)
[28] Note, to-day, an instructive, curious spectacle and conflict.
Science, (twin in its fields, of Democracy in its)--Science, testing
absolutely all thoughts, all works, has already burst well upon the
world--a sun, mounting, most illuminating, most glorious--surely never
again to set. But against it, deeply entrench'd, holding possession,
yet remains, (not only through the churches and schools, but by
imaginative literature, and unregenerate poetry,) the fossil theology
of the mythic-materialistic, superstitious, untaught and credulous,
fable-loving, primitive ages of humanity.
[29] It is to the development, identification, and general prevalence
of that fervid comradeship, (the adhesive love, at least rivaling the
amative love hitherto possessing imaginative literature, if not going
beyond it,) that I look for the counterbalance and offset of
our materialistic and vulgar American democracy, and for the
spiritualization thereof. Many will say it is a dream, and will not
follow my inferences: but I confidently expect a time when there will
be seen, running like a half-hid warp through all the myriad audible
and visible worldly interests of America, threads of manly friendship,
fond and loving, pure and sweet, strong and life-long, carried
to degrees hitherto unknown--not only giving tone to individual
character, and making it unprecedently emotional, muscular, heroic,
and refined, but having the deepest relations to general politics. I
say democracy infers such loving comradeship, as its most inevitable
twin or counterpart, without which it will be incomplete, in vain, and
incapable of perpetuating itself.
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