>I think we should make Matt, and the rest of the world, play Emerson
>for a while.
>[Oh yes, I know, Thoreau is the real 'Survivor' (got to got to have
>been stuff out there....?) but he was just an Emersonian robot, as
>Matt knows all too well.]
>Let's say -- the essay 'Self-Reliance':
>last one to the final page is a Bush-voter.
A taste:
"The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. A boy is in the parlour what the pit is in the playhouse; independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests: he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court him: he does not court you. But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken with eclat, he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account. There is no Lethe for this. Ah, that he could pass again into his neutrality! Who can thus avoid all pledges, and having observed, observe again from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted innocence, must always be formidable. He would utter opinions on all passing affairs, which being seen to be not private, but necessary, would sink like darts into the ear of men, and put them in fear."
I think it was Richard Howard who said that a Martian who read Emerson would never know that half of humanity was female.
Doug