Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editor's Preface
- Introduction
- RALPH WALDO EMERSON
- Nature (1836)
- “The American Scholar” (1837)
- “Divinity School Address” (1838)
- “Literary Ethics” (1838)
- Essays [First Series] (1841)
- “The Method of Nature” (1841)
- Essays: Second Series (1844)
- Poems (1847)
- Essays, Lectures, and Orations (1847)
- Nature; Addresses, and Lectures (1849)
- Representative Men (1850)
- English Traits (1856)
- The Conduct of Life (1860)
- May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)
- Society and Solitude (1870)
- Letters and Social Aims (1876)
- HENRY DAVID THOREAU
- RETROSPECTIVE ESSAYS BY CONTEMPORARIES
- Index
“Divinity School Address” (1838)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editor's Preface
- Introduction
- RALPH WALDO EMERSON
- Nature (1836)
- “The American Scholar” (1837)
- “Divinity School Address” (1838)
- “Literary Ethics” (1838)
- Essays [First Series] (1841)
- “The Method of Nature” (1841)
- Essays: Second Series (1844)
- Poems (1847)
- Essays, Lectures, and Orations (1847)
- Nature; Addresses, and Lectures (1849)
- Representative Men (1850)
- English Traits (1856)
- The Conduct of Life (1860)
- May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)
- Society and Solitude (1870)
- Letters and Social Aims (1876)
- HENRY DAVID THOREAU
- RETROSPECTIVE ESSAYS BY CONTEMPORARIES
- Index
Summary
There is a strange state of things existing about us in the literary and religious world, of which none of our larger periodicals has yet taken notice. It is the result of this restless craving for notoriety and excitement, which, in one way or another, is keeping our community in a perpetual stir. It has shown itself, we think, particularly since that foolish woman, Miss Martineau, was among us, and stimulated the vanity of her flatterers by loading them in return with the copper coin of her praise, which they easily believed was as good as gold. She was accustomed to talk about her mission, as if she were a special dispensation of Providence, and they too thought that they must all have their missions, and began to “vaticinate,” as one of their number has expressed it. But though her genial warmth may have caused the new school to bud and bloom, it was not planted by her.—It owes its origin in part to ill-understood notions, obtained by blundering through the crabbed and disgusting obscurity of some of the worst German speculatists, which notions, however, have been received by most of its disciples at second hand, through an interpreter. The atheist Shelley has been quoted and commended in a professedly religious work, called the Western Messenger, but he is not, we conceive, to be reckoned among the patriarchs of the sect.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Emerson and ThoreauThe Contemporary Reviews, pp. 33 - 54Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992