EMERSON — POET AND ESSAYIST 
 
 BY 
 
 RALPH C. PELTZ 
 
 THESIS 
 
 FOR THE 
 
 DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF ARTS 
 
 IN 
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 
 1921 
 
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CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter I — Page 
 
 Life and Character 1 
 
 Chapter II — 11 
 
 The Journals 
 
 Chapter III- - 22 
 
 Poems of the Inner Man 
 
 Chapter IV — 
 
 Poems of the 1/Vorld 
 
 Chapter 
 
 “ Essays on the Men of Letters 
 
 Chapter VI — 58 
 
 Essays, Political and Social 
 
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I 
 
 Chapter I 
 
 Life and Character. 
 
 "How shall a man escape from his ancestors?" Emerson asks us; 
 and indeed it seems that in his case, at least, all the influences 
 of heredity are operative, for we find the descendant of eight 
 generations of ministers engaged in the ministry, talking, lectur- 
 ing, writing. Somewhere, however, there must have entered a strain 
 producing characteristics not altogether amenable to the life of 
 the usual Hew England minister. Emerson disagreed frequently and 
 widely with his contemporaries, and as G. W. Cooke says in his book 
 on Emerson’s "Life, Writings and Philosophy," kept for himself only 
 that which he considered best in the old faith: "Its doctrines had 
 passed away, and left only its spiritual life behind.” 
 
 Cooke goes on to say, in his chapter on Emerson’s ancestry, 
 that "Such an ancestry, physical and spiritual, is a promise of the 
 richest culture, as it is of the finest natural powers. Emerson 
 
 What He Owed to has not only made good this promise, but added 
 
 Ancesti^y 
 
 to it a remarkable genius and a unique spirit- 
 ual insight. ^0 his ancestry he owes much of the quality and direc- 
 tion of that genius, as well as the fine flavor and arojna of his 
 character, and the rich spiritual grace of his thought. We may well 
 propound his own question, ’How shall a man escape from his anceswoi* 
 tors?’ For we find in his books a confirmation of his declaration, 
 that ’in different hours a man represents each of several of his 
 ancestors, as if there were seven or eight of us rolled uo in each 
 other’s skin, --seven or eight ancestors at least, --and they con- 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2015 
 
 https://archive.org/details/emersonpoetessayOOpelt 
 
2 
 
 stitute the variety of notes for that new piece of music vihich his 
 life is.’ So we find him summing up and repeating, with a master’s 
 stroke of genius, the life and the thought of all his Puritan an- 
 cestors; which has been, in substance, the life and the thought of 
 New England." 
 
 We are told further by Cooke that each of the eight ministerial 
 
 predecessors of Ralph Waldo Emerson held positions of honor and note 
 
 in religious thought, and that the summation of their thoughts and 
 
 activities may well stand as a religious history of New England. 
 
 It is not necessary, in this paper, to go into detail concerning the 
 
 parts play.^d by Emerson’s forefathers in early colonial history; 
 
 suffice it to say that each was alive to the spirit of the times, 
 
 and advanced in his theology with the trend of religious thought 
 
 of the day, so that, in the Emerson whom we are considering, we may 
 
 well expect to find the sort of thinker v/hom we do find. ^11 of 
 
 the Emerson family, we are assured by Cooke, in his careful record 
 
 Mingling of of their early history, "were intellectual 
 
 Characteristics 
 
 eloquent, with a strong individuality of 
 character, and robust and vigorous in their thinking. They were 
 pious and devout, but also practical and philanthropic. More than 
 of the family have graduated at New-England colleges, and 
 twenty have been ministers. His mother’s family were noted for a 
 remarkable spirituality of temperament, for great religious zeal, 
 and were naturally mystics or pietists." The intellectuality and 
 moral vigor of the one family, and the devoutness and mysticism 
 
 other, were both inherited by Emerson. He was nurtured in 
 the most spiritual phases of the old faith. 
 
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3 
 
 Ralph Vi/aldo Emerson was born in Boston, May 25. 1803 . His 
 father died while the boy was only seven years old. Upon the de- 
 vout and loving mother, then, descended the responsibility of car- 
 ing for her five sons , --William, Ralph Waldo, Edward Bliss, Peter 
 Bulkeley, and Charles Chauncy. Rev. R. L. Prothingham, in The 
 Christian Examiner for January, 1854 . describes Emerson’s mother 
 as possessed of "great patience and fortitude, of the serenest 
 trust ibn God, of a discerning spirit, and a most courteous bearing, 
 one who knew how to guide the affairs of her own house, as long as 
 
 she was responsible for that , with the sweetest 
 
 Emerson ’ s 
 Mother 
 
 authority, and knew how to give the least trouble 
 o,nd the greatest happiness after that authority was resigned, Both 
 her mind and her character were of a superior order, and they set 
 their stamp upon manners of peculiar softness and natural grace and 
 quiet dignity. Her sensible and kindly speech was always as good 
 as the best instruction; her smile, thought it was ever ready, was 
 a reward. Her dark, liquid eyes, from which old age could not take 
 away the expression, will be among the remembrances of all on whom 
 they ever rested." 
 
 In the care of her sons, over whom she always exercised a pro- 
 nounced influence, Mrs. Emerson was materially assisted, particular- 
 ly spiritually, by Miss Mary Moody Emerson, the sister of her husband 
 Miss Emerson was one of those strong characters, decided in her 
 opinions, yet with a gentleg.esg and kindliness that did much to win 
 the lasting love of her nephew. Emerson, throughout her life, made 
 her his confidential correspondent, telling her of his hopes, plans, 
 successes, failures. Even when he was a boy he wrote to her from 
 

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 Hlg Aunt and sohool; and one finds in his Journals frequent 
 
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 references to her. Describing Miss Emerson, Mrs. 
 Samuel Ripley, in "Worthy Women of Our First Century," page 174, 
 says that even in her old age she still retained "all the oddities 
 and enthusiasms of her youth, — a person at war with society as to 
 all its decorums," who "enters into conversation with everybody, 
 and talks on every sub.iect; is sharp as a razor in her satire, and 
 sees you through and through in a moment. She hss read, all her 
 life, in the most miscellaneous way; and her appetite for metaphysics 
 is insatiable. Alas for the victim in whose intellect she sees any 
 promise’. Descartes and his vortices, Leibnitz and his monads, 
 
 Spinoza and his unica substantia , will prove it to the very core. 
 
 But, notwi thstanding all this, her power over the minds of her 
 young friends was almost despotic. Bhe heard of me, when I was 
 sixteen years old, as a person devoted to books and a sick mother, 
 sought me out in my garret without any introduction, and, though 
 received at first with sufficient coldness, she did not give me up 
 till she had enchained me entirely in her magic circle." Certainly 
 
 ©n£rson__J_s a woman of these characteristics might well be 
 Influence 
 
 imagined as possessing and exerting a pronounced 
 influence over the impressionable boy, Emerson. 
 
 His aunt was in the way of being his literary counsellor, and 
 often wrote to him regarding his early poetic attempts, in which he 
 was greatly interested; and this interest of his aunt’s was shared 
 in no small degree by her intimate personal friend. Miss Sarah 
 Bradford. When the boy Emerson was eleven years old, this friend 
 of his aunt’s is reported as having written him: "You love to trifle 
 in rhyme a little now and then; why will you not complete this 
 
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5 
 
 versification of the fifth bucolic?" sending him a translation from 
 
 Virgil, "You will answer two ends, or, as the old proverb goes, 
 
 kill two birds with one st one , --improve in your Latin, as well as 
 
 indulge a taste for poetry. Why can’t you write me a letter in 
 
 Latin? But Greek is your favorite language; epistola in lingua 
 
 Graeca would be still better. All the honor will be on my part to 
 
 correspond with a young gentleman in Greek. Tell me what most 
 
 interests you in Rollin; in the wars of contending princes under 
 
 whose banner you enlist, to whose cause you ardently wish success. 
 
 Write me with what stories in Virgil you are most delighted.” And, 
 
 The Boy as a the account given by Cooke goes on to say, the 
 
 Translator 
 
 young schoolboy answered this letter, which WDuld 
 be a strange one indeed to be written to the average eleven-year- 
 old boy tf today, with a poetic rendering of the fifth bucolic, 
 from the nineteenth to the thirty-fifth line, a few verses of which, 
 quoted, will serve to show admirably what was the skill of Emerson 
 at that early day: 
 
 "Mop. Turn nov/, 0 youth’, from your long speech away; 
 
 The bower we’ve reached, recluse from sunny ray. 
 
 The nymphs with pomp have mourned for Daphnis dead; 
 
 The hazels witnessed, and the rivers fled. 
 
 The wretched mother clasped her lifeless child. 
 
 And gods and stars invoked in accents wild, 
 
 Daphnis’. the cows are not novtf led to streams 
 Where the bright sun upon the water gleams; 
 
 Neither do herds the cooling river drink. 
 
 Nor crop the grass upon the verdant brink." 
 
 But while Emerson was thus exercising those cowers and talents 
 which were to make him later one of the m.ost outstanding figures in 
 American literature, how was he occupied in school? It seems that 
 he had an apparent disregard for the ordinary, workaday studies of 
 the curriculup,for he writes in "Spiritual Laws," in his first 
 
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 series of essays, *^The regular course of studies, the years of 
 academical and professional education, have not yielded me better 
 facts than some idle books under the bench at the I^atin school. 
 What we do not call education is more precious than that which we 
 do call so." 
 
 Prom the Latin School Emerson went to harvard college in his 
 
 YQ8-rs at fourteenth year, and was graduated from that in- 
 College 
 
 stitution in 1821. During his four years at Har- 
 vard, he took an active interest in literary affairs, and, as he 
 was interested in omtory and declamation, bent his efforts in 
 that direction, too, and won several prizes. It is amusing now to 
 read what Josiah Quincy, a classmate and rival in declamation, said 
 of Emerson after the valedictory exercises; Quincy wrote in his 
 journal, July I6, 182I, "Attended a dissertation of Emerson’s in 
 the morning, on the subject of Ethical Philosophy. I found it long 
 and dry," The next day, it is reported, Quincy went to the chapel, 
 "where Barnwell and Emerson performed our valedictory exercises 
 before all the scholars and a number of ladies. I’hey were rather 
 poor, and did but little honor to the class," Perhaps there was a 
 tinge of semi-professional jealousy and prejudice in Quincy’s re- 
 marks to his journal, for he had won first prize in a contest for 
 the Bowdoin award, in which trial Emerson took second. 
 
 In 1823 Emerson began the study of theology, studying largely 
 under Channing, who particularly attracted the young student be- 
 cause of his gentleij lovable spirit, the high purpose of his 
 religious rk, and the nobility of his thought. It was Ghanning’s 
 idea that G6d is made known to mortals only by such moral laws as 
 
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 may be found within us, beoause he held, with some metaphysicians 
 
 contact with such a thinker, perhaps, and perhaps because it was 
 his natural tendency, Emerson began at this time to entertain doubts 
 as to the forms of religion. This doubt of his eventuated in his 
 leaving the pulpit, although he was, are told by Sanborn in 
 Scribner’s magazine for February, 1879, eloquent, simple and effec- 
 tive in the pulpit. In the latter part of 1832, some short years 
 after he had been ordained, Emerson resigned his pastorate because 
 
 let him believe his way, and they continue in theirs, so that he 
 would retain his charge, wherein he was universally beloved, but he 
 thought it best to resign. In 8 sermon which he preached at the 
 time of his resignation, he set forth his ideas as to the forms of 
 religion in this wise: (reported in Frothingham’ s History of New 
 England Transcendentalism) "The whole world was full of idols and 
 ordinances, '^he Jewish was a religion of forms. The Eagan was a 
 religion of forms; it was all body,— it had no life,— and the 
 Almighty God was pleased to qualify and send forth a man to teach 
 men that they must serve him with the heart; that only that life 
 was religious which was thoroughly good; that sacrifice was smoke, 
 and forms were shadows. This man lived and died true to this pur- 
 pose; and now, with his blessed word and life before us, Christians 
 must contend that it is a matter of vital importance--really a duty- 
 -to commemorate him by a certain form, whether that form be agree- 
 able to their understandings or not. Is not this to make vain the 
 
 Early Doubts of 
 Formalism ~ 
 
 of Europe, that man and God are one and the 
 same in substance — One through nature. Through 
 
 His Pastorate 
 I^esigried 
 
 he could not conscientiously conduct the usual 
 communion service. His congregation offered to 
 

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 gift of God? Is not this to turn back the hand on the dial? Is 
 not this to make men — to makie ourselves — forget that not forms, but 
 duties — not names, but righteousness and love — are en,ioined? and 
 that, in the eye of God, there is no other measure of the value of 
 any one form than the measure of its use?" 
 
 Following his resignation from the pulpit, Emerson travelled 
 in Europe, where he had the pleasure of meeting many men in whom he 
 was interested. It was while there that he gathered material for 
 
 spent much of his time in lecturing and in preparing material for 
 publication. His first wife, Ellen Louisa ^i'ucker, whom he had 
 married in 1829, had died in 1832, and her death was a distinct 
 shock to Emerson, who was in frail health at the time. However, 
 his tour of Europe in some measure brought back his vigor; and upon 
 his return, he {reached for several months at the Unitarian church 
 in Hew Bedford, but refused a call to settle there, in 1834. In the 
 summer of that year he settled at "The Old Manse" in Concord, where 
 he found an ideal place for study and meditation; and the fruits of 
 those country-thoughts appeared the next year, when he began a cours<! 
 of lectures in Boston. This first real lecture course was biograph- 
 ical, and treated of Luther, Milton, Burke, Michael Ai^elo, and Fox. 
 All these lectures, together with the introductory remarks on the 
 value of biography, were published, and added to his growing popular- 
 
 In September, 1835, Emerson married Hydia Jackson, and, with 
 
 Travels in 
 Europe 
 
 his (later) essays on "Representative Men" and 
 English Traits." After his return from abroad, he 
 
 ity . 
 
 Beginning 
 A Career 
 
 her and his mother, settled in the home on the 
 Cambridge turnpike, in Concord, where he lived the 
 
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 of Emerson^ s lecturing and essay-writing career; and in addition, 
 he turned to studies from which most of his writings on idealism 
 
 derived. He took up the study of Plato with renewed interest, 
 and also read in the works of the German and English idealists. 
 
 Transcendentalism was ,1^st beginning to attract the radicals 
 of the day, and to it Emerson turned. Throughout his life, however, 
 he resented the use of the term ” transcendentalist , " as reported 
 by E, 1 ), Mead in "The Influence of Emerson," "Transcendentalism is 
 
 had a philosophy. Men call him a Transcendentalist, as they called 
 him and his friends sixty years ago. He did not like the term, and 
 thought that most people who used it knew little about what it meant 
 As commonly used by the intelligent man sixty years ago or now, and 
 as accepted by Emerson, it is simply another word for Idealist. 
 
 ."What is popularly called Transcendentalism among us," he said 
 himself, in the midst of the Transcendental movement in ■^'*ew Eng- 
 land, "is Idealism, --Idealism as it appears in 1842." "The Idealism 
 of the present day," he said, "acquired the name of Transcendental 
 from the use of that term by Immanuel Kant, of Kbnigsberg, who 
 replied to the sceptical philosophy of Locke, which insisted that 
 there was nothing in the intellect which was not previously in the 
 
 was a very important class of ideas, or imperative 
 forms, which did not come by experience, but through which exper- 
 ience was acquired; that these were intuitions of the mind itself; 
 
 Interest in 
 Transcendentalism 
 
 the popular term for the philosophy of 
 Emerson, with those who recognize that he 
 
 Emerson and 
 
 experience of the ssenses, by showing that there 
 
 Idealism' 
 

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10 
 
 and he denominated them Transcendental forms. The extraordinary- 
 
 profoundness and precision of that man ^ s thinking hare given vogue 
 
 to his nomenclature, in Europe and America, to that extent, that 
 
 whatever belongs to the class of intuitive thought is popularly 
 
 called at the present day Transcendenta 1 . ” 
 
 The interest which Emerson had in Transcendentalism, or in 
 
 Idealism under whatever name, continued; and he was an ardent 
 
 supporter of the various clubs and schools of the idealistic thought, 
 
 and also was one of the Brook Farm experimenters. However, he did 
 
 not "go in" for the movement as strongly as did some others, having 
 
 many other interests, among which literature was steadily growing. 
 
 Meantime he was continuing his lectures; and gave in Boston in 
 
 1838-9 a course on "The Resources of the Present Age." Two of the 
 
 lectures in this course dealt with literature; others were "Private 
 
 Xife," "Reformers," "Religion ," "Ethics , " "Education;"-- followed 
 
 Lecture the next year by a course on "Human life," in which he 
 bourses 
 
 took up "The Laws of Love," "Home," "The School," 
 "Genius," "The Protest," "Tragedy", "Oomedy," "Duty," "Deraon- 
 lolgy. Erorfi this time on, the Emerson whom all who read American 
 literature’s masterpieces know, came into the being as he is usually 
 seen; and it is unnecessary to follow the long course of lecturing 
 and writing that ensued. Poetry occupied a part of his time, and 
 original writing some; but the larger part of his work was in lectur- 
 ing, his lectures afterward being prepared for publication. His fame 
 increased abroad as raoidly as it did in America, until the position 
 which he has been rightfully accorded was assured, 
 
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Chapter II 
 
 The Journals 
 
 - 0 - 
 
 "These journals are reflections, sometimes dim, sometimes 
 
 clear, of the inner life as stirred by the outer Throughout, 
 
 ^nd increasingly in later years, these are journals, not of in- 
 cidents and persons, but of thoughts." 
 
 — E.W. Emerson, Introduction to Annotated 
 
 J oumals • 
 
 — 0 — 
 
 An accurate insight into the life and thought of Emerson is 
 obtained by studying his Journals, kept for more than fifty years. 
 
 It is true that an analysis of his writings goes a long way toward 
 giving one an understanding of the motivation of Emerson’s thought, 
 and of his beliefs, doubts, prejudices; but in manyaases, particu- 
 larly in the essays, the finished writings have been "purged of 
 personality," as Edward W. Emerson, his son and literary executor, 
 says. It follows, then,, that only by reading the Journals, towhici 
 were confided the hopes, plans, desired, literary ambitions of 
 Emerson from the age of seventeen onward, can one come to know the 
 man as he really was, and trace his thoughts in the making. 
 
 It is rare that a man keeps a record of his thoughts as full 
 
 and accurate as that which Emerson kept in his Journals, '-‘•'here is 
 
 Intiraate Record the almost inevitable tendencv to make a flia-m- 
 Of ^is Thoughts 
 
 if it is to be kept continuously, a literary 
 work; or, if it is not to be a literary work, and is not con- 
 sciously designed for that by its writer, then it has too many 
 breaks, too many omissions, to be of real value in studying the 
 man. But neither of these faults mars Emerson’s Journals. He 
 wrote in them with a surprising regularity, and he probably with- 
 
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12 
 
 held little. He did not endeavor to make a literary masterpiece of 
 his diary, hut set down from day to day his activities and thoughts 
 serious or trivial, from early boyhood to old age. As a result, a 
 study of the Journals is singiilarly valuable to the student of 
 Emerson. By reading what he wrote in his seventeenth year, we can 
 see why some of his essays, written in middle age, are what they 
 are. An evidence of character or tendency in youth points the way 
 to the principle of the man. 
 
 As Edward Emerson says of the early Journals, they do not 
 
 show merit alone: "They show the soil out of which Emerson grew, 
 the atmosphere around, his habits and mental food, his doubts, his 
 
 TO l ^ f™he\ an ^ earnest purpose, and the things he out- 
 
 grew. His frankness with himself is seen, and 
 how he granted the floor to the adversary for a fair hearing. Also 
 the ups and downs of the boy’s health appear in the school-keepin g 
 days, and why, beyond all reasonable hope, considering the neglect 
 of the body, he lived to a healthy middle life and old age by his 
 rambling tendencies, by quietness, and bending to the blast which 
 shattered the health of his more unyielding brothers." Certainly 
 writings which will tell us all of this contain a great deal’. But 
 as it is the primary purpose of this paper to consider Emerson’s 
 writings rather than to peer into his private life, social activi- 
 ties, or family relationships, this phase of his Journal entries 
 may be passed over lightly. 
 
 What we are mainly oonoeraed with, instudying his Journals, 
 
 is to see what evidence there is in the 
 earlier of the vSilumes of habits d)f thought 
 
 Evidence of 
 gab it s~~of "Thought 
 
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13 
 
 literary plans, and flashes of genius which later develop into his 
 
 finished works as the world knows them. For instance, to quote 
 
 further from the admirable introduction to the annotated Journals 
 
 by Fdward Emerson: "in these years (Emerson’s youth) the young 
 
 Emerson was reading eagerly and widely, and learned to find what 
 
 the author or the college text-book had for him, and leave the rest, 
 
 The growth of his literacy taste, his style, independence of thought, 
 
 and originality in writing verse can be traced It was Mr. 
 
 Emerson’s habit often in later years to copy into his journal 
 
 Natural to Him passages from his letters to others in which 
 To Write 
 
 he had conveyed his thought with care 
 
 It was as natural to this boy to write as to another to play ball, 
 or go fishing, or experiment with the tools of a neighbour car- 
 penter, or feel out tunes on a musical instrument. When recita- 
 tions were over, and study did not press, or he was not walking in 
 Mount Auburn woods or the wild country around Fresh Pond, he be- 
 
 took himself to his journal. It was his confidential friend; his 
 ambitions, his disappointments, his religious meditations, his 
 mortifications, his romatic imaginings, his sillinesses, his trial- 
 flights in ‘verse, his joy in Byron and Scott, or Everett’s orations, 
 the ideas gathered from serious books , --all went in, everything but 
 what might be expected in a boy’s diary; for of incidents, of class- 
 mates, of students' doings, there is hardly an entry. Throughout, 
 and increasingly in later years, these are journals, not of in- 
 
 oiSents and persons, but of thoughts. With 
 
 the biograohy of Mr, Emerson in mind or 
 in hand, the outward conditions, or relations with people or 
 

 
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14 
 
 public events which suggested a train of thought, may perhaps be 
 found. A talk, or ramble with a friend, or the reading of a book. 
 
 may be mentioned, but soon the thought takes its own direction. 
 
 More often the thoughts were on the great, the abiding questions.” 
 An example of the tendency mentioned"' just above is perhaps 
 advantageous here. For instance, he wrote in Journal XII, Dec- 
 ember 13, 1823; ” Edinburgh Reviev/ has a fine eulogy of IJewton and 
 Dr. Black, etc., in the first article of the 3d Volume. No. xxxvi 
 contains a reviev/ of %s. Grant on Highlanders, and, in it, good 
 thoughts upon the progress of Manners . ”A gentleman’s character 
 is a compound of obligingness and self-esteem." ^he same volume 
 reviews Alison, and gives an excellent condensed view of his theory. 
 The charm of all these discussions is only a fine luxury, producing 
 scarce any good, unless that of substituting a pure pleasure for 
 impure. Occasionally this reading helps one’s conversation, but 
 seldom. The reason and whole mind is not forwarded by it, as by 
 his to ry . The good in life that seems to be most REAL, is not found 
 in reading, but in those successive triumphs a man achieves over 
 habits of moral or intellectual indolence, or over an ungenerous 
 Spirit and mean propensities.” 
 
 Enough has perhaps been said in Chapter I, dealing with 
 Emerson’s life, concerning his aunt. Miss iStary Emerson. The boy 
 wrote often to her; and she, in turn, responded with letters which 
 her correspondent copied into his Journals. It is sufficient, in 
 
 this connection, to quote part of a letter from 
 her, recorded in Journal V, January 12, 1822, 
 
 A Letter from 
 Eis Aunt 
 
 when Emerson was eighteen years old; ”?/hen that spell which can 
 

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15 
 
 only be felt is thrown over the soul by the inagic of genius, ’Now 
 lettest thou thy servant depart where all is boundless genius-~or 
 let us tarry forever in this grave, if thus illuminated, ’ is the 
 adoring language of the heart. Is it not a well Imow principle 
 of human nature that moments of enthusiasm can produce sacrifices 
 which demand no proportionate virtue to those which never pretend 
 to fame?" .... 
 
 I shall delay until the conclusion of this chapter consid- 
 eration of the strictly literary phases of the Journals, feeling 
 that the proper place for material of this nature is in juxta- 
 position to the ensuing chapter, which deals with some of the 
 literary products of Emerson’s later life. Here, then, it is also 
 
 Tl^ Inner Life appropriate to look at some of those pages of 
 
 Shd Fhe Outer 
 
 the Journals whereon we find recorded some of 
 the "reflections, sometimes dim, sometimes clear, of the inner 
 life as stirred by the outer." Religion, in some one of its 
 manifold phases, was ever near Emerson’s heart; his thoughts turned 
 to it with frequency in boyhood, early manhood, and old age. I^his 
 is, of course, what might be expected, I feel that the consider- 
 ation of some of his thoughts anent religious matters in this 
 place will serve as introductory matter for the following chapter, 
 wherein are discussed his more personal poems--those in which the 
 keynote is religion and the self. 
 
