The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest: The writings of philosophers, poets, novelists, social reformers, and others who have voiced the struggle against social injustice; selected from twenty-five languages; covering a period of five thousand years
General
The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest: The writings of philosophers, poets, novelists, social reformers, and others who have voiced the struggle against social injustice; selected from twenty-five languages; covering a period of five thousand years
Social justice; Social problems
No person, no matter how soft and secluded his own life has
been, can read this Holy Book and not be aware that the
world is filled with a vast mass of unfairness, cruelty, and
suffering. He will find that it has been observed, during
all the ages, by the thinkers, the seers, the poets, and the
philosophers.
And such person will learn, possibly, that this fair world
so brutally unfair, is not decreed by the will of God nor by
any iron law of Nature. He will learn that the world can be
fashioned a fair world indeed by the humans who inhabit it, by
the very simple, and yet most difficult process of coming to
an understanding of the world. Understanding, after all, is
merely sympathy in its fine correct sense. And such sympathy,
in its genuineness, makes toward unselfishness. Unselfishness
inevitably connotes service. And service is the solution of
the entire vexatious problem of man.
He, who by understanding becomes converted to the gospel of
service, will serve truth to confute liars and make of them
truth-tellers; will serve kindness so that brutality will
perish; will serve beauty to the erasement of all that is not
beautiful. And he who is strong will serve the weak that they
may become strong. He will devote his strength, not to the
debasement and defilement of his weaker fellows, but to the
making of opportunity for them to make themselves into men
rather than into slaves and beasts.
One has but to read the names of the men and women whose
words burn in these pages, and to recall that by far more
than average intelligence have they won to their place in
the world's eye and in the world's brain long after the dust
of them has vanished, to realize that due credence must be
placed in their report of the world herein recorded. They were
not tyrants and wastrels, hypocrites and liars, brewers and
gamblers, market-riggers and stock-brokers. They were givers
and servers, and seers and humanists. They were unselfish. They
conceived of life, not in terms of profit, but of service.
Life tore at them with its heart-break. They could not escape
the hurt of it by selfish refuge in the gluttonies of brain
and body. They saw, and steeled themselves to see, clear-eyed
and unafraid. Nor were they afflicted by some strange myopia.
They all saw the same thing. They are all agreed upon what they
saw. The totality of their evidence proves this with unswerving
consistency. They have brought the report, these commissioners
of humanity. It is here in these pages. It is a true report.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account