There is a subtle something in the common earth, crops, cattle, air,
trees, &c., and in having to do at first hand with them, that forms
the only purifying and perennial element for individuals and for
society. I must confess I want to see the agricultural occupation of
America at first hand permanently broaden'd. Its gains are the only
ones on which God seems to smile. What others--what business, profit,
wealth, without a taint? What fortune else--what dollar--does
not stand for, and come from, more or less imposition, lying,
unnaturalness?
AN AMERICAN PROBLEM
One of the problems presented in America these times is, how to
combine one's duty and policy as a member of associations, societies,
brotherhoods or what not, and one's obligations to the State and
Nation, with essential freedom as an individual personality, without
which freedom a man cannot grow or expand, or be full, modern, heroic,
democratic, American. With all the necessities and benefits of
association, (and the world cannot get along without it,) the true
nobility and satisfaction of a man consist in his thinking and acting
for himself. The problem, I say, is to combine the two, so as not to
ignore either.
THE LAST COLLECTIVE COMPACTION
I like well our polyglot construction-stamp, and the retention
thereof, in the broad, the tolerating, the many-sided, the collective.
All nations here--a home for every race on earth. British, German,
Scandinavian, Spanish, French, Italian--papers published, plays acted,
speeches made, in all languages--on our shores the crowning resultant
of those distillations, decantations, compactions of humanity, that
have been going on, on trial, over the earth so long.
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