work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
5713,"",Searching in Past Masters ,2005-05-03 00:00:00 UTC,"1. Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it.
In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility†1 recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light. But enough of metaphor and declamation: it is not by such means that moral science is to be improved.
(p. 11)
",,15241,"","""Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.""","",2009-09-14 19:43:07 UTC,I.ii.1. Of the Principle of Utility
5713,"",Searching in Past Masters ,2005-05-03 00:00:00 UTC,"1. Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it.
In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility†1 recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light. But enough of metaphor and declamation: it is not by such means that moral science is to be improved.
(p. 11)
",,15242,"•INTEREST: Metaphor and declamation are not ""such means"" that will improve moral science.","""In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire [pain and pleasure]: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while""","",2009-09-14 19:43:07 UTC,I.ii.1. Of the Principle of Utility
6816,"",Reading,2011-03-23 03:55:55 UTC,"These instances, and a great many more which might be adduced, while they shew how the complexions of the same persons vary in different climates, it is hoped may tend also to remove the prejudice that some conceive against the natives of Africa on account of their colour. Surely the minds of the Spaniards did not change with their complexions! Are there not causes enough to which the apparent inferiority of an African may be ascribed, without limiting the goodness of God, and supposing he forbore to stamp understanding on certainly his own image, because ""carved in ebony."" Might it not naturally be ascribed to their situation? When they come among Europeans, they are ignorant of their language, religion, manners, and customs. Are any pains taken to teach them these? Are they treated as men? Does not slavery itself depress the mind, and extinguish all its fire and every noble sentiment? But, above all, what advantages do not a refined people possess over those who are rude and uncultivated. Let the polished and haughty European recollect that his ancestors were once, like the Africans, uncivilized, and even barbarous. Did Nature make them inferior to their sons? and should they too have been made slaves? Every rational mind answers, No. Let such reflections as these melt the pride of their superiority into sympathy for the wants and miseries of their sable brethren, and compel them to acknowledge, that understanding is not confined to feature or colour. If, when they look round the world, they feel exultation, let it be tempered with benevolence to others, and gratitude to God, ""who hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth; and whose wisdom is not our wisdom, neither are our ways his ways.""
(pp. 42-4)",,18248,"","""Does not slavery itself depress the mind, and extinguish all its fire and every noble sentiment?""",Fetters,2013-03-09 16:31:58 UTC,Chapter 1
7331,"","Reading Peter Dorsey's Common Bondage: Slavery as Metaphor in Revolutionary America (Knoxville: U. of Tennessee Press, 2009), 33.",2013-03-07 16:06:15 UTC,"[...] With respect to the other species of poor people, such as have a place of abode, and are aged and infirm, we need no other proof of their distress and misery, than the testimony of every English traveller who has ever passed through the country, who will tell you, that, wherever he has stopped to change horses, numbers of poor unhappy people crowded round his post-chaise, soliciting the boon of a single liard. Ignorant of the state of the poor in other parts of Europe, I can only hope it is not more deplorable than in those I am acquainted with. Let any man of candour declare, whether the state of servitude and bondage, in which the poor are held both in France and England, does not merit the name of slavery, and justify the assertion of its universal existence at present, as well as the opinion of its having existed from the remotest antiquity, and that it ever must exist in the world--that it is a genus of the state of man, of which the different kinds of servitude are distinct species--that, as it is impossible totally to eradicate it, or put a stop even to the sale and purchase of the Negroes in Africa which is only one branch of the commerce of the human species, so the modification of the kind of servitude in usage in any country is not rashly to be attempted, nor, in any case, to be undertaken by persons not intimately acquainted with it in all its circumstances. Can any gentlemen in England, if they possessed the power, presume themselves competent to frame laws for the enfranchisement of all the serfs in Russia or Poland? Can any man believe, that, if those people were at this moment set free from all controul of their lords, and deprived of their cottages, and their present method of subsisting themselves, they would not be driven to pillage and devastation for their support? That such would be the consequence of giving a nominal freedom to the Negroes in the West Indies is most certain. They must, in such case, be compelled to work, by laws far more severe than the present, and those laws must be much more rigorously executed than what they are now governed by. Neither could such severity be disapproved of by the people of any nation, who, however free their poor are, oblige them to work. The difficulty the poor find of subsisting themselves throughout Europe, even in Great Britain and Ireland, where liberty is so popular a theme, is evident, from the frequent emigrations we hear of. In what does their superior happiness consist?--In the power of abandoning their native country, and changing their masters.--Be it so. I do not mean to enter into a comparison between the different degrees of servitude. Let it be believed, that the Negroes, in that particular, experience an harder lot than Europeans. It in no degree invalidates the argument, that such a desire of change, such frequent emigrations of the poor of Europe, is very far from being a proof of a superior degree of happiness.
(pp. 203-5) ",,19969,"","""Let any man of candour declare, whether the state of servitude and bondage, in which the poor are held both in France and England, does not merit the name of slavery, and justify the assertion of its universal existence at present, as well as the opinion of its having existed from the remotest antiquity, and that it ever must exist in the world--that it is a genus of the state of man, of which the different kinds of servitude are distinct species--that, as it is impossible totally to eradicate it, or put a stop even to the sale and purchase of the Negroes in Africa which is only one branch of the commerce of the human species, so the modification of the kind of servitude in usage in any country is not rashly to be attempted, nor, in any case, to be undertaken by persons not intimately acquainted with it in all its circumstances.""",Fetters,2013-03-07 16:06:15 UTC,""
7332,"",Reading,2013-03-09 15:42:22 UTC,"I believe, Sir, I have now touched upon all the objections of any consequence, which are made to the abolition of this Trade.--When we consider the vastness of the Continent of Africa; when we reflect how all other countries have for some centuries past, been advancing in happiness and civilization; when we think how in this same period all improvement in Africa has been defeated by her intercourse with Britain; when we reflect how it is we ourselves that have degraded them to that wretched brutishness and barbarity which we now plead as the justification of our guilt; how the Slave Trade has enslaved their minds, blackened their character and sunk them so low in the scale of animal beings, that some think the very apes are of a higher class, and fancy the Ourang Outang has given them the go-by.--What a mortification must we feel at having so long neglected to think of our guilt, or to attempt any reparation: It seems, indeed, as if we had determined to forbear from all interference until the measure of our folly and wickedness was so full and complete; until the impolicy which eventually belongs to vice, was become so plain and glaring, that not an individual in the country would refuse to join in the abolition: It seems as if we had waited until the persons most interested should be tired out with the folly and nefariouness of the trade, and should unite in petitioning against it.
(47-8) ",,19970,"","""[T]he Slave Trade has enslaved their [Africans'] minds, blackened their character and sunk them so low in the scale of animal beings, that some think the very apes are of a higher class, and fancy the Ourang Outang has given them the go-by.""",Fetters,2013-03-09 15:42:22 UTC,""