No More Learning

He was everywhere a learner, expecting light from
the youngest and least educated visitor. The thoughts combined with the
flower of his reading were gradually grouped into lectures, and his main
occupation through life was reading these to who would hear, at first in
courses in Boston, but later all over the country, for the Lyceum sprang
up in New England in these years in every town, and spread westward to
the new settlements even beyond the Mississippi. His winters were spent
in these rough, but to him interesting journeys, for he loved to watch
the growth of the Republic in which he had faith, and his summers were
spent in study and writing. These lectures were later severely pruned
and revised, and the best of them gathered into seven volumes of essays
under different names between 1841 and 1876. The courses in Boston,
which at first were given in the Masonic Temple, were always well
attended by earnest and thoughtful people. The young, whether in years
or in spirit, were always and to the end his audience of the spoken or
written word. The freedom of the Lyceum platform pleased Emerson. He
found that people would hear on Wednesday with approval and
unsuspectingly doctrines from which on Sunday they felt officially
obliged to dissent.

Mr. Lowell, in his essays, has spoken of these early lectures and what
they were worth to him and others suffering from the generous discontent
of youth with things as they were. Emerson used to say, "My strength and
my doom is to be solitary;" but to a retired scholar a wholesome offset
to this was the travelling and lecturing in cities and in raw frontier
towns, bringing him into touch with the people, and this he knew and
valued.

In 1837 Emerson gave the Phi Beta Kappa oration in Cambridge, The
American Scholar, which increased his growing reputation, but the
following year his Address to the Senior Class at the Divinity School
brought out, even from the friendly Unitarians, severe strictures and
warnings against its dangerous doctrines. Of this heresy Emerson said:
"I deny personality to God because it is too little, not too much. " He
really strove to elevate the idea of God. Yet those who were pained or
shocked by his teachings respected Emerson.
His lectures were still in
demand; he was often asked to speak by literary societies at orthodox
colleges. He preached regularly at East Lexington until 1838, but
thereafter withdrew from the ministerial office. At this time the
progressive and spiritually minded young people used to meet for
discussion and help in Boston, among them George Ripley, Cyrus Bartol,
James Freeman Clarke, Alcott, Dr. Hedge, Margaret Fuller, and Elizabeth
Peabody. Perhaps from this gathering of friends, which Emerson attended,
came what is called the Transcendental Movement, two results of which
were the Brook Farm Community and the Dial magazine, in which last
Emerson took great interest, and was for the time an editor. Many of
these friends were frequent visitors in Concord. Alcott moved thither
after the breaking up of his school. Hawthorne also came to dwell there.
Henry Thoreau, a Concord youth, greatly interested Emerson; indeed,
became for a year or two a valued inmate of his home, and helped and
instructed him in the labors of the garden and little farm, which
gradually grew to ten acres, the chief interest of which for the owner
was his trees, which he loved and tended. Emerson helped introduce his
countrymen to the teachings of Carlyle, and edited his works here, where
they found more readers than at home.

In 1847 Emerson was invited to read lectures in England, and remained
abroad a year, visiting France also in her troublous times. English
Traits was a result. Just before this journey he had collected and
published his poems. A later volume, called May Day, followed in 1867.
He had written verses from childhood, and to the purified expression of
poetry he, through life, eagerly aspired. He said, "I like my poems
best because it is not I who write them.