And now, in the full conception of these facts and points, and all
that they infer, pro and con--with yet unshaken faith in the elements
of the American masses, the composites, of both sexes, and even
consider'd as individuals--and ever recognizing in them the broadest
bases of the best literary and esthetic appreciation--I proceed with
my speculations, Vistas.
First, let us see what we can make out of a brief, general,
sentimental consideration of political democracy, and whence it has
arisen, with regard to some of its current features, as an aggregate,
and as the basic structure of our future literature and authorship.
We shall, it is true, quickly and continually find the origin-idea of
the singleness of man, individualism, asserting itself, and cropping
forth, even from the opposite ideas. But the mass, or lump character,
for imperative reasons, is to be ever carefully weigh'd, borne in
mind, and provided for. Only from it, and from its proper regulation
and potency, comes the other, comes the chance of individualism. The
two are contradictory, but our task is to reconcile them.[23]
The political history of the past may be summ'd up as having grown out
of what underlies the words, order, safety, caste, and especially out
of the need of some prompt deciding authority, and of cohesion at all
cost. Leaping time, we come to the period within the memory of people
now living, when, as from some lair where they had slumber'd long,
accumulating wrath, sprang up and are yet active, (1790, and on
eyen to the present, 1870,) those noisy eructations, destructive
iconoclasms, a fierce sense of wrongs, amid which moves the form, well
known in modern history, in the old world, stain'd with much blood,
and mark'd by savage reactionary clamors and demands.
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