Man the Reformer

A Lecture read before the Mechanics' Apprentices' Library
Association,
Boston, January 25, 1841

 

Mr. President, and Gentlemen,

I wish to offer to your consideration some thoughts on the particular and
general relations of man as a reformer. I shall assume that the aim of each
young man in this association is the very highest that belongs to a rational
mind. Let it be granted, that our life, as we lead it, is common and mean; that
some of those offices and functions for which we were mainly created are grown
so rare in society, that the memory of them is only kept alive in old books and
in dim traditions; that prophets and poets, that beautiful and perfect men, we
are not now, no, nor have even seen such; that some sources of human instruction
are almost unnamed and unknown among us; that the community in which we live
will hardly bear to be told that every man should be open to ecstasy or a divine
illumination, and his daily walk elevated by intercourse with the spiritual
world. Grant all this, as we must, yet I suppose none of my auditors will deny
that we ought to seek to establish ourselves in such disciplines and courses as
will deserve that guidance and clearer communication with the spiritual nature.
And further, I will not dissemble my hope, that each person whom I address has
felt his own call to cast aside all evil customs, timidities, and limitations,
and to be in his place a free and helpful man, a reformer, a benefactor, not
content to slip along through the world like a footman or a spy, escaping by his
nimbleness and apologies as many knocks as he can, but a brave and upright man,
who must find or cut a straight road to everything excellent in the earth, and
not only go honorably himself, but make it easier for all who follow him, to go
in honor and with benefit.

In the history of the world the doctrine of Reform had never such scope as at
the present hour. Lutherans, Hernhutters, Jesuits, Monks, Quakers, Knox, Wesley,
Swedenborg, Bentham, in their accusations of society, all respected something,
— church or state, literature or history, domestic usages, the market town, the
dinner table, coined money. But now all these and all things else hear the
trumpet, and must rush to judgment, — Christianity, the laws, commerce,
schools, the farm, the laboratory; and not a kingdom, town, statute, rite,
calling, man, or woman, but is threatened by the new spirit.

What if some of the objections whereby our institutions are assailed are
extreme and speculative, and the reformers tend to idealism; that only shows the
extravagance of the abuses which have driven the mind into the opposite extreme.
It is when your facts and persons grow unreal and fantastic by too much
falsehood, that the scholar flies for refuge to the world of ideas, and aims to
recruit and replenish nature from that source. Let ideas establish their
legitimate sway again in society, let life be fair and poetic, and the scholars
will gladly be lovers, citizens, and philanthropists.

It will afford no security from the new ideas, that the old nations, the laws
of centuries, the property and institutions of a hundred cities, are built on
other foundations. The demon of reform has a secret door into the heart of every
lawmaker, of every inhabitant of every city. The fact, that a new thought and
hope have dawned in your breast, should apprize you that in the same hour a new
light broke in upon a thousand private hearts. That secret which you would fain
keep, — as soon as you go abroad, lo! there is one standing on the doorstep, to
tell you the same. There is not the most bronzed and sharpened money-catcher,
who does not, to your consternation, almost, quail and shake the moment he hears
a question prompted by the new ideas. We thought he had some semblance of ground
to stand upon, that such as he at least would die hard; but he trembles and
flees. Then the scholar says, `Cities and coaches shall never impose on me
again; for, behold every solitary dream of mine is rushing to fulfilment. That
fancy I had, and hesitated to utter because you would laugh, — the broker, the
attorney, the market-man are saying the same thing. Had I waited a day longer to
speak, I had been too late. Behold, State Street thinks, and Wall Street doubts,
and begins to prophesy!'

