Resist Not Evil |
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absolute absolute monarchies armies and navies believe body brutal called cause CHAPTER character charity child civil government committed common condition conduct courts criminal cruel cruelty cure death death penalty depend destroy disease doctrine of non-resistance earth endless enforced extortion fact father feeling fellow force and violence guilt guns hands hatred heart helpless human law human soul ical imprisonment infinite instincts ishment jailers jails judge justice KERR & COMPANY kill kind kleptomania labor land lence lives malice means ment mob law moral nation natural law never outcast passion peace penal code penal institutions penal laws penitentiary physical poor portion prevent crime prisons produce public hanging punishment purpose reach resist not evil rulers ruling class scaffolds so-called society soldiers strength suffering teach temptations tends theory tion to-day true vicious victim vidual violate violence and force weak witchcraft wrong
Popular passages
Page 5 - Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth : But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil : but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
Page 80 - The defect of the born cripple, the idiot, the insane is no longer charged to the poor victim who, unhampered by the world, still has a burden as heavy as should be given to mortal man to bear. The physician who would treat fever or measles or diphtheria without considering the cause would be considered the veriest bungler and responsible for his patient's death. It is not so very long ago that a world about as intelligent as our own believed that disease, deformity, and sin came from the same cause,...
Page 165 - turn the other cheek" or to "resist not evil" may seem at first glance to have no support in the facts of life, but after all that which makes for a higher humanity, a longer life and a more vigorous community is the true philosophy. To use violence and force upon the vicious and the weak must produce the evil that it gives. Like produces like. Clubs, jails, harsh language, brutal force inevitably tend to reproduce the same state of mind in the victim of the assault. This is not merely a fact in...
Page 22 - ... these rulers have depopulated their kingdoms, and carried ruin and destruction to every portion of the earth for gold and power. Not only do these European rulers keep many millions of men whose only trade is war, but these must be supported in worse than useless idleness by the labor of the poor. Still other millions are trained to war and are ever ready to answer to their master's call, to desert their homes and trades and offer up their lives to satisfy the vain ambitions of the ruler of the...
Page 163 - Most men are driven to criminal acts from the necessities of life and the hatred bred by the organized force they meet. Remove dire poverty, as could be easily done with a tithe of what is now spent on force; let organized society meet the individual, not with force, but with helpfulness and love, and the inducement to commit crime could not exist. Let society be the friend not the tyrant, the brother not the jailer, and the feeling will be returned a thousandfold. "No man or no society ever induced...
Page 75 - ... are turned toward the improvement of prisons, the introduction of sanitary appliances, the bettering of jail conditions, the modification of punishment, the treatment of convicts as men. All of this directly disproves the theory that the terrible example of punishment tends to prevent crime. All of these improvements of prison conditions show that society is unconsciously ashamed of its treatment of socalled criminals; that the excuse of prevention of crime is really known to be humbug- and hypocrisy,...
Page 158 - No con/ demnation is just, and no judgment is / righteous. All violence and force are cruel, unjust and barbarous, and cannot be sustained by the judgment of men. But the evil of judgment and punishment does not end with the unfortunate victim. It brutalizes and makes inhuman all who are touched with its power. Under the influence of punishments jailers, policemen, sheriffs, detectives and all who deal with prisons are brutalized and hardened. The iniquities produced upon helpless prisoners leave...
Page 78 - ... political ideas, democracy, socialism, nihilism have met the same fact and have made their way regardless of scaffolds and jails. Even in the common crimes, like burglary and larceny, prisons have had no effect. From the dawn of civilization an endless procession of weak and helpless victims, handcuffed, despised and outlawed, have been marching up to prison doors and still the procession comes and goes.
Page 148 - ... furnishes no redress. Either it does not come within the provisions of the law or else those who are charged with its enforcement do not care to reach this sort of extortion which is the only kind that really affects the world. In either case it shows that the penal code is made and enforced by the ruling class, not upon themselves, but to keep the weak at the bottom of the social scale. The law forbids swindling at least in certain ways, and yet a large part of business consists in making the...
Page 151 - ... kinship of man. Judges, lawyers, clergymen, physicians, all classes of men readily come forward and tell of the virtues of the criminal whom they know, they tell of the extenuating circumstances that led to his act, or they show that, in spite of these, they understand the worth of the man. The criminal is always the man we do not know or the man we hate — the man we see through the bitterness of our hearts. Let one but really love his fellow and he knows full well that he is not a criminal.