Something else is indispensable. All that
record is lofty, but there is a loftier.
The great current points are perhaps simple, after all: first, that
the highest developments of the New World and Democracy, and probably
the best society of the civilized world all over, are to be only
reach'd and spinally nourish'd (in my notion) by a new evolutionary
sense and treatment; and, secondly, that the evolution-principle,
which is the greatest law through nature, and of course in these
States, has now reach'd us markedly for and in our literature.
In other writings I have tried to show how vital to any aspiring
Nationality must ever be its autochthonic song, and how for a really
great people there can be no complete and glorious Name, short of
emerging out of and even rais'd on such born poetic expression, coming
from its own soil and soul, its area, spread, idiosyncrasies, and
(like showers of rain, originally rising impalpably, distill'd from
land and sea,) duly returning there again. Nor do I forget what we all
owe to our ancestry; though perhaps we are apt to forgive and bear too
much for that alone.
One part of the national American literatus's task is (and it is
not an easy one) to treat the old hereditaments, legends, poems,
theologies, and even customs, with fitting respect and toleration, and
at the same time clearly understand and justify, and be devoted to and
exploit our own day, its diffused light, freedom, responsibilities,
with all it necessitates, and that our New-World circumstances and
stages of development demand and make proper.
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