 A progressive, chronological system of quotations from the 
 Journals, touching upon religion, is, of opurse, unthinkable; 
 
 Change in for to attempt this WDUld be to render this 
 
 Religious Ideas 
 
 chapter unv/ieldy. However, I have carefully 
 

 
 
 
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16 
 
 selected passages from one of the earliest of the Journals (V) 
 written when Emerson was eighteen, and from his Journal xxxvi , 
 written in I845. when he was forty-one years old. ^he surprising 
 feature in the comparison is that one of such youth should he cable 
 to express ideas vhich are seen to he so little changed in essence 
 nearly fifty years later. Emerson says, in Journal V: "The in- 
 visible connections between heaven and earth, the solitary prin- 
 ciple which unites intellectual beings to an account and makes of 
 men moral beings religion — is distinct and peculiar, alike in its 
 origin and in its end, from all other relations. It is essential 
 to the ^^niverse. You seek in vain to contemplate the order of 
 things apart from its existence. You can no more banish this than 
 you can separate from yourself the notions of Space and Ihiration. 
 
 " En c omp a s s i n g Through all the perverse mazes and shadows 
 
 i^resence 01 .Deity" 
 
 of infidelity the Light still makes itself 
 visible, until the reluctant mind shudders to acknowledge the 
 eternal encompassing presence of ^eity. If you can abstract it 
 from the Universe, the Soul is bewildered by a system of things of 
 which no account dan be given; instances of tremendous power--and 
 no hand found to form them; a thousand creations in a thousand 
 soheres all pointing upward to a single point— and no object there 
 to see and receive it is all a vast anomaly. Restore Religion and 
 you give to those energies a sublime object." 
 
 Eveafyone knows of Emerson’s inability to allow himself to 
 be led by the blind formalism of the times; and his remarks in 
 Journal xxxvi, below, definitely show what he thought of this 
 matter, which was always of the highest importance to him: 
 
i 
 
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17 
 
 Dislike of "Vestiges of Creation. What is so ungodly as these 
 ii^ormalism 
 
 polite bows to God in English books’ He is always 
 mentioned in the most respectful and deprecatory manner, "that 
 august," "that almighty," "that adorable providence," etc., etc. 
 
 But courage only will the Spirit prompt or accept. Everything in 
 this Vestiges of Creation is good, except the theology, which is 
 civil, timid, and dull. These things which the author so well 
 collates ought to be known only to fev/, and those, masters and 
 poets ." 
 
 One who knows Emerson would not be led to think that he is 
 
 sacrilegious, or even irreligious; and certainly no doubt at all 
 
 remains after reading what he has to say regarding worship, some 
 
 Worship Is few pages further in the same Journal referred to 
 
 EssentialT " 
 
 in connection with the passage quoted ,1ust above: 
 "Worship is the height of rectitude, "The world is no place for 
 the man who doth not worship, and where, 0 Ar.ioonl is there another*? ' 
 Worship, because the s ailor and the ship and the sea are of one 
 stuff; worship, because, though the bases of things are divided, 
 yet the summits are united; because not by thy private, but by 
 they public and universal force canst thou share and so know the 
 nature of things. Worship, because that is the difference between 
 genius and talent; between poetry and prose; between Imagination 
 and Fancy. The poet is like 
 
 the vaulters in the circus round 
 
 Who step froii horse to horse, but never touch the 
 ground." 
 
 Turning now from the broad generalities of religion, which 
 after all is in the abstract, what did Emerson think of the 
 
vx 
 
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18 
 
 practical phase of the same sub.lect-matter? How apply it t o the 
 
 I deas Concerning problems of life? V\fhat is the meaning of 
 Man * s ilif e 
 
 character? Hear Emerson (Journal xxxvi): 
 
 "We do not live an equal life, but on of contrtcsts and patchwork; 
 now a little joy, then a sorrow, now a sin, then a generous or 
 brave action. We must always be little whilst we have these 
 alternations. Character is regular and homogeneous. Our world, 
 it is true, is like us; it has many weathers, here a shade and 
 there a rainbow; here gravel and there a diamond; polar ice, then 
 temperate zone, then torrid; now a genius, then a good many medi- 
 ocre people. 
 
 "Alas’, bur Penetration increases as we grow older, and we 
 are no longer deceived by great words when unrealized and un- 
 embodied. Say rather, we detect littleness in expressions and 
 thoughts that once we should have taken and cited as proofs of 
 strength." 
 
 And this: "....I am forced to remember the clock, and regret 
 
 Eternity and how much time is passing, and if I suend any hour 
 
 Tjime 
 
 upon any history of facts, -I think on this loss; 
 but if you bring me a thought; if you bring me a law; if I con- 
 template an idea, I no longer count the hours. This is of the 
 iilternity which is the generator of Time." 
 
 It seems to me that the keynote of Emerson's idea of the 
 relationship of man-lif e-God , as expressed in the Journals, is 
 struck in the following passage, also chosen from the Journal he 
 kept inl 845 ; "Life is a game between God and man. The one dis- 
 parts himself and feigns to divide into individuals. He puts 
 
Ji/K m 
 
 iuf j i OM i£Jt.'r~..ro^r,Dn r-.-w; o1 'c a.ria 
 
 I'o "Jij f; i r* ij vfi7 orT.t tii j.i/i.'i Yo^xX BJTtf Xocitj 
 : ■ 'rxxx. n'3'teK-l 'Xiioli Viej-otiiiin'o- 
 
 , G >vrf X J’ii- . G*x-'i*ncc Pfi id ^i/oo i\ .-^vfX '• r; c t • ft* 
 
 fi.tnaor'oO iinM 
 
 "rr: 
 
19 
 
 Beauty Not 
 Alie"n"“to' Us 
 
 part in a pomegranate, part in a king’s crown, 
 part in a person. Instantly man sees the heau- 
 
 "tiful things and goes to procure them. As he takes down each one 
 the 1*0 rd smiles and says, "It is yourself; and when he has them sill, 
 it will he yourself . We live and die for a beauty which v/e wronged 
 ourselves in thinking alien." 
 
 Returning to selections from the Journals which refer more 
 directly to the subject matter of this paper — the consideration 
 of Emerson’s literary procedure — I refer again to the example 
 Quoted showing his facility in turning from mere remark of a 
 critical nature upon something he has heard or read, to the devel- 
 opment of an idea of his own. We saw there how he drifted from 
 remarks on the Edinburgh Review to "The good in life that seems 
 to be most REAL, is not found in reading, but in those successive 
 triumphs a man achieves over habits of moral or intellectual in- 
 dolence, or over an ungenerous Spirit and mean propensities." 
 
 The foregoing passage is amply illustrative of Emerson’s 
 discursive faculty; but passages such as the above were by no 
 means the only sort he put in his Journals. V/hen he found a new 
 
 future time. A striking example of this habit of his to use his 
 "musical eyes" as he once referred to his ability to perceive the 
 poetic word, is contained in Journal I, where he wrote, in Jan - 
 uary,l820, the follovdng list; "For use — phrases poetical, -- 
 rescuing and crowning virtue, "oldest complexion of age." ill- 
 conditioned, cameleion. zeal, booked in alphabet, cushioned, com- 
 
 "For Use — 
 Phrases Roeti cal 
 
 word which attracted him, or a poetic phrase, 
 he carefully noted it down for use at some 
 
f ,f. 
 
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20 
 
 punotion. beleaguered, halidom. galloping, whortleberry, spikenard, 
 staunch, council-chamber, star-crossed, till its dye was doubled 
 on the crimson cross, countless multitudes, abutments, panoply, 
 sycophant smile, kidnapping, beheaded, demigods, signal ( adjective , ) 
 Cleopatra, ambidexter, register (verb.) defalcation." Truly, a 
 boy of sixteen, who sought out and wrote down for safe-keeoing such 
 a variety of words and phrases might be expected to produce merit- 
 orious works with a little maturity. 
 
 But, before passing on to a consideration of Emerson’s works, 
 we may well ask, Vtfhence these words? The answer is given in those 
 
 Evidences of parts of the early Journals wherein Emerson 
 
 Wide ReaB^ing 
 
 wrote down lists of books "to be sought". An 
 examination of the following list, written when he was seventeen 
 (August 24, 1820) will serve to show why and how the young Emerson 
 
 t 
 
 found such words as he put down "for use": "V/ordsworth’ s Re pus e ; 
 Quarterly R eview , September, l8l9; Liber VTII, of Buchanan’s 
 Sc ot land --Wallace ; Spenser’s View of the State of Ireland; Camden’s 
 Annals of Queen Elizabeth; Eennet’s Life and Characters of Greek 
 
 Poets ; Hody, Be Illustribus Graecis; Middleton’s 
 
 « . ^ 
 Cicer ; 
 
 Burton’s 
 
 — — - 
 
 Melancholy ; Barrow’s Sermons; Hobbes’ Leviathan ; Joinville’s Life 
 of St. Louis ; Froissart’s History of glan d ; Chaucer’s Works; 
 
 Bayle’s Dictionaire ; Corinne ; Massinger’s Plays; Fletcher’s do; 
 Bentley’s Phalaris ; Peter’s Letters; Letters from Eastern States; 
 Waver ley ; Cogan ^ the Passions ; Sir Charles Gran dison." The fore- 
 going is but part of a long list of books referred to in his early 
 journals, but it is needless, for our purposes, to extend it. 
 
 Evidence enough has been given, for the purposes of this 
 

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21 
 
 paper, to show the nature of Emerson’s Journals, and to orore their 
 
 value to him who would understand the development of Emerson's 
 
 thought; but it i s impraot ioable to endeavor hece to trace some of 
 
 Understanding of the phases of that development, as such an 
 Emerson thro'ugTT" 
 
 The Journals ^ undertaking would constitute a book larger 
 
 than the entire present one. Briefly summar- 
 izing, then, Emerson’s Journals portray the activities of the mind 
 of the man, from youth to old age; his interests are shown in them, 
 and strong hints of the writings and lectures to come are seen in 
 all numbers of the Journals, from the earliest to the last written. 
 
 — 0 -- 
 
'itc f tHy#l|r^ f'h (Jil ^k£j|^ Orfr^f jKfd OtI; 9ffJSY 
 
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 .rt^r^^fw -ft A/ e^*.t uj ®rf .r 01 ^ . . r^fnaou tt ciadpimj Xi^ 
 
 n 
 
 aS £.€fJt’ 
 
ia 
 
 Chapter III 
 
 Poems of the Inner Man 
 
 - 0 - 
 
 " Right upward on the road of fame 
 
 With sounding steps the poet came: 
 
 Born and nourished in miracles, 
 
 His feet were shod with golden bells. 
 
 Or where he stepped the soil did peal 
 
 As if the dust were glass and steel," 
 
 --"The Poet," I. 
 
 — 0 — 
 
 Emerson had the highest opinion of poetry and of the place 
 
 of the poet in life; and he felt that poetry had an actual and 
 
 appreciable effect upon life, in spite of the fact that it has 
 
 often been declared by some to be useless or serving for amusement 
 
 only. In his Journal XV, January 23 , I825, Emerson says; "Poetry, 
 
 wise women have said, hath a noble inutility, and is loved, as the 
 
 flowers of the field, because not the necessaties, but the luxuries 
 
 Emerson^ s Op inion of life; yet I observe it has sometimes 
 
 Poetry 
 
 deigned to mix in the most important in- 
 fluences that act on society. The revolutionary spirit in this 
 cold and prudential country, it is said, was kept ^ive and ener- 
 gized in 17/6 by the seasonable aid of patriotic songs and satir- 
 ical ballads pointing at well-known names and acts. Of Tyrtaeus 
 and his conquering elegies who has not heard? And Greek history 
 has another more extraordinary instance to the purpose, ^’'hen 
 Iiycurgus meditated the introduction into Sparta of his unprece- 
 dented oolitical model, he prevailed upon Thales, whom he met as 
 he travelled in Asia Minor, to pass to Laconia and compose poems 
 there of such a character as to prepare the mind of his country- 
 

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23 
 
 men for the novel schemes of the Reformer." 
 
 How men are influenced by poetry, and what the place of the 
 poet is in the world of workaday people, Emerson tells us in his 
 essay on "The -2oet," wherein he says: "But the highest minds of the 
 world have never cdased to explore the double meaning, or, shall I 
 say, the quadruple, or the centuple, or much morer manifold meaning, 
 of every sensuous fact: Orpheus, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Plato, 
 Plutarch, Dante, Swedenborg, and the masters of sculpture, picture 
 and poetry. For we are not pans and barrows, nor even porters of 
 the fire and torch-bearers, but children of the fire, made of it, 
 and only the same divinity transmuted, and at two or three removes, 
 when we know least about it. And this hidden truth, that the 
 fountains whence all this river of Time, and its creatures, flows, 
 are intrinsically ideal and beautiful, draws us on to the consider- 
 ation of the nature and functions of the Hoet, or the man of Beauty, 
 to the means and materials he used, and to the general aspect of 
 his art in the present time. 
 
 /The breadth of the problem is great, for the poet is represen 
 tative. He stands among partial men for the complete man, and 
 apprises us not of his wealth, but of the common-wealth. The young 
 
 the Poet man reveres men of genius, because, to speak 
 
 Doe's for Hs 
 
 truly, they are more himself than he is. They 
 receive of the soul as he also receives, but they more. Nature 
 enhances her beauty, to the eye of loving men, from their belief 
 that the poet is beholding her shows at the same time. He is 
 isolated among his contemporaries, by truth and by his art, but 
 with this consolation in his pursuits, that they will draw all men 
 
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24 
 
 sooner or later. For all men live by truth, and stand in need of 
 exoression. In love, in art, in avarice, in politics, in labour, 
 in games, we study to utter our painful secret. The man is only 
 half himself, the other half is his expression." 
 
 Truly, a large task is outlined for the poet by Emerson; his 
 duty, his place in the world, is high; but how is he to achieve it? 
 The poet’s work is one of the commonest, and at the same time most 
 difficult, expressions of art. The thing to learn then, so far as 
 the poet is concerned, is his expression of art, Emerson would 
 The Poet and Hjs have us know that the poet, by properly 
 
 making use of his art, can create and enhance 
 
 Methods 
 
 beauty for us, can make the common man see the nobler things in life, 
 can inspire him to great deeds, can incite or sp^ed revolutions. 
 
 What should art be, or do? Should it be photographic, and record 
 in imperishable stone or the master’s canvas the colors of a sunset 
 which delighted us, or a form we cherish in imagination? Should it 
 imprison in the sculptured marble, either real or that of ohrases, 
 the fleeting expression we fain would keep? Emerson does not think 
 so; indeed, in his essay on "Art," he goes so far as to say that 
 art must be new, original: "Thus in our fine arts, not imitation. 
 Creat e , nojt but creation is the aim. In landscapes, the 
 
 painter should give the suggestion of a fairer 
 
 Tmi ta't e' 
 
 creation than we know. The details, the prose of nature, he should 
 omit, and give us only the spirit and splendour." That the artist, 
 or poet, may not fail in his mission, he is warned by Emerson, in 
 the same essay, "But the artist must employ the symbols in use in 
 his day and nation to convey his enlarged sense to his fellow-men. 
 
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 it an inexpressible charm for the imagination." 
 
 What Emerson thought of the poet in general, and of poetry 
 in the abstract, he thought of his own. -i^ostulated theories became 
 his methods, as is well shown in his poetical writings. As nearly 
 as man could, he followed out the plan laid down. 
 
 Truly we should expect to get from a man who regarded poetry 
 
 as capable of political influence, compositions which showed this 
 
 belief. But it is not ^ one in his belief in the vital force of 
 
 poetry in regard to external things and such events as revolutions, 
 
 that Emerson* s opinion of poetry may be found. He did regard this 
 
 Muse as capable of wielding a powerful influence in that way, but 
 
 he felt that the real strength and purpose of poetry was found 
 
 elsewhere; and that the poet must seek for his inspiration in other 
 
 places than the conflicts between nations, if his verse were to ring 
 
 true and nobl6 . He says; "Boetry had better drink at immortal 
 
 fountains." {Journal XV. January 4 » 1825.) Previous to this time. 
 
 Poetry Derived Emerson had written in his J-ournal V, 
 
 Prom immortal 
 
 Pountains of ^^ature January 12, 1822 , his belief that poetry 
 
 is derived from i'lature --that Hature which 
 is always so intimate a part of EnBrson himself--and that "its images 
 are nothing but the striking occurrences selected from Nature and 
 
 Art and clothed in an artful combination of sounds But poetical 
 
 expression constitutes to half the world the beauty of poetry, and 
 in this it seems to resemble Algebra, for both make language an in- 
 strument and depend solely upon it without having any abstracted 
 use." Of course it would be possible for a writer working with 
 

 
 
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 tenet in mind, to say things that had little or no meaning; to write 
 in beautiful language poems whose beauty was on the surface only; 
 but Emerson felt that mere verbal ornamentation of thoughts v/hich 
 in themselves are of little value, was not the sort of poetry which 
 makes its strongest appeal to him who is searching for a higher 
 criticism of life. In exposition of this view, he writes; "Poeti- 
 cal expression serves to embellish dull thoughts, but we love 
 better to follow the poet, when the muse is so ethereal and the 
 thought so sublime that language sinks beneath it." (Journal V, 
 January 12, 1822 .) 
 
 When this muse is so ethereal and the thought of such sub- 
 limity, then, Emerson believes, the poet probably attains to his 
 
 Mankind in ?03,1, which is putting mankind in har- 
 
 harmony wTth i^ature 
 
 mony with i'iature , with God. In a letter 
 to his aunt, dated ^une I5, 1826, the young poet wrote; "It would 
 seem there was some kindred between this new philosophy of poetry 
 and the undisciplined enterprises of intellect in the middle age. 
 
 The geniuses of that era, all on fire with that curiosity which is, 
 in every age, inextinguishable, to break the marble silence of 
 Nature and open some intercourse between man and that divinity with 
 which it seems instinct, struggled to grasp the principles of things 
 to extort from the spheres in the firmament some intrmations of 
 the present or some commentary on the past. They were impatient 
 of their straitened dominion over nature, and were ea^er to 
 
 explore the secrets of her own laboratory, that they might refine 
 clay and iron into gold, might lengthen life and deduce formulas 
 Poets Always for the solution of all those mysteries that 
 
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27 
 
 besiege the human adventurer. Not otherwise this modem poet, by 
 natural humour an ardent lover of all the enchantments of wood and 
 river and seduced by an overweening confidence in the force of his 
 own genius, has discarded that modesty under whose influence aL 1 
 his great precursors have resorted to external nature sparingly 
 for illustration and ornament, and have forborne to tamper with 
 the secret and metaphysical nature of what they borrowed." 
 
 It may seem a little odd that a ooet should be thus likened 
 to the alchemists in search of the philosophe r’ s stone; but after 
 ail, the poet probes the realm of mind in as analytical a manner, 
 if he writes as Emerson often does, as ever did one of the magicians 
 of the middle ages seek in his crucible for the transmutable metal. 
 
 How, then, if one is to "break the marble silence of E'ature" 
 
 and "extort from the spheres in the firmament some intimations of 
 
 the present or some commentar;';' on the past" shall the poet work? 
 
 What must be the qualifications of the man who has this huge task 
 
 Genius Required before him? "It would seem," Emerson says 
 
 B^or HoeTfy 
 
 in this same letter to his confidante, 
 
 "that the genuine bard must be one in whom the extremes of human 
 genius meet; that his judgment must be as exact and level with life 
 as his imagination is discursive and incalculable. It would seem 
 as if abundant erudition, foreign travel, and gymnastic exercises 
 must be annexed to his awiful imagination and fervent piety to 
 finish Milton ; that the boisterous childhood, care-£^gg oriticism 
 
 and poetry, the association of vulgar and unclean companions, were 
 necessary to balance the towering spirit of Shakespeare, and that 
 Mr. Wordsworth has failed of pleasing by being too much a poet . " 
 
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28 
 
 The poet has difficulties in going direct to Nature to draw 
 
 "Go to Nature his inspiration; that marble silence is often 
 
 For fFe ^our'ce" 
 
 Sphinx-like; yet the poet is ad .lured not to 
 give to the world "The fancies found in books," in "V/aldeinsamkeit 
 a poem which sets forth clearly the principles quoted above: 
 
 WALDEINSMIKEIT 
 
 I do not (Jount the hours I spend 
 In wandering b.y the sea; 
 
 The forest is my loyal friend. 
 
 Like God it useth me. 
 
 In plains that room for shadows make 
 Of skirting hills to lie. 
 
 Bound in by streams which give and take 
 Their colors from the sky. 
 
 Or on the mountain-crest sublime. 
 
 Or down the oaken glade, 
 
 0 what have I to do with time? 
 
 For this the day was made. 
 
 Cities of mortals woe-begone 
 Fantastic care derides. 
 
 But in the serious landscape lone 
 Stern benefit abides. 
 
 Sheen will tarnish, honey clo.y. 
 
 And merry is onl.y a mask of sad. 
 
 But, sober on a fund of .loy. 
 
 The woods at heart are glad. 
 
 There the great Planter plants 
 Of fruitful worlds the grain. 
 
 And with a million soells enchants 
 The souls that walk in pain. 
 
 Still on the seeds of all he made 
 The rose of beauty burns; 
 
 Tharough times that wear and forms that fade. 
 Immortal youth returns. 
 
 The black ducks mounting from the lake. 
 
 The pigeon in the pines. 
 
 The bittern’s bhom, a desert make 
 Which no false art refines. 
 
29 
 
 Down in yon watery nook, 
 
 '"here bearded mists divide. 
 
 The gray old gods whom Chaos knew. 
 
 The sires of Mature, hide. 
 
 Aloft, in secret veins of air. 
 
 Blows the sweet breath of song, 
 
 0, few to scale those uplands dare. 
 
 Though they to all belong’. 
 
 See thou bring not to field or stone 
 The fancies found in books; 
 
 Leave authors’ eyes, and fetch your own. 
 
 To brave the landscape's looks. 
 
 Oblivion here they wisdom is. 
 
 They thrift, the sleep of cares; 
 
 For a proud idleness like this 
 Crowns all they mean affairs. 
 
 Emerson would have us understand that if the ooet is to know 
 
 The "Eternal life, he must face the Sphinx, whose eternal 
 
 Questioning " 
 
 questionings the spirit often quails before , 
 yet which it must answer in order to gain the key to life’s estate; 
 and just as ’’Waldeinsamkeit” carried a note of the writer’s rev- 
 erence in the stanza; 
 
 There the great Planter plants 
 Of fruitful worlds the grain. 
 
 And with a million spells enchants 
 The souls that walk in pain 
 
 so, too, does "The Sphinx" give evidence of Emerson’s attitude 
 
 toward Nature, the epitome of religious thought, the manifestation 
 of God everywhere: 
 
 THE SPHINX 
 
 
 The Sphinx is drowsy. 
 
 Her wings are fuhled; 
 
 Her ear is heavy. 
 
 She broofts on the world. 
 "Who’ll tell me my secret. 
 The ages have kept?-- 
 I awaited the seer 
 
 V/hile they slumbered and 
 
 slept ; 
 

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50 
 
 "The fate of the man-ohild. 
 
 The meaning of man; 
 
 Known fruit of the unknown; 
 
 Daedalian plan; 
 
 Out of sleeping a waking. 
 
 Out of vjaking a sleep; 
 
 Life death overtaking; 
 
 Deep underneath deep? 
 
 "Erect as a sunbeam, 
 
 Unspringeth the palm; 
 
 The elephant brov/ses, 
 
 Undaunted and calm; 
 
 In beautiful motion 
 
 The thrush plies his wings; 
 Kind leaves of his covert. 
 
 Your silence he sings. 
 
 "The waves, unashamed. 
 
 In difference sweet. 
 
 Play glad with the bree-^es. 
 
 Old playfellows meet ; 
 
 The .lo^irneying atoms. 
 
 Primordial wholes. 
 
 Firmly draw, firmly drive, 
 
 3y their animate poles. 
 
 "Sea, earth, air, sound, silence. 
 Plant, quadruped, bird. 
 
 By one music enchanted. 
 
 One deity stirred, — 
 
 Each othe other adorning. 
 Accompany still; 
 
 ITight veileth the morning. 
 
 The vapor the hill. 
 
 "The babe by its mother 
 Lies bathed in .loy; 
 
 Glide its hours uncount ed , 
 
 •^he sun is its toy; 
 
 Shines the peace of all being, 
 Without cloud, in its eyes; 
 
 And the sun of the world 
 In soft miniature lies. 
 
 "But man crouches and blushes. 
 Absconds and conceals; 
 
 He creepeth and peepeth. 
 
 He palters and steals; 
 
 Infirm, melancholy. 
 
 Jealous glancing around. 
 
 -ti-nd oaf, an accomplice, 
 
 He poisons the ground. 
 

 
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51 
 
 "Out spoke the great mother. 
 Beholding his fear:-- 
 At the sound of her accents 
 Cold shuddered the sohere;-- 
 'Who has drugged my boy’s cuo? 
 
 'f«ho has mixed my boy’s bread? 
 Who, with sadness and madness 
 Has turned ray child’s head?o" 
 
 I heard a ooet ansv/er 
 Aloud and cheerfully, 
 
 "Say on, sweet Sphinx’, thy dirges 
 Are pleasant songs to me. 
 
