This idea of perfect individualism it is indeed that
deepest tinges and gives character to the idea of the aggregate. For it
is mainly or altogether to serve independent separatism that we favor
a strong generalization, consolidation. As it is to give the best
vitality and freedom to the rights of the States, (every bit as
important as the right of nationality, the union,) that we insist on
the identity of the Union at all hazards.
The purpose of democracy--supplanting old belief in the necessary
absoluteness of establish'd dynastic rulership, temporal,
ecclesiastical, and scholastic, as furnishing the only security
against chaos, crime, and ignorance--is, through many transmigrations,
and amid endless ridicules, arguments, and ostensible failures, to
illustrate, at all hazards, this doctrine or theory that man, properly
train'd in sanest, highest freedom, may and must become a law, and
series of laws, unto himself, surrounding and providing for, not only
his own personal control, but all his relations to other individuals,
and to the State; and that, while other theories, as in the past
histories of nations, have proved wise enough, and indispensable
perhaps for their conditions, _this,_ as matters now stand in our
civilized world, is the only scheme worth working from, as warranting
results like those of Nature's laws, reliable, when once establish'd,
to carry on themselves.
The argument of the matter is extensive, and, we admit, by no means
all on one side.
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