Newsgroup: it.scienza.ambiente
Titolo: Re: Teen scared, awaiting transfer to state prison

The world is a good judge of things, for it is in natural ignorance,
which is man's true state. The sciences have two extremes which meet. The
first is the pure natural ignorance in which all men find themselves at
birth. The other extreme is that reached by great intellects, who, having
run through all that men can know, find they know nothing, and come back
again to that same ignorance from which they set out; but this is a learned
ignorance which is conscious of itself. Those between the two, who have
departed from natural ignorance and not been able to reach the other, have
some smattering of this vain knowledge and pretend to be wise. These trouble
the world and are bad judges of everything. The people and the wise
constitute the world; these despise it, and are despised. They judge badly
of everything, and the world judges rightly of them.
328. The reason of effects.--Continual alternation of pro and con.
We have, then, shown that man is foolish, by the estimation he makes of
things which are not essential; and all these opinions are destroyed. We
have next shown that all these opinions are very sound and that thus, since
all these vanities are well founded, the people are not so foolish as is
said. And so we have de

substitute for
    it, must be freely admitted. The system of Government contracts
    and inspection of immigrants has already done something toward
    ameliorating the condition of the coolie, and guarding him against
    illegal detention after his arrival at Singapore or Penang. Much
    more, however, remains to be done before the coolie trade will
    cease to be a reproach to the Straits Settlements, and it is
    doubtful whether any satisfactory reforms will be accomplished
    until the Chinese Government is moved in the matter with a view to
    checking the evil at the fountain head. Failing this, it would be
    worth considering whether the system of "unpaid passengers" might
    not advantageously be abolished, especially as this class of
    immigrant represents only 11 per cent of the total immigration,
    and more than one-third of the labor contracts last year were
    voluntarily signed by "paid passengers." It seems probable that if
    the "unpaid passenger" system were abolished, and the market thus
    thrown open to free competition, a much larger number of "paid
    passengers" would offer for contracts. But, even if this plan
    should appear to involve too great a risk of diminishing the flow
    of Chinese coolies to Singapore, it surely would not too severely
    tax the ingenuity of the Straits Government to devise a system of
    State-aided immigration, closely resembling that which has for
    many years been working in Canada, and more in accord with the
    dictates of ordinary humanity and English ideas of the liberty of
    the subject.
    Among the Chinese at Singapore the women number less than
    one-fifth of the population, and at Penang the proportion between
    males and females is practically the same. In the immigration
    returns the disparity is even more marked, for there is only
    one female immigrant to every eighteen men. This extraordinary
    preponderance of males in the Chinese population of 

custom, as well as his legal wife by
    American law. When these arrangements were completed, passage was
    immediately engaged on the Korea, bound for that harbor of
    romance, San Francisco Bay. There was, however, to be little
    romance in the life of our small Chinese heroine. The man who made
    her his wife did so simply as a means toward an end, and that end
    was to be a life of slavery and degradation in California. The
    landing of slave girls in free America is prohibited by law, thus
    the slave-dealers must resort to the best means at their command
    to thwart or circumvent our laws. A witnessed marriage in China
    gives an American-born Chinaman the right to land his wife in this
    country, so many an innocent village girl crosses the ocean secure
    in the belief that she is the honored wife of a respectable
    husband. She is landed as such, and, alas! often finds out
    when too late that she is merely the chattel of an evil and
    unscrupulous Highbinder society, whose paid agent is the man to
    whom she is bound. Soon after the Korea's arrival in port, on the
    voyage in which we are interested, I visited the ship to interview
    the Chinese women on board, and there for the first time met our
    little dark-eyed friend, Kum Ping. She had been carefully coached
    on the way as to the visits she might receive from foreign
    missionaries, and the replies to all our questions showed a
    guarded suspicion that seemed quite hopeless. Our cheerful
    interpreter talked on, nevertheless, and finally won a quiet smile
    and the offer of some roast duck (a great delicacy among Chinese).
    All warnings about the dangers and wickedness of Chinatown
    apparently fell on deaf ears. "I am a married wo

Lord, unto thy testimonies."
40Cicero, De finibus, V. 21. "There is no longer anything which is ours;
what I call ours is conventional."
[41]Seneca, Epistles, xcv. "It is by virtue of senatus-consultes and
plebiscites that one commits crimes."
[42]Tacitus, Annals, iii. 25. "Once we suffered from our vices; today we
suffer from our laws."
43Saint Augustine, City of God, iv. 27. "As he has ignored the truth which
frees, it is right he is mistaken."
[44]Cicero, De officiis, iii, 17. "Concerning true law."
45Eccles. 3:19. "for all is vanity."
46Rom. 8:20-21. "It shall be delivered."
[47]Horace, Odes, III. xxix. 13. "Changes nearly always please the great."
48Seneca, Epistles, xx. 8. "In order that you are satisfied with yourself
and the good that is born from you."
[49]Montaigne, Essays, ii. 12.
50Cicero, De Divinatione, ii. 58. "There is nothing so absurd that it has
not been said by some philosopher."
51Cicero, Disputationes Tusculanae, ii. 2. "Devoted to certain fixed
opinions, they are forced to defend what they hardly approve."
52Seneca, Epistles, cvi. "We suffer from an excess of literature as from an
excess of anything."
53Cicero, De officiis, i. 31. "What suits each one best is what is to him
the most natural."
54Virgil, The Georgics, ii. "Nature gave them first these limits."
55Seneca, Ep

sometimes in mere anguish; but generally, as soon as they have this
conviction, it immediately brings their minds to a calm, and unexpected
quietness and composure; and most frequently, though not always, then
the pressing weight upon their spirits is taken away, and a general hope
arises, that some time or other God will be gracious, even before any
distinct and particular discoveries of mercy. Often they then come to a
conclusion within themselves, that they will lie at God's feet, and wait
His time; and they rest in that, not being sensible that the Spirit of
God has now brought them to a frame whereby they are prepared for mercy.
For it is remarkable, that persons when they first have this sense of
the justice of God, rarely, at the time, think any thing of its being
that humiliation they have often heard insisted on, and that others
experience.
In many persons, the first conviction of the justice of God in their
condemnation which they take particular notice of, and probably the
first distinct conviction of it that they have, is of such a nature, as
seems to be above any thing merely legal. Though it be after legal
humblings, and much of a sense of their own helplessness, and of the
insufficiency of their own duties; yet it does not appear to be