Thursday, August 03, 2023
The Studious Class
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Montaigne; or, The Skeptic," Representative Men (Boston: Phillips, Sampson, and Company, 1856), pp. 149-184 (at 155-156):
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The studious class are their own victims: they are thin and pale, their feet are cold, their heads are hot, the night is without sleep, the day a fear of interruption, — pallor, squalor, hunger, and egotism. If you come near them, and see what conceits they entertain, — they are abstractionists, and spend their days and nights in dreaming some dream; in expecting the homage of society to some precious scheme built on a truth, but destitute of proportion in its presentment, of justness in its application, and of all energy of will in the schemer to embody and vitalize it.
