EMERSON..EXCERPT

"Now Emerson can advance the familiar ideas about self-reliance with a fitting language of complete, unarguable conviction. 'Insist on yourself. Never imitate. For your own talent you can present every moment with all the force of a lifetime's cultivation, but of the adopted stolen talents of anybody else you have only a frigid extempore half-expression.' Emerson once told Charles Woodbury that 'definition saves a deal of debate.' The definition that redraws the boundaries of its subject now becomes a hallmark of Emerson's style: 'The education of the mind consists in a continual substitution of facts for words.' He can put a sting in the tail of a familiar saying: 'Every man's Reason is sufficient for his guidance, if used.' The aphoristic style toward which Emerson is working is the perfect medium for turning personal observation into forceful generalization. Attention to rhythm and word choice helps make the surprising seem inevitable: 'There is no object in nature which intense light will not make more beautiful.' Emerson's prose style is now moving further and further away from the excursive, expository norms of his education. He no longer wishes to argue, to prove, to present evidence, to base conclusions on prepared logical grounds. He is seeking, as Nietzsche and Kierkegaard would do--and for similar reasons--an appropriate language for the direct statement of personal intuition. The declarative or imperative form of the aphorism presents a discovery in language so taut and trig that the statement is taken for its own evidence." P.180-181, EMERSON:THE MIND ON FIRE, by Robert D. Richardson, Jr. (1995) Emerson: The Mind on Fire (Centennial Books) www.amazon.com