Bems.

Freethought Review, Volume I, Issue 5, 1 February 1884, Page 9

Bems.

The mind can read nothing grand and difficult unless it passes out of the beaten track into regions where it has feared to go.— Seneca. The less government we have the better—the fewer laws and the less confiding power. The antidote to this abuse of formal government is the influence of private character, the growth of the individual. Emerson. To think we are able, is almost to be so ; to determine upon attainments, is frequently attainment itself. Thus earnest resolution often seems to have about it almost a savor of omnipotence. —Samuel Smiles. If rectitude is not regulated by education, it entails the greatest confusion. . . . We may force the people to follow the principles of justice and reason, but we cannot force them to comprehend them. —Confucius. Satisfaction of mind, to be permanent, is not to be derived from frail and transitory pleasures ; the only mode by which it can be enjoyed is to dispense with melancholy, and avoid thinking of sad and afflicting subjects.— Democritus. Do good to all, both the evil and the good, even your enemies. Men who have no self-command are not capable of fulfilling their duties. Pleasure and riches should be renounced when not approved by conscience.— Chrishna. Man is but a little thing in the midst of the objects of Nature ; by the moral quality radiating from his countenance, he may abolish all considerations of magnitude, and, in all his manners, equal the majesty of the world.— Emerson. To make laws against and ordain punishment for a crime that hitherto has never been known or heard of is the way to introduce it, rather than prevent it. Act honestly and live temperately. I feel that I leave the world better than I found it.— Solon, The following epitaph was inscribed on the tomb of the Pharoah Amenaphis 111. more than 1000 years before the Christian era :—“ A strong arm, a brave temper, a heart faithful to its love, and a delight in works that should survive its own span of life.” Know thyself. Let your study be to correct the blemishes of the mind rather than those of the face. Stop the mouth of slander by prudence. Enrich not thyself by unjust means. Be not idle, though rich. Entertain not evil. Idleness is troublesome ; intemperance hurtful; ignorance intolerable.— Thales. Truth is to be sought with a mind purified from the passions of the body. Having overcome evil things, thou shalt experience the union of the immortal God with mortal man. The noblest gifts of heaven to man are to speak truth and do good offices. These two things resemble the works of God.— Pythagoras. The close connection between the good and the beautiful has been always felt, so much so that both were in Greek expressed by the same word, and in the philosophy of Plato moral beauty was regarded as the archetype of which all visible beauty is only the shadow or the image. We all feel that there is a strict propriety in the term, moral beauty. Lecky. To know that God is and that all is God, this is the substance of the Vedas. When one attains to this there is no need of reading or of works ; they are but the bark, the straw, the envelope. No more need of them when one has the seed, the substance, the creator. When one knows him by science he may abandon science as the torch which has conducted him to the end.— The Vedas. He who feels anger on proper occasions, at proper persons, and besides in a proper manner, at proper times, and for a proper length of time, is an object of praise. This character will therefore be the meek man, in the very points in which meekness is an object of praise ; for by the meek man we mean him who is undisturbed and not carried away by passion, but who feels anger according to the dictates of reason. Aristotle.