They hasten, incredible, blazing bright as fire. From the
deeds and days of Columbus down to the present, and including the
present--and especially the late secession war--when I con them, I
feel, every leaf, like stopping to see if I have not made a mistake,
and fall'n on the splendid figments of some dream. But it is no dream.
We stand, live, move, in the huge flow of our age s materialism--in
its spirituality. We have had founded for us the most positive of
lands. The founders have pass'd to other spheres--but what are these
terrible duties they have left us?
Their politics the United States have, in my opinion, with all their
faults, already substantially establish'd, for good, on their own
native, sound, long-vista'd principles, never to be overturn'd,
offering a sure basis for all the rest. With that, their future
religious forms sociology, literature, teachers, schools, costumes,
&c., are of course to make a compact whole, uniform, on tallying
principles. For how can we remain, divided, contradicting ourselves,
this way?[28] I say we can only attain harmony and stability by
consulting ensemble and the ethic purports, and faithfully building
upon them. For the New World, indeed, after two grand stages of
preparation-strata, I perceive that now a third stage, being ready
for, (and without which the other two were useless,) with unmistakable
signs appears. The First stage was the planning and putting on record
the political foundation rights of immense masses of people--indeed
all people--in the organization of republican National, State, and
municipal governments, all constructed with reference to each, and
each to all.
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