United States or Comoros ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The wars against Denmark, Austria, and France would hardly have taken place without Bismarck's initiative. Even under a most wretched government which commits the grossest blunders great states can exist for a long time; but advancement, real progress is only possible through the intervention of a strong personality." "I am not quite of your opinion.
I had discovered powers within me of which I before had no conception. I had gone on through life, if not rejoicing in my ignorance, at least indifferent to it. I had picked up a certain amount of knowledge from the conversation of others, but it was ill-digested, and I was full of the grossest prejudices. I have scarcely, indeed, given a correct notion of what I was up to this time.
Two equalities the false, which reduces all intellects and all characters, to a dead level, and gives the same power to the bad as to the good, to the wise as to the foolish, ending thus in practice in the grossest inequality; the true, wherein each man has equal power to educate and use whatever faculties or talents God has given him, be they less or more.
That the Gross of Mankind do every where live in opposition to that Rule of Nature which they ought to obey, is a sad Truth; but that we who have this Rule enforc'd by a clearer Light, are included herein, and do in this find the source of many Evils, not only fear'd, but which we actually feel, are Considerations yet more affecting, and not a little aggravated in that, within Memory, this heretofore sober Nation has been debauch'd from Principles of Vertue and Religion, to such an excess of Vice and Prophaneness, that it has been Fashionable to have no shame of the grossest Immoralities; and Men have thought even to recommend themseves by avow'd Impiety.
Fine gentlemen in London vied with each other in the lowest ribaldry and the grossest profanity. The poets of the time, from Dryden to Durfey, ministered to the popular licentiousness. The most shameless indecency polluted their pages. The theatre and the brothel were in strict unison. The Church winked at the vice which opposed itself to the austere morality or hypocrisy of Puritanism.
It is certainly a right feeling to which Darwin, in his "Descent of Man," gives expression, when he says: "For my own part, I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper, or from that old baboon who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs, as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions."
Free-love has been both preached and practiced among them; and among the lower classes the grossest heresies of ancient Gnosticism have mingled with the wildest and most morbid of modern social theories.
We were mutually deceived. She was the victim of self-delusion; but I must charge myself with practising deceit both upon myself and her. "I reflect with astonishment and horror on the steps which led to her degradation and to my calamity. In the high career of passion all consequences were overlooked. She was the dupe of the most audacious sophistry and the grossest delusion.
In nine cases out of ten, recreation is associated in their minds with nothing higher than sensuality. About one half of our poor can neither read nor write, have never been in any school, and know little, or positively nothing, of the doctrines of the Christian religion, of moral duties, or of any higher pleasures than beer-drinking and spirit-drinking, and the grossest sensual indulgence.
It would, however, be the grossest injustice to him if I left it to be supposed for a moment that he accepted this version of his doctrine. He repudiated it emphatically; and, in fact, he modifies the doctrine so much that the real question is, whether he does not deprive it of all force. No one was more sensible of the moral objections to the hell of popular belief.
Word Of The Day