 ever men might lawfully dream awake, and give
utterance to their wildest visions, without dread of laughter or scorn on the
part of the audience - yes, and speak of earthly happiness, for themselves and
mankind, as an object to be hopefully striven for, and probably attained - we,
who made that little semi-circle round the blazing fire, were those very men. We
had left the rusty iron frame-work of society behind us. We had broken through
many hindrances that are powerful enough to keep most people on the weary
tread-mill of the established system, even while they feel its irksomeness
almost as intolerable as we did. We had stept down from the pulpit; we had flung
aside the pen; we had shut up the ledger; we had thrown off that sweet,
bewitching, enervating indolence, which is better, after all, than most of the
enjoyments within mortal grasp. It was our purpose - a generous one, certainly,
and absurd, no doubt, in full proportion with its generosity - to give up
whatever we had heretofore attained, for the sake of showing mankind the example
of a life governed by other than the false and cruel principles, on which human
society has all along been based.
    And, first of all, we had divorced ourselves from Pride, and were striving
to supply its place with familiar love. We meant to lessen the laboring man's
great burthen of toil, by performing our due share of it at the cost of our own
thews and sinews. We sought our profit by mutual aid, instead of wresting it by
the strong hand from an enemy, or filching it craftily from those less shrewd
than ourselves, (if, indeed, there were any such, in New England,) or winning it
by selfish competition with a neighbor; in one or another of which fashions,
every son of woman both perpetrates and suffers his share of the common evil,
whether he chooses it or no. And, as the basis of our institution, we purposed
to offer up the earnest toil of our bodies, as a prayer, no less than an effort,
for the advancement of our race.
    Therefore, if we built splendid castles (phalansteries, perhaps, they might
be more fitly called,) and pictured beautiful scenes, among the fervid coals of
the hearth around which we were clustering - and if all went to rack with the
crumbling embers, and have never since arisen out of the ashes - let us take to
ourselves no shame. In my own behalf, I rejoice that I could once think better
of the
