Reactionary

“ This system of ours which is founded in reason, and in experience of modern conditions, and which {156} is upheld by the unfaltering confidence of a great people, you are wont to condemn as tyrannical and reactionary. ”

“ If a reactionary is any one who will not float with the stream, and a progressive anyone who has the flowing tide with him, we must classify the Christian Fathers and the French Encyclopaedists as belonging to the same type, the progressive ”

“ He passes in review, one after another, what he deems the leading doctrines of the revolutionary school of politics, and dismisses them all as mere instruments of attack upon the old social system, with no permanent validity as social truth. ”

“ All the pleasing illusions which made power gentle and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life, and which, by a bland assimilation, incorporated [72] into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved by the new conquering empire of light and reason. ”

“ It is the people who, in the long run, without theories, by their spontaneous creations, modify, reform, absorb the policy projects and philosophical doctrines, and who, incessantly creating a new reality, incessantly change the basis of politics and philosophy. ”

“ For you must know, that according to some of the most refined and fashionable systems of modern politics, the ideas of right and wrong, and all the moral virtues, are to be considered only as the vagaries of a weak and distempered imagination in the possessor, and of no use in the world, but for the skilful politician to convert to his own purposes of power and profit. ”

“ The one unvarying factor of the human mind,” he went on, “is the firm, unbiased conviction that I am right, and all opposition necessarily, consciously and wilfully wrong. This belief is the base and foundation of all human institutions, of sectionalism, caste, creeds, parties, states, of patriotism itself. ”

“ In the free action of individual thought and expression grew eccentricities of belief and of practice, and a crop of so-called "isms," more or less temporary, unprofitable, and pernicious. Public opinion attained an astonishing degree of freedom,—I never heard of any community that was altogether free of its tyranny. At least extraordinary latitude was permitted in the development of extreme ideas, new, fantastic, radical, or conservative. ”

“ Can any instance be named in history of a party founded on temperament, not on interest or connection? In politics, as in other things, age, no doubt, as a rule, is cautious, and youth hopeful; yet what reactionists are more violent than the younger members of an aristocratic faction? ”

“ All alike, by a dogged persistence in doing as they like, have come to ignore the existence of Authority or Right Reason; and this irrecognition of what ought to be the rule of life operates not only in the political sphere, but also, and conspicuously, in the spheres of morals, taste, society, and literature. ”

“ It cannot be repeated too often that your peculiar power consists in your standing with that public opinion and nothing else. When we spoke at the Reform Club banquet about the “moral forces in politics,” we meant just this. You cannot try to carry your points by making concessions to the spoils politicians without being ultimately beaten, for you leave the ground on which you are strong. ”

“ I think it can be said without exaggeration that there has never been in the history of this Republic a political movement in which the purely moral motive was so strong—indeed, so dominant and decisive. ”

“ They, tend rather to encourage a certain genial and friendly tolerance of all possible human forms of society—even the lowest. They are essentially democratic, not to say socialistic and revolutionary in tone. ”

“ Political impulses are not mere intellectual inferences from calculations of means and ends; but tendencies prior to, though modified by, the thought and experience of individual human beings. This may be seen if we watch the action in politics of such impulses as personal affection, fear, ridicule, the desire of property, etc. ”

“ It has turned every dinner-table into a debating-club, and made every citizen a student of natural law. When a moral quality comes into politics, when a right is invaded, the discussion [200] draws on deeper sources: general principles are laid bare, which cast light on the whole frame of society. ”

“ The everyday cases of private experience, of men defending right conclusions on wrong or conventional grounds, or in a confused form, entangled with conclusions of a like yet different nature;—of arguments, theories, solutions, which once satisfied, satisfying us no longer on a question about which we hold the same belief—of one party unable to comprehend the arguments of another—of one section of the same side smiling at the defence of their common cause by another—are all reproduced on a grander scale in the history of society. ”

“ Anyone who is acquainted with the state of the public mind at present, knows that a priori arguments against revolution as such are not convincing, except to those who are already convinced on other ground. ”

“ Every extravagant political or social movement is followed by a corresponding reaction, even if the movement be on the whole a salutary one, and retribution is sure to fall in one shape or another on the leaders of it. ”

“ These last-mentioned institutions have seldom been radically altered in any country by any process short of revolution, however persuasive the voice of right, of reason, and of utility, in favor of change. ”

“ When confronted with the noisy demonstrations of some new revolutionary claimant for public favor, the well-bred mind, tho plastic to worthily formative influences, is not easily disturbed in its convictions, nor readily affected by the contagion of popular approval. ”

“ Whoever hesitates to utter that which he thinks the highest truth, lest it should be too much in advance of the time, may reassure himself by looking at his acts from an impersonal point of view. Let him duly realise the fact that opinion is the agency through which character adapts external arrangements to itself—that his opinion rightly forms part of this agency—is a unit of force, constituting, with other such units, the general power which works out social changes ”

“ Whatever goes by the different names of the revolutionary, the radical, the democratic, the liberal, the free-thinking, the sceptical, or the negative and critical school or party in religion, politics, or philosophy, all passes with him under the designation of metaphysical, and whatever he has to say about it forms part of his description of the metaphysical school of social science. ”

“ The assertion, then, that an idea of social good is represented by, or realised in, the formation of states, is not to be met by pointing to the selfishness and bad passions of men who have been instrumental in forming them, if there is reason to think that the influences, under the direction of which these passions became thus instrumental, are due to the action of such an idea. ”

