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Updated: May 13, 2025
Do we applaud the superior strength or cunning of Cain, or pretend that the discovery of gun-powder strengthened the arm of the good? No, neither loyalty, nor victory is the true test; it is by their fruits that God will know them. Let us, then, throw away this narrow, self-justifying doctrine of the survival of the fittest, and follow instead the noble counsel of Milton:
It turns the natural world, man's stamping-ground and system of opportunities, into a self-justifying and sacred life; it endows the blameless giant with an inhuman soul and then worships the monstrous divinity it has fabricated. It thereby encounters the same dilemma that defeats all mythology when it forgets its merely poetic office and trespasses upon moral ground.
No, the wide sea is an emblem of all that is deceitful and false, smiling most blandly when preparing to devour you; and the wind is only one shade more respectable nay, perchance the worse of the two; for the waters, in the self-justifying, neighbour-condemning spirit, apparently inherent in human nature and for which Father Adam be thanked may very possibly lay the blame of their fickleness upon it, and bring a host of witnesses into court to testify to their general good behaviour their calmness, and amenity, and inoffensiveness, till exposed to the evil influence of Æolus's unruly troop the most wholesale agitators going, and never so happy as when raising a riot.
Beginning with the axiom that whatever is is right, a metaphysician might adduce the truth that consciousness is something self-existent and indubitably real; therefore, he would contend, it must be self-justifying and indubitably good.
To make an idea instrumental would be to prostitute what, being self-existent, should be self-justifying.
And it is of the nature of vanity and arrogance, if unchecked, to become cruel and self-justifying. There are fierce beasts within: chain them, chain them, and let them learn to cower before the creature with wider reason. This is what one wishes for Mordax that his heart and brain should restrain the outleap of roar and talons.
And in these days of his first devotion to Romola he needed a self-justifying argument. He had learned to be glad that she was deceived about some things.
What you now are in essence and working principle you have always been, and you will always be the same yesterday, today and forever a self-made MAGNET, working to the hair's breadth. Sweetness within brings sweetness without. You have been more or less bitter and self-justifying within, and Tom, Dick, Harry and Fan have danced to the strings you pulled.
What was the exact relation between religion and morality in the past? Does morality any longer need the sanctions and supernatural setting which helped to support it in other days? These are questions of primary importance whose discussion should throw light upon both religion and human morality. Have human values become self-supporting and self-justifying?
The division of labour when extreme does violence to natural genius and obliterates natural distinctions in capacity. What is properly called industry is not art or self-justifying activity, but on the contrary a distinctly compulsory and merely instrumental labour, which if justified at all must be justified by some ulterior advantage which it secures.
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