Moral restraint

“ And it is clear that if, after repeated experiences of the moral discomfort he has felt from witnessing the unhappiness indirectly caused by some of his acts, he is led to check himself when again tempted to those acts, the restraint is of like nature. ”

“ This conscious relinquishment of immediate and special good to gain distant and general good, while it is a cardinal trait of the self-restraint called moral, is also a cardinal trait of self-restraints other than those called moral—the restraints that originate from fear of the visible ruler, of the invisible ruler, and of society at large. ”

“ Moral Laws are set as a curb and restraint to these exorbitant Desires, which they cannot be but by Rewards and Punishments, that will over-balance the satisfaction any one shall propose to himself in the breach of the Law. ”

“ But they often survive when they have become an oppression and a hindrance which cannot be cast off decisively, but by an impulse—rising either from the absolute knowledge of good and great men,—or from the partial insight which is given to superior minds, though of a vitiated moral constitution,—or lastly from that blind energy and those habits of daring which are often found in men who, checked by no restraint of morality, suffer their evil passions to gain extraordinary strength in extraordinary circumstances. ”

“ And yet, let it be remembered that it is this principle of restraint which is more especially the moral point in education; where it fails, discipline and self-denial are wanting, with all the strength they give to integrity, and honor, and true self-respect, with all the decencies of good manners which they infuse into our daily habits. ”

“ But the despair and disgust of life, to which both these and her private letters give such uncompromising and eloquent expression, indubitably reflect her feelings at this moral crisis—the feelings of one who having openly braved the laws of society, to become henceforward a law unto herself, recognises that she has only found her way to fresh sources of misery. ”

“ Who can dare to say ‘I am master of my fate,’ when he does not know how large may be the share of the general burden that will fall to him to drag through life, how great may be the number of these parasites who are living on the moral capital of their generation? ”

“ We hold that every wrong act we commit, if it does not destroy our happiness at the time, and operate as a barbed arrow sticking in the soul, will at least weaken our capacity for happiness in the future, weaken our moral strength and resolution to abstain from crime, weaken our natural detestation of crime, and weaken our moral ability to resist the temptation to commit the same and other crimes in the future, and finally destroy our moral manhood and true dignity. ”

“ They therefore welcome hardness of heart, obstinacy, and recklessness of disposition as an actual means of escape from thoughts which would, under favourable circumstances, lead to moral amendment and reformation. ”

“ Nothing fills or engrosses the mind—nothing seems of sufficient importance to interfere with our present inclination. Prejudices, as well as attachments, lose their hold upon us, and we palter with our duties as we please. Moral obligations, by being perpetually refined upon, and discussed, lose their force and efficacy, become mere dry distinctions of the understanding ”

“ It is merely sentimental slush, sloppy shirking of anything that compels national alertness, or effort, or self-discipline, or self-denial; a moral cowardice that pushes away any fact which disturbs a shallow, torpid, irresponsible, self-indulgent optimism. ”

“ Nothing but a low, perverted and weak moral and ethical sense makes possible the need of an argument on this subject. It is self-evident the moment one stops to ask himself a few simple and primitive questions: "Am I willing to buy my own comfort and pleasure at the expense of those who are helpless? Am I willing to be a moral and physical pauper preying upon the rights of my children? Am I willing to be a thief and misappropriate their physical, mental and moral heritage? Am I willing to be a murderer and taint with slow poison their lives before they get them? ”

“ If the volition of the child, or ignorant citizen, is restrained, judgment is trampled upon, and passion leads on to personal and civil misery, to which no remedy can be applied, but absolute and despotic restraint. ”

“ And so, through all the relations of society, wherever a sacred trust is abused, and a confidence outraged, and obligations rent recklessly asunder, there this self-incurred species of suffering, in a greater or less degree, exists accordingly as the moral sensibilities are blunted, or the contrary. ”

“ If we tolerate bad conditions, we will preach in vain to make good men and women. If we create good conditions, we would preach in vain to make those men and women bad. For they are ever the creatures of their circumstances—the moral product of their surrounding. ”

“ From a few physical perils, and from a very few social evils. This is all. Over the moral world he has no control, except on his own account; and it is the moral life of human beings which is all in all. ”

“ When this progress had gone on for a century or two, it might begin to dawn on people that there was something wrong with their moral principle. What is wrong with their moral principle is that it is immoral. ”

“ Thus those courses, which, if men would fairly attend to the dictates of their own consciences, they would see to be corruption, excess, oppression, uncharitableness; these are refined upon—things were so and so circumstantiated—great difficulties are raised about fixing bounds and degrees, and thus every moral obligation whatever may be evaded. Here is scope, I say, for an unfair mind to explain away every moral obligation to itself. Whether men reflect again upon this internal management and artifice, and how explicit they are with themselves, is another question. ”

“ Whosoever, in anything that concerns the conduct of life, spreads low notions, or drags down men’s opinion or taste, thus helping to pervert ordinary minds from those higher aims and motives and those reverent views of character and life which should be cherished for our common use and service, is debasing the moral currency. ”

“ It appears to me that the slower process deadens the conscience most surely, and the insensibility of those who practice it, betrays a more diseased state of the moral system than the pangs of remorse. ”

“ Certainly, no one can deny that the present misery and degradation in society is a moral wrong, and [Pg 542] that it is our duty to seek some method by which it may be removed as speedily as possible. ”

“ I fully admit that the mischief which a person does to himself may seriously affect, both through their sympathies and their interests, those nearly connected with him, and in a minor degree, society at large. When, by conduct of this sort, a person is led to violate a distinct and assignable obligation to any other person or persons, the case is taken out of the self-regarding class, and becomes amenable to moral disapprobation in the proper sense of the term. ”

