Ironmongery

“ He knew that his thoughts were not the thoughts of others—that he was with the few, and that where one would take his side, thousands would be his eager foes. He knew that wealth would scorn and cultured ignorance deride, and that believers in the creeds, buttressed by law and custom, would hurl the missiles of revenge and hate. He knew that lies, like snakes, would fill the pathway of his life—and yet he told his honest thought—told it without hatred and without contempt—told it as it really was. ”

“ Everything new excites the awe and fear of the savage. This superstitious objection to iron perhaps dates from that early time in the history of society when iron was still a novelty, and as such was viewed by many with suspicion and dislike.732 For everything new is apt to excite the awe and dread of the savage. “It is a curious superstition,” says a pioneer in Borneo, “this of the Dusuns, to attribute anything—whether good or bad, lucky or unlucky—that happens to them to something novel which has arrived in their country. ”

“ I rather distrust a man who never swears, or savagely kicks the foot-stool, or pokes the fire with unnecessary violence. Without some outlet, the anger caused by the ever-occurring troubles of life is apt to rankle and fester within. The petty annoyance, instead of being thrown from us, sits down beside us and becomes a sorrow, and the little offense is brooded over till, in the hot-bed of rumination, it grows into a great injury, under whose poisonous shadow springs up hatred and revenge. ”

“ The destructive instincts of the mob are such that in certain moods it is ready to destroy any kind of man, just as the destructive instincts of a puppy are such that in certain moods it is ready to destroy any sort of book—whether Smiles's Self-Help or Mademoiselle de Maupin is a matter of perfect indifference. The virtuously indignant maintain their power by constantly inciting and feeding this appetite for destruction. Hence, when we feel virtuously indignant, we would do well to inquire of ourselves if that is the limit and Z of our virtue. ”

“ To be fair to the virtuously indignant and the mob, they do not insist beyond reason that their victim shall be a bad man. Good hunting may be had even among the saints, and who does not enjoy the spectacle of a citizen distinguished mainly for his unblemished character being dragged down into the dust? We have no reason to believe that the people who were burned during the Inquisition were worse than their neighbours, yet the mob, we are told, used to gather enthusiastically and dance round the flames. ”

“ When one is charged with practices, which his soul abhors, and which conscious innocence tells him he has never committed, an honest indignation will draw from him expressions in his own favor, which, on other occasions, might be ascribed to an ostentatious turn of mind. The part which I have acted in the American cause has been acknowledged by our friends and by our enemies to have been far from an indifferent one. ”

“ What, if she could think how fearful is my interest in these outrages, that in all probability, if their authors are detected, there is one who will drag me into their ruin; that I am given over, bound and blinded, into the hands of another; and that other, a man steeled to mercy, and withheld from my destruction by a thread—a thread that a blow on himself would snap. ”

“ Thus from these two qualities combined in the presence of oppression, cruelty, or the ordinary stupid and callous denial of freedom, there sprang that flame of indignation from which alone the burning book derives its fire. Examine those other books whose titles I have mentioned, and their origin will in every case be found the same. They are the flaming children of rage, and rage is begotten by imaginative power out of love for the common human kind. ”

“ How often when passion and rancour move us to shew our zeal in the cause of virtue, 166 by oppressing and driving to ruin unutterable, what we call successful villainy, the next hour brings us the news that the object of our indignation is dead.—That soul is gone, however polluted, to answer before another throne for its offences. Ah! who can say that our very severity to such offender may not turn back upon ourselves, and be registered in the Heaven we look forward to with such presumption, to exclude us for ever from it. ”

“ A deep vein of irony runs through every grade of society, making it possible for us to laugh at our own bitter discomfiture, and to scoff with startling distinctness at the evils which we passively permit. ”

“ Ignorance and brutality prevailed amongst large sections of the people both in town and country, and the privileged classes, in spite of vulgar ostentation and the parade of fine manners, set them an evil example in both directions. ”

“ In matters which are morally indifferent, irony is only a jesting which is disguised by gravity; as when we apparently agree with the notions of another person which are averse from our own, so that we puzzle him not only on the point of our own notion, but on the point of his own, and he begins to have a suspicion that he is not sound in the matter. ”

“ But let them rather, learning to good effect from us the wicked tenets of these men, look with contempt upon their doctrines, while at the same time they pity those who, still cleaving to these miserable and baseless fables, have reached such a pitch of arrogance as to reckon themselves superior to all others on account of such knowledge, or, as it should rather be called, ignorance. They have now been fully exposed; and simply to exhibit their sentiments, is to obtain a victory over them. ”

“ It is no rare thing for him whose indignation is kindled at a tale of wicked injustice, cruel oppression, base slander, or misery inflicted by unbridled indulgence; whose anger flames in behalf of the injured and ruined victims of wrong; to be in some relation unjust, or oppressive, or envious, or self-indulgent, or a careless talker of others. How wonderfully indignant the penurious man often is, at the avarice or want of public spirit of another! ”

“ They cannot suppress a smile at the false assumptions and pretensions and hopes of this perishing world. The same temper leads them to assume, for the purpose of mirth, or argument, or self-discipline (which you please) , the very worst that the world can possibly think of themselves, their own views and designs. Irony, in fact, seems only an ethical expression of the logical reductio ad absurdum, as applied to matters of taste, morality, and religion. Great examples have shown it to be compatible with real humility and wide benevolence ”

“ For Ignorance is rude, sensorious, jealous, obstinate, and proud; these being exactly the ingredients of which Disobedience is made; and Obedience proceeds from ample consideration; of which knowledge consists; and knowledge will soon put into one Scale the weight of oppression, and in the other, the heavie burden which Disobedience lays on us in the effects of civil War: & then even Tyranny will seem much lighter, when the hand of supream Power binds up our Load, and lays it artfully on us, than Disobedience (the Parent of Confusion) when we all load one another ”

