union of friends who live in different streets or
towns. Each man, if he attempts to join himself to others, is on all
sides cramped and diminished of his proportion; and the stricter the
union the smaller and the more pitiful he is. But leave him alone, to
recognize in every hour and place the secret soul; he will go up and
down doing the works of a true member, and, to the astonishment of all,
the work will be done with concert, though no man spoke. Government will
be adamantine without any governor. The union must be ideal in actual
individualism.

I pass to the indication in some particulars of that faith in man, which
the heart is preaching to us in these days, and which engages the more
regard, from the consideration that the speculations of one generation
are the history of the next following.

In alluding just now to our system of education, I spoke of the deadness
of its details. But it is open to graver criticism than the palsy of
its members: it is a system of despair. The disease with which the
human mind now labors is want of faith. Men do not believe in a power of
education. We do not think we can speak to divine sentiments in man, and
we do not try. We renounce all high aims. We believe that the defects of
so many perverse and so many frivolous people who make up society, are
organic, and society is a hospital of incurables. A man of good sense
but of little faith, whose compassion seemed to lead him to church as
often as he went there, said to me that "he liked to have concerts, and
fairs, and churches, and other public amusements go on." I am afraid the
remark is too honest, and comes from the same origin as the maxim of the
tyrant, "If you would rule the world quietly, you must keep it amused."
I notice too that the ground on which eminent public servants urge the
claims of popular education is fear; 'This country is filling up with
thousands and millions of voters, and you must educate them to keep them
from our throats.' We do not believe that any education, any system of
philosophy, any influence of genius, will ever give depth of insight to
a superficial mind. Having settled ourselves into this infidelity, our
skill is expended to procure alleviations, diversion, opiates. We adorn
the victim with manual skill, his tongue with languages, his body with
inoffensive and comely manners. So have we cunningly hid the tragedy of
limitation and inner death we cannot avert. Is it strange that society
should