AND SUBORDINATION. 81 



and appetites which he has in common with the inferior 

 creatures. Although a social organization cannot exist 

 without competition, yet it does not necessarily follow 

 that we are to oppose each other with the ferocity and 

 cruelty of wild beasts. It is the intention of Providence 

 that we should seek to ennoble each other by mutual rivalry, 

 that the struggle should improve our moral and intellec- 

 tual nature. As society advances, for the world moves on- 

 ward, those will be most successful who fight the inevitable 

 battles of life bravely and HONORABLY. Even now the ten- 

 dency of the age is to offer increased inducements to a 

 meritorious line of action. What is a mere millionaire 

 after all? Frail and perishable mortal, whom men so 

 much envy and admire, you shall not survive the grave ! 

 To-day your name is in everybody's mouth ; to-morrow 

 you will be forgotten ! Money never rescued any man's 

 name from oblivion, unless it was expended so as to bene- 

 fit society. Virtue alone is enduring. The mind is the 

 noblest part of man. What of the mind of the millionaire ? 

 Are these the men whose spirits converse with us when their 

 bodies have been mouldering in the grave for ages ? Do you 

 rank the millionaire with such men as Newton and Frank- 

 lin, Clay and Webster, and the venerable Humboldt ? 

 These men are not dead ; they live, and they will continue 

 to live for ages yet to come. Who remembers the mil- 

 lionaire ? Does his picture adorn the poor man's home ? 



That which is the most remarkable about a tree, is not 

 only the variety, the perfect harmony, and freedom of its 

 individual parts, but that power of centralization by which 

 all these parts are combined together into one harmonious 

 whole. That is only a harmonious ordered whole, whose 

 parts are free, and those parts are only free which unfold 

 their peculiarities subordinate to a common law, and which 

 in their independent forms equally realize the idea of the 

 whole. In the tree, then, we have presented for contem- 

 plation an illustration, clear and beautiful as the unclouded 

 sun, of a perfectly natural and equitable social system of 

 labor, combining the highest individual freedom with sub- 

 ordination. The tree shows us a system of harmoniously 



