Sources and editorial notes

Here then is the origin and rise of government; namely, a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here too is the design and end of government, viz. freedom and security.

Thomas Paine · Common Sense · Read the source

Paine’s revolutionary pamphlet asks what government is for before admiring its forms. Its account is an argument to examine, not an adopted theory that all government exists only because of vice.

But method must not connote mechanics to any mind.

Mary Parker Follett · The New State · Read the source

Follett resists mistaking political machinery for the life it should enable. The empty public table asks the same question: what participation does this impressive arrangement actually make possible?

Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?

Frederick Douglass · My Bondage and My Freedom · Read the source

In his Fourth of July address, reprinted in this autobiography, Douglass tests a public ideal against exclusion from its benefits. His historical indictment supplies substance beyond a general demand for polite disagreement.

Goading as have been the cruelties to which I have been subjected—bitter as have been the trials through which I have passed—exasperating as have been, and still are, the indignities offered to my manhood—I find in them no excuse for the slightest departure from truth in dealing with any branch of this subject.

Frederick Douglass · My Bondage and My Freedom · Read the source

Douglass insists on truth while describing enslavement and injustice. This is a demanding account of truthful advocacy, not a claim that strong emotion or justified condemnation weakens an argument.

To pass from theological and philosophical truth to the truth of civil business; it will be acknowledged, even by those that practise it not, that clear and round dealing is the honor of man’s nature, and that mixture of falsehood is like alloy in coin of gold and silver, which may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it.

Francis Bacon · Essays · Read the source

Bacon’s alloy comparison makes the apparent usefulness of falsehood part of its danger. A persuasive account can work more smoothly for its author while giving its recipients a less dependable basis for judgment.

The primary motive for language is to influence (through the expression of desire, emotion, and thought) the activity of others; its secondary use is to enter into more intimate sociable relations with them; its employment as a conscious vehicle of thought and knowledge is a tertiary, and relatively late, formation.

John Dewey · How We Think · Read the source

Dewey examines language’s power to influence activity. Political speech therefore needs examination through the understanding and action it invites; this is not an assertion that all influence is deceptive.

To render mankind more virtuous, and happier of course, both sexes must act from the same principle; but how can that be expected when only one is allowed to see the reasonableness of it?

Mary Wollstonecraft · A Vindication of the Rights of Woman · Read the source

Wollstonecraft challenges unequal moral expectations through an argument about shared principles and education. The point is not identical circumstances, but reasons that can apply beyond the favored class.

The blessings in which you this day rejoice, are not enjoyed in common.

Frederick Douglass · My Bondage and My Freedom · Read the source

The Fourth of July address contrasts celebrated liberty with enslavement and exclusion. This specific historical contradiction should not be diluted into the claim that every imperfect celebration is equally hypocritical.

Though we should be too much affected by what concerns ourselves, and too little by what concerns other men, yet, if we always act with impartiality between ourselves and others, if we never actually sacrifice any great interest of others, to any little interest of our own, we are easily pardoned: and it were well, if, upon all occasions, those who desire to do their duty were capable of maintaining even this degree of impartiality between themselves and others.

Adam Smith · The Theory of Moral Sentiments · Read the source

Smith distinguishes imperfect feelings from actually sacrificing another’s great interest to one’s own small one. His standard asks what the person does with conflicting claims, rather than requiring flawless inward consistency.

There is something exceedingly ridiculous in the composition of monarchy; it first excludes a man from the means of information, yet empowers him to act in cases where the highest judgment is required.

Thomas Paine · Common Sense · Read the source

Paine criticizes a political position that separates authority from relevant information. His attack on monarchy is historical argument; the present question is whether the inquiry has been arranged to keep its holder uninformed.

In the suspense of uncertainty, we metaphorically climb a tree; we try to find some standpoint from which we may survey additional facts and, getting a more commanding view of the situation, may decide how the facts stand related to one another.

John Dewey · How We Think · Read the source

Dewey pictures inquiry as gaining a position from which additional facts can be surveyed. The unopened envelope does the reverse: it preserves a comfortable limit on what can become known.

They have no authority to decide the question for all mankind, and exclude every other person from the means of judging.

John Stuart Mill · On Liberty · Read the source

Mill challenges the exclusion of others from the means of judging. The consultation case concerns access to inquiry, while recognizing that legitimate confidentiality can limit disclosure without justifying invented reassurance.

Men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices, which they have imbibed, they cannot trace how, rather than to root them out.

