Moral depravity

“ But again, on the other hand, laziness or untruthfulness or obstinacy may be a black streak, coming to the surface out of the nethermost strata of moral depravity, and, taken in connection with other traits, may justify the most serious apprehension, and should then be a signal for immediate measures of the most stringent sort. ”

“ The root of all your evils is in the sinfulness of the nation. The principle of duty is weakened among you; that of moral obligation is loosened; that of religious obedience is destroyed. Look at the worldliness of all classes—the greediness of the rich, the misery of the poor, and the appalling depravity which is spreading among the lower classes through town and country; a depravity which proceeds unchecked because of the total want of discipline, and for which there is no other corrective than what may be supplied by fanaticism, which is itself an evil. ”

“ The first values to be destroyed will be the body-despising values, and everything connected with them. We shall no longer condone ugliness or physiological depravity either in ourselves or in others. The fact that some bodily defect cannot be helped by the man who reveals it does not make him any the more desirable. We shall remember that, strictly speaking, moral depravity is no more voluntary than physiological depravity ”

“ They present one of those singular examples of human depravity, which must he seen in order to be believed. That a son should mock a benignant mother, when she is weeping tears of agony and distress; that her smile of pride and happiness should make him sad—that can hardly be explained upon any psychological theory. It shows a depth of moral perversity so deep and dark, that the ordinary understanding cannot sound it, and that even the creative power of imagination stands baffled. ”

“ This moral indignation is not half strong enough in those who profess to talk the most about human depravity. And the objection to them is, not that they feel too much or speak too strongly, the actual wickedness, the actual and distinct sins of the wicked; but they speak too vaguely and generally of human wickedness; that they speak with too little discrimination to every man as if he were a murderer or a monster ”

“ The most artful sophistry can not disguise the fact that the doctrine of moral depravity is a slanderous imputation upon divine mercy, goodness, and justice, and challenges not only his goodness, but his good sense.
11. And every page of history and every principle of science demonstrate it to be both false and demoralizing.
Man fell up, and not down.
CHAPTER XXXVI.—THE MORAL DEPRAVITY OF MAN A DELUSION.
It is alleged by the orthodox world that man's moral nature and reasoning faculties, both became depraved by the fall. "Totally depraved" has been the doctrine ”

“ A tendency has shown itself of late, in many quarters, to attribute that increase of sensual vices imagined to mark the age, not to temporary outward causes, provisional phases of our civilization, but to a growth of depravity in character, an intrinsic lowering of moral sanctions and heightening of foul passions in the people. ”

“ According to a more modern exposition, it teaches, that we came from the hands of our Maker with such a constitution, and are placed under such influences and circumstances, as to render certain and infallible the total depravity of every human being, from the first moment of his moral agency ”

“ It is the observation of a moral writer of eminence, 'That there is some degree of virtue in a man's keeping his vices to himself:' for, as [354] example is allowed to be more efficacious than precept in recommendation of virtue, where men act as it were in opposition to the depravity of human nature, how must the open and public example of lewdness draw men into the tide of wickedness, when their own passions and inclinations serve as winds to carry them down the stream! Men like these deserve punishment as public as their crimes. ”

“ It does, I confess, appear to me, that some late excellent and respectable writers, in their apprehension of not giving sufficient prominence to the doctrine of human depravity, have greatly under-rated the actual power of conscience, and have thus injured in a most essential manner the important argument which is derived from the moral impressions of the mind. True it is, indeed, that the nature of man is degenerate, and that the effect [Pg 230] of this appears in his disregarding and disobeying that monitor within. ”

“ A considerate person must find difficulties in enquiring into the causes and reasons of that depravity of human nature which has produced these evils, and rendered the best institutions liable to be so corrupted. This enquiry is much the same with the enquiry into the origin of moral evil, which has in all ages puzzled human wisdom. ”

