The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 12, October, 1858 by Various
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page 15 of 286 (05%)
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faculty, which enables us to enter into the feelings and wants of
others. Nothing, perhaps, in the world can be so unjust as a narrow and frigid conscience beyond its proper range. The bounds of the state may, indeed, not pause where the sustenance of its integral life fails. But then its extension will be purchased with its freedom,--the quality be debased as the quantity increases. Jelly-fish, and creatures of the lowest animation, may sustain magnitude of body, not only with a slight skeleton, but with none at all; and society of a cold-blooded or bloodless kind follows the analogy. But these low grades of social organization, having some show of congruity with the blank levels of Russia, can pretend to none with the continent we inhabit. Yet some species of arbitrament between man and man is sure to establish itself; if it live not, as a part of freedom, in the bosom of each, then does it inevitably build itself into a Fate over their heads; and despotism, war, or similar brutal and violent instrumentalities of adjustment, supply in their way the demand that love and reason failed to meet. Accordingly, in our American Man must be found, first, social largeness and susceptibility,--whatsoever, in the breadth of a flexile and sympathetic nature, may contribute to the keeping of the Golden Rule. But the broadest good-feeling will not alone suffice. The great pledge of peace, fellowship, and profitable co-working among such a population as we anticipate must be sought in the deeper unity of moral principle. For Right is one, and is every man's interest. Right is better than Charity; for Right meets, or even anticipates, normal wants, while Charity only mends failures. Nothing, therefore, that we could discover in the New Man would be such a security for his future, nothing so fit him for his place, as a tendency to simple and universal principles of action. In the absence of this, he will infallibly be compelled one day to enter Providence's court of chancery, and come forth bankrupt. But |
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