Ulema

“ If these Impressions were Inbred, and the Errors purely their Own, it would be a Point, not only of Good Nature, but of Common Justice, and Humanity, to have a Tenderness for People under an Invincible Mistake: But you have Started the Strongest Argument in the World, against your self here, by Enforcing the Necessity of Clearing the Stage of the Seditious Oracles, that Inspire These Desperate Resolutions. ”

“ In this blind and mistaken struggle—a struggle which in the present condition of society seems so unavoidable, even so meritorious, but which in a reformed society will be looked back upon as at something akin to lunacy—we do not even make to ourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness. ”

“ The limit of ideological perfection was to deny ideas; that of metaphysical studies, to deny spirits; that of morals, to deny morality; that of society, to deny authority; that of politics, to establish license; that of religion, to deny God. Thus, human reason, thinking to advance, marched in a retrograde direction ”

“ Have we not already seen enough of the fallacy and extravagance of those idle theories which have amused us with promises of an exemption from the imperfections, weaknesses, and evils incident to society in every shape? ”

“ Every paradox was to him a self-evident truth; every prejudice an undoubted absurdity. The weight of authority, the sanction of ages, the common consent of mankind, were vouchers only for ignorance, error, and imposture. ”

“ The thing that is wrong is a certain fallacy with which we English have comforted ourselves for same decades, which may be called the fallacy of unity, or in another and slighter form, the fallacy of sociability. ”

“ That is the curse which will be fatal to our ideas—insubordination. Do not you think it is very disobedient of you? How can our Society be worked if each one sets himself up as the sole judge of what ought to be done? ”

“ You're realizing that what you'd been standing on—and what's been knocked from under you—was not merely an illusion concerning one man but a fallacy regarding your whole situation; so you need now to know more about what the human race actually is and has been. ”

“ But the example is to be admitted to be equivocal. A more decisive argument is afforded by a consideration of the universal connexion of ferocity of manners, and a contempt of social ties, with the contempt of human life. ”

“ In the midst of all this mental tumult, inestimable maxims of moral and political wisdom are shot forth in short sentences, which have so much of the sting and brilliancy of epigram, that at first we do not appreciate their depth of thought; and through all there burns such a pitiless fierceness of moral reprobation of cruelty, injustice, and wrong, that all the accredited courtesies of debate are violated, once, at least, in every five minutes. ”

“ And first, let us contemplate a common fallacy in men's opinions about human affairs, which pervades the several fallacies fostered by the political bias.
Results are proportionate to appliances—see here the tacit assumption underlying many errors in the conduct of life, private and public. In private life every one discovers the untruth of this assumption, and yet continues to act as though he had not discovered its untruth. ”

“ What question is there in human affairs so weak or so strong that it cannot be approached by argument and reason? This country will, in every emergency, appeal to its enlightened judgment and its spirit of union and harmony, and the appeal will not be unsuccessful. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They bring before us thousands of men, often the most conspicuous in the ever-changing drama of public life, from whose thinking the notions of right and wrong seem to have been wanting or obliterated, acting only from selfishness, avarice, or ambition, monsters of injustice, heartlessness, cruelty and blood. ”

“ I venture to say that the levity with which bad precedents are sometimes employed and admitted as arguments in the discussion of public questions bids fair to produce a confusion of moral, legal and political notions which will have a most sinister influence upon the popular conscience. ”

“ But the distinguishing feature of this second division of our knowledge is, on the one hand, the good or the evil which we derive from our opinions; and, on the other, the obstinacy with which we defend the prejudice which is tormenting and killing us. ”

“ But if all this direful rage and havoc of human passion, this goading purpose of mastery by the strong and privileged over the weak and incompetent, were merely a huge struggle of might against right, it is simple trifling to refer it to any principle rooted in the nature of things. ”

“ For this reason, we curse and scoff at your world and reject your pretended truths which, for us, are lies, including those elementary and primordial verities which you declare are evident to common sense, and on which you base your laws, your institutions, your society, your philosophy, your sciences and your arts. ”

“ But my conscience, my unhappy conscience respects that hapless class who see the faults and stains of our social order, and who pray and strive incessantly to right the wrong; this annoying class of men and women, though they commonly find the work altogether beyond their faculty, and their results are, for the present, distressing. ”

“ I shall not, at present, mention the more formidable evils which the misapplication of literature produces, nor speak of churches infected with heresy, states inflamed with sedition, or schools infatuated with hypothetical fictions. These are evils which mankind have always lamented, and which, till mankind grow wise and modest, they must, I am afraid, continue to lament, without hope of remedy. ”

“ You make yourselves as uncomfortable as you can by all sorts of galling and vexatious institutions, and you throw the blame upon 'Fate.' You lay down rules it is impossible to comprehend, much less to obey ”

“ Now, let the consequences of such a prejudice be considered when shrewd men, thirsting for power, availed themselves of it—and still do so! “Bring about the right state of mind!”—in this way you can do without all arguments and overcome every objection! ”

“ DECLARATION OF BELIEF 1864-65.—It often happens that persons combine to maintain and enforce an opinion; but it is, in our state of society, a paradox to unite for the sole purpose of blaming the opposite side. To invite educated men to do this, and above all, men of learning or science, is the next paradoxical thing of all. ”

