Page:Americans (1922).djvu/98

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when it does enjoy them, and reflects that it may think and hold just what it will, that 'the world is all before it where to choose,' and what system to build up as its own private persuasion; when this torrent of wilful thoughts rushes over and inundates it, who will deny that the fruit of the tree of knowledge, or what the mind takes for knowledge, has made it one of the gods, with a sense of expansion and elevation,—an intoxication in reality, still, so far as the subjective state of the mind goes, an illumination?"

The true emancipator, the man who has entered fully into the modern spirit, is always a reconstructionist. The enlargement of mind which he offers is always, to modify slightly the words of Newman, an enlargement not of tumult and intoxication but of clearer vision and fruitful peace. In our Civil War slaves set free by proclamation flung up their caps and shouted with a vague joy. But shortly afterwards, we are told, many of them returned to their old masters and sought reemployment at their former tasks. So little was their undirected freedom worth. The true liberator strikes off the old shackles but immediately he suggests new service, a fuller use of our powers. He cuts us loose from the old moorings; but then he comes aboard like a good pilot, and while we trim our sails, he takes the wheel and lays our course for a fresh voyage. His message when he leaves us is not, "Henceforth be masterless," but "Bear thou henceforth the scep-