English Prose: A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice of the Art of Writing
General
English Prose: A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice of the Art of Writing
English language -- Rhetoric; English language -- Style; English prose literature; Readers; Report writing -- Problems, exercises, etc.
is observable in all denominations. As the English Bishop said,
"Orthodoxy is my doxy, and heterodoxy is any other doxy," while the
universal tendency is to classify all outside of the orthodoxies and
heterodoxies of the prevailing religion as heathens or atheists. And the
like tendency is observable as to all other differences.--Author's
note.]
[Footnote 46: The Sandwich Islanders did honor to their good chiefs by
eating their bodies. Their bad and tyrannical chiefs they would not
touch. The New Zealanders had a notion that by eating their enemies they
acquired their strength and valor. And this seems to be the general
origin of eating prisoners of war.--Author's note.]
THE MORALS OF TRADE[47]
HERBERT SPENCER
On all sides we have found the result of long personal experience, to be
the conviction that trade is essentially corrupt. In tones of disgust or
discouragement, reprehension or derision, according to their several
natures, men in business have one after another expressed or implied
this belief. Omitting the highest mercantile classes, a few of the less
common trades, and those exceptional cases where an entire command of
the market has been obtained, the uniform testimony of competent judges
is, that success is incompatible with strict integrity. To live in the
commercial world it appears necessary to adopt its ethical code: neither
exceeding nor falling short of it--neither being less honest nor more
honest. Those who sink below its standard are expelled; while those who
rise above it are either pulled down to it or ruined. As, in
self-defence, the civilised man becomes savage among savages; so, it
seems that in self-defence, the scrupulous trader is obliged to become
as little scrupulous as his competitors. It has been said that the law
of the animal creation is--"Eat and be eaten;" and of our trading
community it may be similarly said that its law is--Cheat and be
cheated. A system of keen competition, carried on, as it is, without
adequate moral restraint, is very much a system of commercial
cannibalism. Its alternatives are--Use the same weapons as your
antagonists, or be conquered and devoured.
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