So every active community is divided into
associations of artists, of merchants, of bookbinders, of carpenters,
of masons, of plasterers, of shipwrights, of plumbers. Do you cry out
against it? Then you cry out against a tendency divinely implanted.
Your tirades will accomplish no more than if you should preach to a
busy ant-hill or bee-hive a long sermon against secret societies.
Here we find in our path the oft-discussed question, whether
associations that do their work with closed doors, and admit their
members by pass-words, and greet each other with a secret grip, are
right or wrong. I answer that it depends entirely upon the nature of
the object for which they meet. Is it to pass the hours in revelry,
wassail, blasphemy, and obscene talk, or to plot trouble to the State,
or to debauch the innocent? Then I say, with an emphasis that no man
can mistake, "NO." But is the object the improvement of the mind,
or the enlargement of the heart, or the advancement of art, or
the defence of the government, or the extirpation of crime, or the
kindling of a pure-hearted sociality? Then I say, with just as much
emphasis, "YES.
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