Roebuck or Mr. Lowe debauches the minds of the middle
classes, and makes such Philistines of them. It is the same fashion of
teaching a man to value himself not on what he _is_, not on his progress
in sweetness and light, but on the number of the railroads he has
constructed, or the bigness of the tabernacle he has built. Only the
middle classes are told they have done it all with their energy,
self-reliance, and capital, and the democracy are told they have done it
all with their hands and sinews. But teaching the democracy to put its
trust in achievements of this kind is merely training them to be
Philistines to take the place of the Philistines whom they are
superseding; and they, too, like the middle class, will be encouraged to
sit down at the banquet of the future without having on a wedding
garment, and nothing excellent can then come from them. Those who know
their besetting faults, or those who have watched them and listened to
them, or those who will read the instructive account recently given of
them by one of themselves, the _Journeyman Engineer_, will agree that
the idea which culture sets before us of perfection,--an increased
spiritual activity, having for its characters increased sweetness,
increased light, increased life, increased sympathy,--is an idea which
the new democracy needs far more than the idea of the blessedness of the
franchise, or the wonderfulness of its own industrial performances.
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