The method of reform followed from the principle. It was the method of individual awakening and regeneration, and was to be conducted "through the simplest ministries of family, neighborhood, fraternity, quite wide of associations and institutions." "The true reformer," it was proclaimed, "initiates his labor in the precincts of private life, and makes it, not a set of measures, not an utterance, not a pledge merely, but a life; and not an impulse of a day, but commensurate with human existence: a tendency towards perfection of being." The Transcendentalist might easily become an enthusiast from excess of faith; but a fanatic, with a tinge of melancholy in his disposition, a drop of malignity in his blood, he could not be. He was less a reformer of human circumstance than a regenerator of the human spirit, and he was never a destroyer except as destruction accompanied the process of regeneration. This fine positive purpose appeared in all he undertook. With movements that did not start from this primary assumption of individual dignity, and come back to that as their goal, he had nothing to do. Was he an anti-slavery man--and he was certain to be one at heart--the Transcendentalists were glowing friends of that reform,--he was so because his philosophy compelled him to see in the slave the same humanity that appeared in the master; in the African the same possibilities that were confessed in the Frank, the Anglo-Saxon, and the Celt. Did he take up the cause of education, it was as a believer in the latent capacity of every child, boy or girl; as an earnest wisher that such capacity might be stimulated by the best methods, and directed to the best ends. What he effected, or tried to effect in this way will be understood by the reader of the record of Mr. Alcott's school; that bold and original attempt at educating, leading or drawing out young minds, which showed such remarkable promise, and would have achieved such remarkable results had more faithful trial of its method been possible. Was he a reformer of society, it was as a vitalizer, not as a machinist.