Emerson's address to the graduating class of Harvard Divinity School is one of the most consequential commencement speeches in American history. It was so radical that Emerson was not invited back to Harvard for nearly thirty years. He began with an ecstatic description of summer in New England — 'the grass grows, the buds burst, the meadow is spotted with fire and gold' — before turning to the moral laws governing the soul. This passage articulated what Emerson called 'the intuition of the moral sentiment' — the idea that moral laws were as real and self-executing as physical laws. Virtue rewarded itself instantly; corruption punished itself just as surely. 'He who does a good deed, is instantly ennobled. He who does a mean deed, is by the action itself contracted.' The claim that 'thefts never enrich' and 'alms never impoverish' was not metaphorical — Emerson meant it as a description of how reality actually worked, as inescapable as gravity.