Ralph Waldo Emerson by Oliver Wendell Holmes
page 94 of 449 (20%)
page 94 of 449 (20%)
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dogs, and ferules, the love of little maids and berries, and many
another fact that once filled the whole sky, are gone already; friend and relative, professions and party, town and country, nation and world must also soar and sing." Having spoken of the education of the scholar by nature, by books, by action, he speaks of the scholar's duties. "They may all," he says, "be comprised in self-trust." We have to remember that the _self_ he means is the highest self, that consciousness which he looks upon as open to the influx of the divine essence from which it came, and towards which all its upward tendencies lead, always aspiring, never resting; as he sings in "The Sphinx ":-- "The heavens that now draw him With sweetness untold, Once found,--for new heavens He spurneth the old." "First one, then another, we drain all cisterns, and waxing greater by all these supplies, we crave a better and more abundant food. The man has never lived that can feed us ever. The human mind cannot be enshrined in a person who shall set a barrier on any one side of this unbounded, unboundable empire. It is one central fire, which, flaming now out of the lips of Etna, lightens the Capes of Sicily, and now out of the throat of Vesuvius, illuminates the towers and vineyards of Naples. It is one light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is one soul which animates all men." And so he comes to the special application of the principles he has laid down to the American scholar of to-day. He does not spare his censure; |
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