But the antagonism was too far advanced, passions too much
aroused, the popular ignorance of the existence of higher methods of
solution too dense, and the crisis too imminent for the existence of any
demand for such considerations then; and the publication of the document
was withheld. In it were shown the significance of Slavery as a Fact in
History and a Principle in Nature; its Compensations and Advantages; its
positive value, in fact, in the larger sense, in the development of
human society on the planet; then its destiny to give way in our
advancing civilization to the higher doctrine of abstract rights and
individual culture through intellectual means; and again, the
insufficiency of the latter doctrine, when taken for the whole truth;
and finally, to show how, by the intervention of the science of the
subject, the value of both the Principles in conflict could be extracted
and made cooeperative, and their evils completely neutralized. The world
not being ripe for the adoption of the superior and rational methods
here intimated for the adjustment of our difficulties--the readiness of
one party even, without the equal readiness of the other, being
inadequate--the crisis and the conflict could not be averted; and that
again being the case, it is of the utmost importance that the second in
order of the two adverse principles, the principle of democracy, be
completely triumphant; not because it is more true, but because it is a
more _advanced_ truth, and one step nearer, therefore, to the final
solution,_ which will then lap back, and subsume and assimilate and
reconcile the whole family of fundamental principles upon which the
existence of human society is inexpugnably based_.
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