Its Officer, As A Living Man, May Have
Human Virtues And A Thought In His Brain, But As The Tool Of An
Institution, A Jailer Or Constable It May Be, He Is Not A Whit
Superior To His Prison Key Or His Staff.
Herein is the tragedy;
that men doing outrage to their proper natures, even those called
wise and good, lend themselves to perform the office of inferior
and brutal ones.
Hence come war and slavery in; and what else
may not come in by this opening? But certainly there are modes
by which a man may put bread into his mouth which will not
prejudice him as a companion and neighbor.
"Now turn again, turn again, said the pinder,
For a wrong way you have gone,
For you have forsaken the king's highway,
And made a path over the corn."
Undoubtedly, countless reforms are called for, because society is
not animated, or instinct enough with life, but in the condition
of some snakes which I have seen in early spring, with alternate
portions of their bodies torpid and flexible, so that they could
wriggle neither way. All men are partially buried in the grave
of custom, and of some we see only the crown of the head above
ground. Better are the physically dead, for they more lively
rot. Even virtue is no longer such if it be stagnant. A man's
life should be constantly as fresh as this river. It should be
the same channel, but a new water every instant.
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