It cannot be wondered at, that this general inquest into abuses should arise
in the bosom of society, when one considers the practical impediments that stand
in the way of virtuous young men. The young man, on entering life, finds the way
to lucrative employments blocked with abuses. The ways of trade are grown
selfish to the borders of theft, and supple to the borders (if not beyond the
borders) of fraud. The employments of commerce are not intrinsically unfit for a
man, or less genial to his faculties, but these are now in their general course
so vitiated by derelictions and abuses at which all connive, that it requires
more vigor and resources than can be expected of every young man, to right
himself in them; he is lost in them; he cannot move hand or foot in them. Has he
genius and virtue? the less does he find them fit for him to grow in, and if he
would thrive in them, he must sacrifice all the brilliant dreams of boyhood and
youth as dreams; he must forget the prayers of his childhood; and must take on
him the harness of routine and obsequiousness. If not so minded, nothing is left
him but to begin the world anew, as he does who puts the spade into the ground
for food. We are all implicated, of course, in this charge; it is only necessary
to ask a few questions as to the progress of the articles of commerce from the
fields where they grew, to our houses, to become aware that we eat and drink and
wear perjury and fraud in a hundred commodities. How many articles of daily
consumption are furnished us from the West Indies; yet it is said, that, in the
Spanish islands, the venality of the officers of the government has passed into
usage, and that no article passes into our ships which has not been fraudulently
cheapened. In the Spanish islands, every agent or factor of the Americans,
unless he be a consul, has taken oath that he is a Catholic, or has caused a
priest to make that declaration for him. The abolitionist has shown us our
dreadful debt to the southern negro. In the island of Cuba, in addition to the
ordinary abominations of slavery, it appears, only men are bought for the
plantations, and one dies in ten every year, of these miserable bachelors, to
yield us sugar. I leave for those who have the knowledge the part of sifting the
oaths of our custom-houses; I will not inquire into the oppression of the
sailors; I will not pry into the usages of our retail trade. I content myself
with the fact, that the general system of our trade, (apart from the blacker
traits, which, I hope, are exceptions denounced and unshared by all reputable
men,) is a system of selfishness; is not dictated by the high sentiments of
human nature; is not measured by the exact law of reciprocity; much less by the
sentiments of love and heroism, but is a system of distrust, of concealment, of
superior keenness, not of giving but of taking advantage. It is not that which a
man delights to unlock to a noble friend; which he meditates on with joy and
self-approval in his hour of love and aspiration; but rather what he then puts
out of sight, only showing the brilliant result, and atoning for the manner of
acquiring, by the manner of expending it. I do not charge the merchant or the
manufacturer. The sins of our trade belong to no class, to no individual. One
plucks, one distributes, one eats. Every body partakes, every body confesses,
–with cap and knee volunteers his confession, yet none feels himself
accountable. He did not create the abuse; he cannot alter it. What is he? an
obscure private person who must get his bread. That is the vice, — that no one
feels himself called to act for man, but only as a fraction of man. It happens
therefore that all such ingenuous souls as feel within themselves the
irrepressible strivings of a noble aim, who by the law of their nature must act
simply, find these ways of trade unfit for them, and they come forth from it.
Such cases are becoming more numerous every year.

But by coming out of trade you have not cleared yourself. The trail of the
serpent reaches into all the lucrative professions and practices of man. Each
has its own wrongs. Each finds a tender and very intelligent conscience a
disqualification for success. Each requires of the practitioner a certain
shutting of the eyes, a certain dapperness and compliance, an acceptance of
customs, a sequestration from the sentiments of generosity and love, a
compromise of private opinion and lofty integrity. Nay, the evil custom reaches
into the whole institution of property, until our laws which establish and
protect it, seem not to be the issue of love and reason, but of selfishness.
Suppose a man is so unhappy as to be born a saint, with keen perceptions, but
with the conscience and love of an angel, and he is to get his living in the
world; he finds himself excluded from all lucrative works; he has no farm, and
he cannot get one; for, to earn money enough to buy one, requires a sort of
concentration toward money, which is the selling himself for a number of years,
and to him the present hour is as sacred and inviolable as any future hour. Of
course, whilst another man has no land, my title to mine, your title to yours,
is at once vitiated. Inextricable seem to be the twinings and tendrils of this
evil, and we all involve ourselves in it the deeper by forming connections, by
wives and children, by benefits and debts.

Considerations of this kind have turned the attention of many philanthropic
and intelligent persons to the claims of manual labor, as a part of the
education of every young man. If the accumulated wealth of the past generations
is thus tainted, — no matter how much of it is offered to us, — we must begin
to consider if it were not the nobler part to renounce it, and to put ourselves
into primary relations with the soil and nature, and abstaining from whatever is
dishonest and unclean, to take each of us bravely his part, with his own hands,
in the manual labor of the world.

