It goes without saying that religion thus conceived is the opposite of magic. The latter is essentially selfish, the former admits... of and often even demands disinterestedness. The one claims to force the compliance of nature, the other implores the favor of a god. Above all, magic works in an environment which is semi-physical and semi-moral--the magician, at all events is not dealing with a person; whereas on the contrary it is from the god's personality that religion draws its greatest efficacy. Granted that primitive intelligence thinks it perceives around it, in phenomena and in events, elements of personality rather than complete personalities, religion, as we have just understood it, will ultimately reinforce these elements to the extent of completely personifying them; whereas magic looks upon them as debased, dissolved, as it were, in a material world in which their efficacy can be tapped.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The demagogue is usually sly, a detractor of others, a professor of humility and disinterestedness, a great stickler for equality ...as respects all above him, a man who acts in corners, and avoids open and manly expositions of his course, calls blackguards gentlemen, and gentlemen folks, appeals to passions and prejudices rather than to reason, and is in all respects, a man of intrigue and deception, of sly cunning and management.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Biography, in its purer form, confined to the ended lives of the true and brave, may be held the fairest meed of human virtue--one... given and received in entire disinterestedness--since neither can the biographer hope for acknowledgment from the subject, not the subject at all avail himself of the biographical distinction conferred.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When Sir Robert Walpole had quitted the administration [as prime minister] in 1742 ... he went to dine with Mr. Lee Warner at Wals...ingham. After dinner a very aged clergyman ... desired to be presented to him, and then told Sir Robert that he had been his first schoolmaster in his infancy ... and had then from his early parts foretold his future greatness ... what an instance of beautiful disinterestedness! ... in twenty years that [Sir Robert's] administration lasted, the honest minister of Walsingham ... had never claimed his scholar, nor let him know of his own existence, till Sir Robert had lost all power of serving him!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »