better--the object-lesson of good men and women struggling nobly and
unselfishly for laudable ends. Brook Farm was an attempt to remove
obstructions from the pathway of human progress, taking that word in
the natural sense.

Even afterwards, when he had known human destiny in its perfect
supernatural and natural forms, and when the means to compass it were
in his possession and plainly competent for success, his memory
reproduced the scenes and persons of Brook Farm in an atmosphere of
affection and admiration, though not unmingled with amusement. He
used not infrequently to quote words heard there, and cite examples
of things done there, as lessons of wisdom not only for the
philosopher but also for the ascetic. He was there equipped with the
necessary external guarantee of his inner consciousness that man is
good, because made so by his Creator--inclined indeed to evil, but
yet a good being, even so inclined. Nothing is more necessary for one
who is to be a teacher among a population whose Catholicity is of
blood and family tradition as well as of grace, than to know that
there is virtue, true and high in its own order, outside the visible
pale of the Church. Especially is this necessary if Catholics in any
age or country are to be fitted for a missionary vocation. That this
is the vocation of the Church of his day was Isaac Hecker's
passionate conviction. He was able to communicate this to Catholics
of the old stock as well as to influence non-Catholics in favor of
the Church; perhaps even more so. More than anything else, indeed,
Brook Farm taught him the defect of human nature on its highest
plane; but it taught him also the worthiness of the men and women of
America of the apostle's toil and blood. The gentle natures whom he
there knew and learned to love, their spirit of self-sacrifice for
the common good, their minds at once innocent and cultivated, their