I want to radiate moral courage. Who that has read the life of Emerson cannot appreciate the moral courage that controlled him at all times. He was incapable of cowardice. Timid, sensitive as the most delicate plant, shrinking from notoriety, he yet did and said things that brought down upon him the censure and concentrated fury and hatred of thousands. He, so gentle and kind, spoke words that hit and smashed and crashed through the entrenched ideas of the world like red-hot cannon-balls. Though never a politician, he spoke words on the principles involved in the slavery question that surpassed in fervid eloquence and effective power anything ever said by Wendell Phillips or William Lloyd Garrison. On one occasion he faced a mob of fiery sympathizers with the other side and declared the highest, purest truths of the brotherhood of man, and when remonstrated with for daring such an assemblage he calmly and quietly replied: "Had I been dumb, I would have gone and muttered and made signs."
When men worshiped certain ideas and believed that they were religion, and that it was needful to believe them in order to live aright on earth and win the favor of a heavenly hereafter, Emerson arose and smote them into the dust by the calm, relentless, passionless logic of one who sees and knows--the divinely ordained prophet--and one result of his daring was that he was cast out from his pulpit and from the sweet and hallowed communion he and his grandfathers for eight past generations had enjoyed in the church. What a wrenching of heart strings, what a tearing away of old ties, what an isolation of oneself, what a bringing down of the avalanche of abuse, of slander, of harsh words and unkind deeds! Yet he never hesitated. The oversoul called to the sacrifice, and at the same time pointed to the recompense of the spirit, and he never saw, never knew, never felt the contumely, the scorn, the ostracism, the abuse.
Is it not glorious to live in such a realm of high spiritual courage? To do unconsciously? To _be_ unconsciously? Not to have to work your courage up to the daring point; to nerve yourself for the plunge, but to plunge anyhow, trusting, knowing that in doing the highest, the noblest, the best thing conceivable to you, you can never fail? What does starvation of the body mean to the man whose soul is uplifted into the presence of the Most High? Such an one can live for forty days or forty years, if necessary, without more food than would feed a sparrow. What does isolation from his fellows--preachers, doctors, lawyers, every-day men and women--mean to a man who communes daily with angels, archangels, and with God Himself? Does he feel slighted, hurt, neglected? Such a courage as this I myself desire, so that I may live it, radiate it every moment.