come. In his address, "Man the Reformer," given at Boston before the Library Association of Mechanics' Apprentices, he said: "We are to revise the whole of our social structure, the state, the school, religion, marriage, trade, science;" he declared that "the manual labor of society ought to be shared among all its members," and that "a man should have a farm or mechanical craft for his culture." In a coming society he follows Plato—"The Wise Man (the man of character) is the State;" and then he passes Plato—"The appearance of Character makes the state unnecessary."
"There is a time," Emerson writes, "in everyman's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide Universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. … A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace."
Of free thought and self-reliance Emerson says: "Whoso would be a man must be a non-conformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser,
