His point is that adults, who have been absorbed into the “group...

His point is that adults, who have been absorbed into the “group think” of society, are unable to think for themselves. Emerson says, famously, elsewhere in this essay that “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.” What he means, is that the effect of society is to erode one’s ability to think independently – as he puts it, “Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members,” in that the...