[Illustration]

 THE LAST HARVEST

 BY

 JOHN BURROUGHS

 BOSTON AND NEW YORK

 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

 The Riverside Press Cambridge

 1922

 COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

 * * * * *

 _But who is he with modest looks And clad in homely russet brown? He murmurs near the running brooks A music sweeter than their own. 

 He is retired as noontide dew, Or fountain in a noon-day grove; And you must love him, ere to you He will seem worthy of your love. 

 The outward shows of sky and earth, Of hill and valley, he has viewed; And impulses of deeper birth Have come to him in solitude. 

 In common things that round us lie Some random truths he can impart-- The harvest of a quiet eye That broods and sleeps on his own heart. _

WORDSWORTH

PREFACE

Most of the papers garnered here were written after fourscoreyears--after the heat and urge of the day--and are the fruit of a longlife of observation and meditation. 

The author's abiding interest in Emerson is shown in his close andeager study of the Journals during these later years. He hungered foreverything that concerned the Concord Sage, who had been one of themost potent influences in his life. Although he could discern flies inthe Emersonian amber, he could not brook slight or indifference towardEmerson in the youth of to-day. Whatever flaws he himself detected, hewell knew that Emerson would always rest secure on the pedestal wherelong ago he placed him. Likewise with Thoreau: If shortcomings were tobe pointed out in this favorite, he wished to be the one to do it. Andso, before taking Thoreau to task for certain inaccuracies, he takesLowell to task for criticizing Thoreau. He then proceeds, not withoutevident satisfaction, to call attention to Thoreau's "slips" as anobserver and reporter of nature; yet in no carping spirit, but, as hehimself has said: "Not that I love Thoreau less, but that I love truthmore. "

The "Short Studies in Contrasts, " the "Day by Day" notes, "Gleanings, " and the "Sundown Papers" which comprise the latter partof this, the last, posthumous volume by John Burroughs, were writtenduring the closing months of his life. Contrary to his custom, hewrote these usually in the evening, or, less frequently, in the earlymorning hours, when, homesick and far from well, with the ceaselesspounding of the Pacific in his ears, and though incapable of thesustained attention necessary for his best work, he was neverthelessimpelled by an unwonted mental activity to seek expression. 

If the reader misses here some of the charm and power of his usualwriting, still may he welcome this glimpse into what John Burroughswas doing and thinking during those last weeks before the illness camewhich forced him to lay aside his pen. 

CLARA BARRUS

WOODCHUCK LODGE

ROXBURY-IN-THE-CATSKILLS

CONTENTS

I. EMERSON AND HIS JOURNALS

II. FLIES IN AMBER

III. ANOTHER WORD ON THOREAU

IV. A CRITICAL GLANCE INTO DARWIN

V. WHAT MAKES A POEM?

VI. SHORT STUDIES IN CONTRASTS:

 The Transient and the Permanent

 Positive and Negative

 Palm and Fist

 Praise and Flattery

 Genius and Talent

 Invention and Discovery

 Town and Country

VII. DAY BY DAY

VIII. GLEANINGS

IX. SUNDOWN PAPERS:

 Re-reading Bergson

 Revisions

 Bergson and Telepathy

 Meteoric Men and Planetary Men

 The Daily Papers

 The Alphabet

 The Reds of Literature

 The Evolution of Evolution

 Following One's Bent

 Notes on the Psychology of Old Age

 Facing the Mystery

 INDEX

 The frontispiece portrait is from a photograph by Miss Mabel Watson taken at Pasadena, California, shortly before Mr. Burroughs's death. 

THE LAST HARVEST

I

EMERSON AND HIS JOURNALS

I

Emerson's fame as a writer and thinker was firmly established duringhis lifetime by the books he gave to the world. His Journals, published over a quarter of a century after his death, nearly or quitedouble the bulk of his writing, and while they do not rank in literaryworth with his earlier works, they yet throw much light upon his lifeand character and it is a pleasure to me, in these dark andtroublesome times, [1] and near the sun-down of my life, to go overthem and point out in some detail their value and significance. 

[Footnote 1: Written during the World War. --C. B. ]

Emerson was such an important figure in our literary history, and inthe moral and religious development of our people, that attentioncannot be directed to him too often. He could be entirelyreconstructed from the unpublished matter which he left. Moreover, just to come in contact with him in times like ours is stimulating andrefreshing. The younger generation will find that he can do them goodif they will pause long enough in their mad skirting over the surfaceof things to study him. 

For my own part, a lover of Emerson from early manhood, I come back tohim in my old age with a sad but genuine interest. I do not hope tofind the Emerson of my youth--the man of daring and inspiringaffirmation, the great solvent of a world of encrusted forms andtraditions, which is so welcome to a young man--because I am no longera young man. Emerson is the spokesman and prophet of youth and of aformative, idealistic age. His is a voice from the heights which areever bathed in the sunshine of the spirit. I find that something onegets from Emerson in early life does not leave him when he grows old. It is a habit of mind, a test of values, a strengthening of one'sfaith in the essential soundness and goodness of creation. He helps tomake you feel at home in nature, and in your own land and generation. He permanently exalts your idea of the mission of the poet, of thespiritual value of the external world, of the universality of themoral law, and of our kinship with the whole of nature. 

There is never any despondency or infirmity of faith in Emerson. He isalways hopeful and courageous, and is an antidote to the pessimism andmaterialism which existing times tend to foster. Open anywhere in theJournals or in the Essays and we find the manly and heroic note. Heis an unconquerable optimist, and says boldly, "Nothing but God canroot out God, " and he thinks that in time our culture will absorb thehells also. He counts "the dear old Devil" among the good things whichthe dear old world holds for him. He saw so clearly how good comes outof evil and is in the end always triumphant. Were he living in ourday, he would doubtless find something helpful and encouraging to sayabout the terrific outburst of scientific barbarism in Europe. 

It is always stimulating to hear a man ask such a question as this, even though he essay no answer to it: "Is the world (according to theold doubt) to be criticized otherwise than as the best possible in theexisting system, and the population of the world the best that soils, climate, and animals permit?"

I note that in 1837 Emerson wrote this about the Germans; "I do not drawfrom them great influence. The heroic, the holy, I lack. They arecontemptuous. They fail in sympathy with humanity. The voice of naturethey bring me to hear is not divine, but ghastly, hard, and ironical. They do not illuminate me: they do not edify me. " Is not this the Germanof to-day? If Emerson were with us now he would see, as we all see, howthe age of idealism and spiritual power in Germany that gave the worldthe great composers and the great poets and philosophers--Bach, Beethoven, Wagner, Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, Kant, Hegel, andothers--has passed and been succeeded by the hard, cruel, and sterileage of materialism, and the domination of an aggressive andconscienceless military spirit. Emerson was the poet and prophet ofman's moral nature, and it is this nature--our finest and highest humansensibilities and aspirations toward justice and truth--that has been soraided and trampled upon by the chief malefactor and world outlaw in thepresent war. 

II

Men who write Journals are usually men of certain marked traits--theyare idealists, they love solitude rather than society, they areself-conscious, and they love to write. At least this seems to be trueof the men of the past century who left Journals of permanent literaryworth--Amiel, Emerson, and Thoreau. Amiel's Journal has more thecharacter of a diary than has Emerson's or Thoreau's, though it isalso a record of thoughts as well as of days. Emerson left moreunprinted matter than he chose to publish during his lifetime. 

The Journals of Emerson and Thoreau are largely made up of left-oversfrom their published works, and hence as literary material, whencompared with their other volumes, are of secondary importance. Youcould not make another "Walden" out of Thoreau's Journals, nor buildup another chapter on "Self-Reliance, " or on "Character, " or on the"Over-Soul, " from Emerson's, though there are fragments here and therein both that are on a level with their best work. 

Emerson records in 1835 that his brother Charles wondered that he didnot become sick at the stomach over his poor Journal: "Yet is obduratehabit callous even to contempt. I must scribble on. . . . " Charlesevidently was not a born scribbler like his brother. He was clearlymore fond of real life and of the society of his fellows. He was anorator and could not do himself justice with the pen. Men who writeJournals, as I have said, are usually men of solitary habits, andtheir Journal largely takes the place of social converse. Amiel, Emerson, and Thoreau were lonely souls, lacking in social gifts, andseeking relief in the society of their own thoughts. Such men go totheir Journals as other men go to their clubs. They love to be alonewith themselves, and dread to be benumbed or drained of their mentalforce by uncongenial persons. To such a man his Journal becomes hisduplicate self and he says to it what he could not say to his nearestfriend. It becomes both an altar and a confessional. Especially isthis true of deeply religious souls such as the men I have named. Theycommune, through their Journals, with the demons that attend them. Amiel begins his Journal with the sentence, "There is but one thingneedful--to possess God, " and Emerson's Journal in its mostcharacteristic pages is always a search after God, or the highesttruth. 

"After a day of humiliation and stripes, " he writes, "if I can writeit down, I am straightway relieved and can sleep well. After a day ofjoy, the beating heart is calmed again by the diary. If grace is givenme by all angels and I pray, if then I can catch one ejaculation ofhumility or hope and set it down in syllables, devotion is at an end. ""I write my journal, I deliver my lecture with joy, " but "at the nameof society all my repulsions play, all my quills rise and sharpen. "

He clearly had no genius for social intercourse. At the age of thirtyhe said he had "no skill to live with men; that is, such men as theworld is made of; and such as I delight in I seldom find. " Again hesays, aged thirty-two, "I study the art of solitude; I yield me asgracefully as I can to destiny, " and adds that it is "from eternity asettled thing" that he and society shall be "nothing to each other. "He takes to his Journal instead. It is his house of refuge. 

Yet he constantly laments how isolated he is, mainly by reason of thepoverty of his nature, his want of social talent, of animal heat, andof sympathy with the commonplace and the humdrum. "I have no animalspirits, therefore when surprised by company and kept in a chair formany hours, my heart sinks, my brow is clouded, and I think I will runfor Acton woods and live with the squirrels henceforth. " But he doesnot run away; he often takes it out in hoeing in his garden: "My goodhoe as it bites the ground revenges my wrongs, and I have less lust tobite my enemies. " "In smoothing the rough hillocks I smooth my temper. In a short time I can hear the bobolinks sing and see the blesseddeluge of light and color that rolls around me. " Somewhere he has saidthat the writer should not dig, and yet again and again we find himresorting to hoe or spade to help him sleep, as well as to smooth histemper: "Yesterday afternoon, I stirred the earth about my shrubs andtrees and quarrelled with the pipergrass, and now I have slept, and nolonger am morose nor feel twitchings in the muscles of my face when avisitor is by. " We welcome these and many another bit ofself-analysis: "I was born with a seeing eye and not a helping hand. Ican only comfort my friends by thought, and not by love or aid. " "Iwas made a hermit and am content with my lot. I pluck golden fruitfrom rare meetings with wise men. " Margaret Fuller told him he seemedalways on stilts: "It is even so. Most of the persons whom I see in myown house I see across a gulf. I cannot go to them nor they come tome. Nothing can exceed the frigidity and labor of my speech withsuch. You might turn a yoke of oxen between every pair of words; andthe behavior is as awkward and proud. "

 * * * * *

"I would have my book read as I have read my favorite books, not withexplosion and astonishment, a marvel and a rocket, but a friendly andagreeable influence stealing like a scent of a flower, or the sight ofa new landscape on a traveller. I neither wish to be hated and defiedby such as I startle, nor to be kissed and hugged by the young whosethoughts I stimulate. "

Here Emerson did center in himself and never apologized. His gospel ofself-reliance came natural to him. He was emphatically self, without atrace of selfishness. He went abroad to study himself more than otherpeople--to note the effect of Europe on himself. He says, "I believeit's sound philosophy that wherever we go, whatever we do, self is thesole object we study and learn. Montaigne said himself was all heknew. Myself is much more than I know, and yet I know nothing else. "In Paris he wrote to his brother William, "A lecture at the Sorbonneis far less useful to me than a lecture that I write myself"; and asfor the literary society in Paris, though he thought longingly of it, yet he said, "Probably in years it would avail me nothing. "

The Journals are mainly a record of his thoughts and not of his days, except so far as the days brought him ideas. Here and there thepersonal element creeps in--some journey, some bit of experience, somevisitor, or walks with Channing, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Jones Very, andothers; some lecturing experience, his class meetings, his travelsabroad and chance meetings with distinguished men. But all the morepurely personal element makes up but a small portion of the ten thickvolumes of his Journal. Most readers, I fancy, will wish that theproportion of these things were greater. We all have thoughts andspeculations of our own, but we can never hear too much about a man'sreal life. 

Emerson stands apart from the other poets and essayists of NewEngland, and of English literature generally, as of another order. Heis a reversion to an earlier type, the type of the bard, the skald, the poet-seer. He is the poet and prophet of the moral ideal. His mainsignificance is religious, though nothing could be farther from himthan creeds and doctrines, and the whole ecclesiastical formalism. There is an atmosphere of sanctity about him that we do not feel aboutany other poet and essayist of his time. His poems are the fruit ofOriental mysticism and bardic fervor grafted upon the shrewd, parsimonious, New England puritanic stock. The stress and wild, uncertain melody of his poetry is like that of the wind-harp. Nowriting surpasses his in the extent to which it takes hold of theconcrete, the real, the familiar, and none surpasses his in itselusive, mystical suggestiveness, and its cryptic character. It isYankee wit and shrewdness on one side, and Oriental devoutness, pantheism, and symbolism on the other. Its cheerful and sunny light ofthe common day enhances instead of obscures the light that falls fromthe highest heaven of the spirit. Saadi or Hafiz or Omar might havefathered him, but only a New England mother could have borne him. Probably more than half his poetry escapes the average reader; hislonger poems, like "Initial, Dæmonic, and Celestial Love, " "Monadnoc, ""Merlin, " "The Sphinx, " "The World-Soul, " set the mind groping for theinvisible rays of the spectrum of human thought and knowledge, butmany of the shorter poems, such as "The Problem, " "Each and All, ""Sea-Shore, " "The Snow-Storm, " "Musketaquid, " "Days, " "Song ofNature, " "My Garden, " "Boston Hymn, " "Concord Hymn, " and others, areamong the most precious things in our literature. 

