The Advantages and the Dangers of the American Scholar: A Discourse Delivered on the Day Preceding the Annual Commencement of Union College, July 26, 1836

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Wiley and Long, 1836 - 62 oldal

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52. oldal - This, however, is but an extreme case, to be pointed out as a beacon to mark the covert peril. That such grovelling materiality, such mean selfishness, is not the necessary, nor the constant, no, nor the frequent result of our ardent industry in the affairs of life, let the discoveries of Franklin, and the magnificent far-drawn speculations of Edwards — let the grand philosophy, and the poetic thought, flashing quick and thick through the cloudy atmosphere of political discussion in our senate-house...
25. oldal - I am now indebted, as being a work not to be raised from the heat of youth, or the vapors of wine, like that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amorist, or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite, nor to be obtained by the invocation of dame Memory and her siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim, with the hallowed...
5. oldal - Our immense extent of fertile territory opening an inexhaustible field for successful enterprise, thus assuring to industry a certain reward for its labors, and preserving the lands for centuries to come from the manifold evils of an overcrowded, and consequently degraded population ; our magnificent system of federated republics, carrying out and applying the principles of representative democracy to an extent never hoped or imagined in the boldest theories of the old speculative republican philosophers,...
39. oldal - ... life to raise, at the expense of every sentiment of tenderness to his subjects, and of justice and good faith to foreign nations! It is with difficulty the reader can persuade himself that the Godolphin and Churchill here mentioned are the same persons who were afterwards one in the cabinet, one in the field, the great conductors of the war of the succession.
53. oldal - ... their disappointment to the republican institutions of their country ; not reflecting that it is impossible to enjoy all kinds of good at the same time ; that whatever is administered by men must be subject to abuse ; and that to be happy and successful, every man must some how or other conform himself to the sphere where Providence has placed him. If the scholar gives way to this temptation, he becomes a discordant, jarring thing in society, harmonizing with nothing near or around him. He dwells...
10. oldal - But with us, commerce, arts, agriculture, enterprise, adventure, ambition, are crowding and hurrying every man forward. Our past is but brief. We can scarcely be said to have a present — certainly we have none for mere indolent enjoyment. We are all pressing and hastening forward to some better future. No single mind can well resist the general impulse. The momentum of the whole mass of society, composed of myriads of living forces, is upon each individual, and he flies forward with accelerated...
33. oldal - To emerge from the crowd of menials, and obtain some share of the feast, the unbidden scholar must attach himself to the train of a patron, and feed on the alms his niggard bounty may bestow. Such has been the degrading history of literary men, poets, authors, and, I blush to add, philosophers, throughout the world, for many centuries. And if in our own times the literature of France and of England have, in a good degree, freed...
39. oldal - Did they enjoy, in a greater degree, her favour and confidence ? The very reverse is the fact. But, in one case, they were the tools of a king plotting against his people; in the other, the ministers of a free government acting upon enlarged principles, and wnh enemies which no state that is not in sume degree republican can supply.
40. oldal - ... enlarged principles, and with energies which no state that is not in some degree republican can supply. How forcibly must the contemplation of these men in such opposite situations teach persons engaged in political life, that a free and popular government is desirable, not only for the public good, but for their own greatness and consideration, for every object of generous ambition.
6. oldal - Lockes of former times- ; the reaction of our political system upon our social and domestic concerns, bringing the influence of popular feeling and public opinion to bear upon all the affairs of life in a degree hitherto wholly unprecedented ; the unconstrained range of freedom of opinion, of speech, and of the press, and the habitual and daring exercise of that liberty upon the highest subjects ; the absence of all serious inequality of fortune and rank in the condition of our citizens ; our divisions...

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