Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick, or aged: in the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience have been aroused, when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals.
Emerson suggests that political attitudes are influenced not only by fixed principles but also by a person’s condition and state of mind. He associates conservatism with comfort, fatigue and diminished energy, while linking radicalism with alertness, imagination and renewed moral or intellectual activity. The contrast is deliberately broad and rhetorical rather than a systematic account of political behaviour.
Within New England Reformers, the passage supports Emerson’s wider discussion of reform and resistance to change. He implies that attachment to established arrangements can grow stronger when people are comfortable with existing conditions, while greater energy or moral awareness may encourage them to question those arrangements. The quotation does not establish that conservatives are necessarily passive or radicals necessarily enlightened. Rather, Emerson uses the contrast to argue that political conviction can be shaped by temperament, circumstance and the degree to which a person feels intellectually or morally engaged.