Farewell discourses delivered at South place chapel - Tapa blanda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1884 edition. Excerpt: ...House is closely bound up with the principle of authority. Its power rests not upon reason but privilege; it dates from a social classification now known to be arbitrary. ' Authority loves authority.' A House resting on tradition may naturally tremble at anything weakening the reverence for tradition. Those ancient Jewish laws, long supposed to rest on the decree of the Lord of Lords, will hardly be touched irreverently by the Lords who feel that their own tenure is weakened by all that weakens the principle of arbitrary authority. Yet it may be that this High Court of Parliament will rise to the height of an occasion when our civilisation must make a new departure. If it shall embody the principles of jurisprudence which have been really established by that consensus of the experience of many peoples, which (and not any other vox popuK was declared by misrepresented Hesiod to be the voice of God, then our amended Code will show, among others, the following improvements. 1. The judicial Oath will be abolished. It can secure veracity only among the superstitious, therefore becomes daily a weaker sanction. As its appeal is to superstition, it cannot secure a real but only the verbal and technical truth which satisfies superstition, and this at the cost of lowering the standard of truth in everyday life. The Oath instructs the people that the most injurious lie, unsworn, is a less wrong than a benevolent deception under oath. 'The verdict of ethical science has gone against the judicial Oath, and the community has a right to demand that all falsehood shall be punished where injury, or attempted injury, can be proved. 2. Every punishment instituted in the interests of any deity or deities will be abolished. Injuria deorum cura diis. This would...