Social Tendencies. [Continued.]

From: The Dial, Vol. IV, No. II (Oct. 1843)
Author:
Published: James Munroe and Company 1843 Boston

  OUR organic reforms are not organic enough. Or rather organic reform throughout all forms and all organism will never reach to the life which is in the organ, and that most needs reform. Change the present social order altogether, and introduce forms entirely new; let the organs of exhibition and imbibition for social man be newly created, still man himself, who is the being in the organism, remains unchanged. He is thereby made no better, and it is his bettering which is the one desirable end. Whereas if he were elevated, the organization and form of society would necessarily be also elevated. Were man drawn to the centre, all his circumferential motions would be harmonious. Few truths are now more obvious than that reformers themselves need to be reformed, So will it be visible with regard to associative experiments. They cannot be better than the men and women who jointly make them; upon whom, after all other expedients, the work of reform has to be commenced.

  It is not then by means of a vision seen from his present state, that man can project a better life. But by living up strictly to-day to his deepest convictions of rectitude, there may be opened to him new and deeper consciousness to-morrow. Thus not from day to day will he project new schemes, but from day to day he lives new life. And in this faith, both the scoffer and the hopeful may find a common ground for union. This seems to be the mastering obstacle. This is the thread which it is so difficult to wind up,—a golden thread too, hanging down from heaven to earth preserving unbroken man’s celestial relation. Man appears to progress by a certain law in which time is not an essential element. He may be as long as he will, before he takes a second step, but he can never attain to the third until the second is complete. Social infancy has no fixed period, but youth must come next, and manhood afterwards. Let the boy be ever so old in years, yet as long as his delight rests in playing at marbles and other childish pursuits, he never ranks as an adult. Our social youth stays too long playing at commerce in the market-house. His commercial marbles have rolled into all places and things, foul and clean, from heaps of human flesh to linen and silk, and his fingers are yet unwashed.

  Though none of our projectors may yet have alighted on it, there is undoubtedly somewhere discoverable the true avenue to human happiness. The idea of a true life is almost a universal intuition, and by consequence that the present life is false. Admitted to be possibly in order when contemplated as a whole from beginning to end, yet by the pain we experience, we know it to be but the order of disorder. Invisible, inaudible, intangible as are pain and pleasure, of their reality none can doubt, and such knowledge should suggest that deeper realities are also in the hidden and spirit-world. Amongst such realities this of a true life may there be learnt. In no other quarter may it successfully be sought. Whence man receives the intuition of true life, thence he should seek the knowledge of what it is. They, who have received this information from men by tradition, will naturally look to men for the solution, and to scientific facilities as the means. But they, who have the higher authority of a nature for it in themselves, will look in the same direction for further advice. To such the question now remaining is rather that one only, “What are the hindrances to the realization of true life?” For they no longer doubt that there is a true earthly life to be realized.

  Consistently with their metaphysics, the advocates of the omnipotence of circumstances may plead, that the great and prevailing hindrances to heroic and virtuous existence lie in the very many untoward conditions by which humanity is surrounded. But the really courageous heart takes a different view; and, looking broadly as well as deeply at the facts, is free to admit that the great difficulties do not reside in the circumambient materialities or spiritualities; neither in the world of actual life nor in that of opinion, but in the being itself. Human degeneration is a self-act. To an escape from degeneration human volition is necessary. The primary hindrance to holy life is to be found in the Will itself. Men are not yet disposed for it; they are not yet Willing. In their self-willedness, active and deep, and all-prevalent as it is, there is no room for the universal will and impulse to enter. To which the circumstantial philosopher replies to the effect, that man makes not his own will or disposition, but that it is made for him by circumstances. Not to wander too deeply into the question of free will, nor to assume more than may without prejudice be conceded, we may confine the assertion to these limits, that so far as man knows what is true and good, and is at liberty to act up to his knowledge, he does not do so. There is not a resignation to the absolute true so far as it is revealed. There is not a sect nor perhaps a man at this moment acting fully up to their knowledge and perception of right; and that not because of any obstructive influence in the circumstances, but from a Jack of courage or self-denial or self-resolution, of which there is at the best and calmest moments an entire consciousness. ·Each one apprehending the inmost truth has to say, it is in myself that the principal hindrance lies. The primal obstruction is in myself, or rather is myself. Something in the nature of a sacrifice, a giving up, a forbearing to take, is needful on my part; and no outward influence prevents my practising this, which my heart and my head, my feelings and my rational powers alike demonstrate to be the first great needful step in human melioration.

