Reconstruction

“ Every resolution of a choice involves to some degree a reconstruction of the self, society, and the world. Every intelligent reconstruction is an experiment, guided by laws already known, to achieve mastery over concrete problems. ”

“ Let us not deceive ourselves; there will arise new talents, which will gradually adapt themselves to new conditions, if such will prevail, and their works may perhaps gain from it; but we shall not agree to the principle of general demolition and reconstruction, when this has no other foundation but the well-known thesis—“Let us destroy everything and clear the ground; as to the reconstruction—about that we shall see later on.” ”

“ We cannot speak legitimately of changes in the point of view and the intervening medium until we have already constructed some world more stable than that of momentary sensation. Our discussion of the blue spectacles and the walk round the table has, I hope, made this clear. But what remains far from clear is the nature of the reconstruction required. ”

“ Time has softened much; even the Civil War begins to stand forth in some firmness of outline and clarity of atmosphere. But when we come to reconstruction—grave historians grow almost hysterical, romancers pass the bounds of possibilities, and even official figures contradict one another with sublime effrontery. ”

“ She became more and more alive, not so much to a system of ideas as to a big diffused impulse toward change, to a great discontent with and criticism of life as it is lived, to a clamorous confusion of ideas for reconstruction—reconstruction of the methods of business, of economic development, of the rules of property, of the status of children, of the clothing and feeding and teaching of every one ”

“ There is a too easy and sanguine expectation of “good coming out of evil.” People talked as if Armageddon would naturally be followed by the millennium. But history shows that modern wars leave periods of exhaustion and repression. “Reconstruction” is a phrase now much in vogue, but reconstruction is not progress. If two neighbouring families, or several families, quarrel and pull down each others’ houses, there will certainly have to be “reconstruction” ”

“ The suggestion in the proclamation as to maintaining the political frame-work of the States on what is called reconstruction, is made in the hope that it may do good without danger of harm. It will save labor, and avoid great confusion. ”

“ Meanwhile pardon me for saying that, under existing circumstances, every measure which does not place the business of reconstruction upon the broadest ground will, in my humble opinion, tend to increase the difficulties which necessarily must arise, and hamper your future action. ”

“ There is now some very general measure of agreement The needs of social reconstruction that if humanity is to escape the fate of having passed through the ordeal of world-wide war in vain, the recent era of destruction must be followed by a period of reconstruction and reorganisation, in which many of our systems, institutions, customs and beliefs must be tested, and where necessary refashioned, in the light of our changed ideals and points of view and of the widened experience of human needs and possibilities which our existence through these years of conflict has brought us. ”

“ I know well the darkness of the world. But there are great ones among the boys and girls playing together here. All are on the road, but the great ones of the Reconstruction are already here in the world—playing. ”

“ We are nothing. Will you sell us into slavery among the Egyptians?' The men who remember the old days of the Reconstruction—which deserves an epic of its own—say that there was nothing left to build on, not even wreckage. ”

“ Problems of Reconstruction call for the consideration of men of stability and high character. As the Church's contribution to this momentous discussion, the forthcoming book on "Religion and Reconstruction" is one that everybody will find extremely valuable. ”

“ Yet there are not wanting facts and phenomena which encourage hope, wearing the aspect of a new dawn, suggesting the thought that if we have arrived at a crisis, it is not a crisis of destruction, but of reconstruction, a crisis in which old things pass away to make room for better things of the same kind. ”

“ The critics of the reconstruction policy are often challenged by its defenders with the question, "But what better course can you suggest, even now?" And the immense difficulty of the problem, even as calmly viewed to-day by the closet student, may well make us charitable toward the men who, for the most part, did the best they knew under the immediate besetment of measureless perplexities and contradictions. ”

“ We should also probably better understand the conditions of successful growth or reform, and have less toleration for schemes of social reconstruction.
Civilization has been of slow and painful growth. ”

“ That end, as it was natural for one to feel who had swept such a wide range of comparative studies, was the reconstruction of a past national life, or of the processes of a long organic development, and the estimate of their part in the great competitive struggle of races and peoples and institutions, in which our present civilization and its complex problems have been evolved. ”

“ Then comes reconstruction, reorganization, a getting acquainted with the new order of things, and the new duties and experiences to which it will give rise; then will be discoveries of new truths, and new applications of old; old errors and superstitions have been renounced, and facts and principles which have long lain in abeyance, smothered under a weight of neglect and unappreciation, will start into fresh magnitude. ”

“ The failure hitherto to present in a single view the striking features of these neglected parts is chiefly responsible for the fact that Reconstruction remains one of the most obscure parts of our history. A candid and comprehensive account of the political events of the time appears to divest the subject of much of the difficulty commonly supposed to attend its investigation. From a sufficient body of essential facts the step to an understanding and exposition of every principle of moment is comparatively easy. ”

“ There are here no signs of a millennium. Internal reconstruction, while men are still limited, egotistical, passionate, ignorant, and ignorantly led, means seditions and revolutions, and the rectification of frontiers means wars. ”

“ That in the work of Reconstruction it is important that no false step should be taken, interposing obstacle or delay, but that, by careful provisions, we should make haste to complete the work, so that the unity of the Republic shall be secured on permanent foundations, and fraternal relations once more established among all the people thereof. ”

“ In the beginning of reconstruction the alternative presented itself to us whether we would keep the rebel States under military government until another generation should have grown up untainted by the spirit of slavery, not animated by those fierce passions which had been engendered by the war, a generation that, in one word, might have been expected to enter into the new order of things with readiness ”

