I mean that
you can affect a few souls, and that each of these in turn may affect
a few more, but that no exquisite book tells properly and directly on
a multitude, however largely it may be spread by type and paper.
Witness the things the multitude will say about it, if one is so
unhappy as to be obliged to hear their sayings. I do not write this
cynically, but in pure sadness and pity. Both traveling abroad and
staying at home among our English sights and sports, one must
continually feel how slowly the centuries work toward the moral good
of men, and that thought lies very close to what you say as to your
wonder or conjecture concerning my religious point of view. I believe
that religion, too, has to be modified according to the dominant
phases; that a religion more perfect than any yet prevalent must
express less care of personal consolation, and the more deeply awing
sense of responsibility to man springing from sympathy with that which
of all things is most certainly known to us,--the difficulty of the
human lot. Letters are necessarily narrow and fragmentary, and
when one writes on wide subjects, are likely to create more
misunderstanding than illumination. But I have little anxiety in
writing to you, dear friend and fellow-laborer; for you have had
longer experience than I as a writer, and fuller experience as a
woman, since you have borne children and known a mother's history from
the beginning.
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