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Count Leo Tolstoy - "Resurrection"

Sir Walter Scott - "Chronicles of the Canongate"

George Wharton James - "How to See It,"

Richard M. Stallman - "The Right to Read"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Thoughts on Man

U >> Unknown >> Thoughts on Man




But, if the rich are seduced and led away from the inspirations
of virtue, it may easily be conceived how much more injurious,
and beyond the power of control, are the effects on the poor.
The mysterious source from which the talents of men are derived,
cannot be supposed in their distribution to be regulated by the
artificial laws of society, and to have one measure for those
which are bestowed upon the opulent, and another for the
destitute. It will therefore not seldom happen that powers
susceptible of the noblest uses may be cast, like "seed sown upon
stony places," where they have scarcely any chance to be unfolded
and matured. In a few instances they may attract the attention
of persons both able and willing to contribute to their being
brought to perfection. In a few instances the principle may be
so vigorous, and the tendency to excel so decisive, as to bid
defiance to and to conquer every obstacle. But in a vast
majority the promise will be made vain, and the hopes that might
have been entertained will prove frustrate. What can be expected
from the buds of the most auspicious infancy, if encountered in
their earliest stage with the rigorous blasts of a polar climate?

And not only will the germs of excellence be likely to be
extinguished in the members of the lower class of the community,
but the temptations to irregular acts and incroachments upon the
laws for the security of property will often be so great, as to
be in a manner irresistible. The man who perceives that, with
all his industry, he cannot provide for the bare subsistence of
himself and those dependent upon him, while his neighbour revels
in boundless profusion, cannot but sometimes feel himself goaded
to an attempt to correct this crying evil. What must be expected
to become of that general good-will which is the natural
inheritance of a well-constituted mind, when urged by so bitter
oppression and such unendurable sufferings? The whole temper of
the human heart must be spoiled, and the wine of life acquire a
quality acrimonious and malignant.

But it is not only in the extreme classes of society that the
glaring inequality with which property is shared produces its
injurious effects. All those who are born in the intermediate
ranks are urged with a distempered ambition, unfavourable to
independence of temper, and to true philanthropy. Each man
aspires to the improvement of his circumstances, and the
mounting, by one step and another, higher in the scale of the
community. The contemplations of the mind are turned towards
selfishness. In opulent communities we are presented with the
genuine theatre for courts and kings. And, wherever there are
courts, duplicity, lying, hypocrisy and cringing dwell as in
their proper field. Next come trades and professions, with all
the ignoble contemplations, the resolved smoothness, servility
and falshood, by which they are enabled to gain a prosperous and
triumphant career.

It is by such means, that man, whom "God made upright," is led
away into a thousand devious paths, and, long before the closing
scene of his life, is rendered something the very reverse of what
in the dawning of existence he promised to be. He is like Hazael
in the Jewish history, who, when the prophet set before him the
crying enormities he should hereafter perpetrate, exclaimed, "Is
thy servant a dog," that he should degrade himself so vilely? He
feels the purity of his purposes; but is goaded by one excitement
and exasperation after another, till he becomes debased,
worthless and criminal. This is strikingly illustrated in the
story of Dr. Johnson and the celebrated Windham, who, when he was
setting out as secretary to the lord lieutenant of Ireland,
expressed to his aged monitor, some doubts whether he could ever
reconcile himself to certain indirect proceedings which he was
afraid would be expected of him: to which the veteran replied,
"Oh, sir, be under no alarm; in a short time, depend upon it, you
will make a very pretty rascal[87]."

[87] The phrase here used by Johnson is marked with the
licentiousness we sometimes indulge in familiar conversation.
Translate it into a general maxim; and it contains much
melancholy truth. It is true also, that there are few
individuals, who, in the urgent realities of life, have not
occasionally descended from the heights of theoretical
excellence. It is but just however to observe in the case of
Windham, that, though he was a man of many errors, he was not the
less characterised by high honour and eminent virtue.


Such are the "inventions of man," or rather such is the operation
of those institutions which ordinarily prevail in society.
Still, however, much honour ought to be rendered to our common
nature, since all of us are not led away by the potent spells of
the enchantress. If the vulgar crew of the vessel of Ulysses
were by Circe changed into brutes, so was not their commander.
The human species is divided into two classes, the successfully
tempted, and the tempted in vain. And, though the latter must be
admitted to be a small minority, yet they ought to be regarded as
the "salt of the earth," which preserves the entire mass from
putridity and dishonour. They are like the remnant, which, if
they had been to be found in the cities of the Asphaltic lake,
the God of Abraham pronounced as worthy to redeem the whole
community. They are like the two witnesses amidst the general
apostasy, spoken of in the book of Revelations, who were the
harbingers and forerunners of the millenium, the reign of
universal virtue and peace. Their excellence only appears with
the greater lustre amidst the general defection.

Nothing can be more unjust than the spirit of general levelling
and satire, which so customarily prevails. History records, if
you will, the vices and follies of mankind. But does it record
nothing else? Are the virtues of the best men, the noblest
philosophers, and the most disinterested patriots of antiquity,
nothing? It is impossible for two things to be more unlike than
the general profligacy of the reigns of Charles the Second and
Louis the Fifteenth on the one hand, and the austere virtues and
the extinction of all private considerations in the general
happiness and honour, which constitute the spirit of the best
pages of ancient history, and which exalt and transfix the spirit
of every ingenuous and high-souled reader, on the other.

Let us then pay to human virtue the honour that is so justly its
due! Imagination is indeed a marvellous power; but imagination
never equalled history, the achievements which man has actually
performed. It is in vain that the man of contemplation sits down
in his closet; it is in vain that the poet yields the reins to
enthusiasm and fancy: there is something in the realities of
life, that excites the mind infinitely more, than is in the power
of the most exalted reverie. The true hero cannot, like the
poet, or the delineator of fictitious adventures, put off what he
has to do till to-morrow. The occasion calls, and he must obey.
He sees the obstacles, and the adversary he has to encounter,
before him. He sees the individuals, for whose dear sake he
resolves to expose himself to every hazard and every evil. The
very circumstance, that he is called on to act in the face of the
public, animates him. It is thus that resolution is produced,
that martyrdom is voluntarily encountered, and that the deeds of
genuine, pure and undeniable heroism are performed.

Let then no man, in the supercilious spirit of a fancied disdain,
allow himself to detract from our common nature. We are
ourselves the models of all the excellence that the human mind
can conceive. There have been men, whose virtues may well redeem
all the contempt with which satire and detraction have sought to
overwhelm our species. There have been memorable periods in the
history of man, when the best, the most generous and exalted
sentiments have swallowed up and obliterated all that was of an
opposite character. And it is but just, that those by whom these
things are fairly considered, should anticipate the progress of
our nature, and believe that human understanding and human virtue
will hereafter accomplish such things as the heart of man has
never yet been daring enough to conceive.

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