Essays and poems of Emerson Author:Ralph Waldo Emerson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: But Emerson was also preserved from excessive individualism by a passion which, properly elevated and directed, may be a young man's guardian angel, the passion ... more »of ambition. "All young persons," he observes, "thirst for a real existence for a real object, — for something great and good which they shall do with their heart. Meanwhile they all pack gloves, or keep books, or travel, or draw indentures, or cajole old women." By habitual imaginative association with great men, he had assimilated their thoughts and virtues, and had accustomed himself to look forward with an almost Miltonic assurance to playing a pariTabove the ordinary in the life of his country. At the age of twenty- one he is sketching a series of papers on the improvement of the nation. He thinks the demand for a moral education the best sign of the times, and deems the exploration of the field a task fit for a new Columbus. He queries whether it were not an "heroic adventure" for him to "insist on being a popular speaker." And with perceptible elation at the prospect he concludes: "To address a great nation risen from the dust and sitting in absolute judgment on the merits of men, ready to hear if any one offers good counsel, may rouse the ambition and exercise the judgment of a man." There is some disposition at present to look upon Emerson's ambition as extravagant and to regard his work as a closed chapter in the intellectual life of America. It is even asserted that he never much affected the thinking of his countrymen. Says a recent writer, "What one notices about him chiefly is his lack of influence upon the main stream of American thought, such as it is. He had admirers and even worshippers, but no apprentices." But this judgment will not stand examination. Emerson had Thoreau for an apprentice; and betwee...« less