Daily Inspiration Quote by James Harrington

Harrington is trying to put vice on a leash: not a spooky, external force, but a mechanism that starts inside the mind and only becomes morally charged once the will signs off. In his phrasing, passion isn’t automatically guilty; it’s raw material. The sin happens at the moment it’s “brought forth” into action, when impulse stops being weather and becomes policy.

That distinction matters in the 17th-century political imagination Harrington helped shape. A civil-war generation had watched “passions” get blamed for everything from mob violence to royal overreach, and philosophers were busy rebuilding ethics on sturdier foundations than sermonizing. Harrington’s move is almost constitutional. He separates internal turbulence (contemplation) from public consequence (action), and then assigns jurisdiction: the will is the executive power that turns private desire into social fact.

The subtext is a defense of moral and political responsibility against two convenient escape hatches. One is fatalism: I couldn’t help it, my passions made me do it. The other is hypocrisy: I can indulge any appetite so long as it stays in thought. Harrington rejects both. Passion is human; vice is chosen. At the same time, he’s quietly warning lawmakers and citizens alike: if you want a stable commonwealth, don’t just police behavior, cultivate the will that authorizes it. The line reads like a glossary entry, but the intent is combative: to locate blame where it can actually be argued, judged, and reformed.