who admit the same doctrine will join them, merely on the faith of
the originators; and finally the majority of mankind will recognize
this, and then it will come to pass, that men will cease to ruin
themselves, and will find happiness.

This will happen,--and it will be very speedily,--when people of our
set, and after them a vast majority, shall cease to think it
disgraceful to pay visits in untanned boots, and not disgraceful to
walk in overshoes past people who have no shoes at all; that it is
disgraceful not to understand French, and not disgraceful to eat
bread and not to know how to set it; that it is disgraceful not to
have a starched shirt and clean clothes, and not disgraceful to go
about in clean garments thereby showing one's idleness; that it is
disgraceful to have dirty hands, and not disgraceful not to have
hands with callouses.

All this will come to pass when the sense of the community shall
demand it. But the sense of the community will demand this when
those delusions in the imagination of men, which have concealed the
truth from them, shall have been abolished. Within my own
recollection, great changes have taken place in this respect. And
these changes have taken place only because the general opinion has
undergone an alteration. Within my memory, it has come to pass, that
whereas it used to be disgraceful for wealthy people not to drive out
with four horses and two footmen, and not to keep a valet or a maid
to dress them, wash them, put on their shoes, and so forth; it has
now suddenly become discreditable for one not to put on one's own
clothes and shoes for one's self, and to drive with footmen. Public
opinion has effected all these changes. Are not the changes which
public opinion is now preparing clear?