It is the day of the Holy Ghost.
But when souls fall corrupt, into disintegration, they have no more day. They have sinned against the Holy Ghost.
These people in Blithedale Romance have sinned against the Holy Ghost, and corruption has set in.
All, perhaps, except the I, Nathaniel. He is still a sad, integral consciousness.
But not excepting Zenobia. The Black Pearl is rotting down. Fast. The cleverer she is, the faster she rots.
And they are all disintegrating, so they take to psychic tricks. It is a certain sign of the disintegration of the psyche in a man, and much more so in a woman, when she takes to spiritualism, and table-rapping, and occult messages, or witchcraft and supernatural powers of that sort. When men want to be supernatural, be sure that something has gone wrong in their natural stuff. More so, even, with a woman.
And yet the soul has its own profound subtleties of knowing. And the blood has its strange omniscience.
But this isn't impudent and materialistic, like spiritualism and magic and all that range of pretentious supernaturalism.
[IX. DANA'S "TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST"]
You can't idealize brute labour. That is to say, you can't idealize brute labour, without coming undone, as an idealist.