Page:Henry Mulford Tichenor - A Guide to Emerson (1923).djvu/6

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The life of a man or woman is the story of their thoughts and actions; Ralph Waldo Emerson has therefore given us his life in his writings; and thus has he become immortal. A beautiful chaplet, gathered along the highway of life, from which, in this book, a few of the rarest flowers are plucked.

That we are here to learn, that life is a school of experience, formed the foundation of Emerson's thoughts. "The world," he writes, "exists for the education of each man. There is no age, or state of society, or mode of action in history, to which there is not somewhat corresponding in his life. Everything tends in a wonderful manner to abbreviate itself and yield its own virtue to him. He should see that he can live all history in his own person. He must sit solidly at home, and not suffer himself to be bullied by kings or empires, but know that he is greater than all the geography and all the government of the world; he must transfer the point of view from which history is commonly read, from Rome, and Athens, and London, to himself, and not deny his conviction that he is the court, and if England or Egypt have anything to say to him, he will try the case; if not, let them forever be silent. He must attain and maintain that lofty sight