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The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society by William Withington
page 41 of 57 (71%)
*Bryant.




Part IV.

Welfare as Dependent on Religion.


But in all our attempts to educate self-love into harmony with
Universal benevolence, we contend with the enemy, somewhat as Hercules
wrestled with Antaeus:--

Und erstickst du ihn nicht in den Luften frei,
Stets wachst ihm die Kraft anf der Erde neu.*
[If thou strangle him not high lifted in air,
Fresh strength from the earth he continues to share.]

Thus we come to speak of present welfare, as dependent on the
cultivation of the whole man--on a recognition of his immortality, his
allegiance to his Maker, and his capacity for more disinterested
sentiments, than self-love, however modified.

The influences thus accruing are a confirmation, from higher authority,
of the conclusions approved by philosophy, ethics, the prudence which
calculates how man should live with man, considered as but creatures of
earth--a _re-binding_--a _re-ligation_ to what was _obligation_ before;
and such precisely is the proper sense of the word _religion_.

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