Divine Library is a free online public library that includes free eBook downloads and free audio books.
We work with New Thought Seekers and Sharers around the world
insuring that all New Thought Texts in the Public Domain
are available for you to read on the web for free, forever!
Navigate through this book by clicking Next Page or Previous
Page below the text of the page & jump directly to chapters using the chapter numbers above the text.
the sight of these better ends was the true and best distinction of this time, the disposition to trust a principle more than a material force. I think that the soul of reform , the conviction that not sensualism, not slavery, not war, not imprisonment, not even government, are needed, --- but in lieu of them all, reliance on the sentiment of man, which will work best the more it is trusted; not reliance on numbers, but, contrariwise, distrust of numbers and the feeling that then are we strongest when most private and alone. The young men who have been vexing society for these last years with regenerative methods seem to have made this mistake; they all exaggerated some special means, and all failed to see that the Reform of Reforms must be accomplished without means.
The Reforms have their high origin in an ideal justice, but they do not retain the purity of an idea. They are quickly organized in sonic low, inadequate form, and present no more poetic image to the mind than the evil tradition which they reprobated. They mix the fire of the moral sentiment with personal and party heats, with measureless exaggerations, and the blindness that prefers some darling measure to justice and truth. Those who are urging with most ardor what are called the greatest benefits of mankind, are narrow, self-pleasing, conceited men, and affect us as the insane do. They
