They wear an iron crown and talk in
whispers. Such social conditions crush and maim the individual, and
throughout New England, as throughout the whole North, the individual
was crushed and maimed.
The generous youths who came to manhood between 1820 and 1830, while
this deadly era was maturing, seem to have undergone a revulsion against
the world almost before touching it; at least two of them suffered,
revolted, and condemned, while still boys sitting on benches in school,
and came forth advancing upon this old society like gladiators. The
activity of William Lloyd Garrison, the man of action, preceded by
several years that of Emerson, who is his prophet. Both of them were
parts of one revolution. One of Emerson's articles of faith was that a
man's thoughts spring from his actions rather than his actions from his
thoughts, and possibly the same thing holds good for society at large.
Perhaps all truths, whether moral or economic, must be worked out in
real life before they are discovered by the student, and it was
therefore necessary that Garrison should be evolved earlier than
Emerson.
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