Excerpt from The Wound Dresser: A Series of Letters, Written From the Hospitals in Washington, During the War of the RebellionWhat the United States are working out and establishing needs imperatively the connivance of something subtler than ballots and legislators. The Goethean theory and lesson (if I may brie¿y state it so) of the exclusive sufficiency of artistic, scientific, literary equipment to the character, irrespective of any strong claims of the political ties of nation, state, or city, could have answer'd under the con ventionality and pettiness of Weimar, or the Ger many, or even Europe, of those times, but it will not do for America to-day at all. We have not only to exploit our own theory above any that has pre ceded us, but we have entirely different, and deeper rooted, and infinitely broader themes.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.