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.
Share
More from Henry Ward Beecher
And if by an insane blindness you shall contrive to put off the issue, and send this unsettled dispute down to your children, it will go down, gathering volume and strength at every step, to waste and desolate their heritage.
Let us give sap to the tree of Liberty, that it may not wither and die!
These are symptoms only, not the disease; the effects, not the causes.
And aroused by that spirit, there shall spring up the yet unaroused hosts of men that have not bowed the knee to Baal--and we will war it to the knife, and knife to the hilt.