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The needle points to the pole; but if you bring a huge black mass of pig iron and place by its side, it trembles, yet deviates, like a man struggling to be virtuous before overwhelming temptations.
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gutenberg.orgHorace Mann: “The needle points to the pole; but if you bring a huge black mass of pig iron and place by its side, it trembles, yet…”
Editor's note · Context
Mann uses a metaphor of a needle and iron to illustrate the struggle between virtue and temptation.
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Why, fellow-citizens, the ballot is worse than useless, if it be not FREE!
I answer, that this difference which they so be-little and disparage will often be all the difference between freedom and bondage, between life and death, between honor and infamy, between happiness and perdition.
My instincts, reason, judgment, conscience, may all mislead; but from the first time, now years ago, when I heard this subject broached, my instincts, reason, judgment, conscience, have all been in its favor.
The man of independent circumstances has this liberty; and no man’s circumstances, not even the poorest and the humblest, should be so dependent as to take it away.
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