As Emerson was a bard among poets, a seer among philosophers, aprophet among essayists, an oracle among ethical teachers, so, as Ihave said, was he a solitary among men. He walked alone. He somewhererefers to his "porcupine impossibility of contact with men. " His verythoughts are not social among themselves, they separate. Each standsalone; often they hardly have a bowing acquaintance; over and overtheir juxtaposition is mechanical and not vital. The redeeming featureis that they can afford to stand alone, like shafts of marble orgranite. 

The force and worth of his page is not in its logical texture, but inthe beauty and truth of its isolated sentences and paragraphs. Thereis little inductive or deductive reasoning in his books, but a seriesof affirmations whose premises and logical connection the reader doesnot always see. 

He records that his hearers found his lectures fine and poetical but alittle puzzling. "One thought them as good as a kaleidoscope. " Thesolid men of business said that they did not understand them but theirdaughters did. 

The lecture committee in Illinois in 1856 told him that the peoplewanted a hearty laugh. "The stout Illinoian, " not finding the laugh, "after a short trial walks out of the hall. " I think even his bestEastern audiences were always a good deal puzzled. The lecturer nevertried to meet them halfway. He says himself of one of his lectures, "Ifound when I had finished my new lecture that it was a very goodhouse, only the architect had unfortunately omitted the stairs. " Theabsence of the stairs in his house--of an easy entrance into theheart of the subject, and of a few consecutive and leadingideas--will, in a measure, account for the bewilderment of hishearers. When I heard Emerson in 1871 before audiences in Baltimoreand Washington, I could see and feel this uncertainty and bewildermentin his auditors. 

His lectures could not be briefly summarized. They had no centralthought. You could give a sample sentence, but not the one sentencethat commanded all the others. Whatever he called it, his theme, as hehimself confesses, was always fundamentally the same: "In all mylectures I have taught one doctrine, namely, the infinitude of theprivate man. This the people accept readily enough and even with loudcommendations as long as I call the lecture Art or Politics, orLiterature, or the Household, but the moment I call it Religion theyare shocked, though it be only the application of the same truth whichthey receive everywhere else to a new class of facts. "

Emerson's supreme test of a man, after all other points had beenconsidered, was the religious test: Was he truly religious? Was hispole star the moral law? Was the sense of the Infinite ever with him?But few contemporary authors met his requirements in this respect. After his first visit abroad, when he saw Carlyle, Landor, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and others, he said they were all second-or third-rate menbecause of their want of the religious sense. They all lookedbackward to a religion of other ages, and had no faith in a presentrevelation. 

His conception of the divine will as _the eternal tendency to the goodof the whole, active in every atom, every moment_, is one of thethoughts in which religion and science meet and join hands. 

III

In Emerson's Journal one sees the Emersonian worlds in theirmaking--the essays, the addresses, the poems. Here are the nebulæ andstar-dust out of which most of them came, or in which their suggestionlies. Now and then there is quite as good stuff as is found in hisprinted volumes, pages and paragraphs from the same high heaven ofæsthetic emotion. The poetic fragments and wholes are less promising, I think, than the prose; they are evidently more experimental, andshow the 'prentice hand more. 

The themes around which his mind revolved all his life--nature, God, the soul--and their endless variations and implications, recur againand again in each of the ten printed volumes of the Journals. He hasnew thoughts on Character, Self-Reliance, Heroism, Manners, Experience, Nature, Immortality, and scores of other related subjectsevery day, and he presents them in new connections and with newimages. His mind had marked centrality, and fundamental problems werealways near at hand with him. He could not get away from them. Herenounced the pulpit and the creeds, not because religion meant lessto him, but because it meant more. The religious sentiment, thefeeling of the Infinite, was as the sky over his head, and the earthunder his feet. 

The whole stream of Emerson's mental life apparently flowed throughhis Journals. They were the repository of all his thoughts, all hisspeculations, all his mental and spiritual experiences. What a_mélange_ they are! Wise sayings from his wide reading, fromintercourse with men, private and public, sayings from his farmerneighbors, anecdotes, accounts of his travels, or his walks, solitaryor in the company of Channing, Hawthorne, or Thoreau, his gropingsafter spiritual truths, and a hundred other things, are always markedby what he says that Macaulay did not possess--elevation of mind--andan abiding love for the real values in life and letters. 

Here is the prose origin of "Days": "The days come and go like muffledand veiled figures sent from a distant friendly party, but they saynothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them assilently away. " In this brief May entry we probably see the inceptionof the "Humble-Bee" poem: "Yesterday in the woods I followed the finehumble bee with rhymes and fancies free. "

Now and then we come upon the germ of other poems in his prose. Hereis a hint of "Each and All" in a page written at the age ofthirty-one: "The shepherd or the beggar in his red cloak little knowswhat a charm he gives to the wide landscape that charms you on themountain-top and whereof he makes the most agreeable feature, and I nomore the part my individuality plays in the All. " The poem, his readerwill remember, begins in this wise:

 "Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown Of thee from the hilltop looking down. "

In a prose sentence written in 1835 he says: "Nothing is beautifulalone. Nothing but is beautiful in the whole. " In the poem abovereferred to this becomes:

 "All are needed by each one; Nothing is fair or good alone. "

In 1856 we find the first stanza of his 'beautiful "Two Rivers, "written in prose form: "Thy voice is sweet, Musketaquid; repeats themusic of the rain; but sweeter rivers silent flit through thee asthose through Concord plain. " The substance of the next four stanzasis in prose form also: "Thou art shut in thy banks; but the stream Ilove, flows in thy water, and flows through rocks and through the air, and through darkness, and through men, and women. I hear and see theinundation and eternal spending of the stream, in winter and insummer, in men and animals, in passion and thought. Happy are they whocan hear it"; and so on. In the poem these sentences become:

 "Thou in thy narrow banks are pent: The stream I love unbounded goes Through flood and sea and firmament; Through light, through life, it forward flows. 

 "I see the inundation sweet, I hear the spending of the stream Through years, through men, through Nature fleet, Through love and thought, through power and dream. "

It is evident that Emerson was a severe critic of his own work. Heknew when he had struck fire, and he knew when he had failed. He wasas exacting with himself as with others. His conception of thecharacter and function of the poet was so high that he found thegreatest poets wanting. The poet is one of his three or fourever-recurring themes. He is the divine man. He is bard and prophet, seer and savior. He is the acme of human attainment. Verse devoid ofinsight into the method of nature, and devoid of religious emotion, was to him but as sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. He called Poe"the jingle man" because he was a mere conjurer with words. Theintellectual content of Poe's works _was_ negligible. He was a wizardwith words and measures, but a pauper in ideas. He did not add to ourknowledge, he did not add to our love of anything in nature or inlife, he did not contribute to our contentment in the world--thebread of life was not in him. What was in him was mastery over thearchitectonics of verse. Emerson saw little in Shelley for the samereason, but much in Herbert and Donne. Religion, in his sense of theterm, --the deep sea into which the streams of all human thoughtempty, --was his final test of any man. Unless there was somethingfundamental about him, something that savored of the primordial deepof the universal spirit, he remained unmoved. The elemental azure ofthe great bodies of water is suggestive of the tone and hue Emersondemanded in great poetry. He found but little of it in the men of histime: practically none in the contemporary poets of New England. Itwas probably something of this pristine quality that arrestedEmerson's attention in Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass. " He saw in it"the Appalachian enlargement of outline and treatment for service toAmerican literature. "

Emerson said of himself: "I am a natural reader, and only a writer inthe absence of natural writers. In a true time I should never havewritten. " We must set this statement down to one of those fits ofdissatisfaction with himself, those negative moods that often cameupon him. What he meant by a true time is very obscure. In an earlierage he would doubtless have remained a preacher, like his father andgrandfather, but coming under the influence of Goethe, Carlyle, andWordsworth, and other liberating influences of the nineteenth century, he was bound to be a writer. When he was but twenty-one he speaks ofhis immoderate fondness for writing. Writing was the passion of hislife, his supreme joy, and he went through the world with the writer'seye and ear and hand always on duty. And his contribution to theliterature of man's higher moral and æsthetic nature is one of themost valuable of the age in which he lived. 

IV

Apart from the account of his travels and other personal experiences, the Journals are mainly made up of discussions of upwards of fiftysubjects of general and fundamental interest, ranging from art to war, and looked at from many and diverse points of view. Of these subjectsthree are dominant, recurring again and again in each volume. Theseare nature, literature, and religion. Emerson's main interestscentered in these themes. Using these terms in their broadest sense, this is true, I think, of all his published books. Emerson was anidealist, first, last, and all the time, and he was a literary artist, or aimed to be, first, last, and all the time, and in the same measureand to the same extent was he a devout religious soul, using the termreligion as he sometimes uses it, as a feeling of the Infinite. 

There are one hundred and seventy-six paragraphs, long and short, given to literature and art, and one hundred and sixty given toreligious subjects, and over thirty given to nature. It is interestingto note that he devotes more paragraphs to woman than to man; and moreto society than to solitude, though only to express his dislike of theformer and his love for the latter. There are more thoughts aboutscience than about metaphysics, more about war than about love, moreabout poetry than about philosophy, more on beauty than on knowledge, more on walking than on books. There are three times as manyparagraphs on nature (thirty-three) as on the Bible, all of which issignificant of his attitude of mind. 

Emerson was a preacher without a creed, a scholar devoted tosuper-literary ends, an essayist occupied with thoughts of God, thesoul, nature, the moral law--always the literary artist looking forthe right word, the right image, but always bending his art to theservice of religious thought. He was one of the most religious soulsof his country and time, or of any country and time, yet was disownedby all the sects and churches of his time. He made religion toopervasive, and too inclusive to suit them; the stream at once got outof its banks and inundated all their old landmarks. In the lastanalysis of his thought, his ultimate theme was God, and yet he neverallowed himself to attempt any definite statement about God--refusingalways to discuss God in terms of human personality. When Emersonwrote "Representative Men" he felt that Jesus was the RepresentativeMan whom he ought to sketch, "but the task required greatgifts--steadiest insight and perfect temper; else the consciousness ofwant of sympathy in the audience would make one petulant and sore inspite of himself. "

There are few great men in history or philosophy or literature orpoetry or divinity whose names do not appear more or less frequentlyin the Journals. For instance, in the Journal of 1864 the names orworks of one hundred and seventeen men appear, ranging from Zeno toJones Very. And this is a fair average. Of course the names of hisfriends and contemporaries appear the most frequently. The name thatrecurs the most often is that of his friend and neighbor Thoreau. There are ninety-seven paragraphs in which the Hermit of Walden is themain or the secondary figure. He discusses him and criticizes him, andquotes from him, always showing an abiding interest in, and affectionfor, him. Thoreau was in so many ways so characteristically Emersonianthat one wonders what influence it was in the place or time that gavethem both, with their disparity of ages, so nearly the same stamp. Emerson is by far the more imposing figure, the broader, the wiser, the more tolerant, the more representative; he stood four-square tothe world in a sense that Thoreau did not. Thoreau presented a prettythin edge to the world. If he stood broadside to anything, it was tonature. He was undoubtedly deeply and permanently influenced byEmerson both in his mental habits and in his manner of life, yet themain part of him was original and unadulterated Thoreau. His literarystyle is in many respects better than that of Emerson; its logicaltexture is better; it has more continuity, more evolution, it is moreflexible and adaptive; it is the medium of a lesser mind, but of amind more thoroughly imbued with the influence of the classicalstandards of modern literature. I believe "Walden" will last as longas anything Emerson has written, if not longer. It is the fruit of asweeter solitude and detachment from the world than Emerson ever knew, a private view of nature, and has a fireside and campside quality thatessays fashioned for the lecture platform do not have. Emerson's pagesare more like mosaics, richly inlaid with gems of thought and poetryand philosophy, while Thoreau's are more like a closely woven, many-colored textile. 

Thoreau's "Maine Woods" I look upon as one of the best books of thekind in English literature. It has just the right tone and quality, like Dana's "Two Years Before the Mast"--a tone and quality thatsometimes come to a man when he makes less effort to write than tosee and feel truly. He does not aim to exploit the woods, but to livewith them and possess himself of their spirit. The Cape Cod book alsohas a similar merit; it almost leaves a taste of the salt sea sprayupon your lips. Emerson criticizes Thoreau freely, and justly, Ithink. As a person he lacked sweetness and winsomeness; as a writer hewas at times given to a meaningless exaggeration. 

