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)
To a true scholar the attraction of the aspects of nature, the
departments of life, and the passages of his experience, is simply the
information they yield him of this supreme nature which lurks within
all. That reality, that causing force is moral. The Moral Sentiment is
but its other name. It makes by its presence or absence right and wrong,
beauty and ugliness, genius or depravation. As the granite comes to the
surface, and towers into the highest mountains, and, if we dig down, we
find it below the superficial strata, so in all the details of our
domestic or civil life, is hidden the elemental reality, which ever and
anon comes to the surface, and forms the grand men, who are the leaders
and examples, rather than the companions of the race. The granite is
curiously concealed under a thousand formations and surfaces, under
fertile soils, and grasses, and flowers, under well-manured, arable
fields, and large towns and cities, but it makes the foundation of
these, and is always indicating its presence by slight but sure signs.
So is it with the Life of our life; so close does that also hide. I read
it in glad and in weeping eyes: I read it in the pride and in the
humility of people: it is recognized in every bargain and in every
complaisance, in every criticism, and in all praise: it is voted for at
elections; it wins the cause with juries; it rides the stormy eloquence
of the senate, sole victor; histories are written of it, holidays
decreed to it; statues, tombs, churches, built to its honor; yet men
seem to fear and to shun it, when it comes barely to view in our
immediate neighborhood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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