Vol XII – Natural History of the Intellect (1893)

NATURAL HISTORY OF INTELLECT.Ralph Waldo Emerson I. Powers and Laws of Thought     I have used such opportunity as I have had, and lately in London and Paris, to attend scientific lectures; and in listening to Richard Owen’s masterly enumeration of the parts and laws of the human body, or Michael Faraday’s explanation of magnetic powers,…

HERE is Carlyle’s new poem, his Iliad of English woes, to follow his poem on France, entitled the History of the French Revolution. In its first aspect it is a political tract, and since Burke, since Milton, we have had nothing to compare with it. It grapples honestly with the facts lying before all men,…

I Framed his tongue to music, I armed his hand with skill, I moulded his face to beauty, And his heart the throne of will. MILTON.' The discovery of the lost work of Milton, the treatise " Of the Christian Doctrine," in 1823, drew a sudden attention to his name. For a short time the…

NOT with fond shekels of the tested gold, Nor gems whose rates are either rich or poor As fancy values them: but with true prayers, That shall be up at heaven and enter there Ere sunrise; prayers from preserved souls, From fasting maids, whose minds are delicate To nothing temporal.” SHAKSPEARE.       PYTHAGORAS said that…

HE has seen but half the universe who never has been shown the house of Pain. As the salt sea covers more than two thirds of the surface of the globe, so sorrow encroaches in man on felicity. The conversation of men is a mixture of regrets and apprehensions. I do not know but the…

    WE sometimes meet in a stage‑coach in New England an erect, muscular man, with fresh complexion and a smooth hat, whose nervous speech instantly betrays the English traveller;— a man nowise cautious to conceal his name or that of his native country, or his very slight esteem for the persons and the country that…