Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/256

Rh In 1850, we heard only the threat of arms; in 1851, we saw the volunteer muskets in the kidnapper's hand; in 1864, he put the United States cannon in battery; in 1856, he arms the savage Missourians. But now, also, there are tools of death in the people's hand. It is high time. When the people are sheep, the Government is always a wolf. What will the next step be? Mr. Gushing says, "I know what is requisite; but it is means that I cannot suggest!" Who knows what coup d'etat is getting ready? Surely affairs cannot remain long in this condition.

To understand this present emergency, you must go a long ways back, and look a little carefully at what lies deep down in the foundation of States.

The welfare of a nation consists in these three things; namely: first, possession of material comfort, things of use and beauty; second, enjoyment of all the natural rights of body and spirit; and, third, the development of the natural faculties of body and spirit in their harmonious order, securing the possession of freedom, intelligence, morality, philanthropy, and piety. It ought to be the aim of a nation to obtain these three things in the highest possible degree, and to extend them to all persons therein, that nation has the most welfare which is the furthest advanced in the possession of these three things.

Next, the progress of a nation consists in two things: first, in the increasing development of the natural faculties of body and spirit,—intellectual, moral, affectional, and religious—with the consequent increasing enjoyment thereof; and second, in the increasing acquisition of power over the material world, making it yield use and beauty, an increase of material comfort and elegance. Progress is increase of human welfare for each and for all. That is the most progressive nation which advances fastest in this development of human faculties, and the consequent acquisition of material power. There is no limit to this progress.

That is the superior nation, which, by nature, has the greatest amount of bodily and spiritual faculties, and, education has developed them to the highest degree of human culture, and, consequently, is capacious of the greatest amount of power over the material world, to turn