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[ ] One of the most important of the many events that celebrated the centenary in 1903 of Emerson’s birth was the program arranged in Concord by the Social Circle, later published as a book. This group, which admitted (male) members by invitation only, was Concord’s most distinguished discussion club, and boasted members from every range of life, from farmers and blacksmiths to Emerson himself (and later, his son). Indeed, Emerson often thought that his being offered membership in the Concord Social Circle was a greater honor than his admission to any other club to which he belonged. Throughout the day and evening of 25 May (Emerson’s birthday), a series of speakers, including Charles Eliot Norton, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, George Frisbie Hoar, John Shepard Keyes, and Edward Waldo Emerson, addressed virtually all aspects of Emerson’s reputation and connection with Concord . Of those whose remarks are printed here, William James was the brother of the novelist Henry James and is credited with being the father of the philosophical systems of pragmatism and pluralism. In works such as Principles of Psychology (1890), Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), and Pragmatism (1907), James displayed a shared interest with Emerson about the primacy of the intuition, the importance of comparative religion, and the need for our minds and souls to be in harmony. James’s address, in which he gives his impressions of “an artist whose medium was verbal and who wrought in spiritual material,” is one of the few earlier works to treat Emerson’s philosophical inclinations seriously. Caroline Hazard, an educator, novelist, poet, and president of Wellesley College, discusses the appeal that Emerson’s words and own family life have to the women of her day. William James and Caroline Hazard From The Centenary of the Birth of Ralph Waldo Emerson () “Address of William James” The pathos of death is this, that when the days of one’s life are ended, those days that were so crowded with business and felt so heavy in their passing, what remains of one in memory should usually be so slight a thing. The emerson in his own time phantom of an attitude, the echo of a certain mode of thought, a few pages of print, some invention, or some victory we gained in a brief critical hour, are all that can survive the best of us. It is as if the whole of a man’s significance had now shrunk into the phantom of an attitude, into a mere musical note or phrase, suggestive of his singularity—happy are those whose singularity gives a note so clear as to be victorious over the inevitable pity of such a diminution and abridgment. An ideal wraith like this,of Emerson’s singularity,hovers over all Concord to-day, taking in the minds of those of you who were his neighbors and intimates a somewhat fuller shape, . . . bringing home to all of us the notion of a spirit indescribably precious. The form that so lately moved upon these streets and country roads, or awaited in these fields and woods the beloved Muse’s visits,is now dust; but the soul’s note,the spiritual voice,rises strong and clear above the uproar of the times,and seems securely destined to exert an ennobling influence over future generations. What gave a flavor so matchless to Emerson’s individuality was, even more than his rich mental gifts, their combination. Rarely has a man so known the limits of his genius or so unfailingly kept within them. “Stand by your order,”he used to say to youthful students; and perhaps the paramount impression one gets of his life is of his loyalty to his own type and mission. The type was that of what he liked to call the scholar, the perceiver of pure truth, and the mission was that of the reporter in worthy form of each perception . The day is good, he said, in which we have the most perceptions. There are times when the cawing of a crow, a weed, a snow-flake, or a farmer planting in his field, become symbols to the intellect of truths equal to those which the most majestic phenomena can open. Let me mind my own charge, then, walk alone, consult the sky, the field and forest, sedulously waiting every morning for the news concerning the structure of the universe which the good Spirit will give me. This was the first half of Emerson, but only half; for his...

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