But it is said, `What! will you give up the immense advantages reaped from
the division of labor, and set every man to make his own shoes, bureau, knife,
wagon, sails, and needle? This would be to put men back into barbarism by their
own act.' I see no instant prospect of a virtuous revolution; yet I confess, I
should not be pained at a change which threatened a loss of some of the luxuries
or conveniences of society, if it proceeded from a preference of the
agricultural life out of the belief, that our primary duties as men could be
better discharged in that calling. Who could regret to see a high conscience and
a purer taste exercising a sensible effect on young men in their choice of
occupation, and thinning the ranks of competition in the labors of commerce, of
law, and of state? It is easy to see that the inconvenience would last but a
short time. This would be great action, which always opens the eyes of men. When
many persons shall have done this, when the majority shall admit the necessity
of reform in all these institutions, their abuses will be redressed, and the way
will be open again to the advantages which arise from the division of labor, and
a man may select the fittest employment for his peculiar talent again, without
compromise.

But quite apart from the emphasis which the times give to the doctrine, that
the manual labor of society ought to be shared among all the members, there are
reasons proper to every individual, why he should not be deprived of it. The use
of manual labor is one which never grows obsolete, and which is inapplicable to
no person. A man should have a farm or a mechanical craft for his culture. We
must have a basis for our higher accomplishments, our delicate entertainments of
poetry and philosophy, in the work of our hands. We must have an antagonism in
the tough world for all the variety of our spiritual faculties, or they will not
be born. Manual labor is the study of the external world. The advantage of
riches remains with him who procured them, not with the heir. When I go into my
garden with a spade, and dig a bed, I feel such an exhilaration and health, that
I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do
for me what I should have done with my own hands. But not only health, but
education is in the work. Is it possible that I who get indefinite quantities of
sugar, hominy, cotton, buckets, crockery ware, and letter paper, by simply
signing my name once in three months to a cheque in favor of John Smith and Co.
traders, get the fair share of exercise to my faculties by that act, which
nature intended for me in making all these far-fetched matters important to my
comfort? It is Smith himself, and his carriers, and dealers, and manufacturers,
it is the sailor, the hidedrogher, the butcher, the negro, the hunter, and the
planter, who have intercepted the sugar of the sugar, and the cotton of the
cotton. They have got the education, I only the commodity. This were all very
well if I were necessarily absent, being detained by work of my own, like
theirs, work of the same faculties; then should I be sure of my hands and feet,
but now I feel some shame before my wood-chopper, my ploughman, and my cook, for
they have some sort of self-sufficiency, they can contrive without my aid to
bring the day and year round, but I depend on them, and have not earned by use a
right to my arms and feet.

Consider further the difference between the first and second owner of
property. Every species of property is preyed on by its own enemies, as iron by
rust; timber by rot; cloth by moths; provisions by mould, putridity, or vermin;
money by thieves; an orchard by insects; a planted field by weeds and the inroad
of cattle; a stock of cattle by hunger; a road by rain and frost; a bridge by
freshets. And whoever takes any of these things into his possession, takes the
charge of defending them from this troop of enemies, or of keeping them in
repair. A man who supplies his own want, who builds a raft or a boat to go a
fishing, finds it easy to caulk it, or put in a thole-pin, or mend the rudder.
What he gets only as fast as he wants for his own ends, does not embarrass him,
or take away his sleep with looking after. But when he comes to give all the
goods he has year after year collected, in one estate to his son, house,
orchard, ploughed land, cattle, bridges, hardware, wooden-ware, carpets, cloths,
provisions, books, money, and cannot give him the skill and experience which
made or collected these, and the method and place they have in his own life, the
son finds his hands full, — not to use these things, — but to look after them
and defend them from their natural enemies. To him they are not means, but
masters. Their enemies will not remit; rust, mould, vermin, rain, sun, freshet,
fire, all seize their own, fill him with vexation, and he is converted from the
owner into a watchman or a watch-dog to this magazine of old and new chattels.
What a change! Instead of the masterly good humor, and sense of power, and
fertility of resource in himself; instead of those strong and learned hands,
those piercing and learned eyes, that supple body, and that mighty and
prevailing heart, which the father had, whom nature loved and feared, whom snow
and rain, water and land, beast and fish seemed all to know and to serve, we
have now a puny, protected person, guarded by walls and curtains, stoves and
down beds, coaches, and men-servants and women-servants from the earth and the
sky, and who, bred to depend on all these, is made anxious by all that endangers
those possessions, and is forced to spend so much time in guarding them, that he
has quite lost sight of their original use, namely, to help him to his ends, —
to the prosecution of his love; to the helping of his friend, to the worship of
his God, to the enlargement of his knowledge, to the serving of his country, to
the indulgence of his sentiment, and he is now what is called a rich man, — the
menial and runner of his riches.

