Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/81

Rh its more permanent forms love is merely gregarious, and does not come to individual sociality; it seems but a more subtle mode of gravitation. A herd of buffaloes is only an aggregation of members, not a society of free individuals, who group from choice. Friendship, I think, never appears amongst animals, excepting such as are under the eye of man, and have, in some manner not easily understood, acquired his habits. The animal does not appear to have private affinities, and to attach himself to this or that fellow-being with the discrimination of love; development of the affections is never sought for as a thing good in itself, but only as a means to some other good.

With man there is this greater gravitation of men into masses; which, without doubt, is at first as instinctive as the grouping of bees or beavers; but man is capable of modifying the action of this gregarious instinct so, on the one side, as to form minute cohesions of friendship, wherein each follows his private personal predilections, his own elective affinities; and also, on the other, to form vast associations of men gravitating into a nation, ruled by a common will; and one day we shall, no doubt, group all these nations into one great family of races, with a distinct self-consciousness of universal brotherhood.

It is instructive to look on the rudimentary love in animals, and see the beginnings of human nature, as it were, so low down, and watch the successive risings in successive creations. It helps us to see the unity of the world, and also to foretell the development of human nature; for what is there accomplished by successive creation of new races, with us takes place by the continual development of the same individual.

It is according to the order of nature, that the power to love should be developed before the power to think. All things with us begin with a feeling ; next enlarge to an idea ; then take the form of action, the mind mediating between the inward sentiment and the outward deed. We delight in love long before we have any conscious joy in truth or justice. In childhood we are acquainted with persons before we know things; indeed, things are invested with a dim personality in the mind of children and of savages. We know father and mother long before we