Category: Thought

What makes saintliness in my view, as distinguished from ordinary goodness, is a certain quality of magnanimity and greatness of soul that brings life within the circle of the heroic.

We have seen that the militant type of social structure is based on the principle of compulsory co-operation, while the industrial type of social structure is based on the principle of voluntary co-operation. Now it is clear that plurality of wives, whether the wives are captured in war or purchased from their fathers regardless of their own wills, implies domestic rule of the compulsory type: the husband is tyrant and the wives are slaves. Conversely, the establishment of monogamy where fewer women are taken in war and fewer men lost in war, is accompanied by increased value of the individual woman; who, even when purchased, is therefore likely to be better treated. And when, with further advance, some power of choice is acquired by the woman, there is an approach to the voluntary co-operation which characterizes this marital relation in its highest form. The domestic despotism which polygyny involves, is congruous with the political despotism proper to predominant militancy; and the diminishing political coercion which naturally follows development of the industrial type, is congruous with the diminishing domestic coercion which naturally follows the accompanying development of monogamy.

Herbert Spencer, Principles of Sociology, Vol. I, Part III: Domestic Institutions, Chapter IX: “The Family” (1898).

A fundamental error pervading the thinking of nearly all parties, political and social, is that evils admit of immediate and radical remedies. ‘If you will but do this, the mischief will be prevented.’ ‘Adopt my plan and the suffering will disappear.’ ‘The corruption will unquestionably be cured by enforcing this measure.’ Everywhere one meets with beliefs, expressed or implied, of these kinds. They are all ill-founded. It is possible to remove causes which intensify the evils; it is possible to change the evils from one form into another; and it is possible, and very common, to exacerbate the evils by the efforts made to prevent them; but anything like immediate cure is impossible.

Herbert Spencer, “From Freedom to Bondage,” Introduction to Thomas Mackay, ed., A Plea for Liberty (1891).

Some gain there must be, so this I decree: each time you gain your heart’s desire, your heart will reach for something higher.

Nature having made men unequal, by giving stronger bodily and mental powers to one than to another, the end of government ought to be, to destroy this inequality by protecting the weak. Instead of which, it has always leaned to the opposite side, wearing itself out by disregarding the first principle of its organization.

If the constitution of a state is democratic, then every exceptional negation of democratic principles, every exercise of state power independent of the approval of the majority, can be called dictatorship.

[N]ations, like individuals, become wise only through experience, and only through experience of their own.

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.

Leo Tolstoy, Christianity and Patriotism (1898).

The nature of the encroachment upon the American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependants and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity and frugality, become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole society.

The Greek writer, Aristotle, quoted some centuries before Christ from “the African,” probably some Carthaginian writer on agriculture, the now familiar saying, “the best manure for the land is the foot of the owner.” This homely word long attributed to Dr. Franklin, who stole it for his “Poor Richard’s Almanack” more than a century ago, is based on the sound principle, that personal supervision to be most effective must be limited in its sphere, and that the best agricultural skill becomes weak when it attempts to exhibit itself on too broad a surface. Because a man can cultivate 100 acres better than any of his neighbors, it does not prove that he will cultivate 50 acres additional to them better than a neighbor of inferior skill, who is the owner of these 50 and no more.

Arthur Latham Perry, Principles of Political Economy (1891).