May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)

Summary

In the course of the twenty-one years that have passed between the publication of Mr. Emerson's first volume of poems and the issue of the volume which has just come from the press, there has been a great change in the regard of the public for their author. Mr. Emerson has had the felicity of living long enough to be assured of the gratitude of his own generation for his services to them, and of the permanence in the future of his influence and of his fame. Of hardly any other living American author can it be so confidently assumed that he will hold a place among the universal classics. The class whom he addresses and whom he directly affects through his work are the best. An idealist himself, he is the sage friend and counsellor of those who hold to the ideal as to the only absolute reality, and who, through the power which they draw from the sources of life, have virtue to lift the world, from age to age, to higher levels of thought and action.

It is in the influence of his writing upon character far more than in any direct intellectual effect that the chief worth of Mr. Emerson's teaching consists. He adds but little to the store of thought. His appeal is not so much to the understanding as to the soul of man. He regards thought as the wise man regards money; not as good in itself, but good for its uses and as a means.