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<Text id=EmeRepr>
<Author>Emerson, Ralph Waldo</Author>
<Title>Representative Man</Title>
<Edition>Essays and Lectures. Library of America. New York: Literary Classics of the U.S., 1983</Edition>
<Date>1850</Date>
<body>
<loc><locdoc>EmeRepr615</locdoc><milestone n=615>
<div0 type=chapter n=1>
<l> I <i>Uses of Great Men</i></l>
<p>It is natural to believe in great men. If the
companions of our childhood should turn out to be heroes,
and their condition regal, it would not surprise us. All
mythology opens with demigods, and the circumstance is high
and poetic; that is, their genius is paramount. In the
legends of the Gautama, the first men ate the earth, and
found it deliciously sweet.
<p>Nature seems to exist for the excellent. The world
is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth
wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and
nutritious. Life is sweet and tolerable only in our belief
in such society; and actually, or ideally, we manage to l . . .