“ THERE is a principle, supposed to prevail among many, which is utterly incompatible with all virtue or moral sentiment; and as it can proceed from nothing but the most depraved disposition, so in its turn it tends still further to encourage that depravity. This principle is, that all BENEVOLENCE is mere hypocrisy, friendship a cheat, public spirit a farce, fidelity a snare to procure trust and confidence; ”

“ The more skillfully the language of goodness is assumed, the greater the depravity. ”

“ From the height of your refined, self-confident immorality, you deign to stoop to those 'depraved, coarse people.' You enlighten them, and play the benefactor to them; that is to say, with the means supplied to you by their labour, you inoculate them with your depravity, and blame, correct, and best of all 'punish' them, as unreasoning or vicious infants bite the breasts that feed them. ”

“ We ask ourselves, then, with painful curiosity, what chain of fatal causes could thus debase these unhappy creatures, who have known shame and chastity? There are so many declivities, alas, which verge to that fall! It is rarely the passion of the depraved for depravity; but dissipation, bad example, perverse education, and, above all, want, which lead so many unfortunates to infamy; and it is the poor classes alone who pay to civilisation this impost on soul and body. ”

“ I must say that the morality we practiced in those old days was a finer morality than is practiced today. Don't dismiss this thought hastily. Think of our child labor, of our police graft and our political corruption, of our food adulteration and of our slavery of the daughters of the poor. When I was a Son of the Mountain and a Son of the Bull, prostitution had no meaning. We were clean, I tell you. We did not dream of such depths of depravity. Yea, so are all the lesser animals of today clean. It required man, with his imagination, aided by his mastery of matter, to invent the deadly sins. ”

“ In a word, since men hardened in crime still sometimes sympathize with the recital and expression of elevated sentiments, ought we not to believe that all men have more or less in them of the good, the well doing, the just, but that poverty and ignorance, in falsifying, in stifling these Divine instincts, are the first causes of human depravity? ”

“ If these are the general sentiments of man, what must be their depravity—what must be their degeneracy—who can blot out and erase from the bosom the virtue that is most deeply rooted in the human heart, and twined, within the cords of life itself? Aliens from nature! Apostates from humanity! And yet, if there be a crime more fell, more foul; if there be anything worse than a wilful persecutor of his mother, it is that of a deliberate instigator and abettor to the deed ”

“ Others seem to think that he would deliver homilies of a severer character; would rate men roundly about total depravity, and tell of unconditional election, salvation without works, and imputed righteousness, and talk of hell till the women and children fainted, and the knees of men smote together for trembling. ”

“ It must deal with the terrible debasing power of the inferior, the depraved and feeble-minded, to whom reason means nothing and can mean nothing, who are thriftless, unmanageable and appallingly prolific. Yet if the good in our race is not to be swamped and destroyed by the debased as the fine tree by the parasite, this prolific depravity must be curbed. ”

“ This indolence increases their propensity to stealing and cheating. They seek to avail themselves of every opportunity to satisfy their lawless desires. Their universal bad character, therefore, for fickleness, infidelity, ingratitude, revenge, malice, rage, depravity, laziness, knavery, thievishness, and cunning, though not deficient in capacity and cleverness, renders them people of no use in society. ”

“ It is said that he had arrived at that last stage of human depravity, when cruelty becomes pleasing for its own sake, when the sight of pain as pain, where no advantage is to be gained, no offence punished, no danger averted, is an agreeable excitement. ”

“ Where the motive is of the dissocial kind, the apparent mischievousness of the act, and the strength of the temptation, being given, the depravity is as the degree of deliberation with which it is accompanied. For in every man, be his disposition ever so depraved, the social motives are those which, wherever the self-regarding ones stand neuter, regulate and determine the general tenor of his life. ”

“ But there are drawbacks which cannot be surmounted; and he who wholly associates with the vicious, must, more than any other, be exposed to the effects of depravity. He found man more than ever treacherous and ungrateful—woman more than ever deceiving—indulgence, cloying—debauchery, enervating and his constitution and his spirits exhausted by excess. ”

