t terms, and, if it proved
to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of
it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were
sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a
true account of it in my next excursion."

"It is said that the British Empire is very large and
respectable, and that the United States are a first-rate
power. We do not believe that a tide rises and falls behind
every man which can float the British Empire like a chip, if
he should ever harbor it in his mind."

All of these quotations from Emerson and Thoreau are but various modes
of saying "Let the world go." Everybody knows that in later crises of
American history, both Thoreau and Emerson forgot their old preaching
of individualism, or at least merged it in the larger doctrine of
identification of the individual with the acts and emotions of the
community. And nevertheless as men of letters they habitually laid
stress upon the rights and duties of the private person. Upon a hundred
brilliant pages they preached the gospel that society is in conspiracy
against the individual manhood of every one of its members.

They had a right to this doctrine. They came by it honestly through
long lines of ancestral heritage. The republicanism of the seventeenth
century in the American forests, as well as upon the floor of the
English House of Commons, had asserted that private persons had the
right to make and unmake kings. The republican theorists of the
eighteenth century had insisted that life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness were the birthright of each individual. This doctrine was
related, of course, to the doctrine of equality. If republicanism
teaches that "I am as good as others," democracy is forever hinting
"Others are as good as I." Democracy has been steadily extending the
notion of rights and duties. The first instinct, perhaps, is to ask
what is right, just, lawful, for me? Next, what is right, just, lawful
for my crowd? That is to say, my family, my clan, my race, my country.
The third instinct bids one ask what is right and just and lawful, not
merely for me, and for men like me, but for everybody. And when we get
that third question properly answered, we can afford to close
school-house and church and court-room, for this world's work will have
ended.

We have already glanced at various phases of colonial individualism. We
have had a glimpse of Cotton Mather prostrat