 Henry Thoreau sends me a paper with the old fault of unlimited contradiction. The trick of his rhetoric is soon learned: it consists in substituting for the obvious word and thought its diametrical antagonist. He praises wild mountains and winter forests for their domestic air; snow and ice for their warmth; villagers and wood-choppers for their urbanity, and the wilderness for resembling Rome and Paris. With the constant inclination to dispraise cities and civilization, he yet can find no way to know woods and woodmen except by paralleling them with towns and townsmen. Channing declared the piece is excellent: but it makes me nervous and wretched to read it, with all its merits. 

 I told Henry Thoreau that his freedom is in the form, but he does not disclose new matter. I am very familiar with all his thoughts, --they are my own quite originally drest. But if the question be, what new ideas has he thrown into circulation, he has not yet told what that is which he was created to say. I said to him what I often feel, I only know three persons who seem to me fully to see this law of reciprocity or compensation--himself, Alcott, and myself: and 't is odd that we should all be neighbors, for in the wide land or the wide earth I do not know another who seems to have it as deeply and originally as these three Gothamites. 

A remark of Emerson's upon Thoreau calls up the image of John Muir tome: "If I knew only Thoreau, I should think coöperation of good menimpossible. Must we always talk for victory, and never once for truth, for comfort, and joy?" Then, after crediting Thoreau with someadmirable gifts, --centrality, penetration, strong understanding, --heproceeds to say, "all his resources of wit and invention are lost tome, in every experiment, year after year, that I make to holdintercourse with his mind. Always some weary captious paradox to fightyou with, and the time and temper wasted. "

Emerson met John Muir in the Yosemite in 1871 and was evidentlyimpressed with him. Somewhere he gives a list of his men which beginswith Carlyle and ends with Muir. Here was another man with morecharacter than intellect, as Emerson said of Carlyle, and with theflavor of the wild about him. Muir was not too compliant anddeferential. He belonged to the sayers of No. Contradiction was thebreath of his nostrils. He had the Scottish chariness of bestowingpraise or approval, and could surely give Emerson the sense of being_met_ which he demanded. Writing was irksome to Muir as it was toCarlyle, but in monologue, in an attentive company, he shone; not agreat thinker, but a mind strongly characteristic. His philosophyrarely rose above that of the Sunday school, but his moral fiber wasvery strong, and his wit ready and keen. In conversation and in dailyintercourse he was a man not easily put aside. Emerson found himdeeply read in nature lore and with some suggestion about his look andmanner of the wild and rugged solitude in which he lived so much. 

Emerson was alive to everything around him; every object touched somespring in his mind; the church spire, the shadows on the windows atnight, the little girl with her pail of whortleberries, the passingbee, bird, butterfly, the clouds, the streams, the trees--all foundhis mind open to any suggestion they might make. He is intent on thenow and the here. He listens to every newcomer with an expectant air. He is full of the present. I once saw him at West Point during theJune examinations. How alert and eager he was! The bored andperfunctory air of his fellow members on the Board of Visitorscontrasted sharply with his active, expectant interest. 

V

He lived absolutely in his own day and generation, and no contemporarywriter of real worth escaped his notice. He is never lavish in hispraise, but is for the most part just and discriminating. WaltWhitman is mentioned only thrice in the Journals, Lowell only twice, Longfellow once or twice, Matthew Arnold three times, but Jones Veryis quoted and discussed sixteen times. Very was a poet who had no fastcolors; he has quite faded out in our day. 

Of Matthew Arnold Emerson says: "I should like to call attention tothe critical superiority of Arnold, his excellent ear for style, andthe singular poverty of his poetry, that in fact he has written butone poem, 'Thyrsis, ' and that on an inspiration borrowed from Milton. "Few good readers, I think, will agree with Emerson about the povertyof Arnold's poetry. His "Dover Beach" is one of the first-rate poemsin English literature. Emerson has words of praise for Lowell--thinksthe production of such a man "a certificate of good elements in thesoil, climate, and institutions of America, " but in 1868 he declaresthat his new poems show an advance "in talent rather than in poetictone"; that the advance "rather expresses his wish, his ambition, thanthe uncontrollable interior impulse which is the authentic mark of anew poem, and which is unanalysable, and makes the merit of an ode ofCollins, or Gray, or Wordsworth, or Herbert, or Byron. " He evidentlythought little of Lowell's severe arraignment of him in a college poemwhich he wrote soon after the delivery of the famous "Divinity SchoolAddress. " The current of religious feeling in Cambridge set sostrongly against Emerson for several years that Lowell doubtlessmerely reflected it. Why did he not try to deflect it, or to check it?And yet, when Emerson's friends did try to defend him, it was againsthis will. He hated to be defended in a newspaper: "As long as all thatis said is against me I feel a certain austere assurance of success, but as soon as honeyed words of praise are spoken for me I feel as onethat lies unprotected before his enemies. "

Next to Thoreau, Emerson devotes to Alcott more space in his Journalsthan to any other man. It is all telling interpretation, description, and criticism. Truly, Alcott must have had some extraordinary power tohave made such a lasting impression upon Emerson. When my friend MyronBenton and I first met Emerson in 1863 at West Point, Emerson spoke ofAlcott very pointedly, and said we should never miss a chance to hearhis conversation, but that when he put pen to paper all hisinspiration left him. His thoughts faded as soon as he tried to setthem down. There must have been some curious illusion about it all onthe part of Emerson, as no fragment of Alcott's wonderful talk worthpreserving has come down to us. The waters of the sea are blue, butnot in the pailful. There must have been something analogous inAlcott's conversations, some total effect which the details do notjustify, or something in the atmosphere which he created, that gavecertain of his hearers the conviction that they were voyaging with himthrough the celestial depths. 

It was a curious fact that Alcott "could not recall one word or partof his own conversation, or of any one's, let the expression be neverso happy. " And he seems to have hypnotized Emerson in the same way. "He made here some majestic utterances, but so inspired me that even Iforgot the words often. " "Olympian dreams, " Emerson calls histalk--moonshine, it appears at this distance. 

"His discourse soars to a wonderful height, " says Emerson, "soregular, so lucid, so playful, so new and disdainful of all boundariesof tradition and experience, that the hearers seem no longer to havebodies or material gravity, but almost they can mount into the air atpleasure, or leap at one bound out of this poor solar system. I saythis of his speech exclusively, for when he attempts to write, heloses, in my judgment, all his power, and I derive more pain thanpleasure from the perusal. " Some illusion surely that made the effortto report him like an attempt to capture the rainbow, only to find itcommon water. 

In 1842 Emerson devotes eight pages in his Journal to an analysis ofAlcott, and very masterly they are. He ends with these sentences:"This noble genius discredits genius to me. I do not want any moresuch persons to exist. "

"When Alcott wrote from England that he was bringing home Wright andLane, I wrote him a letter which I required him to show them, sayingthat they might safely trust his theories, but that they should put notrust whatever in his statement of facts. When they all arrivedhere--he and his victims--I asked them if he showed them the letter;they answered that he did; so I was clear. "

Another neighbor who greatly impressed Emerson, and of whom he hasmuch to say, was Father Taylor, the sailor preacher of Boston. Thereis nothing better in the Journals than the pages devoted todescription and analysis of this remarkable man. To Emerson hesuggested the wealth of Nature. He calls him a "godly poet, theShakespear of the sailor and the poor. " "I delight in his greatpersonality, the way and sweep of the man which, like a frigate's way, takes up for the time the centre of the ocean, paves it with a whitestreet, and all the lesser craft 'do curtsey to him, do himreverence. '" A man all emotion, all love, all inspiration, but, likeAlcott, impossible to justify your high estimate of by any quotation. His power was all personal living power, and could not be transferredto print. The livid embers of his discourse became dead charcoal whenreported by another, or, as Emerson more happily puts it, "A creatureof instinct, his colors are all opaline and dove's-neck-lustre and canonly be seen at a distance. Examine them, and they disappear. " Moreexactly they are visible only at a certain angle. Of course this is ina measure true of all great oratory--it is not so much the words asthe man. 

Speaking of Father Taylor in connection with Alcott, Emerson says thatone was the fool of his ideas, and the other of his fancy. 

An intellectual child of Emerson's was Ellery Channing, but he seemsto have inherited in an exaggerated form only the faults of hisfather. Channing appears to have been a crotchety, disgruntled person, always aiming at walking on his head instead of on his heels. Emersonquotes many of his sayings, not one of them worth preserving, allmarked by a kind of violence and disjointedness. They had many walkstogether. 

Emerson was so fond of paradoxes and extreme statements that bothChanning and Thoreau seem to have vied with each other in utteringhard or capricious sayings when in his presence. Emerson catches at avivid and picturesque statement, if it has even a fraction of truth init, like a fly-catcher at a fly. 

A fair sample of Channing's philosophy is the following: "He persistsin his bad opinion of orchards and farming, declares that the onlysuccess he ever had with a farmer was that he once paid a cent for arusset apple; and farming, he thinks, is an attempt to outwit God witha hoe; that they plant a great many potatoes with much ado, but it isdoubtful if they ever get the seed back. " Channing seems to havedropped such pearls of wisdom as that all along the road in theirwalks! Another sample of Channing's philosophy which Emerson thinksworthy of quoting. They were walking over the fields in November. Channing complained of the poverty of invention on the part of Nature:"'Why, they had frozen water last year; why should they do it again?Therefore it was so easy to be an artist, because _they_ do the samething always, ' and therefore he only wants time to make him perfect inthe imitation. "

VI

Emerson was occupied entirely with the future, as Carlyle was occupiedentirely with the past. Emerson shared the open expectation of the newworld, Carlyle struggled under the gloom and pessimism of the old--agreater character, but a far less lambent and helpful spirit. Emersonseems to have been obsessed with the idea that a new and greater manwas to appear. He looked into the face of every newcomer with anearnest, expectant air, as if he might prove to be the new man: thisthought inspires the last stanzas of his "Song of Nature":

 "Let war and trade and creeds and song Blend, ripen race on race, The sunburnt world a man shall breed Of all the zones and countless days. 

 "No ray is dimmed, no atom worn, My oldest force is good as new, And the fresh rose on yonder thorn Gives back the bending heavens in dew. "

Emerson was under no illusion as to the effect of distance. He knewthe past was once the present, and that if it seemed to be transformedand to rise into cloud-land behind us, it was only the enchantment ofdistance--an enchantment which men have been under in all ages. Theeveryday, the near-at-hand, become prosaic; there is no room for thealchemy of time and space to work in. It has been said that allmartyrdoms looked mean in the suffering. Holy ground is not holy whenwe walk upon it. The now and the here seem cheap and commonplace. Emerson knew that "a score of airy miles will smooth rough Monadnoc toa gem, " but he knew also that it would not change the character ofMonadnoc. He knew that the past and the present, the near and the far, were made of one stuff. He united the courage of science with thesensibility of poetry. He would not be defrauded of the value of thepresent hour, or of the thoughts which he and other men think, or ofthe lives which they live to-day. "I will tell you how you can enrichme--if you will recommend to-day to me. " His doctrine ofself-reliance, which he preached in season and out of season, wasbased upon the conviction that Nature and the soul do not become oldand outworn, that the great characters and great thoughts of the pastwere the achievements of men who trusted themselves before custom orlaw. The sun shines to-day; the constellations hang there in theheavens the same as of old. God is as near us as ever He was--whyshould we take our revelations at second hand? No other writer who hasused the English language has ever preached such a heroic doctrine ofself-trust, or set the present moment so high in the circle of theyears, in the diadem of the days. 

It is an old charge against Emerson that he was deficient in humansympathy. He makes it against himself; the ties of association whichmost persons find so binding seemed to hold him very lightly. Therewas always a previous question with him--the moral value of one'sassociations. Unless you sicken and die to some purpose, why such anado about it? Unless the old ruin of a house harbored great men andgreat women, or was the scene of heroic deeds, why linger around it?The purely human did not appeal to him; history interested him only asit threw light upon to-day. History is a record of the universal mind;hence of your mind, of my mind--"all the facts of history preëxist inthe mind as laws. " "What Plato thought, every man may think. What asaint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, hecan understand. " "All that Shakespear says of the king, yonder slip ofa boy that reads in the corner feels to be true of himself"; and soon, seeing in history only biography, and interested in the past onlyas he can link it with the present. Always an intellectual interest, never a human or an emotional one. His Journal does not reveal himgoing back to the old places, or lingering fondly over the memories ofhis youth. He speaks of his "unpleasing boyhood, " of his unhappyrecollections, etc. , not because of unkindness or hardshipsexperienced, but because of certain shortcomings or deficiencies ofcharacter and purpose, of which he is conscious--"some meanness, " or"unfounded pride" which may lower him in the opinion of others. Pride, surely, but not ignoble pride. 

Emerson's expectation of the great poet, the great man, is voiced inhis "Representative Men": "If the companions of our childhood shouldturn out to be heroes, and their condition regal, it would notsurprise us. " On the contrary, I think it would surprise most of usvery much. It is from the remote, the unfamiliar, that we expect greatthings. We have no illusions about the near-at-hand. But with Emersonthe contrary seems to have been the case. He met the new person ortook up the new volume with a thrill of expectancy, a condition ofmind which often led him to exaggerate the fact, and to give an unduebias in favor of the novel, the audacious, the revolutionary. Hisoptimism carried him to great lengths. Many of the new stars in hisliterary firmament have quite faded out--all of them, I think, butWalt Whitman. It was mainly because he was so full of faith in thecoming man that he gave, offhand, such a tremendous welcome to "Leavesof Grass"--a welcome that cooled somewhat later, when he found he hadgot so much more of the unconventional and the self-reliant than hehad bargained for. I remember that when I spoke of Walt Whitman to himin Washington in 1871 or '72, he said he wished Whitman's friendswould "quarrel" with him more about his poems, as some years earlierhe himself had done, on the occasion when he and Whitman walked forhours on Boston Common, he remonstrating with Whitman about certainpassages in "Leaves of Grass" which he tried in vain to persuade himto omit in the next edition. Whitman would persist in being Whitman. Now, counseling such a course to a man in an essay on "Self-Reliance"is quite a different thing from entirely approving of it in a concreteexample. 