  Either this principle is denied, or it is admitted. If denied, on account of the supremacy of circumstances, then men must be left to suffer and complain, until the despot circumstances shall be changed by some other circumstances, which are to be generated of circumstances in some manner yet hidden. But if the principle of man’s self-power, or heaven-derived influence be admitted, then, we say, the point is clear, and every one has to avow, it rests with me to let the world be amended. I have a revelation of the good and true, which is not yet realized so far as I am capable of elevating it to practice, and I am not justified in looking abroad for reasons for my inertia, when I am sensible that the defection is in my own will, in myself, in the very identity and individuality of my own existence. Next to the hindrances which a man discovers in his own inmost existence, may be ranked those moral obstructions which grow out of his own wilfulness. The opinions, thoughts, modes of reasoning, which form, as it were, the store of his mind, have been all collected or formed by that will or wilfulness which is his grand misfortune. They accord with it; they are almost one with it. In case, however, of a conversion of will, or of a semi-conversion, which is a disposition to good, these mental stores are seen to be prejudices, conjectures, and habits difficult to be overcome. These form the glass through which we doubly see all other men and all created things. “Such is the condition of man,” says Dugald Stewart, “that a great part of a philosopher’s life must necessarily be spent, not in enlarging the scope of his knowledge, but in unlearning the errors of the crowd, and the pretended wisdom of the schools.” These may be called accumulations on the outside of the soul; and amongst these may also be classed those appetites and passions whose indulgence takes place through the body. For they do not, ns is sometimes assumed, belong to the body. The attractions of eating and drinking and other sensualities are not attributed to our physical nature. Greediness is a vice of the soul, which is only manifested, not originated, in the body. It is sometimes embodied in heaps of gold and silver, at other times in popular applause, or private ease, at others in viands and stimulants, at others in wife and children. These are but its modes of life; the passion itself is in the soul; and it but goes forth and reenters through the portals of the senses. Such are amongst the most potent obstacles to present progress. It is not difficult to obtain mental assent to beautiful creeds, doctrines, or speculations, which demand no practical change in habits or diminution of personal indulgence; but whenever it is proposed in the smallest degree to abridge gratifications which hinder the soul’s clearness, and really prevent progress in goodness, the intellectual powers become suddenly active, nod energies are exhibited which by their self-origin put to ignominious flight the notion, that man is always mentally ruled by mental circumstances. For an original intellect of comparatively surprising acuteness suddenly springs up. It is not until these formidable opponents within doors are subdued, that we need look abroad for any reasons to account for the non-attainment of our convictions of true life. These have, however, been so frequently exposed and so diligently assailed, that there seems little occasion to dwell further on them. They have their origin in the same source where as our individual obstacles are accumulated. Every opinion and principle, right or wrong, commenced in an individual mind, and the congregate acceptance of these we call church and state, according as they relate to sacred or to secular affairs. The prejudices of art, science, taste, and profession are not small, yet they may all more or less be escaped, until they take the concrete nature upon them, and become part and parcel of church or state. So long as they remain unstamped by either of these seals, their plastic nature remains in a semifluid condition, and the strong-minded individual may counteract their oppressions. But as soon as warm spontaneous thoughts are chilled into orthodoxy, the fluid stream, which would facilitate our progress, is frozen into an unyielding barrier.

  The clearness with which men see that the present state of human affairs is incapable of furnishing to them the desirable results for which they live, is the hopefullest indication observable in the moral horizon. No noisy demagogue, no exciting writer is needful to the production of this state of mind. Even those, who thrive most brilliantly on what is deemed the prosperous side of social arrangements, are ready to admit their inefficacy for permanent good. Life at the heart appears to be n toilsome engagement in a process which has no termination; a preparation for which there is no post-paration; a perpetual circulation of steam-engine and machinery which do no work beyond moving themselves; a hunting in which nothing is caught; a shaft without an aim; a pursuit without a goal.

