No measure or movement could be adopted without the concurring assent of both the patricians and plebeians, and each thus became dependent on the other; and, of consequence, the desire and objects of neither could be effected without the concurrence of the other. To obtain this concurrence, each was compelled to consult the goodwill of the other, and to elevate to office, not those only who might have the confidence of the order to which they belonged, but also that of the other. The result was, that men possessing those qualities which would naturally command confidence—moderation, wisdom, justice, and patriotism—were elevated to office; and these, by the weight of their authority and the prudence of their counsel, combined with that spirit of unanimity necessarily resulting from the concurring assent of the two orders, furnish the real explanation of the power of the Roman State, and of that extraordinary wisdom, moderation, and firmness which in so remarkable a degree characterized her public men.

--John C. Calhoun, ‘Speech on the Force Bill’, Union and Liberty: The Political Philosophy of John C. Calhoun, ed. Ross M. Lence (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1992). 11/7/2019. 

A hypothetical claim resting on abstract assumptions is now for the first time made the basis for affording illusory relief for a particular evil even though it foreshadows deeper and more pervasive difficulties in consequence. The claim is hypothetical, and the assumptions are abstract, because the Court does not vouchsafe the lower courts -- state and federal -- guidelines for formulating specific, definite, wholly unprecedented remedies for the inevitable litigations that today's umbrageous disposition is bound to stimulate in connection with politically motivated reapportionments in so many States. In[p268] such a setting, to promulgate jurisdiction in the abstract is meaningless. It is as devoid of reality as "a brooding omnipresence in the sky," for it conveys no intimation what relief, if any, a District Court is capable of affording that would not invite legislatures to play ducks and drakes with the judiciary. For this Court to direct the District Court to enforce a claim to which the Court has over the years consistently found itself required to deny legal enforcement and, at the same time, to find it necessary to withhold any guidance to the lower court how to enforce this turnabout, new legal claim, manifests an odd -- indeed an esoteric -- conception of judicial propriety. One of the Court's supporting opinions, as elucidated by commentary, unwittingly affords a disheartening preview of the mathematical quagmire (apart from divers judicially inappropriate and elusive determinants) into which this Court today catapults the lower courts of the country without so much as adumbrating the basis for a legal calculus as a means of extrication. Even assuming the indispensable intellectual disinterestedness on the part of judges in such matters, they do not have accepted legal standards or criteria or even reliable analogies to draw upon for making judicial judgments. To charge courts with the task of accommodating the incommensurable factors of policy that underlie these mathematical puzzles is to attribute, however flatteringly, omnicompetence to judges. The Framers of the Constitution persistently rejected a proposal that embodied this assumption, and Thomas Jefferson never entertained it.​

Recent legislation, creating a district appropriately described as "an atrocity of ingenuity," is not unique. Considering the gross inequality among legislative electoral units within almost every State, the Court naturally shrinks from asserting that, in districting, at least substantial equality is a constitutional requirement enforceable[p269] by courts.

Displaying the American Flag
​

Anti-sacramentalis

Far from seeing conflict between revealed religion and nature, they [subscribers to natural theology] insisted upon the mutual dependence of the two.  The order and beauty so manifest in nature pointed, for them, to a supernatural wisdom and directed the observer to a divine cause, thereby confirming and reinforcing the teachings of Scripture.  . . .  For the educated clergy, and especially the Presbyterians, the idea of being apathetic or fearful about the study of nature was simply unacceptable.  To reject the study of God’s handiwork was to close one avenue through which man might approach the Almighty.  To fear the consequences of rational inquiry into nature was to separate the Creator from his creation (Farmer, pgs. 88-9).

“External nature, to reason, . . . becomes an august temple of the Most High.”  Since mortal man was not capable of rising to the full contemplation of God through His Word, he “must study God in his works, as children who cannot look the sun in the face behold its image in the limpid stream” (Farmer, p. 89).

