Disgusted with the vulgarity of a commercial aristocracy, they
become radicals; disgusted with the materialistic working of
"rational" religion, they become mystics. They quarrel with
all that is, because it is not spiritual enough. They would,
perhaps, be patient if they thought this the mere sensuality
of childhood in our nation, which it might outgrow; but they
think that they see the evil widening, deepening,--not only
debasing the life, but corrupting the thought, of our people,
and they feel that if they know not well what should be done,
yet that the duty of every good man is to utter a protest
against what is done amiss.
'Is this protest undiscriminating? are these opinions crude?
do these proceedings threaten to sap the bulwarks on which men
at present depend? I confess it all, yet I see in these men
promise of a better wisdom than in their opponents. Their hope
for man is grounded on his destiny as an immortal soul, and
not as a mere comfort-loving inhabitant of earth, or as a
subscriber to the social contract. It was not meant that the
soul should cultivate the earth, but that the earth should
educate and maintain the soul.
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