The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society by William Withington
page 23 of 57 (40%)
page 23 of 57 (40%)
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the success of all. Secondly, it would abate the strife for
luxuries,--amassing without producing, and cultivating artificial wants,--most fertile sources of discord. And, thirdly, it would establish between physicians and their employers, relations the most agreeable. Another most unmanageable misconception of life's good, makes one of its choicest items to be, the possession of power and superiority. To what depths of degradation will man depress his fellows, just to contemplate the distance between his might and their weakness! If this ambition seems less general than the desire of accumulating, or of substituting contrivance for productiveness, it may be, because the necessity of the case more limits the number who can bear rule; otherwise, the passion for power might find as ready an entrance to as many hearts as are taken by the love of gain, or the dislike to labor. We may find in this thought a partial explanation of the fact, that the thrift of the non-slaveholding States contrasted with the stagnation at the South, is so powerless an argument addressed to the slaveholders there; for you have not only to satisfy avarice of the superior profitableness of free labor; you have still to contend with the lust of dominion--the passion for power and superiority. To manage this passion is the heaviest charge of policy--to provide that the offices which must be intrusted to human hands, be filled peaceably and worthily. Philosophy explodes this notion of good (as claiming to be eminently such), in that it cannot stand the general test: It is a good, which a few must share by detracting so much from the happiness of others. And further, to the love of power is submitted the consideration, that |
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