ll
must have a home. Men are not born rich; in getting wealth the man is
generally sacrificed, and often is sacrificed without acquiring wealth
at last."

We have come to understand by experience that the opinion of masses of
men is a formidable power which can be made safe and useful. In earlier
days this massed opinion was either despised or dreaded; and it is
dreadful, if either confined or misdirected. Emerson compares it to
steam. Studied, economized, and directed, steam has become the power by
which all great labors are done. Like steam is the opinion of political
masses! If crushed by castles, armies, and police, dangerously
explosive; but if furnished with schools and the ballot, developing "the
most harmless and energetic form of a state." His eyes were wide open
to some of the evil intellectual effects of democracy. The individual is
too apt to wear the time-worn yoke of the multitude's opinions. No
multiplying of contemptible units can produce an admirable mass. "If I
see nothing to admire in a unit, shall I admire a million units?" The
habit of submitting to majority rule cultivates individual subserviency.
He pointed out two generations ago that the action of violent political
parties in a democracy might provide for the individual citizen a
systematic training in moral cowardice.

It is interesting, at the stage of industrial warfare which the world
has now reached, to observe how Emerson, sixty years ago, discerned
clearly the absurdity of paying all sorts of service at one rate, now a
favorite notion with some labor unions. He points out that even when
all labor is temporarily paid at one rate, differences in possessions
will instantly arise: "In one hand the dime became an eagle as it fell,
and in another hand a copper cent. For the whole value of the dime is in
knowing what to do with it." Emerson was never deceived by a specious
philanthropy, or by claims of equality which find no support in the
nature of things. He was a true democrat, but still could say: "I think
I see place and duties for a nobleman in every society; but it is not to
drink wine and ride in a fine coach, but to guide and adorn life for the
multitude by forethought, by elegant studies, by perseverance,
self-devotion, and the remembrance of the humble old friend,--by making
his life secretly beautiful." How fine a picture of the democratic
nobility is that!

In his lecture on Man the Reformer, which was read before the
Mechanics'