“ I advise you earnestly, therefore, against any system of conduct, or indulgence of feeling, that would involve your seclusion from society—not only on the grounds of such seclusion obliging you to unnecessary self-denial, but on the still stronger grounds of the loss to our moral being which would result from the absence of the peculiar species of discipline that social intercourse affords. ”

“ Men, from causes too intricate to be here discussed, had become insensible and selfish: their own will had become feeble, and yet they were its slaves, and thence the slaves of the will of others: lust, fear, avarice, cruelty, and fraud, characterized a race amongst whom no one was to be found capable of CREATING in form, language, or institution. The moral anomalies of such a state of society are not justly to be charged upon any class of events immediately connected with them, and those events are most entitled to our approbation which could dissolve it most expeditiously. ”

“ But the inner reason of the failure is often that there has been a moral degeneracy going on, and a weakening of the fibre of character on one side, or on both sides. The particular dispute, whether it be about money or about anything else, is only the occasion which reveals the slackening of the morale. ”

“ We shall arrange that people, young and old, may wish to act rightly. The point of reform will be shifted. At present, all kinds of morality are approached on the assumption that it is requisite to persuade to an unwilling abstinence from vice, and that when the desires of the wicked have been curbed into a sort of ascetic abstemiousness prompted by fear of punishment, whether overt or implicit, a moral feat has been performed. The new morality will only be content when the subject of it would not sin if you asked him to. ”

“ It is expedient to use a restraint even in good desires and endeavours, lest by importunity of desire thou incur distraction of mind, and by want of self-government be a scandal to others, or being gainsayed by others, thou be suddenly troubled and fall.
But thou oughtest to use violence, and resist manfully thy sensual appetites, and respect not, what the flesh would or would not; but rather to labour, that even perforce it be subject to the spirit. ”

“ To a narrow and superficial reading, it exhibits itself as a wholesale repudiation of all moral responsibility and a maniacal attempt to subvert human civilization for the exclusive benefit of the "glorious blonde brute, rampant with greed for victory and spoil." ”

“ And the force of obvious analogy teaches us not to expect all the qualities which please the general taste in those whose instincts lead them to attack the moral nuisances which poison the atmosphere of society. But whether they please us in all their aspects or not, is not the question. Like them or not, they must and will perform their office, and we cannot stop them. They may be unwise, violent, abusive, extravagant, impracticable, but they are alive, at any rate, and it is their business to remove abuses as soon as they are dead, and often to help them to die. ”

“ I admit that this condition which adds to the interest of the problem, and perhaps makes it more amenable to rapid solution, is an indication of a weakness of moral fibre to which must be largely attributed our failure to be master of our circumstances. ”

“ They first destroy the conscience—blunt the moral sense—harden the heart, and wither up all the social and kindly affections, and then their votaries are ripe for any deed of wickedness within the possibility of accomplishment by human agency. ”

“ But to be restrained in things not affecting their good, by their mere displeasure, developes nothing valuable, except such force of character as may unfold itself in resisting the restraint. If acquiesced in, it dulls and blunts the whole nature. ”

“ Some, reared under laws that are loose, may withstand this barrier breaking and be no worse for the change; but in the case of those with whom this barrier of their moral belief stands securely between conscience and forbidden paths, let it fall, and all the best of them will fall with it. ”

“ But when indulged without sufficient cause, or suffered to become excessive or to outlast its occasion, it is in itself evil, and it may lead to any and every form of social injustice, and of outrage against the rights of man and the law of God. ”

“ Certain stages of this process will be in the nature of crisis according to the strength of the opposition encountered in the personal moral struggle, and in opposing social conditions. Nothing but calamity can forestall this progressive moral adjustment to the whole world. ”

“ If a set of conditions exist which are counter to the moral order, or obstruct its fulfillment in the lives of men, these conditions should be changed, the individual should not be sacrificed to them. ”

“ This it is which makes any mind, of well developed feelings, work with, and not against, the outward motives to care for others, afforded by what I have called the external sanctions; and when those sanctions are wanting, or act in an opposite direction, constitutes in itself a powerful internal binding force, in proportion to the sensitiveness and thoughtfulness of the character; since few but those whose mind is a moral blank, could bear to lay out their course of life on the plan of paying no regard to others except so far as their own private interest compels. ”

“ As in the defects of the intellectual development, so in the moral sphere, the condition varies from a complete arrest of moral development to all forms of moral perversion and even to an abnormal development of the moral and emotional susceptibility. ”

“ There can really be no objection to this superfine theory, but that it is inconsistent with the order of Providence, and destructive of the nature of man—that it unfixes our moral land-marks—melts into air every practical virtue and definite duty—substitutes 88words for salutary deeds—and by directing our most natural and useful passions to objects indistinct or unattainable, leaves these powerful agents afloat, and ends by abusing them to the production of crime and misery. ”

“ But such deterioration or degradation is not an isolated evil, or the mere negation of a better state; for it acts as a positive energy in developing moral evil, and brings in its train perverseness, destructiveness, loss of natural decency in habits, conversation and conduct, and many other ills which render their subjects painfully humiliating as human beings, and a source of trouble, annoyance, and expense to all those concerned with them. ”

“ Yield to your feelings, and the chances are enormously great that you are trampled upon by the selfish, or that you come into collision with some of those conventions which must be venerated, for they are the only barriers against moral degradation, and which yet somehow seem to make in favour of the cruel and the self-seeking. ”