No More Learning

He was the third son of William
Emerson, the minister of the First Church in Boston, whose father,
William Emerson, had been the patriotic minister of Concord at the
outbreak of the Revolution, and died a chaplain in the army. Ruth
Haskins, the mother of Ralph Waldo Emerson, was left a widow in 1811,
with a family of five little boys. The taste of these boys was
scholarly, and four of them went through the Latin School to Harvard
College, and graduated there. Their mother was a person of great
sweetness, dignity, and piety, bringing up her sons wisely and well in
very straitened circumstances, and loved by them. Her husband's
stepfather, Rev. Dr. Ripley of Concord, helped her, and constantly
invited the boys to the Old Manse, so that the woods and fields along
the Concord River were first a playground and then the background of the
dreams of their awakening imaginations.

Born in the city, Emerson's young mind first found delight in poems and
classic prose, to which his instincts led him as naturally as another
boy's would to go fishing, but his vacations in the country supplemented
these by giving him great and increasing love of nature. In his early
poems classic imagery is woven into pictures of New England woodlands.
Even as a little boy he had the habit of attempting flights of verse,
stimulated by Milton, Pope, or Scott, and he and his mates took pleasure
in declaiming to each other in barns and attics. He was so full of
thoughts and fancies that he sought the pen instinctively, to jot them
down.

At college Emerson did not shine as a scholar, though he won prizes for
essays and declamations, being especially unfitted for mathematical
studies, and enjoying the classics rather in a literary than grammatical
way. And yet it is doubtful whether any man in his class used his time
to better purpose with reference to his after life, for young Emerson's
instinct led him to wide reading of works, outside the curriculum, that
spoke directly to him. He had already formed the habit of writing in a
journal, not the facts but the thoughts and inspirations of the day;
often, also, good stories or poetical quotations, and scraps of his own
verse.

On graduation from Harvard in the class of 1821, following the
traditions of his family, Emerson resolved to study to be a minister,
and meantime helped his older brother William in the support of the
family by teaching in a school for young ladies in Boston, that the
former had successfully established.
The principal was twenty-one and
the assistant nineteen years of age. For school-teaching on the usual
lines Emerson was not fitted, and his youth and shyness prevented him
from imparting his best gifts to his scholars. Years later, when, in his
age, his old scholars assembled to greet him, he regretted that no hint
had been brought into the school of what at that very time "I was
writing every night in my chamber, my first thoughts on morals and the
beautiful laws of compensation, and of individual genius, which to
observe and illustrate have given sweetness to many years of my life. "
Yet many scholars remembered his presence and teaching with pleasure and
gratitude, not only in Boston, but in Chelmsford and Roxbury, for while
his younger brothers were in college it was necessary that he should
help. In these years, as through all his youth, he was loved, spurred on
in his intellectual life, and keenly criticised by his aunt, Mary Moody
Emerson, an eager and wide reader, inspired by religious zeal,
high-minded, but eccentric.

The health of the young teacher suffered from too ascetic a life, and
unmistakable danger-signals began to appear, fortunately heeded in time,
but disappointment and delay resulted, borne, however, with sense and
courage. His course at the Divinity School in Cambridge was much broken;
nevertheless, in October, 1826, he was "approbated to preach" by the
Middlesex Association of Ministers. A winter at the North at this time
threatened to prove fatal, so he was sent South by his helpful kinsman,
Rev. Samuel Ripley, and passed the winter in Florida with benefit,
working northward in the spring, preaching in the cities, and resumed
his studies at Cambridge.

In 1829, Emerson was called by the Second or Old North Church in Boston
to become the associate pastor with Rev. Henry Ware, and soon after,
because of his senior's delicate health, was called on to assume the
full duty. Theological dogmas, such as the Unitarian Church of
Channing's day accepted, did not appeal to Emerson, nor did the
supernatural in religion in its ordinary acceptation interest him. The
omnipresence of spirit, the dignity of man, the daily miracle of the
universe, were what he taught, and while the older members of the
congregation may have been disquieted that he did not dwell on revealed
religion, his words reached the young people, stirred thought, and
awakened aspiration. At this time he lived with his mother and his young
wife (Ellen Tucker) in Chardon Street. For three years he ministered to
his people in Boston. Then having felt the shock of being obliged to
conform to church usage, as stated prayer when the spirit did not move,
and especially the administration of the Communion, he honestly laid his
troubles before his people, and proposed to them some modification of
this rite.