Unregulated force is not only wasted in the void, like that of gunpowder burned in the open air; but, striking in the dark, and its blows meeting only the air, it recoils and bruises itself. It is destruction and ruin. It is the volcano, the earthquake, the cyclone; not growth and progress.
The blind force of the people is a force that must be economised, and also managed. It must be regulated by Intellect. Intellect is to the people and the people’s force, what the slender needle of the compass is to the ship — its soul, always counselling the huge mass of wood and iron, and always pointing to the north.
To attack the citadels built up on all sides against the human race by superstitions, despotisms, and prejudices, the force must have a brain and a law. Then its deeds of daring produce permanent results and there is real progress. Then there are sublime conquests. Thought is a force, and philosophy should be energy, finding its aim and its effects in the amelioration of mankind. The two great motors are truth and love.
When all these forces are combined, and guided by the Intellect, and regulated by the rule of right, and justice, and of combined and systematic movement and effort, the great revolution prepared for by the ages will begin to march. The power of the deity himself is in equilibrium with his wisdom. Hence the only result is harmony.
It is because force is ill regulated, that revolutions prove fail-tires. Therefore it is that so often insurrections, coming from those high mountains that domineer over the moral horizon, justice, wisdom, reason, right, built of the purest snow of the ideal after a long fall from rock to rock, after having reflected the sky in their transparency, and been swollen by a hundred affluents, in the majestic path of triumph, suddenly lose themselves in quagmires.
From Morals and Dogma by Albert Pike
Comments