But
one cheerfully forgives Emerson the way he puts his thumb-nail on
the bores. He speaks feelingly, and no doubt from as deep an
experience as any man in America.
I really hold Emerson in such high esteem that I think I can safely
indulge myself in a little more fault-finding with him.
I think it must be admitted that he is deficient in sympathy. This
accounts in a measure for his coolness, his self-possession, and
that kind of uncompromising rectitude or inflexibleness that marks
his career, and that he so lauds in his essays. No man is so little
liable to be warped or compromised in any way as the unsympathetic
man. Emerson's ideal is the man who stands firm, who is unmoved,
who never laughs, or apologizes, or deprecates, or makes
concessions, or assents through good-nature, or goes abroad; who is
not afraid of giving offense; "who answers you without supplication
in his eye,"--in fact, who stands like a granite pillar amid the
slough of life. You may wrestle with this man, he says, or swim
with him, or lodge in the same chamber with him, or eat at the same
table, and yet he is a thousand miles off, and can at any moment
finish with you. He is a sheer precipice, is this man, and not to
be trifled with. You shrinking, quivering, acquiescing natures,
avaunt! You sensitive plants, you hesitating, indefinite creatures,
you uncertain around the edges, you non-resisting, and you heroes,
whose courage is quick, but whose wit is tardy, make way, and let
the human crustacean pass.
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