Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/229

Rh Germany. But there the scholar is positively hindered in his function by tho power of the government, which allows freedom of thought, and by education tends to promote it, yet not its correlative freedom of speech, and still less the consequent of that—freedom of act. Revelations of new thought are indeed looked for, and encouraged in certain forms, but the corresponding revolution of old things is forbidden. An idea must remain an idea; the government will not allow it to become a deed, an institution, an idea organized in men. The children, of the mind must be exposed to die, or, if left alive, their feet are cramped, so that they cannot go alone; useless, joyless,, and unwell, they remain in their father's house. The government seeks to establish national unity of action, by the sacrifice of individual variety of action, personal freedom: every man must be a soldier and a Christian, wearing the livery of the government on the body and in the soul, and going through the spiritual exercises of the church, as through the manual exercise of the camp. In a nation so enlightened, personal freedom cannot be wholly sacrificed, so thought is left free, but speech restricted by censorship—speech with the human mouth or the iron lips of the press, Now, as of old, is there a controversy between the temporal and the spiritual powers, about the investiture of the children of the soul.

Then, on the other side, the scholar is negatively impeded by the comparative ignorance of ;the people, by their, consequent lock of administrative power and self-help, and their distrust of themselves. There a great illumination has gone on in the upper heavens of the learned, meteors coruscating into extraordinary glory ; it has hardly dawned on the low valleys of the common people. If it shines there at all, it is but as the Northern Aurora, with a little crackling noise, lending a feeble and uncertain light, not enough to walk with, and no warmth at all; a light which disturbs the dip and alters the variation of the old historical compass, bewilders the eye, hides the stars, and yet is not bright enough to walk by without stumbling. There is a learned class, very learned and very large, with when the scholar thinks, and for whom he writes, most uncouthly, is the language only of the schools; and, if not kept in awe by the government, they are contented that a thought