Mary Wollstonecraft · A Vindication of the Rights of Woman · Read the source

Wollstonecraft distinguishes reason used to defend inherited prejudice from reason used to examine it. The rally organizer’s interpretation must be capable of encountering the empty seats, not merely explaining them away.

If we saw ourselves in the light in which others see us, or in which they would see us if they knew all, a reformation would generally be unavoidable.

Adam Smith · The Theory of Moral Sentiments · Read the source

Smith imagines the corrective force of a view no longer protected by private knowledge and excuses. This is a perspective on self-judgment, not evidence that an outsider always understands a person better.

But such thoughts may mean a supposition accepted without reference to its real grounds.

John Dewey · How We Think · Read the source

Dewey distinguishes holding a supposition from examining its grounds. A sincerely held political story can remain poorly tested; sincerity alone does not establish either its truth or a vicious motive.

Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.

Thomas Paine · Common Sense · Read the source

Paine identifies the superficial authority acquired by an unchallenged custom. His own proposed change still requires reasons; the passage does not make novelty a sufficient answer to an inherited practice.

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Essays, First Series · Read the source

Emerson describes the pressure to preserve one’s past words because others use them to judge character. Political accountability matters, yet a justified revision need not be a betrayal of principle.

However unwillingly a person who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration that however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.

John Stuart Mill · On Liberty · Read the source

Mill asks even a true opinion to remain alive through discussion. The route can be defended for reasons, but mere possession of an old conviction does not remove the need for examination.

Likewise if every member of a group has the same thought, that is not a group idea: when all respond simultaneously to the same stimulus, it cannot be assumed that this is in obedience to a collective will.

Mary Parker Follett · The New State · Read the source

Follett distinguishes simultaneous agreement from an idea developed through group interaction. Matching badges or repeated slogans do not by themselves show that differing claims have received fair consideration.

We have learned to recognize them as selfish, although we blame them not for the will which chooses to be selfish, but for a narrowness of interest which deliberately selects its experience within a limited sphere, and we say that they illustrate the danger of concentrating the mind on narrow and unprogressive issues.

Jane Addams · Democracy and Social Ethics · Read the source

Addams connects a restricted field of concern with a restricted moral outlook. Her own broad language about selfishness is not a diagnosis; the token case asks whether affiliation has displaced a relevant criterion.

The positive evils and dangers of the representative, as of every other form of government, may be reduced to two heads: first, general ignorance and incapacity, or, to speak more moderately, insufficient mental qualifications, in the controlling body; secondly, the danger of its being under the influence of interests not identical with the general welfare of the community.

John Stuart Mill · Considerations on Representative Government · Read the source

Mill separates questions of capacity from interests that diverge from the general welfare. The present collection does not adopt his exclusions from suffrage; it asks how a relevant public claim becomes subordinated to a favored circle.

We have heard much of late of the virtue of patriotism, the love of country, &c., and this sentiment, so natural and so strong, has been impiously appealed to, by all the powers of human selfishness, to cherish the viper which is stinging our national life away.

Frederick Douglass · My Bondage and My Freedom · Read the source

Douglass describes patriotism being invoked to sustain slavery. This grave historical example identifies the claimed moral license of a cause; the comic cake is only a small illustration of that structure, not an equivalence of harms.

Peace is not the matter, but following, and party.

Francis Bacon · Essays · Read the source

Bacon is examining religious unity and faction after reporting a biblical exchange. His short distinction helps ask whether devotion serves a defensible purpose or makes following the party the overriding requirement.

Yet surely if we saw any man shouting with admiration and applause at a barbarous and unmerited execution, which some insolent tyrant had ordered, we should not think we were guilty of any great absurdity in denominating this behaviour vicious and morally evil in the highest degree, though it expressed nothing but depraved moral faculties, or an absurd approbation of this horrid action, as of what was noble, magnanimous, and great.

Adam Smith · The Theory of Moral Sentiments · Read the source

Smith considers moral approval directed toward a tyrant’s undeserved execution. Approval of harm can itself be vicious even where the admirer thinks the action noble; the passage describes injustice rather than prescribing confrontation.

To become respectable, the exercise of their understanding is necessary, there is no other foundation for independence of character; I mean explicitly to say, that they must only bow to the authority of reason, instead of being the MODEST slaves of opinion.

Mary Wollstonecraft · A Vindication of the Rights of Woman · Read the source

Wollstonecraft defends women’s independent understanding against subordination to opinion. The passage does not make human standing conditional on intellectual accomplishment; it challenges arrangements that deny the exercise of judgment.

If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

John Stuart Mill · On Liberty · Read the source

Mill’s defense of a solitary dissenter distinguishes numbers from justification. Taking a speaker seriously does not require accepting their claim or giving every claim equal evidential weight.

