In Emerson’s day, luxury in the present sense had hardly been developed in our country; but he foresaw its coming, and its insidious destructiveness.  “We spend our incomes for paint and paper, for a hundred trifles, I know not what, and not for the things of a man.  Our expense is almost all for conformity.  It is for cake that we run in debt; it is not the intellect, not the heart, not beauty, not worship, that costs us so much.  Why needs any man be rich?  Why must he have horses, fine garments, handsome apartments, access to public houses and places of amusement?  Only for want of thought....  We are first thoughtless, and then find that we are moneyless.  We are first sensual and then must be rich.”  He foresaw the young man’s state of mind to-day about marriage—­I must have money before I can marry; and deals with it thus:  “Give us wealth and the home shall exist.  But that is a very imperfect and inglorious solution of the problem, and therefore no solution.  Give us wealth!  You ask too much.  Few have wealth; but all must have a home.  Men are not born rich; in getting wealth the man is generally sacrificed, and often is sacrificed without acquiring wealth at last.”

We have come to understand by experience that the opinion of masses of men is a formidable power which can be made safe and useful.  In earlier days this massed opinion was either despised or dreaded; and it is dreadful, if either confined or misdirected.  Emerson compares it to steam.  Studied, economized, and directed, steam has become the power by which all great labors are done.  Like steam is the opinion of political masses!  If crushed by castles, armies, and police, dangerously explosive; but if furnished with schools and the ballot, developing “the most harmless and energetic form of a state.”  His eyes were wide open to some of the evil intellectual effects of democracy.  The individual is too apt to wear the time-worn yoke of the multitude’s opinions.  No multiplying of contemptible units can produce an admirable mass.  “If I see nothing to admire in a unit, shall I admire a million units?” The habit of submitting to majority rule cultivates individual subserviency.  He pointed out two generations ago that the action of violent political parties in a democracy might provide for the individual citizen a systematic training in moral cowardice.

It is interesting, at the stage of industrial warfare which the world has now reached, to observe how Emerson, sixty years ago, discerned clearly the absurdity of paying all sorts of service at one rate, now a favorite notion with some labor unions.  He points out that even when all labor is temporarily paid at one rate, differences in possessions will instantly arise:  “In one hand the dime became an eagle as it fell, and in another hand a copper cent.  For the whole value of the dime is in knowing what to do with it.”  Emerson was never deceived by a specious philanthropy, or by claims of equality which find no support in the