Emerson and Other Essays

The book is Emerson and Other Essays. Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are rude lame unmade pernicious in their demands and influence and need not to be flattered but to be schooled. This extract from The Conduct of Life gives fairly enough the leading thought of Emerson's life. The unending warfare between the individual and society shows us in each generation a poet or two a dramatist or a musician who exalts and deifies the individual and leads us back again to the only object which is really worthy of enthusiasm or which can permanently excite it the character of a man.