4–10 August 1834

Carlyle says Society is extinct. Be it so. So- ciety existed in a clan ; existed in Alaric and Attila's time, in the Crusades, in the Puritan Conventicles. Very well. I had rather be soli- tary as now, than social as then. Society exists now where there is love and faithful fellow- working, only the persons composing it are fewer — societies of two or three, instead of na- tions. Societies, parties, are only incipient stages, tadpole states of men, as caterpillars are social, but the butterfly not. The true and finished man is ever alone. Men cannot satisfy him ; he needs God, and his intercourse with his brother is ever condescending, and in a degree hypo- critical.