“ The National Government shall reconstruct the Republic of China on the basis of the revolutionary the Three People's Principles and the Quintuple-Power Constitution. 2. The primary task of reconstruction is the people's livelihood. ”

“ And finally upon the question of reconstruction we find that perpetual disbarment is not visited upon the people of the mightiest city of the new world, because it has from time to time made mistakes and put bad men to the fore. ”

“ But new institutions should arise upon their ruins; creation should succeed destruction; melodious birth-songs should be heard above the despairing death-songs. There should be a new heaven and a new earth, in which should dwell righteousness; and the Prince of Peace-- Prophet, Priest, and King--should reign therein forever and ever. ”

“ Modern principles, that mark a new departure in human progress and in its evidence, Civilisation, took their rise during this epoch of transition, and their development underlies the history of the period, and gives the key to its meaning. ”

“ One cannot altogether regret that such establishments are of the past, and yet the experiment of their reform should have been fairly tried, before destruction made it forever impossible to restore them to noble and pious uses. ”

“ Why, we should dearly love the late revolution we have seen below—it is no longer called Reform—were it to fling up to free light from fettered darkness a few fine bold original spirits, who might give the whole world a new character, and a more majestic aspect to crouching life. ”

“ Vary the theme as you may in the countless histories of countless peoples; subdivide the course of its progress as you will, allowing for different local causes and different local phenomena, the true philosophy of history teaches that no real departure from this natural development is possible. But what if by the violent intervention of some new and entirely foreign force, another development and another life is given to the inanimate ashes of the old? ”

“ Frequent reactions between revolution and restoration serve to emphasize the stress of this crisis; and these contrasts in the conditions of men, revealing human character under the most diverse phases, show how inextricably the romantic and the tragic are interwoven in the average lot. ”

“ This whole book has been written under the impression of a sort of religious terror produced in the author's soul by the view of this irresistible revolution which for so many centuries has been marching across all obstacles, and which is to-day seen still advancing in the midst of the ruins it has made.... If the men of our time were brought to see that the gradual and progressive development of equality is at once the past and the future of their history, this single discovery would give that development the sacred character of the will of the sovran master. ”

“ The eighteenth century gives the Encyclopedia, the revolution gives the Moniteur. Assuredly, it is a construction which increases and piles up in endless spirals; there also are confusion of tongues, incessant activity, indefatigable labor, eager competition of all humanity, refuge promised to intelligence, a new Flood against an overflow of barbarians. ”

“ Nothing must stand in opposition to their will. Reform suggests, Progress acts—Reform suggests the removal of all old landmarks—Progress assists in the accomplishment. By such means, and through successive stages, did those days pass away, now to be reviewed, as a beautiful dream of the past. ”

“ The soul of their civilization, as each sank in its ruins, was breathed into the survivor, until at last, in the great crash of Roman power, the shattered remnants of its pride and its knowledge, scattering through Europe, laid the basis of modern civilization. ”

“ But pause and reflect; take time into consideration: the past history of mankind may be, to what is to come, but as a day. Look at the progress even now making over the barbaric parts of the earth by the best examples of the Caucasian type, promising not only to fill up the waste places, but to supersede the imperfect nations already existing. Who can tell what progress may be made, even in a single century, towards reversing the proportions of the perfect and imperfect types? ”

“ That human society, even humanity itself, is now in a state of flux that at any moment may change into a chaos comparable only with that which came with the fall of classical civilization and from which five centuries were necessary for the process of recovery. Christianity, democracy, science, education, wealth, and the cumulative inheritance of a thousand years, have not preserved us from the vain repetition of history. ”

“ Where civilization exists, reason, in some shape or other, is the incentive or the pretence of development. When an empire enlarges, it is on the call of its allies, or for the balance of power, or from the necessity of a demonstration of strength, or from a fear for its frontiers. ”

“ It was the beginning of a gradual transformation which with every century, with every generation, takes some new form, and is sometimes called progress, sometimes revolution, but which moves on with the same relentless persistence as the laws that govern the earth. ”

“ I propose to deal with reform in a plea of urgency, endeavouring at the same time to trace the evolution of things as they are to-day, quoting history as I go, with one aim only in view, to point a moral and adorn a tale. ”

“ Or rather does each succeeding generation, standing on the graves of their forefathers, rise to a higher vantage ground, as the oaks of the wilderness in succession strike deeper roots, and grow more flourishing over the dust of their predecessors?”
The theory implied in these remarks, if properly stated and understood, is the true theory of the progress of society. It is a real progress. One after another of its empires may have risen, flourished for a time, and then crumbled into ruins. ”

“ "Reform won't catch up to the needs of civilization unless it's made to. ”

“ I remark on men, and upon their conditions of the moral, the mental, and the physical!—on the indomitable courage of restoration as against the ceaseless industry of decay!—on the high and the low, the good and the bad, the weak and the strong, the right and the wrong, the top and the bottom, the past and the future, the white and the black, and all those other things that are not!—and I laugh at all. ”

“ But the transition is not marked by the slow decay of an old tradition and the gradual birth of a new,—rather by the confused conflict of great and active forces. The Renaissance, the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, all are potent and shaping influences. ”

“ Both gave back truth to man, and man to nature, at the expense of temporary moral uncertainty and ruthless destruction. The Renaissance reinstated the individual in his human dignity, as a thinking, feeling, and acting being; the Eighteenth Century reconstructed society as a homogeneous free existence ”