  These are the feelings and views in considerate minds, and next follow speculations for the future. Led, or rather misled, by the rule of experience, men have in vision beheld a public social slate, in which every family being developed, every want satisfied, every tendency elevated, existence should become as redolent of bliss as now it is of woe. Competition, punishment, dogmatism, private property being banished, there would remain cooperation, pleasure, freedom, common property, and a cessation of every evil would ensue. But on examination it must be concluded, either that such plans do not proceed far enough, or that they are projected in a wrong direction. They seem to be made too dependent on extensive scientific arrangements, into which we do not glide in an almost unobservant manner, as the growth of animate bodies proceeds, but there is a strained effort to a preordained result more comparable to the erection of a dead granite building than the perfection of a living being. The future state of man will not be any one that is scientifically prophesied, although scientific prophecies may have some influence; and so far as they are utterances from the law of life in man, they must influence. But in action, men proceed socially as they do artistically. Human society is in fact an art, and not a science. It is erroneous to treat it exclusively in a scientific manner. The “science of society” is a phrase and an expression of feeling which must be superseded by that of the “art of society,” which includes, too, the all of science which is needful, but in a subordinate manner only. The social art is the engagement and-occupation of the true artist. And as the divisional artist instinctively proceeds to utter himself through such materials as he finds lying about, whether they be rough or refined, so the social artist manifests, by the like unerring instinct, the law of his being in new life, through whatever social or human materials may be present. Both work instinctively. The law of criticism is to be developed from their works, and their works cannot be constructed according to a prescribed critical dogma. So far as this artist-spirit is born, there is an actual effort to embody it in some work. The artist-spirit always recoils from the dictation of science, to obey which, would indeed seem to be like a submission of the painter’s design to the colors and pencils. Society attempted wholly on scientific principles, without the central artistic nature, would be found as impracticable as the opposite attempt of producing an outward work or object of art without the aid of science. It is in the marriage of the two, that the resulting offspring of an outward social existence is possible. As to painters, poets, and sculptors, so there is a perpetually new revelation to the social artist, but it comes not through science. Science lies on the other side; and it is from the social artistic nature, through science ns a means, that the revelation is to be made manifest. This art, like all others, is progressive; and the progress of science, originally an issue from it, yet aids it. The music-art developed musical instruments, and scientific improvements leap an aid in return to the artist in his expressions. These are the relative positions of art and science; and if scientifically arranged associations have not yet met with that cordial response which their benevolent projectors anticipated, they should be reminded that this omission is necessarily fatal. Without the feminine principle, without piety, without poetry, without art, as the primal origin, the prevalent idea, no project seems worthy of the time and thought required in the attempt to realize it.

  Society is worthy in the degree in which art, in this sense, rules in it. Because there is no poetry, no warmth now in it, is the soul moved to a change. The wrecks of feudalism served long to sustain the succeeding crafts and guilds; but these stores being all exhausted, and science having swept up every scrap of chivalry to be converted into bread, the skill of political economists being now worn to its last remnant, some change is demanded to succor the famished soul. Now, it is very certain that man in this state will take up that which lies nearest to his hand. He appears individually incapable of much;—so that a bold conduct on the part of scientific projectors may elicit a support they do not legitimately claim. Such a course would merely amount to another chapter in the present order of disorder, a beautifying on the outside, and would not be very productive of either good or harm. We shall, in that case, simply have to return, or rather we shall still have to discover the right course.

  Again man will adopt that which next is offered, and unless that is in harmony with his true progress, the result is again disappointment. There are, however, always two roads lying equally near to his feet. One is really out of his way, but seductive; the other is the true way, but is at the outset repulsive. Hitherto he has oftenest travelled out of his way, or the outer way, and has not really taken up that pursuit which lay next him. He still looks abroad for that which he can find only at home. He seeks in science that which dwells alone in art. Really that which stands next to a man to do, is to live up this day, this hour, to the best intuition of which he is sensible. This is an inner road which it is hard to travel, but the principle is that which all moralists have enunciated, and which they who most diligently pursue, are oftenest charged with deserting.

