modern progress. Without wandering at will in the enticing field of comparison between ancient and modern civilization, the terms just employed express the distinguishing traits of the two. The former was stationary, the latter is progressive: the one stereotyped, presenting at all times the same leaden aspect, dull, monotonous and stiff; the other, ever-changing, its elements in perpetual ferment, and marked by new developements as the result of the ceaseless struggle. In Mormonism, we discover at least three influences which made Asiatic civilization so inert and uniform. The first of these is the degradation of woman; for degraded she is, the moment she sinks from the side of man as his friend and equal, and takes the veil of seclusion in the harem of a master, the minister of his pleasures. Mormonism stamps the brand of social inferiority upon her, by merging her, even in the estimation of the Deity, in the person of her husband, and giving her no other consideration save (to use their own cant lan language.) as she “raises up a holy seed to the Lord.” Thus, by a single stroke of the pen, does Mormonism throw back half the race into a position from which it is impossible to ascend: and to retard the intellectual and moral advancement of those who are constituted by nature the educators of mankind, all history shows is but to lock the wheels of social progress.
The second influence at work in the Mormon scheme, repressing its civilization, is, the merging of the individual into the system; making him, as one quaintly expresses it, only a single spoke in a great wheel; of no individual value, save as he is a component part of a great whole.—I need not pause to show how clear a trait this is of ancient civilization,—the glory and the liberty of the State were the glory and liberty of the citizen: but he had no existence, even in his own thoughts, independent of the commonwealth. We have only now to examine the complex polity of the Mormon government, to see how the ties are multiplied, which bind together the units of society. We have only cursorily to read the history of the sect, to discover how the glory of the Latter-day Church is the attracting power holding each atom to its place in the great orb.
The third element of fixity in Mormon society, is its