 Deep love lieth under 
 Ihese pictures of time; 
 
 They fade in the light of 
 Their meaning sublime. 
 
 "The fiend that man harries 
 Is love of the Best; 
 
 Yawns the pit of the Dragon, 
 Lit by rays from the Blest. 
 The Lethe of Nature 
 
 Can’t trance him again, 
 
 Whose soul sees the perfect. 
 Which his eyes seek in vain. 
 
 "To vision profoimder, 
 
 Man’s spirit must dive; 
 
 His aye-rolling orb 
 
 At no goal will arrive; 
 
 The heavens that now draw him 
 With sv/eetness untold. 
 
 Once found, --for new heavens 
 He sourneth the old. 
 
 "Pride ruined the angels. 
 
 Their shame them restores; 
 Lurks the ioy that is sweetest 
 In stings of remorse, 
 
 Have I a lover 
 
 Who is noble and free? 
 
 I would be were nobler 
 Ihen 1 0 love me . 
 
 "Eterne alternation 
 
 Now follows, how flies; 
 
 And under pain, pleasure, -- 
 Under pleasure, pain lies. 
 Love works at the centre. 
 Heart-heaving alway; 
 
 Forth speed the strong pulses 
 To the borders of day. 
 

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32 
 
 "])ull Sphinx, keep they five wits; 
 
 They sight is growing blear; 
 
 Rue, myrrh and coramin for the Sphinx, 
 
 Her muddy eyes to clear I” 
 
 The old Sphinx bit her thick lip, — 
 
 Said, "Who taught thee me to name? 
 
 I am thy spirit, yoke-fellow. 
 
 Of think eye I am eyebeam. 
 
 "Thou art the unanswered question; 
 
 Couldst see they propsr eye, 
 
 Always it asketh, asketh; 
 
 And each answer is a lie. 
 
 So take they auest through nature. 
 
 It through thousand natures ply; 
 
 Ask on, thou clothed eternity; 
 
 Time is the false reply." 
 
 Uprose themerry Sphinx, 
 
 And crouched no more in stone; 
 
 She melted into purple cloud. 
 
 She silvered in the moon; 
 
 She spired into a yellow flame; 
 
 She flowered in blossoms red; 
 
 She flowed into a foaming wave; 
 
 She stood Monadnoc’s head. 
 
 Thorough a thousnad voices 
 Spoke the universal dame ; 
 
 "V/ho telleth one of my meajaings. 
 
 Is master of all I am.” 
 
 "The Sphinx" is almost as cryptic a poem as "Brahma;" and 
 
 Emerson , the both are philosophical. Emerson is distinctly 
 
 Lyric Foef 
 
 a lyric poet — a poet of individual lines, of 
 moods, whims, a moment’s caprice; and lyrics and ohilosophy may 
 seem somewhat incongruous, the one requiring no sustained or 
 progressive thought, the other necessitating the closest attention 
 to the development of an idea. He himself says, regarding his 
 lyric-philosophy , in which unique combination he has succeeded by 
 sheer merit, "What is poetry? It is philosophy, it is humour, it 
 is a chime of two or three syllables, tt is a relation of thought 
 to things, or language to thuught. It converses with all science 
 

 
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33 
 
 and all imagination, with all accidents and all objects, from the 
 
 "i ^0 grandest that are accessible to the senses. 
 
 Par for f ruth ” 
 
 and grander than those, to the coarsest parts 
 of life. And I would go to the farthest edge of the green earth 
 to learn what it was or was not. If the spirit of him who paced 
 the Academe and had this virtue in his soul, though he feigned to 
 disparage it in his philosophy, or the laurelled lovers of the 
 British Muse, harp in hand, sit on your musty mount, or soothe 
 their majesties by the margin of your lakes, conjure them, I 
 beseech you, to announce this secret that the wit of humanity has 
 been so long in vain toiling to unriddle.” (Letter to Miss Emerson, 
 June 15, 1826.) 
 
 One of the chief elements in Emerson’s philosophy is his 
 attitude toward love, as indicated above in "The Sphinx" where the 
 man replying to the Sphinx says : 
 
 Have I a lover 
 
 Who is noble and free? 
 
 I would he were nobler 
 Than to love me. 
 
 and Emerson develops this idea in a number of his poems, in greater 
 or less degree. Notable among these poems are "Erose" , "Give -aH 
 to Love", and the tri-partite poem "Initial, Daemonic, and Celestial 
 Love." The latter is but the lyric twin of his essay on "Love" , 
 in which the subject is treated in almost exactly the same manner: 
 the two others, "Eros" and "Give All to Love," stand out more 
 individually as poems. "Eros" is short, and in some respects 
 resembles the conventionalized sonnet or lyric on love: 
 
 EROS 
 
 The sense of the world is short, — 
 
 Long and various the report, — 
 
34 
 
 To lore and be beloved; 
 
 Men and gods have not outlearned it; 
 
 And, how oft soever they’ve turned it, 
 
 Not to be improved. 
 
 This, however, hardly represents in a perfectly fair manner 
 
 Emerson’s attitude toward love, which is perhaps best shown, with 
 
 The Love-Note the exception of the long poetical treatise 
 
 In His ?oems 
 
 on the three kinds of love, in "Give All to 
 Love,” which portrays Emerson’s ideas as being mord than senti- 
 mental, and his presentation more than that of the erotic sonneteer 
 of Elizabethan days; there is, Emerson would have us understand, 
 a reason for the optative remark; "1 would he were nobler than 
 to love me” : 
 
 GIVE ALL TO LOVE 
 
 Give all to love; 
 
 Obey thyvheart ; 
 
 Friends, kindred, days, 
 
 Estate, good-fame. 
 
 Plans, credit and the Muse, — 
 
 Nothing refuse . 
 
 !Tis a brave master; 
 
 Let it have scope: 
 
 Follow it utterly, 
 
 Hope beyond hope : 
 
 High and more high 
 It dives into noon. 
 
 With wing unspent. 
 
 Untold intent; 
 
 But it is a god. 
 
 Knows its own path 
 
 And the outlets of the sky. 
 
 It was never for the mean; 
 
 It requireth courage stout. 
 
 Souls above doubt. 
 
 Valor unbending. 
 
 It will reward, — 
 
 They shall return 
 More than they were. 
 
 And ever ascending. 
 
35 
 
 Leave all for love; 
 
 Yet, hear me, yet. 
 
 One word more they heart behoved. 
 
 One pulse more of firm endeavor, -- 
 Keep thee to-day. 
 
 To-morrow, forever. 
 
 Free as an Arab 
 Of thy beloved. 
 
 Oling v/ith life to the maid; 
 
 But when the suprise. 
 
 First shadow of surmise 
 Flits across her bosom young. 
 
 Of a .1oy apart from thee. 
 
 Free be she, fancy-free; 
 
 IJor thou detain her vesture’s hem. 
 
 Nor the palest rose she flung 
 From her summer diadem. 
 
 Though thou loved her as thyself. 
 
 As a self of purer clay. 
 
 Though her parting dims the day. 
 
 Stealing grace from all alive; 
 
 Heartily know. 
 
 When half-gods go. 
 
 The gods arrive. 
 
 The religious element was alwajrs prominent in Emerson’ s 
 
 poetic writing; in fact, there is in some form a hint of his 
 
 philosophy regarding theology in almost every one of his poems. 
 
 Religion in He is a puritan in ancestry and training 
 
 Erne r s on'^s~~Fo e t r y * 
 
 yet is as unorthodoic in practice and 
 philosophy from the point of view of adherents of Puritanism as 
 he is from that of any other organized religion, Emerson is an 
 individualist. He doest not have to be in church to find his 
 God, but prefers instead to seek him in the hills add forests, or 
 the streets of the town, for the God of Emerson is everywhere. 
 This idea of the omnipresence of the Deity is exemplified in a 
 number of poems, chief of which, perhaps, are "Brahma", "Exper- 
 ience", "The Informing Spirit”, "Nature"2 "The Rhodora" , "Music”, 
 
t '*:■ ' -W. ‘'''XSI? ■ 
 
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36 
 
 "Pan", "Each and All", and "Threnody". The idea contained in 
 each is perhaps best conveyed by a brief key-note quotation; 
 "Experience" — 
 
 The inventor of the game. 
 
 Omnipresent without name, 
 
 "The Informing Spirit" — 
 
 There is no great and no small 
 To the Soul that raaketh all. 
 
 " Nat ure " — 
 
 Throb thine (heart) with Nature’s throbbing breast 
 And all is clear from east to west, 
 
 "The Rhodora" — 
 
 The self-same lower that brought me here 
 
 brought you. 
 
 "Musi c" — 
 
 Let me go where’er ^ will, 
 
 I hear a sky-born music still; 
 
 It sounds from all things old. 
 
 It sounds from all things young. 
 
 Prom all that’s fair, from all that’s foul, 
 
 Peals out a cheerful song. 
 
 It is not only in the rose. 
 
 It is not only in the brijd. 
 
 Not only #iere the rainiDow glows. 
 
 Nor in the song of woman heard. 
 
 But in the darkest, meanest things. 
 
 There alway, alway something sings. 
 
 ’Tis not in the high stars along. 
 
 Nor in the cup of budding flowers. 
 
 Nor in the redbreast’s mellow tone. 
 
 Nor in the bow that smiles in showers. 
 
 But in the mud and scum of things 
 There alway, alway somethin g sings . 
 
 Truly, a poet whoecan find the voice and presence of God 
 
 Slgnif icance in 
 All Things 
 
 in such lowly surroundings is rightly 
 called the poet of forward-lioking, hopeful 
 

 
 
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37 
 
 hopeful youth; suoh ftiith is an inspiration and a challenge. 
 Nothing was without significance to Emerson: 
 
 ’’Each and All”-- 
 
 All are needed by each one; 
 
 Nothing is fair or good alone. 
 
 Tn the midst of his almost overwhelming grief at the loss 
 
 of his beloved son, told in "Threnody," Emerson saw the light 
 
 which his faith held up to him: 
 
 "Threnody" — 
 
 What is excellent. 
 
 As GroT“lives , is permanent ; 
 
 Marts' are d"usT7 heart's"’ Toves remain: 
 
 Heart ’s" ~rove~wril meet"~thee again . 
 
 It seems to me that "Brahma" holds in condensed form the 
 
 The Poem Typical very essence of al 1 that Emerson believed 
 
 157”" The Inner i'^an " 
 
 about the Nature -God of his deism, ai d 
 further, is the most representative of all his poems which may 
 be grouped in the class, the name of which I have given to this 
 chapter: * 
 
 BRAHMA 
 
 If the red slayer think he slays. 
 
 Or if the slain think he is slain. 
 
 They know not well the subtle ways 
 I keep, and pass, and turn again. 
 
 Far or forgot to me is near; 
 
 Shadow and sunlight are the same; 
 
 The vanished gods to me appear; 
 
 And one to me are shame and fame. 
 
 They reckon ill who leave me out; 
 
 When me they fly, I am the wings; 
 
 I am the doubter and the doubt. 
 
 And I the hymn the Brahmin sings. 
 
 '*'Por list of other poems which may be considered in the chapter 
 "The Inner Man," see page 
 

 
 
 
 
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58 
 
 The strong gods pine for my abode. 
 
 And pine in vain the sacred Seven ; 
 
 But thou, meek lover of the good! 
 
 Find me, and turn th^y hack on heaven. 
 
59 
 
 Chapter IV 
 
 Poems of the V/orld 
 
 - 0 - 
 
 ” ’Tis siiffioient proof of a man’s aberration to know 
 that he is writing verses on a theory; that he has 
 agreed with two or three critics more to bring the 
 public over to a new taste in poetry.” — (Letter to 
 Miss Emerson, June I 5 , I 826 .) 
 
 Poems in which the spiritual element dominates or has a 
 large place, are chief among Emerson ’ s writings; in fact, the 
 ratio of poems of "The Inner Man” class to those properly class- 
 ifiable under the hading "The Vtforld” is about five to one; and 
 
 A 
 
 this percentage differentiation probably shows as great disparity 
 as occurs in the works of any poet; yet Emerson wrote rather ex- 
 tensively and with great success, on subjects remotely if at all 
 connected with the subject matter in which he was by nature and 
 choice most deeply interested. There are subjects, he thinks. 
 
 Poetry Is lilssential which can not be treated well in prose; 
 
 To S ome"^ub' j e c t s 
 
 and although "Poetry never offers a 
 distinct set of sensations,” Emerson tells us that "it is the 
 language of the passions which do not ordinarily find their full 
 expression in the sober strains of prose,” because, as he be- 
 lieves, "it seems to consist in the pleasure of finding out a 
 connection between a material image and a moral sentiment.” 
 (Journal V^ January 12, l822.) 
 
 Perhaps the best examples of the carrying out of this 
 theory of Emerson’s — treating a certain subject in verse form 
 because it does not yield itself readily to "the sober s’’: ‘ o 
 

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40 
 
 strains of prose" — are "May Day" and "The Adirondacks" . Now, 
 either of these long poems, so far as suh,iect matter is conoerned, 
 contain only those commonplaces, if we regard the poems superfi- 
 cially, which Emerson might well have put into prose; as, for 
 example, he did in his *^ournals when he took a short walking 
 tour ’cross country for a few days; but behind the description in 
 "May-Day" of the "Daughter of Heaven and Earth, coy Spring, with 
 sudden passion languishing," and the "Hard fare, hard bed and 
 comic misery" which Emerson and his companions found in their 
 jaunt into the Adirondacks," there are note of thoughtfulness and 
 a lyric vein, which lacking by virtue of structure in prose, 
 would cause the reader to lose part of the effect which the writer 
 is striving to create and establish. 
 
 Ear as Emerson usually stayed from love in its sentimental 
 
 or romantic form, we find occasionally a poem which might almost 
 
 Poems of Eliza - be class as Elizabethan in tone, if not in 
 
 be than Form 
 
 form and emotional excess; such as "The 
 Amulet" and "Thine Eyes Still Shined” ; 
 
 THE AJiULET 
 
 Your picture smiles as first it smiled; 
 
 The ring you gave is still the same; 
 
 Your letter tells, 0 changing child: 
 
 No tidings since it came. 
 
 Give me an amulet 
 
 That keeps intelligence with you, — 
 
 Red when you love, and rosier red. 
 
 And when you love not, p^le and blue. 
 
 Alas’, that neither bonds nor vows 
 Can certify possession: 
 
 Torments me still the fear that love 
 Died in its last expression. 
 
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41 
 
 THINE EYES STILT. SHINED 
 
 Thine eyes still shined for rae , though far 
 I lonely roved the land or sea; 
 
 As 1 behold yon evening star, 
 
 Which yet beholds not me . 
 
 This morn 1 climbed the misty hill 
 And roamed the pastures through; 
 
 How danced they form before my path 
 Amidst the deep-eyed dewl 
 
 When the redbird spread his sable wing. 
 
 And showed his side of flame; 
 
 When the rosebud ripened to the rose. 
 
 In both I read they name . 
 
 One of the best of Emerson’s poems in "The World" group 
 
 is on a religious subject — "The Concord Hymn" — or rather on a 
 
 politico-religious subject, dealing as it does with a monument 
 
 dedication. It may seem surprising that I have chosen this as 
 
 The "Occasional" one of the most typical in this group, 
 
 Yoem 
 
 when its nature seems such as to preclude 
 the possibility of such classification; but the poem has hardly 
 a word of philosophical import in it; it is neither introspective 
 nor didactic, but is merely a commemoratory poem of occasional 
 nature ; 
 
 CONCORD HYim 
 
 By the rude bridge that arched the flood. 
 
 Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled, 
 
 Hered once the embattled farmers stood. 
 
 And fired the shot heard round the world. 
 
 The foe long since in silence slept; 
 
 Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; 
 
 And time the ruined bridge has swept 
 
 Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. 
 
 On this green bank, by this soft stream. 
 
 We set today a votive stone; 
 
 That memory may their deed redeem. 
 
 When, like our sires, our sons are gone. 
 

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42 
 
 Spirit, that made those heroes dare 
 
 To die, and leave their children free. 
 
 Bid Time and I'lature gently spare 
 
 The shaft we raise to them and thee. 
 
 Of quite sidiilar nature is the "Ode" sung in the Town Hall, 
 Concord, July 4 , 1857* If anything, it has, toward the close, 
 still more of the religious note than is given in the last stanza 
 of the "Concord Hymn?, where there is an invocation to the Deity 
 to spare from natural disintegration the memorial to the patriots; 
 yet the "Ode" is fully as typical a poem of "The V/orld" class as 
 is the "Concord Hymn;" and the same may be said of the "Boston 
 Hymn" , commemorative of the issuing of the ^mancipation Proclam- 
 ation by President Lincoln, which went into effect January 1 , I863. 
 It will be noticed that the poems described just above are occa- 
 sional poems, written for a temporal usage; but that Emerson could 
 write others as well, is clearly shown in such a delightful bit 
 of lyric beauty as "April", which is anything but didactic, devoid 
 of a serious thought, and is in fact nothing but a songlike spring 
 poem of charm: 
 
 APRIL 
 
 The April winds are magical 
 And thrill our tuneful frames; 
 
 The garden walks are passional 
 To bachelors and dames. 
 
 The hedge is gemmed with diamonds. 
 
 The air with Cupids full. 
 
 The cobweb clues of Rosemond 
 Guide lovers to the pool. 
 
 Each iimp'le 'in the water. 
 
 Each leaf that shades the rock 
 Can cozen, pique and flatter, 
 
 Gan parle.v and provoke. 
 
 Goodfellow, Puck and Goblins, 
 
 Know more than any book. 
 
 Down with your doleful problems. 
 
 And court the sunny brook. 
 

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45 
 
 The south-winds are quick-witted. 
 
 The schools are sad and slow. 
 
 The masters quite omitted 
 The lore we care to know. 
 
 In marked contrast to the saucy, flippant gaiety of the 
 
 pagan spring rhapsody "April" is the first stanza of the "Vol- 
 
 "High untaries," written when the bitterness of the 
 
 Seriousness" 
 
 Rebellion was at its height. It seems t o me 
 to be the best example of high seriousness in Emerson’s verse, 
 aside from some of the poems in "The Inner Man" , which are of 
 a different nature, and which can not well be compared .iustly 
 to the powerful, dignified sadness of this stanza: 
 
 VOLUNTARIES 
 
 I. 
 
 Low and mournful be the strain. 
 
 Haughty thought be far from me; 
 
 Tones of penitence and pain. 
 
 Meanings of the tropic sea; 
 
 Low and tender in the cell 
 V<here a captive sits in chains, 
 
 Crooning ditties treasured well 
 Prom his Afric’s torrid plains, 
 
 Sole estate his sire bequeathed, — 
 
 Hapless sire to hapless son, — 
 
 V^as the wailing song he breathed. 
 
 And his chain when life was done. 
 
 V/hat his fault, or what his crime? 
 
 Or what ill planet crossed his prime? 
 
 Heart too soft and will too weak 
 To front the fate that crouches near, — 
 
 Dove beneath the vulture’s beak; — 
 
 Will song dissuade the thirsty spear? 
 
 Dragged from his mother’s arms and breast. 
 Displaced, disfurnished here. 
 
 His wistful toil to do his best 
 Chilled by a ribald .ieer. 
 
 Great men in the Senate sate. 
 
 Sage and hero, side by side. 
 
 Building for their sons the State, 
 
 Which they shall rule with pride. 
 
 They forbore to break the chain 
 Which bound the dusky tribe. 
 

 
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44 
 
 Checked by the owner’s fierce disdain, 
 
 Lured by ”Union'’ as the bribe, 
 
 Destiny sat by, and said, 
 
 ’Pang for pang your seed shall pay. 
 
 Hide in false peace your coward head, 
 
 I bring round the harvest day.’ 
 
 Poems of "The World” — 
 
 To J . 'I'*. — Destiny — Hamatreya — The Humble -Bee --The Snow 
 Storm — Fable — Ode — To fillen--To iiJva — Thine Eyes Still 
 Shined — Xenophanes — Concord Hymn — May-Day--The Adiron- 
 dacks — Ode — Bost on Hymn — Voluntaries — Boston — Soluti on- 
 -Hyran--The Romany Girl--fily Garden — Sea-Shore--April-- 
 In Meraoriam — Politics — Culture — Manners — Art — The Amulet 
 --The T/i/aterfall — Monadnoc — ^The South Wind — Webster-- 
 Written in a Volume of Goethe--The Hnchanter-- 
 
 Poeras of "The Inner Man" — 
 
 The Sphinx--Each and All — ^The Problem--To Rhea--The Visit-- 
 Uriel — The Vyorld-Soiil--Alphonso of Castile — Mithridates-- 
 Earth-Song — Good -Bye — The Rhodora--Berrying--Woodnotes — 
 Monadnoc — -astraea — Etienne de La Boece — Compensation — 
 Forbearance — The Hark — -t'orerunners — Sursum Corda--0de 
 to Beauty — Give ^11 to Dove — Eros--Hermione — Initial, 
 Daemonic, and Celestial Dove — The Apology--Merlin--Bacchus- 
 Merops — Saudi — Holidays--The Day’s Ration--Blight — Muske- 
 taquid — Dirge --Threnody- -Brahma — Pate — Freedom--Letters — 
 Rubies — The Test — Days--The Chartist’s Gomplaint--The 
 Titmouse--The Harp — Song of Nature--Two Rivers — Walde- 
 insamkeit — Terminus — The Nun’s As^i rat ion --Maiden Speech — 
 of the Aeolian Barp--Oupido — The Hast--The Dast Parewell-- 
 In Experience — Compensation- -Hero ism — Character- -Friend- 
 ship — Beauty — Spiritual Daws--Unity — Worship — Pan--The Poet 
 Dife — The Bohemian Hymn--Prayer — Grace--Eros( 2 ) — Written 
 in Haples — ^Written at Rome — Peter’s Field — The '*'alk — May 
 Morning--The Miracle--Pame — Philosopher--Limits . 
 
 - 0 - 
 
45 
 
 Cha pter V 
 
 Essays on the Wen of Letters 
 
 - 0 - 
 
 Emerson is the American essayist par-excellence. His rank 
 
 the world over in the field of letters is largely dependent upon 
 
 his skill in handling the essay, in which he has touched upon 
 
 almost every subject. The essay constitutes by far the greater 
 
 part of his published works; and a considerable portion of his 
 
 journals, in which he recorded his thoughts day by day, or from 
 
 time to time, to speak more correctly, consists of essays or essay- 
 
 material, later developed and expanded. Uoon first thought, it 
 
 The ^oet - seems odd that a lyric poet--for lyric poet 
 
 Pliil^sopher 
 
 Emerson was, even in his most philosophical 
 poems — should be an essayist of first rank. We commonly think 
 of essays, particularly those of the meditative or scholarly type, 
 as coming from a man to whom poetry is well nigh a stranger; yet 
 Emerson is a poet of renown. He succeeds in writing essays and 
 lyric poetry both, throu.gh the force of sheer genius and intellect. 
 Frequently a poem in his customarily short lyric-measure precedes, 
 and sets the key-note for, an essay which is an expansion of the 
 subject treated in the poem. 
 
 Such essays as Emerson wrote were not the work of a few 
 idle moments, nor were they dashed off speedily, as are the some- 
 what similar essays of such modern writers as Dr. Frank Crane, 
 Herbert Kaufman, Bruce Barton, or E. W. Howe. These men write 
 for the syndicated daily press. What they write must, perforce, 
 be done at the moment and for the moment, no matter how much 
 
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46 
 
 Thoughts B ack they may have turned the sub.iect over in their 
 
 Of the s ays 
 
 minds preliminary to setting down their views 
 on paper. Emerson "went into solitude" when he thought out mater- 
 ial for an essay. Probably not one of the many essays he wrote 
 was composed at one time, as the modern novel writer makes a 
 chapter in his bo >k. Continuity of thought is not so essential 
 for the essay-writer as it is for the poet who writes long pieces. 
 The familiar- essay is an expression of a mood, in large measure; 
 
 Emerson^ s but a didactic essay, such as nearly all of 
 
 Essays Didactic 
 
 Emerson’s are, is the result of meditation; 
 it is a gradual growth, and develops and expands in the author’s 
 mind as the oak slowly grows from the acorn, and does not spring 
 into being mushroom-like. 
 
 Emerson was in the habit of forsaking his fomal study-room, 
 where he could never be entirely solitary because of his books, 
 and going to Walden, or for a stroll through the woods. Undoubt- 
 edly his essays are the slowly-ripened fruit of his meditations 
 while on his solitary rambles. As he went out into the country 
 and viewed nature --the open air nature --Emerson meditatednupoh 
 this nature and that which is manifested through man and his 
 activities. He was practically never without his notebook; or, 
 if pad and pencil did not accompany him to a ''' the woods and 
 fields, then the thoughts he had while there were set down per- 
 manently as soon as he returned to his study. Emerson tells us 
 that Wordsworth often carried even hundreds of lines of ooetry 
 in his mind before writing a stanesa; and this is well and good 
 for the poet who needs to keep in progressive order his rhymes 
 
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47 
 
 and lines; but the essayist of Emerson^s type cannot, and need not. 
 
