Natural history of intellect, and other papersEmerson, Ralph Waldo
Philosophy
Natural history of intellect, and other papers
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
American essays -- 19th century; Boston (Mass.); Intellect; Memory; Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1475-1564; Milton, John, 1608-1674
In unfit company the finest powers are paralyzed. No ambition,
no opposition, no friendly attention and fostering kindness,
no wine, music or exhilarating aids, neither warm fireside nor
fresh air, walking or riding, avail at all to resist the palsy of
mis-association. Genius is mute, is dull; there is no genius. Ask of
your flowers to open when you have let in on them a freezing wind.
The mechanical laws might as easily be shown pervading the kingdom
of mind as the vegetative. A man has been in Spain. The facts and
thoughts which the traveller has found in that country gradually
settle themselves into a determinate heap of one size and form and
not another. That is what he knows and has to say of Spain; he cannot
say it truly until a sufficient time for the arrangement of the
particles has elapsed.
* * * * *
These views of the source of thought and the mode of its
communication lead us to a whole system of ethics, strict as any
department of human duty, and open to us the tendencies and duties of
men of thought in the present time.
Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanent wise man, but
men capable of wisdom, who being put into certain company or other
favorable conditions become wise, as glasses rubbed acquire power for
a time.
An individual body is the momentary arrest or fixation of certain
atoms, which, after performing compulsory duty to this enchanted
statue, are released again to flow in the currents of the world.
An individual mind in like manner is a fixation or momentary eddy
in which certain services and powers are taken up and minister in
petty niches and localities, and then, being released, return to the
unbounded soul of the world.
In this eternal resurrection and rehabilitation of transitory
persons, who and what are they? ’Tis only the source that we can
see;—the eternal mind, careless of its channels, omnipotent in
itself, and continually ejaculating its torrent into every artery
and vein and veinlet of humanity. Wherever there is health, that
is, consent to the cause and constitution of the universe, there is
perception and power.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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