These feats are measures or traits of civility; and temperate climate is an important influence, though not quite indispensable, for there have been learning, philosophy, and art in Iceland, and in the tropics.  But one condition is essential to the social education of man,—­namely, morality.  There can be no high civility without a deep morality, though it may not always call itself by that name, but sometimes the point of honor, as in the institution of chivalry; or patriotism, as in the Spartan and Roman republics; or the enthusiasm of some religious sect which imputes its virtue to its dogma; or the cabalism, or esprit du corps, of a masonic or other association of friends.

The evolution of a highly destined society must be moral; it must run in the grooves of the celestial wheels.  It must be catholic in aims.  What is moral?  It is the respecting in action catholic or universal ends.  Hear the definition which Kant gives of moral conduct:  “Act always so that the immediate motive of thy will may become a universal rule for all intelligent beings.”

Civilization depends on morality.  Everything good in man leans on what is higher.  This rule holds in small as in great.  Thus, all our strength and success in the work of our hands depend on our borrowing the aid of the elements.  You have seen a carpenter on a ladder with a broad-axe chopping upward chips and slivers from a beam.  How awkward! at what disadvantage he works!  But see him on the ground, dressing his timber under him.  Now, not his feeble muscles, but the force of gravity brings down the axe; that is to say, the planet itself splits his stick.  The farmer had much ill-temper, laziness, and shirking to endure from his hand-sawyers, until, one day, he bethought him to put his saw-mill on the edge of a waterfall; and the river never tires of turning his wheel:  the river is good-natured, and never hints an objection.

We had letters to send:  couriers could not go fast enough, nor far enough; broke their wagons, foundered their horses; bad roads in spring, snow-drifts in winter, heats in summer; could not get the horses out of a walk.  But we found out that the air and earth were full of electricity; and it was always going our way,—­just the way we wanted to send. Would he take a message? Just as lief as not; had nothing else to do; would carry it in no time.  Only one doubt occurred, one staggering objection,—­he had no carpet-bag, no visible pockets, no hands, not so much as a mouth, to carry a letter.  But, after much thought and many experiments, we managed to meet the conditions, and to fold up the letter in such invisible compact form as he could carry in those invisible pockets of his, never wrought by needle and thread,—­and it went like a charm.

I admire still more than the saw-mill the skill which, on the sea-shore, makes the tides drive the wheels and grind corn, and which thus engages the assistance of the moon, like a hired hand, to grind, and wind, and pump, and saw, and split stone, and roll iron.