A wise man or a wise nation knows the kind of restraint which is good;
the fool, with his feather-brained theories, never knows what is good
for him--he mistakes eternal justice for tyranny, he rebels against
facts that are too solid for him--and we know what kind of an end he
meets. Some peculiarly daring personages carry their spirit of
resistance beyond the bounds of our poor little earth. Only lately many
of us read with a shock of surprise the passionate asseveration of a
gifted woman who declared that it was a monstrous wrong and wickedness
that ever she had been born. Job said much the same thing in his
delirium; but our great novelist put forth her complaint as the net
outcome of all her thought and culture. We only need to open an ordinary
newspaper to find that the famous writer's folly is shared by many
weaker souls; and the effect on the mind of a shrewd and contented man
is so startling that it resembles the emotion roused by grotesque wit.
The whole story of the ages tells us dismally what happens when unwise
people choose to claim the measure of liberty which they think good; but
somehow, though knowledge has come, wisdom lingers, and the grim old
follies rear themselves rankly among us in the age of reason.
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