Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/66

82 abortive men who have advanced in years, but stopped growth in their babyhood, or boyhood. But as the will is the soul of personality, so to say, the heart of intellect, morals, and religion, so the force thereof may promote, retard, disturb, and perhaps for a time completely arrest the progress of intellectual, moral, and religious growth. Still more, this spiritual development of men is hindered or promoted by subtle causes hitherto little appreciated. Hence, by reason of those outward or internal hinderances, you find persons and classes of men who do not attain the average culture of mankind) but stop at some lower stage of this spiritual development, or else loiter behind the rest. You even find whole nations whose progress is be slow, that thay need the continual aid of the more civilized to quicken their growth* Outward circumstances have a powerful influence on this development. If a single class in a nation lingers behind the rest, the cause thereof will commonly be found in some outward hinderance. They move in a resisting medium, and therefore with abated speed. No one expects the same progress from a Russian serf and a free man of New England. I do not deny that in the case of some men personal will is doubtless the disturbing force. I am not now to go beyond that fact, and inquire how the will became as it is. Mere is a man who, from whatever cause, is bodily ill-born, with defective organs. He stops in the animal period; is incapable of any considerable degree of development, intellectual, moral, or religious. Tho defect is in his body. Others disturbed by more occult causes do not attain their proper growth. This man wishes to stop in his savage period, he would be a freebooter, a privateer against society, having universal letters of marque and reprisal; a perpetual Arab, his rule is to get what he can, as he will and where he pleases, to keep What he gets. Another stops at the barbarous age. He is lazy and will not work, others must bear his share of the general burden of mankind. He claims letters patent to make all men servo him. He is hot only indolent, constitutionally lazy, but lazy, consciously and wilfully idle. He will not work, but in one form or another will beg or steal. Yet a fourth stops in the half-civilized period. He will work with his hands, but no more. He cannot discover; he will not study to