How accurately the common instincts--especially those protecting our private interests--discern both the favorable and unfavorable, becomes more of a marvel to me every year. To them the favorable is morally right, the unfavorable morally wrong. If the latter threatens great injury, they excite against it deep-seated indignation as if it were a crime. How else can you explain it that all the churches, accepting the same Christ and worshipping the same God, were at last divided, the northern churches impugning and the southern churches defending slavery. Dwell upon this fact until you interpret it aright. On one side the most conscientious and the best of the north unanimous that slavery is morally wrong; on the other the most conscientious and best of the south unanimous that it is morally right. Then think of the northern and southern statesmen, jurists, and the great public leaders; and at the last consider that the entire people of one section prayed for, fought and died for, slavery, while that of the other did the same things against it. When you do this, you must admit that our community, our country, the society of which we are members, fashions our consciences and makes our opinions. The economic interest of the north was against slavery. It was her interest to get all the territory possible for opportunity to her free workers. It was also a transcendent economic interest of hers that there be no great foreign power near her to require of her that she put thousands of bread-winners and wealth-makers to idle in a standing army. On the other side the economic interest of the south in slavery was so great it commanded her to sacrifice all the advantages of union to preserve slavery, if that should be necessary. Each side feels deeply and more and more angrily that the other is seeking to rob it of the means of production and subsistence--the property to which of all it believes its title most indefeasible. It required some years to bring affairs to this point; but it was accomplished at last; and the north was ready for the root-and-branch abolitionist and the south for the fire-eater. Of course all this effect of oppugnant economical interests is under the guidance of the directors of evolution, who generally have their human servants to masquerade as characters widely different from the true. When these servants put on high airs as if they were doing their own will and not that of their masters, how the directors must smile. They have guaranteed animal reproduction from one generation to another by the impulsion of a supreme momentary pleasure, as Lucretius most philosophically recognizes in his _dux vitæ dia voluptas_. The passion of anger is the converse of that of love. When consent cannot settle some great controversy that must be settled, the passion of anger is so greatly excited by the instigation of the directors that the disputants leave arguments and come to blows. In the ripeness of time the Ransy Sniffleses[38] come forth.