The economy of God, that is, his plan with regard to the world, consists in the deification of the created world, something which, as a consequence of sin, implies also its salvation.  . . .  Salvation and deification undoubtedly have humanity directly as their aim but not a humanity separated from nature, rather one that is ontologically united with it.  For nature depends on man or makes him whole, and man cannot reach perfection if he does not reflect nature and is not at work upon it.  . . .
 
 . . . The glory of Christ on Tabor was spread out over nature too.  Yet, for the eyes and senses of the many it can remain hidden, while nature can be degraded and affected by the wickedness of the few.  In its turn, nature can be the medium through which the believer receives divine grace or the beneficent uncreated energies, just as it can be the medium through which influences driving him toward evil flow out upon him (Fr Dumitru Staniloae, The Experience of God, Vol. 2, The World: Creation and Deification, Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2000, pgs. 1, 3).

The Disconnected Individual

Thus, when nature is maintained and made use of in conformity with itself, it proves itself a means through which man grows spiritually and brings his good intentions toward himself and his fellow men to bear fruit; but when man sterilizes, poisons, and abuses nature on a monstrous scale, he hampers his own spiritual growth and that of others.  This confirms the fact that nature is given as a necessary means for the development of humanity in solidarity . . . .
 
 . . . Through work, moreover, every person obtains the means necessary not only for himself, but also for his neighbors.  Humans must work and think in solidarity with regard to the transformation of the gifts of nature.  Thus, it is through the mediation of nature that solidarity is created among humans, and work, guided by thought, is a principal virtue creative of communion among humans (Ibid., pgs. 3, 4).  

Be thankful and repay
Growth with good work and care.
Work done in gratitude,
Kindly, and well, is prayer.
 . . .
No gratitude atones
For bad use or too much.
 
This is not work for hire.
By this expenditure
You make yourself a place;
You make yourself a way
For love to reach the ground.
In its ambition and
Its greed, its violence,
The world is turned against
This possibility,
And yet the world survives
By the survival of
This kindly working love.
 
 . . .
 
Soon you have salad greens
Out of the garden rows,
Then peas, early potatoes,
Onions, beets, beans, sweet corn.
The bounty of the year
Now comes in like a tide:
 . . .
Eat, and give to the neighbors;
 . . .
Later will come the fall crops:
Turnips, parsnips, more greens,
The winter squashes, cushaws,
And pumpkins big as tubs.
“Too much for us,” you’ll say,
And give some more away.
 
(A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997, Counterpoint, 1998, pgs. 141, 143, 144)

And if indeed we all, who share in the one hope of our calling [Eph. 4:4], are one body, having Christ as head, and are each members of one another [1 Cor. 12:12], if we are not fitted together in the Holy Spirit to join in concord into one body, but each of us chooses the solitary life, we will not serve the common good with coordinated planning according to God’s good pleasure, but fulfill our own passion for self-indulgence.  When we are split off and divided, how can we preserve the relationship and service of the members to each other, or our submission toward our head, that is Christ?  . . .  the one receives each of these [gifts of the Spirit, 1 Cor. 12:8-10] has it no more for his own sake than for the sake of others.  Consequently, in community life the activity of the Holy Spirit in one person must pass to everyone together.  So the one living by himself perhaps has one gift, and he makes it useless because it is uncultivated, buried in the earth within himself.  This indeed involves great danger, as all see who have read the Gospels.  But when many live together, each indeed both enjoys his own gift, multiplying it through sharing, and profits from the gifts of others as his own (On the Human Condition, St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2005, pgs. 120-1).

Tinkering with Tradition
​

Church and Culture

In womanhood is her strength and her triumph.  Class both as woman, and the man again becomes inferior, inasmuch as he is incapable of fulfilling her functions.  A male woman could as ill assume the place and duties of womanhood, as a female-man could those of manhood.  Each is strong in his own nature.  They are neither inferior, nor superior, nor equal.  They are different.  The air has its uses, and the fire has its uses, but these are neither equal nor unequal—they are different.
 
 . . .
 
