"For nearly forty years have I been employed, heart and soul, day by day, almost without ceasing, in preparing the means and arranging the circumstances, to enable me to give the death-blow to the tyranny which, for unnumbered ages, has held the human mind spellbound in chains of such mysterious forms that no mortal has dared approach to set the suffering prisoner free! Nor has the fullness of time for the accomplishment of this great event, been completed until within this hour! Such has been the extraordinary course of events, that the Declaration of Political Independence in 1776, has produced its counterpart, the _Declaration of Mental Independence_ in 1826; the latter just half a century from the former.*** "In furtherance of our great object we are preparing the means to bring up our children with industrious and useful habits, with national and of course rational ideas and views, with sincerity in all their proceedings; and to give them kind and affectionate feelings for each other, and charity, in the most extensive sense of the term, for all their fellow creatures. "By doing this, uniting our separate interests into one, by doing away with divided money transactions, by exchanging with each other our articles of produce on the basis of labor for equal labor, by looking forward to apply our surplus wealth to assist others to attain similar advantages, and by the abandonment of the use of spiritous liquors, we shall in a peculiar manner promote the object of every wise government and all really enlightened men. "And here we now are, as near perhaps as we can be in the center of the United States, even, as it were, like the little grain of mustard seed! But with these _Great Truths_ before us, with the practice of the social system, as soon as it shall be well understood among us, our principles will, I trust, spread from Community to Community, from State to State, from Continent to Continent, until this system and these _truths_ shall overshadow the whole earth, shedding fragrance and abundance, intelligence and happiness, upon all the sons of men!" Such were the antecedents and promises of the New Harmony experiment. The Professor appeared on the stage with a splendid reputation for previous thaumaturgy, with all the crucibles and chemicals around him that money could buy, with an audience before him that was gaping to see the last wonder of science: but on applying the flame that was to set all ablaze with happiness and glory, behold! the material prepared would not burn, but only sputtered and smoked; and the curtain had to come down upon a scene of confusion and disappointment!