"What tedious training, day after day, year after year, never ending, to form the common sense; what continual reproduction of annoyances, inconveniences, dilemmas; what rejoicing over us of little men; what disputing of prices, what reckonings of interest, — and all to form the Hand of the mind; — to instruct us that 'good thoughts are no better than good dreams, unless they be executed!'"
— Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)
Work Title
Date
September 10, 1836
Metaphor
"What tedious training, day after day, year after year, never ending, to form the common sense; what continual reproduction of annoyances, inconveniences, dilemmas; what rejoicing over us of little men; what disputing of prices, what reckonings of interest, — and all to form the Hand of the mind; — to instruct us that 'good thoughts are no better than good dreams, unless they be executed!'"
Metaphor in Context
1. Nature is a discipline of the understanding in intellectual truths. Our dealing with sensible objects is a constant exercise in the necessary lessons of difference, of likeness, of order, of being and seeming, of progressive arrangement; of ascent from particular to general; of combination to one end of manifold forces. Proportioned to the importance of the organ to be formed, is the extreme care with which its tuition is provided, — a care pretermitted in no single case. What tedious training, day after day, year after year, never ending, to form the common sense; what continual reproduction of annoyances, inconveniences, dilemmas; what rejoicing over us of little men; what disputing of prices, what reckonings of interest, — and all to form the Hand of the mind; — to instruct us that “good thoughts are no better than good dreams, unless they be executed!”
(p. 37)
(p. 37)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Emerson, R. W. Nature. 1836. Pagination keyed to Stephen Whicher's Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson: An Organic Anthology Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957. <eBooks@Adelaide><Oregon State Electronic Edition>
Date of Entry
03/31/2010
