Biological analogies in historyRoosevelt, Theodore
Philosophy
Biological analogies in history
Roosevelt, Theodore
History -- Philosophy
national types will more and more tend to become those in which,
though intellect stands high, character stands higher; in which rugged
strength and courage, rugged capacity to resist wrongful aggression
by others will go hand in hand with a lofty scorn of doing wrong to
others. This is the type of Timoleon, of Hampden, of Washington and
Lincoln. These were as good men, as disinterested and unselfish men,
as ever served a State; and they were also as strong men as ever
founded or saved a State. Surely such examples prove that there is
nothing Utopian in our effort to combine justice and strength in the
same nation. The really high civilizations must themselves supply the
antidote to the self-indulgence and love of ease which they tend to
produce.
Every modern civilized nation has many and terrible problems to
solve within its own borders, problems that arise not merely from
juxtaposition of poverty and riches, but especially from the
self-consciousness of both poverty and riches. Each nation must deal
with these matters in its own fashion, and yet the spirit in which the
problem is approached must ever be fundamentally the same. It must
be a spirit of broad humanity; of brotherly kindness; of acceptance
of responsibility, one for each and each for all; and at the same
time a spirit as remote as the poles from every form of weakness and
sentimentality. As in war to pardon the coward is to do cruel wrong to
the brave man whose life his cowardice jeopardizes, so in civil affairs
it is revolting to every principle of justice to give to the lazy, the
vicious, or even the feeble or dull-witted, a reward which is really
the robbery of what braver, wiser, abler men have earned. The only
effective way to help any man is to help him to help himself; and the
worst lesson to teach him is that he can be permanently helped at the
expense of some one else. True liberty shows itself to best advantage
in protecting the rights of others, and especially of minorities.
Privilege should not be tolerated because it is to the advantage of
a minority; nor yet because it is to the advantage of a majority. No
doctrinaire theories of vested rights or freedom of contract can stand
in the way of our cutting out abuses from the body politic. Just as
little can we afford to follow the doctrinaires of an impossible—and
incidentally of a highly undesirable—social revolution, which in
destroying individual rights—including property rights—and the family,
would destroy the two chief agents in the advance of mankind, and the
two chief reasons why either the advance or the preservation of mankind
is worth while. It is an evil and a dreadful thing to be callous to
sorrow and suffering and blind to our duty to do all things possible
for the betterment of social conditions. But it is an unspeakably
foolish thing to strive for this betterment by means so destructive
that they would leave no social conditions to better. In dealing with
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