New England Reformers

members: it is a system of despair. The disease with which the human mind now labors is want of faith. Men do not believe in a power of education. We do not think we can speak to divine sentiments in man, and we do not try. We renounce all high aims. We believe that the defects of so many perverse and so many frivolous people who make up society, are organic, and society is a hospital of incurables. A man of good sense but of little faith, whose compassion seemed to lead him to church as often as he went there, said to me that “he liked to have concerts, and fairs, and churches, and other public amusements go on.” I am afraid the remark is too honest, and comes from the same origin as the maxim of the tyrant, “If you would rule the world quietly, you must keep it amused.” I notice too that the ground on which eminent public servants urge the claims of popular education is fear; “This country is filling up with thousands and millions of voters, and you must educate them to keep them from our throats.” We do not believe that any education, any system of philosophy, any influence of genius, will ever give depth of insight to a superficial mind. Having settled ourselves into this infidelity, our skill is expended to procure alleviations, diversion, opiates. We adorn the victim with manual skill, his tongue with languages, his body with