--- Mario Goveia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >In conclusion, I ask you if any liberal American >Democrat could honestly say as John Mill did, "War is >an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The >decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic >feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much >worse. The person who has nothing for which he is >willing to fight, nothing which is more important than >his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and >has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by >the exertions of better men than himself." >
The above "quote" of John Stuart Mill is a gross corruption of what he actually wrote in his commentary on the American Civil War entitled "The Contest in America". Two disjointed sentences spaced far apart, and separated by an emphatic and important assertion, have been spliced together to manufacture the "quote". The excised intervening salient assertion is the following: "When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice--is often the means of their regeneration." -------- John Stuart Mill In addition, the two spliced sentences have been tampered with by inserting extraneous words for added emphasis. Please see the following link for the ebook article, "The Contest in America" by J. S. Mill, to gain an understanding of the entire context, and of the exact nature of the splicing and tampering. http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/conam10h.htm The whole paragraph from which the two altered, incontiguous sentences in the "quote" were lifted, is as follows: "For these reasons I cannot join with those who cry Peace, peace. I cannot wish that this war should not have been engaged in by the North, or that being engaged in, it should be terminated on any conditions but such as would retain the whole of the Territories as free soil. I am not blind to the possibility that it may require a long war to lower the arrogance and tame the aggressive ambition of the slave-owners, to the point of either returning to the Union, or consenting to remain out of it with their present limits. But war, in a good cause, is not the greatest evil which a nation can suffer. War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice--is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature, who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other. I am far from saying that the present struggle, on the part of the Northern Americans, is wholly of this exalted character; that it has arrived at the stage of being altogether a war for justice, a war of principle. But there was from the beginning, and now is, a large infusion of that element in it; and this is increasing, will increase, and if the war lasts, will in the end predominate. Should that time come, not only will the greatest enormity which still exists among mankind as an institution, receive far earlier its coups de grâce than there has ever, until now, appeared any probability of; but in effecting this the Free States will have raised themselves to that elevated position in the scale of morality and dignity, which is derived from great sacrifices consciously made in a virtuous cause, and the sense of an inestimable benefit to all future ages, brought about by their own voluntary efforts." Cheers, Santosh _____________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. Goanet mailing list ([email protected])
