Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 3 (of 3)Parker, Theodore
Religion
Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 3 (of 3)
Parker, Theodore
Sermons, American; Unitarianism
In America all is quite different. There are no royal or patrician
patrons, no plebeian clients in literature, no immovable aristocracy to
withstand or even retard the new genius, talent, or skill of the
scholar. There is no class organized, accredited and confided in, to
resist a new idea; only the unorganized inertia of mankind retards the
circulation of thought and the march of men. Our historical men do not
found historical families; our famous names of to-day are all new names
in the State. American aristocracy is bottomed on money which no
unnatural laws make steadfast and immovable. To exclude a scholar from
the company of rich men, is not to exclude him from an audience that
will welcome and appreciate.
Then the government does not interfere to prohibit the free exercise of
thought. Speaking is free, preaching free, printing free. No
administration in America could put down a newspaper or suppress the
discussion of an unwelcome theme. The attempt would be folly and
madness. There is no "tonnage and poundage" on thought. It is seldom
that lawless violence usurps the place of despotic government. The chief
opponent of the new philosophy is the old philosophy. The old has only
the advantage of a few years; the advantage of possession of the ground.
It has no weapons of defence which the new has not for attack. What
hinders the growth of the new democracy of to-day?--only the old
democracy of yesterday, once green, and then full blown, but now going
to seed. Everywhere else walled gardens have been built for it to go
quietly to seed in, and men appointed, in God's name or the States', to
exterminate as a weed every new plant of democratic thought which may
spring up and suck the soil or keep off the sun, so that the old may
quietly occupy the ground, and undisturbed continue to decay and
contaminate the air. Here it has nothing but its own stalk to hold up
its head, and is armed with only such spines as it has grown out of its
own substance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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