To these eligibilities--to
this limitless aperture, the race has tended, en-masse, roaring and
rushing and crude, and fiercely, turbidly hastening--and we have seen
the first stages, and are now in the midst of the result of it all,
so far. But there will certainly ensue other stages, and entirely
different ones. In nothing is there more evolution than the American
mind. Soon, it will be fully realized that ostensible wealth and
money-making, show, luxury, &c., imperatively necessitate something
beyond--namely, the sane, eternal moral and spiritual-esthetic
attributes, elements. (We cannot have even that realization on any
less terms than the price we are now paying for it.) Soon, it will
be understood clearly, that the State cannot flourish, (nay, cannot
exist,) without those elements. They will gradually enter into the
chyle of sociology and literature. They will finally make the blood
and brawn of the best American individualities of both sexes--and
thus, with them, to a certainty, (through these very processes of
to-day,) dominate the New World.
GENERAL SUFFRAGE, ELECTIONS, ETC.
It still remains doubtful to me whether these will ever secure,
officially, the best wit and capacity--whether, through them, the
first-class genius of America will ever personally appear in the
high political stations, the Presidency, Congress, the leading State
offices, &c. Those offices, or the candidacy for them, arranged, won,
by caucusing, money, the favoritism or pecuniary interest of rings,
the superior manipulation of the ins over the outs, or the outs over
the ins, are, indeed, at best, the mere business agencies of the
people, are useful as formulating, neither the best and highest, but
the average of the public judgment, sense, justice, (or sometimes want
of judgment, sense, justice.
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