“ In truth, none seem to have any title to assert human nature to be necessarily and universally evil, but those whose own minds afford them one instance of this natural depravity; ”

“ The French police reports tell us: "The depravity [353] of morals is extremely great, and the new generation is growing up in a state of disorder which promises to have the most unfortunate and most far-reaching consequences to future generations. Sodomy and Sapphic love flourish with the same shamelessness as prostitution, and the progress of all these vices is terrifying." [975] From another source we learn: "Society has become terribly depraved; fornication, adultery, incest, and murder by poison or violence are the fruits of philosophism. Things are as bad in the villages as in Paris. ”

“ To be wicked and depraved, and to feel it, and to be wretched under it, is bad enough; but it is a great deal worse to have fallen into that depth of moral degradation, and to feel that really you don't care. ”

“ Restrain yourself, therefore, from all iniquity, and do that which is good." "What, sir," say I, "are the evil deeds from which we must restrain ourselves?" "Hear," says he: "from adultery and fornication, from unlawful revelling, from wicked luxury, from indulgence in many kinds of food and the extravagance of riches, and from boastfulness, and haughtiness, and insolence, and lies, and backbiting, and hypocrisy, from the remembrance of wrong, and from all slander. These are the deeds that are most wicked in the life of men. ”

“ I am not a violent advocate of the doctrine of the total depravity of human nature. I am inclined, on the whole, to believe it a tolerably good nature, yet instances do occur which oblige me to concede that men can and do act from mere personal and selfish motives. ”

“ The most flagrant depravity permeated every class of society. The beauties of a terrestrial paradise were polluted by scenes which proclaimed the shocking degradation of mankind; by crimes which cannot be conceived without dismay ”

“ He has therefore to measure the force by which these motives will be opposed; or, in other words, the 'strength of the temptation.' Now the more depraved a man's disposition, the weaker the temptation which will seduce him to crime. Consequently if an act shows depravity, it will require a stronger counter-motive or a more severe punishment, as the disposition indicated is more mischievous. ”

“ Then should we see depravity, impiety, drunkenness, theft, murder, and a long train of nameless sins against the natural affections and repulsions of mankind, overhanging the devoted spots, and creeping on, to blight the innocent and spread contagion among the pure. ”

“ But even supposing that in our present state of depravity our primitive propensities were such as they ought to be, yet if all our vices are derived from ourselves, why do we complain that we are subjected by them? ”

“ If their lives be spared, they are shunned by society, and treated with every mark of disapprobation and contempt. But, to the disgrace of humanity and virtue, the assassin of honor, the wretch who breaks the peace of families, who robs virgin innocence of its charms, who triumphs over the ill-placed confidence of the inexperienced, unsuspecting, and too credulous fair, is received and caressed, not only by his own sex, to which he is a reproach, but even by ours, who have every conceivable reason to despise and avoid him. ”

“ Our country, like every other, has doubtless produced too many examples of human depravity; but I scarcely recollect any, where a ferocious disposition was not accompanied by corresponding manners—or where men, who would plunder or massacre, affected to retain at the same time habits of softness, and a conciliating physiognomy. ”

“ Before, I looked upon the accounts of vice and injustice, that I read in books or heard from others, as tales of ancient days, or imaginary evils; at least they were remote, and more familiar to reason than to the imagination; but now misery has come home, and men appear to me as monsters thirsting for each other's blood. Yet I am certainly unjust. Every body believed that poor girl to be guilty; and if she could have committed the crime for which she suffered, assuredly she would have been the most depraved of human creatures. ”

“ In the debauches and excesses that excited these temporary manias, in the recklessness of life and property they fostered, and in their disastrous effects on mind and body, are depicted more than in any other one trait the thorough depravity of the race and its tendency to ruin. ”