I certainly shall do no such thing. I shall read what you and other good men write, as I have always done,--glad when you speak my thoughts, and skipping the page that has nothing for me. I shall go on, just as before, seeing whatever I can, and telling what I see; and, I suppose, with the same fortune that has hitherto attended me; the joy of finding, that my abler and better brothers, who work with the sympathy of society, loving and beloved, do now and then unexpectedly confirm my perceptions, and find my nonsense is only their own thought in motley. And so I am, Your affectionate servant, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Thus far it is clear that Emerson's message to the world was almost unqualifiedly personal: an attempt to shake men out of their lazy ways of drifting with the current into active swimming--with the current if they thought best, but usually against it. The whole problem was summarized in his single defiant essay on "Self-Reliance,"[14]--defiant because in this protest he was almost entirely concerned with telling men what they should _not_ do. They should not pray, not be consistent, not travel, not imitate, not conform to society; but should be Godlike, independent, searching their own hearts, and behaving in accord with the truth they found there. It is an anarchy he was preaching, an elevated lawlessness. And the first reaction to such teaching is to ask with shocked disapproval, "What would happen to the world if all men followed his advice?" There are two very simple answers. The first is that if all men followed Emerson's advice, completely as he gave it, the world would be peopled with saints, for what he asked was that men should disregard the laws of society only that they might better observe the laws of God. And the second answer is that such a query sets an impossible condition, for the pressure of custom is so strong and the human inclination to do as others do is so prevailing that counsel like Emerson's will never be adopted, at the most, by more than a very small and courageous minority. [14] "Self-Reliance" Essays, First Series. One fact to keep in mind in reading all Emerson is that he regularly expresses himself in emphatic terms. In consequence, what he says in one mood he is likely in another to gainsay, and in a third, though without any deliberate intention to defend himself, he may reconcile the apparent contradiction. He simply follows out his own ideas on consistency. But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then?... A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.