Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/68

64 morals, religion, and by the fact revealing their beauty to the barbarian race.

In all departments of human concern there are such pioneers for the family, the nation, or mankind. It is instructive to study this law of human progress, to see the De Gamas and Columbuses, aspiring men who dream of worlds to come and lead the perilous van; to see the Vespuccis, the Cortezes, the Pizarros, who get rank and fame by following in their track; to see next the merchant adventurers, soldiers, sutlers, and the like, who make money out of the new conquest, while the great discoverers had for meet reward the joy of their genius, the nobleness of their work, a sight of the world's future welfare from the prophet's mountain—a hard life, a bad name, and a grave unknown.

Now, while there are those men in the van of society, who aspire at more, chiding and taxing mankind with idleness, cowardice, and even sin, there are yet those others who loiter on the way, from weakness or wilfulness, refusing to advance—idlers, cowards, sinners. If born in the rear, afar from civilization, they are left to die—the savages, the inferior races, the perishing classes of the world. If born in the centre or civilization, for a while they impede the march by actively hindering others, by standing in their way, or by plundering the rest—the dangerous classes of society. They too are slain and trodden under foot of men, and likewise perish.

In most large families there is a bad boy, a black sheep in the flock, an Ishmael whom Abraham will drive out into the wilderness, to meet an angel if he can find one. That story of Hagar and her son is very old, but verified anew each year in families and nations. So in society there are criminals who do not keep up with the moral advance of the mass, stragglers from the march, whom society treats as Abraham his base-born boy, but sending them off with no loaf or skin of water, not even a blessing, but a curse; sending them off as Cain went, with a bad name and a mark on their forehead! So in the world there are inferior nations, savage, barbarous, half-civilized some are inferior in nature, some perhaps only behind us in development; on a lower form in the great school of Providence—Negroes, Indians, Mexicans, Irish, and the like,