This sort of balancing of his views of independence is to be found in an essay of thirty years later on "Society and Solitude." The first two thirds of this seem to be quite as unqualified as anything in the early declarations. He quotes Swedenborg: "There are angels who do not live consociated, but separate, house and house; these dwell in the midst of heaven, because they are the best of angels." He says for himself: "We pray to be conventional. But the wary Heaven takes care you shall not be, if there is anything good in you." "We sit and muse, and are serene and complete; but the moment we meet with anybody, each becomes a fraction." Then, however, comes the corrective note: "But this banishment to the rocks and echoes no metaphysics can make right or tolerable. This result is so against nature, such a half view, that it must be corrected by a common sense and experience." In the earlier essays and addresses Emerson had said repeatedly that a man's education could not be complete unless it included contact with people, and in this essay he came round to the reverse of the medal, that no man could fully express himself who was not useful to his fellows. "Society cannot do without cultivated men." This idea was, of course, always in Emerson's mind, but it was in the later years, after he himself had seen more and more of life, that he expressed it in definite assertions instead of taking it for granted as something the wise man would assume. The concluding paragraph in this essay not only sums up Emerson's views on society and solitude but illustrates the kind of balance which he often strikes between statements which little minds could erect into hobgoblins of inconsistency: Here again, as so often, Nature delights to put us between extreme antagonisms, and our safety is in the skill with which we keep the diagonal line. Solitude is impracticable, and society fatal. We must keep our head in the one and our hands in the other. The conditions are met, if we keep our independence, yet do not lose our sympathy. These wonderful horses need to be driven by fine hands. We require such a solitude as shall hold us to its revelations when we are in the street and in palaces; for most men are cowed in society, and say good things to you in private, but will not stand to them in public. But let us not be the victims of words. Society and solitude are deceptive names. It is not the circumstance of seeing more or fewer people, but the readiness of sympathy that imports; and a sound mind will derive its principles from insight, with ever a purer ascent to the sufficient and absolute right, and will accept society as the natural element in which they are to be applied.