Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century; Social problems
Friend Prudence's 'rock-ledge,' as we called it, will gradually
disclose itself to many a man; to all men. Gradually, assaulted
from beneath and from above, the Stygian mud-deluge of Laissez-
faire, Supply-and-demand, Cash-payment the one Duty, will abate
on all hands; and the everlasting mountain-tops, and secure
rock-foundations that reach to the centre of the world, and rest
on Nature's self, will again emerge, to found on, and to build
on. When Mammon-worshippers here and there begin to be God-
worshippers, and bipeds-of-prey become men, and there is a Soul
felt once more in the huge-pulsing elephantine mechanic Animalism
of this Earth, it will be again a blessed Earth.
"Men cease to regard money?" cries Bobus of Houndsditch: "What
else do all men strive for? The very Bishop informs me that
Christianity cannot get on without a minimum of Four thousand
five hundred in its pocket. Cease to regard money? That will be
at Doomsday in the afternoon!"--O Bobus, my opinion is somewhat
different. My opinion is, that the Upper Powers have not yet
determined on destroying this Lower World. A respectable, ever-
increasing minority, who do strive for something higher than
money, I with confidence anticipate; ever-increasing, till there
be a sprinkling of them found in all quarters, as salt of the
Earth' once more. The Christianity that cannot get on without a
minimum of Four thousand five hundred, will give place to
something better that can. Thou wilt not join our small
minority, thou? Not till Doomsday in the afternoon? Well;
_then,_ at least, thou wilt join it, thou and the majority
in mass!
But truly it is beautiful to see the brutish empire of Mammon
cracking everywhere; giving sure promise of dying, or of being
changed. A strange, chill, almost ghastly dayspring strikes up
in Yankeeland itself: my Transcendental friends announce there,
in a distinct, though somewhat lankhaired, ungainly manner, that
the Demiurgus Dollar is dethroned; that new unheard-of
Demiurgusships, Priesthoods, Aristocracies, Growths and
Destructions, are already visible in the grey of coming Time.
Chronos is dethroned by Jove; Odin by St. Olaf: the Dollar
cannot rule in Heaven forever. No; I reckon, not. Socinian
Preachers quit their pulpits in Yankeeland, saying, "Friends,
this is all gone to a coloured cobweb, we regret to say!"--and
retire into the fields to cultivate onion-beds, and live frugally
on vegetables. It is very notable. Old godlike Calvinism
declares that its old body is now fallen to tatters, and done;
and its mournful ghost, disembodied, seeking new embodiment,
pipes again in the winds;--a ghost and spirit as yet, but
heralding new Spirit-worlds, and better Dynasties than the
Dollar one.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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