Nature abhors these
complaisances, which threaten to melt the world into a lump, and hastens
to break up such maudlin agglutinations. The like assimilation goes
on between men of one town, of one sect, of one political party; and
the ideas of the time are in the air, and infect all who breathe it.
Viewed from any high point, the city of New York, yonder city of London,
the western civilization, would seem a bundle of insanities. We keep
each other in countenance, and exasperate by emulation the frenzy of
the time. The shield against the stingings of conscience, is the
universal practice, or our contemporaries. Again; it is very easy to
be as wise and good as your companions. We learn of our contemporaries,
what they know, without effort, and almost through the pores of the
skin. We catch it by sympathy, or, as a wife arrives at the intellectual
and moral elevations of her husband. But we stop where they stop. Very
hardly can we take another step. The great, or such as hold of nature,
and transcend fashions, by their fidelity to universal ideas, are
saviors from these federal errors, and defend us from our
contemporaries.
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