Lewis Rand eBook

Mary Johnston
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 603 pages of information about Lewis Rand.

Lewis Rand eBook

Mary Johnston
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 603 pages of information about Lewis Rand.

Freedom!  Happiness!  What is freedom?  What is happiness?  Freedom is the maximum of self-government finally becoming automatic, and the minimum of government from without finally reduced to the vanishing-point.  Happiness is the ultimate bourne, the Olympian goal, the intense and burning star towards which we travel.  Does not its light even now fall upon us? even now we are palely happy.  And how shall we know the road? and what if, in the night-time, we turn irremediably aside?  How are they to be attained, true Liberty and true Happiness?  Learn!  Light the lamp, and the shadows will flee.—­Self-government.  Teach thyself temperance, foresight, and wise memory of the past.  Thou thyself, in thine own body, art a community.  See, then, that thy communal life is clean, that thy will is in right operation, and thy minds divide thee not to disaster.  Thy very ego, is it not but thy president, the voice of all thy members, representative of all that thy race has made thee to be, effect of ten million causes, and cause of effects thou canst not see?  Let thy ego strengthen itself, deal justly, rule wisely, that thy state fall not behind in this world-progress and be lost out of time and out of mind, in a night without a dawn.  There have been such things:  over against immortal gain there lies immortal loss.  Work, then, while it is day, for if thou work not, the night will make no tarrying.  Know thyself, and, knowing, rule that strange world of thine.  Were it not a doom, were it not a frightful doom, that it should come to rule thee? ...  Government from without!  Government of to-day, Government abroad as we see it in every journal, in every letter that we open—­how heavy, how heavy is the ball and chain the nations wear!  If we alone in this land go free, if for four golden years we have moved with lightness, look to it lest a gaoler come!  Government!  What is the ideal government?  It is a man of business, worthy and esteemed, administering his client’s affairs with thoroughness, economy, and honour.  It is a wise judge, holding the balances with a steadfast hand, sitting there clothed reverently, to judge uprightly and to do no more.  It is a skilled council, a picked band, an honourable Legion, chosen of the multitude, to determine the line of march for an advancing civilization; to make such laws as are according to reason and necessity and to make none that are not, and to provide for the keeping of the law that is made.  The careful man of affairs, the upright judge, the honest maker of honest laws must needs present an account for maintenance and for that expenditure which shall give offence neither to generosity nor to justice; and the account must be paid, yea, and ungrudgingly!  Let us pay, then, each man according to his ability, the tax that is right and fitting; and let us, moreover, give due honour to the vanguard of the people.  It is there that the great flag waves with all the blazonry of the race.  But we want no substituted banner,

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Project Gutenberg
Lewis Rand from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.