In every error there is its shadow of truth.  Error is but truth turned awry, or looked at through a wrong medium.  As the straightest rod will, in appearance, curve when one half of it is placed under water, so God’s truths, leaning down to earth, are often distorted to our view.  Woman’s condition certainly admits of improvement (but when have the strong forgotten to oppress the weak?), but never can any amelioration result from the guidance of her prophets in this present move.  Here, as in all other improvements, the good must be brought about by working with, not against—by seconding, not opposing—Nature’s laws.  Woman, seeking as a woman, may raise her position; seeking as a man, we repeat, she but degrades it.  Everything contrary to Nature is abhorrent to Nature, and the mental aberrations of woman, which we are now discussing, excite at once pity and disgust, like those revolting physical deformities which the eye turns from with involuntary loathing, even while the hand of charity is extended to relieve them.
 
--‘Enfranchisement of Woman’, Louisa S. McCord: Political and Social Essays, Richard Lounsbury ed., Charlottesville, Vir., University Press of Virginia, 1995, pgs. 114, 108-9

Many women (we have already said we will even grant an unfortunately large proportion of women) are degraded, not because they have submitted themselves to the position which nature assigns them, but because, like Mrs. Smith, they cannot be content with the exercise of the duties and virtues called forth by that, and in that, position.  They forget the woman’s duty-fulfilling ambition, to covet man’s fame-grasping ambition.  Woman was made for duty, not for fame; and so soon as she forgets this great law of her being, which consigns her to a life of heroism if she will—but quiet, unobtrusive heroism—she throws herself from her position, and thus, of necessity, degrades herself.  This mistaken hungering for the forbidden fruit, this grasping at the notoriety belonging (if indeed it properly belongs to any) by nature to man, is at the root of all her debasement.
 
 . . .
 
It is this same misguided love for notoriety which now misleads women to insist upon political rights, as they word their demand—that is to say, admission to the struggle for political distinction.  And what is this that they ask?  What, but that like the half-barbarous, half-heroic Spartan maid they may be permitted to strip themselves to the strife, and wrestle in the public arena?  Can civilized, Christianized woman covet such a right?  They pretend, or they mislead themselves to the belief, that they are actuated by a pure desire to ennoble the sex.  Let them look honestly and calmly to the bottom of the question, and they will see that it is but notoriety, not elevation, which they seek.  In all derelictions from the right, the just, the holy, and the true, woman is responsible for her own degradation, inasmuch as it entirely proceeds from her own act, in casting herself out from her true position.
 
--'Woman and Her Needs’, ibid., pgs. 131-2, 133-4

Her mission is, to our seeming, even nobler than man’s, and she is, in the true fulfilment of that mission, certainly the higher being.  Passion governed, suffering conquered, self forgotten, how often is she called upon, as daughter, wife, sister, and mother, to breath, in her half-broken but loving heart, the whispered prayer, that greatest, most beautiful, most self-forgetting of all prayers ever uttered, “Father, forgive them, [for] they know not what they do.”  Woman’s duty, woman’s nature, is to love, to sway by love; to govern by love, to teach by love, to civilize by love!  Our reviewer may sneer—already does sneer—about “animal functions” and the “maternity argument.”  . . .  true woman’s love is too beautiful a thing to be blurred by such sneers.  It is a love such as man knoweth not, and Worcester Conventionists cannot imagine.  Pure and holy, self-devoted and suffering, woman’s love is the breath of that God of love, who, loving and pitying, has bid her learn to love and to suffer, implanting in her bosom the one single comfort that she is the watching spirit, the guardian angel of those she loves.  . . .  such is the type of woman, such her moral formation, such her perfection, and in so far as she comes not up to this perfection, she falls short of the model type of her nature.  Only in aiming at this type, is there any use for her in this world, and only in proportion as she nears it, each according to the talent which God has given her, can she contribute to bring forward the world in that glorious career of progress which Omniscience has marked out for it.  . . .  she has no need to make her influence felt by a stump speech, or a vote at the polls; she has no need for the exercise of her intellect . . . to be gratified with a seat in Congress, or a scuffle for the ambiguous honour of the Presidency.  Even at her own fireside may she find duties enough, cares enough, troubles enough, thought enough, wisdom enough, to fit a martyr for the stake, a philosopher for life, or a saint for heaven.  There are, there have been, and there will be, in every age, great hero-souls in woman’s form, as well as man’s.  It imports little whether history notes them.  The hero-soul aims at its certain duty, heroically meeting it, whether glory or shame, worship or contumely, follow its accomplishment.  Laud and merit is due to such performance.  Fulfil thy destiny; oppose it not.  Herein lies thy track.  Keep it.  Nature’s sign-posts are within thee, and it were well for thee to learn to read them.  Poor fool!  canst though not spell out thy lesson, that ever thus thou fightest against Nature?  Not there!  not there!  Nothing is done by that track.  Never; from the creation of the world, never.  Hero-souls will not try it.  It is the mock-hero, the dissatisfied, the grasping, the selfish, the low-aspiring, who tries that track.  Turn aside from it, dear friends—there is no heaven-fruit there; only hell-fruit and sorrow.
 
