"Thoreau - Civil Disobedience" - читать интересную книгу автора (Thoreau Henry David)

After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the
hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period
continue, to rule is not because they are most likely to be in the
right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because
they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the
majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far
as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which
majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience?-
in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of
expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in
the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislation? Why has
every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and
subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the
law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a
right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly
enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of
conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made
men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even
the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. A common and
natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file
of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and
all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars,
against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences,
which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a
palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable
business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined.
Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and
magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power? Visit the
Navy-Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government
can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts- a mere
shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and
standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with
funeral accompaniments, though it may be,

"Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O'er the grave where our hero we buried."

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as
machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the
militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases
there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral
sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and
stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the
purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a
lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and
dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens.
Others- as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and
office-holders- serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they