nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness.'
No American ever lived whose personal life was more exemplary; or who expressed such perfect disdain of out-worn formulas and lifeless routine. There is dynamite in his doctrine to burst tradition to fragments, when tradition has become an empty shell. 'Every actual state is corrupt,' he cries in one of his dangerous sayings; 'good men will not obey the laws too well.' To good men whose eyes are wide and full of light, there is always breaking a new vision of right reason, which is the will of God, and above the law. Emerson himself broke the Fugitive Slave Law, and in the face of howling Pro-Slavery mobs declared that John Brown would 'make the gallows glorious like the cross.'
That is simply the political aspect of his radical Puritanism. On the æsthetic side, Emerson disregarded the existing conventions of poetry to welcome Walt Whitman, who saluted him as master. Emerson hailed Walt Whitman because Whitman had sought to make splendid and beautiful the religion of a Puritan democracy; and a Puritan democracy is the only; kind that we have reason to suppose will endure.
