Select the correct text in the passage. Which two sentences in this excerpt from "Civil Disobedience" by Henry David Thoreau support the transcendentalist idea that the
individual is more important than government or society?
This American government what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but
each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will. It is
a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves..
But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a
government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? - in which majorities decide only those questions
to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the
legislation? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to
cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think
right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a
conscience.
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