In 1840 Emerson writes: "A notice of modern literature ought toinclude (ought it not?) a notice of Carlyle, of Tennyson, of Landor, of Bettina, of Sampson Reed. " The first three names surely, but whois Bettina, the girl correspondent of Goethe, that she should go insuch a list? Reed, we learn, was a Boston bank clerk, and aSwedenborgian, who wrote a book on the growth of the mind, from whichEmerson quotes, and to which he often alludes, a book that has longbeen forgotten; and is not Bettina forgotten also?

Emerson found more in Jones Very than has any one else; the poems ofVery that he included in "Parnassus" have little worth. Acomparatively unknown and now forgotten English writer also movedEmerson unduly. Listen to this: "In England, Landor, De Quincey, Carlyle, three men of original literary genius; but the scholar, thecatholic, cosmic intellect, Bacon's own son, the Lord Chief Justice onthe Muse's Bench is"--who do you think, in 1847?--"Wilkinson"! GarthWilkinson, who wrote a book on the human body. Emerson says of him in"English Traits": "There is in the action of his mind a long Atlanticroll, not known except in deepest waters, and only lacking what oughtto accompany such powers, a manifest centrality. " To bid a man's stockup like that may not, in the long run, be good for the man, but itshows what a generous, optimistic critic Emerson was. 

VII

In his published works Emerson is chary of the personal element; hesays: "We can hardly speak of our own experiences and the names ofour friends sparingly enough. " In his books he would be only animpersonal voice; the man Emerson, as such, he hesitated to intrude. But in the Journals we get much more of the personal element, as wouldbe expected. We get welcome glimpses of the man, of his moods, of hisdiversions, of his home occupations, of his self-criticism. We see himas a host, as a lecturer, as a gardener, as a member of a ruralcommunity. We see him in his walks and talks with friends andneighbors--with Alcott, Thoreau, Channing, Jones Very, Hawthorne, andothers--and get snatches of the conversations. We see the growth ofhis mind, his gradual emancipation from the bondage of the orthodoxtraditions. 

Very welcome is the growth of Emerson's appreciation of Wordsworth. Asa divinity student he was severe in his criticism of Wordsworth, butas his own genius unfolded more and more he saw the greatness ofWordsworth, till in middle life he pronounced his famous Ode thehigh-water mark of English literature. Yet after that his fondness fora telling, picturesque figure allows him to inquire if Wordsworth isnot like a bell with a wooden tongue. All this is an admirableillustration of his familiar dictum: "Speak what you think now in hardwords, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you say to-day. "

In the Journals we see Emerson going up and down the country in hiswalks, on his lecture tours in the West, among his neighbors, whereverand whenever he goes as alert and watchful as a sportsman. He was asportsman of a new kind; his game was ideas. He was always looking forhints and images to aid him in his writings. He was like a birdperpetually building a nest; every moment he wanted new material, andeverything that diverted him from his quest was an unwelcomeinterruption. He had no great argument to build, no system ofphilosophy to organize and formulate, no plot, like a novelist, towork out, no controversy on hand--he wanted pertinent, concrete, andstriking facts and incidents to weave in his essay on Fate, orCircles, or Character, or Farming, or Worship, or Wealth--somethingthat his intuitive and disjointed habit of thought could seize uponand make instant use of. 

We see him walking in free converse with his friends and neighbors, receiving them in his own house, friendly and expectant, but alwaysstanding aloof, never giving himself heartily to them, exchangingideas with them across a gulf, prizing their wit and their wisdom, butcold and reserved toward them personally, destitute of all feeling ofcomradeship, an eye, an ear, a voice, an intellect, but rarely, or ina minor degree, a heart, or a feeling of fellowship--a giving and ataking quite above and beyond the reach of articulate speech. Whenthey had had their say, he was done with them. When you have found aman's limitations, he says, it is all up with him. After your friendhas fired his shot, good-by. The pearl in the oyster is what iswanted, and not the oyster. "If I love you, what is that to you?" is asaying that could have been coined only in Concord. It seems to methat the basis of all wholesome human attachment is character, notintellect. Admiration and love are quite different things. Transcendental friendships seem to be cold, bloodless affairs. 

One feels as if he wanted to squeeze or shake Emerson to see if hecannot get some normal human love out of him, a love that looks fornothing beyond love, a love which is its own excuse for being, a lovethat is not a bargain--simple, common, disinterested human love. ButEmerson said, "I like man but not men. "

"You would have me love you, " he writes in his Journal. "What shall Ilove? Your body? The supposition disgusts you. What you have thoughtand said? Well, whilst you were thinking and saying them, but not now. I see no possibility of loving anything but what now is, and isbecoming; your courage, your enterprise, your budding affection, youropening thought, your prayer, I can love--but what else?"

Can you not love your friend for himself alone, for his kinship withyou, without taking an inventory of his moral and intellectualqualities; for something in him that makes you happy in his presence?The personal attraction which Whitman felt between himself and certaintypes of men, and which is the basis of most manly friendships, Emerson probably never felt. One cannot conceive of him as caringdeeply for any person who could not teach him something. He says, "Ispeculate on virtue, not burn with love. " Again, "A rush of thoughtsis the only conceivable prosperity that can come to me. " Pureintellectual values seem alone to have counted with Emerson and hisfollowers. With men his question was, "What can you teach me?" WithNature, "What new image or suggestion have you got for me to-day?"With science, "What ethical value do your facts hold?" With naturalhistory, "Can I translate your facts and laws into my supernaturalhistory?" With civil history, "Will your record help me to understandmy own day and land?" The quintessence of things was what he alwayssought. 

"We cannot forgive another for not being ourselves, " Emerson wrote in1842, and then added, "We lose time in trying to be like others. " Oneis reminded of passages in the Emerson-Carlyle correspondence, whereineach tried to persuade the other to be like himself. Carlyle wouldhave Emerson "become concrete and write in prose the straightestway, " would have him come down from his "perilous altitude, ""soliloquizing on the eternal mountain-tops only, in vast solitude, where men and their affairs lie all hushed in a very dim remotenessand only _the man_ and the stars and the earth are visible--come downinto your own poor Nineteenth Century, its follies, its maladies, itsblind, or half-blind but gigantic toilings, its laughter and itstears, and try to evolve in some measure the hidden God-like that liesin it. " "I wish you would take an American hero, one whom you reallylove, and give us a History of him--make an artistic bronze statue (ingood words) of his Life and him!" Emerson's reply in effect is, Cremate your heroes and give me their ashes--give me "the culledresults, the quintessence of private conviction, a _liber veritatis_, a few sentences, hints of the final moral you draw from so muchpenetrating inquest into past and present men. "

In reply to Carlyle's criticism of the remote and abstract characterof his work, Emerson says, "What you say now and heretofore respectingthe remoteness of my writing and thinking from real life, though Ihear substantially the same criticism made by my countrymen, I do notknow what it means. If I can at any time express the law and the idealright, that should satisfy me without measuring the divergence from itof the last act of Congress. "

VIII

Emerson's love of nature was one of his ruling passions. It took himto the country to live, it led him to purchase Walden Pond and theWalden woods; it led him forth upon his almost daily walks, winter andsummer, to the fields and the woods. His was the love of the poet andthe idealist, of the man who communes with Nature, and finds a moraland an intellectual tonic in her works. The major part of his poetryis inspired by Nature. He complains of Tennyson's poetry that it hasfew or no wood notes. His first book, "Nature, " is steeped inreligious and poetic emotion. He said in his Journal in 1841: "All mythoughts are foresters. I have scarce a day-dream on which the breathof the pines has not blown, and their shadows waved. Shall I not thencall my little book Forest Essays?" He finally called it "Nature. " Heloves the "hermit birds that harbor in the woods. I can do well forweeks with no other society than the partridge and the jay, my dailycompany. "

"I have known myself entertained by a single dew-drop, or an icicle, by a liatris, or a fungus, and seen God revealed in the shadow of aleaf. " He says that going to Nature is more than a medicine, it ishealth. "As I walked in the woods I felt what I often feel, thatnothing can befall me in life, no calamity, no disgrace (leaving memy eyes) to which Nature will not offer a sweet consolation. Standingon the bare ground with my head bathed by the blithe air, and upliftedinto the infinite space, I became happy in my universal relations. "This sentiment of his also recalls his lines:

 "A woodland walk, A quest of river-grapes, a mocking thrush, A wild-rose, or rock-loving columbine, Salve my worst wounds. "

 If life were long enough, among my thousand and one works should be a book of Nature whereof Howitt's _Seasons_ should not be so much the model as the parody. It should contain the natural history of the woods around my shifting camp for every month in the year. It should tie their astronomy, botany, physiology, meteorology, picturesque, and poetry together. No bird, no bug, no bud, should be forgotten on his day and hour. To-day the chickadees, the robins, bluebirds and song-sparrows sang to me. I dissected the buds of the birch and the oak; in every one of the last is a star. The crow sat above as idle as I below. The river flowed brimful, and I philosophised upon this composite, collective beauty which refuses to be analysed. Nothing is beautiful alone. Nothing but is beautiful in the whole. Learn the history of a craneberry. Mark the day when the pine cones and acorns fall. 

 I go out daily and nightly to feed my eyes on the horizon and the sky, and come to feel the want of this scope as I do of water for my washing. 

 What learned I this morning in the woods, the oracular woods? Wise are they, the ancient nymphs; pleasing, sober, melancholy truth say those untameable savages, the pines. 

He frequently went to Walden Pond of an afternoon and read Goethe orsome other great author. 

There was an element of mysticism in Emerson's love of nature as thereis in that of all true nature-lovers. None knew better than he thatnature is not all birds and flowers. His love of nature was that ofthe poet and artist, and not that of the scientist or naturalist. 

"I tell you I love the peeping of the Hyla in a pond in April, or theevening cry of the whippoorwill, better than all the bellowing of allthe Bulls of Bashan, or all the turtles of all Palestine. "

Any personal details about his life which Emerson gives us are alwayswelcome. We learn that his different winter courses of lectures inBoston, usually ten of them, were attended on an average by about fivehundred persons, and netted him about five hundred dollars. 

When he published a new volume, he was very liberal with presentationcopies. Of his first volume of poems, published in 1846, he senteighty copies to his friends. When "May-Day" was published in 1867, hesent fifty copies to friends; one of them went to Walt Whitman. I sawit the day it came. It was in a white dress (silk, I think); verybeautiful. He sent a copy of his first volume of "Nature" to Landor. One would like to know what Landor said in reply. The copy he sent toCarlyle I saw in the Scot's library, in Cheyne Row, in 1871. 

IX

Emerson was so drawn to the racy and original that it seems as iforiginal sin had a certain fascination for him. The austere, thePuritanical Emerson, the heir of eight generations of clergy-men, theman who did not like to have Frederika Bremer play the piano in hishouse on Sunday, seems at times to covet the "swear-words" of thecommon people. They itch at his ears, they have flavor and reality. Hesometimes records them in his Journal; for example, this remark of theCanadian wood-chopper who cut wood for his neighbor--he preferred towork by the job rather than by the day--the days were "so damnedlong!"

The mob, Emerson says, is always interesting: "A blacksmith, atruckman, a farmer, we follow into the bar-room and watch witheagerness what they shall say. " "Cannot the stinging dialect of thesailor be domesticated?" "My page about Consistency would be betterwritten, 'Damn Consistency. '" But try to fancy Emerson swearing likethe men on the street! Once only he swore a sacred oath, and that hehimself records: it was called out by the famous, and infamous, Fugitive Slave Law which made every Northern man hound and huntsmanfor the Southern slave-driver. "This filthy enactment, " he says, "wasmade in the Nineteenth Century by men who could read and write. I willnot obey it, by God!"

Evidently the best thing the laboring people had to offer Emerson wastheir racy and characteristic speech. When one of his former neighborssaid of an eclipse of the sun that it looked as if a "nigger" waspoking his head into the sun, Emerson recorded it in his Journal. Hisson reports that Emerson enjoyed the talk of the stable-men and usedto tell their anecdotes and boasts of their horses when he came home;for example, "In the stable you'd take him for a slouch, but lead himto the door, and when he lifts up his eyes, and looks abroad, --bythunder! you'd think the sky was all horse. " Such surprises andexaggerations always attracted him, unless they took a turn that madehim laugh. He loved wit with the laugh taken out of it. The genialsmile and not uproarious laughter suited his mood best. 

