Civic life

“ The powers of state, therefore, should embrace individual life in its entirety; from infancy to mature age, “in all conditions and relations, whether domestic, religious, social, industrial or political.” ”

“ I can conceive such a community organized in running order, powers judiciously delegated—farming, building, trade, courts, mails, schools, elections, all attended to; and then the rest of life, the main thing, freely branching and blossoming in each individual, and bearing golden fruit. I can see there, in every young and old man, after his kind, and in every woman after hers, a true personality, develop'd, exercised proportionately in body, mind, and spirit. ”

“ It gives habits of analyzing the aims and motives of men, and the means they employ to attain their ends, i.e., it gives insight into character and hence makes social adjustment easier.
(b) It develops tolerance for the opinions, convictions, and ideals of others, and tends to prevent hard, dogmatic, and uncompromising judgments and attitudes.
(c) It gives appreciation of the civic and political institutions of to-day—their origin, development, and purposes—and hence teaches the rights and obligations that are inherent in citizenship. ”

“ But several general causes have tended to increase it in our own generation, despite the increasing strength of the appeal which civic duty makes to men who are, or if they cared might be, better informed about public affairs than were their fathers. ”

“ Public spirit is the life of the community in the heart of the individual.—This recognition that we belong to society, and that society belongs to us, that its interests are our interests, that its wrongs are ours to redress, its rights are ours to maintain, its losses are ours to bear, its blessings are ours to enjoy, is public spirit. ”

“ Shall we not rather take the place to which we are entitled, as the leaders, rather than the followers, in the customs of society, turn back the tide of aristocratic inroads, and carry through the whole, not only of civil and political, but of social and domestic, life, the true principles of democratic freedom and equality? ”

“ The head and the heart should act in concert; the head perceiving that the same general principles should be used to direct the forms of every department of life, and endeavoring to apply them to control humanity, should head the appeals of the heart, which, from its mainsprings of love and tenderness, feels, that the whole universe is bound together by the indissoluble ties of fraternity, and, therefore, should realize that as a father and mother, they should govern their children. Of these principles, government should be the true exponent, representative and administrator. ”

“ Out of rights grow duties; the first of which is to live an honest, truthful, self-loyal life, acting and speaking always and everywhere in accordance with the laws of our being, as revealed in our own physical and mental organization. It is by the light of this fact that we must look upon all social requirements, whether in dress, manners, or morals. All that is fundamental and genuine in these will be found to harmonize with universal principles, and consequently with our primary duty in reference to ourselves. ”

“ But these duties become diversified and specialized according as we view man either in the light of the private functions he fills in society, which are his professional duties, or in the light of the particular society of which he is a member, and which is called the State or the country, and these are the civic duties. ”

“ These gains are evidence of a quiet transformation -- a revolution of conscience, in which a rising generation is finding that a life of personal responsibility is a life of fulfillment. Government has played a role. ”

“ Whatever we can do to benefit society benefits ourselves, and in throwing ourselves heart and soul into any of those enterprises that benefit society we are discharging in a very special way the duties of good citizenship. ”

“ Perhaps it is because the kind of democracy we have known -- for the better part of this century -- has emphasized the individual over the community, private gain over the public good, and civic rights over civic duties. But, in truth, the concept of civic duty is the core of the historic tradition of democracy everywhere. ”

“ I spent many years in that illustrious society, in a well-regulated course of useful discipline and studies, and in the agreeable and improving commerce of gentlemen and of scholars; in a society where emulation without envy, ambition without jealousy, contention without animosity, incited industry, and awakened genius; where a liberal pursuit of knowledge, and a genuine freedom of thought, were raised, encouraged, and pushed forward by example, by commendation, and by authority. ”

“ Here, then, lie the first Foundations of civil Liberty: In forming the Habits of the youthful Heart, to a Coincidence with the general Welfare: In checking every rising Appetite that is contrary to This, and in forwarding every Passion that may promote the Happiness of the Community: In implanting and improving Benevolence, Self-Controul, Humility, Integrity, and Truth ”

“ Only those are called to leadership in political life who have recognized the community-bound law of all human life in purest clarity and in the all-embracing extent of its validity and who will place all the powers of their personal lives with the help of a politically moral character in the service of the formation of community life ... ”

“ Therefore if government, private property, marriage, and respect for human life are all good and essential to the very existence of civil society, then it follows that by strengthening every one of them superstition has rendered a great service to humanity. ”

“ The benevolence, charity, capacity, and industry which, exerted in private life, would make a family, a parish, or a town happy, employed upon a larger scale, in support of the great principles of virtue and freedom of political regulations, might secure whole nations and generations from misery, want, and contempt. Public virtues and political qualities, therefore, should be incessantly cherished in our children. ”

“ What, for example, are the qualities in the citizens individually which conduce most to keep up the amount of good conduct, of good management, of success and prosperity, which already exist in society? Every body will agree that those qualities are industry, integrity, justice, and prudence. But are not these, of all qualities, the most conducive to improvement? and is not any growth of these virtues in the community in itself the greatest of improvements? ”

“ Hence, after a Liberal and an Imperial generation, each happy in their respective visions of wealth and expanding greatness, the current renewal of civic interests naturally takes the form of an awakening survey of our actual environment. ”

“ It was therefore necessary to give them a few positive precepts, moulding and regulating their moral and social conduct, to make them 'new creatures' with new notions and new purposes, and to remodel the national life. ”

