Page:Sphere and Duties of Government.djvu/115

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SPHERE AND DUTIES OF GOVERNMENT.

sensations. But, if the State were able to remodel these according to its views (a possibility which we can hardly conceive), I must have been very unfortunate in the exposition of my principles if it were necessary to re-establish the conclusion which meets this remote possibility, viz., that the State may not make man an instrument to subserve its arbitrary designs, and induce him to neglect for these his proper individual ends. And that there is no absolute necessity, such as would perhaps alone justify an exception in this instance, is apparent from that perfect independence of morality on religion which I have already sought to establish, but which will receive a stronger confirmation when I show that the preservation of a State's internal security, does not at all require that a proper and distinct direction should be given to the national morals in general. Now, if there is one thing more calculated than another to prepare a fertile soil for religion in the minds of the citizens, — if there is anything to cause that religion which has been infused into the system of thought and sensation to react beneficially on morality, it is freedom, which always (even though it be in the slightest degree) suffers from the exercise of a positive solicitude on the part of the State. Tor the greater the diversity and characteristic peculiarity of man's development, and the more sublime his feeling, the more easily does he recall his gaze from the narrow, changing circle that surrounds him, and turn to that whose infinity and unity include the reason of those limits and the method of that change,—whether he may hope to realize such a conception of Divinity or not. The greater a man's freedom, the more does he become dependent on himself, and well-disposed towards others. Now, nothing leads us so directly to Deity as benevolent love; and nothing renders the absence of a living belief in God so harmless as self-reliant power—self-sufficing and self-