He was a lover of quiet, twinkling humor. Such humor gleams out oftenin his Journal. It gleams in this passage about Dr. Ripley: "Dr. Ripley prays for rain with great explicitness on Sunday, and on Mondaythe showers fell. When I spoke of the speed with which his prayerswere answered, the good man looked modest. " There is anotherprayer-for-rain story that he enjoys telling: "Dr. Allyne, of Duxbury, prayed for rain, at church. In the afternoon the boys carriedumbrellas. 'Why?' 'Because you prayed for rain. ' 'Pooh! boys! wealways pray for rain: it's customary. '"

At West Point he asked a lieutenant if they had morning prayers atcollege. "We have _reveillé_ beat, which is the same thing. "

He tells with relish the story of a German who went to hire a horseand chaise at a stable in Cambridge. "Shall I put in a buffalo?"inquired the livery-man. "My God! no, " cried the astonished German, "put in a horse. "

Emerson, I am sure, takes pleasure in relating a characteristic storyof Dr. Ripley and a thunder-shower: "One August afternoon, when I wasin the hayfield helping him with his man to rake up his hay, I wellremember his pleading, almost reproachful looks at the sky when thethunder gust was coming up to spoil the hay. He raked very fast, thenlooked at the clouds and said, 'We are in the Lord's hands, mind yourrake, George! we are in the Lord's hands, ' and seemed to say, 'Youknow me, the field is mine--Dr. Ripley's--thine own servant. '"

The stories Emerson delighted in were all rich in this quiet humor. Iheard of one he used to tell about a man who, when he went to his clubat night, often lingered too long over his cups, and came homebefuddled in the small hours, and was frequently hauled over the coalsby his wife. One night he again came home late, and was greeted withthe usual upbraiding in the morning. "It was not late, " he said, "itwas only one o'clock. " "It was much later than that, " said the wife. "It was one o'clock, " repeated the man; "I heard it strike one threeor four times!"

Another good Emersonian story, though I do not know that he ever heardit, is that of an old woman who had a farm in Indiana near theMichigan line. The line was resurveyed, and the authorities set herfarm in Michigan. The old lady protested--she said it was all shecould do to stand the winters of Indiana, she could never stand thoseof Michigan!

Cannot one see a twinkle in Emerson's eye when he quotes his wife assaying that "it is wicked to go to church on Sunday"? Emerson's sonrecords that his father hated to be made to laugh, as he could notcommand his face well. Hence he evidently notes with approval anotherremark of his wife's: "A human being should beware how he laughs, forthen he shows all his faults. " What he thought of the loud, surprisinglaugh with which Carlyle often ended his bitter sentences, I do notknow that he records. Its meaning to Carlyle was evidently, "Oh! whatdoes it all matter?" If Emerson himself did not smile when he wrotethe sentence about "a maiden so pure that she exchanged glances onlywith the stars, " his reader, I am sure, will. 

Emerson evidently enjoyed such a story as this which was told him by abishop: There was a dispute in a vestry at Providence between two hotchurch-members. One said at last, "I should like to know who youare"--

"Who I am?" cried the other, --"who I am! I am a humble Christian, youdamned old heathen, you!"

The minister whom he heard say that "nobody enjoyed religion less thanministers, as none enjoyed food so little as cooks, " must haveprovoked the broadest kind of a smile. 

Although one of Emerson's central themes in his Journals was histhought about God, or his feeling for the Infinite, he never succeededin formulating his ideas on the subject and could not say what God isor is not. At the age of twenty-one he wrote in his Journal, "I knowthat I _know_ next to nothing. " A very unusual, but a very promisingframe of mind for a young man. "It is not certain that God exists, butthat He does not is a most bewildering and improbable Chimera. "

A little later he wrote: "The government of God is not a plan--thatwould be Destiny, [or we may say Calvinism, ] it is extempore. "

He quotes this from Plotinus: "Of the Unity of God, nothing can bepredicated, neither being, nor essence, nor life, for it is above allthese. "

It was a bold saying of his that "God builds his temple in the hearton the ruins of churches and religion. "

"A great deal of God in the universe, " he says, "but not available tous until we can make it up into a man. "

But if asked, what makes it up into a man? why does it take this form?he would have been hard put to it for an answer. 

Persons who assume to know all about God, as if He lived just aroundthe corner, as Matthew Arnold said, will not find much comfort inEmerson's uncertainty and blind groping for adequate expressionconcerning Him. How can we put the All, the Eternal, in words? How canwe define the Infinite without self-contradiction? Our minds are castin the mould of the finite; our language is fashioned from ourdealings with a world of boundaries and limitations and concreteobjects and forces. How much can it serve us in dealing with a worldof opposite kind--with the Whole, the Immeasurable, the Omnipresent, and Omnipotent? Of what use are our sounding-lines in a bottomlesssea? How are we to apply our conceptions of personality to theall-life, to that which transcends all limitations, to that which iseverywhere and yet nowhere? Shall we assign a local habitation and aname to the universal energy? As the sunlight puts out our lamp orcandle, so our mental lights grow pale in the presence of the InfiniteLight. We can deal with the solid bodies on the surface of the earth, but the earth as a sphere in the heavens baffles us. All our terms ofover and under, up and down, east and west, and the like, fail us. Youmay go westward around the world and return to your own door comingfrom the east. The circle is a perpetual contradiction, the sphere asurface without boundaries, a mass without weight. When we ascribeweight to the earth, we are trying it by the standards of bodies onits surface--the pull of the earth is the measure of their weight; butthe earth itself--what pulls that? Only some larger body can pullthat, and the adjustment of the system is such that the centripetaland centrifugal forces balance each other, and the globes float aslightly as any feather. 

Emerson said he denied personality to God because it is too little, not too much. If you ascribe personality to God, it is perfectly fairto pester you with questions about Him. Where is He? How long has Hebeen there? What does He do? Personality without place, or form, orsubstance, or limitation is a contradiction of terms. We are thevictims of words. We get a name for a thing and then invent the thingthat fits it. All our names for the human faculties, as the will, thereason, the understanding, the imagination, conscience, instincts, andso on, are arbitrary divisions of a whole, to suit our ownconvenience, like the days of the week, or the seasons of the year. Out of unity we make diversity for purposes of our practical needs. Thought tends to the one, action to the many. We must have smallchange for everything in the universe, because our lives are made upof small things. We must break wholes up into fractions, and then seektheir common multiple. Only thus can we deal with them. We deal withGod by limiting Him and breaking Him up into his attributes, or byconceiving Him under the figure of the Trinity. He is thus lessbaffling to us. We can handle Him the better. We make a huge man ofHim and then try to dodge the consequences of our own limitations. 

All these baffling questions pressed hard upon Emerson. He could notdo without God in nature, and yet, like most of us, he could notjustify himself until he had trimmed and cut away a part of nature. God is the All, but the All is a hard mass to digest. It means hell aswell as heaven, demon as well as seraph, geology as well as biology, devolution as well as evolution, earthquake as well as earthtranquillity, cyclones as well as summer breezes, the jungle as wellas the household, pain as well as pleasure, death as well as life. Howare you to reconcile all these contradictions?

Emerson said that nature was a swamp with flowers and birds on theborders, and terrible things in the interior. Shall we have one Godfor the fair things, and another God for the terrible things?

"Nature is saturated with deity, " he says, the terrific things as thebeatific, I suppose. "A great deal of God in the universe, " he againsays, "but not valuable to us till we can make it up into a man. " Andwhen we make it up into a man we have got a true compendium of nature;all the terrific and unholy elements--fangs and poisons and eruptions, sharks and serpents--have each and all contributed something to themake-up. Man is nature incarnated, no better, no worse. 

But the majority of mankind who take any interest in the God-questionat all will probably always think of the Eternal in terms of man, andendow Him with personality. 

One feels like combating some of Emerson's conclusions, or, at least, like discounting them. His refusal to see any value in natural scienceas such, I think, shows his limitations. "Natural history, " he says, "by itself has no value; it is like a single sex; but marry it tohuman history and it is poetry. Whole Floras, all Linnæus', andBuffon's volumes contain not one line of poetry. " Of course he speaksfor himself. Natural facts, scientific truth, as such, had no interestto him. One almost feels as if this were idealism gone to seed. 

"Shall I say that the use of Natural Science seems merely 'ancillary'to Morals? I would learn the law of the defraction of a ray becausewhen I understand it, it will illustrate, perhaps suggest, a new truthin ethics. " Is the ethical and poetic value of the natural sciences, then, their main or only value to the lay mind? Their technicaldetails, their tables and formulæ and measurements, we may pass by, but the natural truths they disclose are of interest to the healthymind for their own sake. It is not the ethics of chemical reactionsand combinations--if there be ethics in them--that arrests ourattention, but the light they throw on the problem of how the worldwas made, and how our own lives go on. The method of Nature in thephysical world no doubt affords clues to the method of Nature in thenon-physical, or supersensuous world. But apart from that, it isincredible that a mind like Emerson's took no interest in naturalknowledge for its own sake. The fact that two visible and inodorousgases like hydrogen and oxygen--one combustible and the other thesupporter of combustion--when chemically combined produce water, whichextinguishes fire, is intensely interesting as affording us a glimpseof the contradictions and paradoxes that abound everywhere in Nature'smethods. If there is any ethics or any poetry in it, let him have itwho can extract it. The great facts of nature, such as the sphericityof the cosmic bodies, their circular motions, their mutualinterdependence, the unprovable ether in which they float, the bluedome of the sky, the master currents of the ocean, the primary and thesecondary rocks, have an intellectual value, but how they in any wayillustrate the moral law is hard to see. The ethics, or right andwrong, of attraction and repulsion, of positive and negative, have novalidity outside the human sphere. Might is right in Nature, or, rather, we are outside the standards of right and wrong in her sphere. Scientific knowledge certainly has a poetic side to it, but we do notgo to chemistry or to geology or to botany for rules for the conductof life. We go to these things mainly for the satisfaction which theknowledge of Nature's ways gives us. 

So with natural history. For my own part I find the life-histories ofthe wild creatures about me, their ways of getting on in the world, their joys, their fears, their successes, their failures, theirinstincts, their intelligence, intensely interesting without anyulterior considerations. I am not looking for ethical or poeticvalues. I am looking for natural truths. I am less interested in thesermons in stones than I am in the life under the stones. Thesignificance of the metamorphosis of the grub into the butterfly doesnot escape me, but I am more occupied with the way the caterpillarweaves her cocoon and hangs herself up for the winter than I am inthis lesson. I had rather see a worm cast its skin than see a kingcrowned. I had rather see Phoebe building her mud nest than thepreacher writing his sermon. I had rather see the big moth emerge fromher cocoon--fresh and untouched as a coin that moment from thedie--than the most fashionable "coming out" that society ever knew. The first song sparrow or bluebird or robin in spring, or the firsthepatica or arbutus or violet, or the first clover or pond-lily insummer--must we demand some mystic password of them? Must we not lovethem for their own sake, ere they will seem worthy of our love?

To convert natural facts into metaphysical values, or into moral orpoetic values--in short, to make literature out of science--is a highachievement, and is worthy of Emerson at his best, but to claim thatthis is their sole or main use is to push idealism to the extreme. Thepoet, the artist, the nature writer not only mixes his colors with hisbrains, he mixes them with his heart's blood. Hence his picturesattract us without doing violence to nature. 

We will not deny Emerson his right to make poetry out of nature; webless him for the inspiration he has drawn from this source, for his"Wood-notes, " his "Humble-Bee, " his "Titmouse, " his "May-Day, " his"Sea-Shore, " his "Snow-Storm, " and many other poems. But we must"quarrel" with him a little, to use one of his favorite words, forseeming to undervalue the facts of natural science, as such, and tobelittle the works of the natural historian because he does not giveus poetry and lessons in morals instead of botany and geology andornithology, pure and simple. "Everything, " he says, "should betreated poetically--law, politics, housekeeping, money. A judge and abanker must drive their craft poetically, as well as a dancer or ascribe. That is, they must exert that higher vision which causes theobject to become fluid and plastic. " "If you would write a code, orlogarithms, or a cook-book, you cannot spare the poetic impulse. " "Noone will doubt that battles can be fought poetically who readsPlutarch or Las Casas. "

We are interested in the wild life around us because the lives of thewild creatures in a measure parallel our own; because they are thepartakers of the same bounty of nature that we are; they are fruit ofthe same biological tree. We are interested in knowing how they get onin the world. Bird and bee, fish and man, are all made of one stuff, are all akin. The evolutionary impulse that brought man, brought hisdog and horse. Did Emerson, indeed, only go to nature as he went tothe bank, to make a draft upon it? Was his walk barren that broughthim no image, no new idea? Was the day wasted that did not add a newline to his verse? He appears to have gone up and down the landseeking images. He was so firmly persuaded that there is not a passagein the human soul, perhaps not a shade of thought, but has its emblemin nature, that he was ever on the alert to discover these relationsof his own mind to the external world. "I see the law of Natureequally exemplified in bar-room and in a saloon of the philosopher. Iget instruction and the opportunities of my genius indifferently inall places, companies, and pursuits, so only there be antagonisms. "

Emerson thought that science as such bereaved Nature of her charm. Tothe man of little or no imagination or sensibility to beauty, Naturehas no charm anyhow, but if he have these gifts, they will certainlysurvive scientific knowledge, and be quickened and heightened by it. 

After we have learned all that the astronomers can tell us about themidnight heavens, do we look up at the stars with less wonder and awe?After we have learned all that the chemist and the physicist can tellus about matter--its interior activities and its exterior laws andrelations--do we admire and marvel less? After the geologist has toldus all he has found out about the earth's crust and the rocks, when wequarry our building-stone, do we plough and hoe and plant its soilwith less interest and veneration? No, science as the pursuit of truthcauses light to spring out of the abysmal darkness, and enhances ourlove and interest in Nature. Is the return of the seasons lesswelcome because we know the cause? Is an eclipse less startlingbecause it occurs exactly on time? Science bereaves Nature of herdread and fearsomeness, it breaks the spell which the ignorance andcredulity of men have cast upon her. 

