indeed, but his distempered imagination quite overlooked the fact
that they were ideas long since dead, beyond hope of resurrection. And
it is but the statement of palpable truth to declare that whatever ideas
the South is fighting for now, are of a like obsolete character. The
glory of feudalism, as a system of society, is departed; and its
attendant glories of knight-errantry and human slavery are departed with
it. Don Quixote thought to reestablish the one, and the South deludes
itself with the hope of reestablishing the other. Times and ideas have
changed since the days of feudalism, and the South only repeats in
behalf of slavery the tragic farce of Don Quixote in behalf of
knight-errantry. Both alike would roll back the centuries of modern
civilization, and, reversing the dreams of Plato and Sir Thomas More,
would hope to find a Utopia in the dark ages of the past.

We do not ridicule, much less deny the power of ideas. On the contrary,
we believe heartily in ideas, and in men of ideas. We accept ideas as
forces of civilization, and we would magnify their office as teachers
and helpers of man, in his poor strivings after good. Man is ever
repeating the despondent cry of the Psalmist, 'Who will show us any
good?' It is the mission of ideas, the ministering angels of
civilization, to lift him into a realm of glorious communion with good
and spiritual things, and so inspire him to heroic effort in his work.

Nevertheless, while thus willing to glorify the office of ideas, we hold
them to be of less worth than institutions. That is, ideas, of
themselves, are of little practical value. An idea, disjoined from an
institution, is spirit without body; just as an institution that does
not embody a noble idea, is body without spirit. An idea, to be
effective, must be organized; an institution, to be effective, must have
breathed into it the breath of life, must be vivified with an idea. It
is only thus, in and through institutions, that ideas can exert their
proper influence upon society.

This is, indeed, the American principle of reform. The thorough
conviction of it in the hearts of the American people has thus far saved
us from the anarchy of radicalism, which is ever agitating new ideas;
and is now destined to save us from the bolder-faced anarchy of
revolution, seeking to overthrow our institutions.

But fighting for ideas, what does it mean? The French Revolution (that
great abortion of the eighteenth century and