allen you if it hadn't
been for the latest transcendent product of the genius of culture" (we
won't say what kind), a consummation of the dreams of poets, from David
to Tennyson. Material progress is but a means of expression. Realize
that man's coarseness has its future and will also be refined in the
gradual uprise. Turning the world upside down may be one of its lesser
incidents. It is the cause, seldom the effect that interests Emerson.
He can help the cause--the effect must help itself. He might have said
to those who talk knowingly about the cause of war--or of the last war,
and who would trace it down through long vistas of cosmic, political,
moral evolution and what not--he might say that the cause of it was as
simple as that of any dogfight--the "hog-mind" of the minority against
the universal mind, the majority. The un-courage of the former fears to
believe in the innate goodness of mankind. The cause is always the
same, the effect different by chance; it is as easy for a hog, even a
stupid one, to step on a box of matches under a tenement with a
thousand souls, as under an empty bird-house. The many kindly burn up
for the few; for the minority is selfish and the majority generous. The
minority has ruled the world for physical reasons. The physical reasons
are being removed by this "converting culture." Webster will not much
longer have to grope for the mind of his constituency. The
majority--the people--will need no intermediary. Governments will pass
from the representative to the direct. The hog-mind is the principal
thing that is making this transition slow. The biggest prop to the
hog-mind is pride--pride in property and the power property gives.
Ruskin backs this up--"it is at the bottom of all great mistakes; other
passions do occasional good, but whenever pride puts in its word ... it
is all over with the artist." The hog-mind and its handmaidens in
disorder, superficial brightness, fundamental dullness, then cowardice
and suspicion--all a part of the minority (the non-people) the
antithesis of everything called soul, spirit, Christianity, truth,
freedom--will give way more and more to the great primal truths--that
there is more good than evil, that God is on the side of the majority
(the people)--that he is not enthusiastic about the minority (the
non-people)--that he has made men greater than man, that he has made
the universal mind and the over-soul greater and a part of the
individual mind and soul-