Related to Speculation regarding the future evolution of mind (c.1850-1940)
Description: 'Admitting all this, with the priceless value of our political institutions, general suflfrage, (and fully acknowledging the latest, widest opening of the doors,) I say that, far deeper than these, what finally and only is to make of our western world a nationality superior to any hither known, and outtopping the past, must be vigorous, yet unsuspected Literatures, perfect personalities and sociologies, original, transcendental, and expressing (what, in highest sense, are not yet express'd at all,) democracy and the modern. With these, and out of these, I promulgate new races of Teachers, and of perfect Women, indispensable to endow the birth-stock of a New World.' (4)
'I submit, therefore, that the fruition of democracy, on aught like a grand scale, resides altogether in the future. As, under any profound and comprehensive view of the gorgeous-composite feudal world, we see in it, through the long ages and cycles of ages, the results of a deep, integral, human and divine principle, or fountain, from which issued laws, ecclesia, manners, institutes, costumes, personalities, poems, (hitherto unequalled,) faithfully partaking of their source, and indeed only arising either to betoken it, or to furnish parts of that varied-flowing display, whose centre was one and absolute — so, long ages hence, shall the due historian or critic make at least an equal retrospect, an equal history for the democratic principle. It too must be adorn'd, credited with its results — then, when it, with imperial power, through amplest time, has dominated mankind — has been the source and test of all the moral, esthetic, social, political, and religious expressions and institutes of the civilized world — has begotten them in spirit and in form, and has carried them to its own unprecedented heights — has had, (it is possible,) monastics and ascetics, more numerous, more devout than the monks and priests of all previous creeds — has sway'd the ages with a breadth and rectitude tallying Nature's own — has fashioned, systematized, and triumphantly finished and carried out, in its own interest, and with unparalleled success, a new earth and a new man.' (36-37)
[page numbers from Democratic Vistas: And Other Papers (1888)]