Lawyers -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918 -- Fiction
Such a mind as Huber’s comes to Dora Marsden’s conclusion: "Life is no
two days the same: the same measure never fits twice exactly; hence the
futility of state-making, law-making, moral-making, when all that is of
importance is life-augmenting, and that is the individual’s affair." He
sees that only Labor creates wealth, and that nothing should be robbed
of a fraction of what it creates. He sees that actually government is
"not the president, congress and the courts, not any body or power
created by the Constitution, but always a combination of important
business interests,"[#] not even any individual, and that even if it
were completely constitutional it would still be compulsion—that to
"consent" to be governed is to consent to be compelled.
[#] Charles Edward Russell.
He would argue of politics:
"We Americans pretend to hate kings, and so we devise a republic;
finding the rule of one man bad, we believe we can better it by
multiplying it by ninety millions; finding an ounce has evil effects, we
take a ton. We simply change the tyranny of one for the tyranny of
many. Even if the will of our fifteen million voters ruled us as they
tell us it does, then each one of the fifteen million would be giving
all the 14,999,999 others the right to interfere with him in return for
his one fifteen-millionth right to take a hand in interfering with them.
For that fraction of power over others, he would be giving away all his
power over himself."
Huber would say of religion and law:
"Both are tools in the hands of compulsion. Both try to belittle divine
humanity, the first making Man a pygmy before God and the second making
Man a pygmy before a few men. There can be no crime against God, since
God, or the force that created the world, is omnipotent; no crime
against law, since law is an instrument of the great crime. The law a
deterrent? It isn’t. The statistics prove that, so far as statistics
can prove anything. But you prove it yourself. Why do you try to
refrain from conscious wrong? Not because you’re afraid of the law in
heaven or on earth—you’re not a coward. You simply want to do the
decent thing because it _is_ the decent thing. The desire to do the
decent thing: that’s all the religion and law there is to-day among even
the people that make laws and religions for the purpose of ruling other
people by them. The rulers sin only because their system has dimmed
their judgment of the decent thing, and so they go on maintaining their
law and their religion. The ruled will want to do the decent thing just
as soon as they become responsible creatures through the abolition of
these compulsions, exactly as the rulers, though dulled by keeping up
their system, wanted to do it as soon as they became responsible
creatures by growing above the dictates of these compulsions."
Other men, other religions. For some faith; for some denial. Huber’s
religion was the Gospel of Negation.
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