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Updated: July 21, 2025
Spiritualists, bone-rubbers, anti-vivisectionists, all sort of anti's in fact, those who have fads about education or fads against it, Perfectionists, Daughters of the Dove of Peace, Sons of the Roaring Torrent, itinerant peace-mongers all these may have a real genius among them once in forty years; but to look for an exception to the common run of yellow dogs and damfools among them is like opening oysters with the hope of finding pearls.
As near as I can make out, the scandal they've got agen us, which they've always had agen us because of the wickedness of the Gentile mind, began to have some truth in it when Rigdon came out with his teaching concerning the nonsense of spiritual wives, which wasn't new with him, for I hear that it's held among all the folks as call themselves 'Perfectionists. Well, our prophet made pretty quick work of that doctrine, and he rebuked Rigdon in public and private, and packed him out of the place, and no one can say that our prophet has ever done otherwise with any one as has had notions about marriage."
The people do not appear to be offended at the sight of mud in winter, and, like most of our Western farmers, do not know what good roads are. The Perfectionists pay a little attention to landscape-gardening, and have laid out their grounds very tastefully. The communists are honest. They like thorough and good work; and value their reputation for honesty and fair dealing.
Like the Shakers with their garden seeds, and all other successful communities with their products, the Perfectionists got their start by the excellence of their workmanship. Their traps attracted attention because they were more uniformly well made than others; and thus they built up a trade which has become very large.
I mean it as synonymous with happiness. The person of whom I speak seemed born for the purpose of foreshadowing the doctrines of Turgot, Price, Priestley, and Condorcet of exemplifying by individual instance what has been deemed the chimera of the perfectionists.
But this treatise being already weighty, we do not need to add an explanation, why our leaders were pleased to furnish Noyse's pamphlet to give occasion to these solemn warnings with which we close this treatise, which should be thankfully received from our directors by all parties and especially by Abolitionists and Republicans and by all kinds of Perfectionists and Spiritualists of the last fashion, who are by the abomination, called Free Love, so stupified, that they cannot comprehend our message, although they pretend to be Reformers.
If, on the contrary, he believes in God, he finds hope and comfort in the social theory which Jesus propounded; and he will seek another way out, as did the Rappists, the Eben-Ezers, the Jansenists, the Zoarites, and not less the Shakers and the Perfectionists, each giving his own interpretation to that brief narrative of Luke in which he describes the primitive Christian Church: "And all that believed were together, and had all things in common; and sold their possessions and goods; and parted them to all men as every man had need."
It appears from the above correspondence that both Sarah and Angelina had become tinctured with the doctrines of "non-resistance," which, within a few years, had gained some credit with a few "perfectionists" and active reformers in and about Boston. They had been presented by Lydia Maria Child, a genial writer, under the guise of the Scriptural doctrine of love.
The Perfectionists publish a weekly journal, send this and their pamphlets to all who wish them, and have always used the press freely. Their peculiar doctrines are widely known, and they receive constantly applications from persons desirous to join their communes.
For this purpose I know of no better means than that which the Perfectionists call "criticism" telling a member to his face, in regular and formal meeting, what is the opinion of his fellows about him which he or she, of course, ought to receive in silence. Those who cannot bear this ordeal are unfit for community life, and ought not to attempt it.
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