There is nothing ideal or vague in the vigorous efforts he makes in this volume to rise to political economy and to set forth the practical action of capital and industry on life. He says no longer, 'To me commerce is of trivial import,' but endorses Henry Carey's theory of wealth, and acknowledges unreservedly, in its broadest sense, the universal domination of Law. Statistics bourgeon into prophecies under his pen: he does not disdain their significance, but rather aids their influence with all the power which his spasmodic style has given in drawing our grotesque-loving public to him. We suspect Buckle, and feel a cheerful sense of Bacon and Comte. In his plea for socialism, for education, we see the dawn of the ultimate triumph and dignity of labor. 'We shall one day,' he says, 'supersede Politics by Education.' Pause well here, you who grope forward into the dark future with misgiving and faithless hearts. This is not the chimerical delusion of a transcendental philosophy, this death-knell to the Slavery of Ignorance and Vice. Recognize in it the wide generosity that says with Leczinsky, _'Je ne connais d'avarice permise que celle du temps_.' Here is wealth for want, industry for indolence, distinction for degradation, virtue for vice. It beams clear as the red of morning. Hear it in the whistle of the engine, the roar of the loom, the plowing of the steam-ship through battling waves, the tick of the telegraph, the whirr of the mill wheel, the click of the sewing machine; and he who doubts still may listen to the voice of cannon, the whistling of lances and the clash of swords, and catch the notes of the same chant with a sterner chorus. Hear even the idealist Schelling awaiting that broader freedom than any we have yet known:-- 'The third period in history will be that when that which in preceding periods appeared as Destiny or Nature, shall develop and manifest itself as Providence. Thus what seems to us as the work of Destiny or Nature is already the beginning of a Providence, which reveals itself but imperfectly. When we shall look for the birth of this period, man can not say, but know that when it is, _God will be_.' And Emerson takes up the strain with words of fire:--