Search -
Emerson's complete works [ed. by J.E. Cabot]. Riverside ed (1883)
Emerson's complete works Riverside ed - ed. by J.E. Cabot - 1883 Author:Ralph Waldo Emerson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHARACTER. St passion, fold the hands of thrift, Sit still, and Truth is near ; Suddenly it will uplift Your eyelids to the sphere: "Wait a little, y... more »ou shall see The portraiture of things to he. Fob what need I of book or priest Or Sibyl from the mummied East When every star is Bethlehem Star, — I count as many as there are Cinquefoils or violets in the grass, So many saints and saviours, So many high behaviours. CHAEACTER.1 Moeals respects what men call goodness, that which all men agree to honor as justice, truth- speaking, good-will and good works. Morals respects the source or motive of this action. It is the science of substances, not of shows. It is the what, and not the how. It is that which all men profess to regard, and by their real respect for which recommend themselves to each other. There is this eternal advantage to morals, that, in the question between truth and goodness, the moral cause of the world lies behind all else in the mind. It was for good, it is to good, that all works. Surely it is not to prove or show the truth of things, — that sounds a little cold and scholastic, — no, it is for benefit, that all subsists. As we say in our modern politics, catching at last the language of morals, that the object of the State is the greatest good of the greatest number, — so, the reason we must give for the existence of the world is, that it is for the benefit of all being. 1 Reprinted from the North American Review of April, 1866. Morals implies freedom and will. The will constitutes the man. He has his life in Nature, like a beast: but choice is born in him; here is he that chooses; here is the Declaration of Independence, the July Fourth of zoology and astronomy. He chooses, — as the rest of the creation does not. But will, pure and pe...« less