Thu, May 15, 2014 at 9:03 AM
Fellas,
I finished the Emerson bio, and thought i should share his philosophy of life. It is strange that he doesn’t mention friendship, since he consistently talked about its value and joy in his life.
- The days are gods. That is, everything is divine.
- Creation is continuous. There is no other world; this one is all there is.
- Every day is the day of judgment.
- The purpose of life is individual self-cultivation, self-expression, and fulfillment.
- Poetry liberates. Thought is also free.
- The powers of the soul are commensurate with its needs; each new day challenges us with its adequacy and our own.
- Fundamental perceptions are intuitive and inarguable; all important truths, whether of physics or ethics, must at last be self-evident.
- Nothing great is ever accomplished without enthusiasm.
- Life is an ecstasy; Thoreau has it right when he says, “Surely joy is the condition of life.”
- Criticism and commentary, if they are not in the service of enthusiasm and ecstasy, are idle at best, destructive at worst. Your work, as Ruskin says, should be the praise of what you love.
He continues by saying that Emerson had “an almost intolerable awareness that every morning began with infinite promise. Any book may be read, any idea thought, any action taken. Anything that has ever been possible to human beings is possible to most of us every time the clock says six in the morning. On a day no different from the one now breaking, Shakespeare sat down to begin Hamlet and Fuller began her history of the Roman revolution of 1848. Each of us has all the time there is; each accepts those invitations he can discern. By the same token, each evening brings a reckoning of infinite regret for the paths refused, openings not seen, and actions not taken.”
All my best,
Paul