"
Yet it must be confessed that between the two elements of goodness
there is a kind of opposition, needful though both are for each other.
Order has in it much that is repressive; and wealth--in the sense of
fecundity of powers--is, especially at its beginning, apt to be
disorderly. When a new power springs into being, it is usually chaotic
or rebellious. It has something else to attend to besides bringing
itself into accord with what already exists. There is violence in it,
a lack of sobriety, and only by degrees does it find its place in the
scheme of things. This is most observable in living beings, because it
is chiefly they who acquire new powers. But there are traces of it
even among things. A chemical acid and base meeting, are pretty
careless of everything except the attainment of their own action.
Human beings are born, and for some time remain, clamorous, obliging
the world around to attend more to them than they to it. There is ever
a confusion in exuberant life which bewilders the onlooker, even while
he admits that life had better be.
The deep opposition between these contrasted sides of goodness is
mirrored in the conflicting moral ideals of conservatism and
radicalism, of socialism and individualism, which have never been
absent from the societies of men, nor even, I believe, from those of
animals.
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