Written in 1842 by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1803-1882)
This version originally published in
2005
by
Infomotions, Inc.
This document is distributed under the GNU Public License.
(A Lecture read at the Masonic Temple, Boston, January, 1842)
The first thing we have to say respecting what are called _new views_ here in New England, at the present time, is, that they are not new, but the very oldest of thoughts cast into the mould of these new times. The light is always identical in its composition, but it falls on a great variety of objects, and by so falling is first revealed to us, not in its own form, for it is formless, but in theirs; in like manner, thought only appears in the objects it classifies. What is popularly called Transcendentalism among us, is Idealism; Idealism as it appears in 1842. As thinkers, mankind have ever divided into two sects, Materialists and Idealists; the first class founding on experience, the second on consciousness; the first class beginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class perceive that the senses are not final, and say, the senses give us representations of things, but what are the things themselves, they cannot tell.
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