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 there will dawn ere long on our politics, on our modes of living, a
nobler morning than that Arabian faith, in the sentiment of love. This
is the one remedy for all ills, the panacea of nature. We must be
lovers, and at once the impossible becomes possible. Our age and
history, for these thousand years, has not been the history of kindness,
but of selfishness. Our distrust is very expensive. The money we spend
for courts and prisons is very ill laid out. We make, by distrust, the
thief, and burglar, and incendiary, and by our court and jail we keep
him so. An acceptance of the sentiment of love throughout Christendom
for a season, would bring the felon and the outcast to our side in
tears, with the devotion of his faculties to our service. See this wide
society of laboring men and women. We allow ourselves to be served by
them, we live apart from them, and meet them without a salute in the
streets. We do not greet their talents, nor rejoice in their good
fortune, nor foster their hopes, nor in the assembly of the people vote
for what is dear to them. Thus we enact the part of the selfish noble
and king from the foundation of the world. See, this tree always bears
one fruit. In every household, the peace of a pair is poisoned by the
malice, slyness, indolence, and alienation of domestics. Let any two
matrons meet, and observe how soon their conversation turns on the
troubles from their “_help_,” as our phrase is. In every knot of
laborers, the rich man does not feel himself among his friends,--and at
the polls he finds them arrayed in a mass in distinct opposition to him.
We complain that the politics of masses of the people are controlled by
designing men, and led in opposition to manifest justice and the common
weal, and to their own interest. But the people do not wish to be
represented or ruled by the ignorant and base. They only vote for these,
because they were asked with the voice and semblance of kindness. They
will not vote for them long. They inevitably prefer wit and probity. To
use an Egyptian metaphor, it is not their will for any long time “to
raise the nails of wild beasts, and to depress the heads of the sacred
birds.” Let our affection flow out to our fellows; it would operate in a
day the greatest of all revolutions. It is better to work on
institutions by the sun than by the wind. The state must consider the
poor man, and all voices must speak for him. Every child that is born
must have a just chance for his bread. Let the amelioration in our laws
of property proceed from the concession of the rich, not from the
grasping of the poor. Let us begin by habitual imparting. Let us
understand that the equitable rule is, that no one should take more than
his share, let him be ever so rich. Let me feel that I am to be a lover.
I am to see to it that the world is the better for me, and to find my
reward in the act. Love would put a new face on this weary old world in
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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