Must

“ We must find our duties in what comes to us, not in what we imagine might have been. ”

“ It must be our dearest wish, as it is our highest interest, that this task be well performed. And we should assiduously bring to bear upon them all the moral influences within our reach to make them do it well. ”

“ There are cases when, with a clear consciousness of the rectitude of our purpose, and a strong confidence in the justice of our judgment, we must step over all human laws, be the result to ourselves what it may. ”

“ In countless forms that strange, drawing power lays hold of you, and you must follow or reject. It may be a call to you to yield your reverence, your support, your participation to some benevolent or religious movement. ”

“ If we differ about measures or about men, (as, from the constitution of our nature, differ we must,) let us remember that we are all but fallible men, and extend to others that charity of which the best of us cannot but feel that we stand in need. ”

“ Now we must ask these persons the following questions: Whether to desire what is good is virtuous or vicious; and whether the desire to run in order to reach the goal in the pursuit of what is good be worthy of praise or censure? ”

“ Let those who would study well this social question, or who in public trusts are charged with its solution, be most careful here. Every motive in the minds of these people, whether of instinct, desire, or duty, must be addressed. ”

“ For nothing? He who thinks so must be blinded—must be demented. In these facts are wound up a most distinct significance, and with them are connected most clear and emphatic obligations and responsibilities. ”

“ Again we may say, with no pretense of probing the mystery in its depths, but as gaining a touch of side-light, it is plain that what we look at as the strictly moral forces of mankind—the clear thinking, the definite purpose, the pure aspiration—must be reckoned with as only a part of the volume of force that carries along the individual and the race. ”

“ Hence, human Reason must always receive its particular Cast and Colour from the pre-established Passions, Habits, and Principles; will ever form its ruling Ideas of Good and Evil, Right and Wrong, Just and Unjust, from these great Fountains of human Action. ”

“ The first proposition was that to have moral worth an action must be done from duty.] ”

“ To constitute a sufficient moral system, there must be a recognition of one supreme, the original source of being, authority and wisdom, duty to whom includes, harmonizes and makes binding all other duties ”

“ Important principles may, and must, be inflexible. ”

“ If we must accept Fate, we are not less compelled to affirm liberty, the significance of the individual, the grandeur of duty, the power of character. ”

“ For His claims reach you not as external facts to be passively gazed at, but as imperative, {236} active demands that lay hold of you, and insist that you shall take action upon them. You must yield or you must resist. ”

“ So whether our message is welcomed or not, the fact remains we must go to all; and the worse they are and the harder they are, the more evident is it that, wanted or not, it is needed by them. ”

“ For that reason each one of us must find out for himself what is permitted and what is forbidden—forbidden, that is, to himself. You need never do anything that is forbidden and yet be a thorough rascal. And vice versa. ”

“ If we would perform our quota of the great whole, we must, each in his place, fulfil the duties that lie around us; and we must beware how we go out of our way in pursuit of duty, unless we are confident that we are not neglecting, or perhaps trampling upon, a duty that lies directly in our path. ”

“ All action is for the sake of some end, and rules of action, it seems natural to suppose, must take their whole character and colour from the end to which they are subservient. ”

“ Justice is indispensably and universally necessary, and what is necessary must always be limited, uniform, and distinct. ”

“ Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.” ”

“ But in so complex a thing as human nature, we must consider, it is hard to find rules without exceptions. ”

“ What good I see humbly I seek to do,
And live obedient to the law, in trust
That what will come, and must come, shall come well." ”

“ We must frankly confess, then, using our empirical common sense and ordinary practical prejudices, that in the world that actually is, the virtues of sympathy, charity, and non-resistance may be, and often have been, manifested in excess. ”

“ Now, if we want to work for this kingdom, and to bring it, and enter into it, there's just one condition to be first accepted. You must enter it as children, or not at all; ”

“ But we must not promise what we ought not, lest we be called on to perform what we cannot; ”

“ Well, propensities and principles must be reconciled by some means.” ”

“ Good reasons must, of force, give place to better. ”

“ Important principles may and must be inflexible. ”

“ The necessitarian contends that “volition, or an act of the mind, is the effect of motive, and that it is subject to the power and action of its cause.”126 The advocate of free-will replies, If we must suppose an action of motive on the mind to account for its act, we must likewise suppose another action to account for the action of motive ”