 Gathering the work in this wise. For him it is enough to 
 
 ?*ragments into 
 
 A Whole ^ record the fragment of an idea; and then, 
 
 when the time comes for the writing of a for- 
 mal essay, or the delivering or reading of an equally formal lect- 
 ure, these fragments may be gathered up and made into a mosaic 
 whole . 
 
 Many of Emerson’s essays, as they nov^ stand, were once 
 lectures, either delivered or read. It is difficult to distinguish 
 between most of his lectures and his essays which were written en- 
 tirely as essays, such is the character of his writing. It is not 
 often that this is the case ; for usually the spoken lecture must 
 needs be amended and amended before it is suitable for printing as 
 an essay or brochure. An example of excellent proof of this occurs 
 to me. Col. R. G. Ingersoll, one of the greatest of modern 
 
 The Rssay lecturer-orators, spbke on subjects which are. 
 
 And the Speech 
 
 or may be, excellent essay topics; yet if one 
 will read the usual collection of his addresses in printed form, 
 it is at once apparent that a great deal of effect is lost in 
 printing them. The majority of Colonel Ingersoll ’s printed works 
 were never written by him for publication, but have been assembled 
 from stenographic and newspaper reports of his lectures as de- 
 livered. I do not know how great a use of notes Ingersoll made 
 in delivering a lecture ; but certainly he did not write out a 
 lecture as Emerson did, so that it could be printed and lose none 
 of its effect, without revision. An excellent example of how a 
 reported essay of Emerson’s may stand as a complete and printable 
 

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48 
 
 bit of writing is given by Emerson himself, although he does not 
 comment on it, in his book on "English Traits," where iA is found 
 his "Speech at Manchester", -Emerson says: "A few days after my 
 arrival at i^^an Chester, in November, 184.7 » "tke Manchester Athenaeum 
 gave its annual banquet ill the Eree -Trade Hall. With other guests, 
 I was invited to be present, and to address the company. In 
 looking o^er recently a nev/paper report of my remarks, I incline 
 to reprint it, as fitly expressing the feeling with which I entered 
 England, and which agrees well enough with the more deliberate 
 results of better acquaintance recorded in the foregoing pages. 
 
 Sir Archibald Alison, the historian, presided, and opened the 
 meeting with a speech. He was followed by Mr. Cobden, Lord Brack- 
 ley, and others, among whom v/as Mr. Cruikshank, one of the contri- 
 butors to Punch. Mr. Dickenses letter of apology for his absence 
 was read. Mr. Jerrold, who had been announced, xdid not appear. 
 
 On being introduced to the meeting, I said... "and there follows 
 the account of Mr. Emerson’s speech in the Free-Trade Hall. 
 
 "Reportable " Certainly the man who could so arran ge 
 
 Quality of speeches 
 
 his remarks that a newspaper report of 
 them was satisfactory enough to him (or else he was so well re- 
 ported) that he "inclines to reprint it" without change, is poss- 
 essed of a wonderful pov/er and ability in composing his thoughts’. 
 And this is but illustrative of Emerson’s skill as shown at si 1 
 times. An essayist who can do this well deserves the reputation 
 he has gained. 
 
 Not only was Emerson’s thought such that tt suited the 
 essay form of writing exactly, but his diction as well we find 
 
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49 
 
 aptly suited for this sort of composition. An essay is not to be 
 regarded as a formal argument like that of a writer who is pre- 
 senting a nev; theory of chemistry; nor should we think of an essay 
 as being well written only when it shows an orderly progression 
 from opening sentence, which should be in the style of a newpaper 
 lead, through the body of the argument or exposition to a close 
 which is as clearly cut as the sharp and incisive sentence with 
 
 The Essay which such a writer as Poe concluded a narrative. 
 
 A Mosa'ic 
 
 No; an essayist’s subject matter, particularly 
 if that essayist be an Emerson, we see as a grouping, more or 
 less arbitrary, of multitudinous details. It has been said that 
 Carlyle’s individual sentences are each as sharply-cut and dis- 
 tinct as jewels; can we not say, then, that an essay of Emerson’s 
 is a mos&ic, in which, on close inspection, we can see the com- 
 ponent individual stones, rather than a bit of homogeneous hardened 
 plaster-modeling? 
 
 Emerson excels in the individual sentence. He is terse, 
 
 restrained, epigrammatic. Perhaps a greater number of epigrams 
 
 Emerson , can be found in his works than in those 
 
 Master of Epigram 
 
 of any other writer of essays or other 
 long compositions. For purposes of illustration, consider the 
 following epigrammatic sentences, which I here quote as best 
 illustrative of Emerson’s power of saying a thing of moment in an 
 extremely condensed form: 
 
 "All literature writes the character of the wise man." 
 (History) 
 
 "A man is the whole encyclopedia of facts." (History.) 
 
50 
 
 "Every feforra was onoe a private opinion, and when it shall 
 be a private opinion again it will solve the problem of 
 the age.” (History) 
 
 "Speak your latest conviction, and it shall be the uni- 
 versal sense.” (Self-Reliance.) 
 
 "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your 
 own mind," (Self-Reliance.) 
 
 "Intellect is the simple power anterior to all action or 
 construction. (Intellect) 
 
 "The world exists for the education of each man," (History) 
 
 "Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity 
 of feicts." (History) 
 
 "Nothing astonishes men so much a s common-sense and 
 plain dealing." (Art) 
 
 "The wisest doctor is gravelled by the inquisitiveness 
 of a child." (Intellect) 
 
 "Let not your virtue be of the written or spoken sort, 
 but of the practiced," (Journal XIV, I824 j 
 
 "Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a 
 very few laws." (History) 
 
 "Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the 
 same." (Historyt 
 
 "The life of a man is the epitome of the life of a body 
 of men." (Journal XVIII , Mar., 1825) 
 
 "Every man beholds his human condition m th a degree of 
 melancholy." (Intellect) 
 
 "Man is a foolish slave who is busy in forging his own 
 fetters." (Journal XII, June, I823 ) 
 

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51 
 
 "Sympathy is the wine of life." ( Journal XIII , Jan. 25, 1824 
 
 "What is our life hut an endless flight of winged facts 
 or events?" (History) 
 
 "In every work of genius we recognize our own re,1ected 
 thoughts." (Self-Reliance) 
 
 "What is a man hut nature’s finer success in self-expli- 
 cation?" (Art) 
 
 "Every law which the state enacts indicates a fact in 
 human nature; that is all*" (History) 
 
 "A mind might ponder its thoughts for ages and not gain 
 so much self-knowledge as the passion of love shall 
 teach it in a day." (History) 
 
 "A foolish consistency is the hohgohlin of little minds, 
 adored hy little statesmen and philosophers and divines." 
 ( Self-Reliance • ) 
 
 ( Sel 
 
 "Our spontaneous action is always the hest." (Intellect) 
 
 "There is time enough for every business men are really 
 resolved to do." (Journal XIV. 1824) 
 
 "The difference between men is in their principle of 
 association." (History) 
 
 "To he great is to he misunderstood." (Self-Reliance) 
 
 "The bodies of intemperate men are the tombs of immortal 
 minds." 
 
 "Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love." 
 
 ( Self-Reliance) 
 
 "What is the use of pretending to know what we know not?" 
 (History) 
 
 "To believe too much is dangerous, because it is the 
 
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52 
 
 near neighbour of unbelief. Pantheism leads to Atheism." 
 
 (Journal XVI II , Mar. 11 . 1827) 
 
 What Emerson said in few words, in single sentences like the 
 above — and these are but hastily chosen examoles from a huge 
 source — other writers use. and have used, paragraphs or chapters 
 to express. One can study Emerson’s individual sentences as a 
 ^ewfeler would study the individual pearls on a strand of beads, 
 such is the way in which they stand distinct, and yet linked 
 into a whole. 
 
 In general, it may be said that a rough division of Emer- 
 son’s essays may be made so that all the sub.lects he covered may 
 be classified as Special or as General. He dealt with the 
 
 Rough Grouping qualities of Jian in the large, and he dealt 
 
 Of Essays 
 
 with the qualities of the named man. He 
 touched upon a history that is universal, and upon the sagas of 
 the Northmen. His facile pen wrote with equal wisdom and ex- 
 cellence of poetry as a symbol, and of Shakespeare, the immortal 
 bard. I have found it more practical, hov;ever, in discussing 
 Emerson’s essays, to forsake such an obvious grouping as that 
 which I have mentioned above, and instead have arranged in what 
 seems to me a proper sequence, regardless of chronological cont- 
 inuity, or type, from the standpoint of special or general sub- 
 ject -matter, the essays considered, feeling that the grouping 
 in the following pages is of far greater advantage in leading to 
 an understanding of the subjects Emerson treated, and the manner 
 in which he handled them. 
 
 During an oration delivered before the literary societies 
 
r , ^- « r7inj j» T.i M p f r g j nripng i 
 
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53 
 
 of Dartmouth college, July 24, 1838, Emerson said that he felt 
 that one of the things of greatest benefit to him in his under- 
 graduate days was his belief in the place of the scholar in the 
 world: ”I have reached the middle age of man," he said, "yet I 
 believe I am not less glad or sanguine at the meeting of scholars, 
 than when, a boy, I first saw the graduates of my own College 
 assembled at their anniversary. Neither years nor books hare yet 
 
 The Place of availed to extirpate a pre.iudice then rooted 
 
 The S'chola'r" 
 
 in me, that a scholar is the favourite of 
 heaven and earth, the excellency of his country, the happiest of 
 men. His duties lead him directly into the holy ground where 
 other men's aspirations only point. His successes are occasions 
 of the purest , 1 oy to all men. Eyes is he to the blind; feet is 
 he to the lame. His failures, if he is worthy, are inlets to 
 higher advantages. And because the scholar, by every thought he 
 thinks, extends his dominion into the general mind of men, he 
 is not one, but many. The few scholars in each country, whose 
 genius I know, seem to me not individuals, but societies; and, 
 when events occur of great import, I count over these represent- 
 atives of opinion, whom they will affect, as if I were counting 
 nations. And, even if his results were incomijiunicable ; if they 
 abode in his own spirit; the intellect hath somewhat so sacred 
 in its possessions, that the fact of his existence and pursuits 
 would be a happy omen." 
 
 Thus Emerson; and he points out that the one who holds the 
 
 Intellect, the sceptre is limited in his monarchy of nature 
 
 Divine ii’orce 
 
 and men by the intellect which is his divine 
 

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54 
 
 force. He says: ’’The resources of the scholar are proportioned 
 to his confidence in the attributes of the Intellect. The re- 
 sources of the scholar are co-extensive v;ith nature and truth, 
 yet can never be his, unless claimed by him with an equal great- 
 ness of mind. He cannot Imow them until he has beheld with awe 
 the infinitude and impersonality of the intellectual power. 
 
 When he has seen, that it is not his, nor any man^s, but that 
 it is the soul v/hich made the world, and that it is all access- 
 ible to him, he will Imow that he, as its minister, may right- 
 fully hold all things subordinate and answerable to it." 
 
 If the scholar, the literary man, such as Emerson wrote 
 
 of, and such as will be considered in this chapter, is to go on 
 
 "Spiritual and exercise and exhibit his power, Emerson 
 
 Independence” 
 
 would have us know, he must not be bound by 
 conventionality, must not be a slave to precept or forever in 
 fear of going where there is no guiding precendent: "The sense 
 of spiritual independence is like the lovely varnish of the dew, 
 whereby the old, hard, peaked earth, and its old self-same pro- 
 ductions, are made new every morning, and shining with the last 
 touch of the artist’s hand.” 
 
 These, then, were the qiialities the scholar must have; 
 and Emerson wrote a series of essays on men representative, each 
 in his field, of all the attributes mentioned. Your scholar is 
 not necessarily a poet, not necessarily an historian; but he 
 must be the highest in his field. 
 
 REPRESBNTAT IVE MEN 
 
 "It is natural," Emerson reminds us, "to believe in great 
 

 
 
 
 
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55 
 
 men. If the companions of our childhood should turn out to be 
 heroes, and their conditions regal, it w)uld not surprise us. 
 
 All mythology opens with demigods, and the circumstance is high 
 and poetic; that is, their genesis is paramount. In the legends 
 of the Gautama, the first man ate the earth, and found it deli- 
 ciously sweet.” 
 
 There is in all of us a tendency to pursue the great men; 
 
 to see him, if we can; or, if he be dead, or unavailable, then 
 
 to see what he has done — what mark of his presence there is left 
 
 on art, things, men, nations. ”We travel into foreign parts to 
 
 find his works,” Emerson says; and, in speaking of the influence 
 
 of great men, adds: "The race goes with us on their credit, ^he 
 
 "Study knowledge that in the city is a man vAio in- 
 
 Great Men" 
 
 vented the railroad, raises the credit of all 
 the citizens.” Each of us can put to use the great men of history. 
 Studying them and what they have done helps us to understand our- 
 selves — aids in our conduct of life. If we would have the most 
 benefit from great men, we should not go to see, or converse 
 with, those whose great qualities are but magnifications of our 
 own lesser characteristics: your poet should know the greatest 
 man in natural science, and your lawmaker should visit the poet 
 in his home. "Each man seeks those of different quality from 
 his own, and such as are good of their kind; that is, he seeks 
 other men, and the otherest , ” Emerson says. It seems that he 
 did not fully live up to this standard when he visited Cole- 
 ridge, Wordsworth, Landor; but he was a younger man than they, 
 and modest enough not to account himself as a great poet or 
 
56 
 
 writer of any sort, so that visiting other great ooets would he 
 a mste of time. At all events, these greater poets (greater 
 at the time, at least) had a salutary effect: ”The stronger 
 the nature the more it is reactive. Let us have the equality 
 pure. A little genius let us leave ^ong.'’ 
 
 Of the benefits, or gifts, obtainable from great men, there 
 
 are two kinds — the direct and the indirect. Emerson says that 
 
 "Direct giving is agreeable to the early belief of men; direct 
 
 " Education Is giving of material or metaphysical aiid, 
 
 Man ’ s ^n f 0 iTTn g " 
 
 as of health, eternal ^/outh, fine senses, 
 arts of healing, magical power, and pro^ihecy. The boy believes 
 there is a teacher who can sell him wisdom. Churches believe 
 in imputed merit. But, in strictness, we are not much cognisant 
 of direct serving. Man is endogenous, aid education is his un- 
 folding. Gift is contrary to the law of the universe. .Indirect 
 service is left. Men have a pictorial or representative quality, 
 and serve us in the intellect." 
 
 Having these things in mind, then, let us consider the men 
 of different types included under the general heading of "Repre- 
 sentative Men," and also a few others concerning whom Bmerson has 
 written essays, and which I have chosen to briefly discuss here, 
 feeling that their proper place is in this connection. What are 
 the kinds of men Emerson likes? Hear him: '*! admire great men 
 of all classes, those who stand for facts, and for thoughts; I 
 like rough and smooth, ’ Sourges of God,’ and ’Darlings of the 
 human race.’ I like the first Caesar: and Charles V., of Spain; 
 and Charles XII., of Sweden; Richard Rlantagenet; and Bonaparte, 
 
57 
 
 "Masters of in Prance. I applaud a sufficient man. an 
 
 Men” 
 
 officer equal to his office: captains, ministers, 
 senators. I like a master standing firm on legs of iron, well- 
 bofn, handsome, rich, eloquent, loaded with advantages, drawing 
 all men by fascination into tributaries and supporters of his 
 power. Sword and staff, or talents sword-like and staff -like, 
 carry on the work of the world. But I find him greater, when 
 he can abolish himself, and all heroes, by letting iri this 
 element of reason, irrespective of persons; this subtiliser, 
 and irresistible upward force, into our thought, destroying in- 
 dividualism; the power so great, that the potentate is nothing. 
 
 Then he is a monarch, who gives a constitution to his people; 
 a pontiff, who preaches the equality of souls, and releases his 
 servants from their barbarous homages; an emperor, who can spare 
 his empire." 
 
 No one could give a higher dompliment to Plato than Emer- 
 son, when he said "Among books, Plato only is entitled to Omar’s 
 
 Plato’ s fanatical compliment to the ^oran , when he said, 
 
 Pla.ce 
 
 'Burn the libraries, for their value is in this 
 book.* These sentences contain the culture of nations; these are 
 the corner-stone of schools; these are the fountain-head of liter- 
 atures. A discipline it is in logic, arithmetic, taste, symmetry, 
 poetry, language, rhetoric, ontology, morals, or practical wisdom. 
 There was never such range of speculation. Out of Plato come 
 all things that are still written and debated among men of thought.' 
 Emerson tells us that Plato absorbed the learning of his own time, 
 and points the way to the learning of today. His philosophical 
 concepts are of value in all things in understanding the conduct 
 
58 
 
 of life. "Philosophy is the account which the human mind pives 
 to itself of the constitution of the world," J^imerson says: and 
 goes on to show how all this is included in Plato, whom he has 
 
 I 
 
 f chosen as one of his "Representative ^en," styling him the typical 
 
 f 
 
 1 
 
 or representative philosopher, wherein "the quality is pure"" Of 
 
 value to the human in learning the meaning of life is to be logical; 
 
 "The Great and who could do better than to study Plato, who, 
 
 Ave’rage i%n" 
 
 Emerson says, was as definite and absolute in 
 his logic as the mathematician in reading his logarithmic tables. 
 Perhaps Emerson finds the greatest value in Plato when he says that 
 "He is a great average man; one who, to the best thinking, adds 
 a proportion and equality in his faculties, so that men see in 
 him their own dreams and glimpses made available, and made to 
 pass for what they are." 
 
 I As Plato was the representative philosopher, so, in Emer- 
 
 son^ s day, was Swedenborg the representative mystic. Undoubtedly 
 such a mind as Emerson’s, imbued with idealism, transcendentalism, 
 would perforce be attracted to such thought as the expressed in 
 Swedenborgianism; and so we find him saying of Emanuel Sweden- 
 borg; "A colossal soul, he lies vast abroad on his times, uncom- 
 prehended by them, and requires a long focal .distance to be seen; 
 
 suggests, as Aristotle, Bacon, Selden, Humboldt, that a certain 
 
 S 
 
 ! Swedenborg and vastness of learning, or quasi omnipresence 
 
 Mysticism 
 
 of the human soul in nature, is possible," 
 
 I Emerson tells us of the youthful training of the man who was some 
 day to make a great and lasting mark in religion, and points out 
 i that for many years this later mystic was engaged in scientific 
 
studies and works of the most concrete and naturalistic nature. 
 
 V/hat was the true note of all of Swedenborg’s knowledge and 
 practices* Hear Emerson; "The thoughts in which he lived were, 
 the universality of each law in nature; the Platonic doctrine of 
 the scale or degrees; the version or conversion of each into other, 
 and so the correspondence of all the parts; the fine secret that 
 little explains large, and large, little: the centrality of man 
 
 in nature, and the connection that subsists throughout all things: 
 he saw that the human body was strictly universal, or an instru- 
 ment through which the soul feeds and is fed by the whole of 
 matter; so that he held, in exact antagonism to the sceptics, 
 that, 'the wiser a man ;’s, the more will he be a worshipper of 
 the I^eity.'" But Swedenborg, Emerson hastens to point out, was 
 
 "See God in not always interested in the miraculous as- 
 
 Nature^ 
 
 pects of God’s omnipresence; this mystic 
 felt that it was as great a call to man to see God in nature as 
 in miracles. Nature aQ d not super-nature was his idea. Emerson 
 says that "To a right perception, at once broad and minute, of 
 the order of nature, he added the comprehension of the moral 
 laws in their widest social spects; but whatever he saw, through 
 some excessive determination to form, in his constitution, he saw 
 not abstractly, but in pictures, heard it in dialogues, constructed 
 it in events. When he attempted to announce the law most sanely, 
 he was forced to couch it in parable." The benefit we dative, then, 
 in using this great and representative man, is obtained from his 
 hiimanity and his action in relating things; — Mthout which know- 
 ledge or belief is useless. 
 

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60 
 
 Turning from a man who was representative of al 1 that was 
 
 implied in faith, Swedenborg, Emerson takes up Montaigne, whom he 
 
 What Is a styles "The Sceptic." What is a true sceptic? 
 
 True S^e^tic? 
 
 “ And what is his use- Emerson ^ives his opin- 
 
 ion thus: "This, then, is the right ground of the sceptic , --this 
 of condideration , of self-containing; not at all o f unbelief; not 
 at all of universal denying, nor of universal doubting— doubting 
 even that he doubts; least of all, of scoffing and profligate 
 jeering at all that is stable and good." At some time or other 
 in our lives, we are sure to be sceptics, Emerson feels; and he 
 indicates it as follows: "But though we are natural conservers 
 
 and causationists , and reject a sour, dumpish unbelief, the 
 scent ical class, which Montaigne represents, have reason, and 
 every man, at some time, belongs to it. Every superior mind 
 will pass through this domain of equilibration — I should rather 
 say, will know how to avail himself of the checks and balances 
 in nature, as a natural weapon against the exaggeration and formal- 
 ism of bigots and blockheads." We see here the value of the 
 sceptic and of some of the sceotical attitude to us: It enables 
 us to avoid the danger of being led by absolutely blind faith, 
 without use of that intellect which is God-given and should guide 
 us . 
 
 No one, probably , will disoute Emerson’s choice of Shakes- 
 peare as the representative poet. True, Homer is often so-called; 
 but Homer is not only of an entirely different class, but also 
 his work more nearly resembles a written collection of the Norse 
 sages and folk-tales than it does pure poetry, as Shakespeare’s 
 
6l 
 
 is. Emerson did not like many things Shakespeare said. He felt 
 
 that some of the freedom of the greatest of the poets, running 
 
 into a grossness that was unknown in the Elizabethan era, might 
 
 Shakespeare’s with value have been omitted; y©t he real— 
 
 Claim to '^lory 
 
 ized that Shakespeare’s claim to glory is 
 
 based on nothing but truth; and the reason for his almost il- 
 limitable success is his humanity : "Other men say wise thinp-s 
 
 as well as he; only they say a good many foolish things, and do 
 not know when they have spoken wisely, i^e knows the sparkle of 
 the true stone, and puts it in high place, wherever he finds, it. 
 He borrows very near home." This is what we mi^t expect of the 
 English poet, as we have seen heretofore, where Emerson describes 
 the British bard as oicking out for his subjects the familiar, 
 homely objects. That the world was tardy in recognising the 
 Olympian grandeur of Shakespeare was certain to be the case; 
 
 "Our poet’s mask was impenetrable. You cannot see the mountain 
 
 near. It took a century to make it suspected; and not until two 
 
 centuries had passed, after his death, did any criticism which 
 we think adequate begin to appear." Emerson felt that those 
 critics who judge Shakespeare as dramatist only, fail to give him 
 his due; and Emerson’s whole concept of ‘Shakespeare is contained 
 Eulogy of in these lines: "He wrote the airs for all our 
 
 modem music; he wrote the text of modern life; 
 the text of manners; he drew the man of England and Europe; the 
 father of the man in America; he drew the man, and described the 
 day, and what is done in it; he read the hearts of men and women, 
 their probity, and their second thought, and wiles; the wiles of 
 

 
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62 
 
 innocence, and the transitions by which virtues and vices slide 
 into their contraries; he could divide the mother’s part from the 
 father’s part in the face of the child, or draw the fine demarca- 
 tions of freedom and of fate: he knew the laws of repression which 
 make the poliee of nature: and all the sweets and all the terrors 
 of human lot lay in his mind as truly but as softly as the land- 
 scape lies on the eye, And the importance of this wisdom of life 
 sinks the form, ai§ of Drama or i^pic, out of notice. ’Tis like 
 making a question concerning the paper on which a king’s message 
 
 is w ritten. " 
 
 One’s Own History 
 in liapoleon 
 
 Although Napoleon, whom Emerson selects as the representa- 
 tive "man of the World” ”is no hero, in the high sense,” and ”no 
 
 capuchin" , to use his own words for denying 
 any claim to saintliness, Emerson tells us 
 at once that "Every one of the million readers of anecdotes or 
 memoirs, or lives of Napoleon, delights in the page, because he 
 studies in it his own history." We are all prone, when reading 
 of the deeds of some character noted in history, to say to our- 
 selves, Why, this man thinks the same things I do’.” And it is 
 not at all difficult to understand that "Bonaparte was the idol 
 of common men, because he had in transcendent degree the Quali- 
 ties and powers of common men." Napoleon, Emerson tells us, was 
 "actually a monopoliser and usurper of other minds." All the 
 
 great achievements of Napoleon were accomplished because he 
 cared for nothing but success, i^e was not to be stopped by any- 
 thing: "Napoleon renounced, once for all, sentiments and affect- 
 tions, and would help himself with his hands and his head. With 
 
63 
 
 him is no mtracle , and no magic. He is a worker in brass, in 
 iron, in wood, in earth, in roads, in buildings, in money, and 
 in troops, and a very consistent and v/ise master-workman." Emer- 
 son speaks of Hapoleon as being the "pattern democrat" to which 
 is due the fact that he is the idol and ideal of the average man. 
 
 "Goethe; or, the Writer," is a chapter in "Representative 
 Men" \»sherein Emerson tells us that he finds" 
 a provision, in the constitution of the world. 
 
