Hope and aspiration also furnish the secret springs of civilization.  All things useful and beautiful were once only hopes and ideas.  Free institutions are ideals of liberty, crystallized into word forms.  Tools and instruments are ideals dressed up in iron clothes.  The early forest man dwelt in a cave; ached with cold and moaned with hunger.  Going into the forest to dig roots he found honey hived by the bees and nuts stored up by squirrels against the winter.  Straightway hope suggested to him a larger granary, whence hath come all man’s bins and storehouses.  Man plucked a large plum and found it sour, and another plum small, but sweet.  Hope suggested that he unite the two and strike through the abundant acid juices of the one with the sugar of the other.  Thence came all vineyards and orchards.  Digging in the soil tired him, but hope suggested that his pet ox might pull his forked stick; when the wooden stick wore blunt hope replaced it with an iron point; when the iron point refused to scour hope suggested steel; when the steel made his burden light and doubled the pace of his steeds, hope suggested a seat on the plow; when the riding-plow gave him time to think, hope suggested he could increase the harvest by doubling the depth, when the weight was overheavy for his beasts, hope suggested a steam-plow.  The Kensington Museum exhibits the growth of the plow idea, as it moved from the forked stick to the “steam gang.”  If in this procession of material plows we could see the procession of ideal plows we would find that thoughts and hopes are a thousandfold more than material things.

By hope also do the people increase in wisdom and culture and character.  Millions of men are digging and toiling twelve hours each day; and God hath sent forth hope to emancipate them from drudgery.  The man digging with his pick hath a far-away look as he toils.  Hope is drawing pictures of a cottage with vines over the doorway, with some one standing at the gate, a sweet voice singing over the cradle.  Hope makes this home his; it rests the laborer and saves him from despair.  Multitudes working in the stithy and deep mines sweeten their labor and exalt their toil by aspiring thoughts.  Thinking of his little ones at home, the miner says:  “My children shall not be as their father was; my drudgery is not for self, but for love’s sake; the sweat of my brow is oil in the lamp of love; I will light it to-night on the sacred altar of home.”  Here is the secret of the rise and reign of the people.  This explains all man’s progress in knowledge and culture.  As the fruits and flowers rise rank upon rank in response to the advancing summer, so all that is most refined and exalted in man’s mind or heart bursts forth in new ideals, reforms, revolutions, in response to the revelation of that personal presence from whom all hope and aspiration incessantly proceed.