Divine Library is a free online public library that includes free eBook downloads and free audio books.

We work with New Thought Seekers and Sharers around the world insuring that all New Thought Texts in the Public Domain are available for you to read on the web for free, forever!

"Unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit."
~ 2 Corinthians 2:17

Navigate through this book by clicking Next Page or Previous Page below the text of the page & jump directly to chapters using the chapter numbers above the text.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Serving New Thought is pleased to present

Ralph Waldo Emerson's

Nature, Addresses, and Lectures

Book page numbers, along with the number to the left of the .htm extension match the page numbers of the original books to ensure easy use in citations for research papers and books


Introduction - Nature - Commodity - Beauty - Language - Discipline - Idealism - Spirit - Prospects - The American Scholar - Divinity College, Cambridge - Literary Ethics - The Method of Nature - Man the Reformer - Lecture on the Times - The Transcendentalist - The Young American - Contents -


the understanding or the affections. Hundreds of writers may be found in every long-civilized nation who for a short time believe and make others believe that they see and utter truths, who do not of themselves clothe one thought in its natural garment, but who feed unconsciously on the language created by the primary writers of the country, those, namely, who hold primarily on nature.

But wise men pierce this rotten diction and fasten words again to visible things; so that picturesque language is at once a commanding certificate that he who employs it is a man in alliance with truth and God. The moment our discourse rises above the ground line of familiar facts and is inflamed with passion or exalted by thought, it clothes itself in images. A man conversing in earnest, if he watch his intellectual processes, will find that a material image more or less luminous arises in his mind, contemporaneous with every thought, which furnishes the vestment of the thought. Hence, good writing and brilliant discourse are perpetual allegories. This imagery is spontaneous. It is the blending of experience with the present action of the mind. It is proper creation. It is the working of the Original Cause through the instruments he has already made.

These facts may suggest the advantage which the country-life possesses, for a powerful mind, over the

page scan

36


PREVIOUS PAGE - NEXT PAGE

Support New Thought Library so that we can continue our work 
of putting all public domain New Thought texts at your fingertips for free!