If the power of producing effects is the criterion of value, the few will always be the most valuable, and the mass relatively, subordinate, and the weak and lowest will be left helplessly worthless.
He critiques the notion that value is determined solely by power, warning of the implications for society.
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More from Henry Ward Beecher
Mariners might as well blame you for the swing and toss of their craft when tides troop in or march out of your harbor, as us, for heaving to that tide which God swells under us.
There have been, from the earliest period of the world, two different, and oppugnant, doctrines of man--his place, rights, duties and relations.
It is the only basis on which the poor, the ignorant, the weak, the laboring masses can entrench against oppression.
And the theory of man is always the starting point of all other theories, systems, and Governments which divide the world.