The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Letters and social aims [Vol. 8]

must revolve, denying you, but not less forced to obey.

We wish to put the ideal rules into practice, to offer liberty instead of chains, and see whether liberty will not disclose its proper checks; believing that a free press will prove safer than the censorship; to ordain free trade, and believe that it will not bankrupt us; universal suffrage, believing that it will not carry us to mobs, or back to kings again. I believe that the checks are as sure as the springs. It is thereby that men are great and have great allies. And who are the allies? Rude opposition, apathy, slander,—even these. Difficulties exist to be surmounted. The great heart will no more complain of the obstructions that make success hard, than of the iron walls of the gun which hinder the shot from scattering. It was walled round with iron tube with that purpose, to give it irresistible force in one direction. A strenuous soul hates cheap successes. It is the ardor of the assailant that makes the vigor of the defender. The great are not tender at being obscure, despised, insulted. Such only feel themselves in adverse fortune. Strong men greet war, tempest, hard times, which search till they find resistance and bottom. They wish, as Pindar said, "to

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Title
The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Letters and social aims [Vol. 8]
Author
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882.
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Page 231
Publication
Boston ; New York :: Houghton, Mifflin,
[1903-1904].

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"The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Letters and social aims [Vol. 8]." In the digital collection The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/4957107.0008.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed June 13, 2025.
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