What, then, is the moral of my fables? That we must mend our ways and be hopeful;—or, be hopeful and mend our ways. Each of these comes of the other, and each is pointed out by past experience to be our duty, as it ought to be our pleasure. Enough has been said to prove that we must mend our ways: but I feel as if enough could never be said in the enforcement of hopefulness. When we see what an advance the race has already made, in the present infant stage of humanity,—when we observe the differences between men now living,—it seems absolute impiety to doubt man’s perpetual progression, and to question the means. The savage who creeps into a hollow tree when the wind blows keen, satisfying his hunger with grubs from the herbage, and the philosopher who lives surrounded by luxury which he values as intellectual food, and as an apparatus for securing him leisure to take account of the stars, and to fathom the uses of creation, now exist before our eyes,—the one a finished image of primeval man; the other a faint, shadowy outline of what man may be.—Why are these men so unlike? By observing every gradation which is interposed, an answer may be obtained.—They are mainly formed by the social circumstances amidst which they live. All other differences,—of bodily colour and form, and of climate,—are as nothing in comparison. Wherever there is little social circumstance, man remains a savage, whether he be dwarfed among the snows of the Pole, or stretches his naked limbs on the hot sands of the desert, or vegetates in a cell like Caspar Hauser. Where-ever there is much social circumstance, man becomes active, whether his activity be for good or for evil. In proportion as society is so far naturally arranged as that its relations become multitudinous, man becomes intellectual, and in certain situations and in various degrees, virtuous and happy. Is there not yet at least one other stage, when society shall be _wisely_ arranged, so that all may become intellectual, virtuous, and happy; or, at least, so that the exceptions shall be the precise reverse of those which are the rare instances now? The belief is irresistible. There has been but one Socrates, some say; and he lived very long ago.—Who knows that there has been but one Socrates? Which of us can tell but that one of our forefathers, or some of ourselves, may have elbowed a second or a tenth Socrates in the street, or passed him in the church aisle? His philosophy may have lain silent within him. Servitude may have chained his tongue; hunger may have enfeebled his voice; he may have been shut up in the Canton Factory, or crushed under a distraint for poor-rates or tithes. Till it has been known how many noble intellects have been thus chained and silenced, let no one venture to say that there has been but one Socrates.