Hence it happens that the whole interest of history lies in the fortunes of
the poor. Knowledge, Virtue, Power are the victories of man over his
necessities, his march to the dominion of the world. Every man ought to have
this opportunity to conquer the world for himself. Only such persons interest
us, Spartans, Romans, Saracens, English, Americans, who have stood in the jaws
of need, and have by their own wit and might extricated themselves, and made man
victorious.

I do not wish to overstate this doctrine of labor, or insist that every man
should be a farmer, any more than that every man should be a lexicographer. In
general, one may say, that the husbandman's is the oldest, and most universal
profession, and that where a man does not yet discover in himself any fitness
for one work more than another, this may be preferred. But the doctrine of the
Farm is merely this, that every man ought to stand in primary relations with the
work of the world, ought to do it himself, and not to suffer the accident of his
having a purse in his pocket, or his having been bred to some dishonorable and
injurious craft, to sever him from those duties; and for this reason, that labor
is God's education; that he only is a sincere learner, he only can become a
master, who learns the secrets of labor, and who by real cunning extorts from
nature its sceptre.

Neither would I shut my ears to the plea of the learned professions, of the
poet, the priest, the lawgiver, and men of study generally; namely, that in the
experience of all men of that class, the amount of manual labor which is
necessary to the maintenance of a family, indisposes and disqualifies for
intellectual exertion. I know, it often, perhaps usually, happens, that where
there is a fine organization apt for poetry and philosophy, that individual
finds himself compelled to wait on his thoughts, to waste several days that he
may enhance and glorify one; and is better taught by a moderate and dainty
exercise, such as rambling in the fields, rowing, skating, hunting, than by the
downright drudgery of the farmer and the smith. I would not quite forget the
venerable counsel of the Egyptian mysteries, which declared that "there were two
pairs of eyes in man, and it is requisite that the pair which are beneath should
be closed, when the pair that are above them perceive, and that when the pair
above are closed, those which are beneath should be opened." Yet I will suggest
that no separation from labor can be without some loss of power and of truth to
the seer himself; that, I doubt not, the faults and vices of our literature and
philosophy, their too great fineness, effeminacy, and melancholy, are
attributable to the enervated and sickly habits of the literary class. Better
that the book should not be quite so good, and the bookmaker abler and better,
and not himself often a ludicrous contrast to all that he has written.

But granting that for ends so sacred and dear, some relaxation must be had, I
think, that if a man find in himself any strong bias to poetry, to art, to the
contemplative life, drawing him to these things with a devotion incompatible
with good husbandry, that man ought to reckon early with himself, and,
respecting the compensations of the Universe, ought to ransom himself from the
duties of economy, by a certain rigor and privation in his habits. For
privileges so rare and grand, let him not stint to pay a great tax. Let him be a
caenobite, a pauper, and if need be, celibate also. Let him learn to eat his
meals standing, and to relish the taste of fair water and black bread. He may
leave to others the costly conveniences of housekeeping, and large hospitality,
and the possession of works of art. Let him feel that genius is a hospitality,
and that he who can create works of art needs not collect them. He must live in
a chamber, and postpone his self-indulgence, forewarned and forearmed against
that frequent misfortune of men of genius, — the taste for luxury. This is the
tragedy of genius, — attempting to drive along the ecliptic with one horse of
the heavens and one horse of the earth, there is only discord and ruin and
downfall to chariot and charioteer.

