Irregularity

“ All this very plausible reasoning does not convince me, as it has not convinced the wisest of our Statesmen, that our ancestors erred in laying it down as an axiom of policy that the toleration of Irregularity is incompatible with the safety of the State. Doubtless, the life of an Irregular is hard; but the interests of the Greater Number require that it shall be hard. If a man with a triangular front and a polygonal back were allowed to exist and to propagate a still more Irregular posterity, what would become of the arts of life? ”

“ Could blind chance constitute order and decorum, and consequently a providence? That wisdom, order, and design should be the production of nonentity, or of chaos, confusion, and old night, is too absurd to deserve a serious confutation, for it supposeth that there may be effects without a cause, viz.: produced by nonentity, or that chaos and confusion could produce the effects of power, wisdom, and goodness. Such absurdities as these we must assent to, or subscribe to the doctrine of a self-existent and providential being. ”

“ 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! ”

“ If these Impressions were Inbred, and the Errors purely their Own, it would be a Point, not only of Good Nature, but of Common Justice, and Humanity, to have a Tenderness for People under an Invincible Mistake: But you have Started the Strongest Argument in the World, against your self here, by Enforcing the Necessity of Clearing the Stage of the Seditious Oracles, that Inspire These Desperate Resolutions. ”

“ This contravention of the natural order has produced, as such contravention always must produce, a certain confusion and false movement, of which we are now beginning to feel, in almost every direction, the inconvenience. In all directions our habitual causes of action seem to be losing efficaciousness, credit, and control, both with others and even with ourselves. Everywhere we see the beginnings of confusion, and we want a clue to some sound order and authority. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In making error objective we have made all objectivity erroneous. We find ourselves obliged to say that the choir of Westminster Abbey, the Brooklyn bridge, the heads on our shoulders are all supported by logical errors!
Following these illustrations of ontological contradictions there is indeed this interesting statement: "Nature is so full of these mutually negative processes that we are moved to admiration when a few forces coöperate long enough to form what we call an organism."32 The implication is, apparently, that as an "opposition" of forces is error, "coöperation" of forces is truth. ”

“ A certain impatience of decision leads people frequently to pronounce upon as anomalies, [Pg 185] what a severer scrutiny would prove to be well understood, and belonging to accredited divisions of human character. ”

“ 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? ”

“ An examination of this case will present a striking instance of the error into which the strongest minds may be led, whenever they shall depart from the plain, common acceptation of terms, or from well ascertained truths, for the attainment of conclusions, which the subtlest ingenuity is incompetent to sustain. ”

“ 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? ”

“ A deliberate attempt may be made to recognize many wills, harmonize discords. Order may be brought out of chaos, and the limits of the realm within the borders of which order reigns may be indefinitely extended. ”

“ All modification of an essentially corrupt system would be fruitless. Principles may be corrected, persons may be changed, but the intrinsic nature of a thing [273] admits neither of correction nor change. ”

“ We have on one hand a difficulty, an obstacle, a violation effected through something human life has carried out in action. We have on the other a violation of interests and forces intrinsically just and right. ”

“ 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? ”

“ The daily habits of one so situated must imply, to some extent, an ignorance of the precise detail of all that may be consequent upon them. We think it natural, (nay, with a due regard to truth, inevitable,) that one so situated, if called upon on an emergency, should admit his inability to enumerate all that he had done,-all that he had authorized to be done through others, and every consequence which might flow from the one or the other. ”

“ Destroy the volitional nature, the definite subjective purposes, preferences, fondness for certain effects, forms, orders, and not the slightest motive would remain for the brute order of our experience to be remodelled at all. But, as we have the elaborate volitional constitution we do have, the remodelling must be effected, there is no escape. ”

“ Mere inadvertencies and casual neglects arising from an unavoidable and most complicated confusion in the state of your affairs, have been treated in such language and sentiments, as nothing but the most glaring and premeditated faults could warrant. Groundless informations have, without further scrutiny, borne with you the stamp of truth, though proceeding from those who had therein obviously their own purpose to serve, no matter at whose expense. ”

“ The objection to a decided policy, and the indisposition to a timely action, which are excusable in one whose influence is beginning, and whose reign is new, is continued through the whole reign of one to whom those defects are natural, and who exhibits those defects in all his affairs. ”

