The American Scholar

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Emerson, Ralph Waldo

"The American Scholar"

All the rest behold in the hero or the poet their own green and crude being, -- ripened; yes, and are content to be less, so _that_ may attain to its full stature. What a testimony, -- full of grandeur, full of pity, is borne to the demands of his own nature, by the poor clansman, the poor partisan, who rejoices in the glory of his chief. The poor and the low find some amends to their immense moral capacity, for their acquiescence in a political and social inferiority. They are content to be brushed like flies from the path of a great person, so that justice shall be done by him to that common nature which it is the dearest desire of all to see enlarged and glorified. They sun themselves in the great man's light, and feel it to be their own element. They cast the dignity of man from their downtrod selves upon the shoulders of a hero, and will perish to add one drop of blood to make that great heart beat, those giant sinews combat and conquer. He lives for us, and we live in him.

Men such as they are, very naturally seek money or power; and power because it is as good as money, -- the "spoils," so called, "of office.

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Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria (page 66) St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 (page 33) The Devil's Pool (page 127)

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Emerson, Ralph Waldo

"The American Scholar"