Excerpt from Select Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Some books, like some persons, convey to us all that they will ever have to give at a single sitting. Others hold our attention profitably through two or three encounters. But the books to be shipwrecked with, the great books into which rich and substantial lives have been distilled and packed - the Dialogues of Plato, Montaigne's Essays, Boswell's Johnson, the Essays and Journals of Emerson - these are to be lived with and returned to and made the companions of hours and days and moods as various as those in which they were written. You cannot discover what Emerson has been to others or what he may be to you by any cursory turning of his pages. Still less can you "get him up" by studying any summary of his philosophical system. Philosophers tell us indeed that his philosophical system is hopelessly antiquated, and fancy that they have disposed of him. But Emerson himself remarked: "I need hardly say to anyone acquainted with my thoughts that I have no system." The value of his thoughts depends scarcely more upon the metaphysical filaments among them than the value of a string of alternating beads of gold and pearl depends upon the string. The figure has a momentary illustrative force but is very inadequate. Emerson lives, still speaks pertinently of our current affairs, and tomorrow we shall still find him commenting with equal pertinency on tomorrow's affairs. To know him is not mere knowledge. It is an experience; for he is a dynamic personality, addressing the will, the emotions, the imagination, no less than the intellect.
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