itself in affection. ”

“ Even now, what is the amount of settled belief in the right, as it is termed, of "coeducation?" What would be said to a young man if he presented himself in the name of that right at the door of Vassar, or any female college? Without arraigning the past, those whose duty it is may consider, with the deliberation which they deserve, the two distinct questions, whether it is desirable that the education of both sexes shall be the same, and whether it is desirable that the young men and the young women of the wealthier classes shall be educated together in the same universities. ”

“ No one who was in the United States at the time of the civil war could fail to see what immense strength that Government derived from the breadth of the basis on which it rested, and from the universal feeling that it was in the fullest sense the Government of the people. It was enabled in this way to put forth a power which no autocracy could have put forth. Many Americans, it is true, will tell you that universal suffrage is a failure, and that it is the great danger of the state. ”

“ Man, the insect, aims at producing things which we feel to be noble, and which, according to the measure of his span, will endure; but the power of the universe does nothing but turn the homogeneous into the heterogeneous and back again through the same tread-mill round of differentiations and integrations, every round ending in the same fatal "equilibration" and total wreck of all the results of the process. ”

“ Yet if this life were all, and if enjoyment were the object of being, it would be difficult to deny that the pessimist had a formidable case, or that the world, on the whole and for the majority of mankind, was a failure. It is, at least it may be, otherwise if the theistic hypothesis is true, if the secret of the universe is not mechanical but moral, if the paramount object is the formation of character, and if the results of effort are to endure, in any form whatever, beyond the physical catastrophe of the planet. Trying to be good is within the power of a galley-slave ”

“ It clearly implies that the community is divided by a difference of opinion, not only on ordinary matters and points of current administration, but on some question of fundamental character and of paramount importance. Nothing less can make the submission of the individual intellect and conscience to party discipline rational or moral. In the absence of such a question, party is faction, the ruin of all commonwealths. ”

“ Lying is often a refuge to the weak, a stepping-stone to power, a ground of reverence toward those who live by getting credit for knowing what they do not know. No one doubts that it is right for the maternal partridge to feign lameness, a broken wing or leg, in order to conceal her young in flight, by causing the pursuer to suppose he can more easily catch her than her offspring. From whence, then, in nature, do we derive the fact that a human being may not properly tell an untruth with the same motive? ”

“ And therefore we are still at liberty, at all events, to entertain the belief that the sight of a single politician suffering a felon's doom by the impartial and righteous judgment of a court of law, for the corrupt betrayal of his public trust, would have a more salutary effect than the interested and reckless denunciations of all the party orators and journalists in the world. ”

“ We may accept with admiration and gratitude Darwin's scientific discoveries without feeling ourselves obliged to draw from them inferences which the discoverer himself has not drawn. We may recognize the breaches made by science, history, and criticism in the evidences not only of Christianity, but of natural religion; we may admit with sadness that the world is at present left without any positive proof, in a producible form, of articles of belief deemed but a few years ago as indisputable as they were fundamental ”

“ It is needless to say that any discussion of the relative excellence, intellectual or moral, of the two moieties of humanity would be equally barren and irrelevant. The only question is as to the proper spheres of the man and woman; and assuredly, by unsexing women, we should do no homage to their sex.
It is alleged that female influence would mitigate the violence of party politics. But what ground have we, in reason or experience, for believing that women, if introduced into the political arena, would be less violent than men? ”

“ Hundreds of thousands have suffered death for their religion. Is it conceivable that the belief for which they died can have had no influence on their lives? Is it conceivable that the influence can have been confined to the martyrs? Is not Christendom almost coextensive with moral civilization? And does not the whole face of Christendom—do not its literature, its art, its architecture, show that religion has been its soul? ”

“ Instead of disparaging the morality of scientific men I have expressly recognized their moral superiority as a class, only pointing out that we can not reason from their case to that of the multitude. To those of the number who served on the Jamaica Committee I have paid the best tribute in my power by saying that they were "among the foremost champions of humanity on that occasion," as Miss Bevington finds herself compelled with very manifest reluctance to admit. ”

“ A man and his wife, taking opposite sides in politics, would be brought into direct and public collision, especially if they happened to be active politicians, about a subject of the most exciting kind. Would the harmony of most households bear the strain? Would not a husband who cared for his own happiness be apt to say that if his wife wanted it she might have the vote, but that there should be only one vote between them? ”

“ Can any instance be named in history of a party founded on temperament, not on interest or connection? In politics, as in other things, age, no doubt, as a rule, is cautious, and youth hopeful; yet what reactionists are more violent than the younger members of an aristocratic faction? ”

“ Who can doubt that many good and noble works have been, and are still being performed, from love of God and from a love of man which is inspired by belief in our common relations to God? Who can doubt that heroes and reformers have been led to face peril, to risk their lives in the service of their kind, by the conviction that they were doing the Divine will, and that while they were doing it they would be in the Divine keeping? ”

“ It is needless to say what effects an incessant war of intrigue, calumny, and corruption, carried on by such party leaders, with the aid of the sort of journalists who are willing to take their pay, must produce on the political character of a community, however naturally good, and well adapted for self-government. Nobody is to blame. The blame rests entirely on the system. ”