Chapter II: Emerson’s Character

The praise which Emerson gives to character at the expense of luxurious surroundings was sincere. His own tastes were very simple. ‘Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants and to serve them one’s self, so as to have something left to give, instead of being always prompt to grab?’ Acknowledging himself enmeshed in the conventionalities of ‘civilized’ life and no more responsible than his fellow victims, he nevertheless did what he could to follow out his theory. He would at least not be one of the infirm people of society, who, if they miss any one of their comforts, ‘represent themselves as the most wronged and most wretched persons on earth.’ Emerson did not live in the woods on twenty-seven cents a week, but he had no objection to a friend’s living that way if the friend found it profitable. For himself he would not be ‘absurd and pedantic in reform.’

No characteristic is more marked than his spirit of tolerance. It was not of a smooth, purring sort, growing out of eagerness to please or unwillingness to offend, but rather an aggressive tolerance. Emerson would not merely grant to every man ‘the allowance he takes,’ but would even force him to take it. He was patient with the most obnoxious of reformers. And he could be tolerant with those who could tolerate nothing.

With pronounced and original views he had little solicitude to impose his views on others. He was without egotism. To state the truth as he apprehended it and to let the world come to his ideas if the world could and would, contented him. But he had no quarrel with the order of things. His good humor and smiling patience are manifest in everything he has written.

Emerson held firmly to the doctrine of the brotherhood of man, yet with no touch of the unctuous fraternizer. He had the rebuffs that all must encounter who try to break down the partition wall between classes. In an attempt to solve, according to the Golden Rule, the problem of a servant’s status in the household, he was thoroughly beaten and laughingly acknowledged it. He did his share, but the servant refused to fraternize.

He was a good citizen, an excellent neighbor, prompt in the acknowledgment of all homely duties. His was a large-souled, benignant, and gracious nature. There was something healing in his mere presence, though no word was spoken.