shows in an admirable summary of his participation in the Anti-slavery movement, "his civic courage was flawless." He interrupted his lecture on Heroism in 1838 to praise the brave Lovejoy "who gave his breast to the bullets of a mob, for the rights of free speech and opinion, and died when it was better not to live." He received John Brown in Concord, and when two years later the law doomed him to die, he declared publicly in Boston that the new saint would "make the gallows glorious like the cross."
Efficient nature, the source of political power, herself requires to be checked. Where is the check to be found? "The wise man is to settle it immovably in his mind, that he only is fit to decide on his best action; he only is fit to praise it; his verdict is praise enough, and as to society, 'their hiss is thine applause'" (Journals, 1833–5). The contention of parties cannot be trusted to guard the interests of truth. Emerson has no naive respect for numbers. He has looked with disillusioned eye upon the wisdom of majorities. He confides to his Journal, for example, that if Jackson is elected, "we shall all feel dirty." He says that if he were unduly in love with life, he would attend a Jackson caucus, and "I doubt not the unmixed malignity, the withering selfishness, the impudent vulgarity, that mark those meetings would speedily cure me of my appetite for longevity." Yet despite this bitterness, the Jackson party was, as he
