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Emerson's Complete Works: Letters and social aims
Emerson's Complete Works Letters and social aims 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: KESOTJRCES. Men are made up of potencies. We are magnets in an iron globe. We have keys to all doors. We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of di... more »scovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck; the earth sensitive as iodine to light; the most plastic and impressionable medium, alive to every touch, and, whether searched by the plough of Adam, the sword of Caesar, the boat of Columbus, the telescope of Galileo, or the surveyor's chain of Picard, or the submarine telegraph, — to every one of these experiments it makes a gracious response. (I am benefited by every observation of a victory of man over nature; by seeing that wisdom is better than strength ; by seeing that every healthy and resolute man is an organizer, a method coming into a confusion and drawing order out of it. ; We are touched and cheered by every such example. We like to see the inexhaustible riches of Nature, and the access of every soul to her magazinesThese examples wake an infinite hope, and call every man to emulation. A low, hopeless spirit puts out the eyes; skepticism is slow suicide. A philosophy which sees only the worst; believes neither in virtue nor in genius ; which says 't is all of no use, life is eating us up, 't is only question who shall be last devoured, — dispirits us; the sky shuts down before us. A Schopenhauer, with logic and learning and wit, teaching pessimism, — teaching that this is the worst of all possible worlds, and inferring that sleep is better than waking, and death than sleep, — all the talent in the world cannot save him from being odious. But if instead of these negatives you give me affirmatives; if you tell me that there is always life for the living; th...« less