“Whoever is satisfied with society as it is; whose sense of justice is not wounded by its common action, institutions, spirit of commerce, has no business with this community; neither has any one who is willing to have other men (needing more time for intellectual cultivation than himself) give their best hours and strength to bodily labor to secure himself immunity therefrom. . . .  Everything can be said of it, in a degree, which Christ said of His kingdom, and therefore it is believed that in some measure it does embody His idea.  For its Gate of Entrance is strait and narrow.  It is, literally, a pearl hidden in a field. Those only who are willing to lose their life for its sake shall find it. . . .  Those who have not the faith that the principles of Christ’s kingdom are applicable to this world, will smile at it as a visionary attempt.”

Brook Farm has an interest for Catholics because, in the order of guileless nature, it was the preamble of that common life which Isaac Hecker afterwards enjoyed in its supernatural realization in the Church.  It was a protest against that selfishness of the individual which is highly accentuated in a large class of New-Englanders, and prodigiously developed in the economical conditions of modern society.  Against these Isaac had revolted in New York; at Brook Farm he hoped to find their remedy.  And in fact the gentle reformers, as we may call these West Roxbury adventurers into the unexplored regions of the common life, were worthy of their task though not equal to it.  There is no doubt that in small numbers and with a partial surrender of individual prerogatives, well-meaning men and women may taste many of the good things and be able to bear some of the hardships of the common life.  But to compass in permanent form its aspirations in this direction, as in many others, nature is incompetent.  The terrible if wonderful success of Sparta is what can be attained, and tells at what cost.  The economy of the bee-hive, which kills or drives away its superfluous members, and the polity of Sparta, which put the cripples and the aged to death, are essential to permanent success in the venture of communism in the natural order.  “Sweetness and light” are enjoyed by the few only at the sacrifice of the unwholesome and burdensome members of the hive.

Brook Farm, however, was not conceived in any spirit of cruelty or of contempt of the weaker members of humanity; the very contrary was the case.  Sin and feebleness were capable, thought its founders, of elimination by the force of natural virtue.  The men and women who gathered there in its first years were noble of their kind; and their kind, now much less frequently met with, was the finest product of natural manhood.  Of the channels of information which reach us from Brook Farm, and we believe we have had access to them all, none contains the slightest evidence of sensuality, the least trace of the selfishness of the world, or even any sign of the extravagances