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)
III. Having thus spoken of the resources and the subject of the scholar,
out of the same faith proceeds also the rule of his ambition and life.
Let him know that the world is his, but he must possess it by putting
himself into harmony with the constitution of things. He must be a
solitary, laborious, modest, and charitable soul.
He must embrace solitude as a bride. He must have his glees and his
glooms alone. His own estimate must be measure enough, his own praise
reward enough for him. And why must the student be solitary and silent?
That he may become acquainted with his thoughts. If he pines in a lonely
place, hankering for the crowd, for display, he is not in the lonely
place; his heart is in the market; he does not see; he does not hear; he
does not think. But go cherish your soul; expel companions; set your
habits to a life of solitude; then, will the faculties rise fair and
full within, like forest trees and field flowers; you will have results,
which, when you meet your fellow-men, you can communicate, and they will
gladly receive. Do not go into solitude only that you may presently come
into public. Such solitude denies itself; is public and stale. The
public can get public experience, but they wish the scholar to replace
to them those private, sincere, divine experiences, of which they have
been defrauded by dwelling in the street. It is the noble, manlike, just
thought, which is the superiority demanded of you, and not crowds but
solitude confers this elevation. Not insulation of place, but
independence of spirit is essential, and it is only as the garden, the
cottage, the forest, and the rock, are a sort of mechanical aids to
this, that they are of value. Think alone, and all places are friendly
and sacred. The poets who have lived in cities have been hermits still.
Inspiration makes solitude anywhere. Pindar, Raphael, Angelo, Dryden, De
Staël, dwell in crowds, it may be, but the instant thought comes, the
crowd grows dim to their eye; their eye fixes on the horizon,--on vacant
space; they forget the bystanders; they spurn personal relations; they
deal with abstractions, with verities, with ideas. They are alone with
the mind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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