  How mistaken men are as to the cause of their unhappiness, or how unready they are to admit it, is evident in the great variety of subjects to which human misery has been attributed. Hereditary monarchy, hereditary aristocracy, a law-established church, corrupt parliaments, national debts, taxation, machinery, education, ignorance, over-production, over-population, excessive commercial enterprise, banking, and various other facts have been suggested to account for the discontented condition of man. It only needs a geographical survey to see that in countries, where most of these afflictions are unknown, happiness does not yet attend man. A survey of the old or eastern continent of the globe shows almost no nations exempt from most of these forms of ill; and from the rest, the greater part of the new continent is exempt. It is not to be denied that more or less of physical misery abounds, as these forms of evil more or less prevail, but the soul-sickness seems to depend little on these causes. When the English emigrant escaped from the dark and dismal miseries of the manufacturing town of his birth, to the American swamp, he no more left behind him the origin of unhappiness than he did his mother tongue; and we must not be surprised to find his descendants heirs to one, as well as to the other. Misery they inherit as a generation; language they learn to lisp by education. But the initiation of both is equally certain, and from the same source. This fact is, we trust, becoming too well known to permit many more classes of ephemeral reforms or exoteric amendments to be seriously proposed or extensively relied on by mankind. It ought to be well understood that to rely so much on external plans, which are to be worked by others, is the most backsliding and treasonable treatment conceivable of that original impulse which is the basis of our amending desires. These persons and these plans become the great deluders. Their operation is that of throwing a tub to the whale. Minds which left alone would become intense in purpose, clear in thought, and strong in action, have been induced to lean on crutches, which will let them down into the mire. As soon as the weight is really placed on them, they break. Echoes of the great sounds of political economy, which but a few years ago promised emancipation to man, have not all died away. At this forge were to be wrought machines to support men in every predicament. Yet how soon these fires are cold, and the hammers silent. Economy as a science has been as little prolific of good, as factious party politics. So do all short-sighted schemes wear out, and we have to return to the primitive stimulant which moves us. Were this the universal course, there would be no want of outward concurrence. In fact this is the only sound mode for its attainment. Outward union is not brought about by calling for it, but by the like spirit working in all men. We have now to see whether the present appetite is really one in all the individuals, which is partly to be known by the sort of food it craves. We have to ascertain whether the new spirit is an unfolding from the universal basis, and if it tends to one social order.

  Viewed broadly, and as a whole, there is much that is cheering in the moral prospect. A deeper sense, a purer tint, seems spread over all moral thought. Wit has possibly run almost to the end of its barren career, and must await the coming up of affection.

  In the general demand throughout the world for reformed government, we remark one of the workings of the youthful spirit. It is not by an accident; it is not by local association that men have become thus like-minded. Sympathy comes not by the rubbing together of corrupt human frames. Unity in mind is not generated by the aggregation of bodies. We may no longer fancy that men are urged as of old to a demand for political privileges by local or temporary scarcity of bread. We can no longer believe that the “vox populi” issues only from an empty stomach, though in famishment it requires a deeper, bolder, wilder tone. The politician now seeks rather by the organization of imposing numbers, than the array of physical instruments, to attain his end. His argument now is accumulation of minds, not the best dry gunpowder. He is no believer in force by bodies; or at least his idea of physical power is changed from that of muscular energy, to that of mind, as the mover. This is at length brought in as the primary element in the new political compound, and is the heart in the modern tyrant “public opinion;” a heart which joined with an undivided head and an unbroken body would be unbearable. But integrity the body never had, and never can ham. Integrity is not constituted of an aggregate collection, and this is the highest unitive idea which occurs to the mind of the political reformer.

  This is the very infancy of central thought; the crudest notion of unity. The development of but one leaf more in the human bud exposes the externality of this object, and effects a reaction inwards, throwing the mind more consciously on itself, when the idea of universal education is next vividly entertained. Hence over-honest politicians expand into educationists. As soon as it is perceived that wise and liberal government is only possible with wise and liberal citizens, the effort is to make them so.

  No thinker, at least no benevolent thinker, can have missed of the idea of universal education. The redemption of all mankind from the degradation of ignorance is the aim of every true scholar. The student who labors incessantly in his closet, apparently for himself only, is working for the entire human race, whether he knows it or not; and ultimately he discovers this fact with exceeding joy. The joy of aiding human emancipation by pure mental means is unknown to the political agitator, who is only tolerable in the roughest sketchings of social thought. Even the sluggish conservative joins in schemes of education, though with a different motive. For he perceives the assuaging effects of literature and gentle pursuits, and relies on them to tame the public spirit, and spare him a little longer the position wherein he stands.

