Mendicancy

“ And thus mendicancy is made honourable at the expense of honest toil. It should be further remarked that there are a number of begging castes, in which all work is proscribed and mendicity exalted into a divinely ordained profession! ”

“ Now don't start moralizing, Cæsar.
HELIOGABALUS
Why not? I am moral: why shouldn't I moralize? Is it a crime for a cow to give milk?
LUCIA
[An exclamation of disgust] Oh, you always—
HELIOGABALUS
I have been faithful to you, little pullet, for 180 days and, what's more, 180 nights. How's that for morals? I defy you to find me a Christian to match it, at any weight. Think of it! Here am I, still in the prime of life, Emperor of Rome, Pontifex Maximus and all the rest of it, and yet I am as virtuous as a convict in the death-house. Here am I without a glass of schnapps for six months. ”

“ When I say that societies cannot be raised to wealth and power, and the top of earthly glory, without vices, I do not think that, by so saying, I bid men be vicious, any more than I bid them be quarrelsome or covetous, when I affirm that the profession of the law could not be maintained in such numbers and splendor, if there was not abundance of too selfish and litigious people. ”

“ We have, it may be, a scruple on the point of human dignity, compromised by the entreaty and the thanks of the mendicant; but we have a strange way of vindicating that dignity when we refuse to man, woman, or child the recognition of a simply human word. ”

“ And if they have not a fixed heart, there is nothing which they will not do, in the way of self-abandonment, of moral deflection, of depravity, and of wild license. When they thus have been involved in crime, to follow them up and punish them;-- this is to entrap the people. ”

“ This laudable quality is commonly known by the name of Manners and Good-breeding, and consists in a fashionable habit, acquired by precept and example, of flattering the pride and selfishness of others, and concealing our own with judgment and dexterity. This must be only understood of our commerce with our equals and superiors, and whilst we are in peace and amity with them; for our complaisance must never interfere with the rules of honour, nor the homage that is due to us from servants and others that depend upon us. ”

“ Therefore it is said, "To urge one's sovereign to difficult achievements may be called showing respect for him. To set before him what is good and repress his perversities may be called showing reverence for him. ”

“ Mencius said, 'If men of virtue and ability be not confided in, a State will become empty and void. Without the rules of propriety and distinctions of right, the high and the low will be thrown into confusion. ”

“ The slave rebels against hardships and calls his rebellion superiority. Let your superiority be an acceptance of hardships. Let your commanding be an obeying.... Let your highest thought be: 'Man is something to be surpassed.'... I do not advise you to love your neighbor—the nearest human being. I advise you rather to flee from the nearest and love the furthest human being. Higher than love to your neighbor is love to the higher man that is to come in the future.... Propagate yourself upward. Thus live your life. ”

“ Go back into history as far as you please, and you will find no record that he has ever opened his mouth for fairness, for justice, for decency between man and man. Such concepts, like the concepts of honour and of liberty, are eternally beyond him, and belong only to his superiors. ”

“ If you punish without prejudice, without listening to your repugnances or your inclinations, if you can think that you please God, whatever you do, and are conscious that you seek good only without respect to persons,—if you govern with those dispositions, as I do not doubt you will, our Lord will govern with you. ”

“ If we duly consider these passages, we shall find, that fear, as well as love, and the highest esteem, are plainly and distinctly inculcated in them; and that the best method is made use of there, to inspire men with a deep sense of the three ingredients that make up the compound of reverence. The reason is plain: If people were to be governed by that body of laws, nothing was more necessary to enforce their obedience to them, than their awful regard and utmost veneration to him, at whose command they were to keep them, and to whom they were accountable for the breaking of them. ”

“ From all which I would shew, that, on the one Hand, you can make no Multitudes believe contrary to what they feel, or what contradicts a Passion inherent in their Nature, and that, on the other, if you humour that Passion, and allow it to be just, you may regulate it as you please. How unanimous soever, therefore, all Rulers and Magistrates have seem'd to be in promoting some Religion or other, the Principle of it was not of their Invention. ”

