FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108  
109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   >>   >|  
onvergent_ and toward Consolidation, Centralization, Order, or, in one word, _Unity_; with a minor reference only to Freedom, Independence, or Individuality. A change then took place, and the Tendency to Unity began to yield, as the _major_ or _chief_ tendency in society, to the opposite or divergent drift toward Disunity or Individuality, which gradually came to be pre-eminently active. The Spirit of Disintegration which thus arose, has exhibited and is still exhibiting itself in Religious affairs, by the destruction of the integrality of the Church, and its division into numerous sects; and in the State, by the Democratic principle of popular rule, as opposed to the Monarchical theory of the supremacy of one. We have now arrived, in the course of our development as a race, at the culminating point of the second Stage of Progress--the Era of _Individuality_. The predominant tendency of our time in things Religious, Governmental, Intellectual, and Practical, is toward the utter rejection of all clogs upon the personal freedom of Man or Woman. This is seen by the neglect into which institutions of all kinds tend to fall, and the disrespect in which they are held; in the movements for the abolition of Slavery and Serfdom; in the recognition of the people's right of rule, even in Monarchical countries; more radically in the Woman's Rights Crusade, and in the absolute rejection, by the School of Reformers known as Individualists, of all governmental authority other than that voluntarily accepted, as an infringement of the individual's inherent right of self-sovereignty. This Spirit of Individuality, this desire to throw off all trammels, and to live in the atmosphere of one's own personality, exhibits itself in a marked degree in the literature of our day. It is the animating spirit of John Stuart Mill's work 'On Liberty'--a work which, as the writer has elsewhere shown, was substantially borrowed, although without any openly avowed acknowledgment of indebtedness, from an American publication. It is this spirit which has inspired some of the most remarkable of Herbert Spencer's Essays; and is distinctively apparent in the Fourth one of the Propositions which Mr. Buckle affirms to be 'the basis of the history of civilization;' and in the general tenor of Prof. Draper's _Intellectual Development of Europe_. The gist of this doctrine of Individuality, as it is now largely prevalent in respect to the institutions of the Ch
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108  
109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

Individuality

 

rejection

 

tendency

 
Religious
 
spirit
 

Intellectual

 

Monarchical

 

institutions

 
Spirit
 

trammels


exhibits
 

literature

 

animating

 

degree

 

marked

 

personality

 

atmosphere

 

individual

 
Reformers
 

School


Individualists

 

governmental

 

absolute

 

Crusade

 

countries

 

radically

 

Rights

 

authority

 

inherent

 

sovereignty


desire

 

infringement

 
voluntarily
 

accepted

 

borrowed

 

affirms

 

Buckle

 
history
 
civilization
 

Propositions


Essays

 
distinctively
 

apparent

 

Fourth

 
general
 
largely
 

prevalent

 

respect

 

doctrine

 

Draper