Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897 edition. Excerpt: ... suits upon them--but what do we do to conquer this tyrant ?1 Our one idea is restraint and punishment. More liberty would mean less license. "She who escapeth safe and unpolluted from out the schoole of freedome, giveth more confidence of hirself than she who commeth sound out of the school of severity and restraint," is a saying of Montaigne. But practically, what is to be done 1 How would a freer system work? We must face the unpalatable fact, that a cut-and-dried scheme which will now seem plausible, is just as impossible as our present state of society would have appeared to the man of the Middle Ages. All that can be done, at any given time in the world's history, is to indicate the next direction of development.2 It is futile to say that human nature is incapable of this or that, since human nature is precisely the author and creator of all the changes that the world has ever seen or ever will see. I have suggested that the instinctive side of human nature may be reduced to more manageable proportions;8 and this is surely not an entirely vain hope, unless it is also vain to hope to bring men and women into better conditions of mind and body; unless it is vain to hope that thought and will count for something in human destiny. It is clear that, in proportion as a life is free and rich in occupation and interest, the less temptation there will be to drown misery or chase away dulness by merely sensual pleasures. Once more, I must repeat that to demand what would appear to be an immediately workable system under the new conditions, is as unreasonable as it would be to ask a cattle-lifting clan of the Middle Ages to turn over a new leaf, and earn their living on the Stock Exchange. Both conceptions of existence are, however, possible...