og that even its own eye could not penetrate. Thus with you, if I
understand you rightly, the _common_ and the _fateful_ are nearly one
and the same; the Good is to you an exceptional energy which struggles
up from the level forces of the universe. Is not your conception of
human existence nearly this: a perpetual waste deluge, and here and
there some Noah in his ark above it?

There is noble truth to be seen from this point of view,--truth to which
America also will have to attend. But being intensely limited to this
sole point of view, you are _utterly_ without eye for the whole
significance of our national life. You are not only _at_ the opposite
pole from us, but your whole heart and intelligence are _included in_
the currents of that polaric opposition.

Still further. I think, that, having made out its scheme of thought,
your mind soon contracts a positive demand _even for the evil
conditions_ which, in your estimation, made that scheme necessary. To
illustrate. A man is roused at night, and sent flying for a physician in
some sudden and terrible emergency. He returns, broken-winded, to learn
that it was altogether a false alarm. It is quite possible that his
first emotion, on receiving this intelligence, will not be pleasure, but
indignation; he may feel that somebody ought to _be_ sick, since he has
been at such pains. Pardon me, if I think your position not wholly
dissimilar. It seems to me to have become an imperative requisition of
your mind that nine-tenths of mankind should be fools. They _must_ be
so; else you have no place for them in your system, and know not what to
do with them. As fools, you have full arrangements made for their
accommodation. Some hero, some born ruler of men, is to come forth (out
of your books) and reduce them to obedience, and lord it over them in a
most useful manner. But if they will not be fools, if they
contumaciously refuse to be fools, they disturb the necessary
conditions of kingship, and, of course, deserve much reprobation. I do
not, therefore, feel myself unjust to you in saying, that, the better
the American people behave, _in consistency with their political
traditions and customary modes of thought_, the less you are able to be
pleased with them. If they demean themselves as fools and incapables,
(as they sometimes do,) they bring grist to your mill; but if they show
wisdom, courage, and constancy, they leave you to stand at your
mill-doors and grumble for want of to