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Loading... Essays and English Traitsby Ralph Waldo EmersonI thought these essays were claptrap when I had to read some of them in school. Now forty years later my opinion is confirmed. One can see how appropriate is Mr. Emerson's best known quotation ("Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds"). "English Traits" (one of the more readable of the pieces in this collection) is one of the most inconsistent works I've ever come across. But Emerson is not all harmlessly quaint. I don't see how anybody familiar with the history of the 20th century can read "Self Reliance", his most famous and once popular essay, without a shudder. Includes "The Over-Soul" (1841, written before Nietzsche was even born--1844). "Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Always our being is descending into us from we know not whence." [133] "When I watch that flowing river...I see that I am a pensioner, not a cause but a surprised spectator of this ethereal water." [134] |
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"Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Always our being is descending into us from we know not whence." [133] "When I watch that flowing river...I see that I am a pensioner, not a cause but a surprised spectator of this ethereal water." [134] ( )