Good cause

“ We’ve had a mighty large stone took out of the way, instead of any new ’uns laid in our path. Ah! Why should we ever be fainthearted? The cause is a good cause, and it will prosper, depend upon it. And now, friends, there’s many of you here to-night as came, I know, just for a bit of fun ”

“ Where now shall we place the Good? To what objects shall we apply it? To those which are in our own power? Then is health not good, and whole limbs and life? and are not children and parents and country? ”

“ Self-purified, health will be yours; faith-protected, success will be yours; self-governed, power will be yours, and all that you do will prosper, for, ceasing to be a disjointed unit, self-enslaved, you will be in harmony with the Great Law, working no longer against, but with, the Universal Life, the Eternal Good. ”

“ WHEN one passes in review the individual causes that disturb and complicate our social life, by whatever names they are designated, and their list would be long, they all lead back to one general cause, which is this: the confusion of the secondary with the essential. Material comfort, education, liberty, the whole of civilization—these things constitute the frame of the picture ”

“ But it is only of a small minority that I can say they as yet seriously take to heart these things; that they earnestly meditate on what is wanted for their country, for mankind,—for our cause is indeed, the cause of all mankind at present. ”

“ From this comparison of benevolence and self-love, of our public and private affections, of the courses of life they lead to, and of the principle of reflection or conscience as respecting each of them, it is as manifest that we were made for society, and to promote the happiness of it, as that we were intended to take care of our own life and health and private good. ”

“ For what is the fortune of any detached self as compared with the one cause of the whole country? And just such a voluntary devotion to a cause can ennoble the routine of the humblest daily business, in the office, in the household, in the school, at the desk, or in the market place, if one only finds the cause that can hold his devotion—be this cause his business firm or his profession or his household or his country or his church, or all these at once. ”

“ Yet vigor is contagious, and whatever makes us either think or feel strongly, adds to our power, and enlarges our field of action. We have a debt to every great heart, to every fine genius; to those who have put life and fortune on the cast of an act of justice; to those who have added new sciences; to those who have refined life by elegant pursuits. 'Tis the fine souls who serve us, and not what is called fine society. ”

“ And in its various applications, to increasing production and quickening communication, to lengthening life and healing sickness, to protecting workers and cheapening food, men see the natural fruits of an activity whose basis is common thought and its ultimate purpose the common good. ”

“ This critical spirit of an all-inclusive reform of life, to which everything belonging to life is subject, for which science works and art as well, living and active in the heart of modern humanity in countless problems, like the woman problem, the labor problem, like national and international social problems, with all their subdivisions,—this critical spirit gives our time a prophetic character. ”

“ If, therefore, we or any other people are to continue ambitious for the extension of that higher mental power of which we boast, or for the success of the bold spirit of enterprise with which we seek to replenish the earth and subdue it; if we desire that the lessons of Christianity and of true civilization should be spread over the world, we must strive for an abundance of this national health—tough, pliant, and elastic—ready and fit for any good work anywhere.—Journal of the Society of Arts. ”

“ The cause in which we are assembled and the objects we are met to promote, I take, and always have taken to be, the cause and the objects involving almost all others that are essential to the welfare and happiness of mankind. ”

“ And were it a thousand times dialectically demonstrated that life as a whole is regulated by a transcendent principle to a final inclusive goal, truth and error, health and disease, good and evil, hope and fear in the concrete would remain none the less just what and where they now are. ”

“ Now since every activity, whether of knowing or doing, aims at some good, it is for us to settle what the good is which the civic activity aims at,—what, in short, is the ultimate end of all 'goods' connected with conduct? ”

“ So it is with more involved phenomena. Just as we here find that, throughout both its physical and intellectual divisions, healthful life implies continuance of the established successions of antecedents and consequents among our vital actions; so shall we find it throughout the moral division. In our dealings with external Nature and our fellow men, there are relations of cause and effect, on the maintenance of which, as on the maintenance of the internal ones above instanced, life depends. ”

“ That which, when we become capable of reflection, we term conscience, consists in pleasure in forms of action furthering the welfare of society—forms gradually moulded to habit with the development of social relations,—and in a corresponding pain at the realization of having failed of such action; the knowledge of the demand, by society as a whole or by a part of society, of action in accord with the general welfare, and the sense of the justice of this demand, constituting the feeling of obligation and duty. ”

“ The causes of every social phenomenon which we are particularly interested about, security, wealth, freedom, good government, public virtue, general intelligence, or their opposites, are infinitely numerous, especially the external or remote causes, which alone are, for the most part, accessible to direct observation. ”

“ When actions of ours, therefore, can influence the state of our country, we associate the idea of those acts as causes, with the pleasurable results as effects, and hence the MOTIVE exists.
To individuals of the great body of the people, wholly in most countries deprived of power, their country can seldom present itself in the light of a motive, because with few acts of theirs as cause, can they associate a benefit to their country as the Effect. ”

“ Sir Thomas More.—The consolation is upon your principle of expectant hope. Whenever improved morals, wiser habits, more practical religion, and more efficient institutions shall have diminished the moral and material causes of disease, a thoroughly scientific practice, the result of long experience and accumulated observations, will then exist, to remedy all that is within the power of human art, and to alleviate what is irremediable. ”

“ The modification of men's moral natures, caused by the continuous discipline of social life, which adapts them more and more to social relations, is therefore the chief proximate cause of social progress. ”

