To bridge the Atlantic is a trifle if the heart is
really set on the attainment of better conditions. Here are they freely
presented, at a day’s walk from the shore, without a long and expensive
journey to the West. Please to advertise these facts to all youthful men
and women; for such are much wanted here. There is now a certain
opportunity for planting a love colony, the influence of which may be
felt for many generations, and more than felt; it may be the beginning
for a state of things which shall far transcend itself. They to whom our
work seems not good enough may come and set out a better.
Footnote 6:
Brook Farm.
I should mention to you that passing his door Mr. Theodore Parker came
to the Community in the evening and again in the morning. He is a very
popular man at present and has a congregation at Roxbury, but being
unwell by reason of close study, he will sail to Europe on the 1st
September. He will remain in Germany for three or four months, and
afterwards as long in England. No doubt you will see him and render him
all the service you can.... At present we are not sought by many
persons, but the value in our enterprise depends not upon numbers so
much as upon the spirit from which we can live outwardly and in all
relations true to the intuitions which are gifted to us. We must not
forget how great have been the works done by individuals, and in the
absence of what are usually called facilities. Our obstacles are, I
suppose, chiefly within, and as these are subdued we shall triumph in
externalities. I could send you a description of works and crops, our
mowing, hoeing, reaping, ploughing in tall crops of clover and grass for
next year’s manure, and various other operations, but although they have
some degree of relation to the grand principle to which they are
obedient, they are worth little in the exoteric sense alone. Perhaps the
external revelations of success ought always to be kept secret, for
every improvement discovered is only turned to a money making account
and to the further degradation of man, as we see in the march of science
to this very moment. If we knew how to double the crops of the earth, it
is scarcely to be hoped that any good would come by revealing the mode.
On the contrary, the bounties of God are already made the means by which
man debases himself more and more. We will therefore say little
concerning the sources of external wealth until man is himself secured
to the End which rightly uses these means....
Mr. Charles Stearns Wheeler, the eminent Greek student, who went from
here to Germany last summer, died at Leipsic[7] in June, age 26. He was
one of Mr. Emerson’s great hopes.
Footnote 7:
This should be Rome.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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