Critias

“ For this reason, we curse and scoff at your world and reject your pretended truths which, for us, are lies, including those elementary and primordial verities which you declare are evident to common sense, and on which you base your laws, your institutions, your society, your philosophy, your sciences and your arts. ”

“ I do not mean to suggest that the product in either case does not betray the flaws inherent in its origin. The flaws are there as in every human institution. Because they are not only there but visible, we have faith that they will be corrected. ”

“ Complaint is often made, in these times, of what we call the disorganized condition of society: how ill many forces of society fulfil their work; how many powerful are seen working in a wasteful, chaotic, altogether unarranged manner. It is too just a complaint, as we all know. But perhaps if we look at this of Books and the Writers of Books, we shall find here, as it were, the summary of all other disorganizations;—a sort of heart, from which, and to which all other confusion circulates in the world! ”

“ These themes are all-comprehensive: every truth and every error which any intellect can harbour, must find a place under one or other of these heads; and these, accordingly, are the departments into which philosophy is divided, inasmuch as these are the provinces where error has to be uprooted, and truth planted. ”

“ What social system or institutions would stand?—what government on the face of the earth could endure for a minute, under such a doctrine? We know that in the great scheme of creation itself, framed by an all-powerful, all-wise, and all-good Being, evil exists. ”

“ But this I suppose to be an error, and that it ought to be classed in the catalogue of common errors, and in my reasoning on this subject, I shall undertake to demonstrate that it is one, by informing mankind, that contrary to the opinion of the world, the most refined, and the most safe policy, is that which is founded in justice and truth. ”

“ Everything sickens me,—every detail of the life that is now, the stock exchange and newspapers, alleged art and trade, and the whole false principle that is under it all. I can't fight them, the contest sickens me. It is all wrong, the principle of your reform; you are wrong yourself. ”

“ What question is there in human affairs so weak or so strong that it cannot be approached by argument and reason? This country will, in every emergency, appeal to its enlightened judgment and its spirit of union and harmony, and the appeal will not be unsuccessful. ”

“ I venture to say that the levity with which bad precedents are sometimes employed and admitted as arguments in the discussion of public questions bids fair to produce a confusion of moral, legal and political notions which will have a most sinister influence upon the popular conscience. ”

“ Have we not already seen enough of the fallacy and extravagance of those idle theories which have amused us with promises of an exemption from the imperfections, weaknesses, and evils incident to society in every shape? ”

“ Will you hazard so desperate a step while there is any possibility that any portion of the ills you fly from have no real existence? Will you, while the certain ills you fly to are greater than all the real ones you fly from—will you risk the commission of so fearful a mistake? ”

“ Hull, it is wrong—altogether wrong—and YOU know it's wrong—to lend your name and your influence and your reputation to that crowd. They'd let you do a little good—why? To make their professions of reform seem plausible. To fool the people into trusting them again. ”

“ But in itself, the practice of carrying the questions which more than all others require special knowledge and preparation, before the incompetent tribunal of common opinion, is, he contends, radically irrational, and will and ought to cease when once mankind have again made up their minds to a system of doctrine. ”

“ Till that happy and sure disposal of any issue has been reached, discord, passion, wasteful expedients, and failure attend all discussions of it, all dealing with it. Experiment and shifting policy will still keep it open, but only justice and right can ever dispose of it. ”

“ My work selects, for the most part, sins against demonstration: but the world is full of questions of fact or opinion, in which a struggling minority will become a majority, or else will be gradually annihilated: and each of the cases subdivides into results of good, and results of evil. ”

“ Into this categorical assertion of a concrete experience embodying a plan, our whole series of hypothetically valid assertions of the realm of Critical Rationalism have now resolved themselves. A will concretely embodied in a life, — and these meanings identical with the very purposes that our poor fleeting finite ideas are even now so fragmentarily seeking, amidst all their flickerings and their conflicts, to express, — this, I say, is the reality. ”

“ As a spectator in close enough contact with present social problems to understand all the points under discussion, yet at the same time sufficiently removed from them to analyse them coolly and judge them without prejudice, I bring forward my evidence unshackled by conventions. It has seemed to me that such fair, exact evidence might interest those who seek to glean, amongst all classes of society, the thousand dissimilar and contradictory elements whence proceed the lessons needed both for the present and the future. ”

“ Who were better qualified than those men themselves, instructed in detail in all the peril of that crisis,—men who had comprehended and weighed with a judgment which has left no successor to its seat, all the conflicting considerations and claims which that crisis brought with it,—who better qualified than these to decide on the measures by which the hideous nuisances of that time should be abated ”

“ I propose to beg no question, to shrink from no conclusion, but to follow truth wherever it may lead. If the conclusions that we reach run counter to our prejudices, let us not flinch; if they challenge institutions that have long been deemed wise and natural, let us not turn back. ”

“ But this is a truth which, in the present state of society, will arouse the most bitter antagonism, and must fight its way, inch by inch. It will be necessary, therefore, to meet the objections of those who, even when driven to admit this truth, will declare that it cannot be practically applied. ”

“ If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis, at which we are arrived, may with propriety be regarded as the æra in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act, may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind. ”

