Part 19 (1/2)

CCCXVII

Children work a greater metamorphosis in men than any other condition of life. They ripen one wonderfully and make life ten times better worth having than it was.

CCCXVIII

Teach a child what is wise, that is _morality_, Teach him what is wise and beautiful, that is _religion!_

CCCXIX

People may talk about intellectual teaching, but what we princ.i.p.ally want is the moral teaching.

CCCXX

We are in the midst of a gigantic movement greater than that which preceded and produced the Reformation, and really only the continuation of that movement But there is nothing new in the ideas which lie at the bottom of the movement, nor is any reconcilement possible between free thought and traditional authority. One or other will have to succ.u.mb after a struggle of unknown duration, which will have as side issues vast political and social troubles. I have no more doubt that free thought will win in the long run than I have that I sit here writing to you, or that this free thought will organize itself into a coherent system, embracing human life and the world as one harmonious whole. But this organization will be the work of generations of men, and those who further it most will be those who teach men to rest in no lie, and to rest in no verbal delusions.

CCCXXI

Make up your mind to act decidedly and take the consequences. No good is ever done in this world by hesitation.

CCCXXII

The world is neither wise nor just, but it makes up for all its folly and injustice by being d.a.m.nably sentimental.

CCCXXIII

Without seeing any reason to believe that women are, on the average, so strong physically, intellectually, or morally, as men, I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that many women are much better endowed in all these respects than many men, and I am at a loss to understand on what grounds of justice or public policy a career which is open to the weakest and most foolish of the male s.e.x should be forcibly closed to women of vigour and capacity.

CCCXXIV

We have heard a great deal lately about the physical disabilities of women. Some of these alleged impediments, no doubt, are realty inherent in their organization, but nine-tenths of them are artificial--the products of their modes of life. I believe that nothing would tend so effectually to get rid of these creations of idleness, weariness, and that ”over stimulation of the emotions” which, in plainer-spoken days, used to be called wantonness, than a fair share of healthy work, directed towards a definite object, combined with an equally fair share of healthy play, during the years of adolescence; and those who are best acquainted with the acquirements of an average medical pract.i.tioner will find it hardest to believe that the attempt to reach that standard is like to prove exhausting to an ordinarily intelligent and well-educated young woman.

CCCXXV

The only good that I can see in the demonstration of the truth of ”Spiritualism” is to furnish an additional argument against suicide.

Better live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk twaddle by a ”medium” hired at a guinea a seance.

CCCXXVI

I ask myself--suppose you knew that by inflicting prolonged pain on 100 rabbits you could discover a way to the extirpation of leprosy, or consumption, or locomotor ataxy, or of suicidal melancholia among human beings, dare you refuse to inflict that pain? Now I am quite unable to say that I dare. That sort of daring would seem to me to be extreme moral cowardice, to involve gross inconsistency.

For the advantage and protection of society, we all agree to inflict pain upon man--pain of the most prolonged and acute character--in our prisons, and on our battlefields. If England were invaded, we should have no hesitation about inflicting the maximum of suffering upon our invaders for no other object than our own good.