Seclusion

“ Those who know any thing of the vicinity of Paris, know the extreme difficulty of finding seclusion unless at a great distance from its suburbs. Such a thing as an unexplored, or even an unfrequently visited recess, amid its woods or groves, is not for a moment to be imagined. Let any one who, being at heart a lover of nature, is yet chained by duty to the dust and heat of this great metropolis—let any such one attempt, even during the weekdays, to slake his thirst for solitude amid the scenes of natural loveliness which immediately surround us. ”

“ If men are sealed to me, it is because they want to be; and if they will be good, and hearken to my counsel and live a righteous life, I will agree to dictate and counsel them; but when men want to be sealed to me to have me feed and clothe them, and then act like the Devil, I have no more feeling and affection for them than I have for the greatest stranger in the world. Because a man is sealed to me, do you suppose that he can escape being judged according to his works? ”

“ Woe to the man, who will believe neither power, freedom, nor morality; because he nowhere finds either entire, or unmixed with sin, thraldom and infirmity. In the natural and intellectual realms, we distinguish what we cannot separate; and in the moral world, we must distinguish in order to separate. Yea, in the clear distinction of good from evil the process of separation commences. ”

“ I posit myself as individual, in opposition to another individual, by ascribing to myself a sphere for my freedom, from which I exclude the other, and by ascribing to him a sphere, from which I exclude myself—of course, only in the thinking of a fact and by virtue of this fact. ”

“ I speak in the presence of enlightened constitutional lawyers and statesmen, and I do not fear a contradiction when I assert that the doctrine of exclusion is not to be found in the principles, or in the analogies of our Constitution, or in the history of our country, or in the opinion of any statesman whose name or memory has reached us. ”

“ Every such person, and every one in any way of exceptionable character, was under the ban of hopeless exclusion. It was useless to challenge the excluders, since they had proclaimed that they would not fight. ”

“ In either view, whether the impulse spreads from the individual or from society, from within or from without, neither the components nor the mass can work in independence of each other. The personal and the general mind and will are inseparably united. ”

“ For each in its own way, and for its own purposes, gives countenance to the only consignment of one human creature to the power of another that the slow evolution of Justice has left in civilised society. ”

“ And the meeting [Pg 364] being ended, he stood up and said, ‘Good women, ye have spoken well, and prayed well; pray what is your rule?’ They answering, ‘The Spirit of God is our rule, and it ought to be thine, and all men’s, to walk by:’ he replied, ‘It is not my rule, nor I hope ever shall be.’ A clear evidence how prejudice may bias even discreet people; for being prepossessed thereby, men will speak sometimes rashly, without considering what. ”

“ The permission by God of a mere human, unsanctioned enterprise, nay, of a mighty, general, protracted, and incurable division among mankind—a system of opposition with all its unhappy consequences, its moral impediments, and its political disasters; such a permission forms, as I have already observed, the great enigma of history—the wonderful secret of the divine decrees in the conduct of mankind, as well as in the conduct of individuals. ”

“ Confinement, restriction, punishment even is necessary for the support of civilized society; but to shut the door of repentance even upon a murderer, to put an eternal termination to his usefulness in this life, to force him upon an unknown, inconceivable existence, is beyond what we can conceive to be the authority of custom. ”

“ XXI. Yet this division does not proceed from ignorance; for the soul admits of a twofold division, one of which partakes of reason, the other is without it. When, therefore, we are ordered to give a law to ourselves, the meaning is, that reason should restrain our rashness. ”

“ They made a noble and privileged order—open to the whole world. No one could complain of an unjust exclusion, for the only thing that could exclude them from the order was unwillingness or inability to follow the Rule. ”

“ I wish to live peaceably, but I have lately experienced so many instances of your most bare-faced and wanton oppression, to my prejudice, that there’s no longer a doubt with me what course I must be under the disagreeable necessity to take, that I may obtain redress and do justice to myself and family. ”

“ It is the outcome of his act, or his act returning upon himself, in a different way from that in which a man's act returns on himself when, having misused his body, he is visited according to physical necessity by painful consequences. The cause of the suffering which the act entails in the one case is the relation of the act to a society governed by the conception of rights ”

“ When disposition, like a sail unfurled,
Shews all its rents and patches to the world.
Disposition however is the one thing which undergoes no other change than that of growth in after life. The physical constitution, when any morbid principle is innate in it, rarely alters ”

“ Suppose that these three classes, the feeble-minded, the timid, and the men overwhelmed and crushed by their condition, are as numerous as the humane portion of the masters, are one-tenth of the whole, or 300,000. The rest are conscious of the qualities of a man. They desire their freedom, and are kept in slavery only by external force—the systematic force of public law, the irregular force of private will. ”

“ The Intellectual-Principle is for ever repugnant to distinction and to partition. Soul, there without distinction and partition, has yet a nature lending itself to divisional existence: its division is secession, entry into body. ”

“ The soul, long pent up and dwarfed, suddenly expands in new-found freedom. What wonder that every tendency is to excess,—radical complaint, radical remedies, bitter denunciation or angry silence. Some sink, some rise. ”

“ In this easy transition from doubt to assurance we seem to ourselves almost passive; the 'reasons' which decide us appearing to flow in from the nature of things, and to owe nothing to our will. We have, however, a perfect sense of being free, in that we are devoid of any feeling of coercion. The conclusive reason for the decision in these cases usually is the discovery that we can refer the case to a class upon which we are accustomed to act unhesitatingly in a certain stereotyped way. ”

