RADICALISM AND THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 3 stirs human society, and sets men to thinking. It is itself a very thinking spirit. In relation to humanity—its facts, its conditions, its wants, its duties, and its destiny,—this spirit is the bone and sinew, the life and impulse of all real progress, alike in the Church and the State. The truth is, since the fall of Adam this world has never been just right; it is not so now; and it will not be for some time to come. There is a vast accumulation of error among men, and also a vast accumulation of iniquity, in various forms pervading human society. Human nature wants improvement. Society wants it. Hence the practical question is this:—Shall we leave things as they are, because they arel or shall we attempt to make them better, rooting out the error and the wrong, and introducing the truth and the right? This is the question with which we have to deal; and to it the radical spirit always returns but one answer. It clamors for correction, improvement, and progress. It is indeed the spirit of progress. The enlightened radical is the man of progress. The fact that things are, is not in his judgment conclusive proof that they ought to be. He takes the liberty of inquiring into their nature; and when he has reached a conclusion, he frankly and firmly tells the world of it. Galileo, for example, was an astronomical radical; he saw that, contrary to the notions of the age, the earth moved around the sun, and not the sun around the earth; by a perfectly radical investigation of the facts, he caught this truth; and although it subverted the cycles and epicycles of the old theory, although the Pope took the alarm and tried to keep him still, Galileo held fast to his conviction, and so far as he could, made it known to others. He was the man of progress; and the world now recognizes him as such. Those who would exorcise the Galileos in science, morals, and religion, are practically the enemies of all progress. They may not always intend this; yet this is the legitimate effect of their theory. Such, in a word, is my analysis of the radical spirit, taken,— first, in its elementary meaning,—secondly, in its direct and specific aim,—thirdly, in its relation to the progress and development of man from an imperfect to a more perfect form of life.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=