CONTENTS. PAGE THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. An Oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, Aug. 31, 1837 THE METHOD OF NATURE. An Oration delivered before MAN THE REFORMER. A Lecture read before the Mechan. ics' Apprentices' Library Association, Boston, January 25, 1841. 215 THE TRANSCENDENTALIST. A Lecture read in the Masonic Temple, Boston, January, 1842 309 THE YOUNG AMERICAN. A Lecture read before the Mer- cantile Library Association, in Boston, February 7, 1844. 341 NATURE. A SUBTLE chain of countless rings reads omens where it goes, INTRODUCTION. Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe ? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs ? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship. Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection |
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