Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of Ralph Waldo EmersonEmerson, Ralph Waldo
Philosophy
Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
Indexes
[236] James Hutton (1726-1797), great Scotch geologist, author of the Theory of the Earth.
[237] Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), English philosopher, jurist, and legislative reformer.
[238] Fourier (1772-1837), French socialist, founder of the system of Fourierism.
[239] Calvinism, the doctrines of John Calvin (1509-1564). French theologian and Protestant reformer. A cardinal doctrine of Calvinism is predestination.
[240] Quakerism, the doctrines of the Quakers or Friends, a society founded by George Fox (1624-1691).
[241] Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), Swedish theosophist, founder of the New Jerusalem Church. He is taken by Emerson in his Representative Men as the type of the mystic, and is often mentioned in his other works.
[242] "Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not."—Emerson, Art.
[243] Thebes, a celebrated ruined city of Upper Egypt.
[244] Palmyra, a ruined city of Asia situated in an oasis of the Syrian desert, supposed to be the Tadmor built by Solomon in the wilderness (II. Chr., viii. 4).
[245]
"Vain, very vain, my weary search to find
That bliss which only centers in the mind....
Still to ourselves in every place consign'd,
Our own felicity we make or find."
Goldsmith (and Johnson),
The Traveler, 423-32.
"He that has light within his own clear breast
May sit i' th' center, and enjoy bright day;
But he that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts,
Benighted walks under the mid-day sun;
Himself in his own dungeon."
Milton, Comus, 381-5.
Compare also Paradise Lost, I, 255-7.
[246] Vatican, the palace of the pope in Rome, with its celebrated library, museum, and art gallery.
[247] Doric, the oldest, strongest, and simplest of the three styles of Grecian architecture.
[248] Gothic, a pointed style of architecture, prevalent in western Europe in the latter part of the middle ages.
[249] Never imitate. Emerson insists on this doctrine.
[250] Shakespeare (1564-1616), the great English poet and dramatist. He is mentioned in Emerson's writings more than any other character in history, and is taken as the type of the poet in his Representative Men.
"O mighty poet! Thy works are not as those of other men, simply and merely great works of art; but are also like the phenomena of nature, like the sun and the sea, the stars and the flowers,—like frost and snow, rain and dew, hailstorm and thunder, which are to be studied with entire submission of our own faculties, and in the perfect faith that in them there can be no too much or too little, nothing useless or inert,—but that, the further we press in our discoveries, the more we shall see proofs of design and self-supporting arrangement where the careless eye had seen nothing but accident!"—De Quincy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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