We have come to have an enormous interest in human life as such, accompanied by confidence in its essential soundness.

Jane Addams · Democracy and Social Ethics · Read the source

Addams describes a democratic interest in human life rather than only in approved speakers. Her confidence is an aspiration to examine experience, not a guarantee that every personal interpretation is correct.

To follow the path of social morality results perforce in the temper if not the practice of the democratic spirit, for it implies that diversified human experience and resultant sympathy which are the foundation and guarantee of Democracy.

Jane Addams · Democracy and Social Ethics · Read the source

Addams links democratic ethics to diversified experience and sympathy. The planner’s account needs contact with the burdens of those affected, rather than treating administrative neatness as sufficient consideration.

It is to be observed accordingly, that we are still more anxious to communicate to our friends our disagreeable than our agreeable passions, that we derive still more satisfaction from their sympathy with the former than from that with the latter, and that we are still more shocked by the want of it.

Adam Smith · The Theory of Moral Sentiments · Read the source

Smith notices the particular wound of distress meeting no fellow-feeling. The passage helps explain why an affected person can reasonably need acknowledgment as well as a technically accurate account of limited resources.

There is no difficulty in showing that the ideally best form of government is that in which the sovereignty, or supreme controlling power in the last resort, is vested in the entire aggregate of the community, every citizen not only having a voice in the exercise of that ultimate sovereignty, but being, at least occasionally, called on to take an actual part in the government by the personal discharge of some public function, local or general.

John Stuart Mill · Considerations on Representative Government · Read the source

Mill’s ideal gives citizens a voice and some actual participation. The present relevance is whose experience enters a decision, without importing his historical restrictions on who qualified for political rights.

Absolute and arbitrary power can never be maintained by one man over the body and soul of another man, without brutal chastisement and enormous cruelty.

Frederick Douglass · My Bondage and My Freedom · Read the source

Douglass names the coercion sustaining enslavement. His specific historical account should retain its gravity; the meeting token is a separate ordinary example of control, not a claim that all procedural disputes are equivalent.

To free the way for that process is the task of practical politics.

Mary Parker Follett · The New State · Read the source

Follett places practical politics in the service of a developing capacity for self-government. A participation rule deserves assessment through the scope it actually leaves for people’s judgment and contribution.

There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism.

John Stuart Mill · On Liberty · Read the source

Mill’s surrounding argument includes coercion by prevailing social opinion, not only officials. A public process can suppress reasonable agency through informal pressure as well as through its formal allocation of authority.

A man of rank or fortune, sure of rising by interest, has nothing to do but to pursue some extravagant freak; whilst the needy GENTLEMAN, who is to rise, as the phrase turns, by his merit, becomes a servile parasite or vile pander.

Mary Wollstonecraft · A Vindication of the Rights of Woman · Read the source

Wollstonecraft describes a hierarchy that rewards influence and makes advancement depend on compliance. Her contemptuous period wording is not adopted as a label for dependent people; credible constraints matter when judging available choices.

The virtue in most request is conformity.

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Essays, First Series · Read the source

Emerson’s deliberately provocative sentence questions conformity mistaken for virtue. Agreement may be well reasoned; the arrow case concerns surrender of judgment for favor rather than cooperation itself.

People more happily situated, who sometimes hear their opinions disputed, and are not wholly unused to be set right when they are wrong, place the same unbounded reliance only on such of their opinions as are shared by all who surround them, or to whom they habitually defer: for in proportion to a man's want of confidence in his own solitary judgment, does he usually repose, with implicit trust, on the infallibility of "the world" in general.

John Stuart Mill · On Liberty · Read the source

Mill describes borrowed infallibility: uncertainty in oneself can coexist with excessive reliance on a surrounding circle. The political question is whether approval has replaced examination of the position’s reasons.

On the other hand, it is also a maxim of experience that in the multitude of councillors there is wisdom, and that a man seldom judges right, even in his own concerns, still less in those of the public, when he makes habitual use of no knowledge but his own, or that of some single adviser.

John Stuart Mill · Considerations on Representative Government · Read the source

Mill distinguishes concentrated responsibility from reliance on a single source of knowledge. The platform can allocate authority, but it cannot make the officeholder’s observations sufficient for every question.

Preserve likewise the rights of inferior places; and think it more honor to direct in chief than to be busy in all.

Francis Bacon · Essays · Read the source

Bacon asks a superior office to preserve the legitimate spheres beneath it. His hierarchical framework is historical; the point is that authority does not make every other person’s judgment dispensable.

