o two
or ten or twenty, he dwarfs himself below the stature of one.

But the men of less faith could not thus believe, and to such, concert
appears the sole specific of strength. I have failed, and you have
failed, but perhaps together we shall not fail. Our housekeeping is not
satisfactory to us, but perhaps a phalanx, a community, might be. Many
of us have differed in opinion, and we could find no man who could make
the truth plain, but possibly a college, or an ecclesiastical council
might. I have not been able either to persuade my brother or to prevail
on myself, to disuse the traffic or the potation of brandy, but
perhaps a pledge of total abstinence might effectually restrain us. The
candidate my party votes for is not to be trusted with a dollar, but he
will be honest in the Senate, for we can bring public opinion to bear on
him. Thus concert was the specific in all cases. But concert is neither
better nor worse, neither more nor less potent than individual force.
All the men in the world cannot make a statue walk and speak, cannot
make a drop of blood, or a blade of grass, any more than one man can.
But let there be one man, let there be truth in two men, in ten men,
then is concert for the first time possible; because the force which
moves the world is a new quality, and can never be furnished by adding
whatever quantities of a different kind. What is the use of the concert
of the false and the disunited? There can be no concert in two, where
there is no concert in one. When the individual is not individual, but
is dual; when his thoughts look one way and his actions another; when
his faith is traversed by his habits; when his will, enlightened by
reason, is warped by his sense; when with one hand he rows and with the
other backs water, what concert can be?

I do not wonder at the interest these projects inspire. The world is
awaking to the idea of union, and these experiments show what it is
thinking of. It is and will be magic. Men will live and communicate, and
plough, and reap, and govern, as by added ethereal power, when once they
are united; as in a celebrated experiment, by expiration and respiration
exactly together, four persons lift a heavy man from the ground by the
little finger only, and without sense of weight. But this union must be
inward, and not one of covenants, and is to be reached by a reverse of
the methods they use. The union is only perfect when all the uniters are
isolated. It is the