I inhale great draughts of space;
The east and the west are mine;
and the north and the south are mine.
I am larger, better than I thought;
I did not know I held so much goodness.
Allons! We must not stop here!
However sweet these laid-up stores —
however convenient this dwelling,
we cannot remain here;
However shelter'd this port,
and however calm these waters,
we must not anchor here;
However welcome the hospitality
that surrounds us, we are permitted
to receive it but a little while.
Allons! Be not detain'd!
Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten,
and the book on the shelf unopen'd!
Let the tools remain in the workshop!
let the money remain unearn'd!
Let the school stand!
mind not the cry of the teacher!
Let the preacher preach in the pulpit!
let the lawyer plead in the court,
and the judge expound the law.
There are several reasons why the marriage of East and West dreamt of by Emerson
and Thoreau did not take place. The Gold Rush of 1849, to California, had turned
people's attention in other directions. Then had come the Civil War, in which brother
had fought brother and men's worst passions had been let loose. Lastly, the
development of science and technology had brought about a great change in people's
outlook, intensifying their desire for material prosperity.
The publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859 changed the Weltanschauung of
the Western world, and its repercussions were felt more in the New World than in
Europe. Within a decade, intellectual people gave up their belief in the Biblical story of
creation and did not hesitate to trace man's origin back to an apelike ancestor, and
beyond that to a primordial protoplasmic atomic globule. The implications of evolution
were incorporated into every field of thought — law, history, economics, sociology,
philosophy, religion, and art; transcendentalism was replaced by empiricism,
instrumentalism, and pragmatism. The American life-current thus was turned into a
new channel. When America had been comparatively poor she had cherished her