To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty.

John Stuart Mill · On Liberty · Read the source

Mill distinguishes personal certainty from a warrant to deny others a hearing. His argument addresses reasons for suppression, not a duty to provide unlimited access to every disruptive or threatening speaker.

It may be a substitute for worldly pursuits; yet narrow instead of enlarging the heart: but virtue must be loved as in itself sublime and excellent, and not for the advantages it procures or the evils it averts, if any great degree of excellence be expected.

Mary Wollstonecraft · A Vindication of the Rights of Woman · Read the source

Wollstonecraft asks that virtue be valued beyond its rewards. Her surrounding religious argument is historical; the political case asks whether admiration has displaced the public purpose the performance advertises.

It is thus that he treats every thing as vanity which has any reference, either to what are, or to what ought to be the sentiments of others: and it is by means of this sophistry, that he establishes his favourite conclusion, that private vices are public benefits.

Adam Smith · The Theory of Moral Sentiments · Read the source

Smith is criticizing Mandeville’s reduction of concern for others’ judgment to vanity. The counterpoint matters here: public presentation, reputation and moral speech can be fitting rather than automatically vicious.

So are there some vain persons, that, whatsoever goeth alone, or moveth upon greater means, if they have never so little hand in it, they think it is they that carry it.

Francis Bacon · Essays · Read the source

After an Aesop fable, Bacon describes inflated ownership of an undertaking carried by greater forces. The image questions who receives the credit while preserving the distinction between acknowledgment and dependence on admiration.

Some, when they take revenge, are desirous the party should know whence it cometh.

Francis Bacon · Essays · Read the source

Bacon identifies the wish that the target recognize the source of retaliation. His surrounding ranking of kinds of revenge is not adopted; the present distinction concerns payback rather than fair accountability.

From his example in this respect I learned the lesson that great men cultivate love, and that only little men cherish a spirit of hatred.

Booker T. Washington · Up from Slavery · Read the source

Washington is recalling Samuel Chapman Armstrong’s example. The historical praise invites reflection on resentment; it does not require harmed people to suppress distress, forgive, resume contact or accept further exposure.

Bradford being unkind enough to forbid it, which occasion’d some resentment on my part; and I thought so meanly of him for it, that, when I afterward came into his situation, I took care never to imitate it.

Benjamin Franklin · Autobiography · Read the source

Franklin recalls resentment over postal access and his later decision not to repeat the treatment. This autobiographical claim illustrates a different choice after acquiring power, without endorsing the surrounding account of bribing riders.

It is again the justification of stealing from the rich to give to the poor.

Jane Addams · Democracy and Social Ethics · Read the source

Addams is examining explanations offered for a corrupt ward politician’s generosity. Her surrounding paternalistic classifications are not adopted; redistribution of a private benefit does not by itself justify the purchased public judgment.

Of what efficacy are rules of procedure in securing the ends of justice if the moral condition of the people is such that the witnesses generally lie, and the judges and their subordinates take bribes?

John Stuart Mill · Considerations on Representative Government · Read the source

Mill asks what formal procedures can accomplish when the people operating them sell or falsify judgment. The passage makes character relevant without pretending that rules or institutional safeguards are therefore unnecessary.

A servant or a favorite, if he be inward, and no other apparent cause of esteem, is commonly thought but a by-way to close corruption.

Francis Bacon · Essays · Read the source

Bacon notices how a favorite can become an indirect route to corruption. His sentence reports a suspicion, not sufficient proof; personal relationships require examination of the actual exchange rather than automatic accusation.

He is enchanted with the distant idea of this felicity.

Adam Smith · The Theory of Moral Sentiments · Read the source

Smith’s imagined ambitious person gives a promised future condition authority over continuing effort. The passage questions the picture of enough that drives acquisition, rather than condemning ambition or a modest wish for comfort.

Of great riches there is no real use, except it be in the distribution; the rest is but conceit.

Francis Bacon · Essays · Read the source

Bacon distinguishes resources’ use from their mere possession. His sweeping claim is a historical perspective, not financial advice; the seats illustrate acquisition that consumes the shared purpose it should support.

The desire of dazzling by riches, the most certain pre-eminence that man can obtain, the pleasure of commanding flattering sycophants, and many other complicated low calculations of doting self-love, have all contributed to overwhelm the mass of mankind, and make liberty a convenient handle for mock patriotism.

Mary Wollstonecraft · A Vindication of the Rights of Woman · Read the source

Wollstonecraft links display, command and mock patriotism. The present distinctions separate these motives rather than treating her bundle as one vice; a public slogan does not justify an excessive private claim.