“ How did the intelligentsia of These States bear up under that strain? What was the reaction of our learned men to the challenge of organized hysteria, mob fear, incitement to excess, downright insanity? How did they conduct themselves in that universal whirlwind? They conducted themselves, I fear, in a manner that must leave a brilliant question mark behind their claim to independence and courage, to true knowledge and dignity, to ordinary self-respect—in brief, to every quality that belongs to the authentic aristocrat. ”

“ When I have shewn the Necessity of Vice, to render a Society great and potent, I have exposed that Greatness, and left it to them, the Members of it, whether it is worth buying at that Price; and I defy all my Enemies to shew me, where I have recommended Vice, or said the least Tittle, by which I contradict that true, as well as remarkable Saying of Monsieur Baile. Les utilités du vice n'empèchent pas qu' il ne soit mauvais. ”

“ In its light, such things as mercy and charity seemed pernicious and immoral, because they meant a transfer of power from strong men, whose proper business it was to grow stronger and stronger, to weak men, whose proper business it was to serve the strong. In a word, this master-morality was the morality of peoples who knew, by experience, that it was pleasant to rule and be strong. ”

“ Whatever enables them to rule and conquer and dazzle, to the dismay and envy of their neighbors, is regarded by them as the summit, the head, the standard of all things.... Verily, men have made for themselves all their good and bad. ”

“ It is the instinct of a true aristocracy, not to punish eccentricity by expulsion, but to throw a mantle of protection about it—to safeguard it from the suspicions and resentments of the lower orders. ”

“ I must have been wanting in propriety - how should this have happened to me?" He examines himself, and is specially benevolent. He turns round upon himself, and is specially observant of propriety. The perversity and unreasonableness of the other, however, are still the same. The superior man will again turn round on himself, "I must have been failing to do my utmost." He turns round upon himself, and proceeds to do his utmost, but still the perversity and unreasonableness of the other are repeated. ”

“ This backwardness to generalize a rule, found so necessary practically to be followed, may be resolved into that flattering conceit of human dignity, which is yielded reluctantly, inch by inch, as plain demonstration wrests it away. ”

“ You fulfill implicitly all their desires, and exact from them a like obedience to the laws of the seraglio; you take a pride in rendering them the meanest services; you submit to their lawful commands with reverence and in dread; you serve them like the slave of their slaves. ”

“ Here, more than anywhere else on earth, the status of an individual is determined by the general consent of the general body of his fellows; here, as we have seen, there are no artificial barriers to protect him against their disapproval, or even against their envy. ”

“ Here the general average of intelligence, of knowledge, of competence, of integrity, of self-respect, of honor is so low that any man who knows his trade, does not fear ghosts, has read fifty good books, and practices the common decencies stands out as brilliantly as a wart on a bald head, and is thrown willy-nilly into a meager and exclusive aristocracy. ”

“ Ambition joined to idleness, and baseness to pride , a desire of obtaining riches without labour, and an aversion to truth , flattery, treason, perfidy, violation of engagements, contempt of civil duties, fear of the prince's virtue, hope from his weakness, but above all a perpetual ridicule cast upon virtue, are, I think, the characteristics by which most courtiers in all ages and countries have been constantly distinguished. ”

“ Through the presence of these alien motives the social and industrial régime of status gradually disintegrates, and the canon of personal subservience loses the support derived from an unbroken tradition. ”

“ Meanwhile, however, it is certainly not going too far to notice the circumstance that there is an irreconcilable antithesis between the two sorts of men that we have described—that a great moral passion is fatal to the gentler and more caressing amenities of life, and vice versa. ”

“ In the face of so exalted a moral passion it would be absurd to look for that urbane habit which seeks the well-being of one's self and the other fellow, not in exact obedience to harsh statutes, but in ease, dignity and the more delicate sort of self-respect. ”

“ Its obscure conception of propriety, its nebulous notion that this or that is honorable, hampers him in every direction, and very narrowly. What he resigns when he enters, even when he makes his first deprecating knock at the door, is every right to attack the ideas that happen to prevail within. ”

