We had left the rusty iron framework of society behind us; we
had broken through many hindrances that are powerful enough to keep
most people on the weary treadmill of the established system, even
while they feel its irksomeness almost as intolerable as we did. We
had stepped down from the pulpit; we had flung aside the pen; we had
shut up the ledger; we had thrown off that sweet, bewitching,
enervating indolence, which is better, after all, than most of the
enjoyments within mortal grasp. It was our purpose--a generous one,
certainly, and absurd, no doubt, in full proportion with its
generosity--to give up whatever we had heretofore attained, for the
sake of showing mankind the example of a life governed by other than
the false and cruel principles on which human society has all along
been based.
And, first of all, we had divorced ourselves from pride, and were
striving to supply its place with familiar love. We meant to lessen
the laboring man's great burden of toil, by performing our due share
of it at the cost of our own thews and sinews. We sought our profit
by mutual aid, instead of wresting it by the strong hand from an
enemy, or filching it craftily from those less shrewd than ourselves
(if, indeed, there were any such in New England), or winning it by
selfish competition with a neighbor; in one or another of which
fashions every son of woman both perpetrates and suffers his share of
the common evil, whether he chooses it or no. And, as the basis of
our institution, we purposed to offer up the earnest toil of our
bodies, as a prayer no less than an effort for the advancement of our
race.
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