“ Thou must beg from those who have the giving of it; thou who covetest to outvie others in honour must lower thyself to the humble posture of petition. Dost thou long for power? Thou must face perils, for thou wilt be at the mercy of thy subjects' plots. ”

“ Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong, [1137]
Between whose endless jar justice resides, [1138]
Should lose their names, and so should justice too. [1136] [1137] [1139]
Then every thing includes itself in power, [1140]
[Pg 146] Power into will, will into appetite; 120
And appetite, an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And last eat up himself. ”

“ Let us fence against physical evil by care, and the use of those means which experience must have pointed out to us: let us fence against moral evil by philosophy. I renounce the alternative you propose. ”

“ Of its own accord must it ever overcome itself anew. With your values and formulae of good and evil, you exercise power, you valuing ones: and that is your secret love, and the sparkling, trembling, and overflowing of your souls. ”

“ Indeed, sir, to enable us to determine both on the one and the other of these great questions with a firm and precise judgment, I think it may be necessary to consider distinctly the true nature and the peculiar circumstances of the object which we have before us; because, after all our struggle, whether we will or not, we must govern America according to that nature and to those circumstances, and not according to our imaginations ”

“ The new philosophy has its chief bearing on conduct, not in abstract conceptions about fate, free will, and responsibility, but in the stimulus it gives to find new tools and weapons of moral achievement. How shall we make men good? No longer by the mere appeal to reason; no longer mainly by promise of heaven and threat of hell. Still appealing to reason, to hope and fear, to imagination, we must go on to put about men all stimulating influences, all guiding appliances. ”

“ I ought'--we have within us a moral judge, to whom we feel ourselves subject, and who points out and requires of us our duty. 'I can'--we are conscious of power to do that which we perceive we ought to do. 'I will'--we determine to exercise that power with a volition which is in itself a step in the execution of that which we will. Here is a beautiful and perfect chain, and the wonder is that, so exquisitely constituted as he is for right-doing, error should be even possible to man. ”

“ They would appear as various expressions of the fact that the moral order acts not capriciously or like a human being, but from the necessity of its nature, or, if we prefer the phrase, by general laws,—a necessity or law which of course knows no exception and is as ‘ruthless’ as fate. ”

“ What, after all, is it that we mean to say of an action when we say that it is right or ought to be done? And what is it that we mean to say of a state of things when we say that it is good or bad? Can we discover any general characteristic, which belongs in common to absolutely all right actions, no matter how different they may be in other respects? ”

“ Yet what rights can one exercise over another, save only as regards the body, and that which is lower than the body—I mean fortune? What! wilt thou bind with thy mandates the free spirit? Canst thou force from its due tranquillity the mind that is firmly composed by reason? ”

“ Most true is it, as a wise man teaches us, that ‘Doubt of any sort cannot be removed except by Action.’ On which ground, too, let him who gropes painfully in darkness or uncertain light, and prays vehemently that the dawn may ripen into day, lay this other precept well to heart, which to me was of invaluable service: ‘Do the Duty which lies nearest thee,’ which thou knowest to be a Duty! ”

“ In the ought the self is commanded, and that self is the sensuous self in me, which is ordered, and which, if I obey, is forced by the non-sensuous formal will which stands above the empirical element, and, equally with that, is myself. The ought is the command of the formal will, and duty is the obedience, or, more properly, the compulsion of the lower self by that will, or the realization of the form in and against the recalcitrant matter of the desires. ”

“ But apart from that altogether, let me just remind you, in half a dozen sentences, of the various limitations or fences which hedge up our lives on every side. There are the obligations which we owe, and the relations in which we stand, to the outer world, the laws of physical life, and all that touches the external and the material. There are the relations in which we stand, and the obligations which we owe, to ourselves. ”

“ We speak not of external acts; and hence we lay aside the whole scheme of natural necessity. We speak of the acts of the will; and we ask, if these be not free from the dominion of moral necessity, from necessitating causes over which we have no control, can we be accountable for them? Can we be to praise or to blame for them? Can they be our virtue or our vice? ”

“ If man's soul had remained in a state of freedom and innocence, what merit would there have been in loving and obeying the order he found established, an order which it would not have been to his advantage to disturb? ”

“ Try to be, not to seem. Only so far as you earnestly wish to do right for the sake of right, can you gain a principle that will sustain you hereafter; and that is what we wish, not fair appearances now. ”