 "Goethe, the 
 Secretary"’ 
 
 for the writer or secretary, who is to report the doings of the 
 miraculous spirit of life that everywhere throbs and works. His 
 office is a reception of the facts into the mind, and then a 
 selection of the eminent and characteristic experiences." He 
 tells us, further, that "society has really no graver interest 
 than the well-being of the literary class. And it is not to be 
 denied that men are cordial in their recognition and welcome of 
 intellectual accomplishments." As he chose Hapoleon as the re- 
 presentative "man of the world", then Goethe is chosen by Emer- 
 son as the representative of the other half of the "popular ex- 
 ternal life and aims of the nineteenth century." 
 He tells us that among the lists of literary 
 
 A Literary 
 S’enius 
 
 geniuses of the age there is no name greater than that of Goethe, 
 to "represent the pov/ers and duties of the scholar or writer." 
 
 Such a high estimate as this of the great German poet -writer is 
 upheld further, where Emerson says that "The ’Helena’ or the second 
 part of ’Faust’ is a philosophy of li<|erature set in poetry." 
 
 Very probably, Emerson’s walks to Walden often made him 
 the more or less chance meeter of Thoreau, that almost inaccessible 
 

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64 
 
 recluse whose delight in nature, if for a somewhat different 
 
 reason, was as great a s Emerson’s. Their different appreciation 
 
 Emerson and of nature, it might be said, is ohe of kind, 
 
 Thoreau 
 
 and not of extent, because the naturalist 
 Thoreau, claiming that the could tell what day it was if suddenly 
 wakened in the woods from a trance, by studying the plants about 
 him, is as thoroughly an examplar of the belief in the Idea, that 
 permeates and yet antedates all material manifestations of the 
 visible world, as is Emerson, whose Nature is more abstract. 
 
 In his terse, epigrammatic manner, Emerson describes for us 
 this strangely unmodern man, Thoreau, We gain as accurate a pic- 
 ture of the inner man from the essay on Thoreau as a ohotograoh 
 would give us of the fleshly man. Emerson tells us, in a passage 
 describing the spirit of Thoreau, that "There was somewhat mili- 
 tary in his nature, not to be subclued, always manly and able, 
 but rarely tender, as if he did not feel himself except in op- 
 position. He wanted a fallacy to expose, a blunder to pillory, 
 
 I may say required a little sense of victory, a roll of the drum, 
 to call his powers into full exercise. It cost him nothing to 
 say No; indeed, he found it much easier than to say Yes.” 
 
 It is, perhaps, a far cry from the New England idealist- 
 individualist to the writer of ’Paradise Lost’; yet Emerson 
 understood, interpreted, and valued the blind poet of Cromwell’s 
 secretariat. The two were certainly far a part in the ways in 
 which they expressed their faith in the Haling Force of the 
 universe, yet Emerson is delighted to mark the fact that Milton’s 
 fame is changing and growing, and "is not rigid and stony like 
 
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65 
 
 Milton^ s Fame his bust.” He points out that ”as a man's 
 
 T^o Grow 
 
 fame, of course, characterises those v/ho 
 give it, as much as him who received it, the nev; criticism in- 
 dicated a change in the public taste, and a change which the poet 
 himself might claim to have wrought.” What is it in Milton, 
 newly discovered, vhich is making him greater than ever? Emerson 
 tells us that "he kindles a love and emulation in us which he 
 did not in foregoing generations;” and he believes that now Mil- 
 ton's fame is sure to grow and to be secure. 
 
 Hardly a pleasing characterisation of Vi/alter Savage handor 
 is given us in the following passage; "In Mr. -Candor's coarse- 
 ness there is a certain air of defiance, and the rude word seems 
 sometimes to arise from a disgust at niceness and over-refinement. 
 Before a well-dressed company he plunges his fingers in a cess- 
 pool, as if to expose the whiteness of his hands and the jewels 
 of his ring. Afterward, he washes them in M\dne: but you are never 
 secure from his freaks." V^e are but little reassured, however, 
 when Emerson goes on to say that Landor is "A sort of Earl Peter- 
 
 Lan dor's Blunt borough in literature, his eccentricity is 
 
 Assertiveness 
 
 too decided not to have diminished his great- 
 ness. He has capital enough to have furnished the brain of fiffy 
 - stock authors, yet has written no good book." Emerson seesm to 
 value Candor's blunt assertiveness which reaches almost to a dis- 
 regard for others' opinions which is unsocial and uncivil, for he 
 days: "What he says of Wordsworth is true of himself, that he 
 delights to throw a clod of dirt on the table and cry "Gentlemen, 
 there is a better man than all of you." However, a better picture 
 

66 
 
 of the man is given us in this passage, and we come to see his 
 
 finer points: "But we have spoken all our discontent. Possibly 
 
 his writings are open to harsher censure; but we love the man, 
 
 from sympathy as well as for reasons to be assigned; and have 
 
 no wish, if we were able, to put an argument in the mouth of his 
 
 critics, Now for twenty years we have still found the I magin ary 
 
 "The Rich and Conversations a sure resource in solitude. 
 
 Ample -t?age 
 
 and it seems to us as original in its form 
 as in its matter. Nay, when we remember his rich and an pie page, 
 wherein we are always sure to find free and sustained thought, a 
 keen and precise understanding, an affluent and ready memory 
 familiar with all chosen books, an industrious observation in 
 every department of life, an experience to which nothing has 
 occurred in vain, honour for every ,1ust and generous sentiment 
 and a scourge like that of Furies for every oppressor, whether 
 public or private, we feel how dignified is this oerpetual Censor 
 in his curule chair, and v;e v;ish to thank a benefactor of the 
 reading world." 
 
 To discuss Michael -t^ngelo , the sculptor who felt that a 
 
 knowledge of anatomy is essential for him who carves in marble, 
 
 in order that he may depict the more faithfully the intricacies 
 
 of detail of the surface, is a fit task for a man who went into 
 
 The Statue and solitude to study the anatomy of nature. 
 
 The Ussay 
 
 in order that he might later chisel out his 
 detailed sentences setting forth every lineament of the v/hole; 
 and so Emerson we find to be an apt hand at portraying the spirit 
 and work of the great Italian artist. It is needless, perhpps. 
 
67 
 
 to go into detail in picking out the points in the description 
 and exposition of Emerson in dealing with this sub.ieot; suffice 
 it to quote the following: "Above all men whose history we know, 
 Michael Angelo presents us with the perfect image of the artist. 
 
 He is an eminent master in the four fine arts. Painting, Sculpture, 
 Architecture, and Poetry." 
 
 - 0 - 
 

 
 
 
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 14 
 
 
 v‘ V ’ .CfXI 
 
68 
 
 Chapter VI 
 
 Essays, Political and Social 
 
 - 0 - 
 
 Emerson, in his essays, did not deal alone with literary 
 
 and other men whom he considered representative; he turns with 
 
 facility from the discussion of the specific to interpretation 
 
 of the general; and the essays considered in the following chapter 
 
 take up a vast variety of phases of human conduct, viewed from 
 
 The Essay and many angles. Throughout, we find the in- 
 
 THe” Man _ 
 
 terpretation colored with Emerson’s strong 
 
 personality, in spite of the fact that it is sometimes said that 
 he stripped his essays of personality. This, it WDUld seem, is 
 not wholly true; and it would he regrettable, perhaps, if it 
 were. No man can write or speak of the great truths of life im- 
 partially. To attempt to do so would be to deprive a field 
 pregnant with possibilities of the warmth of an interpretation 
 as richly human as Emerson’s. 
 
 "To a sound judgment," he says, "the most abstract truth 
 is the most practical;" and we find throughout his writings 
 evidences of his belief in this statement, which here appears in 
 its most axiomatic form. He who searches ever more for the prac- 
 tical, in man or the larger Nature, this transcendentalist wuuld 
 have us understand, is likely to lose sight of the fact which to 
 him was self-evident; that the Idea is all, for it is the ul- 
 timate thing, philosophically considered. Not that is ultimate 
 
 Nature and which is arrived at last, as the conclusion in 
 
 TEe 'Sour " 
 
 an argument; but that which is ultimate is the 
 

 
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69 
 
 primary oausation, that point back of vhich we can not attain. 
 Emerson says that "Philosophically considered, the universe is 
 composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore,, 
 all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes 
 as the NOT ME, that is, both nature and art, ^1 other men and 
 my own body, must be ranked under this name, NATURE. In enumer- 
 ating the values of nature and casting up their sum. I shall use 
 the word in both senses — in its common and in its philosophical 
 import. In inquiries so general as our present one, the inaccur- 
 acy is not material; no confusion of thought will occur. Nature , 
 in the common sense, refers to e ssences unchanged by man; space, 
 the air, the river, the leaf. Art is applied to the mixture of 
 his will with the same things, as in a house, a canal, a statue, 
 a picture. But his operations taken together are so insignifi- 
 cant, a little chipping, baking, patching, and washing, that in 
 an impression so grand as that of the world on the human mind, 
 they do not vary the result." 
 
 How is a man to regard nature, if he would understand it 
 
 best? Whether one consider nature in common or the philosophical 
 
 How Understand sense, it is essential that nature be con- 
 
 Nature ? 
 
 sidered in such a wa.y that the highest 
 understanding of facts and processes is attained. A man can not 
 do his best thinking in a crowd, or where his attention is likely 
 to be drawn by those around him; he must go into solitude to study 
 nature in either of the two larger senses — and solitude is not 
 always found in his study, however much this retreat may be left 
 unvisited by other men, because in his study there are books to 
 

 
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70 
 
 read, there is the temptation to study, to write--" But if a man 
 
 sould be alone, let him look at the stars." It was in pursuance 
 
 of that idea that Emerson so frequently left the study in his 
 
 home, and went strolling through the woods; or, at V^alden, one 
 
 of his favorite retreats, sat him down to think. 
 
 In his essay on Nature, Emerson points out that all of the 
 
 wide world is ours to enjoy: "Miller owns this field, Locke that, 
 
 I The Poet and and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of 
 
 I Natu re 
 
 I them owns the landscape. There is a property 
 
 in the horiaon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate 
 all the parts, that is, the poet. This is the best part of these 
 men’s farms, yet to this their warranty deeds give no title." 
 
 It would seem that Emerson is at one with Wordsworth when 
 he says: "To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature." 
 j Truly, the Rydal Mount sage and mystic goes no farther in his 
 
 I 
 
 i "Ode on Intimations of Immortality" than Emerson, when he says: 
 
 i 
 
 ' "The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are 
 
 I still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit 
 
 ! of infancy even into the era of manhood," and further, this: "The 
 
 "Go into the sun illuminates only the eye of the man, 
 
 W o^dF’ _ . _ , „ , , 
 
 but shines into the eye and the heart ox the 
 
 child." If one would enjoy and understand nature to the utmost, 
 
 he must have this childlike power; and Emerson says that all of 
 
 us can wield it, if we go into the woods; "In the woods, too, a 
 
 man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what 
 
 period soever of life, is always a child." 
 
 In discussing Nature as Commodity, Emerson points out that 
 

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71 
 
 Nature is more than the food or drink of life; "not only the 
 material, but is also the process and the result. All the parts 
 incessantly work into each other ^s hands for the profit of man." 
 And Emerson's faith and belief in the fact that God is manifest 
 everywhere throughout the universe is brought to us in the pass- 
 age: "the endless circulations of the divine charity nourish man." 
 But if we admit this, that Nature subserves man's desires and 
 Higher function needs, should we think that for this, and 
 
 this only. Nature exists? Is there no 
 
 of Nature 
 
 higher function in this activity and function than t o be a source 
 
 of life? Hear Emerson: "A man is fed, not that he may be fed, but 
 that he may work." It is not enough that we receive Nature's 
 gifts, even those of the higher nature than the material. We must 
 also take the things which the divine source, the Idea manifest, 
 gives to us, and put them to use. The man who receives and never 
 gives is half a man or less. Fulfilment of destiny is best seen 
 in activity. 
 
 The sould is in search of, and delighted when it finds, 
 beauty--another of the characteristics of Nature. As Emerson says 
 in one of his poems that tliere is a beauty "even in the mud and 
 scum of things," so here we find the statement that "Even the 
 corpse has its own beauty." 
 
 Just why is it that each of us is ever in search of Beauty? 
 
 
 The Search i' ■ Is there a real function, a practical pur- 
 
 fo'r Beauty 
 
 pose, in Beauty? There are times when the 
 physical manifestation of Beauty is of value; the mean soul is 
 elevated by looking at a noble work of art: "The simple perception 
 

 
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72 
 
 of natural forms is a delight.” But if this were all, it were 
 not enough. We see and appreciate Beauty because Beauty is nat- 
 ural. It is found in all natural ob,iects, low or high. A work 
 of art, being the embodiment of the Idea, is a summation of the 
 world of nature: "A work of art i s an abstract or epitome of the 
 world,” Emerson tells us; and since all of us are of the world, 
 and cognizant of its processes, there is answer enough in this 
 for the existence of Beauty, and reason enough vJhy it is sought. 
 Emerson says that ”No reason can be asked or given why the soul 
 seeks beauty. Beauty, in its largest and profoundest sense, is 
 one expression of the universe. God is the all-fair.” 
 
 Nature, besides serving the human being in the guise of 
 commodity and that of beauty, subserves also in language. V/ords, 
 
 Words and that is to say, establish the necessary connection 
 
 The Hind' ... , . , , 
 
 between mind and matter. V/ithout the word, writi- 
 
 ten or printed, man is no better than other aAimals. He has no 
 
 way of telling his neighbor of the facts of life as he sees them. 
 
 Above all, Emerson frequently insists, is the Idea; if we have 
 
 words to express ourselves, we can relate that Idea to life, to 
 
 the manifestations of the Idea in man, art, nature. Before we 
 
 can understand spirit, it is best if we can see a concretion of 
 
 it. This is true for us throughout life. Numbers are always 
 
 abstract, philosophically viewed; and the child, beginning his 
 
 education, is not taught the number one , but sees its meaning in 
 
 "one apple”, "one boy”, etc. We are forever seeking to put down 
 
 in a form that the senses can evaluate, some expression of the 
 
 idea. It seems that it is essential to our v/elfare that we do 
 

 
 
 
 
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73 
 
 this. "There seems to be a necessity in spirit to manifest itself 
 in material forms; and day and night, river and storm, beast and 
 bird, acid and alfcali, pre-exist in necessary Ideas in the mind 
 of Gid, and are what they are by virtue of proceeding affections, 
 in the world of spirit. A Pact is the end or last issue of spirit." 
 
 We learn from nature through the discipline that is implied 
 
 ! in all of the uses nature makes of herself for us. "Our dealing 
 
 Discipline with sensible objects," Emerson reminds us, "is 
 
 Of Nature ' 
 
 a constant exercise in the necessary lessons of 
 difference, of likeness, of order, of being and seeming, of pro- 
 gressive arrangement ; of assent from particular to general; of 
 combination to one end of manifold forces." That is to say, we 
 jj learn by experience. "The burnt child shuns the fire" is trite, 
 but true; and what man learns through experience, what discipline 
 he receives at the hands of a nature whose "dice are always loaded," 
 should, if he have the right outlook upon life, guide him in his 
 conduct of life. 
 
 Peral:ps the discipline of nature should give us a hint of the 
 idealism which is behind it sill. The point of view of the trans- 
 cendentalist is contained in Emerson’s statement that "A noble 
 doubt perpetually suggests itself, whether this end be not the 
 "Pinal Pinal Cause of the universe; and whether nature 
 
 outwardly exists." And further; "Whether nature 
 enjoy a substantial existence without, or is only in the apocalypse 
 of the mind, it is alike useful and alike venerable to me." When 
 one reads such statements, one is prone to wonder v/hether or not 
 the Christian Science doctrines of today are not the final growth 
 
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74 
 
 of the idealistic philosophy, which went from Plato through 
 
 Plotinus and the other Neo-Platonists , on up through the German 
 
 philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and 
 
 crystallized into New England Transcendentalism. The similarity 
 
 is surprising. At all events, Emerson says that "Finally, re- 
 
 ligioh and ethics, which may he fitly called, — the practice of 
 
 ideas, or the introduction of ideas into life, — have an analogous 
 
 effect with all lower culture, in degrading nature and suggesting 
 
 its dependence on spirit.” Back of and behind all the ohysical 
 
 manifestations of the Idea, Emerson means, is the Idea itself; 
 
 and idealism is a natural property of the man who is but one of 
 
 the ohases of this manifestation. Continuing this view of the 
 
 Man, Nature, the subject, in the division of the essay on 
 
 TIocT 
 
 Nature headed "Spirit”, Emerson says that "As 
 a plant upon the earth, so a man rests upon the bosom of God; he 
 is nourished by unfailing fountains, and draws, at his need, in- 
 exhaustible power." All that is necessary for man to do, is to 
 learn how to tap that reservoir of Ideas, of which everything in 
 nature and art is a product, if man would hold the secret of life. 
 To those who are able to do this, Emerson says in "Prospects”, 
 the last subdivision of his subject, "a fact is true poetry, and 
 themost beautiful of fables.” 
 
 In giving us the uses for which Nature is designed, there 
 are methods employed, the understanding of which is requisite to 
 man. The fountain-head of all is God, the source of the inex- 
 haustible Idea. It is not for us to question too closely, how- 
 
 "All Things ever: "It is God in us which checks the 
 
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75 
 
 language of petition b 3 '’ a grander thought. In the bottom of the 
 heart, it is said; ”I am, and by me , 0 child I this fair body and 
 world of thine stands and grows. I am ; ^ 1 things are mine; and 
 all mine are thine." If we but realize this, then our conduct 
 of life will be right and proper and satisfactory. Nature has 
 no limited purpose: "Nature can only be conceived as existing to 
 a universal and not to a particular and," i^merson reminds us. 
 Emerson's idea that "the dice of God are always loaded" is brought 
 out agiin in "The Method of Nature" where he says: "I conceive 
 a man as always spfi)ken to from behind, and unable to turn his 
 head and see the speaker". How, then, can man conquer nature 
 and make it, in its devious methods, subserve his purpose? The 
 answer, Emerson feels, is plain: "By piety alone, and by convers- 
 ing with the cause of nature, is he safe and commands it." 
 
 Emerson, in his long essay on Nature, and in that on The 
 
 Method of Nature, both of which have been considered above, deals 
 
 with the varied manifestations of nature; in Essay VI, Second 
 
 All Nature Series, he describes external nature for its 
 
 Is Useful' 
 
 beauties and services to us; and he says; "It 
 seems as if the day was not wholly profane, in which we have 
 given heed to some naturaOL object. The fall of snowflakes in a 
 still air, preserving to each crystal its perfect from; the blow- 
 ing of sleet over a wide sheet of water, and over plains, the 
 waving ryefield, the mimic waving of acres of houstonia, whose 
 innumerable florets whiten and ripple before the eye; the reflec- 
 tions of trees and flowers in glassy lakes ; the musical steaming 
 odorous south v/ind, which converts all trees to wind-harps; the 
 

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76 
 
 crackling and spurting of hemlock in the flames; or of pine logs, 
 which yield glory to the walls and faces in the sitting-room, — 
 these are the music and pictures of the most ancient religion.” 
 
 If the artist cannot call to our minds pictures like these, then 
 he fails. The unnatural is never beautiful; and by avoiding n 
 nature, is of no use to us. That which serves us best is that 
 which is most like nature; "Only as far as the masters of the 
 world have called in nature to their aid,” Emerson says, ”can 
 they reach the height of magnificence." 
 
 After all, it is only in so far as our understanding of 
 
 nature aids us in our conduct of life that what we have been, 
 
 observed, thought upon, learned, is of value; and Emerson points 
 
 this out repeatedly in his essay on "The Conduct of life" . If 
 
 Use Your a man have everything, and know not how to use 
 
 iCnowledge 
 
 it, of what avail is his possession* Understands- 
 ing is the chief business of all of us; understanding our busi- 
 nesses, understanding our friends, understanding ourselves. "It 
 chanced during one winter, a few years ago", Emerson remarks, 
 "That our critics were bent on discussing the theory of the Age. 
 By an odd coincidence, four or five noted men were each reading 
 a discourse to the citizens of Boston dr New Yokr, on the Spirit 
 of the Times. It so happened that the subject had the same 
 prominence in some remarkable pamphlets and journals issued in 
 London in the same season. To me, however, the question of the 
 times resolved itself into a practical question of the conduct 
 of life. "How shall I live?" Veritably, the query, "How shall I 
 live?" is one which each of us must put to himself. All v/e do; 
 
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77 
 
 the hooks we read, the thoughts we evolve, the friends we make-- 
 all tare of use to us only in so far as they enable us to answer 
 that question satisfactorily. I have chosen, aid quoted below, 
 different phases of Emerson^ s answer to that query: 
 
 ’’Life is a search after power; and this is an element with 
 
 which the world is so saturated, — there is no chink or crevice 
 
 Power, the in which it is not lodged, — that no honest 
 
 Secret of hLife 
 
 seeking goes unrewarded. A man should 
 prize events and possessions as the one in which this fine min- 
 eral is found; and he can well afford to let events and posses- 
 sions and the breath of the body go, if their value has been 
 added to him in the shape of power." In this, we see Emerson’s 
 idea that work, with its accompanying reward in money, position, 
 influence, is one of the things we must consider, if we are to 
 understand what the proper conduct of our life is to be. 
 
 This idea is further developed in the chapter on "Wealth,” 
 wherein Emerson says: ”As soon as a stranger is introduced into 
 any company, one of the first questions which all wish to have 
 answered is. How does that man get his living? And with reason. 
 He is no whole man until he knows how to earn a blameless live- 
 lihood. Society is barbarous until every industrious man can 
 
 "Be a get his living without dishonest customs. Every 
 
 P Inducer 
 
 man is a consumer, and ought to be a producer. 
 
 He fails to make his place good in the world unless he not only 
 pays his debt, but also adds something to the common wealth." 
 
 The latter part of this quotation is socialistic, and reflects 
 the communism vjith which Emerson and others were imbued when 
 
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the Transcendentalists tried the Brook Pram experiment. Brook 
 farm failed; but any thinking man will ^acknowledge that his only 
 chance of real success — a success that goes farther than the super- 
 ficial one of owning property--lies in sticking by this orinciple 
 steadfastly. Production, then, should be one of our guides in 
 determining our conduct of life. 
 
 But it will avail us little, if we work, produce, and add 
 
 to the store of the material wealth of the world as well as our 
 
 own, if we have no cultural power too. True wealth consists not 
 
 in owning a fine horse, but in knowing how to drive him. The man 
 
 with thousands of beautiful acres is poor, if he can not walk 
 
 over them in spring and delight in the budding of renascent life, 
 
 Culture is Emerson tells us that "The word of ambition at 
 
 Necessary 
 
 the present day is Culture. Vtfhilst all the 
 world is in pursuit of power, and of wealth as a means of power, 
 culture corrects the theory of success. A man is the prisoner 
 of his power. A topical memory makes him an almanac; a talent 
 for debate, a disputant; skill to get money makes him a miser, 
 that is, a beggar. Culture reduces these inflammations by in- 
 voking the aid of other powers against the dominant talent, and 
 by appealing to the rank of powers. It v/atches success. For per- 
 fonnance. Nature has no mercy, and sacrifices the performer to 
 get it done ; makes a dropsy or a tympany of him. If she wants 
 a thumb, she makes one at the cost of arms and legs, and any 
 excess of power in one part is usually paid for at once by some 
 defect in a contiguous part." Balance, then, is an essential 
 in our conduct of life as is work. The old Greek motto of 
 
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 "Froper I.l!ah? 
 
 is not a proper man. A symmetrical culture 
 is best. It is difficult to attain this, Emerson recognizees 
 full v;ell; and he says that "Our efficiency depends so much on 
 our concentration, that Nature usually in the instances where a 
 marked man is sent into the world, overloads him with bias, 
 sacrificing his symmetry to his working powers." V/hat is culture? 
 might be asked; if it is to be understood that culture should 
 be our guide, how can we attain it? How avoid being overloaded 
 with a bias? Emerson says: "Culture is the suggestion from 
 certain best thoughts, that a man has a range of affinities, 
 through which he can modulate the violence of any master-tones 
 that have a droning preponderance in his scale, and succour 
 him against himself. Culture redresses his balance, outs him 
 among his equals and superiors, revives the delicious sense of 
 sjnnpathy, and warns him of the dangers of solitude and repul- 
 sion" . 
 
