Page "belles_lettres" Paragraph 310
from
Brown Corpus
Emerson -- Platonist, idealist, doctrinaire -- sounded a high Transcendental note in his `` Boston Hymn '', delivered in 1863 in the Boston Music Hall amidst thundering applause: `` Pay ransom to the owner and fill the bag to the brim.
Who is the owner??
The slave is owner, And ever was.
Pay him ''!!
It is the abstractionism, the unrealism, of the pure idealist.
It ignores the sordid financial aspects ( quite conveniently, too, for his audience, who could indulge in moral indignation without visible, or even conscious, discomfort, their money from the transaction having been put away long ago in a good antiseptic brokerage ).
Like Pilate, they had washed their hands.
But can one, really??
Can God be mocked, ever, in the long run??
Page 1 of 1.
1.810 seconds.