our
Democracy of that over-faith in public opinion which tends to become a
species of religion of which the Majority is the prophet. John Stuart
Mill has emphasized his conviction that the boldest individuality is of
the utmost importance to social well-being, and has urged its direct
encouragement as peculiarly the duty of the present time. Herbert
Spencer has written most eloquent warnings on the danger of perverting
certain generalizations upon society into a law for the private citizen.
He has declared that the wise man will regard the truth that is in him
not as adventitious, not as something that may be made subordinate to
the calculations of policy, but as the supreme authority to which all
his actions should bend. He has shown us that the most useful citizens
play their appointed part in the world by endeavoring to get embodied in
fact their present idealisms: knowing that if they can get done the
things aimed at, well; if not, well also, though not so well. Now our
complaint is, that Dr. Ray generalizes upon the limited class of facts
which has come under his professional observation. There may be a feeble
folk who have gone mad over Mr. Phillips's speeches or Mrs. Dall's
lectures. This is not the place to discuss the methods or ends of either
of these conspicuous persons. But shall we make nothing of the possible
numbers of young men, plunging headlong at the prizes of society after
the manner which Dr. Ray so intelligently deprecates, who have waked to
a new standard of success by seeing one with talents which could gain
their coveted distinctions passing them by to pursue, in uncompromising
honesty of conviction, his solitary way? Shall we not consider the
city-bred girls, confined in circles where the vulgar glitter of wealth
was mitigated only by the feeblest dilettanteism,--spirited young women,
falling into a morbid condition, whose pitiableness Dr. Ray has well
illustrated,--who have yet been strengthened to possess their souls in
health and steadiness by a voice without pleading in their behalf the
right to choose their own work and command their own lives? When we are
warned against those who come to regard it "as a sacred duty to
vindicate the claims of abstract benevolence at all hazards, even though
it lead through seas of blood and fire," our adviser is either basing
his counsel upon the very flattest truism, or else intends to indorse a
popular cry against men who claim to have founded their convic