Quotes4study

It was on the lecture-platform that he found his power and won his fame. The courses of lectures that he delivered at the Masonic Temple in Boston, during the winters of 1835 and 1836, on "Great Men," "English Literature," and "The Philosophy of History," were well attended and admired. They were followed by two discourses which commanded for him immediate recognition, part friendly and part hostile, as a new and potent personality. His Phi Beta Kappa oration at Harvard College in August 1837, on "The American Scholar," was an eloquent appeal for independence, sincerity, realism, in the intellectual life of America. His address before the graduating class of the divinity school at Cambridge, in 1838, was an impassioned protest against what he called "the defects of historical Christianity" (its undue reliance upon the personal authority of Jesus, and its failure to explore the moral nature of man as the fountain of established teaching), and a daring plea for absolute self-reliance and a new inspiration of religion. "In the soul," he said, "let redemption be sought. Wherever a man comes, there comes revolution. The old is for slaves. Go alone. Refuse the good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination of men. Cast conformity behind you, and acquaint men at first hand with Deity." In this address Emerson laid his hand on the sensitive point of Unitarianism, which rejected the divinity of Jesus, but held fast to his supreme authority. A blaze of controversy sprang up at once. Conservatives attacked him; Radicals defended him. Emerson made no reply. But amid this somewhat fierce illumination he went forward steadily as a public lecturer. It was not his negations that made him popular; it was the eloquence with which he presented the positive side of his doctrine. Whatever the titles of his discourses, "Literary Ethics," "Man the Reformer," "The Present Age," "The Method of Nature," "Representative Men," "The Conduct of Life," their theme was always the same, namely, "the infinitude of the private man." Those who thought him astray on the subject of religion listened to him with delight when he poetized the commonplaces of art, politics, literature or the household. His utterance was Delphic, inspirational. There was magic in his elocution. The simplicity and symmetry of his sentences, the modulations of his thrilling voice, the radiance of his fine face, even his slight hesitations and pauses over his manuscript, lent a strange charm to his speech. For more than a generation he went about the country lecturing in cities, towns and villages, before learned societies, rustic lyceums and colleges; and there was no man on the platform in America who excelled him in distinction, in authority, or in stimulating eloquence. Entry: EMERSON

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 9, Slice 3 "Electrostatics" to "Engis"     1910-1911

In England also the early spiritualist newspapers were filled with "inspirational" writing,--_Pages of Ike Paraclete_, &c. The most notable series of English automatic writings are the _Spirit Teachings_ of the Rev. W. Stainton Moses. The phenomenon, of course, lends itself to deception, but there seems no reason to doubt that in the great majority of the cases recorded the writing was in reality produced without deliberate volition. In the earlier years of the spiritualist movement, a "planchette," a little heart-shaped board running on wheels, was employed to facilitate the process of writing. Entry: AUTOMATIC

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon"     1910-1911