The States
have leisure to laugh from Maine to Texas at some newspaper joke,
and New England shakes at the double-entendres of Australian
circles, while the poor reformer cannot get a hearing.
Men do not fail commonly for want of knowledge, but for want of
prudence to give wisdom the preference. What we need to know in
any case is very simple. It is but too easy to establish another
durable and harmonious routine. Immediately all parts of nature
consent to it. Only make something to take the place of something,
and men will behave as if it was the very thing they wanted.
They _must_ behave, at any rate, and will work up any material.
There is always a present and extant life, be it better or worse,
which all combine to uphold. We should be slow to mend, my
friends, as slow to require mending, "Not hurling, according to
the oracle, a transcendent foot towards piety." The language of
excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm
before you can utter oracles. What was the excitement of the
Delphic priestess compared with the calm wisdom of Socrates?--or
whoever it was that was wise.
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