Emerson had little use for science except so far as it yielded himsymbols and parables for his superscience. The electric spark did notkindle his interest unless it held an ethical fact for him; chemicalreactions were dull affairs unless he could trace their laws in mentalreactions. "Read chemistry a little, " he said, "and you will quicklysee that its laws and experiments will furnish an alphabet orvocabulary for all of your moral observations. " He found a lesson incomposition in the fact that the diamond and lampblack are the samesubstance differently arranged. Good writing, he said, is a chemicalcombination, and not a mechanical mixture. That is not the noblestchemistry that can extract sunshine from cucumbers, but that which canextract "honor from scamps, temperance from sots, energy from beggars, justice from thieves, benevolence from misers. "

Though mindful of the birds and flowers and trees and rivers in hiswalks, it was mainly through his pressing need of figures and symbolsfor transcendental use. He says, "Whenever you enumerate a physicallaw, I hear in it a moral law. " His final interest was in the morallaw. Unless the scientific fact you brought him had some moral value, it made little impression upon him. 

He admits he is more interested to know "why the star form is so oftrepeated in botany, and why the number five is such a favorite withNature, than to understand the circulation of the sap and theformation of buds. " His insight into Nature, and the propheticcharacter of his genius, are seen in many ways, among others in hisanticipation or poetic forecast of the Darwinian theory of the originof species, in 1853. 

"We want a higher logic to put us in training for the laws ofcreation. How does the step forward from one species to a higherspecies of an existing genus take place? The ass is not the parent ofthe horse; no fish begets a bird. But the concurrence of newconditions necessitates a new object in which these conditions meetand flower. When the hour is struck in onward nature, announcing thatall is ready for the birth of higher form and nobler function, not onepair of parents, but the whole consenting system thrills, yearns, andproduces. It is a favorable aspect of planets and of elements. "

In 1840 he wrote, "The method of advance in Nature is perpetualtransformation. " In the same year he wrote:

"There is no leap--not a shock of violence throughout nature. Mantherefore must be predicted in the first chemical relation exhibitedby the first atom. If we had eyes to see it, this bit of quartz wouldcertify us of the necessity that man must exist as inevitably as thecities he has actually built. "

X

How fruitful in striking and original men New England was in thosedays--poets, orators, picturesque characters! In Concord, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Alcott; in Boston and Cambridge, Lowell, Longfellow, Norton, Holmes, Higginson, Father Taylor, Bancroft, Everett, and others, with Webster standing out like a Colossus on theNew Hampshire granite. This crop of geniuses seems to have been theaftermath of the Revolution. Will our social and industrial revolutionbring anything like another such a crop? Will the great World Warproduce another? Until now too much prosperity, too much mammon, toomuch "at ease in Zion" has certainly prevailed for another band ofgreat idealists to appear. 

Emerson could never keep his eyes off Webster. He was fairlyhypnotized by the majesty and power of his mind and personality, andhe recurs to him in page after page of his Journal. Webster was ofprimary stuff like the granite of his native hills, while such a manas Everett was of the secondary formation, like the sandstone rocks. Emerson was delighted when he learned that Carlyle, "with thosedevouring eyes, with that portraying hand, " had seen Webster. And thisis the portrait Carlyle drew of him: "As a Logic-fencer, Advocate, orParliamentary Hercules, one would incline to back him at first sightagainst all the extant world. The tanned complexion, that amorphous, crag-like face; the dull black eyes under their precipice of brows, like dull anthracite furnaces, needing only to be _blown_; themastiff-mouth, accurately closed:--I have not traced as much of_silent Berserkir-rage_, that I remember of, in any other man. "

Emerson's description and praise and criticism of Webster form some ofthe most notable pages in his Journal. In 1843, when Webster came toConcord as counsel in a famous case that was tried there, the fact soexcited Emerson that he could not sleep. It was like the perturbationof a planet in its orbit when a large body passes near it. Emersonseems to have spent much time at the court-house to hear and studyhim: "Webster quite fills our little town, and I doubt if I shall getsettled down to writing until he has well gone from the county. He isa natural Emperor of men. " He adjourned the court every day in trueimperial fashion, simply by rising and taking his hat and looking theJudge coolly in the face, whereupon the Judge "bade the Crier adjournthe Court. " But when Emerson finally came to look upon him with thesame feeling with which he saw one of those strong Paddies of therailroad, he lost his interest in the trial and did not return to thecourt in the afternoon. "The green fields on my way home were toofresh and fair, and forbade me to go again. "

It was with profound grief that he witnessed the decline of Webster'spolitical career, owing to his truckling to the Southern proslaveryelement, and to his increasing intemperance. To see the placid, transcendental Emerson "fighting mad, " flaring up in holy wrath, readhis criticisms of Webster, after Webster's defection--his moralcollapse to win the South and his support of the Fugitive Slave Law. This got into Emerson's blood and made him think "daggers andtomahawks. " He has this to say of a chance meeting with Webster inBoston, at this period: "I saw Webster on the street--but he waschanged since I saw him last--black as a thunder-cloud, andcareworn. . . . I did not wonder that he depressed his eyes when he sawme and would not meet my face. "

In 1851 he said that some of Webster's late speeches and state paperswere like "Hail Columbia" when sung at a slave-auction; then hefollows with the terrible remark: "The word _liberty_ in the mouth ofMr. Webster sounds like the word _love_ in the mouth of a courtezan. "

The prizes or fancied prizes of politics seem to have corrupted allthe great men of that day--Webster, Choate, Foote, Clay, Everett. Their "disgusting obsequiousness" to the South fired Emerson's wrath. 

XI

The orthodox brethren of his time, and probably of our time also, Ifancy, could make very little of Emerson's religion. It was thereligion of the spirit and not of the utilitarian and matter-of-factunderstanding. It identified man with God and made all naturesymbolical of the spirit. He was never tired of repeating that alltrue prayers answered themselves--the spirit which the act of prayerbegets in one's self is the answer. Your prayer for humility, forcharity, for courage, begets these emotions in the mind. The devoutasking comes from a perception of their value. Hence the only realprayers are for spiritual good. We converse with spiritual andinvisible things only through the medium of our own hearts. Thepreliminary attitude of mind that moves us to face in this directionis the blessing. The soldier who, on the eve of battle, prays forcourage, has already got what he asks for. Prayer for visible, material good is infidelity to the moral law. God is within you, moreyour better self than you are. Many prayers are a rattling of emptyhusks. Emerson says the wise man in the storm prays God, not forsafety from danger, but for deliverance from fear. 

Although Emerson broke away from all religious forms, yet was theresomething back of them that he always respected, as do we all. Herelates that one night at a hotel a stranger intruded into his chamberafter midnight, claiming a share in it. "But after his lamp had smokedthe chamber full, and I had turned round to the wall in despair, theman blew out his lamp, knelt down at his bedside, and made in lowwhispers a long earnest prayer. Then was the relation entirely changedbetween us. I fretted no more, but respected and liked him. "

Contrasting his own case with that of so many young men who owed theirreligious training exclusively to Cambridge and other publicinstitutions, he says: "How much happier was my star which rained onme influence of ancestral religion. The depth of the religioussentiment which I knew in my Aunt Mary, imbuing all her genius andderived to her from such hoarded family traditions, from so many godlylives and godly deeds of sainted kindred of Concord, Maiden, York, wasitself a culture, an education. "

XII

A course of ten lectures which he delivered in Boston in February, 1840, on the "Present Age" gave him little pleasure. He could not warmup, get agitated, and so warm and agitate others: "A cold mechanicalpreparation for a delivery as decorous, --fine things, pretty things, wise things, --but no arrows, no axes, no nectar, no growling, notranspiercing, no loving, no enchantment. " Because he lackedconstitutional vigor, he could expend only, say, twenty-one hours oneach lecture, if he would be able and ready for the next. If he couldonly rally the lights and mights of sixty hours into twenty, he said, he should hate himself less. Self-criticism was a notable trait withhim. Of self-praise he was never guilty. His critics and enemiesrarely said severer things of him than he said of himself. He wasalmost morbidly conscious of his own defects, both as a man and as awriter. There are many pages of self-criticism in the Journals, butnot one of self-praise. In 1842 he writes: "I have not yet adjusted myrelation to my fellows on the planet, or to my own work. Always tooyoung, or too old, I do not justify myself; how can I satisfy others?"Later he sighs, "If only I could be set aglow!" He had wished for aprofessorship, or for a pulpit, much as he reacted from thechurch--something to give him the stimulus of a stated task. Somefriend recommended an Abolition campaign to him: "I doubt not a coursein mobs would do me good. "

Then he refers to his faults as a writer: "I think I have materialenough to serve my countrymen with thought and music, if only it wasnot scraps. But men do not want handfuls of gold dust but ingots. "

Emerson felt his own bardic character, but lamented that he had so fewof the bardic gifts. At the age of fifty-nine he says: "I am a bardleast of bards. I cannot, like them, make lofty arguments in stately, continuous verse, constraining the rocks, trees, animals, and theperiodic stars to say my thoughts, --for that is the gift of greatpoets; but I am a bard because I stand near them, and apprehend allthey utter, and with pure joy hear that which I also would say, and, moreover, I speak interruptedly words and half stanzas which have thelike scope and aim:"

 "What I cannot declare, yet cannot all withhold. "

There is certainly no over-valuation in this sentence, made when hewas sixty-two: "In the acceptance that my papers find among mythoughtful countrymen, in these days, I cannot help seeing how limitedis their reading. If they read only the books that I do, they wouldnot exaggerate so wildly. " Two years before that he had said, "I oftenthink I could write a criticism of Emerson that would hit the white. "

Emerson was a narrow-chested, steeple-shouldered man with a tendencyto pulmonary disease, against which he made a vigorous fight all hisdays. He laments his feeble physical equipment in his poem, "Terminus":

 "Curse, if thou wilt, thy sires, Bad husbands of their fires, Who, when they gave thee breath, Failed to bequeath The needful sinew stark as once, The Baresark marrow to thy bones, But left a legacy of ebbing veins, Inconstant heat and nerveless reins, -- Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb, Amid the gladiators, halt and numb. "

And yet, looking back near the end of his life, he says thatconsidering all facts and conditions he thinks he has had triumphanthealth. 

XIII

Emerson's wisdom and catholicity of spirit always show in histreatment of the larger concerns of life and conduct. How remarkableis this passage written in Puritanic New England in 1842:

 I hear with pleasure that a young girl in the midst of rich, decorous Unitarian friends in Boston is well-nigh persuaded to join the Roman Catholic Church. Her friends, who are also my friends, lamented to me the growth of this inclination. But I told them that I think she is to be greatly congratulated on the event. She has lived in great poverty of events. In form and years a woman, she is still a child, having had no experiences, and although of a fine, liberal, susceptible, expanding nature, has never yet found any worthy object of attention; has not been in love, nor been called out by any taste, except lately by music, and sadly wants adequate objects. In this church, perhaps, she shall find what she needs, in a power to call out the slumbering religious sentiment. It is unfortunate that the guide who has led her into this path is a young girl of a lively, forcible, but quite external character, who teaches her the historical argument for the Catholic faith. I told A. That I hoped she would not be misled by attaching any importance to that. If the offices of the church attracted her, if its beautiful forms and humane spirit draw her, if St. Augustine and St. Bernard, Jesus and Madonna, cathedral music and masses, then go, for thy dear heart's sake, but do not go out of this icehouse of Unitarianism, all external, into an icehouse again of external. At all events, I charged her to pay no regard to dissenters, but to suck that orange thoroughly. 

And this on the Church and the common people written the year before:

 The Church aërates my good neighbors and serves them as a somewhat stricter and finer ablution than a clean shirt or a bath or a shampooing. The minister is a functionary and the meeting-house a functionary; they are one and, when they have spent all their week in private and selfish action, the Sunday reminds them of a need they have to stand again in social and public and ideal relations beyond neighborhood, --higher than the town-meeting--to their fellow men. They marry, and the minister who represents this high public, celebrates the fact; their child is baptized, and again they are published by his intervention. One of their family dies, he comes again, and the family go up publicly to the church to be publicised or churched in this official sympathy of mankind. It is all good as far as it goes. It is homage to the Ideal Church, which they have not: which the actual Church so foully misrepresents. But it is better so than nohow. These people have no fine arts, no literature, no great men to boswellize, no fine speculation to entertain their family board or their solitary toil with. Their talk is of oxen and pigs and hay and corn and apples. Whatsoever liberal aspirations they at any time have, whatsoever spiritual experiences, have looked this way, and the Church is their fact for such things. It has not been discredited in their eyes as books, lectures, or living men of genius have been. It is still to them the accredited symbol of the religious Idea. The Church is not to be defended against any spiritualist clamoring for its reform, but against such as say it is expedient to shut it up and have none, this much may be said. It stands in the history of the present time as a high school for the civility and mansuetude of the people. (I might prefer the Church of England or of Rome as the medium of those superior ablutions described above, only that I think the Unitarian Church, like the Lyceum, as yet an open and uncommitted organ, free to admit the ministrations of any inspired man that shall pass by: whilst the other churches are committed and will exclude him. )

 I should add that, although this is the real account to be given of the church-going of the farmers and villagers, yet it is not known to them, only felt. Do you not suppose that it is some benefit to a young villager who comes out of the woods of New Hampshire to Boston and serves his apprenticeship in a shop, and now opens his own store, to hang up his name in bright gold letters a foot long? His father could not write his name: it is only lately that he could: the name is mean and unknown: now the sun shines on it: all men, all women, fairest eyes read it. It is a fact in the great city. Perhaps he shall be successful and make it wider known: shall leave it greatly brightened to his son. His son may be head of a party: governor of the state: a poet: a powerful thinker: and send the knowledge of this name over the habitable earth. By all these suggestions, he is at least made responsible and thoughtful by his public relation of a seen and aërated name. 

