It is not, however, to be expected that any one will resolve
upon evil merely for evil's sake, notwithstanding he cannot accomplish
it and nothing but his own injury can result from the attempt. The
use of liberty for evil ends is done away. Man must either resolve
to renounce his liberty entirely--to become, with patience, a passive
wheel in the great machine of the whole--or he must apply his liberty
to that which is good.
And thus, then, in a soil so prepared, the good will easily flourish.
When selfish aims no longer divide mankind, and their powers can no
longer be exercised in destroying one another in battle, nothing will
remain to them but to turn their united force against the common and
only adversary which yet remains--resisting, uncultivated Nature. No
longer separated by private ends, they will necessarily unite in one
common end, and there will grow up a body everywhere animated by one
spirit and one love. Every disadvantage of the individual, since it
can no longer be a benefit to any one, becomes an injury to the whole
and to each particular member of the same, and is felt in each member
with equal pain, and with equal activity redressed. Every advance
which one man makes, human nature, in its entirety, makes with him.
Here, where the petty, narrow self of the person is already
annihilated by the Polity, every one loves every other one as truly as
himself, as a component part of that great _Self_ which alone remains
for him to love, and of which he is nothing but a component part,
which only through the Whole can gain or lose.
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