AND THE SEXUAL RELATIONS.
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think and feel? For if they still thought and felt, they would also feel the necessity of embodying their thoughts and feelings in, and of manifesting them through, corresponding aspirations. I cannot help thinking how much these thousands could accomplish if they wanted to; and that they do not want to, although everything, just everything has been done to urge them on, is not that a proof of their complete demoralization and baseness?
Perhaps the colors of my picture are too somber, perhaps other eyes will see it from a more cheerful point of view, which I do not know. But that, on the whole, I do not see things too darkly, you, at least, cannot deny.[1]
- ↑ However, our friend forgets to make any allowance for the effect which the social and political conditions had upon the emigrants, and especially forgets to consider that a great many of the highest minded, and most cultured of them were, moreover, obliged to struggle with miserable circumstances, which made it hard for them, or discouraged them, from taking part in affairs of general interest. But she is perfectly right in condemning the great mass of the older emigration, whose pecuniary conditions are much better, but who have actually sworn off, and hate every participation in intellectual life and liberal aspirations, while every low and illiberal tendency seems to meet with their approval; moreover, that part of the younger generation, which is likewise quite numerous, who are not suffering from pecuniary disabilities, but who, guided by a shallow conceit, observe a negative or passive attitude toward everything that does not especially curry their favor. The upshot of it all is, of course, that the entire German emigration does not weigh anything what-
