The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: with a biographical introduction, and notes, and a general index. Vol. 10 Lectures and biographical sketches by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Author:Ralph Waldo Emerson [Emerson, Ralph Waldo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Philosophy
Publisher: AMS Press
Published: 1968-01-15T10:18:38.294000+00:00

THE SCHOLAR.

FOR thought, and not praise,

Thought is the wages

For which I sell days,

Will gladly sell ages

And willing grow old,

Deaf and dumb, blind and cold,

Melting matter into dreams,

Panoramas which I saw,

And whatever glows or seems

Into substance, into Law.

THE sun and moon shall fall amain

Like sowers' seeds into his brain,

There quickened to be born again

THE SCHOLAR

AN ORATION DELIVERED BEFORE THE WASHINGTON AND JEFFERSON SOCIETIES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA,

28TH JUNE, 1876.

GENTLEMEN:

The Athenians took an oath, on a certain crisis in their affairs, to esteem wheat, the vine and the olive the bounds of Attica. The territory of scholars is yet larger. A stranger but yesterday to every person present, I find myself already at home, for the society of lettered men is a university which does not bound itself with the walls of one cloister or college, but gathers in the distant and solitary student into its strictest amity. Literary men gladly acknowledge these ties which find for the homeless and the stranger a welcome where least looked for. But in proportion as we are conversant with the laws of life, we have seen the like. We are used to these surprises. This is but one operation of a more general law. As in coming among strange faces we find that the love of letters makes us friends, so in strange thoughts, in the worldly habits which harden us, we find with some surprise that learning and truth and beauty have not let us go; that the spiritual nature is too strong for us; that those excellent influences which men in all ages have called the Muse, or by some kindred name, come in to keep us warm and true; that the face of Nature remains irresistibly alluring. We have strayed from the territorial monuments of Attica, but here still are wheat and olives and the vine.

I do not now refer to that intellectual conscience which forms itself in tender natures, and gives us many twinges for our sloth and unfaithfulness:—the influence I speak of is of a higher strain. Stung by this intellectual conscience, we go to measure our tasks as scholars, and screw ourselves up to energy and fidelity, and our sadness is suddenly overshone by a sympathy of blessing. Beauty, the inspirer, the cheerful festal principle, the leader of gods and men, which draws by being beautiful, and not by considerations of advantage, comes in and puts a new face on the world. I think the peculiar office of scholars in a careful and gloomy generation is to be (as the poets were called in the Middle Ages) Professors of the Joyous Science, detectors and delineators of occult symmetries and unpublished beauties; heralds of civility, nobility, learning and wisdom; affirmers of the one law, yet as those who should affirm it in music and dancing; expressors themselves of that firm and cheerful temper, infinitely removed from sadness, which reigns through the kingdoms of chemistry, vegetation, and animal life. Every natural power exhilarates; a true talent delights the possessor first.

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