Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/229

216 duction, that I should not weary your ears at all this morning, were it not that another man, your Mend and mine, Mr. Phillips, lies sick at home. Remember the threefold misfortune of my position: I come after an African, after a woman, and in the place of Wendell Phillips.

I shall ask your attention to some "Thoughts on the Present Aspect of the anti-Slavery Enterprise, and the Forces which work therefor."

In all great movements of mankind, there are three special works to be done, so many periods of work, and the same number of classes of persons therein engaged.

First is the period of sentiment. The business is to produce the right feeling,—a sense of lack, and a fore-feeling of desire for the special thing required. The aim is to produce a sense of need, and also a feeling of want. That is the first thing.

The next period is that of ideas, where the work is to furnish the thought of what is wanted,—a distinct, precise, adequate idea. The sentiment must precede the thought: for the primitive element in all human conduct is a feeling; everything begins in a spontaneous emotion.

The third is the period of action, when the business is to make the thought a thing, to organize it into institutions. The idea must precede the action, else man begins to build and is not able to finish: he runs before he is sent, and knows not where he is going, or the way thither.

Now these three special works go on in the anti-Slavery movement; there are these three periods observable, and three classes of persons engaged in the various works. The first effort is to excite the anti-Slavery feeling ; the next, to furnish the anti-Slavery idea; and the third is to make that thought a thing,—to organize the idea into institutions which shall be as wide as the idea, and fully adequate to express the feeling itself. I. The primitive thing has been, and still is, to arouse a sense of humanity in the whites, which should lead us to abolish this wickedness.

Another way would be to arouse a sense of indignation in the person who has suffered the wrong,—in the slave—