Moral revolution

“ They are tremulous with righteous wrath at age-long oppression, contempt, and abuse; and they are instinct with the living forces of a noble moral ideal. They express the essential spirit of the Revolution, which each day, where it has free course, finds fuller embodiment in political, social, and moral reforms, in humanitarian institutions and altruistic effort. ”

“ On the other hand, they who are animated with the unconquerable spirit of the Social revolution, they who have the moral courage to stand erect, to assert their convictions, to stand by them, to go to jail or to hell for them—they are writing their names in this crucial hour, they are writing their names in fadeless letters in the history of mankind. ”

“ We there find a noble principle implanted in the nature of man, that pants for distinction. This principle operates in every bosom, and when kept under the control of reason, and the influence of humanity, it produces the most benevolent effects. But when the checks of conscience are thrown aside, or the moral sense weakened by the sudden acquisition of wealth or power, humanity is obscured, and if a favorable coincidence of circumstances permits, this love of distinction often exhibits the most mortifying instances of profligacy, tyranny, and the wanton exercise of arbitrary sway. ”

“ When by some moral revolution men are cut loose from all their old moorings and get beyond the [Pg 512] public sentiment that once bound them, with no immediate selfish interest to subserve—as, for instance, our fathers in leaving England, or the French Communes in the late war—in hardship and suffering they dig down to the hard-pan of universal principles, and in their highest inspirational moments proclaim justice, liberty, equality for all. ”

“ Postscript of Vergil's Works, as translated by Dryden, XV. p. 187.
CHAPTER THIRD The Revolution Section I.—The Moral Revolution
With the constitution of 1688 a new spirit appears in England. Slowly, gradually, the moral revolution accompanies the social: man changes with the state, in the same sense and for the same causes; character moulds itself to the situation; and little by little, in manners and in literature, we see spring up a serious, reflective, moral spirit, capable of discipline and independence, which can alone maintain and give effect to a constitution. ”

“ As to the moral revolution which is now fermenting in many lands, especially with regard to economic questions, it can neither be helped nor hindered by shams and lies and surely, as to this revolution, it behoves all men to take heed what side they are on ”

“ But, when the advances of knowledge shall make morality the real basis of social union, and not it’s shadow the mask of selfishness, men cannot again lose the ground so surely taken, or forget principles, though they may accomplishments.
And that a civilization founded on reason and morality is, in fact, taking place in the world, will appear clear to all those, who have considered the atrocious vices and gigantic crimes, that sullied the polish of ancient manners. ”

“ It is only when a third character, as previously suggested, has preponderance that a revolution in a state according to moral principles can be free from injurious consequences; nor can anything else secure its endurance. In proposing or setting up a moral state, the moral law is relied upon as a real power, and free-will is drawn into the realm of causes, where all hangs together mutually with stringent necessity and rigidity. ”

“ The impetus to reform or revolution springs in every age from the realization of the contrast between the external order of society and the moral standards recognized as valid by the conscience or reason of the individual. ”

“ At the heart of the Revolution, like a torrid stream flowing undiscernible amid the waters of a tumbling sea, is a new way of understanding life. The social changes desired by the various assailants of the old order are only the expression of a deeper change in moral idea, and the drift of the new moral idea is to make life simpler. ”

“ But this genius had no check, acknowledged no limit to its desires or will, either emanating from Heaven or man, and thus remained revolutionary while combating revolution: thoroughly acquainted with the general conditions of society, but imperfectly, or rather, coarsely understanding the moral necessities of human nature; sometimes satisfying them with the soundest judgment, and at others depreciating and insulting them with impious pride. ”

“ There appears, however, to be no doubt that the abandonment of the custom was chiefly an effect of the great wave of humane feeling, the passion of pity and compunction for all suffering--in a word, the impulse of tender-heartedness--which was really the great moral power behind the Revolution. ”

“ The new thinkers themselves belonged to all ranks, though very few of them were to be found among the aristocracy. They all preached, with more or less ardour, and with a more or less crude application of logic to political conditions, the doctrine that every man had an equal moral right with every other to control his own life. ”

“ Unless they be allowed to substantiate my observation, that civilization has hitherto been only a perfection of the arts; and a partial melioration of manners, tending more to embellish the superiour rank of society, than to improve the situation of all mankind. Sentiments 224were often noble, sympathies just—yet the life of most men of the first class was made up of a series of unjust acts, because the regulations thought expedient to cement society, did violence to natural justice. ”

“ Conquest, it is true, prepared the way for the revolution, and the concessions made by the ruling class to the demands of the disfranchised classes and peoples were motived in the main by political prudence and expediency. But it is equally true that ethical sentiment worked with these other causes in determining the course and progress of the revolution, and that one of its most important results was the imparting of a great impulse to the widening moral movement going on in the ancient world, and the bringing to recognition of the principles of the moral equality and brotherhood of men. ”

“ We have seen above how in the conservative classes the opposition between moral theory and practice arises, so that morality appears to them as that which everybody demands but nobody practises—something which is beyond our strength, which is only given to supernatural powers to carry out. Here we see in the revolutionary classes a different kind of antagonism arise between moral theory and practice, the antagonism between the moral ideal and the reality created by the social revolution. ”