 Emerson quotes Plato as saying that "A boy is the most 
 
 visious of all wild beasts," and Gascoigne as saying that "A 
 
 boy is better unborn than untaught." Edmcation, then, must 
 
 be brought into play, if we are to be cultured men; but is ed- 
 
 Tru£. ucation doing its part? Education, if it is 
 
 "Efd^at i on 
 
 to be the source, or one of the main tribut- 
 aries, to culture, must be the right sort, Emerson says "Let 
 us make our education brave and preventive," and goes on to 
 comment that though the parent sends the boy to school to learn 
 

 
 
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 grammar and study through long terms, the boy is pleased best 
 
 not be associating with his instructors, or in perusing Greek 
 
 syntaxes, but in looking into shop windows on his way home from 
 
 school, and in mingling with those of his own age. "He hates 
 
 the grammar and Gradus Emerson says, "and loves guns, fishing 
 
 rods, horses, and boats. ViJell, the boy is right; and you are 
 
 not fit to direct his bringing up if your theory leaves out 
 
 his gymnastic training. Archery, cricket, gun and fishing-rod, 
 
 horse and boat, are all educators, liberalisers; and so are 
 
 dancing, dress, and the stree-talk:; and, — provided only the boy 
 
 has resources, and is of a noble and ingenuous strain, — these 
 
 will not serve him less than the books. He learns chess, whist, 
 
 dancing, and theatricals. The father observes that another boy 
 
 Liberal Judgment has learned algebra and geometry in the 
 
 Through Education 
 
 same time. But the first boy has ac- 
 quired much more than these poor games along with them 
 
 These minor skills and accomplishments, — for example, dancing, 
 --are tickets of admission to the dress-circle of mankind, and 
 the being master of them enables the youth to judge intelligent- 
 ly of much on which, otherwise, he would give a pedantic squint." 
 Liberalisation, then, is also a requisite to the man who would 
 know what his conduct of life should be. The pure scholiast, 
 the pedant, the book-worm, the man who lives in mind only, is 
 not symmetrically cultured. A cultured man, perhaps, should 
 know Greek and the classics; but he is not cultured if he knows 
 them perfectly, and can not box, 'ride, or row. 
 
 "We talk much of utilities , --but »tis our manners that 
 
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 associate us", i^merson says. Behaviour is one of things in 
 our conduct of life which we must watch. "The soul v/hich 
 animates nature is not less significantly published in the 
 figure, movement, and gesture of animated bodies, than in its 
 last vehicle of articulate speech. This silent and subtile 
 language is Manners; not what, but how . " Thus Emerson in the 
 fifth subdivision of his essay on "The Conduct of Life;" and 
 the idea is greatly expanded in his essay on "Manners" , dis- 
 cussion of w^hich 1 include here for ourposes of illustration. 
 
 The V^hat and because I feel that its proper relation 
 
 And the Hpw 
 
 to all Emerson wrote is here. It is how we 
 do a thing that counts. This may easily be proven. Let us say 
 a man writes rhyme. Shall we, then, say he is a poet? If at 
 he does makes him he is , then he is a poet ; but assume that the 
 rhyming doggerel he has written is such as can be written by 
 anyone with even a limited knowledge of the language; that man 
 is not a poet; the how element is lacking. If we can understand 
 how to do a thing, well and good; if we can understand this, 
 and also know how the other man does it, better; but "Half the 
 world, it is said, knows not how the other half lives," Emer- 
 son says, quoting from an old saying. O-^r Behaviour, our man- 
 ners, are of great use to us in our conduct of life, as Emerson 
 points out in this; "Manners aim to facilitate life, to get rid 
 of impediments, and bring the man pure to energies. They aid 
 our dealings and conversation, as a railv/ay aids travelling, by 
 getting rid of all avoidable obstructions of the road, and 
 leaving nothing to be conquered but pure space. These forms 
 

 
 
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82 
 
 very soon become fixed, and a fine sense of propriety is cul- 
 
 Fi xation of tivated with the more heed, that it becomes 
 
 Forms 
 
 a badge of civil and social distinctions. Thus 
 grows up Fashion, an equivocal semblance, the most puissant, 
 the most fantastic and frivolous, the most feared and followed, 
 and which morals and violence assault in vain.” If manners are 
 what they should be, another step toward that perfect culture 
 which is one of the prime Ifehings in our conduct of life, is 
 taken, ^he cultured man is the gentleman; a term often misused, 
 but still understood for what it should mean, ^he gentleman’s 
 conduct of life is what it should be. He relies upon himself, 
 he asserts himself, and so is welcomed by others; no one is at 
 ease if there is one in the company who is not self-possessed. 
 Emerson says, in developing this idea, "A gentleman never dodges; 
 "A circle of men perfectly well-bred, would be a company of sen- 
 sible person, in which every man’s native manners and character 
 
 Self- appeared.” "The basis of good manners is self- 
 
 HelTance 
 
 ” reliance." ”A scholar may be a well-breddmai , 
 
 or he may not. The enthusiast is introduced to polished scholars 
 in society, and is chilled and silenced by finding himself not 
 in their element, ^hey ^1 have somewhat v/hich he has not, and, 
 is ©ems, ought to have." 
 
 V/orship seems to Emerson to be as essential as the other 
 elements in the makeup of a cultured man, the man who knows TAhat 
 the conduct of life should be. ”We are born believing,” he 
 says, and adds that "In the last chapters, we treated some part- 
 iculars of the question of culture, But the whole state of mai 
 

 
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93 
 
 is a state of culture; and its flowering and completion may be 
 described as religion, or worship." The culture of the man, 
 in a way, determines his worship, because "The god of the can- 
 nibals will be a cannibal, of the crusaders a crusader, and of 
 the merchants a merchant.” We ape others, of course; the cos- 
 termonger’s wife, if she can contrive it, will walk like the 
 duchess whose house she serves; the shop girl’s rhinestones are 
 
 The Age of imitations of the diamonds of Fifth Avenue. 
 
 Belief ^ a.-. 4.4. 
 
 And in likeemanner , the religion of the better 
 
 classes is sure, in time, to be the religion of the lower. If 
 the ruler of a country be insincere, his sub,]ects are affected 
 measurably. Emerson points out that "The religion of the cul- 
 tivated class, now, to be sure, consists in an avoidance of acts 
 and engagements which it was once their religion to assume. 
 
 But this avoidance will yield spontaneous forms in their due 
 hour.” And he adds, later, that "All the great ages have been 
 ages of belief." Seal success is measured by culture; culture 
 is a phase of worship, or worship of culture, for they are in- 
 terdeoendent ; and hence proper worship we find regarded by 
 Emerson as one of the essentials in our conduct of life. 
 
 "We live by our imaginations, our admirations, by our 
 sentiments," says Emerson in his chapter on Illusions in 
 "The Conduct of Life." This is undeniable; but there are dif- 
 ferent kinds of illusions, as he goes on to point out; There 
 
 Some Illusions are deceptions of the senses, deceptions 
 
 Are~~Go'od ^ 
 
 of the passions, and the structural, bene- 
 ficent illusions of sentiment and of the intellect." Some 
 
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84 
 
 illusions, then, are base, and deleoterious , while others have 
 their good effects. Still, the real value in all our conduct 
 of life lies in knowing an illusion when one arises, and not 
 being overcome and misled by it. It seems to me that the key- 
 note of Emerson’s views on the conduct of life is struck in 
 
 this passage; "The intellect is stimulated by the statement of 
 
 truth in a trope, and the will by clothing the laws of life in 
 
 illusions. But the unities of Truth and of Right are not broken 
 
 by the disguise. There need never be any confusion in these. 
 
 In a crowded life of many parts and performers, on a stage of 
 
 nations, or in the obscurest hamlet in Maine or California, 
 
 the same elements offer the same choices to each nev; comer , 
 
 and, according to his election, he fixes his fortune in absolute 
 
 nature ... .There is no chance, and no anarchy, in the universe. 
 
 All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his 
 
 The Gods and sphere. The young mortal enters the hall of 
 
 riTusions 
 
 the firmament; there is he alone with them 
 along, they pouring on him benedictions and gifts, and beckoning 
 him up to their thrones. On the instant, and incessantly, fall 
 snow-storms of illusions. He fancies himself in a vast crowd 
 
 which sways this way and that, and whose movement and goings 
 he must obey; he fancies himself poor, orphaned, insignificant. 
 The mad crowd drives hither and thither, now furiously commanding 
 this thing to be done, now that. What is he that he should re- 
 sist their will, and think or act for himself? Every moment, 
 nev; changes, and new showers of deceptions, to baffle and dis- 
 tract him. And when, by-and-by, for an instant, the air clears, 
 

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85 
 
 and the cloud lifts a little, there are the gods still sitting 
 around him on their thrones , --they alone with him alone . The 
 eternal verities of life are always present. They may he hidden, 
 but never effaced. He who can find them has the secret of hov/ 
 to live. Their teachings become his knowledge; hei'is a part 
 of their system. And by this means, is he guided into the 
 proper knowledge of the condnct of life. 
 
 Conduct of life, like other things, may change with the 
 passage of time. War seems to Emerson to have once been essen- 
 tial; the savage conflicts of early day were needful to estab- 
 lish the foundations on which we have later builded, because 
 it was a factor in progress; tempo raiy, and passing into disuse 
 
 V/ar and (or so it seemed to Emerson in that day), aid 
 
 Progress 
 
 he says: "The student of history acquiesces the 
 
 more readily in this copious bloodshed of the early annals, 
 bloodshed in God’s name, too, when he learns that it is a temp- 
 orary and preparatory state, and does actively forward the 
 culture of man." The reason for war’s being preparatory was 
 that through it, strong, and therefore, generally speaking, 
 the more intellectual nations, in conquering the weaker, forced 
 them to adopt the modes of life of the victor; that is, to adopt 
 such a system in their conduct of life as had been proven more 
 successful, through the victory of one and the loss of the other. 
 "The strong tribe," Emerson says, "in which war has become an 
 art, attack and conquer their neighbours, and teach them their 
 arts and virtues." Progress is the result. '*'^hen one civili- 
 zation is overthrown by another, and a change takes place in 
 
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86 
 
 its wake, the weaker qualities die out, the stronper survive; 
 
 and if, with Emerson, we look upon those things which in the 
 
 long run succeed as being good, then war in early days accom- 
 
 |)lished good. The little clan, forced to live from hand to 
 
 mouth, an d in which every man had to be a warrior the larger 
 
 part of his time in order that his tribe might have comparative 
 
 security, had little or no time in which to become cultured. 
 
 The Iroquois Indianas, a huge tribe, strong and dominant, lived 
 
 in stockaded huts. Inside their inclosure they grew grains, 
 
 V/ ar and in the cultivation of which the men took a part. 
 
 Culture 
 
 The Illinois Indians, a smll tribe, ever fearing 
 
 their neighbors to the east, were partially nomadic. They 
 lived by hunting, and what little agrarian activity existed in 
 a low foim in their temporary encampments was done by the w) men . 
 So it has been throughout history, ii’or centuries the Chinese 
 led the world in culture; they were a great nation. Across the 
 China Sea were their kinsmen; the Japanese, among whom the office 
 of samurai was the highest; and until western civilization, with 
 its newer modes of warfare, touched the Japanese, he was a sav- 
 age while the Chinese was a civilized man, comparatively speak- 
 ing. Perhaps the greatest service of war in the past has been 
 to give man self-confidence. Emerson says; "What does all this 
 war, beginning from the lowest races and reaching up to man, 
 signify? Is it not manifest that it covers a great and bene- 
 
 Self-Help ficent principle, which nature had deeply at 
 
 Necessary 
 
 heart? Vi/hat is that principle? It is self- 
 help. Nature implants with life the instinct for self-help. 
 

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87 
 
 perpetual struggle to "be, to resist opposition, to attain to 
 freedom, to attain to a mastery, and the security of a oermanent, 
 self-defended being; and to each creature these objects are 
 made so dear, that it risks its life continually in the strug- 
 fle for these ends.” We must not think, however, that this in- 
 stinct is the only one of value; "The instinct of self-help is 
 very early unfolded in the coarse and merely brute forms of 
 war, only in the childhood and imbecility of the other instincts, 
 and remains in that form only until their development. It is 
 the ignorant and childish part of mankind that is the fighting 
 part ." 
 
 What, then, are the characteristics of the part of man- 
 kind that does not fight— that is not ignorant and childish? 
 Emerson says that "At a certain stage of his progress, the man 
 fights, if he be of a dound body and mind. At a certain higher 
 stage, he makes no offensive demonstration, but is alert to 
 repel injury, ai d of an unconn uerable heart. Thisij then, is 
 that which we should strive to gain, if we would be helped along 
 a step further--by self-help always, let it not be forgotten- 
 in our appreciatinn of the right conduct of life. 
 
 Thinking man is always seeking improvement ; is always 
 
 eager to reform and to be reformed; yet reform must be gone at 
 
 cautiously. ”I do not wish to be absurd and pedantic in reform” 
 
 Emerson says, because the rabid refomer, the man dominated by 
 
 Judicious a sheer mania for changing what is into 
 
 Reform Is Good 
 
 something that yet is not, is sure to 
 place himself in "an absolute isolation from the advantages of 
 

 
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88 
 
 civil society.” In his essay on "Man the Reformer" Emerson 
 points out that judicious reform is good, and to he desired; 
 and he says that "Every great and commanding moment in the 
 annals of the world is the triumph of some enthusiasm." Reform 
 is needed in America, he believes; and he outliries the way in 
 which it should come: "Let our affection flow out to our fel- 
 lows; it wDuld operate in a day the greatest of all revolutions. 
 It is better to work on institutions by the sun than by the wind. 
 The state must consider the poor man, and all voices must speak 
 for him. Every dMld that is born must have a just chance for 
 his bread. Let the amelioration in our laws of property proceed 
 from the concession of the rich, not from the grasping of the 
 poor." And what a telling phrase this is, well to be used today 
 against the advocates of Mirectiaot ion' I "Let us begin by 
 
 habitual imparting Love would put a new face on this weary 
 
 old world in which we dwell as pagans and enemies too long, and 
 it would warm the heart to see how fast the rain diplomacy of 
 statesmen, the impotrence of amies, and navies, and lines of 
 defence, would be superseded by this unarmed child." Reform, 
 we see, should be brought about gradually. It can never be ac- 
 complished by sudden action, if it is real reform, but must re- 
 sult as the outcome of a change in the heart and mind of every 
 
 individual man. 
 
 We have previously seen what Emerson thought of reform and 
 reformers in general; and now we shall see his specialization, 
 
 his localization, of the same subject, which ne 
 treats in "New England Reformers." After dis- 
 
 Value of 
 Reformers 
 
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89 
 
 cussing the fervor for reform and change which swept New England 
 from 1820-1844, Emerson satirically exclaims "What a fertility 
 of pro, 1 ects for the salvation of the world’." After a few lines 
 of humorous wit, however, he seriously says that "with this din 
 of opinion and debate, there was a keener scrutiny of insti- 
 tutions and domestic life than any we had known* there was 
 sincere protesting against existing evils, and there were changes 
 of employment dictated by conscience.” There is often a re- 
 action against reform; a period of relaxation follows a period 
 of exertion: the world seems to en.ioy a sort of moral holiday 
 after it has been keyed up to a pitch of high idealism and al- 
 truism, as is manifest in 192O, following the close of the 
 V/orld V'/ar. Emerson, in 1844, said that "No doubt, there was 
 
 "Sufficiency of „ , , 
 
 The i?rivate n.Iair ' plentiful vapouring, and cases 0^ back- 
 
 sliding might occur. But in each of 
 these movements emerged a good result, a tendency to the adopt- 
 ion of simpler methods, and an assertion of the sufficiency of 
 the private man." It is upon the latter fact that he lays em- 
 phasis in this e ssay-lecture , saying that the reionn in educa- 
 tion, in which it became realized that it was not essential to 
 a man’s success in business that he know Greek, had that effect 
 which Emerson thinks the most important of ^ 1 ; "One tendency 
 appears alike in the philosophical speculation, and in the 
 rudest democrat ical movements, through all the petulance and all 
 the puerility, the wish, namely, to east aside the superfluous, 
 and arrive at short methods, urged, as I suppose, by an intui- 
 
I 
 
 
 t 
 
 
 >iJ 
 
90 
 
 tion that the human spirit is equal to all emergencies, alone, 
 and that man is more often injured than helped by the means he 
 uses. I conceive this gradual casting off of material aids, and 
 the indication of growing trust in the private, self -supplied 
 powers of the individual, to be the affirmative principle of the 
 
 Think for recent philosophy: and that it is feeling its 
 
 Yourself . , . « ^ 
 
 ‘ own profound truth, and is reaching forward at 
 
 this very hour to the happiext conclusions.” If they did naught 
 else, then, the New ISngland reformers made people think for them- 
 selves: and the self-reliant man is a long way on the road to 
 self-realisation and to an understanding of the conduct of life. 
 There is something radical about reform, even in conservative 
 New England; and Emerson asks, rightly, "Is not every man some- 
 times a radical in politics? Men are conservatives when they 
 are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. 
 
 This idea of conservatism is developed and expanded in an 
 essay on "The Conservative," in which Emerson says "There is al- 
 ways a certain meanness in the argu- 
 ment of conservatism, joined with a 
 certain superiority in its fact. It affirms because it holds. 
 
 Is there suchvta thing in existence as a pure conservative? Emer- 
 son thinks not, and he says: "Moreover, as we have already shown 
 that there is no pure reformer, so it is to be considered that 
 there is no pure conservative, no man who from the beginning to 
 the end of his life maintains the defective institutions; but 
 
 No Pure 
 
 Uonserva tive Exists 
 
 he who sets his face like a flint against every novelty , when 
 approached in the confidence of conversation, in the presence of 
 

 ! 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 
 I 
 
 i 
 
 -I 
 
91 
 
 friendly and generous persons, has also his gracious and relent- 
 ing motions, and es mouses for the time the cause of man; and 
 even if this be a short-lived emotion, yet the remembrance o f it 
 in private hours mitigates his selfishness and compliance with 
 custom." 
 
 Certainly the transcendentalist is not a conservative; one 
 should hardly think that the moments in which he "espouses the 
 cause of man" were rare; and although Transcendentalism, as dis- 
 cussed by Emerson in his essay on "The Transcendentalist", was 
 
 The Higher not new, it was none the less radical. The 
 
 Re la"^i on sli i p s ^ ^ 
 
 idealism that motivated the transcendentalist s 
 
 of Boston, of Brook Farm, was not novel, "but the very oldest of 
 thoughts cast into the mould of these new times." V/hat an idealisi 
 does, is to connect the Thing with. ’the Idea--to establish that 
 relationship expressed in Emerson’s doctrine, which may be repre- 
 sented thus, diagramatically: 
 
 Emerson, in explication of the above, s^cys: "The idealist, 
 
 in speaking of events, sees them as spirits. He does not deny 
 
 Events the sensuous fact: by no means; but he will not 
 
 As Spirits 
 
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see that alone." 
 
 92 
 
 It is all well and good for us to examine, and 
 to make use of, circumambient, material nature; but it is essen- 
 tial to our well-being that we see the true reality behind it 
 all: the source, of which this nature is but the effluence. 
 
 Our attention is called to the fact that "Although, as we 
 have said, there is no pure Transcendentalist , yet the tendency 
 to respect the intuitions, and to give them, at least in our 
 creed, all authority over our experience, has deeply coloured 
 the conversation and poetry of the present day". Hence, it is 
 proper that we investigate the effects of this upon the scholar 
 in America, and upon the rising generations in the America of 
 Emerson's day. In his essay, "The American Scholar," Emerson 
 The Scholar notices that the scholar is the man who real- 
 
 ises the oneness of Nature, God, Art, Man — 
 
 Knows 
 
 "Thus to him, to this schoolboy under the bending dome of day, 
 is suggested, that he and it proceed from one root; one is leaf 
 and one is flower; relation, sympathy, stirring in every vein. 
 
 And what is that root? Is not that the soul of his soul ? — k 
 thought too bold — a dream too wild. Yet when this spiritu^ 
 light shall have revealed the lav; of more earthly natures — when 
 he has learned to v/orship the soul, amd to see that the natural 
 philosophy that now, is, is only the first gropings of its gig- 
 antic hand, he shall look foiward to an ever expanding knowledge 
 as to a becoming creator. He shall see, that nature is the 
 opposite of the soul, answering to it part for part. One is seal, 
 and one is print. Its beauty is the beauty of his ovm mind. 
 
 Its laws are the laws of his ov/n mind. Nature then becomes to 
 
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 The Yputh and 
 The State 
 
 93 
 
 him the measure of his attainments. So much of nature as he 
 is ignorant of, so much of his own mind does he not yet possess. 
 And, in fine, the ancient precept, "Know thyself," and the 
 modern precept, "Study nature," become at last one maxim." 
 
 It is, of course, but to be expected that the transcenden- 
 talist in Emerson should speak thus, in discussing the American 
 
 scholar; but not all our land is made up of 
 scholars; what of the youth? Emerson says, 
 in his essay on "The Young American," in spealdng of the attitude 
 of the youth of the land toward the state; "But the wise and 
 just man will always feel that he stands on his own feet; that 
 he imparts strength to the state, not receives security from it; 
 and that if all went down, he and such as he would quite easily 
 combine in a new and better constitution." An egotistic point 
 of view for the young man to take, no doubt; but if it is guid- 
 ed by common— sen se , it will win out. IWhat a challenge there is 
 to the American of today in Emerson’s appeal; "I call upon you, 
 young men, to obey your heart, and be the nobility of this land’." 
 
 Emerson and Plato on Love 
 
 It is of interest and value in this connection, to compare 
 the thought of Emerson, after considering his adjurations to 
 "The Young American," with Plato, whom we may consider as the 
 exponent in his day of those ideas which, in a modified and 
 modernized form, Emerson stood for in the nineteenth century. 
 
 How much Emerson owed to Plato, Socrates, and other "an- 
 cients who called beauty the flowering of virtue," we do not 
 know; but certainly there are many points of marked similarity 
 

94 
 
 in the philosophy of fhe American transcendental ist and that of 
 the persons reported in the dialogues in "The Symposium." This 
 rather surprising similitude may readily be pointed out by means 
 of pamllel passages. It goes still further, however; we can 
 divide Emerson's treatment of his subject into three parts, and 
 find corresponding divisions in the writings of the ancients. 
 
 The division of a tripartite nature in Emerson's essay 
 on Love is just what one would expect, having read others of 
 
 The Tripartite essays. He divides, more or less distinctly, 
 
 Division . , _ . ^ 
 
 the entire field thus; Physical, social, 
 
 spiritual. As in his essay on Compensation, where he drav/s 
 illustrations first from physical nature, the sciences, and 
 mechanical arts, then from the activities of society, and fin- 
 ally deals with the effects of compensatory action on the soul 
 of man, so too in his essay on Love he describes it first as 
 the physical passion, next in relation to its effect upon society 
 and the state, and at last shops us how it affects manis inner 
 Accordingly^ I have followed in this paper the order in 
 which Emerson takes up the three phases of the subject, have 
 quoted passages from his essay illustrative of the different 
 Dolnts, and have compared them with passages taken from The 
 Symposium" which I believe portray, if not an exact, at all 
 events a measurably equivalent idea of the subject. In doing 
 this, only such passages from each work as are clearly and ob 
 viously indicative of the writer's attitude on the subject, 
 have been chosen, ^'his is done briefly, in order to show first 
 of all wherein the points of similarity lie. The later pat?t 
 of the paper is concerned with a general comparison, in v\to.ich 
 
95 
 
 no attempt is made at continuity, but which aptly and amply 
 illustrates, with but little comment, the parallel ideas found 
 in Emerson and older writers. 
 
 I . Physical 
 
 Emerson regarded the physical basis of 16 ve--the de- 
 sire of the sexes for one another — to be good, end essential. 
 
 He says: ’’The strong bent of nature is 
 seen in the proportionmA^ich this topic 
 
 Nature’ s Winning 
 Pictures" 
 
 of personal relations usurps in the conversation of society;" 
 and, "All mankind love a lover. The earliest demonstrations of 
 complacency and kindness are nature’s most winning pictures." 
 Further on, he says: "I have been told, that is some public dis- 
 courses of mine my reverence for the intellect has made me un- 
 justly cold to the personal relations. But now I almost shrink 
 at the remembrance of such disparaging words. For persons are 
 love’s world, and the coldest philosopher cannot recount the 
 debt of the young soul wandering here in nature to the power of 
 love, without being tempted to unsay, as treasonable to nature, 
 aught derogatory to the social instincts." 
 
 Eryximachus , one of the speakers in "The Symposium," has 
 this to say of love i "....whereas other gods have poems and 
 
 hymns made in their honor by the poets, who are 
 so many, the great and glorious god. Love, has 
 
 not a single panegyrist or encomiast This mighty deity has 
 
 been neglected wholly’." Phaedrus, too, said that Love is not 
 only the oldest of the gods, but "he is also the source of the 
 greatest benefits to us." One must make allowance, in comparing 
 
 Love a 
 B'en^f i t 
 
96 
 
 the Greek and American discourses oh love, for differences 
 chronological , religious, and environmental; but when this is 
 done, it is at once aoparent that the gist of Emerson^s remarks 
 on this phase of the subject may without doubt be paralleled by 
 the underlying sense of what Eryximachus and Phaedrus said at 
 Agathon*s banquet- 
 II. Social 
 
 Always interested in the welfare of society in the 
 large, Emerson of course found in the love of two individuals o 
 cause and reason for a greater and more inclusive love, which 
 made for the better understanding of humankind. To quote; By 
 conversation with that which is in itself excellent, magnanimous, 
 lowly, and just, the lover comes to a warmer love of these nobil- 
 ities, and a quicker apprehension of them. Then he passes from 
 loving them in one to loving them in all, and so is the one 
 beautiful soul only the door through v^hich he enters to the so- 
 ’’Traits of ciety of all true and pure souls ... .And, be- 
 
 holding in many souls the traits of the 
 
 divine beauty, and separating in each soul that which is divine 
 from the taint which it has contracted in ;fehe world, the lover 
 ascends to the highest beauty, to the love and knowledge of the 
 Divinity, by steps on this ladder of created souls." The latter 
 part of.the foregoing passage shows Emerson's ever-present idea 
 of God being manifested in all things, and attainable by all. 
 This quotation might equally well, perhaps be taken as repres- 
 entative of the third division of his thought on love, namely, 
 the spiritual side of it; but it haimonizes so thoroughly, and 
 

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Social Progress 
 And Iiove 
 
 97 
 
 is such an orderly progression from his social ideas on the sub- 
 ject, that I have chosen to quote it here as well as later. Pro- 
 bably the most concise and definite statement of the social side 
 of love is given by Emerson in the following: "For it is the nat- 
 ure and end of this relation, that they (lovers) should represent 
 the human race to each other. All that is in the world, which is 
 or ought to be known, is cunningly wrought into the texture of 
 man, of woman." 
 
