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Ralph Waldo Emerson was a renowned 19th-century American essayist, philosopher, lecturer, poet, and leader of the transcendental philosophical movement. Today, we will read a selection from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essays, Second Series, Essay 5, entitled “Gifts,” in which the philosopher talks about the virtues of dedication. Emerson encourages the reader to think about the nature of both “gift giving” and “gift receiving.”“Nature does not indulge us: we are children, not pets: she is not fond: everything is dealt to us without fear or favor, after severe universal laws. Yet these delicate flowers look like the frolic and interference of love and beauty. Men used to tell us that we love flattery, even though we are not deceived by it, because it shows that we are important enough to be courted. Something like that pleasure, the flowers give us: what am I, to whom these sweet hints are addressed?”“In our condition of universal dependence, it seems heroic to let the petitioner be the judge of his necessity, and to give all that is asked, though at great inconvenience. If it be a great desire, it is better to leave the office of punishing him to others. I can think of many parts I should prefer playing to that of the Furies, the goddesses of vengeance.”“Therefore, the poet brings his poem; the farmer, corn; the painter, his picture; the girl, a handkerchief of her own sewing. This is right and pleasing, for it restores society to its primary basis, when a man’s biography is conveyed in his gift, and every man’s wealth is an index of his merit.”“We wish to be self-sustained. We do not quite forgive a forgiver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten. We can receive anything from love, for that is a way of receiving it from ourselves, but not from any one who assumes to bestow.”“We ask the whole. Nothing less will content us. We arraign society, if it does not give us, besides earth, fire, and water, opportunity, love, reverence, and objects of veneration.”
