Then it must be said he loved money too well. This infirmity was not native to him, but must probably be imputed to early poverty, the necessity of working hard in order to pay debts not altogether of his own contracting, thus pledging the meagre income of the first sixty years of his life. His final income was large, but it was earned by incessant literary toil, which naturally rendered him avaricious of the rewards that might come to him. His generosity did not have a fair chance to show itself outside of his family. There it was lavish, but there it was too much mixed up with affection, duty, and pride to be credited to his manhood. He did not live long enough, either, to attain complete superiority over his accidents. He was already an old man before he had money for his wants. I remember meeting him on Broadway in 1861, the year of his wife's death, and he said: "My grief is embittered by the thought that she died just as I was getting able to obtain for her what she needed." He was then fifty-nine years of age. It cannot be expected that any impulse of generosity will overcome the habits of a life-time at so advanced a period as this. That they showed themselves at all is remarkable, and establishes as well their power as their existence.

In a word, this man was too heavily weighted by circumstances to do his genius full justice. He seemed to be two individuals, with little in common between them. As one looked at his past or at his present, his real character was differently judged. The most plausible account of him was that which supposed the experiences to be buried in a deep grave, which was seldom uncovered even by the man himself, who lived in the day before him, and rarely glanced back save to mourn over or to make sport of his former career. The only way of establishing a unity in his history is to concede the supremacy of the intellectual quality over the moral in his first endeavors. The prejudice in favor of the moral was and is so strong that to maintain this supremacy will seem like a condemnation of him, though meant in his praise. He probably would so have considered it, especially when carried away by the flood of memories. It was easy for him to be mistaken. His merit consists in the energy of the reason which made headway against a host of disadvantages and achieved something resembling a victory in the end. Some time hence, when the homage paid to sentiment shall have yielded to the worship of knowledge, George Ripley will be regarded as one of the earliest apostles of the light.

All these greatly enriched my life in New York, opened new spheres of activity, and enlarged my whole horizon, both intellectually and socially. Their variety, elasticity, and vigor in many fields of intellectual force added much to the extension of my view, and acted, not merely as a refreshment, but also as a stimulus.

XV.
THE PRESENT SITUATION.

The progress of mind is continuous. Strictly speaking, there are no periods of transition, no crises in thought. The history of ideas presents no gap. Every stage begins and ends an epoch. One is often reminded of the common notion that the year begins and ends at a particular moment. Every day begins and ends a year; every hour is equally sacred. Yet solemn thought, worship, self-examination, are precious, and these can be secured only by the observance of times and seasons; so that we fall on our knees and pray when the old year ends and the new one begins.

So, as a point of time must be fixed upon, we will begin with Thomas Paine. It is not easy to speak fully and justly of Paine, because in so doing we must speak of the misapprehensions and mis-statements of which he has been the victim; and even if we refute these, the bare mention of them leaves a stain on his fame. No doubt his method—application of common-sense to religion—was essentially vicious. Common-sense is an admirable quality in practical affairs, quite indispensable in the management of business of all kinds, but it has no place in the discussion of works of the higher imagination—of poetry, art, music, or faith. But such was the man's genius, such was the demand of his age. It is easy to speak of his ignorance, his coarseness, his impudence, his vanity; but it must be remembered that his education was very imperfect, for he was utterly ignorant of any language but his own, and he did not, apparently, read even the English deists; that he was a man of the people; that he lived in an age of revolutions; that he stood for the rights of common humanity. It must be remembered also that, in the first place, he brought the human mind face to face with problems which had been appropriated by a special class that considered itself exempt from criticism. In the next place he was in dead earnest; not attacking the Bible or religion out of flippancy or brutality, but because he really hated the interpretations that were usually given of sacred things; his attack was against orthodoxy, not against faith. "His blasphemy," says Leslie Stephen, "was not against the Supreme God, but against Jehovah. He was vindicating the ruler of the universe from the imputations which believers in literal inspiration and dogmatical theology had heaped upon him under the disguise of homage. He was denying that the God before whom reasonable creatures should bow in reverence could be the supernatural tyrant of priestly imagination, who was responsible for Jewish massacres, who favored a petty clan at the expense of his other creatures, who punished the innocent for the guilty, who lighted the fires of everlasting torment for the masses of mankind, and who gave a monopoly of his favor to priests or a few favored enthusiasts. Paine, in short, with all his brutality, had the conscience of his hearers on his side, and we must prefer his rough exposure of popular errors to the unconscious blasphemy of his supporters." Then Paine did love his kind; he abhorred cruelty, and desired, after his fashion, to elevate his race.

Examples of this are numerous. At the time when the "Common Sense" and "Crisis" were having an enormous sale, the demand for the former reaching not less than one hundred thousand copies, and both together offering to the author profits that would have made him rich, Paine freely gave the copyright to every State in the Union. In his period of public favor and of intimate friendship with the founders of the government, Paine declined to accept any place or office of emolument, saying: "I must be in everything, as I have ever been, a disinterested volunteer. My proper sphere of action is on the common floor of citizenship, and to honest men I give my hand and heart freely." The State of Virginia made a large claim on the general government for lands. Thomas Paine opposed the claim as unreasonable and unjust, though at that very time there was a resolution before the legislature of Virginia to appropriate to him a handsome sum of money for services rendered. In 1797, Paine was the chief promoter of the society of "Theophilanthropists," whose object was the extinction of religious prejudices, the maintenance of morality, and the diffusion of faith in one God. "It is want of feeling," says this heartless blasphemer, "to talk of priests and bells, while infants are perishing in hospitals, and the aged and infirm poor are dying in the streets." In 1774, Paine published in the Pennsylvania Journal, a strong, anti-slavery essay. While clerk in the Pennsylvania Legislature he made an appeal in behalf of the army, then in extreme distress, and subscribed his entire salary for the year to the fund that was raised. Towards the close of his life, he devised a plan for imposing a special tax on all deceased persons' estates, to create a fund from which all, on reaching twenty-one years, should receive a sum to establish them in business, and in order that all who were in the decline of life should be saved from destitution. It is not generally known that Paine often preached on Sunday afternoons at New Rochelle. In England he spoke in early life from Dissenting pulpits, and to him we owe this exquisite definition of religion: "It is man bringing to his Maker the fruits of his heart." All this is evidence that honorable considerations were at the bottom of his own belief. He was, according to his view, the friend of man, and in this interest wrote his books. He introduced kindness into religion.

He certainly repeated the ideas of Collins and Toland, and the conceptions that were floating in the air, breathed by Voltaire and Diderot; but he did give them voice. The English deists were dead, and would have continued so but for him. He was essentially a pamphleteer, the master of a very rich, simple style that went directly to the hearts of the people. His best performances were unquestionably political, but all his works were marked by the same peculiarities. His mistake was in supposing that the power that could animate an army could pull down a church.