James Elliot Cabot - A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson Vol. II, 1887

Page 365

APPENDIX truth. its

The work

little

The

circuit.

735

F.

of art represents all nature within

the nature of every

perception of beauty belongs to

man,

yet,

from defective organiza-

very unequal in different persons.

tion, it is

marks the distance of actual from the want of

it.

neighbor.

A

To man

a true

life

ideal

Nothing

man more

than

beauty would be an hourly

should be

all eye, all ear, to

the in-

him from the forms

timations of the soul reflected to

he should purge his organs by purity and Then shall the name of the world be beauty, " at last as it was at first. Poet," iii. 9, (Mostly in " ÂŤ " 19. Art," ii. 334. Beauty," vi. History," ii. 17. V. " The Heart." In strictness the soul 281, etc.) of things

;

self-denial.

has nothing to do with persons they are embodied thoughts and affections on which, as upon diagrams, the :

student reads his

own

nature and law.

not this absolute condition be any

with the relative and actual.

Meantime

let

moment confounded

This solitude of essence

is

not to be mistaken for a view of our position in nature.

Our

position in nature

wrong the

proud doctrine of social creatures. live in us

is

truth by too

and we

the reverse of

stiffly

in them.

and

let relations to

Let none

are partial and

shared by thousands who This impulse of affection is

is

not to be analyzed, but obeyed. part,

We

self-sufficiency.

Our being

this.

standing on the cold and

Welcome each

them form

as they will.

to his

If

we

believed in the existence of strict individuals, in an infinity of hostility in the fight.

The

enemy, we should never dare

to

rule of conduct in respect to this part of our

nature seems to be implicit obedience. cultivated nature

knows

its

The

heart in a

own, knows that such and


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