 . . . Woman!  woman!  respect thyself and man will respect thee.  Oh!  cast not off thy spear and thy shield, thine Aegis, thine anchor, thy stay!  Wrapped thou art, in a magic cloud.  Cast it not off to destroy thine own divinity.  Man worships thee and himself; he knows not why.  Ignorantly, in thee he bows to his “Unknown God.”  The benevolent, the true, the holy, the just; in a word, the God of Love speaks to him through thee.  Woman, cherish thy mission.  Cast not from thee thy moral strength—for, lo!  what then art thou!  Wretchedly crawling to thy shame, thy physical meekness trampled underfoot by a brutal master, behold thee, thou proud mother of earth, to what art thou sunk!
 
 . . . Woman will reach the greatest height of which she is capable—the greatest, perhaps, of which humanity is capable—not by becoming man, but by becoming, more than ever, woman.  By perfecting herself, she perfects mankind; and hers, we have said, is the higher mission, because, from her, must the advance towards perfection begin.  The woman must raise the man, by helping, not by rivalling, him.  Without woman, this world of mankind were a wrangling dog-kennel.  Could woman be transformed into man, the same result would follow.  She it is who softens; she it is who civilizes; and, although history acknowledges her not, she it is who—not in the meteoric brilliancy of warrior or monarch, but in the quiet, unwearied and unvarying path of duty, the home of the mother, the wife, and the sister, teaching man his destiny—purifies, exalts, and guides him to his duty.
 
--‘Enfranchisement of Woman’, pgs. 109, 110, 111, 119

Now, we contend that to be a divinity, a genial, household divinity—not in that character, at least, to worship . . . , but to be worshiped at the holiest altar of the Penates, the home hearth; to be the soul of that home, even as our great Father-God is the soul of the creation; to be the breath, the life, the love-law of that home; the mother, the wife, the sister, the daughter—such is woman’s holiest sphere, such her largest endowment.  This is the natural position from which she has stepped; this the individuality which she has forgotten; these the distinctive powers which she has laid aside, to become imbecile and subservient in the exercise of others unsuited to her nature.  This beautiful recognition of her unlikeness to man, is the sole mystery of her existence; the one great truth which must be evolved to make woman no longer the weak plaything of a tyrannic master, no longer the trampled thing, pleading for tolerance at the foot of her conqueror, but the life, the soul, the vital heart of society; while in her and through her thus circulates the every throb of this great living world.  She does not rule, she cannot rule, by stump-speech, convention, or ballot-box; but she can rule, and she does rule, by the quiet soul-power, which, silent as the blood through the arteries of life, throbs on forever, ceasing but with the existence of the body which it vivifies.
 
