The Struggle for Law
right, action, is a mere matter of character: the attitude which an individual or a nation assumes towards an attempt on its rights is the surest test of its character. If by character we understand personality, full, self-reliant and self-asserting, there can be no better opportunity to test this quality than when arbitrariness attacks one’s rights, and, with his rights, his person. The manner in which the wounded feeling of law or of personality reacts, whether under the influence of passion in wild and violent action, or with subdued, persistent resistance, is no measure of the intensity of the strength of the sentiment of legal right; and there can be no greater error than to ascribe to the savage or the uncultured man, with whom the former manner is the normal one, a stronger feeling of legal right, than to the educated man who takes the second course. This manner is more or less a matter of education and temperament; but a firm, tenacious and resolute resistance is in no way inferior to violent and passionate reaction. It would
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