African Spir - Nature Quotes

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There is a radical dualism between the empirical nature of man and its moral nature.

African Spir
The more a man is successful in getting out from his own individuality, of his egoist self, and to control the instincts of his physical nature, the more his character, by rising above material contingencies, widen, become free and independent.

African Spir
Nothing depict better the poverty of human nature than to see men, placed at the head of a State, and who should, so to speak, embody the law, be concerned only with their own prestige and their own particular interests.

African Spir
The more gifted by nature is a man, the more is deplorable the abuse that he does by using them to shameful ends. A swindler of higher condition is more blameworthy than a vulgar scoundrel; an intelligent evil-doer, having benefited from a higher education, represent a more saddening phenomenon than an unfortunate illiterate fellow having committed an offence.

African Spir
Experience shows that what great role practice and experience play in education; practice , the prolonged exercise lead to habit: exemple suggests imitation. Habit can become a second nature, but, wrongly directed, it may also heighten unfortunate tendencies and be an obstacle to progress.

African Spir
What determinate events is, beside national, dynastic and particular egoism, the instinct of domination and conquest, in one word, force. Judging by the history of humanity, harms that men have had to suffer, harms that men have to suffer by their nature are minute in comparison to these they inflict to each others. The most fantastic imagination might not fabricate some cruelties, injustices and perfidies that men have not exceeded in practice.

African Spir
Outward, thanks to the knowledge of physical laws, man could subdue nature, but inwardly, he remained a slave to it. For, when all is said and done, at what is aiming all this display of activity, if not to realized outward profits, to provide material pleasure. It is not the first time that men sell their birth right for a dish of lentils, and thus disown the best of themselves.

African Spir
If we recognize, following the materialist theories, that only the physical nature exist, and that man contain no higher essence, divine, which, by one side of his being, raise him above his animal nature, it would be a question neither of obligation, nor of moral responsibility; then the supreme good would consist for him, indeed, to satisfy his appetites and his natural inclinations, to look for the pleasure and flee from pain. In this case, there could be neither religion nor moral, since religion is precisely what raise man above vulgar reality, and that moral is the very negation of selfishness.

African Spir
Arbitrariness and true liberty are as distinct from each other that the empirical nature is distinct from the higher nature of man.

African Spir