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)
shocked a circle of friends of order here in Boston, who supposed that
our people were identified with their religious denominations, by
declaring that an eloquent man,--let him be of what sect soever,--would
be ordained at once in one of our metropolitan churches. To be sure he
would; and not only in ours, but in any church, mosque, or temple, on
the planet; but he must be eloquent, able to supplant our method and
classification, by the superior beauty of his own. Every fact we have
was brought here by some person; and there is none that will not change
and pass away before a person, whose nature is broader than the person
which the fact in question represents. And so I find the Age walking
about in happy and hopeful natures, in strong eyes, and pleasant
thoughts, and think I read it nearer and truer so, than in the
statute-book, or in the investments of capital, which rather celebrate
with mournful music the obsequies of the last age. In the brain of a
fanatic; in the wild hope of a mountain boy, called by city boys very
ignorant, because they do not know what his hope has certainly apprised
him shall be; in the love-glance of a girl; in the hair-splitting
conscientiousness of some eccentric person, who has found some new
scruple to embarrass himself and his neighbors withal; is to be found
that which shall constitute the times to come, more than in the now
organized and accredited oracles. For, whatever is affirmative and now
advancing, contains it. I think that only is real, which men love and
rejoice in; not what they tolerate, but what they choose; what they
embrace and avow, and not the things which chill, benumb, and terrify
them.
And so why not draw for these times a portrait gallery? Let us paint
the painters. Whilst the Daguerreotypist, with camera-obscura and silver
plate, begins now to traverse the land, let us set up our Camera also,
and let the sun paint the people. Let us paint the agitator, and
the man of the old school, and the member of Congress, and the
college-professor, the formidable editor, the priest, and reformer, the
contemplative girl, and the fair aspirant for fashion and opportunities,
the woman of the world who has tried and knows;--let us examine how well
she knows. Could we indicate the indicators, indicate those who most
accurately represent every good and evil tendency of the general mind,
in the just order which they take on this canvass of Time; so that all
witnesses should recognise a spiritual law, as each well known form
flitted for a moment across the wall, we should have a series of
sketches which would report to the next ages the color and quality of
ours.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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