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Updated: May 8, 2025
Here is a distinguished divine, for whom I have great respect, for I owe him a charming hour at one of our literary anniversaries, and he has often spoken noble words; but he holds up a remark of my friend the "Autocrat," which I grieve to say he twice misquotes, by omitting the very word which gives it its significance, the word fluid, intended to typify the mobility of the restricted will, holds it up, I say, as if it attacked the reality of the self-determining principle, instead of illustrating its limitations by an image.
Nothing tended to turn his mind to the contemplation of nature at least we see no signs of it in his work, his conceptions of national development were uncomplicated by reference to the share that physical conditions have in moulding it; man alone, and man as in all respects self-determining, has interest for him.
There is a law of conscience impressed upon man when he comes into the world, which makes him a moral being capable of distinguishing between right and wrong. Man knows when he sins against the law of his conscience. He is self-conscious and self-determining. He knows himself as himself and he can determine his actions; it is these characteristics which make him responsible for his sins.
The will is the man, and where it ceases to lift itself up in self-sacrificing and self-determining rebellion, and dissolves into running waters of submission, these will flow through the life and make it pure. To obey self is sin, to obey God is righteousness. The issues of such obedience are 'length of days ... and peace.
According to their party names, which were first heard during this period, the "Optimates" wished to give effect to the will of the best, the "Populares" to that of the community; but in fact there was in the Rome of that day neither a true aristocracy nor a truly self-determining community. Both parties contended alike for shadows, and numbered in their ranks none but enthusiasts or hypocrites.
Do you want an image of the human will, or the self-determining principle, as compared with its prearranged and impassable restrictions? A drop of water, imprisoned in a crystal; you may see such a one in any mineralogical collection. One little fluid particle in the crystalline prism of the solid universe! Weaken moral obligations? No, not weaken, but define them.
You simply cannot have at one and the same time a universe in which all that occurs is the consequence of calculable and indestructible forces, the operations of which can be foreseen and relied upon, and a universe controlled by a self-determining deity, capable of modifying the action of these same forces. You may have one or the other, but it is sheer lunacy to imagine that you can have both.
Do you want an image of the human will, or the self-determining principle, as compared with its prearranged and impassable restrictions? A drop of water, imprisoned in a crystal; you may see such a one in any mineralogical collection. One little fluid particle in the crystalline prism of the solid universe! Weaken moral obligations? No, not weaken, but define them.
Ever since her failure in that moral coup d'etat by which the sinful dynasty of the natural self-determining power was to be dethroned, her attempts in the way of education had been a series of feeble efforts followed by plaintive wails over their utter want of success.
The nucleus which lies at the heart of an empire or a civilization has a political life cycle that runs from the unstructured or little structured aggregation of confederation or self-determining local groups to a highly centralized political absolutism holding and exercising its authority by the use of the military. The steps in this process have been clearly marked in earlier civilizations.
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