  There is a stage in human development where the frivolity of politics, and the short-coming of education are rendered manifest. At this stage, a deeper work is demanded. Political reform succeeds political reform, and men are no better-and no happier. Education proceeds, and with it, penitentiaries and jails, hospitals and insane asylums are multiplied. Churches compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and the result is as of old.

  The consciousness of such results frequently drives men back to individual narrowness. In his fruitless reliance, the publicist turns misanthrope. In contemplation of perverse humanity, the mentalist sinks into the book-collector, the literary critic, or the speculatist. The churchman becomes a skeptic.

  Some few, qualified to net a leading part, are neither misanthropic, nor visionary, nor skeptical under any want of outward success. They are loveful, real, and faithful. But they are not found on every hill-side, nor in every study, nor in every factory. In courts and colleges we seek them not. With spade, or mallet, or shuttle in hand, they are to be found, full of youth, and practicality, and hope. Of what they really stand in need, many such are yet unaware. Their immediate object is nearly as obscure as the deep-moving impulse. Collected, located, united, they would be as a city seated on a hill; while dispersed, they are unknown to each other, and are overshadowed by the dark mass of the world, by which they are either to be wholly hid from light, or suffered to rise in egotistic splendor equally fatal to all good.

  These are willing laborers; they shrink not from physical nor from menial duties: they desire not to avoid the outward responsibilities, in making a provision for the inward life. The lower necessities they joyfully submit to, for the happiness of the higher freedom. The love-spirit is strong in them potentially, as the labor-principle is present in them actually. The unitive means alone seem wanting, the mediator between love and labor.

  Baffled, beset, or persecuted by the old hindering spirit, as progressive newness ever has been, the first aim is now, ns in all foretime, to erect a fence against such assaults. The few new must defend themselves from the many old. The first duty—spirit-integrity; the first law—spirit-conservation, demand such a course. The most beautiful corollary of this law, the conservation of good in the whole, equally enforces it.

  Are the few new yet numerous enough or strong enough to erect this fence in the outward world? Are they prepared to be this stockade? Are they sufficiently potent and certain in being? Rude may be the assaults attempted from without, but ruder far are those which must be mastered within. Man meets with a great enemy in the declared opponent; he finds even a greater in false friendship; but his greatest enemies are in his own heart; verily, just where his greatest friend also abides. And there they are, face to face, the fiend and the friend. Which shall triumph? Shall we have the strength of friendship to join the old world in its hindering negation, or shall we be embraced by the love in friendship, and join the new world in its creative affirmation? Onward we must. The distinguished mission of the love-enlightened is to create a new sphere for the acting man; to construct a new cradle for the infant humanity, to nurse the new-born, to tend the weak, to foster the needful, to enlighten the dark, to sympathize with the lowly, to meliorate the arrogant, to sweeten the bitter.

  Creation, construction, generation, not of life itself, but of new, beautiful, harmonious modes of it, is now man’s great work. He is to open a place, to clear an arena for the manifestation of spirit under a new aspect. This precinct must be kept pure and unspotted from the world, free from old corruption in food, in raiment, in law, in commerce, in wedlock. Holiness, innocence, lustre must overspread all things, inspire all nets, permeate all being. Such a commencement shall he as the word in the Beginning, in the ever Beginning; a seed whose tree shall overshadow all nations, and find sap for its roots in every soil.

  Although future events are not to be read out of the past, yet may the coming be glanced at from the same point which generated the past, and generates the present. If there be any one fact in human existence deserving the character of universal, it is, that every human being enters the world as the member of a family. The creator, in using two human instruments to produce a third, maintains an irreversible decree, which may not be left unconsidered. The family may now be an example of anything rather than of amity; yet exist it must; and from this relationship all action must he dated. Marriage is something more, and something better than a contrivance for the perpetuation of the animal nature. Universal love rather than old-bachelor philosophies may suggest that public kind of treatment of children, which has so often been discussed, yet at the same time there seems no greater infraction of universal love in parental than in connubial affection. Moral sympathy is the basis of wedded union; a mental likeness precedes the liking, and these elements, no less than physical similarity, are repealed in the offspring. Were entire separation of parents and children decreed at the earliest movement which physical sustenance permits, sympathy and likemindedness would, in no small number of cases, generate an unerring family register. Affection then is something; sympathy, passion, tendency, genius, are to be taken into the account. Falsely fed hitherto, they yet are true wants in human nature. Universal love is ever manifested in individual nets, and on individual objects in different degrees. Divinity itself has not made the tree and the man susceptible of the same amount of divine love; yet the love is one. Neither can man, though he love all objects with the same love, love them all in the same degree. The family then need not be a hindrance to a love for the whole human race. Nor indeed is it so; though not unfrequently is it made the apology and excuse for unloving conduct. Where the family originates in self-love, its existence is likely enough to manifest the fact in the strongest manner, Marriage and children do not generate selfishness, but selfishness generates them. Marriage is the mode of it with the married, as is single life with the bachelor and the spinster. Marriage and its results are not more corrupting than any other social institution; they do but serve to declare in the most marked manner, the power which rules in humanity. By its fruits the human tree is known.

