ences of surrounding scenery and overshadowing skies, in the bosom of the family, by the love and gentleness, or wrath and fretfulness of parents, by the passions or affections they see manifested, the conversations to which they listen, and above all by the general pursuits, habits, and moral tone of the community.

These considerations, together with Brownson's extensive discussion of the press and the lyceum, seemed to point to the conclusion that people were most likely to develop a love of liberty through exposure to wide‐ ranging public controversy, the "free action of mind on mind." Strong convictions would not amount to much unless those who held them proved both able and willing to defend them. Public controversy, accordingly, ought to address itself not only to politics but to religion—the "two great concernments of human beings." When he criticized the separation of religion and politics, Brownson meant that questions concerning the "destiny of man" ought to become questions for public debate, not that a new religious establishment should provide authoritative answers. "The day for authoritative teaching is gone by." Efforts to reimpose it would only lead to that "calm, respectable state, which our respectable clergy contend for"; and anything was preferable to the "present deadness of our churches." "Peace is a good thing, but justice is better.... Give us the noise and contention of life, rather than the peace and silence of the charnel-house."

To call Brownson a republican would be stretching a point. He considered it an argument in favor of democracy that "it takes care not to lose the man in the citizen"—not exactly a republican sentiment. In the free cities of antiquity, Brownson pointed out, "there were rights of the citizen, but no rights of man." Thus Socrates, condemned to death, submitted to the polis instead of heeding his friends' advice to flee. "He had no rights as a man, that he might plead." In Greece and Rome, "there was no personal liberty"; the "individual ... counted for nothing." This subordi

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