liberal ideas, in one direction, affords no security for their
attaining to mediocrity in others; and that one familiar with the
history of thought, may pronounce, with moral certainty, that such and
such ideas were never entertained in such or such society, where due
preparation did not exist. As we may confidently say, No mountain-top
can tower high enough, to catch the sunbeams at midnight; with equal
confidence we may say of many ideas now familiar as school-boy truths:
no intellect in ancient Greece or Rome soared high enough above the
mass to grasp them.




Part II.

Welfare as Dependent on Policy.


As generally at all points, so the materialism of the age particularly
appears, in that the political economists take _wealth_, defining their
science in the vulgar acceptation, rather than in the good old English
sense, _welfare_, _well-being_. If they occasionally venture a remark
of a more liberal bearing on the general subject of public welfare;
such is the exception to the general rule. Money, with its equivalents
and exchangeables, is their usual theme in treating of wealth; thought
the common use of the word economy might suggest a higher science. For
he does not exhaust our idea of a good economist, who manages to have
at command abundant materials for rendering home happy; while, for lack
of wisdom to turn such materials to account, that home may be less
happy than the next-door neighbor's, where want is hardly staved off.