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)
From this transfer of the world into the consciousness, this beholding
of all things in the mind, follow easily his whole ethics. It is simpler
to be self-dependent. The height, the deity of man is, to be
self-sustained, to need no gift, no foreign force. Society is good when
it does not violate me; but best when it is likest to solitude.
Everything real is self-existent. Everything divine shares the
self-existence of Deity. All that you call the world is the shadow of
that substance which you are, the perpetual creation of the powers of
thought, of those that are dependent and of those that are independent
of your will. Do not cumber yourself with fruitless pains to mend and
remedy remote effects; let the soul be erect, and all things will go
well. You think me the child of my circumstances: I make my
circumstance. Let any thought or motive of mine be different from that
they are, the difference will transform my condition and economy.
I--this thought which is called I,--is the mould into which the world is
poured like melted wax. The mould is invisible, but the world betrays
the shape of the mould. You call it the power of circumstance, but it is
the power of me. Am I in harmony with myself? my position will seem to
you just and commanding. Am I vicious and insane? my fortunes will seem
to you obscure and descending. As I am, so shall I associate, and, so
shall I act; Cæsar’s history will paint out Cæsar. Jesus acted so,
because he thought so. I do not wish to overlook or to gainsay any
reality; I say, I make my circumstance: but if you ask me, Whence am I?
I feel like other men my relation to that Fact which cannot be spoken,
or defined, nor even thought, but which exists, and will exist.
The Transcendentalist adopts the whole connection of spiritual doctrine.
He believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of the human mind to
new influx of light and power; he believes in inspiration, and in
ecstasy. He wishes that the spiritual principle should be suffered to
demonstrate itself to the end, in all possible applications to the state
of man, without the admission of anything unspiritual; that is, anything
positive, dogmatic, personal. Thus, the spiritual measure of
inspiration is the depth of the thought, and never, who said it? And so
he resists all attempts to palm other rules and measures on the spirit
than its own.
In action, he easily incurs the charge of antinomianism by his avowal
that he, who has the Lawgiver, may with safety not only neglect, but
even contravene every written commandment. In the play of Othello, the
expiring Desdemona absolves her husband of the murder, to her attendant
Emilia. Afterwards, when Emilia charges him with the crime, Othello
exclaims,
“You heard her say herself it was not I.”
Emilia replies,
“The more angel she, and thou the blacker devil.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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