ABSTRACT

Moral progress has never been brought about by the spontaneous growth of moral sentiments in people who held power, by their bestowing the benefits of their ethical inspiration upon those, whom that power used, by ‘dispensing justice.’ Justice has never been dispensed from in consequence of an ethical ideal. It has been wrested from the unwilling hands of the holders of power. The interests and cupidities of princes have merely been powerful auxiliaries in the battles of emancipation, auxiliaries which have often determined the victory, but were themselves the tools of the intellectual forces. The oppressed have only revolted against tyranny or injustice, however atrocious, when they have clearly learned to perceive it as irrational, mendacious, and false. The actual sufferers, the crushed and oppressed, when they have risen against barbarity and injustice, have been interested, not theoretically inspired by abstract principles; but those interested motives could not operate until the critical unmasking of irrational claims had taken place.