The duty that every man should assume his own vows, should call the
institutions of society to account, and examine their fitness to him, gains in
emphasis, if we look at our modes of living. Is our housekeeping sacred and
honorable? Does it raise and inspire us, or does it cripple us instead? I ought
to be armed by every part and function of my household, by all my social
function, by my economy, by my feasting, by my voting, by my traffic. Yet I am
almost no party to any of these things. Custom does it for me, gives me no power
therefrom, and runs me in debt to boot. We spend our incomes for paint and
paper, for a hundred trifles, I know not what, and not for the things of a man.
Our expense is almost all for conformity. It is for cake that we run in debt; 't
is not the intellect, not the heart, not beauty, not worship, that costs so
much. Why needs any man be rich? Why must he have horses, fine garments,
handsome apartments, access to public houses, and places of amusement? Only for
want of thought. Give his mind a new image, and he flees into a solitary garden
or garret to enjoy it, and is richer with that dream, than the fee of a county
could make him. But we are first thoughtless, and then find that we are
moneyless. We are first sensual, and then must be rich. We dare not trust our
wit for making our house pleasant to our friend, and so we buy ice-creams. He is
accustomed to carpets, and we have not sufficient character to put floor-cloths
out of his mind whilst he stays in the house, and so we pile the floor with
carpets. Let the house rather be a temple of the Furies of Lacedaemon,
formidable and holy to all, which none but a Spartan may enter or so much as
behold. As soon as there is faith, as soon as there is society, comfits and
cushions will be left to slaves. Expense will be inventive and heroic. We shall
eat hard and lie hard, we shall dwell like the ancient Romans in narrow
tenements, whilst our public edifices, like theirs, will be worthy for their
proportion of the landscape in which we set them, for conversation, for art, for
music, for worship. We shall be rich to great purposes; poor only for selfish
ones.

Now what help for these evils? How can the man who has learned but one art,
procure all the conveniences of life honestly? Shall we say all we think? —
Perhaps with his own hands. Suppose he collects or makes them ill; — yet he has
learned their lesson. If he cannot do that. — Then perhaps he can go without.
Immense wisdom and riches are in that. It is better to go without, than to have
them at too great a cost. Let us learn the meaning of economy. Economy is a
high, humane office, a sacrament, when its aim is grand; when it is the prudence
of simple tastes, when it is practised for freedom, or love, or devotion. Much
of the economy which we see in houses, is of a base origin, and is best kept out
of sight. Parched corn eaten to-day that I may have roast fowl to my dinner on
Sunday, is a baseness; but parched corn and a house with one apartment, that I
may be free of all perturbations, that I may be serene and docile to what the
mind shall speak, and girt and road-ready for the lowest mission of knowledge or
goodwill, is frugality for gods and heroes.

Can we not learn the lesson of self-help? Society is full of infirm people,
who incessantly summon others to serve them. They contrive everywhere to exhaust
for their single comfort the entire means and appliances of that luxury to which
our invention has yet attained. Sofas, ottomans, stoves, wine, game-fowl,
spices, perfumes, rides, the theatre, entertainments, — all these they want,
they need, and whatever can be suggested more than these, they crave also, as if
it was the bread which should keep them from starving; and if they miss any one,
they represent themselves as the most wronged and most wretched persons on
earth. One must have been born and bred with them to know how to prepare a meal
for their learned stomach. Meantime, they never bestir themselves to serve
another person; not they! they have a great deal more to do for themselves than
they can possibly perform, nor do they once perceive the cruel joke of their
lives, but the more odious they grow, the sharper is the tone of their
complaining and craving. Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants and to
serve them one's self, so as to have somewhat left to give, instead of being
always prompt to grab? It is more elegant to answer one's own needs, than to be
richly served; inelegant perhaps it may look to-day, and to a few, but it is an
elegance forever and to all.

I do not wish to be absurd and pedantic in reform. I do not wish to push my
criticism on the state of things around me to that extravagant mark, that shall
compel me to suicide, or to an absolute isolation from the advantages of civil
society. If we suddenly plant our foot, and say, — I will neither eat nor drink
nor wear nor touch any food or fabric which I do not know to be innocent, or
deal with any person whose whole manner of life is not clear and rational, we
shall stand still. Whose is so? Not mine; not thine; not his. But I think we
must clear ourselves each one by the interrogation, whether we have earned our
bread to-day by the hearty contribution of our energies to the common benefit?
and we must not cease to _tend_ to the correction of these flagrant wrongs, by
laying one stone aright every day.