“ In other words, as a return for what you wish to have society do for you, what can you do for society? This is a very important question—more important to you than to society. The question is, whether you will be a member of society by right, or by courtesy. If you have so mean a spirit as to be content to be a beneficiary of society—to receive favors and to confer none—you have no business in the society to which you aspire. ”

“ Read the history of what has been done in this commonwealth, in this city, during the last twenty-five years for humanity, for education, for science and the arts, for every form of public use or human need, and then say, if you can, that public spirit has been dying out. Our people have never been otherwise than public spirited, and hence the promptness and unanimity of their response to this new call to public duty. ”

“ that the question was, whether, if the reformers of society and government could succeed in their objects, and every person in the community were free and in a state of physical comfort, the pleasures of life, being no longer kept up by struggle and privation, would cease to be pleasures. ”

“ This plan follows the natural growth and development of the child’s mind, and aims by teaching the civic virtues and simplest community relations to lay the foundations of good citizenship. See Outline of Work on page 231.
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[ix]
CONTENTS
[1]
PART I
CIVIC VIRTUES Stories Teaching Thoroughness, Honesty,
Respect, Patriotism, Kindness to
Animals
These stories also teach, incidentally, the co-ordinate virtues of obedience, cleanliness, orderliness, courtesy, helpfulness, punctuality, truthfulness, care of property, and fair play. ”

“ One leads to a higher citizenship, a freer expression of the individual and a fuller life for all. The other leads to reaction, the rule of the few over the many, and the restriction of the average man's chances to grow upward. ”

“ In every community in our land there are many hundreds of earnest and sincere men, clergymen and laymen, reformers who strive for reform in the field of politics, in the field of philanthropy, in the field of social life ”

“ It is by political discussion that the manual laborer, whose employment is a routine, and whose way of life brings him in contact with no variety of impressions, circumstances, or ideas, is taught that remote causes, and events which take place far off, have a most sensible effect even on his personal interests; and it is from political discussion and collective political action that one whose daily occupations concentrate his interests in a small circle round himself, learns to feel for and with his fellow-citizens, and becomes consciously a member of a great community. ”

“ Let law and religion, learning and scholarship, pure speech, noble ideas, and sacred principles—the order and moral dignity of the family—man's moral strength, woman's winning beauty, her stainless purity, her exalted excellence and piety,—and the simplicity of youth,—let these be the agencies we use in forming and compacting the main and master instrument for the fulfilment of a nation's mission—its mind and manhood! ”

“ As soon as the place begins to spread at ease real responsibility of all sorts will begin, and the good-natured feeling must surely be that the civic conscience in her, at such a stage, will fall into step. ”

“ In a free democracy, on the other hand, those who participate are in a continuous process of education, judging, selecting, willing, and always with regard to realities that affect daily life. Citizenship gives one a continuous laboratory course of training in the art of right living. ”

“ In this new nation was realized the dream of the social philosophers and philanthropists of all ages: a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, resting on the deep and solid foundations of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. ”

“ That reasons as well as feelings may help the establishment of happiness and liberty, on the basis of wisdom and virtue, be our aim and intention. Let us not be led into any means which are unworthy of this end, nor, as [Pg 250] so much depends upon yourselves, let us cease carefully to watch over our conduct, that when we talk of reform it be not objected to us, that reform ought to begin at home. In the interval that public or private duties and necessary labours allow, husband your time so that you may do to others and yourselves the most real good. ”

“ Not only be ready to defend it with your lives; but constantly cultivate and encourage the inspiring qualities of civic pride and virtue, so that your whole future career will reflect a sincere and patriotic affection for and just appreciation of the noble institutions of our great republic. ”

“ Mortified to see, by the faces of my listeners, that I did not make the favourable impression I had anticipated, I elevated my theme; dwelling on the excellence of democratic institutions, their promotion of tranquil happiness by the government of party, and the mode in which they diffused such happiness throughout the community by preferring, for the exercise of power and the acquisition of honours, the lowliest citizens in point of property, education, and character. ”

“ Above all, This will give Stability to civil Liberty, if the social Passions of Individuals can be so far extended, as to include the Welfare of the whole Community, as their chief and primary Object. This Affection is distinguished by the Name of public Spirit, or the Love of our Country; the highest Passion that can sway the human Heart, considered as a permanent Foundation of true Liberty. ”

“ This domestic Spiritual Power, being principally moral, and confined to a private life, requires the support and guidance of an intellectual power exterior to it, the sphere of which will naturally be wider, extending also to public life. ”

“ Political ideals must be based upon ideals for the individual life. The aim of politics should be to make the lives of individuals as good as possible. ”

“ And thus the stages are before us in the course of which the coming just society may gradually be established—that society in which the individual shall attain his highest liberty and development, and consequently his greatest happiness. ”

“ We hear, indeed, some wild talk about the establishment of a social order, or disorder, without government and without laws and courts of justice, in which everybody can do what he or she pleases, and that when everybody can do what he or she pleases, everybody will do right, and have enough of the good things of the world, and be happy. ”

“ Societies, if they reflect on the end of their association, will perceive that to secure it they must observe good faith and punctuality in their engagements. The citizen, when he consults his reason, will perceive how much it is necessary, for the good of the nation to which he belongs, that he should exert himself to advance its prosperity, or, in its misfortunes, to retrieve its glory. ”