oners might enjoy during the term of their
imprisonment. The prisoners could, of course, think and talk much as
they pleased, but there was nobody but themselves to hear; and in the
absence both of an adequate material, discipline, and audience, both the
words and thoughts were without avail. The truth is, of course, that
intellectual individuality and independence were sacrificed for the
benefit of social homogeneity and the quickest possible development of
American economic opportunities; and in this way a vital relation has
been established for Americans between the assertion of intellectual
independence or moral individuality and the adoption of a nationalized
economic and political system.

During the Middle Period American individual intelligence did, indeed,
struggle gallantly to attain freedom. The intellectual ferment at that
time was more active and more general than it is to-day. During the
three decades before the war, a remarkable outbreak of heresy occurred
all over the East and middle West. Every convention of American life was
questioned, except those unconscious conventions of feeling and thought
which pervaded the intellectual and moral atmosphere. The Abolitionist
agitation was the one practical political result of this ferment, but
many of these free-thinkers wished to emancipate the whites as well as
the blacks. They fearlessly challenged substantially all the established
institutions of society. The institutions of marriage and the state
fared frequently as ill as did property and the church. Radical,
however, as they were in thought, they were by no means revolutionary in
action. The several brands of heresy differed too completely one from
another to be melted into a single political agitation and programme.
The need for action spent itself in the formation of socialistic
communities of the most varied kind, the great majority of which were
soon either disbanded or transformed. But whatever its limitations the
ferment was symptomatic of a genuine revolt of the American spirit
against the oppressive servitude of the individual intelligence to the
social will, demanded by the popular democratic system and tradition.

The revolt, however, with all the sincere enthusiasm it inspired, was
condemned to sterility. It accomplished nothing and could accomplish
nothing for society, because it sought by individual or unofficial
associated action results which demanded official collective action; and
it acc