Papers of the American Negro Academy. (The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers, No. 18-19.)

One wrong produces other wrongs as surely and as naturally as the seed of the thorn produces other thorns. Men do not in the moral world gather figs from a thorn-bush any more than they do in the vegetable world. What they sow in either world, that they reap. Such is the law. The earth is bound under all circumstances and conditions of time and place to reproduce life, action, conduct, character, each after its own kind. Men cannot make what is bad bring forth what is good. Truth does not come out of error, light out of darkness, love out of hate, justice out of injustice, liberty out of slavery. No, error produces more error, darkness more darkness, hate more hate, injustice more injustice, slavery more slavery. That which we do is that which we are, and that which we shall be. The great law of reproduction which applies without shadow of change to individual life, applies equally to the life of that aggregation of individuals called a race or nation. Not any more than an individual can they do wrong with impunity, can they commit a bad deed without reaping in return the result in kind. There is nothing more certain than the wrong done by a people shall reappear to plague them, if not in one generation, then in another. For the consummation of a bad thought in a bad act puts what is bad in the act beyond the control of the actor. The evil thus escapes out of the Pandora-box of the heart, of the mind, to reproduce and to multiply itself a hundredfold and in a hundred ways in the complex relationships of men within human society. And then it returns not as it issued singly, but with its related brood of ill consequences: ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 35352
Author: Cromwell, John Wesley
Release Date: Feb 21, 2011
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Contributor (Author): Grimké, Archibald Henry, 1849-1930, Hershaw, Lafayette M., 1863-1945, Pickens, William, 1881-1954, Schomburg, Arthur Alfonso, 1874-1938, Steward, T. G. (Theophilus Gould), 1843-1924