Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 3, 2025
One may reasonably question the latter part of this statement, bearing in mind the facts just pointed out, but the first part admits of overwhelming proof. Celibacy is not chastity, and it is difficult to see how the coarsening of character described by Lecky himself can be consistent with a heightened humanity.
This view is maintained and in great measure sustained by J.S. Mill in his Liberty, the Areopagitica of the nineteenth century, and more elaborately if not more philosophically set forth in the comprehensive treatise of Wilhelm von Humboldt on The Sphere and Duties of Government. These writers are followed with various reserves by Grote, Buckle, Mr. Herbert Spencer, and by Mr. Lecky. Mill writes:
On civic life and the civic virtues the influence of asceticism was equally disastrous. "A candid examination," says Lecky, "will show that the Christian civilisation has been as inferior to the Pagan ones in civic and intellectual virtues as it has been superior to them in the virtues of humanity and chastity."
Lecky, in his "European Morals," says: "It is one of the most remarkable and, to some writers, one of the most perplexing facts in the moral history of Greece, that in the former and ruder period women had undoubtedly the highest place, and their type exhibited the highest perfection."
But religion, to be efficacious, must be not passively accepted, but USED. Its help comes not to him who saith "Lord, Lord!" but to him who earnestly seeks to do the will of the Father. J. Payot, Education of the Will. H. C. King, Rational Living, chap. VI, sec. III; chap. X. W. James, Psychology, vol. I, pp. 122-27; vol. II, pp. 561-79. W. E. H. Lecky, Map of Life, chap.
And even within the community governed by such sanctions the weaker, and especially the weakest, did not rank as equals; among the most highly civilised nations of antiquity, the Greeks and Romans, infanticide and exposure flourished indeed, as Lecky points out, by the ideal legislations of Plato and Aristotle, and by the actual legislations of Lycurgus and Solon, infanticide was positively enjoined.
Lecky, Lord Arthur Russell and his brothers to choose a few names almost at random. The last- named, Lord Arthur Russell, was the most kindly and friendly of men. Probably without being conscious of it themselves, he and his distinguished wife formed what a pedantic social analyst might call the centre of a social group.
I have tried the same mode with several writers. I found that the plan succeeded with Macaulay and with Lecky. I tried it again and again with Shakespeare and Hawthorne, but if I succeeded in writing out the paragraph I found that it was because I memorized their very words. To write out their ideas in my own language I found impossible.
There is not room here to explain and justify the impressions of dissatisfaction which have been briefly indicated, but a serious writer like Mr. Lecky will not find such suggestions altogether useless. The objections, even the misunderstandings, of a reader who is not careless or ill-disposed, may serve to stimulate an author’s vigilance over his thoughts as well as his style.
This is the indictment which can fairly be brought against the Act of Union." What follows reflects honour on Mr. Dicey as an honest opponent who does not shrink from facts; but what a wholesale condemnation of the policy of the Imperial Parliament! On this matter, if on no other, De Beaumont, Froude, and Lecky are at one.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking