The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Miscellanies [Vol. 11]

resolutions of public bodies, or the pledges never so often given and put on record of public men, will not bind them. The fact comes out more plainly that you cannot rely on any man for the defence of truth, who is not constitutionally or by blood and temperament on that side. A man of a greedy and unscrupulous selfishness may maintain morals when they are in fashion: but he will not stick. However close Mr. Wolf's nails have been pared, however neatly he has been shaved, and tailored, and set up on end, and taught to say, "Virtue and Religion," he cannot be relied on at a pinch: he will say, morality means pricking a vein. The popular assumption that all men loved freedom, and believed in the Christian religion, was found hollow American brag; only persons who were known and tried benefactors are found standing for freedom: the sentimentalists went down-stream.1 I question the value of our civilization, when I see that the public mind had never less hold of the strongest of all truths. The sense of injustice is blunted,—a sure sign of the shallowness of our intellect. I cannot accept the railroad and telegraph in exchange for reason and charity. It is not skill in iron locomotives that makes so fine civility, as the jealousy of

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Title: The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Miscellanies [Vol. 11]
Author: Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882.
Canvas: Page 183
Publication: Boston ; New York :: Houghton, Mifflin,; [1903-1904].

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Collection: The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Full citation: "The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Miscellanies [Vol. 11]." In the digital collection The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/4957107.0011.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed June 13, 2025.

The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Miscellanies [Vol. 11]

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