otherwise his rule would have been a disaster to the tribes he governed.
Conscience has originated in fear and is to decay with ignorance, say
some. Already that extraordinary piece of folly has been answered.
Conscience is the correlative of power, the guide of energy. If the one
decays, so must the other. Living strongly, energetically, making
experiments, seeking liberty and dominion, pressing towards the higher
we are ever to acknowledge the responsibility which governs life. By
what we know of the divine will we are to order every purpose and scheme
and advance to further knowledge. There are victories we might win,
there are methods by which we might harass those who do us wrong. One
voice says Snatch the victories, go down by night and injure the foe,
insinuate what you cannot prove, while the sentinels sleep plunge your
spear through the heart of a persecuting Saul. But another voice asks,
Is this the way to assert moral life? Is this the line for a man to
take? The true man swears to his own hurt, suffers and is strong, does
in the face of day what he has it in him to do and, if he fails, dies a
true man still. He is not responsible for obeying commands of which he
is ignorant, nor for mistakes which he cannot avoid. One like Samson is
clean-handed in what it would be unutterably base for us to do. But
close beside every man are such guiding ideas as straightforwardness,
sincerity, honesty. Each of us knows his duty so far and cannot deceive
himself by supposing that God will excuse him in acting, even for what
he counts a good end, as a cheat and a hypocrite. In politics the rule
is as clear as in companionship, in war as in love.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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