Winterslow Author:William Hazlitt Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ESSAY III. ON PARTY SPIRIT. Pakty spirit is one of the profoundnesses of Satan, or, in more modem language, one of the dexterous equivoques and contrivances ... more »of our self-love, to prove that we, and those who agree with us, combine all that is excellent and praiseworthy in our own persons (as in a ring-fence), and that all the vices and deformity of human nature take refuge with those who differ from us. It is extending and fortifying the principle of the amour-propre, by calling to its aid the esprit de corps, and screening and surrounding our favourite propensities and obstinate caprices in the hollow squares or dense phalanxes of sects and parties This is a happy mode of pampering our self-complacency, and persuading ourselves that we, and those who side with us, are "the salt of the earth;" of giving vent to the morbid humours of our pride, envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, those naturalsecretions of the human heart, under the pretext of self-defence, the public safety, or a voice from heaven, as it may happen ; and of heaping every excellence into one scale, and throwing all the obloquy and contempt into the other, in virtue of a nickname, a watchword of party, a badge, the colour of a ribbon, the cut of a dress. We thus desolate the globe, or tear a country in pieces, to show that we are the only people fit to live in it; and fancy ourselves angels, while we are playing the devil. In this manner, the Huron devours the Iroquois, because he is an Iroquois ; and the Iroquois the Huron, for a similar reason : neither suspects that he does it because he himself is a savage, and no better than a wild beast; and is convinced in his own breast that tlie difference of name and tribe makes a total difference in the case. The Papist persecutes the Protestant, the Protes...« less