How many fathers ever acknowledge their spiritual debt to the gift of fatherhood as has Bronson Alcott:
I know not how much more spiritual I am from the parental relation (he writes), how much I have been indebted to them for the light that hath dawned upon my own mind from the radiance of their simple spirits. Certain it is that the more I associate with them in the simple ways they love, the more do I seem to revere. Verily had I not been called to associate with children, had I not devoted myself to the study of human nature in its period of infancy and childhood, I should never have found the tranquil repose, the steady faith, the vivid hope that now sheds a glory and a dignity around the humble path of my life. Childhood hath saved me.
Out of his theories, his studies, and meditations came a sublime ambition, a desire to become a laborer in the "Field of the Soul."
Infancy I shall invest with a glory—a spirituality which the disciples of Jesus, deeply as they entered into His spirit and caught the life of His mind, have failed to bring forth in their records of His sayings and life. I shall redeem infancy and childhood, and, if a Saviour of Adults was given in the person of Jesus, let me, without impiety or arrogance, regard myself as the Children's Saviour. Divine are both missions. Both seek out and endeavor to redeem the Infinite in man, which, by reason of the clogs of sense and custom, is in perpetual danger of being lost. The chief obstacle in the way of human regeneration is the want of a due appreciation of human nature, and particularly of the nature of children.
Home and its influence upon children meant much to Mr. Alcott, and in all his writing the nearest approach to a protest against the poverty he was called upon to endure was when, for a time, he was obliged to give up that home. Deep is the pathos that lies between the lines of this entry in his journal:
Home for Children
I deem it very important to the well being of my children to insure them a home. At least their means of improvement are limited, their pleasures are abridged, the domestic relations, so vital to virtue—to all that lives in the heart and imagination, are robbed of their essential glory, and the effect is felt throughout the character in after life. I feel that my duty as a father cannot be fully carried out when I am thus restricted. Whether we can yet improve this condition remains to be determined.
The home was reestablished—and such a home! An influence felt throughout the world, the inspiration of every book Louisa Alcott wrote.