I have fancied some disembodied human soul giving its verdict.)
NATURE AND DEMOCRACY--MORALITY
Democracy most of all affiliates with the open air, is sunny and
hardy and sane only with Nature--just as much as Art is. Something is
required to temper both--to check them, restrain them from excess,
morbidity. I have wanted, before departure, to bear special testimony
to a very old lesson and requisite. American Democracy, in its myriad
personalities, in factories, work-shops, stores, offices--through
the dense streets and houses of cities, and all their manifold
sophisticated life--must either be fibred, vitalized, by regular
contact with out-door light and air and growths, farm-scenes, animals,
fields, trees, birds, sun-warmth and free skies, or it will certainly
dwindle and pale. We cannot have grand races of mechanics, work
people, and commonalty, (the only specific purpose of America,) on
any less terms. I conceive of no flourishing and heroic elements of
Democracy in the United States, or of Democracy maintaining itself
at all, without the Nature-element forming a main part--to be its
health-element and beauty-element--to really underlie the whole
politics, sanity, religion and art of the New World.
Finally, the morality: "Virtue," said Marcus Aurelius, "what is it,
only a living and enthusiastic sympathy with Nature?" Perhaps indeed
the efforts of the true poets, founders, religions, literatures,
all ages, have been, and ever will be, our time and times to come,
essentially the same--to bring people back from their persistent
strayings and sickly abstractions, to the costless average, divine,
original concrete.
Pages:
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341