“ By exclusion is meant, not only the intrinsical repugnance of one being to another, but that, for one reason or another, whether intrinsical or extrinsical, the existence of one implies the negation of the existence of the other. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Comparing one lot with another, does not rather the equality of the general doom of trouble and sorrow, of difficulty and struggle, witness the impartiality with which we are governed and our several fates distributed to us? The self-assured and self-relying strength of my constitution (I mean by that my character as well as the temperament from which it results) knows nothing of the trials that beset yours—doubt, distrust, despondency. ”

“ According to the multitude of my sorrows in my heart, thy comforts have given joy to my soul.
93:20. Doth the seat of iniquity stick to thee, who framest labour in commandment?
Doth the seat of iniquity stick to thee, etc.... That is, wilt thou, O God, who art always just, admit of the seat of iniquity: that is, of injustice, or unjust judges, to have any partnership with thee? Thou who framest, or makest, labour in commandment, that is, thou who obligest us to labour with all diligence to keep thy commandments.
93:21. They will hunt after the soul of the just, and will condemn innocent blood. ”

“ A hundred years ago our fathers announced this sublime, and, as it seemed then, foolhardy declaration, that God intended all men to be free and equal,—all men, without restriction, without qualification, without limit. ”

“ But mere exclusion would never beget a reality, nor would a mere sensuous impression ever give birth to a perception, if there were not something from which it was excluded, if by an absolute act of the mind the negation were not referred to something positive, and if opposition did not issue out of non-position. ”

“ We are, therefore, not to wonder that most fail, amidst tumult, and snares, and danger, in the observance of those precepts, which they lay down in solitude, safety, and tranquillity, with a mind unbiased, and with liberty unobstructed. ”

“ I foresee the positive denial of all positive morals, the removal of all restrictions. I feel I do not know what ‘license,’ as we should term it, may not truly belong to the perfect state of Man. When there is no self surely there is no restriction; as we see there is none in Nature. ”

“ What right have you to enter into a compact with yourself that you will do thus or so, against the light within you? Is it for you to make up your mind,—to form any resolution whatever,—and not accept the convictions that are forced upon you, and which ever pass your understanding? ”

“ Our notion of order in civil society being taken from the analogy of subjects inanimate and dead, is frequently false; we consider commotion and action as contrary to its nature; we think that obedience, secrecy, and the silent passing of affairs through the hands of a few, are its real constituents. ”

“ It is a peculiar virtue of our system of law that the process of inclusion and exclusion, so often employed in developing a rule, is not allowed to end with its enunciation, and that an expression in an opinion yields later to the impact of facts unforeseen. ”

“ Then, there is the separation regulation, dragging after it a long train of horrors and heart-rending sufferings—violating the law of holy writ—"Whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder"—and trampling upon the best feelings of human nature. ”

“ But to show the rythm, and alliteration, and peculiar style, I give the following:
"When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."—Declaration. ”

“ Suppose, however, for the sake of argument, that the mere will to separate were in this case, or in any case, a sufficient ground for separation, I beg to be informed whose will? The will of any knot of men who, by fair means or foul, by usurpation, terrorism, or fraud, have got the reins of government into their hands? ”

“ I have, throughout, treated the idea of a right residing in the injured person, and violated by the injury, not as a separate element in the composition of the idea and sentiment, but as one of the forms in which the other two elements clothe themselves. These elements are, a hurt to some assignable person or persons on the one hand, and a demand for punishment on the other. An examination of our own minds, I think, will show, that these two things include all that we mean when we speak of violation of a right. ”

“ They were shunned, and they had reacted to exclusion by exclusiveness. ”

“ Let it be assumed, he urges, that compulsion is indispensable to the establishment of the law of Right. Such compulsion may be, and is, contrary to the instinctive will, the 'natural freedom', of the isolated individual. ”

“ Truth now comes to us in such small segments that we no longer see the pattern of it; but this we are able to perceive: that the mystery of Separation is equal in degree with the mystery of Union, and that the child of separation is Pain. ”

“ The great law of division became clear to him—the separation for a time of the universal agent into two parts, by the separation and reuniting of which comes light and heat and the hidden force of life, and the prime rules of attractive action; all things that are accounted material. ”

“ That court of conscience which moderates the rigour of the law we call a court of equity. Those who are found faulty were perhaps overtaken in the fault, and are therefore to be restored with the spirit of meekness; and threatening, even when just, must be moderated. ”

“ I am excluded from the possession of a determined object, not through the will of the other, but only through my own free-will. If I had not excluded myself, I should not be excluded. But I must exclude myself from something in virtue of the Conception of Rights. ”

“ For it hath been proved by experience in the world that in the case of such matters of conscience laceration causeth healing; censure produceth increased diligence; prohibition induceth eagerness; and intimidation createth avidity. The root is hidden in the very heart, while the branch is apparent and evident. When one branch is cut off other branches grow. ”

“ And with respect to restraint and confinement: whoever will consider the restraints from fear and shame, the dissimulation, mean arts of concealment, servile compliances, one or other of which belong to almost every course of vice, will soon be convinced, that the man of virtue is by no means upon a disadvantage in this respect. ”

“ They were to carry with them a double force—a force of coercion, visible and palpable; a force addressed to conscience, neither visible nor palpable, and in its nature only capable of being inwardly appreciated. ”

“ The necessity for an exclusion like this, it will be admitted by all, must indeed by very strong to justify it: it will never be recognized for trivial reasons much less upon those that may be simulated or unworthy. ”