 Let him modestly accept those hints of a more beautiful life which he meets with; how to do with few and easily gotten things: but let him seize with enthusiasm the opportunity of doing what he can, for the virtues are natural to each man and the talents are little perfections. 

 Let him hope infinitely with a patience as large as the sky. 

 Nothing is so young and untaught as time. 

How wise is his saying that we do not turn to the books of theBible--St. Paul and St. John--to start us on our task, as we do toMarcus Aurelius, or the Lives of the philosophers, or to Plato, orPlutarch, "because the Bible wears black clothes"! "It comes with acertain official claim against which the mind revolts. The Bible hasits own nobilities--might well be charming if left simply on itsmerits, as other books are, but this, 'You must, ' 'It is your duty, 'in connection with it, repels. 'T is like the introduction of martiallaw into Concord. If you should dot our farms with picket lines, and Icould not go or come across lots without a pass, I should resist, orelse emigrate. If Concord were as beautiful as Paradise, it would beas detestable to me. "

In his essays and letters Emerson gives one the impression of neverusing the first words that come to mind, nor the second, but the thirdor fourth; always a sense of selection, of deliberate choice. To usewords in a novel way, and impart a little thrill of surprise, seemedto be his aim. This effort of selection often mars his page. He israrely carried away by his thought, but he snares or captures it witha word. He does not feel first and think second; he thinks first, andthe feeling does not always follow. He dearly loved writing; it wasthe joy of his life, but it was a conscious intellectual effort. Itwas often a kind of walking on stilts; his feet are not on the commonground. And yet--and yet--what a power he was, and how precious hiscontributions!

He says in his Journal, "I have observed long since that to give thethought a full and just expression I must not prematurely utter it. "This hesitation, this studied selection robs him of the grace offelicity and spontaneity. The compensation is often a sense of noveltyand a thrill of surprise. Moreover, he avoids the commonplace and thecheap and tedious. His product is always a choice one, and is seen tohave a quality of its own. No page has more individuality than his, and none is so little like the page of the ordinary professionalwriter. 

'Tis a false note to speak of Emerson's doctrines, as Henry James did. He had no doctrines. He had leading ideas, but he had no system, noargument. It was his attitude of mind and spirit that was significantand original. He would have nothing to do with stereotyped opinions. What he said to-day might contradict what he said yesterday, or whathe might say to-morrow. No matter, the spirit was the same. Truth is asphere that has opposite poles. Emerson more than any other writerstood for the contradictory character of spiritual truth. Truth iswhat we make it--what takes the imprint of one's mind; it is not adefinite something like gold or silver, it is any statement that fitsour mental make-up, that comes home to us. What comes home in one moodmay not come home in another. 

Emerson had no creed, he had no definite ideas about God. Personalityand impersonality might both be affirmed of Absolute Being, and whatmay not be affirmed of it in our own minds?

The good of such a man as Emerson is not in his doctrines, but in hisspirit, his heroic attitude, his consonance with the universal mind. His thought is a tremendous solvent; it digests and renders fluid thehard facts of life and experience. 

XIV

Emerson records in his Journal: "I have been writing and speaking whatwere once called novelties, for twenty-five or thirty years, and havenot now one disciple. Why? Not that what I said was not true; not thatit has not found intelligent receivers; but because it did not go fromany wish in me to bring men to me, but to themselves. I delight indriving them from me. What could I do, if they came to me?--they wouldinterrupt and encumber me. This is my boast that I have no schoolfollower. I should account it a measure of the impurity of insight, ifit did not create independence. "

It is never easy to stray far from the master in high moral, æsthetic, and literary matters and be on the safe side; we are only to try toescape his individual bias, to break over his limitations and "bravethe landscape's look" with our own eyes. We are to be more on guardagainst his affinities, his unconscious attractions and repulsions, than against his ethical and intellectual conclusions, if one may makethat distinction, which I know is hazardous business. We readilyimpose our own limitations upon others and see the world as old whenwe are old. 

Emerson criticized Carlyle because Carlyle was not Emerson, just asCarlyle criticized Emerson because he was not Carlyle. We are all poorbeggars in this respect; each of us is the victim of his own demon. Beware of the predilection of the master! When his temperament impelshim he is no longer a free man. 

We touch Emerson's limitations in his failure to see anything inHawthorne's work; they had "no inside to them"; "it would take him andAlcott together to make a man"; and, again, in his rathercontemptuous disposal of Poe as "the jingle man" and his verdict uponShelley as "never a poet"! The intellectual content of Shelley's workis not great; but that he was not a poet, in fact that he was anythingelse but a poet, though not of the highest order, is contrary to thetruth, I think. Limitations like this are not infrequent in Emerson. Yet Emerson was a great critic of men and of books. A highlyinteresting volume showing him in this character could be compiledfrom the Journals. 

Emerson and Hawthorne were near neighbors for several years. Emersonliked the man better than his books. They once had a good long walktogether; they walked to Harvard village and back, occupying a coupleof days and walking about twenty miles a day. They had muchconversation--talked of Scott and Landor and others. They found thebar-rooms at the inns cold and dull places. The Temperance Society hademptied them. Hawthorne tried to smoke a cigar in one of them, but"was soon out on the piazza. " Hawthorne, Emerson said, was moreinclined to play Jove than Mercury. It is a pleasing picture--thesetwo men, so unlike, but both typical of New England and both men of ahigh order of genius, walking in friendly converse along the countryroads in the golden September days over seventy years ago. Emersonalways regretted that he never succeeded in "conquering a friendship"with Hawthorne, mainly because they had so few traits in common. Tothe satisfaction of silent intercourse with men Emerson was clearly astranger. There must be an interchange of ideas; the feeling ofcomradeship, the communion of congenial souls was not enough. Hawthorne, shy, silent, rather gloomy, yet there must have been acharm about his mere presence that more than made up for his want ofconversation. His silence was golden. Emerson was a transcendentalYankee and was always bent on driving sharp bargains in theinterchange of ideas with the persons he met. He did not propose toswap horses or watches or jack-knives, but he would swap ideas withyou day in and day out. If you had no ideas to swap, he lost interestin you. 

The wisdom of a great creative artist like Hawthorne does notnecessarily harden into bright epigrammatic sayings or rules for theconduct of life, and the available intellectual content of his worksto the Emersonian type of mind may be small; but his interior, hisemotional and imaginative richness may much more than make it up. Thescholar, the sayer of things, must always rank below the creator, orthe maker of things. 

Philosophers contradict themselves like other mortals. Here and therein his Journals Emerson rails against good nature, and says "tomahawksare better. " "Why should they call me good-natured? I, too, likepuss, have a tractile claw. " And he declares that he likes the sayersof No better than the sayers of Yes, and that he preferred hardclouds, hard expressions, and hard manners. In another mood, or fromanother point of view, he says of a man, "Let him go into his closetand pray the Divinity to make him so great as to be good-natured. " Andagain, "How great it is to do a little, as, for instance, to deservethe praise of good nature, or of humility, or of punctuality. "

Emerson's characterization of himself as always a painter isinteresting. People, he said, came to his lectures with expectationthat he was to realize the Republic he described, and they ceased tocome when they found this reality no nearer: "They mistook me. I amand always was a painter. I paint still with might and main and choosethe best subject I can. Many have I seen come and go with false hopesand fears, and dubiously affected by my pictures. But I paint on. " "Iportray the ideal, not the real, " he might have added. He was apoet-seer and not a historian. He was a painter of ideas, as Carlylewas a painter of men and events. Always is there an effort at vividand artistic expression. If his statement does not kindle theimagination, it falls short of his aim. He visualizes his most subtleand abstract conceptions--sees the idea wedded to its correlative inthe actual world. A new figure, a fresh simile gave him a thrill ofpleasure. He went hawking up and down the fields of science, of trade, of agriculture, of nature, seeking them. He thinks in symbols, hepaints his visions of the ideal with pigments drawn from the world allabout him. To call such men as Emerson and Carlyle painters is only toemphasize their artistic temperaments. Their seriousness, theirdevotion to high moral and intellectual standards, only lift them, asthey do Whitman, out of the world of mere decorative art up to theworld of heroic and creative art where art as such does not obtrudeitself. 

XV

Emerson wonders why it is that man eating does not attract theimagination or attract the artist: "Why is our diet and table notagreeable to the imagination, whilst all other creatures eat withoutshame? We paint the bird pecking at fruit, the browsing ox, the lionleaping on his prey, but no painter ever ventured to draw a maneating. The difference seems to consist in the presence or absence ofthe world at the feast. The diet is base, be it what it may, that ishidden in caves or cellars or houses. . . . Did you ever eat your breadon the top of a mountain, or drink water there? Did you ever camp outwith lumbermen or travellers in the prairie? Did you ever eat thepoorest rye or oatcake with a beautiful maiden in the wilderness? anddid you not find that the mixture of sun and sky with your bread gaveit a certain mundane savour and comeliness?"

I do not think Emerson hits on the true explanation of why man feedingis not an attractive subject for the painter. It is not that the dietis base and is hidden in caves and cellars, or that the world is notpresent at the feast. It is because eating is a purely selfish animaloccupation; there is no touch of the noble or the idyllic or theheroic in it. In the act man confesses his animal nature; he is nolonger an Emerson, a Dante, a Plato--he is simply a physiologicalcontrivance taking in nutriment. The highest and the lowest are forthe moment on the same level. The lady and her maid, the lord and hislackey are all one. Eating your bread on a mountain-top or in the campof lumbermen or with a beautiful maiden in the wilderness adds a newelement. Here the picture has all nature for a background and theimagination is moved. The rye and the oatcake now become a kind ofheavenly manna, or, as Fitzgerald has it, under such conditions thewilderness is Paradise enow. The simple act of feeding does not nowengross the attention. Associate with the act of eating any worthy ornoble idea, and it is at once lifted to a higher level. A motherfeeding her child, a cook passing food to the tramp at the door or toother hungry and forlorn wayfarers, or soldiers pausing to eat theirrations in the field, or fishermen beside the stream, or the haymakerswith their lunch under a tree--in all such incidents there arepictorial elements because the least part of it all to the looker-onis the act of eating. 

In Da Vinci's "Last Supper" the mere animal act of taking food playsno part; the mind is occupied with higher and more significant things. A suggestion of wine or of fruit in a painting may be agreeable, butfrom a suggestion of the kitchen and the cook we turn away. Theincident of some of Washington's officers during the Revolutionentertaining some British officers (an historical fact) on bakedpotatoes and salt would appeal to the artistic imagination. All theplanting and reaping of the farmers is suggestive of our animal wants, as is so much of our whole industrial activity; but art looks kindlyupon much of it, shows us more or less in partnership with primalenergies. People surrounding a table after all signs of the dinnerhave been removed hold the elements of an agreeable picture, becausethat suggests conversation and social intercourse--a feast of reasonand a flow of soul. We are no longer animals; we have moved up manydegrees higher in the scale of human values. 

Emerson's deep love and admiration for Carlyle come out many times inthe Journals. No other literary man of his times moved and impressedhim so profoundly. Their correspondence, which lasted upwards offorty years, is the most valuable correspondence known to me inEnglish literature. It is a history of the growth and development ofthese two remarkable minds. 

I lately reread the Correspondence, mainly to bring my mind again incontact with these noble spirits, so much more exalted than any in ourown time, but partly to see what new light the letters threw upon thelives of these two men. 

There is little of the character of intimate and friendly letters inthese remarkable documents. It is not Dear Tom or Dear Waldo. It isDear Emerson or Dear Carlyle. They are not letters, they are epistles, like Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, or to the Thessalonians, or tothe Romans. Each of them contains the fragments of a gospel that bothwere preaching, each in his own way, but at bottom the same--thebeauty and majesty of the moral law. Let the heavens fall, the morallaw and our duty to God and man will stand. These two men, sodifferent in character and temperament, were instantly drawn togetherby that magnet--the moral sentiment. Carlyle's works were occupiedalmost entirely with men--with history, biography, political events, and government; Emerson's with ideas, nature, and poetry; yet the bedrock in each was the same. Both preached an evangel, but howdifferent!

Emerson makes a note of the days on which he received a letter from, or wrote one to, his great Scottish friend. Both were important eventswith him. It is evident that Emerson makes more of an effort to writehis best in these letters than does Carlyle. Carlyle tosses his offwith more ease and unconscious mastery. The exchange is always infavor of the Scot. Carlyle was, of course, the more prodigiouspersonality, and had the advantage in the richness and venerablenessof the Old World setting. But Emerson did not hesitate to discount himin his letters and in his Journals, very wisely sometimes, not sowisely at others. 

"O Carlyle, the merit of glass is not to be seen, but to be seenthrough; but every crystal and lamina of the Carlyle glass isvisible. " Of course Carlyle might reply that stained glass has othermerits than transparency, or he might ask: Why should an author'sstyle be compared to glass anyhow, since it is impossible todissociate it from the matter of his discourse? It is not merely toreveal truth; it is also to enhance its beauty. There is the charm andwitchery of style, as in Emerson's own best pages, as well as theworth of the subject-matter. Is it not true that in the description ofany natural object or scene or event we want something more than tosee it through a perfectly transparent medium? We want the added charmor illusion of the writer's own way of seeing it, the hue of his ownspirit. 

