...man as a sovereign state with a sovereign state — tends to true union as well as greatness. . . . The spirit of the American freeman is already suspected...private avarice make the air we breathe thick and fat. . . . There is no work for any but the decorous and the complaisant. Young men of the fairest promise,...

...know all; it is for you to dare all. Mr. President and Gentlemen, this confidence in the lounsearched might of man belongs, by all motives, by all prophecy,...The scholar is decent, indolent, complaisant. See al20 ready the tragic consequence. The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon...

...rose." And here also, among the cultured and intellectual, he finds indolence, decency, and complacency. "The spirit of the American freeman is already suspected...private avarice make the air we breathe thick and fat. . . . See already the tragic consequence. The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats...

...preoccupied with many things, and compassed about by so great a cloud of witnesses. As Emerson said, in 1837, "the spirit of the American freeman is already suspected to be timid, imitative, tame." Yet, even at this, his summons to cultural freedom found no ready response outside New England. Domestic...

...street. . .the news of the boat. . .the glance of the eye. . .the shop, the plough and ledger . . . We have listened too long to the courtly muses of...is already suspected to be timid, imitative, tame. . .we will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds.' Telescoped...

...he declares that "the world is nothing, the man is all," it is only to reaffirm that "the unsearched might of man belongs, by all motives, by all prophecy, by all preparation, to the American Scholar." Rising from "hope" to "confidence," he declares, summarily, that a "nation of men will for the first...

...and stands in a "state of virtual hostility" to American society. Emerson lamented in his words that "public and private avarice make the air we breathe thick and fat" so that there was "no work for any but the decorous and the complaisant." I want to conclude by saying...

...know all, it is for you to dare all. Mr. President and Gentlemen, this confidence in the unsearched might of man belongs, by all motives, by all prophecy, by all preparation, to the American Scholar.9 A distinctive feature of Emerson's reflections on power is that he associates a mythic self...

...address at Harvard in 1837, "We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe" and lamented that "The spirit of the American freeman is already suspected to be timid, imitative, tame," he was only saying what scores of American commencement speakers had said before. The United States...

...of man," for the "new importance given to the single person," the task of embodying which belonged, "by all motives, by all prophecy, by all preparation, to the American Scholar."43 Clearly the deforming power of society itself was the mortal enemy of such confidence:...