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Show 46 . . r . a little further. You sometimes trate thts regressive 1orce . . . . fi d thrivinO' hardy family, Industnous, m the country n a o' . th ·rty up early and down late. By temperate, savmg, n ' . . t bl l'sfortune there IS born Into the some unaccoun a e m ' . . family, and grows up t he re, a 1a zy boy . . He IS w. eak In the knees droopinO' in the neck, limber In the lOins, and s1 u gg1.s h a'1 1 over. He rises late in the morning, after he has been called many times, and, in the dog-days, comes down whilst his mother is getting breakfast, and hangs over the fire. Most of you have doubtless seen such ; I have, to my sorrow. That is one form of the regressive force. He is what the Bible calls a heaviness to his mother, and a grief to his father. There is a worse retarding force than this; to wit: sometimes a bad boy is born into the family with head enough, but with a devilish heart; he is a malformation in respect to all the higher faculties,a destructive form of the regressive force. Now, a nation may have that regressive force in these two forms,- the lazy retardative, the wicked destructive. Sometimes this Progressive Force seems limited to a small class of persons,- men of genius, like the Hebrew prophets, the Socratic philosophers, the German reformers of the sixteenth century, or the French savants of the eighteenth. But it is not likely it is really thus limited; for these men of genius are merely trees of the common kind, rooted into the public soil, but grown to taller stature than the rest. In the Northern States of America, and also in England and Scotland, it is plain this progressive force is widely spread among the great mass of the people, who are not only instinctively, but of set purpose, eager for progress; that is, for the increasing development of faculties, and for the consequent increasing power over the material world, transforming it to use and beauty. New · England is a monument attesting this fact. But still this force arrives 47 to its highest form in men of genius. Here, in the North, you may find rnen of money, men of education, literary culture, and scientific skill; men of talent,- able to learn readily what can now be taught,- who do not share this progressive instinct, whose will is regressive: but these are exceptional men,- some maimed by accident, others impotent from their mother's womb; whom no Peter and John could make otherwise than halt and lame. But all the men of genius- aboriginal power of sight, ability to create, to know and teach what none learned before- are on the side of this progressive force. In all the Northern States, I know but one exception among the men of politics, science, art, letters, or religion. Even in his Cradle, the Northern genius strangles the regressive snakes of Fogydon1. Still, these men of genius are not the Cause of the progressive force, only expressions of it; not its exclusive depositaries. They are the thunder and lightning, perhaps the rain, out of the cloud, sparks from the electric charge: they are not the cloud; they did not make it. Of course, where the cloud is fullest of the fire of heaven, there is the reddest lightning, the heaviest thunder, and the most abounding rain. Still, the men of genius did not make the progressive spirit of the North ; they but express and help to educate that force. In the North; those two educational factors, Labor and Government, are widely diffused: more persons partake of each than anywhere else in the world. So there is no exclusive, permanent Servile Class,- none that does all the work, and enjoys none of the results: there is no exclusive and permanent Ruling Class ; all are masters, all servants; all command, and all obey. So much for the progressive force. The Regressive Force may consist 1n the general sluggishness of the whole mass of the people: then it will be |