“ The more Respect and Reverence are paid to Divines, and the higher their Dignity is, the greater Opportunity they have of making themselves serviceable in every Branch of their Function, but more especially that Part of it now under Consideration. ”

“ Have you not owned, that you have thought worse of me, than now you find me to deserve? No men, nor their works, ought to be condemned upon hearsays and bare surmises, much less upon the accusations of their enemies, without being examined into. ”

“ At the very start, indeed, she set up barriers against gratitude, for her decision to ask a favor of me was, in a subtle sense, a judgment of my inferiority. One does not ask favors, if it can be avoided, of persons one genuinely respects; one puts such burdens upon the naïve and colorless, upon what are called the good natured; in brief, upon one's inferiors. ”

“ It being the interest then of the very worst of them, more than any, to preach up public-spiritedness, that they might reap the fruits of the labour and self-denial of others, and at the same time indulge their own appetites with less disturbance, they agreed with the rest, to call every thing, which, without regard to the public, man should commit to gratify any of his appetites, vice ”

“ How deeply affecting is it, that those who are the same in complexion, the same in blood, in language, and in religion, should, notwithstanding, butcher one another with unrelenting rage, and glory in the deed? That men should lay waste the fields of their fellow subjects, with whose provision they themselves had been often fed, and consume with devouring fire those houses, in which they had often found a hospitable shelter? ”

“ In the second, that those who wanted a sufficient stock of either pride or resolution, to buoy them up in mortifying of what was dearest to them, followed the sensual dictates of nature, would yet be ashamed of confessing themselves to be those despicable wretches that belonged to the inferior class, and were generally reckoned to be so little removed from brutes ”

“ At the same time, his good sense, his loyalty, the scarcely stifled instincts of duty, and his innate aversion for anything which resembled anarchy, restrained him; and in that prolonged and dubious struggle between conflicting feelings, there were others which hurried him onward. ”

“ First, those that are deserved for our faults, for our imperfections, and for our past sins. Secondly, for those we have not deserved, as false accusation, contempt, and hatred without a cause. Thirdly, those that are voluntary—that is, incurred by any acts or restriction of our liberty which may offend those who indulge their liberty too much. ”

“ In brief, the new will to power, working in the true Puritan as in the mere religious sportsman, stimulated him to a campaign of repression and punishment perhaps unequalled in the history of the world, and developed an art of militant morality as complex in technique [Pg 241] and as rich in professors as the elder art of iniquity. ”

“ Nothing, therefore, is more unjust, than that we should continue our Esteem for Valour when it degenerates, and both the Motive Men set out with, and the Scope they aim at, are palpably destructive. Anger, Pride, Envy, and several other Passions, are capable of subduing Fear. ”

“ What is done [28] for the common Good, every Member of the Society may, at one time or other, receive an Advantage from; and therefore quarrelsome People, that love fighting, act very preposterously and inconsistent with their Interest, when they venture to have their Bones broke, for endeavouring to deprive Surgeons of the Means to understand the Structure of them. ”

“ The feeblest motives had influence over such men, all young and ardent as they were—the followers of different factions, though without prejudices, principles, convictions, without hatred and without affection. ”

“ In all human beings, if only understanding be brought to the business, dignity will be found, and that dignity cannot fail to reveal itself, soon or late, in the words and phrases with which they make known their high hopes and aspirations and cry out against the intolerable meaninglessness of life. ”

“ And, as to private persons, there are innumerable instances in the most polite ages of men of sense and virtue, that have entertained the most miserable, unworthy, and extravagant notions of the Supreme Being. What confused and unaccountable apprehensions must not some men have had of Providence, to act as they did! ”

“ He has discovered the long-sought sure cure for all the sorrows of the world; he has the infallible scheme for putting down injustice, misery, ignorance, suffering, sin; his appeal is not to the rules of a sinister and discreditable game, but to the bursting heart of humanity, the noblest and loftiest sentiments of man. ”