The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 56
[title page]
The Free Mind in the Free Body.
Ant-Force Paper, No. I. [The Party of Individual Liberty.]
A Statement of Principles and Measures by Auberon Herbert.
(Author of "A Politician in trouble about his Soul.")
"Republics abound in young civilians, who believe that laws make the city, that grave modifications of the policy and modes of living and employment of the population, that commerce, education, and religion may be voted in and out, and that any measure, though it were absurd, may be imposed on a people, if only you can get sufficient voices to make it a law. But the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand which perishes in the twisting;. .—Emerson.
"Now it is a universally observed fact that the two evil dispositions in question, the disposition to prefer a man's selfish interests to those which he shares with other people, and his immediate and direct interests to those which are indirect and remote, are characteristics more especially called forth and fostered by the possession of power. The moment a man or a class of men find themselves with power in their hands, the man's individual interest, the class's separate interest, acquires an entirely new degree of importance in their eyes. Finding themselves worshipped by others, they become worshippers of themselves, and think themselves entitled to be counted at a hundred times the value of other people; while the facility they acquire of doing as they like without regard to consequences, insensibly weakens the habits which make men look forward even to such consequences as affect themselves. This is the meaning of the universal tradition, grounded on universal experience, of men's being corrupted by power."—J. S. Mill.
"We want men and women who shall renovate life and our social state, but we see that most natures are insolvent. . . . Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our occupations, our marriages, our religion, we have not chosen, but society has chosen for us. . . . Let a Stoic open the resources of man and tell men that they are not leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves; that with exercise of self-trust new powers shall appear; . . . that the moment a man acts from himself, tossing the laws, the books, idolatries, and customs out of the window, we pity him no more, but thank and revere him,-and that teacher shall restore the life of man to splendour, and make his name dear to all history."—Emerson.
Price One Penny.
Printed and Published by the Women's Printing Society, Limited, Great College Street, Westminster, S.W. 1885.