A single summer and autumn dissipated the hopes planted there, and with them the faith that the world could be refashioned by artificial arrangements of circumstances. The surprising thing was, that such a man should ever have fallen into the notion that it could; he was an idealist; his faith was in the soul--not in organization of any sort; he was a regenerator, not a reformer. All the good work he had done was of the regenerative kind, through an awakening of the spiritual powers of individuals. His mission was to educate--to draw out souls, whether of children or adults. Faith in the soul was his inspiration and his guide. He early accepted the office of teacher, made it the calling of his life, and in the exercise of it, kept in mind this faith in the soul as the highest of qualifications. To understand his enthusiasm, it is only necessary to apprehend his idea. In the chapter on Childhood, in "Concord Days," that idea is thus conveyed: "To conceive a child's acquirements as originating in nature, dating from his birth into his body, seems an atheism that only a shallow metaphysical theology could entertain in a time of such marvellous natural knowledge as ours. 'I shall never persuade myself,' says Synesius, 'to believe my soul to be of like age with my body.' And yet we are wont to date our birth, as that of the babes we christen, from the body's advent, so duteously inscribed in our family registers, as if time and space could chronicle the periods of the immortal mind, and mark its longevity by our chronometers. Only a God could inspire a child with the intimations seen in its first pulse-plays; the sprightly attainments of a single day's doings afford the liveliest proofs of an omniscient Deity, revealing His attributes in the motions of the little one!... Were the skill for touching its tender sensibilities, calling forth its budding gifts, equal to the charms the child has for us, what noble characters would graduate from our families--the community receiving its members accomplished in the personal graces, the state its patriots, the church its saints, all glorifying the race."