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Beginning as it does with the most human, and only at the very last attacking the most animal part of our nervous constitution, it is essentially the bestializer, save only that the alcoholized human being is much lower than the beast, on the general principle, Corruptio optimi pessima the corruption of the best is the worst.
They admire his ability, his wonderful vitality, versatility, ingenuity of trickery. They sincerely believe that he is only crazy, and think it a great pity. They speak of the wreck of his rich intellect, and say in effect corruptio optimi pessima est.
But corruptio optimi pessima, and as the employment of wisdom for the benefit of mankind as, for instance, curing the sick, physically and morally is the highest, so the use of any abnormal power for the advantage of self is the vilest sin that man can commit.
All the miserable scandals of Catholic countries, taken at the worst, are, as I view the matter, no argument against the Church itself; and the reason which I give in the lecture is, that, according to the proverb, Corruptio optimi est pessima.
The guerillas and their chiefs were always popular, a fatal circumstance due to the War of Independence, one of those good things which have been the origin of an infinite number of detestable things. Corruptio optimi pessima.
We notice in this attitude an unconscious recognition of the sanctity of the religious state; but we see behind it a Pharisaic spirit that exaggerates evil at the expense of justice. Now, if the principle that abuse destroys use is applied to all things, nothing will remain standing, and the best will go first. Corruptio optimi pessima.
It would be immortal, I understand, but for the possibility of its annihilation by its First Cause Who, from all I can hear, is quite capable of adding that to the number of His other practical jokes, corruptio per se and corruptio per accidens both being excluded by court etiquette.
It is necessary to premise this, because many are of opinion that superstition is a corruption of religion; and though they would agree that as such, "corruptio optimi pessima," yet they would look on religion as the state of spiritual health, and superstition as one of spiritual disease.
Already they numbered more than twelve hundred brethren in England alone; and they were found where they were most needed, in the back slums of the undrained and crowded towns, amongst the hovels of the serfs where plague was raging, where leprosy lingered there were the Franciscans in this the heroic age of their order, before they had fallen from their first love, and verified the proverb Corruptio optimi est pessima.
He recalled Gibbon's lamentation over the age of the Antonines, and Mommsen's grave doubt whether, taken as a whole, the area once covered by the Roman Empire can be said to be substantially happier now than in the days of Severus. O corruptio optimi!
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