They will certainly be shared by all tyrants, all
persons whose tempers incline to absolutism, all believers in force as
the true dynamic of stable social government. To reason with such
persons is impossible, because their opinions are the fruit of temper,
and are therefore irrational. But even such persons are not destitute
of powers of observation, and in the long history of the world there is
a field of observation which no person of intelligence can neglect.
Do we find, as we survey this field, that force has ever proved the
true dynamic of stable social government? We find the exact contrary
to be true. The great empires of the past were founded on force and
perished, even as Napoleon discovered in his final reveries on human
history. Whenever force has been applied to maintain what seemed a
right social system it has uniformly failed. The Church of Rome
applied force to produce a world consonant with her ideas of truth; she
was all but destroyed by the recoil of her prolonged persecutions. The
Puritans were persecuted in the name of truth and virtue; they
triumphed. The Puritans in turn persecuted, under the impulse of
ideals that an impartial judgment must pronounce among the loftiest and
noblest that ever animated human hearts, and in turn they were
overthrown.
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