In twelve days I shall be nineteen years old; which I count a miserable thing. Has any other educated person lived so many years and lost so many days? I do not say acquired so little for by an ease of thought & certain looseness of mind I have perhaps been the subject of as many ideas as many of mine age. But mine approaching maturity is attended with a goading sense of emptiness & wasted capacity; with the conviction that vanity has been content to admire the little circle of natural accomplishments, and has travelled again & again the narrow round, instead of adding sedulously the gems of knowledge to their number. Too tired and too indolent to travel up the mountain path which leads to good learning, to wisdom & fame, I must be satisfied with beholding with an envious eye the laborious journey & final success of my fellows, remaining stationary myself, until my inferiors & juniors have reached & outgone me. And how long is this to last? How long shall I hold the little acclivity which four or six years ago I flattered myself was enviable, but which has become contemptible now? It is a child’s place & if I hold it longer I may quite as well resume the bauble & rattle, grow old with a baby’s red jockey on my grey head & a picturebook in my hand, instead of Plato and Newton. Well, and I am he who nourished brilliant visions of future grandeur which may well appear presumptuous & foolish now. My infant imagination was idolatrous of glory, & thought itself no mean pretender to the honours of those who stood highest in the community, and dared even to contend for fame with those who are hallowed by time & the approbation of ages. It was a little merit to concieve such animating hopes, and afforded some poor prospect of the possibility of their fulfilment. This hope was fed & fanned by the occasional lofty communications which were vouchsafed to me with the Muses’ Heaven and which have at intervals made me the organ of remarkable sentiments & feelings which were far above my ordinary train. And with this lingering earnest of better hope (I refer to this fine exhilaration which now & then quickens my clay) shall I resign every aspiration to belong to that family of giant minds which live on earth many ages & rule the world when their bones are slumbering, no matter, whether under a pyramid or a primrose? No I will yet a little while entertain the Angel.
Look next from the history of my intellect to the history of my heart. A blank, my lord. I have not the kind affections of a pigeon. Ungenerous & selfish, cautious & cold, I yet wish to be romantic. Have not sufficient feeling to speak a natural hearty welcome to a friend or stranger and yet send abroad wishes & fancies of a friendship with a man I never knew. There is not in the whole wide Universe of God (my relations to Himself I do not understand) one being to whom I am attached with warm & entire devotion—not a being to whom I have joined fate or weal or wo, not one whose interests I have nearly & dearly at heart; and this I say at the most susceptible age of man.
Perhaps at the distance of a score of years, if I then inhabit this world, or still more, if I do not, these will appear frightful confessions; they may or may not; it is a true picture of a barren & desolate soul.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, from ‘Emerson in His Journals’, selected and edited by Joel Porte, found at chymes.org
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