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Updated: June 19, 2025
It did not disturb either his effects or the way in which the public was accustomed to be moved. On the other hand, he was filled with a mixture of contempt and hatred for anything which threatened to disturb that arrangement and put him to extra trouble. Contempt would predominate if the innovator had no chance of emerging from obscurity.
A Locrian, who proposed any new law, stood forth in the assembly of the people with a cord round his neck, and if the law was rejected, the innovator was instantly strangled. The Decemvirs had been named, and their tables were approved, by an assembly of the centuries, in which riches preponderated against numbers.
Thus, if the innovator be a religious soul, grown conscious of some new spiritual principle, he will try to find support for his inspiration in some lost book of the law or in some early divine revelation corrupted, as he will assert, by wicked men, or even in some direct voice from heaven; no delusion will be too obvious, no re-interpretation too forced, if it can help him to find external support somewhere for his spontaneous conviction.
'He has for passionate foes all such as flourish under the old order, for friends those who might flourish under the new; but these are lukewarm, partly from fear of their opponents, on whose side are established law and right, partly from the incredulity which prevents men from putting faith in what is novel and untried. It therefore becomes a matter of necessity that the innovator should be backed up with force, that he should be in a position to command and not obliged to sue for aid.
To lose one's money was a crime; to lose another's money the unforgiven sin, because that was Baltimore public opinion, which she thought was the only opinion entitled to consideration. The old Scotch and Irish merchants there had made it the law that enterprise was only excusable by success, and that success only branded an innovator.
How else comes it, that the critic to-day tells us, dares to tell us, that this leader's word to the new ages of advancement is, that there is no scientific advancement to be looked for here? how else could he tell us, with such vivid detail of illustration, that this innovator and proposer of advancement, never intended his Novum Organum to be applied to the cure of the moral diseases, to the subduing of the WILL and the AFFECTIONS, but thought, because the old philosophy had failed, there was no use in trying the new; because the philosophy of words, and preconceptions, had failed, the philosophy of observation and application, the philosophy of ideas as they are in nature, and not as they are in the mind of man merely, the philosophy of laws, must fail also; because ARGUMENT had failed, ART was hopeless; because syllogisms, based on popular, unscientific notions were of no effect, practical axioms based on the scientific knowledge of natural causes, and on their specific developments, were going to be of none effect also?
This was more than enough to unite the whole government party, patricians as well as plebeians, against the dangerous innovator. The trial for high treason, the charge of having meditated a renewal of the monarchy, wrought on the blind multitude with the insidious charm which belongs to stereotyped party-phrases.
The ordinary tactics of the reformers who appeared in the religious state which we have just described, and which might be called "traditional formalism," were to oppose the "text" of the sacred books to "traditions." Religious zeal is always an innovator, even when it pretends to be in the highest degree conservative.
The new Protector was a weak and worthless man; but the bulk of the nation were content to be ruled by one who was at any rate no soldier, no Puritan, and no innovator. Richard was known to be lax and worldly in his conduct, and he was believed to be conservative and even royalist in heart. The tide of reaction was felt even in his Council.
And of all innovators, the innovator on ethical theory is apt to be the most unpopular and to be the least able to secure impartial attention to his speculations. And hence it is that vague theories, couched in unintelligible or only half-intelligible language, and almost totally inapplicable to practice, have usually done duty for what is called a system of moral philosophy.
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