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THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.
VOL. II.—OCTOBER, 1858.—NO. XII.
THE NEW WORLD AND THE NEW MAN.
Half a dozen rivulets leap down the western declivity of the RockyMountains, and unite; four thousand miles away the mighty Missouridebouches into the Mexican Gulf as the result of that junction. Did therivulets propose or plan the river? Not at all; but they knew, each,its private need to find a lower level; the universal law they obeyedaccomplished the rest. So is it with the great human streams. Mightybeginnings do not lie in the minds of the beginners. History is aperpetual surprise, ever developing results of which men were theagents without being the expectants. Individual actors, with respect tothe master claim of humanity, are, for the most part, not unlike thatfleet hound which, enticed by a tempting prospect of meat, outran alocomotive engine all the way from Lowell to Boston, and won a handsomewager for his owner, while intent only on a dinner for himself.Humanity is served out of all proportion to the intention of service.Even the noble souls, never wanting in history, who follow not a bait,but belief, see only in imperfect survey the connections and relationsof their deeds. Each is faithfully obeying his own inward vocation, avoice unheard by other soul than his own, and the inability tocalculate consequences makes the preëminent grandeur of his position;or he is urged by the high inevitable impulse to publish or verify anidea: the Divine Destiny works in their hearts, and plans overtheir heads.
Socrates felt a sacred impulse to test his neighbors, what they knewand were: this is such account of his life as he himself can give atits close. His contemporaries generally saw in him an imperturbable andtroublesome questioner, fatally sure to come at the secret of everyman's character and credence, whom no subterfuge could elude, nocompliments flatter, no menaces appall,—suspected also of someemancipation from the popular superstitions: this is the account of himwhich they are able to give. At twenty-three centuries' distance wesee in him the source of a river of spiritual influence, that yetstreams on, more than a Missouri, in the minds of men,—more than aMissouri, for it not only flows as an open current, but, percolatingbeneath the surface, and coming up in distinct and distant fountains,it becomes the hidden source of many a constant tide in the faiths andphilosophies of nations.
The veil covers the eyes of spectators and agents alike. Columbusreturns, freighted with wondrous tidings, to the Spanish shore; thenation rises and claps its hands; the nation kneels to bless its godsat all its shrines, and chants its delight in many a choral Te Deum.What, then, do they think is gained? Why, El Dorado! Have they notgained a whole world of gold and silver mines to buy jewelled cloaksand feathers and frippery with? Have they not gained a cornucopia ofsavages, to support new brigades at home by their enslavement, and newbishoprics abroad by their salvation? Touching, truly, is the childisheagerness and bonhommie with which those Spaniards in fancy assume,as it were, between thumb and finger, this continent, deemed to benothing less than gold, and feed with it the leanness of hungry purses;and the effect is not a little enhanced by the extreme pains they areat to say a sufficient grace over the imagined meal. "Oh, wonderful,Pomponius!" shouts the large-minded Peter Martyr. "Upon the surface of