It is surprising to find
this identity of content in all great deliverances. The only thing we
really admire is personal liberty. Those who fought for it and those who
enjoyed it are our heroes.
But the hero may enslave his race by bringing in a system of tyranny;
the battle-cry of freedom may become a dogma which crushes the soul; one
good custom may corrupt the world. And so the inspiration of one age
becomes the damnation of the next. This crystallizing of life into death
has occurred so often that it may almost be regarded as one of the laws
of progress.
Emerson represents a protest against the tyranny of democracy. He is the
most recent example of elemental hero-worship. His opinions are
absolutely unqualified except by his temperament. He expresses a form of
belief in the importance of the individual which is independent of any
personal relations he has with the world. It is as if a man had been
withdrawn from the earth and dedicated to condensing and embodying this
eternal idea--the value of the individual soul--so vividly, so vitally,
that his words could not die, yet in such illusive and abstract forms
that by no chance and by no power could his creed be used for purposes
of tyranny.
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