“ There can be only one permanent revolution—a moral one; the regeneration of the inner man.
How is this revolution to take place? Nobody knows how it will take place in humanity, but every man feels it clearly in himself. And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself. ”

“ The great truths which had affected many of these poor people to tears, were exactly those which, during the last eighteen hundred years, have been active in effecting so many moral revolutions in the world, and which must ultimately triumph over all error and all oppression. ”

“ This important conclusion, involving the happiness and exaltation of the human character, demands serious and mature consideration; as it must ultimately sink the dignity of society into contempt, and its members into greater wretchedness; or elevate it to a degree of grandeur not hitherto anticipated, but by the most enlightened statesmen and philosophers. ”

“ As to the essence of human nature, what our national experience has made plain is this, that to remain in a continually exalted moral condition is not human nature. That has happened which was prophesied: we have gone down hill from the Revolution until now; we are absorbed in "mere money-getting." ”

“ In our day the attempt is made to reform society by civilisation, by education, by material progress, by change of policies and organisations. No! the change needed is vital. It is the change from moral death to moral life. ”

“ Such traditions of a progress and regress in virtue and happiness, and of repeated changes from one condition to another, are not destitute of general truth. The moral is not, more than the physical world, exempt from revolutions. ”

“ The analogies that we can draw from physical to moral topics are of all others the most striking.
Does anyone yet question the possibility of inducing radical reform of moral and political evil? Does he object, from that impossibility, to the association which I propose, which I frankly confess to be one of the means whose instrumentality I would employ to attain this reform. Let them look to the methods which I use. Let me put my object out of their view and propose their own, how would they accomplish it? By diffusing virtue and knowledge, by promoting human happiness. ”

“ The law of human progress, what is it but the moral law? Just as social adjustments promote justice, just as they acknowledge the equality of right between man and man, just as they insure to each the perfect liberty which is bounded only by the equal liberty of every other, must civilization advance. Just as they fail in this, must advancing civilization come to a halt and recede. ”

“ L.—There is a general revolution which changes the tastes of the mind as well as the fortunes of the world. ”

“ As if a system, good and right in itself, defensible in the light of sound reason, could suffer by the fullest examination which could be made in private or in public, or by the profoundest agitation which could arise from the use of mere moral means! The discussions, the agitations, and all the fierce passions which attended them, were unavoidable. Human nature must be changed and wholly revolutionized before such agitations can be suppressed. They are the means appointed by the Creator for the progress of humanity. ”

“ Some think it must come by political instrumentality, by changes in the laws; others have no hope but in a social regeneration, or reconstruction of society, others still rely only on moral and religious influences. ”

“ Such is the burst and growth of power and virtue which may rise out of excessive national afflictions from tyranny and oppression;—such is the hallowing influence, and thus mighty is the sway, of the spirit of moral justice in the heart of the individual and over the wide world of humanity. ”

“ Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil; ”

“ Both are akin to that state of mind which narrows the entrance into a wider morality to the eye of a needle, and accounts for the fact that new moral movements have ever and again been inaugurated by those who have found themselves in revolt against the conventionalized good. ”

“ By the mere force of moral revulsion in England, by the throes of a great civil war engendered by slavery in America, at last the true nature of a moral personality got itself recognized,—the inviolability of personal responsibility, the sanctity of the individual, the sacredness of freedom,—those great principles on which the whole of our public and political life are founded. ”

“ Nevertheless, in proportion to the increase of the mass of individuals, the caprices of chance and of liberty neutralize each other to allow the providential action that presides over our destinies to prevail. Looking at the same total of the life of the world, humanity undoubtedly advances: there are in our time fewer moral miseries, fewer physical miseries, than were known in the past. ”

“ Times and occasions and provocations will teach their own lessons. The wise will determine from the gravity of the case; the irritable from sensibility to oppression; the high-minded from disdain and indignation at abusive power in unworthy hands; the brave and bold from love of honourable danger in a generous cause. But with or without right, a revolution will be the very last resource of the thinking and the good. ”

“ Reform exclusively as a moral protest and awakening is condemned to sterility. Reformers exclusively as moral protestants and purifiers are condemned to misdirected effort, to an illiberal puritanism, and to personal self-stultification. ”

“ Will the wheels of the millennial car be rolled onward by miraculous power? No! God designs to confer this holy privilege upon man; it is through his instrumentality that the great and glorious work of reforming the world is to be done. And see you not how the mighty engine of moral power is dragging in its rear the Bible and peace societies, anti-slavery and temperance, sabbath schools, moral reform, and missions? ”

“ As I have shown, the indispensable condition of success of all movements for moral reform is the suppression not only of militant strife, but of political strife. While they prevail, all ecclesiastical and pedagogic efforts to better the condition of society must fail. ”

“ But as in this struggle the survival of the fittest does not necessarily mean the destruction of those who represented the defeated ideal, but the supplanting of their ideal by another, the movement is one of comprehension, and we should expect to find, and do find, the history of morality exhibit the gradual development of a universal moral order, good not for one group of men but for all. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The historian well and truly describes the state of society in those evil days, and how the manners of the age became, year by year, more lost to virtue, dignity, and honour, until at length all the better feelings of human nature, even religion itself, became a by-word and a mockery amidst the chaos of the Revolution. ”