Lectures and Miscellanies

Thus the Democratic idea, in affirming the peo- ple's sovereignty, does in effect reduce government into a mere public ministry or service. It utterly explodes the old conceptions of government, as having an authority derived from some other source than the people. It is only while imper- fectly evolved as in this country, in which not the whole people, but an ill-defined majority, rules, that it tolerates institutions which exhibit some faint remnant of authority. Oar institutions do not, as yet, by any means, perfectly incorporate the Democratic idea. They exhibit a far more ad- vanced development of it than has been attained anywhere else, but still fall very far short of giving it perfect expression. The great advantage, as it appears to me, which our position claims, is this : that we publicly recognise the worth of the Demo- cratic idea, and stand committed by our past his- tory, and our present tendencies, to allow it a com- plete evolution. It cannot be doubted by any attentive observer of our national and state legis- lation, that the tendency among us, from the be- ginning, has been to curtail the force of govern- ment, to reduce its legislative branches into a complete docility to the popular will, and make the executive branch more and more purely execu- tive. And if this be undeniable, if such be the continual operation of the Democratic idea, you will readily admit that its tendency is to destroy

The principle of Democracy, which legitimates this result, is enthroned in our polity, and what is more, vivifies the newest affections and thoughts of all people. It is not a conventionality of man. It is an actual tendency of the Divine Providence, 1* 10 DEMOCRACY AND ITS ISSUES. felt all along the progress of human history, and marching now in open day to a complete and tri- umphant evolution. Happy are they, therefore, who no longer think of resisting or impeding it. But, above all, happy are they who betimes joyfully accept it with all the merely political changes it in- duces, believing that the paternal Wisdom, whose instrument it is, designs only good and no evil from it, and that in lieu of every edifice removed. He will build up another so glorious that the former will never again come into mind.

I do not want of course to insist against your will, against the habits of your intelligence, upon the application of this typicality of John the Baptist to the function of Democracy. But I will insist that they who regard John and his water "baptism, or doctrine of repentance from evil-doing, as a suitable forerunner to Jesus, and his baptism of the Holy Ghost, or doctrine of God's living pre- sence and power in every man saint and sinner alike, can not reasonably demur at my assigning to the purely disorganizing agencies of Democracy so beneficent an influence upon human destiny. As Jesus needed no other preparation for his reception than the repentance which John preached, or the ceasing to do evil, so the fullest evolution of human destiny, the utmost blessedness the heart of man can desire, needs for its realization nothing more than that very work which Democracy is now per- forming, namely, the undoing of old and restrictive legislation, the breaking up the foundations of an- cient privilege, the removing of every obstacle to the exact public equality of man with man.

Remove, then, the existing bondage of human- ity, remove those factitious restraints which keep appetite and passion on the perpetual look out for escape, like steam from an overcharged boiler, and their force would instantly become conservative instead of destructive. For man is destined by the very necessity of his creation, for nothing but the obedience of his inward and divine self-hood, for the obedience of God within him. Even while he is utterly unconscious of his true or inmost self- hood, the aim of his whole existence, the end of all his struggle and toil is to realize it, and when it does dawn upon him, it sheds a complete calm upon the turbid sea of his outward relations. The effect is irresistible. You cannot arouse a man to self-respect, to a sense of his proper hu- manity, to a consciousness of the divinity which constitutes his being, without rendering him supe- DEMOCRACY AND ITS ISSUES. 49

feet or infinite life. When you investigate or compare with your intelligence a flower, a horse^ an eagle, or any fact whatever of nature, you per- ceive that it is not self-centred, that its end or object does not lie within itself, that it is therefore destitute of any inward selfhood or individuality, and confesses itself a merely relative existence, contingent upon the coexistence of other things. You will perceive that the flower, the horse, or whatsoever the thing may be, has no deeper life than that of its nature, is an unmixed subject of its nature, and has no inward or ideal selfhood ca- pable of restraining and controlling its natural one. It is this superficiality of nature, this destitution of an inward individuality, characterizing all her offspring, which places them at an infinite remove from man, and forbids us accordingly to conceive of them as adequate forms or subjects of the supreme life. The only adequate form or subject of that life is the human, because its goodness being self-involved, that is, proceeding from a self- hood within and superior to the natural one, is absolute and unconditioned upon circumstances. It is this distinction or supremacy of the human form, which justifies us in saying that the highest goodness and wisdom are not conceivable in any other form. In short it is the inseparable alliance between the human form and the highest con- ceivable goodness which constrains us always to

