Interest in Politics is Virtuous, and Yet…

“As the traveler on serious business may be tempted to linger, while he gazes on the beauty of the prospect which opens on his way, so this well-ordered and divinely governed world, with all its blessings of sense and knowledge, may lead us to neglect those interests which will endure when itself has passed away.  In truth, it promises more than it can fulfill…And hence it is that many pursuits, in themselves honest and right, are nevertheless to be engaged in with caution, lest they seduce us; and those perhaps with special caution, which tend to the well-being of men in this life.  The sciences, for instance, of good government, acquiring wealth, of preventing and relieving want, and the like, are for this reason especially dangerous; for fixing, as they do, our exertions on this world as an end, they go far to persuade us that they have no other end.” -John Henry Newman