 Phaedrus, one of the speackers quoted by Plato, was at one 
 with Emerson in saying that social progress was best secured 
 
 through love. To quote; "For the prin- 
 ciple which ought to be the guide of men 
 who would nobly live— that principle, I say, neither kindred, nor 
 honor, nor wealth, nor any other motive is able to implant as 
 surely as love. Of what am I speaking? Of the sense of honor and 
 dishonor, without which neither states nor individuals ever do 
 any good or great work." Emerson has told us that through the 
 love of individuals there is attained an appreciation of good 
 qualities in others than the beloved; and here Phaedrus corro- 
 borates it. 
 
 Ill . Spiritual 
 
 "Every promise of the soul has innumerable fulfilments,” 
 
 says Emerson; "each of its joys ripens into a new want." And he 
 
 tells us definitely the divine purpose back of human love, when 
 
 he says: "Therefore, the Deity sends the glory of youth before 
 
 the soul, that it may avail itself of beautiful bodies as aids 
 
 The OelestiaH to its recollection of the celestial 
 
 Through the"~~ E‘arthly 
 
98 
 
 good and fair; and the man beholding such a person in the female 
 sex runs to her, and finds the highest ,1oy in contemplating the 
 form, movement, and intelligence of this person, because it sug- 
 gests to him the presence of that which indeed is within the 
 beauty, and the cause of the beauty.” It is perhaps not amiss 
 to quote here part of a passage already used under division II: 
 
 ”And, beholding in many souls the traits of the divine beauty, 
 and separating in each soul that which is divine from the taint 
 which it has contracted in the world, the lover ascends to the 
 highest beauty, to the love and knowledge of the Divinity, by 
 steps on this ladder of created souls." This passage, as already 
 mentioned, is closely connected with the social idea; but hear 
 Emerson further; "But things are ever grouping themselves accord- 
 ing to higher or more interior laws. Neighbourhood, size, numbers, 
 habits, persons lose by degrees their power over us. Cause and 
 effect, real affinities, the longing for harmony between the soul 
 and the circumstance, the progressive, idealizing instinct, pre- 
 dominate later, and the step backward from the higher to the lower 
 relations is impossible. Thus even love, which is the deification 
 of persons, must become more impersonal every day. Of this at 
 
 first it gives no hint the soul is wholly embodied, and the 
 
 body is wholly ensouled." And his final statement of the spiritual 
 nature and purpose of real love is thus given; "At last they dis- 
 cover that all which at first drew them together , —those once 
 sacred features, that magical play of charms,— was deciduous, had 
 a prospective end, like the scaffolding by which the house was 
 built; and the purification of the intellect and the heart, from 
 

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The True 
 Purpose of Love 
 
 ye&r to year, is the real marriage, fore- 
 seen and prepared from the first, and 
 
 99 
 
 wholly above their oonsoiousness . . . .Thus are we put in training I 
 for a love which knows not sex, nor person, nor partiality, but I 
 which seeks virtue and wisdom everywhere, to the end of increas- I 
 ing virtue and wisdom. We are by nature observers, and thereby 
 learners. That is our permanent state. But we are often made I 
 
 to feel that our affections are but tents of a night. Though I 
 
 slowly and with pain, the objects of the affections change, as I 
 
 the objects of thought do. There are moments when the affections I 
 rule and absorb the man, and make his happiness dependent upon a 
 person or persons. But in health the mind is presently seen 
 again,— its overarching vault , bright with galaxies of immutable 
 lights, and the warm loves and fears that swept over us as clouds, 
 must lose their finite character and blend with God, to attain 
 their own perfection. But we need not fear that we can lose an y- 
 thing by the progress of the soul. The soul may be trusted to 
 the end. That which is so beautiful and attractive as these re- 
 lations must be succeeded and supplanted only by what is more 
 
 beautiful, and so on for ever.” 
 
 Eryximachus said: "Furthermore, all sacrifices and the whole 
 
 art of divination, which is the art of communion between gods 
 and men, --these, I say, are concerned only with the salvation aaid 
 the healing power of love;" and Aristophanes declared that "if we 
 are friends of God and reconciled to him we shall find our own 
 true loves, which rarely happens in this world. ...ray words have a 
 wider application; and I believe that if all of us obtained our 
 
100 
 
 love, and each one had his particular beloved, thus returning to 
 our original nature, then our race would be happy." Allowance 
 must here be made for the fact that the soul, as understood in 
 
 God and Emerson’s time and today, was not regarded as an 
 
 TITe ^oul , , , 
 
 entity in any thing like the Same manner by the 
 
 men of whom Plato writes; but nevertheless the references to "God" 
 
 or "the God" found in "The Symposium" are obviously illustrative 
 
 of ideas which may with justice be compared to Emerson’s. Socrates, 
 
 reporting his conversation with Biotima, said that love "is a 
 
 great spirit, and like all that is spiritual he is intermediate 
 
 between the divine aid the mort^ ," and further, that love is the 
 
 power "Which interprets and conveys to the gods the orayers and 
 
 scarifices of men, and to men the commands and reiifards of the gods, 
 
 and this power spans the chasm which divides them, and in this all 
 
 is bound together, and through this the arts of the prophet and 
 
 the oriest, their sacrifices and mysteries and charms, and all 
 
 prophecy and incantation, find their way, Por God mingles not 
 
 with man; and through this power all the intercourse and speech 
 
 "Spiritual of God with man, whether awake or asleep, is 
 
 Wisdom" 
 
 carried on. The wisdom whichuunder stands this 
 
 is spiritual; all other wisdom, such as that of arts or handi- 
 crafts, is mean and vulgar." How greatly this passage resembles, 
 even in context, that of Emerson, wherein he says "But things are 
 ever grouping themselves according to higher or more interior 
 laws," and the other: "At last they discover that all which at 
 first drew them together .... .was deciduous, had a prospective end,, 
 ..the warm loves and fears that swept over us as clouds, must lose 
 
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101 
 
 their finite character and blend with God, to attain their own 
 perfection 
 
 I believe that the passages I have chosen and quoted above, 
 from Emerson and from the different speakers mentioned in "The 
 Symposium”, illustrate well enough the main divisions of the sub- 
 ject as made by Emerson, and as corroborated in the speeches of 
 the earlier men. To sum up: Both thought that love had its de- 
 finite place as a matter affecting individuals; that it affected 
 society; and that through it msn attained fo communion th Divin- 
 ity. 
 
 The following passages from Emerson and "The Symposium"’- 
 might be grouped under one or another of the foregoing three heads; 
 but to include them there, with the necessary comments on each, 
 would be to make this division of the subject much longer than 
 advisable; and so I have set them down here, with no comment. In 
 nearly all cases, even the wording of them is so similar that it 
 would be useless to point out the similarity of thought in them; 
 and where there is a difference, due to the inherent differences 
 in the Christian thou^t of Emerson and the pagan philosophy of 
 the men in "The Symposi-um," I believe that even a casual compari- 
 son will show how nearly alike were the thoughts on love of our 
 American thinker-poet and the early Greek philosophers. 
 
 Parallel Passages 
 
 love Selects Youth 
 
 Emerson: "Eor, though the celestial rapture fall^^ig out 
 
 of heaven seizes only upon those of tender 
 
 ”^he delicious fancies of youth reject the least 
 
 savour of a mature philosophy..." 
 

 
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102 
 
 "The natural association of the sentiment of love 
 with the heyday of the blood seems to require, that in order to 
 portray it in vivid tints, which every youth and maid should con- 
 fess to be true to their throbbing experience, one must not be 
 
 too old." 
 
 Symposium: "For, in the first place, Phaedrus, he is the 
 youngest; {of the gods) and of his youth he is himself the wit- 
 ness, fleeing out of the way of age, which is swift enough girely, 
 swifter than most of us like : yet he can not be overtaken by him; 
 he is not a bird of that feather; youth and love live ana move 
 
 together. " 
 
 Strength and Courage from Love 
 
 Emerson: "The like force has the passion over all his nature 
 It expands th”e sentiment; it makes the cloi'm gentler;-' and gives the 
 coward heart. Into the most pitiful and abject it will infuse a 
 heart and courage to defy the world, so only it have the count- 
 enance of the beloved object." 
 
 "They try and weigh their af fection , and , adding 
 
 up costly advantages, friends, opportunities, exult in discovering 
 that willingly, joyfully, they would give all as a ransom for the 
 beautiful, the beloved head, not one hair of which shall be harmed* 
 
 Symposium: "love will make men dare to die for thbir be- 
 loved." , 4. 4.-U . 
 
 "The interests of rulers require that their 
 
 subjects should be poor in spirit, and there there should be no 
 strong bond of friendship or society among them; and love, above 
 all other motives, is likely to inspire this, as our Athenian 
 tyrants learned by experience." 
 
 Grace and Beauty from Love 
 
 Emerson: "It is the dawn of civility and grace in the 
 
 coarse and "nistic." n « 
 
 "Beauty, whose revelation to man we now celebrate, 
 
 welcome as the sun wherever it pleases to shine, which pleases 
 everybody with it and with themselves, seems sufficient to it- 
 self. The lover can not paint his maiden to his fancy poor and 
 solitary. . .she teaches his eye why Beauty was pictured with Loves 
 and Graces attending her steps." 
 
 Symposium: "The actions of a lover have a grace which en- 
 nobles them.”" 
 
 "But what if man had eyes to see the true 
 beauty--the divine beauty, I mean... would that be an ignoble life?" 
 
 Poetry from Love 
 
 Emerson: "It is a fact often observed, that men have 
 

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103 
 
 written good verses under the inspiration^^ of passion, who cannot 
 write well under any other circumstances." 
 
 Sympo sium : "For in the first place he is a poet, and he is 
 also the' source 'of poetry in others, which he could not he if he 
 were not himself a poet. And at the touch of him every one be- 
 comes a poet, even though he had no music in him before. 
 
 Sensual and Spiritual Love 
 
 Emerson: "If, however, from too much conversing with mat- 
 erial objects," the soul was gross, and misplaced its satisfaction 
 in the body, it reaped nothing but sorrow; body being unable to 
 fulfill the promise which beauty holds out; but if, accepting the 
 hint of these visions and suggestions which beauty makes to his 
 mind, the soul passes through the body, and falls to admire 
 strokes of character, and the lovers contemplate one another in 
 their discourses and their actions, then they pass to the true 
 palace of beauty, more and more inflame their love of it, and 
 by this love extinguishing the base affection, as the sun 
 out the fire by shining on the hearth, they become pure and hal- 
 lowed.” 
 
 Symposium: "Evil is the vulgar lover who loves the body 
 rather than the soul, and who is inconstant because he is a lover 
 of the inconstant; and therefore when the bloom of youth which 
 he was desiring is over, he takes ngs and flies away, in spite 
 of all his words and promises; whereas the love of the noble mind, 
 which is in union with the unchangeable, is everlasting. 
 
 Turning now from the most generalized of Emerson’s ideas, 
 let us take up in detail various phases of the manifold subjects 
 touched upon in the large in the preceding chapter. Part of 
 Nature v/e may well conceive as consisting of Self-Reliance, and 
 surely Spiritual Laws, Compensation, and History comprise chapters 
 in the great book of life. 
 
 In this division of Emerson’s essays, he touches upon such 
 impersonalities as Compensation, and upon such personalities as 
 Character. I shall discuss each essay briefly, using occasional 
 quotations illustrative of the points in question, and in my ex- 
 position, shall follow the order in which Emerson arranged the 
 "Essays First and Second Series." Each is such an integer that 
 
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104 
 
 I feel that it is impossible to relate all the essays, as I did 
 in Group I. 
 
 History 
 
 Without hurry, without rest, the human spirit goes forth from 
 the beginning to embody every faculty, every t thought , every emo- 
 tion, vflaich belongs to it, in appropriate events.” Emerson goes 
 on from this admirable starting point to show us that since it is 
 essential to our understanding of man that we read the history 
 which is the record of the "one mind common to all individual 
 men,” it is requisite that we know hhow to read history. He tells 
 us how to read in order to gain this knowledge: "The student . is 
 to read history actively and not passively; to esteem his own 
 life the text, and books the commentary." It is only by relating 
 things that they have value to us. Anything standing alone is 
 valueless, as much as a man stranded solitary on a deserted island 
 would be valueless to society. When we read history, we are im- 
 bued with a desire to make it lifelike. Oaesar is never an ab- 
 straction to us; we accompany him on his marches through Gaul, 
 After all, the material thing, whether it be a conflict of armed 
 men called forth by a general, or a book written by a poet, is 
 but a manifestation of the Idea — the God which is everywhere. 'The 
 spirit of the man who directed the battle, the spirit of the poet 
 who wrote the book, are one with ours, for both emanated from the 
 great and inexhaustible Source. This is the reason why we put 
 ourselves in the place of Napoleon watching from his carriage the 
 battle at V/aterloo; why we share with Milton in feeling the tor- 
 tures of the damned souls, creatures of his creative intellect. 
 
 n 
 
 Man is explicable by nothing less than all his history. 
 
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105 
 
 We are related to all men, througii our common origin. "Strasburg 
 cathedral is a material counterpart of the soul of Erv/in of Stein- 
 bach. The true poem is the poet’s mind; the true ship is the ship- 
 builder," Emerson tells us. 
 
 Self-Reliance 
 
 "Trust thyself; every heart vibrates to that iron string.” 
 
 An egocentric way of looking at life in the large, perhaps; but, 
 if this tenet be guided and its rigor ameliorated by understand- 
 ing, its success is certain. Subservience never wins out. The 
 soul is restrained by hearkening ever to the counsels of others. 
 
 The intellect declines when its own adjurations are not regarded. 
 
 If we would succeed, we must not be too greatly concerned v/ith 
 public opinion. Emerson says that "What I must do, is all that 
 concerns me; not what the people think." But we must not carry 
 this to an extreme. Too great an individualism results in anarchy, 
 mental if not social. No one can stand entirely el one. It is 
 essential for our own selfish best interest that we conform some- 
 what to the ideas and modes of life of others; and Emerson is 
 frank enough to warn us that "For nonconformity the world whips 
 you with its displeasure.” It has been previously pointed out 
 that it is naturel for a human being to admire, and, in a measure , 
 to worship great men. They are the sources of our inspiration; 
 but we must not be too deferential, too humble, overly self— abas- 
 ing in the presence, actual or imagined, of the great men of the 
 world’s history. "Our reading, Emerson remarks, "is mendicant and 
 sycophantic. In history, our imagination makes fools of us, plays 
 
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US false. Kingdom and lordship, power and estate, are a gaudier 
 vocabulary thah private John and Edward in a small house and com- 
 mon day's work; but the things of life are the same to both; the 
 sum**total of both is the same." V/e must not think that these 
 great ones of the past and present have exhausted every possi- 
 bility: ”V/hy all this deference to Alfred, and Scanderbeg, and 
 Gustavus? Suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out virtue? 
 
 As great a stake depends upon your privat e act today , as followed 
 their public and renowned steps. When private men shall act with 
 vast views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of 
 kings to those of gentlemen." And this is the keynote of the 
 essay: Be self-reliant, but that need not mean that you should be 
 egotistical. The egotistical man is rarely one of great actions. 
 Be self-reliant and do great things, and you are one of the great 
 
 men . 
 
 Compensat ion 
 
 Every false step we mate takes us nearer to the precipice. 
 Every good deed we do ennobles us. There is a recompense for all 
 things* good and bad. Justice is inescapable. The king who made 
 himself great by plunder and ravage is scorned today. The martyrs 
 of yesterday are today saints, booner or later, your sin will 
 find you out. In his essay on "Compensation," Emerson points out 
 the evidences of compensatory action throughout the universe, 
 material and spiritual. He gives a host of examples, which it 
 is not necessary to refer to heie in detail. A single citation 
 of the method Emerson uses in presenting evidences of balance. 
 
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of compensation, will suffice: '*An inevitable dualism bisects 
 nature, so that each thing is a half, and suggests another thing 
 to make it whole; as spirit, matter; man, woman; subjective, ob- 
 jective; in, out; upper, under; motion, rest; yea, nay." Through 
 all of this bipartite division of the universe, the soul is striv- 
 ing to assert itself, and it is through that that progress is made 
 in spite of the compensatory change and interchange which rules 
 all things: "The soul strives amain to live and work through all 
 things. It would be the only fact. All things shall be added 
 unto it, — power, pleasure, knowledge, beauty." 
 
 Spiritual Laws 
 
 This striving of the soul, told of above, is not dictated 
 by our intellect: "A little consideration of what takes place 
 around us every day would shew us that a higher law than that of 
 our will regulates events; that our painful labours are very un- 
 necessary, and altogether fruitless; that only in our easy, siraule 
 spontaneous action are we strong, and by contenting ourselves with 
 obedience we become divine." Emerson would have us act in the my 
 through which he so often arrived at his conclusion — what has 
 often been called "divine guess." He tells us that each of us 
 has his vocation, which will be pointed out if we are natural men, 
 and act according to our natures; we must not make a choice that 
 results in a uartial fulfilment only; the entire being must entbr 
 into the real choice: "Until he can manage to communicate himself 
 to others in his full stature and proportion as a wise and good 
 man, he does not yet find his vocation." We must act according to 
 the dictates of our conscience, and be guided to the right by the 
 
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 spiritual laws which are higher, more permanent, better than any 
 our intellect can formulate. 
 
 Friendship 
 
 ”1 awoke this morning v/ith devout thanksgiving for my 
 friends, the old and the new," Emerson says; and describes what 
 to him is good and noble and true in friendship; "Pleasant are 
 these ,1ets of affection, which relume a young world for me again. 
 Delicious is a ijust and firm encounter of two in a thought, in a 
 feeling. How beautiful, on their approach to this beating heart, 
 the steps and forms of the gifted and the true’." These friends 
 are God— given, Emerson would have us understand. It is through 
 them that we progress, because the word, the action, of a true 
 friend, is a help to the evolution of our own souls; and there is 
 a great value which we should place on the friend; "Ho advantages 
 no powers, no gold or force can be any match for him." A friend, 
 as we have seen, can be of the greatest use to us; but this use 
 we must not seek to make temporary, or have it materialize too 
 soon. Bonds stronger than those of temporal utility must bind us 
 and our friends, if we would have the ri^t to call them friends. 
 Friendships should not be things of passions, should not move 
 like the avalanche, but should be like "the Haturlangsamkeit , 
 which hardens the ruby in a million years, and works in duration, 
 in which prized, perhaps, of all virtues, and it is with the 
 friend that we can best afford to be utterly and absolutely sin- 
 cere. V'/e must stand in true relations to him. Our hearts must 
 
 be as one, ere the advantage of friendship may be d&rived. 
 
109 
 
 Prudence 
 
 What is it to he prudent? Is it always to hesitate before 
 we carry out in action a plan we have formulated in thought? Is 
 prudence merely lack of sudden decision? Emerson says that "Pru- 
 dence is the virtue of the senses. It is the science of appear- 
 ances. It is the outmost action of the inward life. It is God 
 taking thought for oxen. It moves matter after the laws of mat- 
 ter. It is content to seek health of body by complying with 
 physical conditions, and health of mind by the laws of the intel- 
 lect." But v/e must beware, in being what we think is prudent, 
 that we do not regulate our acts by "the spurious prudence, mak- 
 ing the senses final," which, Emerson would have us know, "is the 
 god of sots and cowards, and is the subject of all comedy.” Re- 
 solved in its ultimate analysis, we find a strikingly close con- 
 nection between real prudence, as Emerson sees it, and self-re- 
 liance. The prudent man, like the self-reliant man, does not 
 depend upon what others do or say entirely, but "takes the laws 
 of the world, whereby man’s being is conditioned, as they are, 
 
 , n 
 
 and keeps these laws, that (he) may enjoy their proper good. 
 
 If a man is confronted with a duty which he must do or leave, as 
 his choice dictates, what is prudence then? Is it in taking half 
 measures, in equivocation? No; "prudence does not consist in 
 evasion, or in flight, but in courage. He who wishes to walk in 
 the most peaceful parts of life with an serenity must screw him- 
 self up to a resolution, iet him front the object of his worst 
 apprehension, and his stoutness will commonly make his fear 
 groundless." Hereaagain, we see the relationship of prudence 
 
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110 
 
 and self-reliance. With Polonius, we might well say "To thine 
 own self be true; It follows then as night the day, thou oanst 
 not then he false to any man. 
 
 Heroism 
 
 The courage which it takes to make a decision such as the 
 truly prudent man is often called upon to formulate, is well des- 
 cribed by Emerson in his essay on "Heroism." Ihis quality, or 
 state of being, seems, like beauty, to be its own excuse for 
 being; "There is somewhat in great actions, which does not allow 
 us to ge behind them. Heroism feels and newer reasons, and there 
 fore is always right." Emerson seems to have the idea of self- 
 reliance frequently in mind, for notes of it appear frequently in 
 "Heroism". This, however, one might expect; heroism is scarcely 
 possible for the man who shrinks, who does not trust himself or 
 
 his own convictions and thoughts. "Self-trust." Emerson tells 
 us, "is the essence of Heroism. It is the state of the soul at 
 war; and its ultimate objects are the last defiance of falsehood 
 and wrong, and the power to bear all that can be inflicted by 
 evil a^nts." Heroism is always bold, persistent; the hero is ^ 
 kind to his enemies, careless of renown or disrepute, truthful, 
 and just. He is strong in his own strength, and neither needs 
 nor asks shelter. Heroism is good humored and hilarious in its 
 deeds: "It is a height to which common duty can very wSll attain 
 to suffer and to dare with solemnity. But these rare souls get 
 opinion, success , and life, at so cheap a rate, that they will 
 not soothe their enemies by petitions, or the show of sorrow, 
 but wear their own habitual greatness." All men are at times 
 

Ill 
 
 noble and exhibit touches of heroism in their actions; but these 
 fits wherein one acts beyond his own nature are fleeting; it is 
 reserved for him of truly heroic spirit to be consistent and per- 
 sistent; to exhibit always, at all times and in all situations, 
 those characters which make for heroism--to show such a front to 
 all adversity that it scorns all deception, ruse, and convenience. 
 
 The Over-Soul — 
 
 The idea of God permeating all things is found in Emerson’s 
 essay on "The Over-Soul". He says: "....within man is the soul 
 of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which 
 every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE." We 
 are led to see that the Over-soul, that part of us which is above 
 and beyond the outer man, tells us that we are as nothing in the 
 huge cosmogony of the universe. We are led to this discovery by 
 the fact that the "soul in man is not an organ, but animates and 
 exercises all the organs; is not a function, like the power of 
 memory, of calculation, of comparison, — ^but uses these as hands 
 and feet; is not a faculty, but a light; is not the intellect or 
 the will, but the master of the intellect and the will; is the 
 
 r 
 
 vast background of our being, in which they lie, — an immensity not 
 possessed and that can not be possessed." Our real respect for and 
 admiration of man is not directed to his functions, the activities 
 of his organs of mind or body, but to the real man which is a]. 1 
 of these and more than these. We are interested not in what he 
 does, but in what he is. Man, --that concordance and manifestation 
 of nature — is not the animal which thinks, but the physical vessel 
 in which is the spark emanated from the Divine All. 
 
 -1 
 
f! 
 
112 
 
 G i re le s 
 
 The old saying that "there is nothing new under the sun" 
 is carried out by Emerson in "Circles," He tells us that Every 
 ultimate fact is only the first of a new series." Qur life is 
 a perpetuation and repetition. We live as others did; others, 
 in all essentials, shall live as we do. As in his essay on "Hist- 
 ory," here we find the thou^t that man is the real actor, not the 
 circumstances or events in which he has a part. But for all that 
 man does, representing himself, giving us an image of the life 
 of a dweller in ancient Athens, or a precursor of what is to come, 
 he "is not so much a v/orieman in the world as he is a suggestion 
 of that he should he. Men walk as prophecies of the next age." 
 
