Miscellanies : $b embracing Nature, addresses, and lecturesEmerson, Ralph Waldo
Philosophy
Miscellanies : $b embracing Nature, addresses, and lectures
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
American essays -- 19th century; Philosophy of nature; Transcendentalism (New England)
But by coming out of trade you have not cleared yourself. The trail of
the serpent reaches into all the lucrative professions and practices of
man. Each has it own wrongs. Each finds a tender and very intelligent
conscience a disqualification for success. Each requires of the
practitioner a certain shutting of the eyes, a certain dapperness and
compliance, an acceptance of customs, a sequestration from the
sentiments of generosity and love, a compromise of private opinion and
lofty integrity. Nay, the evil custom reaches into the whole institution
of property, until our laws which establish and protect it, seem not to
be the issue of love and reason, but of selfishness. Suppose a man is so
unhappy as to be born a saint, with keen perceptions, but with the
conscience and love of an angel, and he is to get his living in the
world; he finds himself excluded from all lucrative works; he has no
farm, and he cannot get one; for, to earn money enough to buy one,
requires a sort of concentration toward money, which is the selling
himself for a number of years, and to him the present hour is as sacred
and inviolable as any future hour. Of course, whilst another man has no
land, my title to mine, your title to yours, is at once vitiated.
Inextricable seem to be the twinings and tendrils of this evil, and we
all involve ourselves in it the deeper by forming connections, by wives
and children, by benefits and debts.
Considerations of this kind have turned the attention of many
philanthropic and intelligent persons to the claims of manual labor, as
a part of the education of every young man. If the accumulated wealth of
the past generation is thus tainted,--no matter how much of it is
offered to us,--we must begin to consider if it were not the nobler part
to renounce it, and to put ourselves into primary relations with the
soil and nature, and abstaining from whatever is dishonest and unclean,
to take each of us bravely his part, with his own hands, in the manual
labor of the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account