  Considerations of the kinds here glanced at, indicate the possibility for human emergence by easier transition than is presented in extended scientific arrangements. While the family kindred is a universal ordinance, it is equally certain that every individual is related to the whole human race; yet not in the same degree. Divine justice would scarcely be perceptible in making the improvement or health of one individual wholly dependent on the improvement and health of every other. In a measure, it is so; but the relation of some is so distant, that the influence scarcely reaches. And, at all events, the more it is so, the more potent the outward influence may be deemed—the greater is the urgency for individual healthfulness. So of the family. In the mere fact of association, families will not be improved. In the scientific and artistic association of families, something may be attained, but such an arrangement calls for skill in outward arrangements and knowledge of human materials, which the world has not yet witnessed. And, in the mean time, the regeneration of any one should not be so wholly dependent on the regeneration of all. The one willing should not be a victim of the unwilling many. Moreover it is at least questionable whether individuals or families can be harmoniously associated until harmony reigns in them individually.

  The family has no more received justice at the hands of the world than the individual has. Institutions, laws, customs, habits, are as opposed to the well-working of true family as of true individual life. Yet it is the fashion to condemn the one as the origin of social ill, and to pity the other as the victim. Public life commits a serious error, on its own principles, when it recognizes individuals, or rather individual man only without admitting female influences to a like extent. Society is male, not family, not humane.The sacredness of the family has only been talked about; while really it never has been profaned. The supremacy of the family has not so much as been contemplated. Church, state, commerce, wealth, wit, command. To the external forms of some of these all family claims succumb; and although, as an idea, it has been mentally entertained, and, as a fact, has had its influence, yet the position which to the family duly belongs has never been awarded. In this the Church and State should live. In this alone should they be exhibited in outward form; living form. On no other basis can living forms depend. Neither Church, nor State, nor Commerce can produce one living human being. They are but dead externals, animated by so much of life as creeps into them from the family origin. Commerce should consist in the interchanges of affection. The State is rightfully the family economies: in this all questions of law, of government, of justice should be discussed and determined. The Church is nowhere, if not in the holy family: its prayers, its sacraments, its praises are hourly, continually repeated.

  The necessity for permitting what may be called the female element in society to grow up in its due proportion, has recently pressed more and more upon the mind. Woman and her rights, duties, and position, is the theme for many pens. In almost all cases, whether of male or female authority, the mistake seems to exist, that whatever advance woman may make in the social sphere, is to take place by reason of a concession granted by man. This is clearly so large a vice in the premises, that the consequences must be vicious too. It must not be so. Man may indeed cease to hinder woman’s just life; but with no other sentiment than that until now he has been in error; he has done too much, and he must now do less that the right may be.

  In many other ways, also, we may catch glimpses of a coming newness, as much broader in outward character than the present, as it is deeper in spirit-origin. That origin really may be one, but in the apparent world it works step by step. First one round of the ladder is mounted, and then another is attained, leading unto a third. We have only to be certain that we do go upwards, and are not merely shifting our feet and coming back continually to the same level. Clearly this is too much the case; or rather it has been. Let us hope the world is wiser now. And there is so much the greater promise, inasmuch as for the bettering of both man and his conditions, the greater part of the achievement consists in that easy process of ceasing to do. The honest man inquires, “shall I go into trade?” and the prompt response is “no.” The aspirant says “shall I benefit men as a legislator?” and common sense replies “you cannot elevate man by degrading yourself.” The pious mind would find in a church the fraternal sphere which conscience tells him the hireling desecrates. How much of that which exists, must the new man cease to touch. Neither wealth, nor public life, nor church, as at present known, presents an attraction to him which he dare accept. Cleanliness of hand, of head, of heart, are not found compatible with these things. As the laws against smugglers, or slave-traders, they are nought to him. He touches them not; they touch not him; unless indeed as affording ground for false accusation, of which no small share awaits him. In this sense of living out of the present order, the progressive man may be said to outlive it. And daily are the ranks of such progressive men augmented. It is the legitimate order of human progress in this twofold manner to effect its purpose. He who abstains from alcohol, effectively destroys the distilleries, and need not be so unwise as to strike his mallet against the building. Active destructiveness is not the function of the true man, but his cessation of use causes by-gone customs to fall off like tattered garments.