“ Whatever favor a radical criticism can obtain, it must win on its merits both as an adequate interpretation of our political past and as an outlook towards the solution of our present and future political and economic problems. ”

“ The two great influences of their time, Science and Democracy, operating upon their life and literature, made them at once sensitive to the reasons for man’s shortcomings, and sensible of the absurd position of the avowed castigator—who, moreover, by his very situation as a sharp-shooter renders himself in turn the more conspicuous target. ”

“ Its existence having been so far a struggle, and an assertion at the sword's point, of principles, just in themselves, but needing qualification to make them available as the foundations of a polity, it is full of defects, to remedy which, so as to make it the deliberate expression of public reason, clear of sectional interest and passion, is now the great aim of political thought and effort. ”

“ But I fear—In short, I have been told that political strife was a necessary result of human nature."
"Human nature!" cried the old boy, impetuously; "what human nature? The human nature of paupers, of slaves, of slave-holders, or the human nature of wealthy freemen? ”

“ Many an action which, if taken singly, appears unjustifiable or hateful, loses that character when viewed as one of the series of events from which it arose, as a connecting link in the political chain of which it forms a part. ”

“ It becomes a grave question how far we may safely give political power to those who entertain views so erroneous respecting fundamental social relations; and who so pertinaciously struggle to enforce these erroneous views. ”

“ The controversies of old and new organization, nonresistance and political action, may now be looked upon by the parties to them, who still survive, with the philosophic calmness which follows the subsidence of prejudice and passion. ”

“ From a blend of these two he has constructed in imagination the image of Democracy—a loud-voiced, independent, arrogant figure, with a thirst for drink, and imperfect standards of decency, and a determination to be supported at some one else’s expense. ”

“ Your attempt to impede the progress of truth and liberal opinion will have no other tendency than to detract from that merit and applause you would otherwise have obtained if you had confined yourself to the objects for which your Society was instituted. ”

“ Then it may easily happen that the smoke of the battle-field of political and social controversy will obscure their pure air, that efforts will be made to stamp out the exceptional doctrine and the exceptional man. ”

“ While holding that, in unorganized groups of men, the feeling manifested as public opinion controls political conduct, just as it controls the conduct distinguished as ceremonial and religious; and, while holding that governing agencies, during their early stages, are at once the products of aggregate feeling, derive their powers from it, and are restrained by it, we must admit that these primitive relations become complicated when, by war, small groups are compounded and recompounded into great ones. ”

“ But if be seeks to pervert these principles, or to change this character, be is a Revolutionist, whether his schemes are designed to be perfected by the arts of persuasion, the strong hand of force, or by any other means. ”

“ A change so radical in the mode of admission to the ranks of the force may be safely reckoned upon to encounter adverse and censorious criticism. The very radicalism, subversive as it undoubtedly would be, of all the traditions of the past, would incite to opposition. ”

“ And, moreover, a just public opinion and a statesmanlike treatment of present problems demand that they be seen in their historical relations in order that history may hold the lamp for conservative reform. ”

“ We are far from intending to involve ourselves in juridical and constitutional controversies, or from regulating the distribution of praise and blame by the opinions which have gained the day at a later time, or prevail at the moment; still less shall we be guided by our own sympathies: our only concern is to become acquainted with the great motive powers and their results. And yet how can we help recognising manifold coincidences with that conflict of opinions and tendencies in which we are involved at the present day? ”

“ A number of new passionate creeds and movements, appealing to the reason, justice, and welfare of mankind, to the interests of individuals, classes, nations, races, and humanity, are struggling to gain power over human conduct in the arts of economic and political organization. ”

“ If our difference of opinion is so inclusive that we can agree on nothing political, our differences have gone from mere opinion into the depths of ideology. Here the institutional framework is affected. ”

“ But great ideas sometimes now make their way in spite of the most obstinate opposition, and operating, particularly in republics, by insensible degrees, sow the seeds of those principles and true opinions, which, as they arrive to maturity, prove so efficacious in times of political contest and public commotion. ”

“ This may lead the candid mind to cast a veil over that ambiguity which confounds opinion, and that counteraction of former principles, which often sets a man in opposition to himself and prevents that uniformity of conduct which dignifies and that consistency which adorns the character. ”

“ I have shown in another work how institutions, arts, and languages are modified in passing from one people to another, and how the laws of these transformations differ from the truth as stated in books. I allude to this matter now merely to show why, in examining the subject of democratic ideas, we occupy ourselves so little with the text of doctrines, and seek only for the psychological elements of which they constitute the vestment, and the reactions which they provoke in the various categories of men who have accepted them. ”

“ If they express it well in law and fact, in book and song, they prosper under its mysterious approval; if they do not, it revolts or forgets or does something else of an equally annihilatory sort. That, briefly, is the idea of the People. ”

“ Every political party based upon real principles (rather than upon a desire for spoils) , is organized as the result of the radiation of those principles held in the self-reliant hearts of a few men. Every school of thought, in philosophy, theology, medicine, law, ethics, or political economy, is based upon the radiation of ideas from self-reliant men. ”

“ Thus the joint operation of two moral causes together,—the sort of causes which politicians do not seriously regard,—tells against the designs of the politicians with what seems to be an almost inexorable fatality. ”

“ All is confusion, intermingling of principles and opinions, political rivalry and personal antipathy, the working of which produces, from time to time, something brisk and exciting, and a good deal of clever speaking and writing, interesting enough to the immediate actors, but which the mass of the country does not care a straw about. ”