But the idea which now begins to agitate society has a wider scope than our
daily employments, our households, and the institutions of property. We are to
revise the whole of our social structure, the state, the school, religion,
marriage, trade, science, and explore their foundations in our own nature; we
are to see that the world not only fitted the former men, but fits us, and to
clear ourselves of every usage which has not its roots in our own mind. What is
a man born for but to be a Reformer, a Remaker of what man has made; a renouncer
of lies; a restorer of truth and good, imitating that great Nature which
embosoms us all, and which sleeps no moment on an old past, but every hour
repairs herself, yielding us every morning a new day, and with every pulsation a
new life? Let him renounce everything which is not true to him, and put all his
practices back on their first thoughts, and do nothing for which he has not the
whole world for his reason. If there are inconveniences, and what is called ruin
in the way, because we have so enervated and maimed ourselves, yet it would be
like dying of perfumes to sink in the effort to reattach the deeds of every day
to the holy and mysterious recesses of life.

The power, which is at once spring and regulator in all efforts of reform, is
the conviction that there is an infinite worthiness in man which will appear at
the call of worth, and that all particular reforms are the removing of some
impediment. Is it not the highest duty that man should be honored in us? I ought
not to allow any man, because he has broad lands, to feel that he is rich in my
presence. I ought to make him feel that I can do without his riches, that I
cannot be bought, — neither by comfort, neither by pride, — and though I be
utterly penniless, and receiving bread from him, that he is the poor man beside
me. And if, at the same time, a woman or a child discovers a sentiment of piety,
or a juster way of thinking than mine, I ought to confess it by my respect and
obedience, though it go to alter my whole way of life.

The Americans have many virtues, but they have not Faith and Hope. I know no
two words whose meaning is more lost sight of. We use these words as if they
were as obsolete as Selah and Amen. And yet they have the broadest meaning, and
the most cogent application to Boston in 1841. The Americans have no faith. They
rely on the power of a dollar; they are deaf to a sentiment. They think you may
talk the north wind down as easily as raise society; and no class more faithless
than the scholars or intellectual men. Now if I talk with a sincere wise man,
and my friend, with a poet, with a conscientious youth who is still under the
dominion of his own wild thoughts, and not yet harnessed in the team of society
to drag with us all in the ruts of custom, I see at once how paltry is all this
generation of unbelievers, and what a house of cards their institutions are, and
I see what one brave man, what one great thought executed might effect. I see
that the reason of the distrust of the practical man in all theory, is his
inability to perceive the means whereby we work. Look, he says, at the tools
with which this world of yours is to be built. As we cannot make a planet, with
atmosphere, rivers, and forests, by means of the best carpenters' or engineers'
tools, with chemist's laboratory and smith's forge to boot, — so neither can we
ever construct that heavenly society you prate of, out of foolish, sick, selfish
men and women, such as we know them to be. But the believer not only beholds his
heaven to be possible, but already to begin to exist, — not by the men or
materials the statesman uses, but by men transfigured and raised above
themselves by the power of principles. To principles something else is possible
that transcends all the power of expedients.

Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world is the triumph
of some enthusiasm. The victories of the Arabs after Mahomet, who, in a few
years, from a small and mean beginning, established a larger empire than that of
Rome, is an example. They did they knew not what. The naked Derar, horsed on an
idea, was found an overmatch for a troop of Roman cavalry. The women fought like
men, and conquered the Roman men. They were miserably equipped, miserably fed.
They were Temperance troops. There was neither brandy nor flesh needed to feed
them. They conquered Asia, and Africa, and Spain, on barley. The Caliph Omar's
walking stick struck more terror into those who saw it, than another man's
sword. His diet was barley bread; his sauce was salt; and oftentimes by way of
abstinence he ate his bread without salt. His drink was water. His palace was
built of mud; and when he left Medina to go to the conquest of Jerusalem, he
rode on a red camel, with a wooden platter hanging at his saddle, with a bottle
of water and two sacks, one holding barley, and the other dried fruits.

