ne solution urged,--communism in
property, communism in effort, communism in results, everything in
common.

In 1840 Emerson wrote to Carlyle, "We are all a little wild here
with numberless projects of social reform. Not a reading man but
has a draft of a new community in his waistcoat pocket. I am
gently mad myself, and am resolved to live cleanly. George Ripley
is talking up a colony of agriculturists and scholars, with whom
he threatens to take the field and book. One man renounces the use
of animal food; another of coin; and another of domestic hired
service; and another of the State; and on the whole we have a
commendable share of reason and of hope."

Ripley did found his Brook Farm, and a lot of good people went and
lived there--not Emerson; he was just a trifle too sane to be won
over completely, but even he used to go into his own garden and
dig in a socialistic way until his little boy warned him not to
dig his foot.

That is the trouble with communism, those who dig are apt to dig
their feet. It is easier to call a spade a spade than to use one.
Men may be born free and equal, but if they are, they do not show
it. From his first breath man is oppressed by the conditions of
his existence, and life is a struggle with environment. Freedom
and liberty are terms of relative not absolute value. The
absolutism of the commune is oppression refined, each man must dig
even if he digs his own foot. The plea of the anarchist for
liberty is more consistent than the plea of the communist,--the
one does demand a wild, lawless freedom for individual initiative;
the other demands the very refinement of interference with liberty
of mind and body.

The evolutionist looks on with philosophic indifference, knowing
that what is to be will be, that the stream of tendency is not to
be checked or swerved by vaporings, but moves irresistibly onward,
though every thought, every utterance, every experiment, however
wild, however visionary, has its effect.

We of the practical world sojourning in the Shaker village may
commiserate the disciples of theory, but they are happy in their
own way,--possibly happier in their seclusion and routine than we
are in our hurly-burly and endless strife for social, commercial,
and political advantages. Life is as settled and certain for them
as it is unsettled and uncertain for us. No problems confront
them; the everlasting query, "What shall we do to-morrow?" is
never asked; plans for the com