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There is danger in Popes. And as for the People, what of them and their authority? Perhaps of them and their authority one has spoken enough. Their authority is a thing blind, deaf, hideous, grotesque, tragic, amusing, serious, and obscene. It is impossible for the artist to live with the People. All despots bribe. The people bribe and brutalise. Who told them to exercise authority?
But the Roman senate had the wisdom not to overlook the fact, that the only means of giving permanence to despotism is moderation on the part of the despots.
Eastern despots and Roman emperors have been the worst scourges to mankind; yet the Danes preferred a despot to an aristocracy, and are as 'well governed as any people in Europe. In Greece, democracy, in spite of its defects, produced the most brilliant results. Hence, he argues, we must go 'beyond the surface, and 'penetrate to the springs within. The result of the search is discouraging.
If even it could be demonstrated that there is a super-human Being, it cannot be proper to clothe him in the noblest human attributes still less can it be justifiable in pigmies, such as we are, to invest Him with odious attributes belonging only to despots ruling over slaves.
How long she may do so is known only to God; but of this I am assured, that if we shall be able to keep our own, it will be, not by entering into any compromise, but by assuming an attitude of determined defiance to the papal system. There must be no truckling to foreign despots and foreign priests: the bold Protestant policy of the country must be maintained.
But I became obnoxious to the Jacobins, because I reprobated their aristocracy, which aimed at usurping all legitimate authority. "From Constantinople to Lisbon, from Kamschatka to Amsterdam, every bastille is ready to receive me. The Huron and Iroquois forests are peopled with my friends; the despots and the courts of Europe, they are the only savages I fear.
An utter surrender of "life and limb" on the part of the governed would have left nothing for the governing but self-will, and this has for its natural consequence the growth of that absolutism so often called "oriental despotism," as though there were no despots of occidental history! Let it be far from me to uphold despotism of any sort; but it is a mistake to identify feudalism with it.
The kislar aga waited a little to ascertain if there was no reprieve, for too hasty a compliance with despots is almost as dangerous as delay. He caught my eye he saw at once that if not her head it would be his own, and he quitted the room. In a few minutes he held up by its fair tresses the head of my beautiful rival; I looked at the distorted features, and was satisfied.
The people can easily escape from the tyranny of despots, but they do not know how to throw off the effects of their own despotism; just as we avoid the assassin's steel, while we succumb to a constitutional malady. As soon as a nation becomes proprietor, either it must perish, or a foreign invasion must force it again to begin its evolutionary round.
Small minds easily find objects: trifles amuse them; but a high soul covets things beyond its daily reach; trifles occupy its aim mechanically; the thought still wanders restless. This is the case with you. Your intellect preys upon itself. Mandeville continued "You women are at once debarred from public life and yet influence it. You are the prisoners, and yet the despots of society.
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