But there will dawn ere long on our politics, on our modes of living, a
nobler morning than that Arabian faith, in the sentiment of love. This is the
one remedy for all ills, the panacea of nature. We must be lovers, and at once
the impossible becomes possible. Our age and history, for these thousand years,
has not been the history of kindness, but of selfishness. Our distrust is very
expensive. The money we spend for courts and prisons is very ill laid out. We
make, by distrust, the thief, and burglar, and incendiary, and by our court and
jail we keep him so. An acceptance of the sentiment of love throughout
Christendom for a season, would bring the felon and the outcast to our side in
tears, with the devotion of his faculties to our service. See this wide society
of laboring men and women. We allow ourselves to be served by them, we live
apart from them, and meet them without a salute in the streets. We do not greet
their talents, nor rejoice in their good fortune, nor foster their hopes, nor in
the assembly of the people vote for what is dear to them. Thus we enact the part
of the selfish noble and king from the foundation of the world. See, this tree
always bears one fruit. In every household, the peace of a pair is poisoned by
the malice, slyness, indolence, and alienation of domestics. Let any two matrons
meet, and observe how soon their conversation turns on the troubles from their
"_help_," as our phrase is. In every knot of laborers, the rich man does not
feel himself among his friends, — and at the polls he finds them arrayed in a
mass in distinct opposition to him. We complain that the politics of masses of
the people are controlled by designing men, and led in opposition to manifest
justice and the common weal, and to their own interest. But the people do not
wish to be represented or ruled by the ignorant and base. They only vote for
these, because they were asked with the voice and semblance of kindness. They
will not vote for them long. They inevitably prefer wit and probity. To use an
Egyptian metaphor, it is not their will for any long time "to raise the nails of
wild beasts, and to depress the heads of the sacred birds." Let our affection
flow out to our fellows; it would operate in a day the greatest of all
revolutions. It is better to work on institutions by the sun than by the wind.
The state must consider the poor man, and all voices must speak for him. Every
child that is born must have a just chance for his bread. Let the amelioration
in our laws of property proceed from the concession of the rich, not from the
grasping of the poor. Let us begin by habitual imparting. Let us understand that
the equitable rule is, that no one should take more than his share, let him be
ever so rich. Let me feel that I am to be a lover. I am to see to it that the
world is the better for me, and to find my reward in the act. Love would put a
new face on this weary old world in which we dwell as pagans and enemies too
long, and it would warm the heart to see how fast the vain diplomacy of
statesmen, the impotence of armies, and navies, and lines of defence, would be
superseded by this unarmed child. Love will creep where it cannot go, will
accomplish that by imperceptible methods, — being its own lever, fulcrum, and
power, — which force could never achieve. Have you not seen in the woods, in a
late autumn morning, a poor fungus or mushroom, — a plant without any solidity,
nay, that seemed nothing but a soft mush or jelly, — by its constant, total,
and inconceivably gentle pushing, manage to break its way up through the frosty
ground, and actually to lift a hard crust on its head? It is the symbol of the
power of kindness. The virtue of this principle in human society in application
to great interests is obsolete and forgotten. Once or twice in history it has
been tried in illustrious instances, with signal success. This great, overgrown,
dead Christendom of ours still keeps alive at least the name of a lover of
mankind. But one day all men will be lovers; and every calamity will be
dissolved in the universal sunshine.

Will you suffer me to add one trait more to this portrait of man the
reformer? The mediator between the spiritual and the actual world should have a
great prospective prudence. An Arabian poet describes his hero by saying,

"Sunshine was he
In the winter day;
And in the midsummer
Coolness
and shade."

He who would help himself and others, should not be a subject of irregular
and interrupted impulses of virtue, but a continent, persisting, immovable
person, — such as we have seen a few scattered up and down in time for the
blessing of the world; men who have in the gravity of their nature a quality
which answers to the fly-wheel in a mill, which distributes the motion equably
over all the wheels, and hinders it from falling unequally and suddenly in
destructive shocks. It is better that joy should be spread over all the day in
the form of strength, than that it should be concentrated into ecstasies, full
of danger and followed by reactions. There is a sublime prudence, which is the
very highest that we know of man, which, believing in a vast future, — sure of
more to come than is yet seen, — postpones always the present hour to the whole
life; postpones talent to genius, and special results to character. As the
merchant gladly takes money from his income to add to his capital, so is the
great man very willing to lose particular powers and talents, so that he gain in
the elevation of his life. The opening of the spiritual senses disposes men ever
to greater sacrifices, to leave their signal talents, their best means and skill
of procuring a present success, their power and their fame, — to cast all
things behind, in the insatiable thirst for divine communications. A purer fame,
a greater power rewards the sacrifice. It is the conversion of our harvest into
seed. As the farmer casts into the ground the finest ears of his grain, the time
will come when we too shall hold nothing back, but shall eagerly convert more
than we now possess into means and powers, when we shall be willing to sow the
sun and the moon for seeds.