It is a misfortune to him who amasses it; for
it is a voluntary continuance in the harness of a beast of burden, when
the soul should enfranchise and lift itself up into a higher region of
pursuits and pleasures. It is a persistence in the work of providing
goods for the body after the body has already been provided for; and
it is a denial of the higher demands of the soul, after the time has
arrived, and the means are possessed, of fulfilling those demands....
Because the lower service was once necessary, and has, therefore, been
performed, it is a mighty wrong, when, without being longer necessary,
it usurps the sacred rights of the higher.
* * * * *
=_Orestes A. Brownson, 1800-._= (Manual, p. 480.)
From "New Views."
=_159._= THE DUTY OF PROGRESS.
Progress is the end for which man was made. To this end it is his duty
to direct all his enquiries, all his systems of religion and philosophy,
all his institutions of politics and society, all the productions of his
genius and taste, in one word, all the modes of his activity. This is
his duty. Hitherto, he has performed it but blindly, without knowing,
and without admitting it. Humanity has but to-day, as it were, risen to
self-consciousness, to a perception of its own capacity, to a glimpse of
its inconceivably grand and holy destiny.
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