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The course of the republic: American responses to technology in the nineteenth century.

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From: Social Education
Date: 20070401
Author:Manfra, Meghan McGlinn

In a speech he gave on July 18, 1867, to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge University, Ralph Waldo Emerson extolled nineteenth-century innovation and its effect on the individual imagination.

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   Great strides have been made 
   within the present century. 
   Geology, astronomy, chemistry, 
   optics have yielded grand results. 
   The correlation of forces and the 
   polarization of light have carried 
   us to sublime generalizations--have 
   affected an imaginative race 
   like poetic inspirations. We have 
   been taught to tread familiarly 
   on giddy ...

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