Letters and Social Aims

ラルフ・ワルド・エマーソン

言語:

英語

状態:

Complete work

著者性:

Written by the author

LETTERS AND EALPH WALDO EMERSON. BOSTON: JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, LATE TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & Co. COPYRIGHT, 1R7">. BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON. P fli UNIVERSITY PRESS : WELCH, CICEI.OW, & Co., CAMBRIDGE. CONTENTS. PAGE POETEY AND IMAGINATION 1 SOCIAL AIMS 69 ELOQUENCE 97 RESOURCES ' 119 THE COMIC 137 QUOTATION AND ORIGINALITY 155 PROGRESS OF CULTURE 183 PERSIAN POETRY . . . . . . . 211 INSPIRATION 239 GREATNESS 267 IMMORTALITY 287 POETRY AND IMAGINATION. POETRY AND IMAGINATION. PERSIAN POETRY . . . . . . . 211 INSPIRATION 239 GREATNESS 267 IMMORTALITY 287 POETRY AND IMAGINATION. POETRY AND IMAGINATION. THE perception of matter is made the common- sense, and for cause. This was the cradle, this the go-cart, of the human child. We must learn the homely laws of fire and water ; we must feed, wash, plant, build. These are ends of necessity, and first in the order of nature. Poverty, frost, famine, disease, debt, are the beadles and guardsmen that hold us to common-sense. The intellect, yielded up to itself, cannot supersede this tyrannic necessity. The restraining grace of common-sense is the mark of all the valid minds, — • of -<Esop, Aristotle, Alfred, Luther, Shakspeare, Cervantes, Franklin, Napoleon. The common-sense wliich does not meddle with the absolute, but takes things at their word, — things as they appear, — believes in the existence of mat ter, not because we can touch it, or conceive of it, but because it agrees with ourselves, and the uni verse does not jest with us, but is in earnest, — is the house of health and life. In spite of all the joys of poets and the joys of saints, the most im aginative and abstra

全文を読む →