According to Mr. Bliss Perry, the greatest idealists are the most
practical workers:
Take those men of the transcendental epoch, whose individuality
has been fortunately transmitted to us through our literature.
They were in love with life, enraptured of its opportunities
and possibilities. No matter to what task a man set his hand,
he could gain a livelihood without loss of self-respect or the
respect of the community. Let him try teaching school, Emerson
would advise; let him farm it a while, drive a tin-pedler’s
cart for a season or two, keep store, go to Congress, live
the “experimental life.” Emerson himself could muse upon the
oversoul, but he also raised the best Baldwin apples and
Bartlett pears in Concord, and got the highest current prices
for them in the Boston market. His friend Thoreau supported
himself by making sandpaper or lead-pencils, by surveying
farms or by hoeing that immortal patch of beans; his true
vocation being steadily that of the philosopher, the seeker.
(Text.)--_Atlantic Monthly._
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