“ The wrongs committed were so remediless, the outrages upon right, character, and life, had been so shocking, that it was expecting too much from the ordinary standard of humanity to demand a general oblivion. ”

“ If these questionings come from us with greater persistence, with a more imperious authority, if they divert us from the quest of lucre, life's only object in the eyes of most men, does it become us to complain? ”

“ But such discourses as mine, which only call past evils to mind and give warning of what may follow, leave nothing in them that is so absurd that they may not be used at any time, for they can only be unpleasant to those who are resolved to run headlong the contrary way ”

“ But when we turn to subjects infinitely more complicated, to morals, religion, politics, social relations, and the business of life, three-fourths of the arguments for every disputed opinion consist in dispelling the appearances which favour some opinion different from it. ”

“ To shrink from the dangerous obligation to which we stood pledged, or even to appear so to shrink, was to relinquish that hold upon public opinion, both at home and abroad, which hold we had at last obtained, and to abandon the moral power which, if a contest did arise, would be the main portion of our strength. ”

“ The unspeakable difficulties in the way of the solution of this problem,—the difficulties which the radical bias in the individual human nature, even under its noblest forms, creates,—the difficulties which the ignorance, and stupidity, and passion of the multitude created then, and still create, appear here without any mitigation. ”

“ But since life has for its primordial elements assimilation and aggression, I try not only to obey my imperatives, but to put them persuasively and convincingly into other minds, to bring about my good and to resist and overcome my evil as though they were the universal Good and the universal Evil in which unthinking men believe. ”

“ Not alone in sensitive, highly organised natures is such a mental conflict possible. The dullest specimen of humanity, when drawn by desire toward evil, is recalled by a sense of right, which is proportionate in power and strength to his evil tendency. ”

“ All questions of politics, of social order, of education, have been falsified, root and branch, owing to the fact that the most noxious men have been taken for great men, and that people were taught to despise the small things, or rather the fundamental things, of life. ”

“ A perfect and just distribution of the goods and labours of life—“to each according to his needs, from each according to his powers”—is Utopian. Moreover envy, hatred and all uncharitableness prevent it: stupidity, sloth, selfishness, treachery and tyranny preclude it. ”

“ Such difficulties of thought regarding moral distinctions, motives good and bad, conflicts of conscience, the justice and expediency of laws and governments, as usually arise as people begin to reflect seriously upon the ways of the better social life, have been considered, besides many practical questions regarding self-control, elevation of feeling and thought, and the part of wisdom in every-day affairs. ”

“ If, in opposition to these arguments, and in defiance, at once, of right reason and general authority, the elliptical arch should at last be chosen, what will the world believe, than that some other motive than reason influenced the determination? ”

“ My work selects, for the most part, sins against demonstration: but the world is full of questions of fact or opinion, in which a struggling minority will become a majority, or else will be gradually annihilated: and each of the cases subdivides into results of good, and results of evil. ”

“ But this is a truth which, in the present state of society, will arouse the most bitter antagonism, and must fight its way, inch by inch. It will be necessary, therefore, to meet the objections of those who, even when driven to admit this truth, will declare that it cannot be practically applied. ”

“ Prejudice and Passion, Vainglory and Profit, not Reason, and Virtue, and the Common Good, seem but too plainly, to support this Practice, and the Defence of it, as the matter is at present managed among us. ”

“ Nor, however threadbare they may look to-day, can the final conclusions be reasonably objected to:—“First, That every Person who indulges his Ill-nature or Vanity, at the Expense of others; and in introducing Uneasiness, Vexation, and Confusion into Society, however exalted or high-titled he may be, is thoroughly ill-bred;” ”

“ The world is, however, full of wicked passions; and wicked passions find fertile soil in political parties, social classes, and public opinion—that vague power which has come so much to the fore in the last hundred years. ”

“ More than once kindly men of the world and scholars were smitten with pity for this strange lad, in whom they could not but recognise certain negative qualities rare in the eighteenth century—an intense and cruel truthfulness, an absolute disinterestedness, a constitutional contempt for all the vanities and baseness of the world. ”

“ Supposing men to have abused their liberty, by which abuse vice has once been introduced into the world; and that wrong notions, a bad taste, and vicious habits have been strengthened by the defects of education and government, our present distresses may be easily explained. ”

“ And so far from the assumption being less objectionable or less dangerous because the opinion is called immoral or impious, this is the case of all others in which it is most fatal. These are exactly the occasions on which the men of one generation commit those dreadful mistakes, which excite the astonishment and horror of posterity. ”

“ In fact, he held that the conditions of modern life, the relations of people in mass, which she had somehow always considered as almost perfect and, indeed, divinely established, were absolutely outworn and fundamentally unrighteous and unjust. ”

“ Shall he who, unwittingly, totters blindfold on the edge of a precipice, deem it a rude or an uncharitable violence which would snatch him with a strong and a venturous hand, or even it may be with a painful grasp, from the fearful ruin over which he impends? ”

“ But in matters of right and wrong, whatever be the lures, the taunts, or the usages of the world, or whatever the supposed inconveniences of singularity, let judgment and conscience always rule with absolute sway. ”