 Emerson mrns us that a thinker is the most dangerous and vital 
 force God can put on earth. Right thinking rouses and raises, 
 had thinking depresses and lowers. In our circles of life, in 
 which we move and live and do, can come a force, the creation of 
 a thinker, which can give reputation or destroy it. W'hat is nec- 
 essary, then? It is to "make the verge of today the new centre." 
 
 intellect j 
 
 As we have seen that man’s real course in life is deters 
 
 mined hy the soul, or Over-soul, in the sense that the soul, which 
 is the manifestation of the guiding spirit of all, is master of 
 man’s acts and thoughts, so too shall we see that one of the func- 
 tions controlled hy that s oul--namely , the intellect can and 
 
 does have a great deal to do with determining his course of life. 
 What is the hardest task in the world?" the essayist asks; and 
 
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replies. ”To think". He tells us further that we have but little 
 means of keeping the thoughts we think where we want them to lie. 
 This seems to be almost beyond our power, because "we are the 
 prisoners of ideas. They catch us up for moments into their heaven 
 and so fully engage us, that we take no thought for the morrow, 
 gaze like children, without an effort to make them our own. 
 
 Emerson tells us that it is as hard to find the truth in our 
 thoughts by going into the world of open air nature as it is to 
 sit us down in our libraries to ponder: "Yet thoughts are flitting 
 before him" in spite of the difficulty we have in catching them. 
 
 How to use the intellect, then, is our problem. Without the propei 
 understanding of its usage, we are informed, all else avails us 
 not at all: "The difference between persons is not in wisdom, but 
 in art." We are advised, then, to have a constructive intellect. 
 
 A genius is valueless unless he can put on paper or into seme 
 working form, be it machinery or politics, the inspirations he 
 receives. Here is the idea contained so many places in Emerson, 
 the material world is a phenomenon of the Idea, and is not essen- 
 tial from the point of view of the giver of the idea; but often ^ 
 this phenomenal materialization is needful, if we would apprehend 
 the idea. Hmerson gives us the v/hole thing briefly thus: ¥/hen 
 
 the spiritual energy is directed on something outward, then is 
 it a thought." Relationship, here as elsewhere, we see is the 
 ultimate essential, Absolute intellection musu have its efflu- 
 ence in action. The idea must be represented in constructive 
 
 thought . 
 

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 There is not only a use in experience, but a pleasure, 
 Emerson w uld have us understand. It is obvious that we always 
 gain through Experience, that hard, but profitable teacher; but 
 in addition to this is the element of surprise; "Life is a series 
 of surprises, and would not be worth talcing or keeping, if it 
 were not. God delights to isolate us every day, and hide from 
 us the past and the future." The one thing that determines what 
 our lives shall be, since experience is or may be, common to all, 
 is the temperament of the individual. Life is a series of sur- 
 prises, yes; but hear Emerson further: "Life is a train of moods 
 like a string of beads, and as we pass through them, they prove 
 to be many-coloured lenses which paint the world their own hue, 
 and each shows only what lies in its focus." This is ohe very 
 idea contained in the statement that "life is nature seen throu^ 
 the lens of temperament." It is the way in which we look upon 
 our experiences that colors and determines what profit we shall 
 make of them. Eortunate the man whose temperament is not such 
 that it limits his outlook upon life, or prevents him from making 
 the most salutary use of his experiences; and the fate of him to 
 whom temperament is a restraint only is regrettable. Emerson says 
 that "Temperament is the veto or limitation -power in the consti- 
 tution," and we readily see that it is such. The man whose tem- 
 perament is of the sort that he can weigh and ,iudge his exper- 
 iences, may classify them, look upon them through a lens that 
 colors them in bright hues that are unmistakable, and profit there 
 by, He who can not do so has his vision obscured always. 
 
115 
 
 Oharaoter 
 
 What is character^ Emerson tells us that it is "a reserved 
 force which acts directly by presence, and without means. It 
 is conceived of as a certain undemonstrahl e force, a Familiar or 
 Genius, by whose impulses the man is guided, but whose counsels 
 he cannot impart; which is company for him, so that such men are 
 often solitary, or if they chance to be social, do not need 
 society, but can entertain themselves very well alone. "It is 
 this difference in character which to a large extent determines 
 the capabilities of a man. One man succeeds, it seems, by sheer 
 plodding; and another by intuition or sheer intellect. In either 
 case character is at the bottom of the matter. Power of char- 
 acter in a man we can see and evaluate in all activities. It 
 is apparent in politics, in business, in art. One man’s character 
 influences not only his deeds, but those of others. This is a 
 force which determines activities, and may direct results of 
 great moment. When we meet a person of power in character, we 
 are aware of it as v/ell as if we looked upon a man of great phy- 
 si cal strength. It dominates and colors and gives tone to his 
 actions, so that his will expresses itself in all he does. If 
 the character of those in association with him is weak, then that 
 character must give way to the stronger. But after all, it is 
 the effect of and the value in character to the individual which 
 is of most vital importance, rather than What this character can 
 be as a determiner to others; and in this relation Emerson tells 
 us that "No change of circumstances can repair a defect of char- 
 acter*" and further "Character is cdntrality, the impossibility 
 

 V i';i 
 
 
ii6 
 
 Qf b©in^ displ8.06d or oversG't.” Thon , our ch-arixctor is strong, 
 GO rrespond in^ will b© our 'treulinsn't of fh© orobl©rns which com© 
 up, and which it is essential for each to solve; if v/eak, we 
 again se© a corresponding result. The reason for this is plain, 
 Emerson feels, and gives it to us in unmistakable terras. He tells 
 us that: "Character repudiates intellect, yet excites it; and 
 character passes into thought, is published so, and then is ash- 
 amed before new flashes of moral worth." 
 
 Manners 
 
 Certainly one of the things determined by character is 
 represented in our manners. In fact, manners represent character 
 in its entire being, because it is through manners that character 
 is shown. "Manners aim to facilitate life," Emerson would have 
 us know; "to get rid of impediments, and bring the man pure to 
 energise." The manners of the master determine the manners of 
 the slave, because character is conveyed through those manners. 
 
 If a political leader does a certain thing, his constituents or 
 followers are influenced to do likewise. Imitation of manners 
 made the old house servant in the pre-war South of the United 
 States a gentleman, regardless of color. But what happens when 
 master men, men of high character, fully conveyed in manners, 
 meet and associates with one another? Then we see another, and 
 better effect of manners as representative of character; "The 
 association of these masters with each other, and with men in- 
 telligent of their merits, is mutually agreeable and stimulating. 
 The good forms, the happiest expressions of each, are repeated 
 and adopted." 
 

 
 / 
 
117 
 
 Gifts 
 
 "The only gift,” Emerson assures us, ”is a portion of they- 
 self.” The ring, the bit of gold, the ,1eweled bauble, is not a 
 gift as Emerson sees it. It is not representative of its giver, 
 any more than the artificial manners of the actor on the stage are 
 indicative of the character of the actor. It is only when a rf.ft 
 is personal, in the highest sense of the word, that it is a true 
 gift. Y/hat are these personal gifts? Let Emerson answer: ”.... 
 the poet brings his poem; the shephered, his lamb; the farmer, 
 com; the miner, a gem; the sailor, coral and shells; the painter, 
 his picture; the girl, a handkerchief ofher own sewing.” It would 
 seem that Emerson believes that the character of the owner is ex- 
 pressed only in such gifts; that we gain nothing from our friend 
 when he gives us a gook he has not written, a chain he has not 
 fashioned. ”He is a good man who can receive a gift well,” Emer- 
 son avers, and tells us that it is not a good thing, often, to 
 receive gifts, even those of the personal nature; but he adds that 
 ”I fear to breathe any treason against the majesty of love, which 
 is the genius and god of aifts, and to whom we must not affect to 
 prescribe. Let him give kingdoms or flower-leaves indifferently. 
 There are persons from whom we always expect fairy tokens; let us 
 not cease to expect them.” 
 
 Politics 
 
 In solitude or not; lost An our considerations of the Beyond; 
 wherever our thoughts may dwell usually, or wherever our desires 
 direct them, we must always keep an open and attentive eye for 
 politics. Our life in the state of civilization, among other beings 
 

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118 
 
 is directed by politics; and it behooves ns to understand some- 
 what of them. "Politics rest on necessary foundations,” Emerson 
 assures us, "and can not be treated with levity." The state is 
 politics, viewed as one must see it to understand it. Its func- 
 tion is seeing that the people comprising it and giving it being 
 and authority, are cared for. The people are the only interest 
 of the state, viewed in the last analysis. ^11 political con- 
 siderations which involve property are but incidental, for, Ene r- 
 son says, "property will always follow persons.” There is no 
 property without personality. This is true even in the common 
 property such as a park, the natural national resources, ail save 
 the spirit and aspect of Nature itself, which man can never own. 
 Emerson warns, however, that politics must not be too greatly 
 concerned with limiting persons, which are its real interest, be- 
 cause "The boundaries of personal influence it is impossible to 
 fix, as persons are organs of moral or supernatural force;" and 
 in this statement one finds the relationship Emerson carries 
 through in almost everything he writes — ^-^an is but a symbol and 
 a representation of something higher and greater, and this is 
 manifested even in his politics. 
 
 Nominalist and Realist 
 
 Genius, in the opinion of Emerson, or entire lack of it, 
 is of much more frequent occurrence than mediocrity; and the per- 
 fectly balanced man, he believes, does not exist: "Great men, or 
 men of great gifts, you shall easily find, but symmetrical men 
 never." '<^hat is there which is real, and what is only an inven- 
 tion? Emerson says that "'^ur exaggeration of all fine characters 
 
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 ' .7. , ^y > ^ ■ * -3 ; '■’ ’ ?r *• BiiHipiiii -idtumr ^^ — '"'.iv " 
 
119 
 
 arises from the fact that we identify each in turn with the soul. 
 But there are no such men as we fable; no Jesus, nor Pericles, 
 nor Caesar, nor Angelo, nor vVashington, such as we have made. 
 
 We consecrate a great deal of nonsense, because it was allowed 
 by great men. There is none without his foible." "I verily 
 believe, " he humorously adds, "if an angel should come to chaunt 
 the chorus of the moral law, he would eat too much gingerbread, 
 or take liberties with private letters, or do some precious 
 atrocity.” Your nominalist creates these men, your realist speaks 
 of them as Emerson above: "Our native love of reality .loins with 
 this experience to teach us a little reserve, and to dissuade a 
 too sudden surrender to the brilliant qmalities of person;" and 
 further, he sa.ys that "In the famous disoute with the Niaminalist s, 
 the Realists had a good deal of reason." But this is not unalter- 
 able fiat; and Emerson hastens to tell us, in particular, that 
 "After taxing Goethe as a courtier, artificial, unbelieving, 
 worldly, I took up his book of Helena, and found him an Indian of 
 the wilderness, a piece of pure nature like an aople or an oak, 
 large as morning or night, and virtuous as a briar-rose." What 
 then, is needful, if we would escape the evil of inclining too 
 much in either direction.? We have seen that there is no perfectly 
 balanced or symmetrical man; but we can hope to approach a bal- 
 ance. Emerson, in giving a pointer to us in our search for the 
 mid-ground betv/een nominalism and realism, both of which are 
 variants from actuality, says: "I would have no work of no 
 
 speech, or action, or thought, or friend, but the best." And 
 this we can take as being the sense of all that is contained in 
 
the essays of this series: -i^roper relationship, proper selection, 
 is to be our guide. 
 
 Our intellectual home is -f^^ngland, -i^erson frequently re- 
 minds us; it is there the eyes of him imbued with travel-lust 
 (with v/hich iiraerson is not greatly in sympathy) oftenest turn. 
 
 This is, of course, but natural, and what might be expected, since 
 America is after all a colony of lingland. Revolution or no Revol- 
 ution. Perhaos, in I833. when Emerson first visited England, it 
 was more tiuie than it is today that the American traveler is deep- 
 ly interested in Great Britian. '^orld-v/ide travel since that day 
 has taken the man inspired with the fever to see, into all parts 
 of the ^lobe ; and commonly his visit to England is social, rather 
 
 Our Interest than educational. But no matter if the trav- 
 
 In 'En>land 
 
 eler who has been so fortunate as to see all 
 parts of the world, has taken advantage of the opoortunity to go 
 to Asia, Africa, southern Europe or Bouth America before England, 
 he is always asked, when speaking of his travels; "How do you like 
 England? Did you go to Stratford-on-Avon? How does old Johnny 
 Bull at home suit you?" The reason for our interest in England 
 and all that is British, is easily explicable. Vife speak the same 
 language, our political institutions, despite the ermine of George 
 or the raving of the yellow press of America, are greatly alike. 
 The student in America is nurtured on British mental food. He 
 knows Dickens as well as 0. Henry; he is as familiar with Words- 
 worth as with Poe; and who is there among us English -speakers in 
 this colony removed Gaesar-like from the mother, who does not 
 claim Shakespeare as his o\m fiilly as much as any man’s across the 
 
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sea? 
 
 121 
 
 Emerson^ s I 
 Indebtedness 
 
 We are undoubtedly attracted chiefly by the men of England. 
 Unless he be anbassador or charge d'affaires, your traveller cares 
 little or nothing for the politics and political institutions of 
 the country in which he travels; but he is eager to see the people 
 who support tiiose institutions; and Emerson, we may be sure, felt 
 the urge more strongly, than those of us who have not the first- 
 hand interest in literature and in literary men that dominated 
 
 him. He says, speaking of his first visit to 
 England: "Like most young men of that time, I 
 was much indebted to the men of Edinburgh, and of the Edinbur gh 
 
 Review to Jeffrey, Mackintosh, Hallam , and to Scott, Playfair, 
 
 and De Quincey, and my narrow and desultory reading had inspired 
 the wish to see the faces ff three or four writers— Coleridge , 
 Wordsworth, Landor, De Quincey, and the latest and strongest con- 
 tributor to the critical journals, Carlyle; and I suppose if I 
 had sifted the reasons that led me to Europe, when I was ill and 
 was advised to travel, it was mainly the attraction of these per- 
 sons." 
 
 However, Emerson describes in considerable detail various 
 characteristics of the English people, telling us of their modes 
 of life, habits, whims and fancies, in a manner that differs 
 somewhat from his usual essay style, in that he has recourse to a 
 great deal of pure description and exposition. 
 
 After remarks relative to the racial descent of the in- 
 habitants of the British Isles, with which we are not primarily 
 
 Abilities of concerned in this paper, Emerson goes on to tell 
 
 The English” 
 
122 
 
 of the abilities of the people. He finds them possessed of out- 
 standing abilities in the fields of literature, science, politics, 
 art. Each of these abilities comes to them from a different 
 source. Politically and in war they owe their prowess to their 
 Norse ancestry; the Homan invasion is responsible for much of 
 their art, particularly the ecclesiastical, although this influ- 
 ence descended directly through the Hermans, who were part ViKing 
 as well. Hut whatever his abilities, each Britisher considers 
 that he must have some skill; and the keynote of the division 
 "Abilities" in the series of essays on English traits is contained 
 "Excel in at in the following: "When Ihor and his cot- 
 
 • _ ft 
 
 pan ions arrived at Utgard, he is told that 
 
 Least~Qne THing " 
 
 »nobody is permitted to remain here, unless he understand some art, 
 and excel in it all other men.” '^he same question is still put 
 to the posterity of ^hor. A nation of labourers, every man is 
 trained to some one art or detail, and aims at perfection in that; 
 not content unless he has something in which he thinks he sur- 
 passes all other men. He would rather not do anything at all, 
 than not do it well. I suppose no people have such thoroughness; — 
 from the highest to the lowest, every man meaning to be master 
 
 of his art. 
 
 In speaking of the manners of the English, Ei^erson says that 
 he finds "the Englishman to be him of all men who stands firmest 
 in his shoes," and adds the attitude of the Britisher toward 
 others; "They require you to dare to he of your ovm opinion, and 
 they hate the praotieal cowards who cannot in affairs answer 
 directly yes or no." Perhaps the most significant description of 
 
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 the iSnglish given in the chapter "Marmera" is the following. 
 
 "They are positive, methodioal, cleanly and formal, lovin g rout Ine , 
 
 and conventional ways; loving truth and re- 
 ligion, to be sure, but inexorable on points 
 of form.” In this part of our paper on Emerson, no effort is made 
 to analyze, as has been done previously, because the entire group 
 of his essays on "English Traits” stand out by themselves, separ- 
 ate and distinct in tone and manner fromhis customary essay, such 
 as we have heretofore considered; and so a quotation or two, 
 illustrative of the central idea in each of these chapters, I 
 deem about all that is necessary in order to depict understandably 
 the way in which Emerson criticised Tingland and the English. 
 
 He says that "The Teutonic tribes have a national single- 
 ness of heart, which contrasts with the Latin races. The German 
 " National name has a proverbial significance of sincerity 
 
 and honest meaning. The arts hear testimonyyto 
 it. The faces of clergy and laity in old 
 sculptures and illuminated missals are charged with earnest be- 
 lief." These same traits characterise the Englishman of today, 
 and the following quotation Emerson feels may apply also: "The 
 Northman Guttorm said to Eing Olaf , ’it is royal work to fulfill 
 royal words.” Probity, then, is an outstanding characteristic 
 
 of the English. 
 
 A brief but pithy description of the character of the in- 
 habitants of the British-lsles is given in the eighth division 
 of "English Traits, where Emerson reports that the English race 
 are said to be morose, and adds: ”I do not know that they have 
 

 
 
 
 
 
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124 
 
 sadder brows than their neighbors of northern climates. They are 
 sad by comparison with the singing and dancing nations; not sadder 
 but slow and staid, as finding their joys at home. Theyl^: too, 
 believe that where there is no enjoyment of life, there can be 
 no vigour and heart in speech or thou^t: that your merry heart 
 goes all the way, your sad one tires in a mile." 
 
 Another characteristic of the British is given in the 
 chapter headed "Cockayne," where Bmerson tells us that "The Eng- 
 The individual lish are a nation of humorists. Individual 
 
 ^ is pushed to the uttermost bound com- 
 
 patible with public order. Property is so perfect, that it seems 
 the craft of that race, and not to exist elsewhere. The King 
 cannot step on an acre which the peasant refuses to sell. A test 
 ator endows a dog or a rookery, and Europe cannot interfere with 
 his absurdity. Every individual has his particular v/ay of living 
 which he pushes to folly, and the decided sympathy of his com- 
 patriots is engaged to back up ^^r. Crump’s whim by statutes, and 
 chancellors, and horse -guards ." We might be led by this to thinx 
 that the English are so individualistic and egoistic that their 
 own undoing would be wrought by their excess of self-assertion 
 and self-reliance; but Emerson tells us that "nature makes noth- 
 ing in vain, and this little superfluity of self-regard in the 
 English brain, is one of the se^irets of their power and history. 
 Por it sets every man on being and doing what he really is and 
 can." In other words, it is a further evidence of and help to- 
 wards the understanding of that truth and honor which is so 
 characteristic of the -English. 
 

12 5 
 
 speaking of the material characteristics of England, Emer- 
 son tells us that "there is no country in which so absolute a 
 
 homage is paid to wealth.” This, at this 
 late day, sounds a trifle strange to an 
 
 "The Homage 
 
 t'o' ^.Tealth" 
 
 American who is accustomed to hearing his country styled the 
 "Land of the i^ollar Mark," and a land whose monogramraed initials 
 are supposed to represent the sign of coinage; a country where 
 every person is supposed, or alleged, to be a money-grubber; yet 
 Emerson says that "In America, there is a touch of shame when a 
 man exhibits the evidences of large property, as if, after all, 
 it needed apology. But the Englishman has pure pride in his 
 wealth, and esteems it a final certificate. A coarse logic rules 
 throughout all English souls;--if you have merit, can you not 
 show it by your Rood clothes, and coach, and horses? How can 
 a man be a gentleman without a pipe of wine? 
 
 That this respect for money and the tangible evidence of 
 possession of it harmonizes well with the attitude of the people 
 toward their aristocracy is well shown in this passage, from the 
 chapter on "Aristocracy." "The frame of society is aristocratic, 
 the taste of the people is loyal, ^he estates, names and manners 
 of the nobles flatter the fancy of the people and conciliate the 
 necessary support." This would be a veyy bad thing were it not 
 for one fact, which Emerson hastens to give us in the following. 
 "The Norwegian pirate got what he could, and held it for his 
 eldest son. The Norman noble, who was the Norwegian pirate bao- 
 tised, did likewise. There was this advantage of western over 
 oriental nobility, that this was recruited from below. English 
 
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Who has courage and 
 
 ” The Logical 
 En gLi sh" 
 
 history is aristocracy with the doors open, 
 faculty, let him come in." 
 
 "The logical iinglish," Emerson avers, "train a scholar as 
 they train an engineer. Oxford is a Greek 
 factory, as Wilton mills weave carpet, and 
 Sheffield grinds steel. They know the use of a tutor^, as they 
 know the use of a horse; and they draw the greatest amount of 
 benefit out of both." It is this educational system in England 
 which produces the culture which is a notable thing there; and 
 which we, in a measure, lac^i, as evidenced in the following, where- 
 in Emerson speaks of the young English collegians: "Their affec- 
 tionate and gregarious ways reminded me at once of the habits of 
 our Cambridge men, though I imputed to these English an advantage 
 
 in their secure and polished manners." 
 
 In close harmony with the educational system of England is 
 the religion of the country, for the clergy is educated to a man. 
 Emerson tells us that we can not explain any people at the present 
 day by their religion, but says that"the clergy forea thousand 
 
 years have been the scholars of the nation 
 and adds that "The national temperament 
 
 Religion and the 
 fSfTohar Stability 
 
 deeply en.ioys the unbrokeh order and tradition of its church; the 
 liturgy, ceremony, architecture; the sober grace, the good company, 
 the connection with the throne, and with history, which adorn it. 
 And whilst it endears itself thus to men of more taste than 
 activity, the stability of the English nation is passionately en- 
 listed to its support, from its inextricable connection with the 
 cause of public order, with politics and with the funds." 
 
J . • i.'J li. “t 
 
Comnionsense of 
 The KngiisK 
 
 In view of the charaoteristics already pointed out, we are 
 not surprised when Emerson tells us, speaking in his chapter on 
 "Literature," that "A strong common sense, which it is not easy 
 to unseat or disturb, marks the English mind for a thousand years: 
 
 a rude strength newly applied to thought, 
 as of sailors and soldiers who had lately 
 learnt to read, ^hey have no fancy, and never are surprised into 
 a covert or witty word, such as oleased the Athenians and Italians, 
 and was convertible into a fable not long after; but they delight 
 in strong earthy expression, not mistakeable, coarsely true to 
 the human body, and, though spoken among princes, equally fit and 
 welcome to the mob." a similar characteristic imbues their 
 poetry; "The poet nimbly recovers himself from every sally of the 
 imagination. The English muse loves the farmyard, the lane, and 
 market. She says, with X)© Stael, ’I tramp in the mire with wooden 
 shoes, whenever they would force me into the clouds,’ E©r, the 
 Englishman has accurate perceptions; takes hold of things by the 
 right end, and there is no slipperiness in his grasp." Emerson 
 goes on, in his description of the literary tastes and abilities 
 of the English, to say that the Englishman, "When he is intell- 
 ectual, and a poet or philosopher, he carries the same hard truth 
 and the same keen machinery into the mental sphere. His mind 
 must stand on a fact." When an English writer desires to write 
 as his native instincts direct, he uses "the frame, or skeleton, 
 of Saxon words, and, when elevation or ornament is sought, to 
 interweave Homan: but sparingly; nor is a sentence maae of Roman 
 without loss of strength." 
 
 words alone 
 
fciifi? i' '^ m''¥*' 
 
 ■ "* 
 
 J?T. 
 
 
 
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128 
 
 The Papers and 
 Politick 
 
 It is advisable to speak in this connection of "The Times, 
 the greatest of newspapers published in Eng- 
 land, and, in Emerson’s day, the greatest of 
 
 all newspapers. He says of the ^^nglish newspaper that it "stands 
 in antagonism with the feudal institutions, and it is all the 
 more beneficent succour against the secretive tendencies of a 
 monarchy. The celebrated i>ori' Somers 'knew of no good law pro- 
 posed and passed in his time, to which the public papers had not 
 directed his attention.’ There is no corner and no night. A 
 relentless inquisition drags every secret to the day, turns the 
 glai« of this solar microscope on every malfaisance , so as to 
 make the public a more terrible spy than any foreigner; and no 
 weakness can be taken advantc^ge of by an enemy, since the whole 
 people are already forewarned." Just how great a part "The Times 
 plays in the life of the Englishman is accurately indicated by 
 Emerson's statement as follows: "Here in England every day a chapter 
 Independence of of Genesis, and a leader in the 
 
 The people are attracted to the paper because 
 
 The iaper^ 
 
 it is independent and fearless; for this paper "attacks a Duke as 
 readily as a policeman, and with the most provoking airs of con- 
 descension." The people never know what to expect from the paper; 
 "they do not know, when they take it up, what their paper is going 
 to say; but, above all, they like it "for the nationality and con- 
 fidence of its tone." 
 
 Emerson found in England what he thought the best among all 
 institutions; "a cultivated person, fitly surrounded by a happy 
 home, 'with honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,' -^H this 
 
^ - 
 
129 
 
 leads him to make the following boldly axiomatic statement, in 
 the chapter "Result:" "England is the best of actual nations." 
 
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1^0 
 
 Bibliography 
 
 Emerson’s complete works, (Including the Journals) 
 
 Alcott, A. B. - "Estimate of the Character and Genius of 
 
 Emerson 
 
 Coo)2e, G, V/, - "Emerson - His Life, Writings, and Philosophy." 
 Mead, E, D, - The Influence of Emerson.