--‘Woman and Her Needs’, p. 152

​Not a little surprised have we been to see, in so long-established and respectable a periodical as the Westminster Quarterly [Review], a grave defence of such mad pranks as are being enacted by these petticoated despisers of their sex—these would-be men—these things that puzzle us to name.  They should be women, but, like Macbeth’s witches, they come to us in such a questionable shape, that we hesitate so to interpret them.  Moral monsters they are; things which Nature disclaims.  In ceasing to be women, they yet have failed to make themselves men.  Unsexed things, they are, we trust—like the poor bat in the fable, who complains, “neither mouse nor bird will play with me”—destined to flit their twilight course, alone and unimitated.
 
--‘Enfranchisement of Woman’, pgs. 110-1

​“ . . . It was always full of interest for me, principally, perhaps, from home associations. One of the earliest memories of my childhood is, being held up before it by my father, while he told me the sad story it delineates, with all the touches of pathos which Chaucer introduces into his version of it. I can recall even yet," continued Mrs. Irvine, musingly, “the very tones in which he used to recite some of the lines:
 
--'Father, why do ye weep?
Is there no morsel bread that ye do keep?
I am so hungry that I cannot sleep!'
 
As I grew older, I was, perhaps, more interested in it from the fact that it used to hang on the wall in the old ancestral home of our family, on the southern border of Scotland. Your great grandfather, ‘the Laird of Newton,' as he was called, looked on that picture many a time as you do now, no doubt; so that the associations it furnishes, make me prize it more than its own intrinsic merit as a work of art.  . . .”

--Silverwood, Derby & Jackson, New York, 1856, pgs. 10-11, available online
​

​A laughing group entering the parlor, interrupted the conversation. Josepha, a child not much over ten, installed herself upon her brother's knee; Eunice, the next older sister, couched herself upon the rug, and took the head of the little grey-hound into her lap; Zilpha sat on a low seat beside her mother: and to the cheerful voices that floated through the twilight room, the music, tender and soft, which Edith's fingers awakened, formed a subdued accompaniment, as she played and listened.
 
 . . .
 
There was something very beautiful in his [Lawrence’s] manner towards his mother. He loved to choose his seat near her; he addressed to her the most of his conversation; he anticipated her minute wants,—the stool for her feet,—the cushion for her head,—the books she liked best near her,—the first flower of Spring,—the first tinged leaf of Autumn: there was no limit to the unobtrusive manifestations of his thoughtful love. He never overlooked her presence in a room; and many a time would he leave the group of interested talkers, if he chanced to observe her sitting apart, and address himself to her entertainment. His attentions were more than the dictates of filial devotion,—more than the simple homage of graceful youth to riper age. Had she been a young beauty, whose fascinations had enthralled him, there could not have been a more delicate mingling of what might be termed the chivalry of the heart with the tenderness of his love. The language of look and action was,—"others may do much for me,—but no suffering in my behalf,—no ministrations,— no devotedness, can be like a mother's!" And as he now sat with his arm over the back of her chair, talking with her of his plans and prospects, and the eyes of each strayed to the circle about the table, animatedly discussing what particular thing they would like best to have brought them from abroad,—the gaze of the mother and son was simultaneously raised to the grim canvas on the wall, with an inward ''thank God," that, as yet, the home-picture was shadowless.
 
--pgs. 14, 16-7

​"Still, you are not answering my question. Why does Providence thus deal with those who live so as to please him best? Why stint and treat them so harshly, if he has the world at his command, for their necessities, and lavish luxuries on those who scorn him? Surely, there is no bribe held out to induce people to become Christians."
 
"This is part of the discipline, by means of which they come to be 'put among the children.' Trial may have been—must have been needed, to bring this sick girl to her present submissive state. It is hardly wrong to exalt suffering to the utmost—to call it divine, if it works out the result which He who sends it, intends that it should."
 
"You surely don't think there is anything meritorious in mere suffering?"
 
"By no means. So much do I object to the Popish idea of it, that I would not have that expression—'perfect through suffering'—used as it often is used now-a-days, without a special limit of it to the results of the thing, not the thing itself; and is there not some such law as this, underlying all the order of nature? The ore must be passed through the furnace, before we have the gold; the rough stone must be filed, before we see the sparkle of the gem; the gums must be bruised, or they will not give out their precious odor; the roses must be crushed, that we may have the fragrant oil; the soil must be torn up by the plow-share, before there can be any harvest; and through such a process must the soul receive its strength."
 
