ad them better than all my instructions.

But if some of the matters spoken about at the beginning of the
"Dioptrics" and the "Meteors" [published with the "Discourse on Method"]
should at first give offence because I have called them "suppositions,"
and have shown no desire to prove them, let the reader have patience to
read the whole attentively, and I have hope that he will be satisfied.

The time remaining to me I have resolved to employ in trying to acquire
some knowledge of nature, such that we may be able to draw from it more
certain rules for medicine than those which up to the present we
possess. And I hereby declare that I shall always hold myself more
obliged to those by whose favour I enjoy my leisure undisturbed than I
should be to any who should offer me the most esteemed employments in
the world.

* * * * *

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

NATURE

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American writer and moralist, was
born at Boston on May 25, 1803, of English stock and a family
of preachers. He was educated at Harvard for the Unitarian
ministry, and became a settled pastor in Boston before he was
twenty-six. Three years later he resigned his charge owing to
theological disagreements. In 1833 he visited Europe and
England as a hero worshipper, his desire being to meet Landor,
Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Carlyle. He saw them all, and
formed a lifelong friendship with Carlyle. Returning to
America, he settled at Concord, where he lived till his death,
on April. 27, 1882. His public work took the form of lectures,
of which his books are reproductions. In 1836 he published his
first book, "Nature," anonymously. "Nature" was the germ essay
from which all Emerson's later work sprang, a first expression
of thoughts that were expanded and developed later. It was
published in 1836, when its writer was thirty-three years of
age, and known only as a preacher who had become a lecturer.
Already Emerson had adopted the methods of a seer rather than
those of the consecutive thinker. "Nature" was one of the
first-written books of great writers that made a deep
impression on the understanding few, but had only a few
readers. It presaged the greatness to be; and indeed its
poetical quality carries a charm, which Emerson sometimes
failed to reproduce and never afterwards surpassed.