Principles

“ We ought to think of this, in order that we may be ready day by day for the performance of any duty required of us; we ought to know the principles so perfectly that we can apply them to the performance of every duty and feel and know that we are right—understand them for ourselves that we may be capable of applying them both in this life and in that which is to come. ”

“ But to men truly initiated and rightly taught, these ruling and master principles, which, in the opinion of such men as I have mentioned, have no substantial existence, are in truth everything and all in all. ”

“ It is in recognition of these eternal laws that I speak, these principles will stand forever and the people that puts them into daily practice, will abide with the principles, but the people who violate them must go down. ”

“ These principles, whether lax or strict, low or high in moral tone, become, by an insensible and imperceptible adoption, their principles, and are carried out by them into the duties and avocations of future life. ”

“ You may hold what principles you please provided you hold them in the background; and thus men of the most conflicting principles can unite and hold those principles in abeyance while with ardor and energy they pursue the phantom of worldliness. ”

“ If there are certain principles, as I think there are, which the constitution of our nature leads us to believe, and which we are under a necessity to take for granted in the common concerns of life, without being able to give a reason for them; these are what we call the principles of common sense; and what is manifestly contrary to them, is what we call absurd. ”

“ The great principles which govern the phenomena of all bodies are gradually being discovered, and when found we deductively apply them to ourselves, and thus arrive at a knowledge of our true position in nature, our duties, our proper course of conduct, &c. ”

“ All the great things of humanity have been accomplished in the name of absolute principles. ”

“ The kingdom of God will establish truth and correct principles—the principles of truth, equity, and justice; in short, the principles that emanate from God, principles that are calculated to elevate man in time and through all eternity. ”

“ We then, abandoning these, seek for some higher and more universal principles—essential in the nature of things, and thus independent of the will and action of man—to see if they will throw any light on the subject. ”

“ For in the intellectual and moral education of man, considered merely as a citizen of the present world, we see the constant and inseparable union of the two principles, and provision made for their perpetual exercise. ”

“ To discover general principles belongs to the progressive aspect of the mind, which is most strongly developed in men; to. preserve and apply the general principles which are already established belong to the conservative side of the mind, and for this women, as they have been made by the evolution of the race, have and should have a peculiar aptitude. ”

“ Thus, knowledge of general principles must be applied to particular affairs, and this supposes that one knows how to reason correctly, how to infer the particular from the general, how to put facts together. ”

“ Those who have dispensed with the assumption of such a universal standard, have only been enabled to do so by supposing that a moral sense, or instinct, inherent in our constitution, informs us, both what principles of conduct we are bound to observe, and also in what order these should be subordinated to one another. ”

“ There are laws which govern nature, and the principles of matter with which we are surrounded, with which many of us are familiar. These laws are as unchangeable as the revolution of the earth upon its axis, or as the rising and setting of the sun. ”

“ I say this, not looking from a sectarian point of view, but as guided by the principles that ought to govern us in our judgment of men, comprehensively regarding their qualities, and what they have been to their age. ”

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

“ For there is one truth of which I am profoundly convinced,—nations live by absolute ideas, not by approximate and partial conceptions; therefore, men are needed who define principles, or at least test them in the fire of controversy. ”

“ To begin with clear and self-evident principles, to advance by timorous and sure steps, to review frequently our conclusions, and examine accurately all their consequences; though by these means we shall make both a slow and a short progress in our systems; are the only methods, by which we can ever hope to reach truth, and attain a proper stability and certainty in our determinations. ”

“ Here are four principles all classed together, all equally important, all {314} equally necessary, and all required at our hands by those fixed and eternal laws of truth and justice, by which the worlds are governed, and by which we may return back into the presence of God, and dwell with the just and true and the pure of all ages. ”

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

“ The two great principles which move the [186] world are, the love of wealth and the love of knowledge. These two principles respectively represent and govern the two most important classes into which every civilized country is divided. ”

“ It is therefore evidently the intention of that part of the moral government with which we are acquainted, to impress these principles deeply on the human mind, and to induce the human race to regulate their conduct accordingly. ”

“ They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. ”

“ If then it be the property of Rational Creatures, and Essential to their very Natures to Chuse their Actions, and to determine their Wills to that 27 Choice by such Principles and Reasonings as their Understandings are furnish’d with, they who are desirous to be rank’d in that Order of Beings must conduct their Lives by these Measures, begin with their Intellectuals, inform themselves what are the plain and first Principles of Action and Act accordingly. ”