We can recall among the selfish people of our acquaintance at least one common characteristic,—the conviction that they are different from other men and women, that they need peculiar consideration because they are more sensitive or more refined.

Jane Addams · Democracy and Social Ethics · Read the source

Addams examines the idea that one’s special sensitivity warrants exemption from common claims. Personal needs can be real; the political question is whether they have received automatic rather than justified priority.

Even in good men, the judge within is often in danger of being corrupted by the violence and injustice of their selfish passions, and is often induced to make a report very different from what the real circumstances of the case are capable of authorizing.

Adam Smith · The Theory of Moral Sentiments · Read the source

Smith describes self-interested distortion of an inward judgment. The passage challenges a comfortable account of fairness without making a single selfish decision sufficient evidence of someone’s whole character.

In strikes workmen often sacrifice their own interests for what will benefit the union: the individual—I may prefer his present wages to the privations of a strike; the group-I wants to raise the wages of the whole union.

Mary Parker Follett · The New State · Read the source

Follett distinguishes an individual’s immediate interest from the union’s shared interest. This is a description of one political tension, not an instruction to sacrifice essential resources or submit to group pressure.

The consequences of a belief upon other beliefs and upon behavior may be so important, then, that men are forced to consider the grounds or reasons of their belief and its logical consequences.

John Dewey · How We Think · Read the source

Dewey asks that consequential beliefs receive examination of their grounds. A petition’s sincerity does not settle whether its central claim has received the reasonable care available before others are invited to rely on it.

Moreover, the development of responsibility and self-direction will be the most effective means of raising standards.

Mary Parker Follett · The New State · Read the source

Follett connects standards with responsibility and self-direction rather than regulation alone. The petition case needs someone to own the check; a general instruction that everyone be careful may leave that task unattended.

We slowly learn that life consists of processes as well as results, and that failure may come quite as easily from ignoring the adequacy of one's method as from selfish or ignoble aims.

Jane Addams · Democracy and Social Ethics · Read the source

Addams distinguishes the adequacy of a method from the worth of its aims. The response to a recurring omission may be a smaller promise or better handover, rather than another declaration of good intentions.

When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember, that virtue is not hereditary.

Thomas Paine · Common Sense · Read the source

Paine refuses to treat virtue as a hereditary possession. The civic parallel is limited but useful: an institution’s good history cannot by itself establish the adequacy of its present operation.

Genuine ignorance is more profitable because likely to be accompanied by humility, curiosity, and open-mindedness; while ability to repeat catch-phrases, cant terms, familiar propositions, gives the conceit of learning and coats the mind with a varnish waterproof to new ideas.

John Dewey · How We Think · Read the source

Dewey contrasts admitted ignorance with the appearance of learning that blocks new ideas. The polished bell makes a similar distinction between a reassuring surface and a question about actual present capacity.

We have not yet tried democracy.

Mary Parker Follett · The New State · Read the source

Follett challenges confidence in the label democracy by asking about its actual practice. Her sweeping historical verdict is a provocation to examine, not a finding about every contemporary political arrangement.

By thought man also develops and arranges artificial signs to remind him in advance of consequences, and of ways of securing and avoiding them.

John Dewey · How We Think · Read the source

Dewey describes signs that bring consequences into present judgment. Political promises need that anticipatory work, including attention to the people who will bear costs absent from the immediate celebration.

The qualities most useful to ourselves are, first of all, superior reason and understanding, by which we are capable of discerning the remote consequences of all our actions, and of foreseeing the advantage or detriment which is likely to result from them: and secondly, self-command, by which we are enabled to abstain from present pleasure or to endure present pain, in order to obtain a greater pleasure or to avoid a greater pain in some future time.

Adam Smith · The Theory of Moral Sentiments · Read the source

Smith connects foresight with self-command in his account of prudence. The political case extends the question to risks imposed on others, rather than treating the decision maker’s own advantage as the complete account.

The utility of this currency became by time and experience so evident as never afterwards to be much disputed; so that it grew soon to fifty-five thousand pounds, and in 1739 to eighty thousand pounds, since which it arose during war to upwards of three hundred and fifty thousand pounds, trade, building, and inhabitants all the while increasing, tho’ I now think there are limits beyond which the quantity may be hurtful.

Benjamin Franklin · Autobiography · Read the source

Franklin qualifies an account of a successful currency expansion with limits he later recognized. The point is willingness to examine consequences beyond the celebrated gain, not a current monetary or investment recommendation.