Page:The Democratic Heart.pdf/4

instinct starts into many considerations at ma points nearer the truth than a fretful agonism comes out. The fact grows more and more apparent, that although the conservative spirit which distinguishes the democratic party has not been demonstrative in literary expression or defense-for it is not in its nature to be so, its intuitions have been usually confirmed, while st the "intelligence" which the opposition vaunts is really several grades beneath the radical conceit of it, being to first class m scholarship and real sagacity in some respects very superficial. Its boast is not M the latest afterthought of the topics wherein it assumes to excel; its philosophy is not of the best Greek and German, much less of christian insight; its philanthropy is often unpractical, lacking as well high justice as secular knowledge of men ;- n while on the other hand the apparent indifference of the democracy to certain canons of taste and policy has proved itself consequent to a deeper and quieter moral science-its coldness due partly to a wise faith in the curative forces of nature, and partly to the hopeless insolubility of many of those problems which call forth of radicalism its over-anxious and untimely zeal. And therefore, while we freely admit that there are more republican than democratic newspapers, more republican lyceums and literary bureaus,-while we acknowledge the republican party as leading in anti-slavery, temperance, and even free-school agitation, we must be forgiven if we smile when these facts are paraded to prove more than a forward haste for results regardless of their most judicious attainment, to prove that the politicians and professors and preachers who staminate and signalize these exalted claims are men of first class ability, or familiar with the results of first class thought, or to prove that the "prosperity" of the late republican administrations is other than the prodigal issue of a vast deal of promisory money.

At all events let us see the truth of the matter. We offer no biased, captious dispute. There is a grip of culture as of masonry, that tells how many degrees of crudity we have passed through how many acres of bosh we have waded. There must be another style than that which cries "nigger! nigger! crank!" from one side, and "rum! ruffianism! Rome!" from the other. Let us honestly and intimately perceive the difference of the two parties. Perhaps a few strokes of the pencil may bring this brazen Biddy of the cartoons into classic proportions.

When we seek the difference of the two great parties the first important fact appearing is, that there are two-not only here but in nations generally, a fact so startling as almost to suggest a conjecture that the difference must be as of good and evil. It has indeed a deep and fundamental significance. All opposition is of two, for the world is of duplex movement. Man is a complication of doubles. We are double as visible and invisible, mind and body, male and female, right side and left side. A man is two organizations set up side to side, each with its nerves, brain, eye, ear, nostril, arm, leg, lung, liver, kidney, heart, and one side may be paralyzed and the other working comparatively well. The mind also is double, and each half also is double-like, as Plato says, a stick unequally broken, of which the two pieces are also unequally broken-either side supplementary, as well as antagonistic to the other.

When we notice this duplexity and antagonism in the physical and the intellectual natures of man we are forewarned of a duplexity and an antagonism in his moral nature; and all difference in the moral, (as that expression is best understood,) is of more and less of the quality of force: that is, self-reliance, independence, autonomy. There are, in this respect, not absolutely but comparatively, a feminine and a masculine mind. The one is subservient to authority, law, precedent; the other is an authority and a law unto itself. The one conforms, depends; the other originates and is disposed to stand alone. The one, overawed by its environment, believes in radical, relegated, pre-established right, and says let justice be done tho' the heavens fall; the other finds itself judicial and defensive amid a set of insoluble problems, where justice varies the duty of the hour in a course of compromise and conciliation. The one would be forever active-going up to the help of the Lord against the mighty; the other is quiet and has faith that evil is a sufficient enemy to itself. To the one, government is an alien force: all that is established is fixed, rigid, authoritative in itself; to the other all authority is by present gift, and all institutions are but the loose and flow-