With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, WILLIAM SHAKSPERE-Hamlet 154. THE HIGHER PANTHEISM IN A NUTSHELL ONE, who is not, we see; but one, whom we see not, is; What, and wherefore, and whence: for under is over and under; If thunder could be without lightning, lightning could be without thunder. Doubt is faith in the main; but faith, on the whole, is doubt; Why, and whither, and how? for barley and rye are not clover; Neither are straight lines curves; yet over is under and over. One and two are not one; but one and nothing is two; Parallels all things are; yet many of these are askew; One, whom we see not, is; and one, who is not, we see; A. C. SWINBURNE Touching all with thine opiate Sleep will come when thou art, 156. THE AMERICAN FORM OF GOVERNMENT We as Americans are intolerant believers in our form of government. Every child learns to think that it is the best in the world, not only for us but for all men. Every demagogue learns to bellow forth his unlimited, unquestioning certainty of that superiority and universal applicability. I am not here to dispute the belief-only to define the facts about it. If our form of government is the best, it cannot be so because it is the cheapest. On the contrary, it is one of the most expensive in the world. Nor can it be the best because it is the most efficient. On the contrary, it is one of the slowest in the world; the most complicated, cumbrous, and limited. And even within the spheres in which it will work, our form of government is not the easiest to work. On the contrary, it requires, to keep it running successfully, more public spirit, more study about candidates, more time for multitudinous elections, more watchfulness of public officials, and a higher average of intelligence than any other in the world. Now, if these things are so, if our government does in any measure have these defects, then the old question of the Philistines comes up with insistent force, "Wherein lies its great strength?" The answer has become a truism. Its strength lies in the quality of man it develops. The real merit is not in the machinery, but in the skilled intelligence absolutely required to frame and to work it; in the combination of respect for authority on the one hand, with training in individual initiative on the other, which this work brings out and which the government has thus far scrupulously and religiously guarded. WHITELAW REID 157. EMBERS THAT time of year thou may'st in me behold As after sunset fadeth in the west, Which by and by black night doth take away, WILLIAM SHAKSPERE 158. PURITAN NARROWNESS AND BREADTH The Puritan is a stern figure enough, but it is a manly figure withal, full of strength and force and purpose. He had grave faults, but they were the faults of a strong and not a weak nature, and his virtues were those of a robust man of lofty aims. It is true that he drove Roger Williams into exile and persecuted the Antinomians; but he founded successful and God-fearing commonwealths. He hanged Quakers, and in a mad panic put old women to death as witches; but he planted a college in the wilderness and put a schoolhouse in every village. He made a narrow creed the test of citizenship; but he founded the town meeting, where every man helped to govern, and where all men were equal before the law. He banished harmless pleasures, and cast a gloom over daily life; but he formed the first union of states in the New England confederacy, and through the mouth of one of the witchcraft judges uttered an eloquent protest against human slavery a century before Garrison was born or Wilberforce began his agitation. He refused liberty of conscience to those who sought it beneath the shadow of his meeting-house; but he kept the torch of learning burning brightly in the New World. In the fullness of time he broke the fetters which he had himself forged for the human mind, as he had formerly broken the shackles of Laud and Charles. He was rigid in his prejudices, and filled with an intense pride of race and home; but when the storm of war came upon the colonies he gave without measure and without stint to the common cause. HENRY CABOT LODGE-The Puritan * 159. THE ORIGIN OF OUR ETHICAL CODE Men should seriously set themselves to revise their ethical code in the light of its origin. The ethical like the legal code of a people stands in need of constant revision. The moral world is as little exempt as the physical world from the law of ceaseless change. In our own rules of conduct, in what we call the common decencies of life as well as in weightier matters of morality, there survive savage taboos, which, masquerading as an expression of divine will or draped in the flowing robes of a false philosophy, have maintained their credit long after the crude ideas out of which they sprang have been discarded by the progress of thought and knowledge-while on the other hand many ethical precepts and social laws, which now rest firmly on a basis of utility, may at first have drawn some portion of their sanctity from the ancient system of superstition. In primitive society murder derived much of its horror from a fear of the angry ghost. Thus superstition may serve as a convenient crutch to morality till she is strong enough to walk alone. The ancient Semites appear to have passed through a course of moral evolution not unlike that which we see in process among the Esquimaux; and some of the old laws of Israel are clearly savage taboos disguised as commands of the deity. J. G. FRAZER † * From Speeches and Addresses. By permission of, and special arrangement with, Houghton and Mifflin Company, authorized publishers. † From The Golden Bough, published by The Macmillan Company. 160. WOLSEY'S CHARGE TO CROMWELL CROMWELL, I did not think to shed a tear Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace. To silence envious tongues; be just, and fear not. And, prithee, lead me in: There take an inventory of all I have, To the last penny; 'tis the king's: my robe, And my integrity to heaven is all I dare now call mine own. O Cromwell, Cromwell! Had I but serv'd my God with half the zeal I serv'd my king, he would not in mine age Have left me naked to mine enemies. WILLIAM SHAKSPERE-Henry VIII 161. THE LITTLE BLACK ΒΟΥ My mother bore me in the southern wild, But I am black, as if bereaved of light. |