In a better
and freer sense than has usually been the case with such attempts, the
design sprang out of one man's mind and fell properly under his control.
His simple object was to distribute labor in such a way as to give all
men time for culture, and to free their minds from the debasing
influence of a merely selfish competition. It was a practical, orderly,
noble effort to apply Christianity directly to human customs and
institutions. "A few men and women of like views and feelings," one of
his sympathizers has said, "grouped themselves around him, not as their
master, but as their friend and brother, and the community at Brook Farm
was instituted." At various times Charles Dana, Pratt, the young
Brownson, Horace Sumner (a younger brother of Charles), George William
Curtis, and his brother Burrill Curtis were there. The place was a kind
of granary of true grit. People who found their own honesty too heavy a
burden to carry successfully through the rough jostlings of society,
flocked thither. "They were mostly individuals" says Hawthorne, "who had
gone through such an experience as to disgust them with ordinary
pursuits, but who were not yet so old, nor had suffered so deeply, as to
lose their faith in the better time to come."
To men like Hawthorne, however little they may noise the fact abroad,
the rotten but tenacious timbers of the social order shake beneath the
lightest tread. But he knew that the only wise method is to begin
repairing within the edifice, keeping the old associations, and losing
nothing of value while gaining everything new that is desirable.
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