“ They fill their pockets with "fool's gold" and think they are rich. They stuff their minds with mistakes and think they are wise. They console themselves with legends and myths, have faith in fiction and forgery—give their hearts to ghosts and phantoms and seek the aid of the non-existent.
They put a monster—a master—a tyrant in the sky, and seek to enslave their fellow-men. They teach the cringing virtues of serfs. They abhor the courage of manly men. They hate the man who thinks. They long for revenge.
They warm their hands at the imaginary fires of hell. ”

“ Murderers have assigned as the only reason they themselves could give for their crime, that “the Devil got into them,” and urged the deed. But the insane have, perhaps, no attribute more in common than that of superweening self-esteem. The maniac who has been removed from a garret sticks straws in his hair and calls them a crown. So much does inordinate arrogance characterize mental aberration, that, in the course of my own practice, I have detected, in that infirmity, the certain symptom of insanity, long before the brain had made its disease manifest even to the most familiar kindred. ”

“ For my part, I make no pretensions to the erudition of the bookworm, and I cannot read the history of the Man in the Iron Mask without feeling my blood boil at the abominable abuse of power—the heinous crime of which he was the victim. ”

“ While applying the nomenclature of disease to these exceptional monsters, we need not allow that their atrocities were, at first at any rate, beyond their control. Moral insanity is often nothing more than the hypertrophy of some vulgar passion—lust, violence, cruelty, jealousy, and the like. The tyrant, placed above law and less influenced by public opinion than a private person, may easily allow a greed110 for pleasure or a love of bloodshed to acquire morbid proportions in his nature. ”

“ Guided by a lofty personality, this Socratic irony becomes, in Kierkegaard's definition, merely "the negative liberation of subjectivity"; that is, not the family, nor society, nor the state, nor any rules superimposed from outside, but one's innermost self (or subjectivity) is to be the determining factor in one's life. And understood thus, irony as a negative element borders on the ethical conception of life. ”

“ How execrable then and infamous are the wretches, who, for a few precarious, momentary, and perhaps imaginary advantages, would rob their country, their happy country, for ever, of every thing that can render human life desireable; and for a little tinsel pageantry, and false and servile homage, unworthy of honest men, and hated by wise men, would involve millions of their fellow-creatures in lasting misery, bondage, and woe, and charge themselves with their just hatred and bitter curses! ”

“ Sometimes there does seem a good deal of ‘irony’ deep down underneath everything!”
“Ah!” sighed the impresario, though a radiant smile broke through in spite of him, “no one understands such things better than I. Life’s just full of irony, isn’t it?—whichever way you turn!”
[49]
“My brother, Captain Utterbourne,” she observed, “has all sorts of subtle theories about it, though I never can remember just how they go afterward, since, you see, he has a way of ‘conveying’ so much and yet really saying so little!” ”

“ But we forget how many circumstances, especially in populous cities, tend to corrupt the lowest orders of men. Ignorance is the least of their failings. An admiration of wealth unpossessed, becoming a principle of envy, or of servility; a habit of acting perpetually with a view to profit, and under a sense of subjection; the crimes to which they are allured, in order to feed their debauch, or to gratify their avarice, are examples, not of ignorance, but of corruption and baseness. If the savage has not received our instructions, he is likewise unacquainted with our vices. ”

“ Thus, a single reflection will suffice to show the impropriety of anger, the dreadful consequences of revenge, calumny, and backbiting. Every one must perceive that in giving a free course to unbridled desires, he becomes the enemy of society, and then it is the part of the laws to restrain him who renounces his reason and despises the motives that ought to guide him. ”

“ It is easy to understand this respect for brigands. Whoso revolts against society requires an iron mind in an iron body, and these mankind instinctively admires, however misdirected be their energies. ”

“ Well, if even in our own sphere all sense of shame, all dignified self-consciousness, is at an end,—if every one is to heed the dictates of low and vulgar impulses,—no wonder that the halo surrounding us is dimmed, and the mob ventures to attack the throne itself! ”

“ The eyes see, if you open them, in spite of you. The ears hear, if they are unstopped, without asking your permission. And the brain thinks, in spite of you. Should you express that thought? Certainly you should, if others express theirs. You have exactly the same right. He who takes it from you is a robber. For thousands of years people have been trying to force other people to think their way. Did they succeed? No. Will they succeed? No. Why? Because brute force is not an argument. ”

“ The irony gains in power by being veiled in the innocence of the dog. The irony in France's writings is generally veiled in some such manner. In Monsieur Bergeret à Paris, for instance, the standpoint of the author's opponents is presented to us in two chapters which are read aloud by Monsieur Bergeret from a supposed work of the year 1538, in which France, with extraordinary skill, has imitated the language, style, and reasoning of the Trublions, the Nationalists of that age. ”

“ We are all influenced more or less by our surroundings, by the demands and opinions and feelings and prejudices of our fellow- citizens. There is a personality made up of many individuals known as society. This personality has prejudices like an individual. It often becomes enraged, acts without the slightest sense, and repents at its leisure. It is hard to reason with a mob whether organized or disorganized, whether acting in the name of the law or of simple brute force. But in any case, where people refuse to be governed by reason, they become a mob. ”

“ It is honorable, because it is in fact the triumph of lofty sentiment over an instinctive repugnance to pain, and over those yearnings after personal ease and security which society has condemned as ignoble. It is kept alive by pride and the fear of shame; and thus the dread of real evil is overcome by the superior dread of an evil which exists but in the imagination. ”