Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/134

130 parisons. Let me now compare the present condition of Boston with that in former times. Every man has an ideal, which is better than the actual facts about him. Some men amongst us put that ideal in times past, and maintain it was then an historical fact; they are commonly men who have little knowledge of the past, and less hope for the future; a good deal of reverence for old precedents, little for justice, truth, humanity; little confidence in mankind, and a great deal of fear of new things. Such men love to look back and do homage to tho past, but it is only a past of fancy, not of fact, they do homage to. They tell us we have fallen; that the golden age is behind us, and the garden of Eden ; ours are degenerate days; the men are inferior, the women less winning, less witty, and less wise, and the children are an untoward generation, a disgrace, not so much to their fathers, but certainly to their grandsires. Sometimes this is the complaint of men who have grown old; sometimes of such as seem to be old without growing so, who seem born to the gift of age, without the grace of youth.

Other men have a similar ideal, commonly a higher one, but they place it in the future, not as an historical reality, which has been, and is therefore to be worshipped, but one which is to be made real by dint of thought, of work. I have known old persons who stoutly maintained that the pears, and the plums, and the peaches, are not half so luscious as they were many years ago ; so they bewailed the existing race of fruits, complaining of "the general decay" of sweetness, and brought over to their way of speech some aged juveniles. Meanwhile, men born young, set themselves to productive work, and, instead of bewailing an old fancy, realized a new ideal in new fruits, bigger, fairer, and better than the old. It is to men of this latter stamp that we must look for criticism and for counsel. The others can afford us a warning, if not by their speech, at least by their example.

It is very plain that the people of New England are advancing in wealth, in intelligence, and in morality; but in this general march there are little apparent pauses, slight waverings from side to side; some virtues seem to straggle from the troop; some to lag behind, for it is not always the same virtue that leads the van. It is with the flock of