A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-slavery and reform papers.Thoreau, Henry David
History
A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-slavery and reform papers.
Thoreau, Henry David
Brown, John, 1800-1859; Québec (Province) -- Description and travel; Slavery -- United States
Every man will include in his list of worthies those whom he himself
best represents. Carlyle, and our countryman Emerson, whose place and
influence must erelong obtain a more distinct recognition, are, to a
certain extent, the complement of each other. The age could not do with
one of them, it cannot do with both. To make a broad and rude
distinction, to suit our present purpose, the former, as critic, deals
with the men of action,—Mahomet, Luther, Cromwell; the latter with the
thinkers,—Plato, Shakespeare, Goethe; for, though both have written upon
Goethe, they do not meet in him. The one has more sympathy with the
heroes, or practical reformers, the other with the observers, or
philosophers. Put their worthies together, and you will have a pretty
fair representation of mankind; yet with one or more memorable
exceptions. To say nothing of Christ, who yet awaits a just appreciation
from literature, the peacefully practical hero, whom Columbus may
represent, is obviously slighted; but above and after all, the Man of
the Age, come to be called workingman, it is obvious that none yet
speaks to his condition, for the speaker is not yet in his condition.
Like speaks to like only; labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy,
criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry. Literature speaks how much
still to the past, how little to the future, how much to the East, how
little to the West,—
In the East fames are won,
In the West deeds are done.
One merit in Carlyle, let the subject be what it may, is the freedom of
prospect he allows, the entire absence of cant and dogma. He removes
many cart-loads of rubbish, and leaves open a broad highway. His
writings are all unfenced on the side of the future and the possible.
Though he does but inadvertently direct our eyes to the open heavens,
nevertheless he lets us wander broadly underneath, and shows them to us
reflected in innumerable pools and lakes.
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Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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