  Practically, the steps will be gained somewhat after this manner. More and more recruits will daily be enlisted from the old crowd, and swell the orderly of the new phalanx; but let it not be forgotten that the family relations cannot be lightly or irreverently treated. Not in public halls, but around the hearth-stone it ever has happened that improvement has been first discussed. Not in the noisy bustle of life where they are preached, but in the quiet recesses of home, all high, dignified, and heroic actions have their origin. In the family, the last, the noblest, the redeeming secret lies hid. Perhaps it is true that in this circle man’s fall originated, and in it is perpetuated; but logically and retributively that fact should at least not preclude, if it does not confirm the prognostic, that in the family are to be sown the permanent seeds of new life.

  Man’s healthfullest feelings are of home-origin. Even the most ambitious will confess this. Catch the busy scribe, on whose pen the public waits for its miserable newspaper-wit, or for its political instructions, and he will own he hopes by his labors to make his family happy.—Speak in private with the orator, and he will admit that between the shallow pretensions of his cause, and the stimulants necessary to keep up his frame, he is a ruined being. Of the wealth-seeker we need make no inquiry. His only pretence for chicane is the protection of his family from his own morally disastrous process. These pursuits are so foreign to the legitimate purpose of life that devotion to them is social and domestic death; and, as far as permanent good is concerned, the world has to be ever begun anew. The public sentiment which now condemns war, and slave-trading, and hanging of men, must extend its condemnation to the quieter and subtler contrivances of legislation, and tradecraft, and presscraft, which more certainly obstruct the attainment of human happiness. These institutions are equally fatal to the reign of the human family, and the highest, purest human affections on earth. While the sceptre is in the hands of an artificial and factitious father called King, or Governor, or President, it cannot be with the true parent. All usurped dominion has to cease before the lawful empire can be commenced. To this consummation, as we predict, there is a strong tendency. Notwithstanding the great activity infused into the present order, there is little faith anywhere in its stability. Thrones, credits, estates, fame, may almost be calculated at so many years’ purchase. But there is not yet so clearly presented, as some minds desire, that unity on which a new faith is to be built. Here lies the difficulty in the new movement. Men cannot give up the old rites and ceremonies of the church, until they are vitally sensible of the ever present God within their own hearts. Men cannot abandon courts of law and state legislation, until they are fully conscious of the permanence of eternal justice and divine law in themselves. Men cannot give up the pursuit of wealth, until they are quite convinced that they are themselves the true riches of the earth. It is not on the exchange, it is not in the public assembly, it is not in the formal church that men will become aware of these deep truths. Hence the quivering anxiety to draw them to the meeting and the mart. The great opponent of death, as the great friend to life, is privacy. Quiet, serenity, vigor of soul, originality of thought are fatal to a system which lives by noise, bustle, decrepitude, and imitation.

  Sacred precinct is the family and supreme it should be also. Every home-act should be as sacred as the secretes emotions in the soul; effusing a perpetual sabbath. Every humane action is a sacrament, every human effort a work of art, having for object its own construction. This is the great end in creation. But humanity can only work in this order, when connected livingly, purely, generatively with the creating spirit. Until then, all is disorder, chaos, profanity. All that attracts men, all that engages their attention, is only tolerated on the excuse of its subserviency to the sacredness of home; a sacredness which is pretended to be upheld by the very processes which violate its sanctuary, so that really it is not. Men are hopefully asking why this illusion should be prolonged. And as no satisfactory response is heard, they ask it more and more earnestly. Their earnestness is the omen of its downfall.

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All Sub-Works of The Dial, Vol. IV, No. II (Oct. 1843):
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