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
Frankly, then, it is necessary to say that all sorrow dwells in a low
region. It is superficial; for the most part fantastic, or in the
appearance and not in things. Tragedy is in the eye of the observer,
and not in the heart of the sufferer. It looks like an insupportable
load under which earth moans aloud. But analyze it; it is not I,
it is not you, it is always another person who is tormented. If a
man says, Lo! I suffer—it is apparent that he suffers not, for grief
is dumb. It is so distributed as not to destroy. That which would
rend you falls on tougher textures. That which seems intolerable
reproach or bereavement, does not take from the accused or bereaved
man or woman appetite or sleep. Some men are above grief, and some
below it. Few are capable of love. In phlegmatic natures calamity
is unaffecting, in shallow natures it is rhetorical. Tragedy must
be somewhat which I can respect. A querulous habit is not tragedy.
A panic such as frequently in ancient or savage nations put a troop
or an army to flight without an enemy; a fear of ghosts; a terror
of freezing to death that seizes a man in a winter midnight on the
moors; a fright at uncertain sounds heard by a family at night in the
cellar or on the stairs,—are terrors that make the knees knock and
the teeth clatter, but are no tragedy, any more than seasickness,
which may also destroy life. It is full of illusion. As it comes,
it has its support. The most exposed classes, soldiers, sailors,
paupers, are nowise destitute of animal spirits. The spirit is true
to itself, and finds its own support in any condition, learns to live
in what is called calamity as easily as in what is called felicity;
as the frailest glass-bell will support a weight of a thousand pounds
of water at the bottom of a river or sea, if filled with the same.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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