of thought, is transferred to the record. The poet chanting was felt to
be a divine man: henceforth the chant is divine, also. The writer was a
just and wise spirit: henceforward it is settled the book is perfect; as
love of the hero corrupts into worship of his statue. Instantly the book
becomes noxious: the guide is a tyrant.... Books are the best of things,
well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the
one end which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to
inspire.... The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.
This every man is entitled to; this every man contains within him,
although in almost all men obstructed, and as yet unborn. The soul
active sees absolute truth and utters truth, or creates. In this action
it is genius; not the privilege of here and there a favorite, but the
sound estate of every man.... Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of
genius by over-influence. The literature of every nation bears me
witness. The English dramatic poets have Shakspearized now for two
hundred years.... These being his functions, it becomes him to feel all
confidence in himself, and to defer never to the popular cry. He, and he
only, knows the world. The world of any moment is the merest appearance.
Some great decorum, some fetish of a government, some ephemeral trade,
or war, or man, is cried up by half mankind and cried down by the other
half, as if all depended on this particular up or down. The odds are
that the whole question is not worth the poorest thought which the
scholar has lost in listening to the controversy. Let him not quit his
belief that a popgun is a popgun, though the ancient and honorable of
the earth affirm it to be the crack of doom."

Dr. Holmes called this speech of Emerson's our "intellectual
Declaration of Independence," and indeed it was. "The Phi Beta Kappa
speech," says Mr. Lowell, "was an event without any former parallel in
our literary annals,--a scene always to be treasured in the memory for