“ It has happened however, that, in our approaches towards this crisis, the Public understanding has been but little addressed upon the subject; so that the appeal which is now suddenly made to their passions and imaginations, finds them unprepared with that knowledge of the true circumstances of the case, which can alone enable them to govern those passions, and control those [Pg 2] imaginations. Let us then endeavour to recover the time which has been lost, by taking a deliberate view of the circumstances which produce this crisis. ”

“ But according to every hypothesis as to the law, and the temptations and pressures towards vice, here are the individuals who, of all the society, have yielded to said pressure. These are of the worst substance for enduring pressure! ”

“ Anyone who can introduce a little order into this chaos by establishing in any quarter a single sound rule of criticism, a single rule which clearly marks what is right as right, and what is wrong as wrong, does a good deed; and his deed is so much the better the greater force he counteracts of learning and ability applied to thicken the chaos. ”

“ That our institutions of government and law were plainly owing to our gross defects in reason, and by consequence in virtue; because reason alone is sufficient to govern a rational creature; which was, therefore, a character we had no pretence to challenge, even from the account I had given of my own people; although he manifestly perceived, that, in order to favour them, I had concealed many particulars, and often said the thing which was not. ”

“ As to actions, he asserted that they were all morally indifferent, that men should only look to their results, and that law and custom are the only authorities which make an action either good or bad. ”

“ In the second the two persons quarrel over the question whether justice or injustice, truth or falsehood, pays better, or over some religious question, and lay a wager upon it. A decision is given against the person with whom the audience is expected to sympathize, for instance, the champion of justice. ”

“ As far as experience may show errors in our establishments, we are bound to correct them; and if any practices exist contrary to the principles of justice and humanity within the reach of our laws or our influence, we are inexcusable if we do not exert ourselves to restrain and abolish them. ”

“ That becomes the criterion to which every idea or judgment is subjected. All that upholds the established authority is good, and therefore true; all that tends to weaken it is bad and therefore false. ”

“ A long catalogue of evils might indeed be enumerated. But I see no reason for believing any of them insuperable, and I have no doubt but that the progress of political science will in time discover a remedy for most. ”

“ Thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not bear false witness—these, and the like elementary rules of conduct, are universally admitted to be right, for they are the groundwork of society. Take these away, and the world lapses into chaos. ”

“ The evils that would have come into existence had that institution not been there, however, are not apparent. They are the incalculable part of the bargain; and, being incalculable, are inevitably neglected in argument. ”

“ But not only in these higher forms of seeking after reputation, but in lower forms, this trembling before, and seeking to conciliate, the tribunal of what we call ‘general opinion,’ which means the voices of the half-dozen people that are beside us and know about us, besets us all, and weakens us all in a thousand ways. ”

“ The oftener the measure is brought under examination, the greater the diversity in the situations of those who are to examine it, the less must be the danger of those errors which flow from want of due deliberation, or of those missteps which proceed from the contagion of some common passion or interest. ”

“ And, if, looking back forty years, we observe the growth of the public claim versus the private claim, we may infer that the private claim will presently be absorbed wholly. Already the correlative theory is becoming so definite and positive that you meet with the notion, uttered as though it were an unquestionable truth, that criminals are "society's failures." ”

“ Thus, hatched by Licentiousness, Faction would attain to its enormous Growth: The unprincipled among the Great would form the Head, the unprincipled among the Populace would form the Body, of this rapacious Monster. ”

“ But does it follow that because the people make mistakes in so simple a matter as the selection of their agents, they would be infallible in the incomparably more complex and difficult task of the enactment and interpretation of laws? ”

“ Shall we wonder that the world, slowly trying its institutions by the experience of ages, has at last come to the stage of casting out the judicial ordeal; or shall we rather wonder at the constitution of the human mind, which for so many ages has set up the creations of delusive fancy to hold sway over a world of facts? ”

“ They omit, indeed, to calculate upon the accidents of disease, and temperament, and organization, and circumstance, together with the multitude of independent agencies which affect the opinions, the conduct, and the happiness of individuals, and produce determinations of the will, and modify the judgement, so as to produce effects the most opposite in natures considerably similar. These are those operations in the order of the whole of nature, tending, we are prone to believe, to some definite mighty end, to which the agencies of our peculiar nature are subordinate ”

“ Yet the revelations yielded by these ancient remains show us that societies could hold together notwithstanding: what we should think a chaos of conduct and of opinion. Nay, more, they show us that it was possible for men to profess one thing and do another, without betraying a consciousness of inconsistency. ”

“ What great calamity is to be averted? Have the people thronged our doors, and loaded our tables with petitions for relief against the pressure of some political mischief, some notorious misrule, which this experiment is to redress? ”

“ Would, O Crito that the multitude could effect the greatest evils, that they might also effect the greatest good, for then it would be well. But now they can do neither; for they can make a man neither wise nor foolish ”

“ These questions of free-will versus law, and the like, are but little, if at all, questions of fact—when we get down to definite facts bearing upon the matter we find little or no disagreement—but of point of view and emphasis. ”

“ Whether the incidents, or the characters, are copied from life, is of little importance—The only question is, if the circumstances, and situations, are altogether improbable? If not—whether the consequences might not have followed from the circumstances?—This is a grand question, applicable to all the purposes of education, morals, and legislation—and on this I rest my moral—'Do men gather figs of thorns, or grapes of thistles?' asked a moralist and a reformer. ”