"Wealth," he praises the "socialism of our day" for raising the question of "how certain civilizing benefits, now only enjoyed by the opulent, can be enjoyed by all." He goes on to argue, however, that a more equitable distribution of goods is not enough. A manly, self-reliant, independent "character" is the goal, a fuller access to "civilizing benefits" only a means to that end. "Society can never prosper ... until every man does that which he was created to do."

Emerson's consistently skeptical attitude toward social reform has to be seen in the same light. He sympathized with many of the social movements of his day, and one of them, abolition, eventually enlisted his almost unqualified support: but for the most part he remained deplorably aloof, from the reformers' point of view. He holds that modern society needs "faith," not reform. In "New England Reformers" (1844), he urges reformers to "look beyond surfaces" and partial remedies. Society needs self-respecting men and women, not a perfect set of institutions. "The disease with which the human mind now labors is want of faith." In effect, Emerson takes the position that the state cannot dispense with virtue, that virtue lies in the citizen, not in the institutions. ^* He wonders too whether reformers, too eager to level mankind to a common type, will not destroy respect for "genius," which inspires people by its example to live on a "higher plane." "We are weary of gliding ghostlike through the world.... We desire ... to be touched by that fire which shall command this ice to stream, and make our existence a benefit."

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It is worth calling attention once again to the contrary view—the cardinal tenet of liberalism—expressed by John Taylor, the Virginia theorist of politics. In opposition to John Adams and other classical republicans, Taylor took the position that "an avaricious society can form a government able to defend itself against the avarice of its members" by enlisting the "interest of vice ... on the side of virtue." Men needed no other motive than self-interest to see the need for a just and limited government that would keep order, restraining individuals from injuring one another while itself submitting to the restraints imposed by the laws of the land. "If ... the individuals composing the nation must be virtuous, ... republics would be founded in ... the evanescent qualities of individuals." Fortunately, the institutions and "principles of a society may be virtuous, though the individuals composing it are vicious."

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