Far, far, indeed, stretch, in distance, our Vistas!
How much is still to be disentangled, freed! How long it takes to make
this American world see that it is, in itself, the final authority and
reliance!
Did you, too, O friend, suppose democracy was only for elections, for
politics, and for a party name? I say democracy is only of use there
that it may pass on and come to its flower and fruits in manners, in
the highest forms of interaction between men, and their beliefs--in
religion, literature, colleges, and schools--democracy in all public
and private life, and in the army and navy.[26] I have intimated
that, as a paramount scheme, it has yet few or no full realizers and
believers. I do not see, either, that it owes any serious thanks to
noted propagandists or champions, or has been essentially help'd,
though often harm'd, by them. It has been and is carried on by all the
moral forces, and by trade, finance, machinery, intercommunications,
and, in fact, by all the developments of history, and can no more be
stopp'd than the tides, or the earth in its orbit. Doubtless, also, it
resides, crude and latent, well down in the hearts of the fair average
of the American-born people, mainly in the agricultural regions. But
it is not yet, there or anywhere, the fully-receiv'd, the fervid, the
absolute faith.
I submit, therefore, that the fruition of democracy, on aught like a
grand scale, resides altogether in the future. As, under any profound
and comprehensive view of the gorgeous-composite feudal world, we see
in it, through the long ages and cycles of ages, the results of a
deep, integral, human and divine principle, or fountain, from which
issued laws, ecclesia, manners, institutes, costumes, personalities,
poems, (hitherto unequall'd,) faithfully partaking of their source,
and indeed only arising either to betoken it, or to furnish parts of
that varied-flowing display, whose centre was one and absolute--so,
long ages hence, shall the due historian or critic make at least an
equal retrospect, an equal history for the democratic principle.
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