The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Letters and social aims [Vol. 8]

of the individual to be himself. One leaf, one blade of grass, one meridian, does not resemble another. Every mind is different; and the more it is unfolded, the more pronounced is that difference.1 He must draw the elements into him for food, and, if they be granite and silex, will prefer them cooked by sun and rain, by time and art, to his hand. But, however received, these elements pass into the substance of his constitution, will be assimilated, and tend always to form, not a partisan, but a possessor of truth.2 To all that can be said of the preponderance of the Past, the single word Genius is a sufficient reply. The divine resides in the new. The divine never quotes, but is, and creates. The profound apprehension of the Present is Genius, which makes the Past forgotten. Genius believes its faintest presentiment against the testimony of all history; for it knows that facts are not ultimates, but that a state of mind is the ancestor of everything. And what is Originality? It is being, being one's self, and reporting accurately what we see and are. Genius is in the first instance, sensibility, the capacity of receiving just impressions from the external world, and the power of coördinating these after the laws of thought. It implies Will, or original force, for their right

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Title: The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Letters and social aims [Vol. 8]
Author: Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882.
Canvas: Page 201
Publication: Boston ; New York :: Houghton, Mifflin,; [1903-1904].

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Collection: The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Full citation: "The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Letters and social aims [Vol. 8]." In the digital collection The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/4957107.0008.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed June 12, 2025.

The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Letters and social aims [Vol. 8]

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