PARTS:
Part 1
Part 2
Written in 1841 by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1803-1882)
This version originally published in
2005
by
Infomotions, Inc.
This document is distributed under the GNU Public License.
(A Lecture read before the Mechanics' Apprentices' Library Association, Boston, January 25, 1841)
Mr. President, and Gentlemen,
I wish to offer to your consideration some thoughts on the particular and general relations of man as a reformer. I shall assume that the aim of each young man in this association is the very highest that belongs to a rational mind. Let it be granted, that our life, as we lead it, is common and mean; that some of those offices and functions for which we were mainly created are grown so rare in society, that the memory of them is only kept alive in old books and in dim traditions; that prophets and poets, that beautiful and perfect men, we are not now, no, nor have even seen such; that some sources of human instruction are almost unnamed and unknown among us; that the community in which we live will hardly bear to be told that every man should be open to ecstasy or a divine illumination, and his daily walk elevated by intercourse with the spiritual world.
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