I. Emerson and US. (Bicentennial Essays: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882))‪.‬

EMERSON TELLS US that truth is "such a flyaway, such a slyboots, so untransportable and unbarrelable a commodity, that it is as bad to catch as light."' However things may be with truth, it is so with Emerson's thought. What he says is often wise or inspiring, but he has no coherent theory, and his commitment to what he writes is uncertain. He tells us what currently appears true to him, in penetrating, compressed, and sometimes shocking language, but his indifference to consistency makes his writings imply everything and nothing. What do we make of him, and why has he been so important to the life of the mind in America? He believed in inspiration and followed every glimmering, accepting eternal goals in concept but never feeling bound by them in practice. He dreamed of a great public power, on which [the intellectual man] can draw, by unlocking, at all risks, his human doors, and suffering the ethereal tides to roll and circulate through him: then he is caught up into the life of the Universe, his speech is thunder, his thought is law, and his words are universally intelligible as the plants and animals. (2)