“ The irregular things done in the confusion of mighty troubles, and on the hinge of great revolutions, even if all were done that is said to have been done, form no example. If they have any effect in argument, they make an exception to prove the rule. ”

“ Many, I doubt not, failing to recognize the truth that, in proportion as an aggregate is complex, the effects wrought by an incident force become more multitudinous, complicated, and incalculable, and that, therefore, a society is, of all kinds of aggregates, the kind most difficult to affect in an intended way and not in unintended ways—many such will ask evidence of the difficulty. ”

“ But the history of the efforts made to satisfy these demands might be broadly described as a history of errors—the error consisting in ascribing fixity to that which is fluent, which varies as we vary, being gross when we are gross, and becoming, as our capacities widen, more abstract and sublime. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Any theory which proposes two methods of judgment or two measures of law, in consequence of a supposed difference of vital power, is emphatically uncertain, and lays itself open to just suspicion of dangerous error. ”

“ We will therefore take this opportunity of making a few remarks on an error which is, we fear, becoming common, and which appears to us not only absurd, but as pernicious as almost any error concerning the transactions of a past age can possibly be. ”

“ In a word, my Lord, the Injustice, Delay, Puerility, false Refinement, and affected Mystery of the Law are such, that many who live under it come to admire and envy the Expedition, Simplicity, and Equality of Arbitrary Judgments. ”

“ When the multitude is strongly stirred by a consciousness of the abnormal in its midst, to someone, or to something, it means danger. Order is not preserved by authority, but by tradition. A suspicion that events are about to happen which are contrary to established order shakes that tradition, with the immediate result that confusion threatens. ”

“ We charge the evil consequence not to the error of our schemes and our incomplete inquiry into conditions (thereby getting material for revising the former and stimulus for extending the latter) but to untoward fate. We even plume ourselves upon our firmness in clinging to our conceptions in spite of the way in which they work out. ”

“ If you secretly or openly hold that to be just and veracious which is successful, then it needs no further demonstration that penalties of ultimate failure are exacted for injustice, because it is precisely the failure that constitutes the injustice. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The inadequacy and fragility of reason in man.—The rarity and inadequacy of reason in humanity.—Subordination of reason in human conduct.—Brutal and dangerous forces.—The nature and utility of government. Government impossible under the new theory. ”

“ For isolated truths separated from other known truths by an interval of conjecture, in which error might find room to construct its works, may offer perilous occasions to unprepared and unstable minds. The policy was therefore to allow such truths to be put forward only hypothetically, or altogether to suppress them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ However honest and faithful in their engagements they may be, they will by no means submit to any alterations of the system to which they have been brought up without great trouble, altercation, and complaints of the injustice with which they are treated. ”

“ because laws, like houses, lean on one another, and the operation is delicate, and should be necessary: the objection, in such a case, ought not to arise from the natural infirmity of human institutions, but from substantial faults which contradict the nature and end of law itself,—faults not arising from the imperfection, but from the misapplication and abuse of our reason. ”

“ All obstructions to the executions of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle and of fatal tendency. ”

“ The evils you speak of have arisen, in a great part, from the want of a due comprehension and consideration of the objects to be obtained; but were that all, the evils of the system existing would be speedily remedied ”

“ I can see now a significance back of these seemingly trivial things: they reveal an unenviable complexity of nature. In first one thing, then another, I have stood out against conforming to customs, if my own ideas of right and wrong prohibited me, but alas! so often has come the ultimate defeat—concessions to conventions, customs, overpowering circumstances, or instincts. ”

“ And however irregular this process may be (and we admit that men’s habits and prejudices produce many anomalies, or seeming anomalies, in it) it is a process far more trustworthy than are legislative judgments. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Men under such circumstances in general err from an inaccuracy or deficiency of statement, proceeding from the confusion and uncertainty of a mind oppressed and agitated by the burthen of important affairs, or difficult and intricate circumstances. ”

“ Each unit in the society of civilisation has to the outside observer—and sometimes even to his own self-detached and impartial survey—a certain oddity or fixity, a gleam of irrationality, which shows him to fall short of complete sanity or limpid and mobile intelligence. ”