“ How large a section of this world do you care for, in such a vital, responsible way, that you are thinking about its welfare, forming schemes for its improvement, bending your energies toward its advancement? ”

“ In proposing to the public any simple or compound, for the preserving, increasing, or restoring health, the first object should be to explain its nature. This is the principal test by which its merits can be known, or mankind rationally induced to try its virtues. ”

“ The general problem, which comprehends every special problem, is the right ruling of conduct in all directions under all circumstances. In what way to treat the body; in what way to treat the mind; in what way to manage our affairs; in what way to bring up a family; in what way to behave as a citizen; in what way to utilize all those sources of happiness which nature supplies—how to use all our faculties to the greatest advantage of ourselves and others—how to live completely? ”

“ One also thinks of the cause as superhuman in the scope, the wealth, the unity, and the reasonableness of its purposes and of its accomplishments.
Such is the cause. That the individual loves it is, in any one case, due to the chances of his temperament and of his development. That it can be conceived and served is a matter of social experience. That it is more worthy to be served than are any passing whims, individual or social, is the insight which the individual gets whenever he surveys his life in its wider unities. ”

“ The first great principle that ought to occupy the attention of mankind, that should be understood by the child and the adult, and which is the main spring of all action, whether people understand it or not, is the principle of {134} improvement. The principle of increase, of exaltation, of adding to that we already possess, is the grand moving principle and cause of the actions of the children of men. ”

“ Now here the great social heirloom consists of two parts: the instinct of beneficence, which makes a certain side of our nature, when predominant, wish to do good to men; and the intellectual conception of beneficence, which we can compare with any proposed course of conduct and ask, ‘Is this beneficent or not?’ By the continual asking and answering of such questions the conception grows in [34] breadth and distinctness, and the instinct becomes strengthened and purified. ”

“ So these questions are coming up perpetually, showing that underlying the ordinary surface of our common daily life is still this theory that God arbitrarily governs the world, and rewards people for being good with health and with money and with children and with all sorts of prosperity. There is no end of talk in regard to judgments, as they are called. I remember when I was living in the West I take this as an illustration as good as any a neighboring small city was badly devastated by fire. ”

“ But each of the maxims can be taken to the heart and conscience of the individual, to become a principle of each man’s own character and conduct, and then to reappear, retranslated into social action, according to the wisdom of the time or the wisdom of the man or the wisdom of the Church. ”

“ I have come here with sincere and ardent devotion to a cause, and to use my best endeavors to have that cause put under the care of men who are devoted to it with equal sincerity and possess those qualities of mind and heart which will make it safe in their keeping. ”

“ They do lead to results. They are effects and tell us of a cause. They are powerful effects, and proclaim a powerful cause. They are moral and spiritual effects, and assure us of the existence of a moral and spiritual agent who has caused them. ”

“ The constant holding of the health ideal, of the truth thought, the health and prosperity thought, the optimistic thought, the kindly, cheerful, helpful thought and the shutting out of all their opposites, not only help to restore health, but also increase tremendously the disease-resisting power. Right thought is a health, efficiency, and happiness tonic. ”

“ Thus we meet with a fundamental philosophy of life in which it is not the satisfaction of needs, appetites, and desires, but the opposite theory which is thought to lead to welfare. Renounce what you want; do what you do not want to do; pursue what is repugnant ”

“ As I consider virtue and vice to consist in action, and not in opinion, and as this action has its seat in the will, and not in the conscience, I shall confine my inquiries chiefly to the influence of physical causes upon that moral power of the mind, which is connected with volition, although many of these causes act likewise upon the conscience, as I shall show hereafter. The state of the moral faculty is visible in actions, which affect the well-being of society. ”

“ It follows necessarily from this perception that we should consider as most important in science “investigations into the results of good and bad actions, considerations of the reasonableness or unreasonableness of human institutions and beliefs, considerations of how human life should be lived in order to obtain the greatest well-being for each ”

“ We are sent into this world to struggle—that we may in a variety of ways be tried—that all our trials may tend to our improvement. What I wish to impress on you, my lads, is, that we should be contented in every condition in which we are placed; we should be thankful for every step we gain, while our chief aim in life is our religious and moral improvement. ”

“ Who shall say how many thousands have been made wiser, happier, and better, by those pursuits in which she has taught mankind to engage? to how many the studies which took their rise from her have been wealth in poverty, liberty in bondage, health in sickness, society in solitude? ”

“ Above all, every regulation of life with reference to a power above us felt to have a Providence over the world in which we live has an almost inevitable reaction on health and will lead to better things. ”

“ This arrangement of Providence, designed for our happiness, has become, either through ignorance or want of self-control, the chief cause of the many diseases and sufferings which afflict those classes who have the means of seeking a variety to gratify the palate. ”

“ We are here to introduce correct doctrine, to introduce correct morals, to introduce correct philosophy, to introduce correct government and to teach men how to live and how to die—how to be happy in this world and in the world which is to come, and to lay the foundation for eternal lives in the eternal worlds. ”

“ I mean, in nothing that shall carry forward the improvement of the head and the heart, either in the individual or society, or that shall add to the conveniences of life, or the better providing for the welfare of communities of men. ”

“ Measure as we may the progress of the world,—materially, in the advantages of steam, electricity, and other mechanical appliances; sociologically, in the great improvements in the conditions of life; intellectually, in the diffusion of education; morally, in a possibly higher standard of ethics,—there is no one measure which can compare with the decrease of physical suffering in man, woman, and child when stricken by disease or accident. ”