The Despotism Of Custom Is

Hitherto It Is Questionable If All The Mechanical Inventions Yet Made Have Lightened The Day's Toil Of Any Human Being. They Have Enabled A Greater Population To Live The Same Life Of Drudgery And Imprisonment, And An Increased Number Of Manufacturers And Others To Make Fortunes. They Have Increased The Comforts Of The Middle Classes. But They Have Not Yet Begun To Effect Those Great Changes In Human Destiny, Which It Is In Their Nature And In Their Futurity To Accomplish.

Christian Morality (so Called) Has All The Characters Of A Reaction; It Is, In Great Part, A Protest Against Paganism. Its Ideal Is Negative Rather Than Positive; Passive Rather Than Action; Innocence Rather Than Nobleness; Abstinence From Evil, Rather Than Energetic Pursuit Of Good: In Its Precepts (as Has Been Well Said) "thou Shalt Not" Predominates Unduly Over "thou Shalt.

Among A People Without Fellow-feeling, Especially If They Read And Speak Different Languages, The United Public Opinion, Necessary To The Working Of The Representative Government, Cannot Exist.

There Is A Limit To The Legitimate Interference Of Collective Opinion With Individual Independence: And To Find That Limit, And Maintain It Against Encroachment, Is As Indispensable To A Good Condition Of Human Affairs, As Protection Against Political Despotism.

So True Is That Unnatural Generally Means Only Uncustomary, And That Everything Which Is Usual Appears Natural.