--pgs. 213-4

The person who truly wishes to be healed is he who does not refuse treatment. This treatment consists of the pain and distress brought on by various misfortunes. He who refuses them does not realize what they accomplish in this world or what he will gain from them when he departs this life.--Four Hundred Texts on Love 3.82 ​

​"You are hurried, no doubt," continued Edith, "and greatly annoyed, and I don't wish, to intrude farther upon you. Here is pen and paper: sign me a written pledge that you will get Mrs. Bryson's consent to the adjustment I desire; for, if it is your wish to settle the matter thus, she will surely comply."
​
"Suppose every other creditor should make a similar demand, how long would my wife and children be out of the alms-house? But, I really am earnestly desirous to do what I can for you. Let me see," he mused, counting the fingers of his left hand, ''in five; no, in seven days hence, I may be able to make a disposition of matters that shall satisfy you. . . ."
 
--pgs. 226-7

​"News for you!" exclaimed Jacqueline the next morning, as for a moment she picked up the fresh paper that had just been laid on the breakfast table, and she read the paragraph:
 
"Mr. Thomas Bryson, one of the largest shipping merchants of our city, who has been so unfortunate as to be compelled to wind up business, in consequence, we believe, of the failure of a foreign house, sailed on Saturday, with his family, in the ---, for Liverpool. He expects to reside abroad for some years; as in Germany he can educate his sons at less expense than here. Our old friend bears our sympathies with him in his misfortunes, and constrained expatriation."
 
Edith dropped her fork with a pang.
 
"The hypocrite!" ejaculated Mr. Dubois, energetically.
 
"No such thing as the failure of a foreign house. That's a story of his own getting up, to cover his villainous speculations. I don't believe a word of it—"
 
"Or rather his wife's heartless extravagance," interrupted the doctor.
 
"Both—both, Edith; I feared some ruse, my dear. It is too bad—too bad!"
 
--pgs. 259-60

​" . . . I'm perfectly content to have the barriers just where they are, since I believe Providence designed this circumscription. I firmly believe our sex was commanded to be 'under obedience,' as part of the primal curse. Our regeneration is being worked out as Christianity makes progress; and who knows but that the balances may be even, by the time we have reached the edge of the millenium," added Edith, with a smile.
 
--p. 175

​Edith sat up, and looked into her sister's eyes.
 
"Zilpha, I must surrender into the hands of him whom I would love, my very self—my heart of hearts—my whole being. I must obey him—not because it is the requirement, but because I feel such obedience to be the sweetest thing in the world. I hardly quarrel with Milton's assertion--
 
" 'He for God only, she for God in him'--
 
as derogatory to woman, for there would be no humiliation—at least, I should be conscious of none—in the willing deference rendered to a man I owned to be intellectually, intelligently, physically, morally, my superior. What humiliation does the loving, all-confiding child feel in leaning for everything, venturing everything, upon the father she doats on? I am disgusted with this rant about the servility of a wife's obedience, on which some of the sensible women even of this generation have gone mad. As if 'perfect love' did not 'cast out fear!' They who talk and feel this way, have not yet learned the alphabet of love, human or divine. They forget that God's absolute sovereignty is the true Christian's ground of serenest confidence, because he unites with it the thought of His absolute love, and 'there is no fear in love.' "
 
"But you would not have the wife the mere passive recipient—the wax to the seal—without tastes, and opinions, and emotions of her own?"
 
"By no means! no more than I would have every branch, and tendril, and curl of the vine wound rigidly round the supporting oak, thereby spoiling all the grace fulness of its appropriate proportions, and the oneness of its identity. But the faith of love, in its object, must be kindred to the Christian's faith in God—unquestioning, immovable. When it is so, willing obedience must be a heart-delight—a very blessedness."
 
--pgs. 347-9