Principles Condemned
Humanum Genus criticises a number of principles, for example the idea that popular sovereignty is the source of all rights and that man should bend to no authority other than himself:
Then come their doctrines of politics, in which the naturalists lay down that all men have the same right, and are in every respect of equal and like condition; that each one is naturally free; that no one has the right to command another; that it is an act of violence to require men to obey any authority other than that which is obtained from themselves.
Finally it condemns what it sees as the Masonic idea of the total separation of religion and state:
It is held also that the State should be without God; that in the various forms of religion there is no reason why one should have precedence of another; and that they are all to occupy the same place.
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Famous quotes containing the words principles and/or condemned:
“Amidst the downward tendency and proneness of things, when every voice is raised for a new road or another statute or a subscription of stock; for an improvement in dress, or in dentistry; for a new house or a larger business; for a political party, or the division of an estate;Mwill you not tolerate one or two solitary voices in the land, speaking for thoughts and principles not marketable or perishable?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Let us imagine a number of men in chains and all condemned to death, where some are killed each day in the sight of the others, and those who remain see their own fate in that of their fellows and wait their turn, looking at each other sorrowfully and without hope. It is an image of the condition of man.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)