Isaac was then in his fifteenth year.

Among the conversations recorded in the memoranda we find this reference to their earliest interview: "I first met Dr.Brownson in New York, in our house.

I was then reading the Washington _Globe,_ Benton's speeches, Calhoun's, etc.
The elder Blair was its editor; its motto was, 'The world is governed too much'-- a motto in whose spirit there could be no great movement except in the way of revolution.

After the establishment of the American Government the principle expressed in that motto could only be abandoned or pushed into revolution and anarchy.
"I put this question to Brownson: 'How can I become certain of the objective reality of the operations of my soul ?' He answered: 'If you have not yet reached that period of mental life, you will do so before many years.' "It is a great humiliation for me to admit that I was ever in a state in which I doubted the actual validity of the testimony of my own faculties, and the reality of the phenomena of my mental existence.

I had begun my mental life in politics, and in a certain sense in religion; but to my philosophical life I was yet unborn." In the article on the "Workingman's Party," already quoted from, Father Hecker, after mentioning that Dr.Brownson continued to lecture before the New York members of the party for several years, goes on as follows: "If it be asked why a man like Dr.Brownson, a born philosopher, should have thus busied himself with the solution of the most practical of problems by undertaking to abolish inequality among men, the answer is plain.