Book: Good excuse

Moral principle does not allow to transform really a person, a living man with his inseparable and essential national definition in some empty, abstract subject, the arbitrary partition of its defining features. <...> ... if we love a person, then you should love his nation which he loves and which themselves do not separate. The highest moral ideal requires that we love all men as ourselves, but as people don't exist outside of peoples, <...> then the direct logical conclusion is that we must love all peoples as his own. This commandment affirms the patriotism as a natural and primary sense, as a direct obligation of the person to your nearest collective whole, and at the same time the feeling released from the Zoological properties national egoism, or nationalism, becoming the basis and measure of positive relations to all other peoples according to unconditional and comprehensive moral principle.

... everyone will agree that patriotism is irrational, instead use harmful and lead the Nations to death, is the empty patriotism that expresses only unfounded claim, and is, finally, the patriotism is directly false, serving only the guise for the low, self-interested motives. <...> With regard to our Fatherland, Peter the Great and Pushkin - enough of these two names, to admit that our national spirit is exercising its dignity only in open communication with all of humanity, not alienated from it.

In the sense of sexual shame is <...> a person recognizes for himself the shameful <...> the very essence of that law of nature which governs the whole organic world. What is important is not so much what people in General are ashamed of how much something he is ashamed of. Having this ability to shame, not seen in other animals person could be defined as an animal ashamed.

Because the source of human laws - the source of troubles. Transparent jet of moral truth you can barely see it under the detritus of other, purely historical elements, expressing only the actual balance of forces and interests in that or another time. Therefore, justice, like virtue, does not always coincide with legality, or legal truth, and sometimes he is with her in direct conflict, as confessed by lawyers: summus jus - summa in juria.

... vandergeest or moderation is the virtue of virtues only when it refers to conditions and actions shameful, limiting, or removing them. Virtue does not require us to be posterini or moderate at all, or in all, but only that we abstain from what is below our human dignity and that freely admit we would be ashamed.

I know that if I was born amongst the cannibals, then he would be a cannibal, and I can't help but feel gratitude and reverence to those people who, through their works and deeds have brought my people from the savage state and brought it to that degree of culture where he is now located.

Consciously and intelligently to do good, I can only when we believe in good, in an objective, independent value in the world, that is, in other words, believe in moral order, in the Providence of God. <...> Not to have this faith means to believe in the meaning his own life, means to renounce the dignity of sentient beings.

Hence two rules of altruism - negative and positive:
1) do not do to others anything that does not want from others, and
2) do to others what he would like from others.
Shorter and simpler: these two rules are commonly joined together, expressed as: don't hurt anybody and everyone how can, help (Neminem laede, imo omnes, quantum potes, juva). First, the negative, the rule is called, in particular, the rule of justice, the second - charity.

The General consciousness of humanity strongly recognizes that pity is good; people who share this feeling is called good; the deeper he feels and the more uses, the kinder he admits; man is ruthless opposite, called evil the advantage. <...> As a permanent property, and the principle of practical ruthlessness that is called egoism. <...> If, therefore, selfishness is condemned by reason as a meaningless statement is non-existent and impossible, then the opposite principle of altruism, psychologically-based sense of pity, is justified by reason, and conscience. <...> ... reason brings the principle or rule of relationship to all other beings: do unto others as you would have them do to yourself.

Regret about the suffering of the criminal, of course, is not the approval or justification of crimes. On the contrary, the more the pity excited in me the unfortunate consequences of someone's sins, the stronger my conviction of these sins.

... when a soldier in the war team kills the enemy, impelled only "debt service", then how would we, in principle, neither regarded the war as a whole, we are certainly not going to blame the soldier into the immoral cruelty; it is another thing if he finds pleasure in murder and pleasure pierces the man with a bayonet.

... the root of our moral relation to others is not involved, or the sense of solidarity in General, but in pity, or compassion.

Ministers of the medieval Church tortured and burned heretics, Jews, witches and witches were for the most part people in the ascetic sense is impeccable, but the unilateral power of the spirit, no pity, made them incarnate devils.

... austerity is not yet good and, consequently, cannot be the Supreme or absolute principle of morality. The true (moral), the ascetic acquires the power over the flesh is to strengthen the formal powers of the spirit, and to best promote the good.