The reason why man is .obliged to subdue the earth to himself, the reason why God cannot confer sovereignty by word of mouth or other mechanical 64 PEOPERTY AS A SYMBOL. metlaod, is, that all true sovereignty is inwardly generated. It is never imposed lapon a person from without by the deed of another, but grows up from within, is a sovereignty of genius. It is never mechanical, but always rational, proceeding from an exact ratio or adaptation between superior and inferior. Besides, God is a spirit without any finite natural continent or body, and He cannot therefore communicate any gift to man in an out- ward way, but only in an inward way, or through the man himself. In short the conditio sine qua non of His doing anything for man, is the endowment of man's selfhood, the imparting to him a self- hood which shall be exactly proportionate to His own, which shall be instinct with all power.

reproduced in nature, until they become fixed or embodied in act. We know nothing in respect either to the nature or the intensity of our passions until they become developed in action. No one knows the sentiment and life of Love in his own bosom by intuition, but only as some outward occasion arises for its exhibition. No one knows the force of the parental sentiment, save as it is called into consciousness by intercourse with his children. Nor does any one know the reach and subtilty of his intellect, until some outward strug- gle of truth and error has evoked the evidence. And all this for a very good reason, namely, that power, no matter of what sort, has no passive existence, has no existence apart from performance. Power in other words is purely active. It is never power save in producing. You may say for ex- ample, that A has greatly more powerful passions that B. But in making this judgment you do not mean to intimate that A has a greater material bulk of passion than B, but only that his passions are more influential upon his action. The measure of a passion's intensity is the control it exerts upon action. His passions are the most potent who is most impelled to action by them. Power is by no means contingent upon bulk. In fact it is impaired by it. Daniel Lambert added six hundred pounds to the avoirdupois of ordinary humanity. Daniel was not therefore six hundred times more a man.

The answer is plain. Men are ashamed of the respect they pay it. Property cannot be a final fact of history, cannot be a good in itself, cannot be a divine end in humanity, because every man in proportion to his inward culture, in proportion to his genius, is ashamed of the deference he pays it. He feels this deference to be a mere trick of his servile and scullion nature, and inwardly or individually renounces it every time it recurs. The fact is that it is only among the lowest persons intellectually, persons in whom the sensuous imagination predominates, that you find any open profession of respect for it left. Among slaves, in fact among negroes as a class, and among the retainers of great families, in short among all per- sons in whom self-respect has never been developed or fostered, it still exerts an unrebuked dominion. But there it stops. No man of refinement allows it any indulgence.

eousness consists with — I am very far indeed from saying that it is generally accompanied by — a heart of impenetrable hardness, an intellect of the utmost tenuity, and a life of complete selfishness. I have known distinguished fathers and mothers in our Christian Israel whose presence was like mildew upon flowers, and who sent you away with the feeling of having been defrauded of half your vital electricity. They were fathers that begot nothing but their own vapid arrogance, and mo- thers that suckled nothing more tender than their own strapping self-conceit. For there is nothing humanizing — nothing elevating — in personal devo- tion, after you reach a certain stage of culture in the race. It is well for me when my will is purely sensual or devilish — when it insists upon over- riding everything to compass a momentary grati- fication— when in short I am an infant in culture and manifest the disposition of an infant — then it is well for me to obey the will of a superior. Devotion then is both profitable and honorable. And in the earliest periods of human history accordingly we see it most abounding.

out to us, and which has so long furnished the staple spiritual commodity of the old theologj. But I vehemently discredit the prospect of any positive good. Man's true good never comes from without him, but only from the depths of divinity within him, and whatever tends to divert his atten- tion from this truth, and fix it on Mahommedan paradises, and salvation through electricity, claims his most vindictive anathema. Above all, a spirit- ual life which feels itself depleted by the diligent prosecution of the natural one, which is actually interested to invade the latter, and persuade good sound flesh and blood to barter its savory cakes and ale for trite and faded sentimentalities, is a life which every reasonable person may safely scout as unworthy his aspiration.