Brook Farm: Historic and Personal MemoirsCodman, John Thomas
History
Brook Farm: Historic and Personal Memoirs
Codman, John Thomas
Brook Farm Phalanx (West Roxbury, Boston, Mass.)
By watchful and diligent economy, there can be no doubt that a
community would attain greater pecuniary success than is within the
hope of honest individuals working separately. But Brook Farm is not a
community, and in the variety of motives with which persons associate
there, a double diligence and a watchfulness perhaps, too costly will
be needful to preserve financial prosperity. While, however, this
security is an essential element in success, riches would, on the other
hand, be as fatal as poverty, to the true progress of such an
institution. Even in the case of those foundations which have assumed a
religious character, all history proves the fatality of wealth. The
just and happy mean between riches and poverty is, indeed, more likely
to be attained when, as in this instance, all thought of acquiring
great wealth in a brief time is necessarily abandoned, as a condition
of membership. On the other hand, the presence of many persons, who
congregate merely for the attainment of some individual end, must weigh
heavily and unfairly upon those whose hearts are really expanded to
universal results.
As a whole, even the initiative powers of Brook Farm have, as is found
almost everywhere, the design of a life much too objective, too much
derived from objects in the exterior world. The subjective life, that
in which the soul finds the living source and the true communion within
itself, is not sufficiently prevalent to impart to the establishment
the permanent and sedate character it should enjoy. Undeniably, many
devoted individuals are there; several who have, as generously as
wisely, relinquished what are considered great social and pecuniary
advantages, and, by throwing their skill and energies into a course of
the most ordinary labors, at once prove their disinterestedness, and
lay the foundation for industrial nobility.
An assemblage of persons, not brought together by the principles of
community, will necessarily be subject to many of the inconveniences of
ordinary life, as well as to burdens peculiar to such a condition. Now
Brook Farm is at present such an institution. It is not a community; it
is not truly an association; it is merely an aggregation of persons,
and lacks that oneness of spirit, which is probably needful to make it
of deep and lasting value to mankind. It seems, after three years'
continuance, uncertain whether it is to be resolved more into an
educational or an industrial institution, or into one combined of both.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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