“ God, great principle of all minor principles, God, who is Himself without a principle, could not conceive Himself, if, in order to do it, He required to know His own principle. ”

“ To controvert, for example, the prevailing doctrines with regard to the freedom of the will, the sources of our knowledge, the nature of the understanding {xlviii} as containing the controlling principles of our whole being, and the universality of the law of cause and effect, even in connection with the argument and the authority of the most powerful intellect of the age, may even now be worse than in vain. ”

“ From this he singles out the principles and distinctions which are of general applicability, and employs the powers and resources of a most precise and analytic mind to give to those principles and distinctions a philosophic basis, grounded in the universal reason of mankind, and not in mere technical convenience. ”

“ It was in the winter of 1822-3 that I formed the plan of a little society, to be composed of young men agreeing in fundamental principles—acknowledging Utility as their standard in ethics and politics, and a certain number of the principal corollaries drawn from it in the philosophy I had accepted—and meeting once a fortnight to read essays and discuss questions conformably to the premises thus agreed on. ”

“ By a consciously self-realising principle is meant a principle that is determined to action by the conception of its own perfection, or by the idea of giving reality to possibilities which are involved in it and of which it is conscious as so involved; or, more precisely, a principle which at each stage of its existence is conscious of a more perfect form of existence as possible for itself, and is moved to action by that consciousness. ”

“ but moral principles require reasoning and discourse, and some exercise of the mind, to discover the certainty of their truth. They lie not open as natural characters engraved on the mind; ”

“ The problems of life and destiny, the Being of God, the constitution of the universe, the fundamental principles of ethics, politics, and law are of little concern to him. It is doubtful, indeed, whether it has ever dawned upon his mind that there are such questions worthy of patient consideration by the reflective powers. ”

“ All the essentially human subjects, such as sociology, politics, morality, religious worship, &c., are in this position, and are probably results partly of the operation of the great principles of nature acting through the body and mind of man. ”

“ Why are we not divided and distracted as the world are? And especially the country round about us? The reason is, we are and have been taught correct principles. How easy it would be to put the world of mankind right, if they would be set right and if they would hearken to the voice of God. In this age, as in all others, the inhabitants of the earth have been told what would come upon them, but they heed not the warnings of the servants of God. ”

“ I answer, everything is useful which contributes to fix in the principles and practices of virtue. ”

“ As he puts it, the clear understanding that we are parts of nature, and of our position in the universe of things, will yield a new character. We shall only then desire what is ordained for us and shall find rest in the truth, in the knowledge of what is necessary. This he regards as the highest state of the individual, and the desire to attain it he evidently considers the supreme motive by which the individual should be governed. ”

“ Where there is a tacit convention that principles are not to be disputed; where the discussion of the greatest questions which can occupy humanity is considered to be closed, we cannot hope to find that generally high scale of mental activity which has made some periods of history so remarkable. ”

“ The capacity, then, on the part of the individual of conceiving a good as the same for himself and others, and of being determined to action by that conception, is the foundation of rights; and rights are the condition of that capacity being realised. ”

“ Because a group of beings are capable each of conceiving an absolute good of himself and of conceiving it to be good for himself as identical with, and because identical with, the good of the rest of the group, there arises for each a consciousness that the common good should be the object of action, i.e. a duty, and a claim in each to a power of action that shall be at once secured and regulated by the consciousness of a common good on the part of the rest, i.e. a right. ”

“ Supposing that philosophers can find exquisite reasons for considering the institutions and requirements which have resulted from all this self-seeking and violence to be contributory to the common good of those who have to submit to them, is it not trifling to speak of them as founded on or representing a conception of this good, when no such conception has influenced those who established, maintain, or submit to them? ”

“ Process (2) , which may be called a reconciliation of reason with itself, because it is the appropriation by reason as a personal principle in the individual of the work which reason, acting through the media of other persons, has already achieved in the establishment of conventional morality, is the condition of the third stage in which the moral progress of the individual consists; viz. the growth of a personal interest in the realisation of an idea of what should be, in doing what is believed to contribute to the absolutely desirable, or to human perfection, because it is believed to do so. ”

“ But, besides that the ordinary course of nature may convince us, that almost everything is regulated by principles and maxims very different from ours; besides this, I say, it must evidently appear contrary to all rules of analogy to reason, from the intentions and projects of men, to those of a Being so different, and so much superior. ”

“ In an age like the present, when a general reconsideration of all first principles is felt to be inevitable, and when more than at any former period of history the suffering portions of the community have a voice in the discussion, it was impossible but that ideas of this nature should spread far and wide. ”