Quotes from baring gould sabine v

The first natural right man has in society is that of disposing freely of his person. It is the most sacred property in the world. Of what use is any other property, if between it and you is an impenetrable wall.

That we may be able to profit by the experience of others, we are endowed with an instinct adapted to the purpose of drawing us into the company of our fellows--this is the social instinct.

Freedom consists in the exercise of the will in overthrowing every opposition which restrains the development of the nature of the creature.

Man and God being placed face to face, one as contingent, the other as absolute, the contingent lives as contingent and the absolute as absolute. To live as absolute, is to be at once the power and principle of life; to live as contingent is to live as effect, without ever being able to live as principle.

God, the principle and the end of all, gives Himself to all to multiply indefinitely His gifts one by the other, and to distribute them, thus inimitably augmented, through each to all. Associated in this work of universal solidarity, we reunite all the scattered fragments of God's perfection manifested in ourselves.

If prayer be the affirmation of the link between God and man, to neglect prayer is to disallow the link; and the link severed, the two personalities are opposed and become actively hostile, so that the idea of God is destroyed or at least is passively ignored.

Human authority may furnish conviction, but never certainty. Divine authority is immutable and infallible.

I have no intention of arguing for liberty, because I believe it to be an irrational verity, one which must be assumed, and which can never be demonstrated. Every one, the veriest sceptic included, believes in liberty, and believes in it naturally and invincibly. He cannot emancipate himself from the belief that he has a power of option between two courses of action, though he may have created a system in which he has demonstrated that liberty is impossible.

Interference with personal liberty for opinions is immoral, for every man has a right to his own opinions and a right to express them; and interference with the liberty of A is only lawful when A has violated the rights of B, and then one interference must exactly balance the other. When an idea takes the knife like Lady Macbeth, it has on its hands a dye which all the perfumes of Araby cannot efface. It has defied morality, and, as its penalty, morality delivers it over to impotence.

In the family, from the first, the idea of authority has appeared. Protection and order are requisites of the family; and these cannot exist without recognition of an authority.

Of authority there are two sorts, the authority of right, and the authority of force.

Man must emphasize himself, and consequently must distinguish himself from God. He must recognize these two terms, himself and God, as terms distinct, not only in thought, but by an act of will, for man must will himself, and by willing himself constitute his personality. However, he must do this without separating himself from God, without excluding God. He must will himself, but he must at the same time will God.

God is not a person in the human sense, which is exclusive of other personalities. He is immutable, all-inclusive, absolutely free, intelligent and loving, that is, He is personal, because the world exists, and by its existence He becomes relative.

Thus man believes in truths of two kinds, in those of absolute certainty through direct conviction, and in those of comparative certainty through conviction of the trustworthiness of the authority which propounds them.

Worship is the subjection of the personality of the worshipper to the object worshipped; it is therefore the affirmation of the relations the two personalities bear to one another.

The cravings of the soul of man before music and painting were discovered must have resembled the stutterings for impossible utterance in the dumb.

Evil is the rejection of the infinite for the finite.

Man has no knowledge of things except by the thoughts present to his mind; that is, he can only know what is thinkable.