If man begins to forget that he is
a social being, a member of a body, and that the only truths which can
avail him anything, the only truths which are worthy objects of his
philosophical search, are those which are equally true for every man,
which will equally avail every man, which he must proclaim, as far as he
can, to every man, from the proudest sage to the meanest outcast, he
enters, I believe, into a lie, and helps forward the dissolution of that
society of which he is a member. I care little whether what he holds be
true or not. If it be true, he has made it a lie by appropriating it
proudly and selfishly to himself, and by excluding others from it. He
has darkened his own power of vision by that act of self-appropriation,
so that even if he sees a truth, he can only see it refractedly,
discoloured by the medium of his own private likes and dislikes, and
fulfils that great and truly philosophic law, that he who loveth not his
brother is in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth. And so it
befell those old Greek schools. It is out of our path to follow them to
Italy, where sturdy old Roman patriots cursed them, and with good
reason, as corrupting the morals of the young.
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