I think we may admit all this--doubtless Emerson would admit it--andyet urge that Carlyle's style had many faults of the kind Emersonindicated. It thrusts itself too much upon the reader's attention. Hisprose is at the best, as in the "Life of Stirling, " when it is mosttransparent and freest from mannerisms. Carlyle's manner at its bestis very pleasing; at its worst it becomes a wearisome mannerism. Whena writer's style gets into a rut his reader is not happy. Ease, flexibility, transparency, though it be colored transparency, areamong the merits we want. 

The most just and penetrating thing Emerson ever said about Carlyle isrecorded in his Journal in 1847: "In Carlyle, as in Byron, one is muchmore struck with the rhetoric than with the matter. He has manlysuperiority rather than intellectuality, and so makes good hard hitsall the time. There is more character than intellect in everysentence, herein strongly resembling Samuel Johnson. " Criticism likethis carries the force and conviction of a scientific analysis. 

The Journals abound in similar illuminating bits of criticism directedto nearly all the more noted authors of English literature, past andpresent. In science we do want an absolutely colorless, transparentmedium, but in literature the personality of the writer is everything. The born writer gives us facts and ideas steeped in his own quality asa man. Take out of Carlyle's works, or out of Emerson's, or out ofArnold's, the savor of the man's inborn quality--the savor of thatwhich acts over and above his will--and we have robbed them of theirdistinctive quality. Literature is always truth of some sort, plus aman. No one knew this better than Emerson himself. Another remark ofEmerson's, made when he was twenty-seven years old, has high literaryvalue:

"There is no beauty in words except in their collocation. "

It is not beautiful words that make beautiful poetry, or beautifulprose, but ordinary words beautifully arranged. The writer who hopesby fine language to invoke fine ideas is asking the tailor to turn himout a fine man. First get your great idea, and you will find it isalready fitly clothed. The image of the clothes in this connection is, of course, a very inadequate and misleading one, since language is thethought or its vital integument, and not merely its garment. We oftenpraise a writer for his choice of words, and Emerson himself says inthe same paragraph from which I quote the above: "No man can writewell who thinks there is no choice of words for him. " There is alwaysa right word and every other than that is wrong. There is always thebest word, or the best succession of words to give force and vividnessto the idea. All painters use the same colors, all musicians use thesame notes, all sculptors use the same marble, all architects use thesame materials and all writers use essentially the same words, theirarrangement and combination alone making the difference in the variousproducts. Nature uses the same elements in her endless variety ofliving things; their different arrangement and combinations, and someinterior necessity which we have to call the animating principle, isthe secret of the individuality of each. 

Of course we think in words or images, and no man can tell which isfirst, or if there is any first in such matters--the thought or theword--any more than the biochemist can tell us which is first in theliving body, the carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and so on, or the livingforce that weaves itself a corporeal garment out of these elements. 

XVI

Emerson hungered for the quintessence of things, their lastconcentrated, intensified meanings, for the pith and marrow of men andevents, and not for their body and bulk. He wanted the ottar of rosesand not a rose garden, the diamond and not a mountain of carbon. Thisbent gives a peculiar beauty and stimulus to his writings, while atthe same time it makes the reader crave a little more body andsubstance. The succulent leaf and stalk of certain garden vegetablesis better to one's liking than the more pungent seed. If Emersoncould only have given us the essence of Father Taylor's copious, eloquent, flesh-and-blood discourses, how it would have delighted us!or if he could only have got the silver out of Alcott's bewitchingmoonshine--that would have been worth while!

But why wish Emerson had been some other than he was? He was at leastthe quintessence of New England Puritanism, its last and deepestmeaning and result, lifted into the regions of ethics and æsthetics. 

II

FLIES IN AMBER

It has been the fashion among our younger writers to speak slightinglyand flippantly of Emerson, referring to him as outworn, and as theapostle of the obvious. This view is more discreditable to the youngpeople than is their criticism damaging to Emerson. It can make littledifference to Emerson's fame, but it would be much more becoming inour young writers to garland his name with flowers than to utter theseharsh verdicts. 

It is undoubtedly true that Emerson entered into and influenced thelives of more choice spirits, both men and women, during the pastgeneration than did any other American author. Whether he still doesso would be interesting to know. We who have felt his tonic andinspiring influence can but hope so. Yet how impossible he seems intimes like these in which we live, when the stars of the highestheaven of the spirit which illumine his page are so obscured orblotted out by the dust and the fog of our hurrying, materialisticage! Try to think of Emerson spending a winter going about the WesternStates reading to miscellaneous audiences essays like those that nowmake up his later volumes. What chance would he stand, even inuniversity towns, as against the "movies" (a word so ugly I hesitateto write it) in the next street?

I once defended Emerson against a criticism of Matthew Arnold's. It istrue, as Arnold says, that Emerson is not a great writer, except onrare occasions. Now and then, especially in his earlier essays, thereis logical texture and cohesion in his pages; development, evolution, growth; one thing follows another naturally, and each paragraphfollows from what went before. But most of his later writings are akind of patchwork; unrelated ideas are in juxtaposition; theincongruities are startling. All those chapters, I suppose, were readas lectures to miscellaneous audiences in which the attention soonbecame tired or blunted if required to follow a closely reasonedargument. Pictures and parables and startling affirmations suitedbetter. Emerson did not stoop to his audience; there was nocondescension in him. The last time I heard him, which was inWashington in the early seventies, his theme was "Manners, " and muchof it passed over the heads of his audience. 

Certain of Emerson's works must strike the average reader, when hefirst looks into them, as a curious medley of sense and wildextravagance, utterly lacking in the logical sequence of the bestprose, and often verging on the futile and the absurd. Yet if one doesnot get discouraged, one will soon see running through them veins ofthe purest gold of the spirit, and insight into Nature's ways, thatredeem and more than redeem them. 

I recall that when, as a young man, I looked into them the first time, I could make nothing of them. I was fresh from reading the standardessayists and philosophers of English literature--Addison, Steele, Cowley, Johnson, Locke--and the poems of Pope, Young, and Cowper, allof ethical import and value, and sometimes didactic, but nevermystical and transcendental, and the plunge into Emerson was a leapinto a strange world. But a few years later, when I opened his essaysagain, they were like spring-water to parched lips. Now, in my oldage, I go back to him with a half-sad pleasure, as one goes back tothe scenes of one's youth. 

Emerson taught us a mingled poetic and prophetic way of looking atthings that stays with us. The talented English woman Anne Gilchristsaid we had outgrown Emerson; had absorbed all he had to give us; andwere leaving him behind. Of course he was always a teacher andpreacher, in the thrall of his priestly inheritance, and to thatextent we leave him behind as we do not leave behind works of pureliterature. 

As to continuity, some of his essays have much more of it than others. In his "Nature" the theme is unfolded, there is growth and evolution;and his first and second series of Essays likewise show it. The essayson "Character, " on "Self-Reliance, " on the "Over-Soul, " meet therequirements of sound prose. And if there is any sounder prose thancan be found in his "Nature, " or in his "English Traits, " or in hishistorical and biographical addresses, I do not know where to find it. How flat and commonplace seem the works of some of the masters ofprose to whom Arnold alludes--Cicero, Voltaire, Addison, Swift--compared with those of Emerson! A difference like that betweenthe prismatic hues of raindrops suspended from a twig or a trellis inthe sunlight and the water in the spring or the brook. 

But in Emerson's later work there is, as geologists say, nonconformitybetween the strata which make up his paragraphs. There is onlyjuxtaposition. Among his later papers the one on "Wealth" flows alongmuch more than the one on "Fate. " Emerson believed in wealth. Povertydid not attract him. It was not suited to his cast of mind. Povertywas humiliating. Emerson accumulated a fortune, and it added to hisself-respect. Thoreau's pride in his poverty must have made Emersonshiver. 

Although Arnold refused to see in Emerson a great writer, he did admitthat he was eminent as the "friend and aider of those who would live inthe spirit"; but Arnold apparently overlooked the fact that, devoid ofthe merit of good literature, no man's writings could have highspiritual value. Strip the Bible of its excellence as literature, andyou have let out its life-blood. Literature is not a varnish or apolish. It is not a wardrobe. It is the result of a vital, imaginativerelation of the man to his subject. And Emerson's subject-matter at itsbest always partakes of the texture of his own mind. It is admitted thatthere are times when his writing lacks organization, --the vitalties, --when his rhetoric is more like a rocking-horse or amerry-go-round than like the real thing. But there are few writers whodo not mark time now and then, and Emerson is no exception; and Icontend that at his best his work has the sequence and evolution of allgreat prose. And yet, let me say that if Emerson's power and influencedepended upon his logic, he would be easily disposed of. Fortunatelythey do not. They depend, let me repeat, upon his spiritual power andinsight, and the minor defects I am pointing out are only like flies inamber. 

He thought in images more strictly than any other contemporary writer, and was often desperately hard-put to it to make his thought wed hisimage. He confessed that he did not know how to argue, and that hecould only say what he saw. But he had spiritual vision; we cannotdeny this, though we do deny him logical penetration. I doubt ifthere ever was a writer of such wide and lasting influence as Emerson, in whom the logical sense was so feeble and shadowy. He had in thisrespect a feminine instead of a masculine mind, an intuitional insteadof a reasoning one. It made up in audacious, often extravagant, affirmations what it lacked in syllogistic strength. The logical mind, with its sense of fitness and proportion, does not strain orover-strain the thread that knits the parts together. It does not jumpto conclusions, but reaches them step by step. The flesh and blood offeeling and sentiment may clothe the obscure framework of logic, butthe logic is there all the same. Emerson's mind was as devoid oflogical sense as are our remembered dreams, or as Christian Science isof science. He said that truth ceased to be such when polemicallystated. Occasionally he amplifies and unfolds an idea, as in theessays already mentioned, but generally his argument is a rope ofsand. Its strength is the strength of the separate particles. He isperpetually hooking things together that do not go together. It islike putting an apple on a pumpkin vine, or an acorn on a hickory. "Aclub foot and a club wit. " "Why should we fear, " he says, "to becrushed by the same elements--we who are made up of the sameelements?" But were we void of fear, we should be crushed much oftenerthan we are. The electricity in our bodies does not prevent us frombeing struck by lightning, nor the fluids in our bodies prevent thewaters from drowning us, nor the carbon in our bodies prevent carbondioxide from poisoning us. 

One of Emerson's faults as a writer arose from his fierce hunger foranalogy. "I would rather have a good symbol of my thought, " heconfesses, "than the suffrage of Kant or of Plato. " "All thinking isanalogizing, and it is the use of life to learn metonymy. " His passionfor analogy betrays him here and there in his Journals, as in thispassage: "The water we wash with never speaks of itself, nor does fireor wind or tree. Neither does a noble natural man, " and so forth. Ifwater and fire and wind and tree were in the habit of talking ofanything else, this kind of a comparison would not seem so spurious. 

A false note in rhetoric like the above you will find in Emersonoftener than a false note in taste. I find but one such in theJournals: "As soon as a man gets his suction-hose down into the greatdeep, he belongs to no age, but is an eternal man. " That I call anignoble image, and one cannot conceive of Emerson himself printingsuch a passage. 

We hear it said that Whittier is the typical poet of New England. Itmay be so, but Emerson is much the greater poet. Emerson is a poet ofthe world, while Whittier's work is hardly known abroad at all. Emerson is known wherever the English language is spoken. Not thatEmerson is in any sense a popular poet, such as, for example, Burns orByron, but he is the poet of the choice few, of those who seek poetrythat has some intellectual or spiritual content. Whittier wrote manyhappy descriptions of New England scenes and seasons. "The Tent on theBeach" and "Snow-Bound" come readily to mind; "The Playmate" is asweet poem, full of tender and human affection, but not a great poem. Whittier had no profundity. Is not a Quaker poet necessarily narrow?Whittier gave voice to the New England detestation of slavery, but byno means so forcibly and profoundly as did Emerson. He had a theology, but not a philosophy. I wonder if his poems are still read. 

In his chapter called "Considerations by the Way, " Emerson strikesthis curious false note in his rhetoric: "We have a right to be hereor we should not be here. We have the same right to be here that CapeCod and Sandy Hook have to be there. " As if Cape Cod or Cape Horn orSandy Hook had any "rights"! This comparison of man with inanimatethings occurs in both Emerson and Thoreau. Thoreau sins in this way atleast once when he talks of the Attic wit of burning thorns andbriars. There is a similar false note in such a careful writer as DeanSwift. He says to his young poet, "You are ever to try a good poem asyou would a sound pipkin, and if it rings well upon the knuckle, besure there is no flaw in it. " Whitman compares himself with aninanimate thing in the line:

 "I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by. "

But he claims no moral or human attributes or rights for his level; itsimply acts in obedience to the principle it embodies--the law ofgravitation. 

The lecturer "gets away" with such things better than the writer. Anaudience is not critical about such matters, but the reader takes noteof them. Mosaics will do on the platform, or in the pulpit, but willnot bear the nearer view of the study. 

The incongruities of Emerson are seen in such passages as this: "Eachplant has its parasites, and each created thing its lover and poet, "as if there were any relation between the two clauses of thissentence--between parasites and lovers and poets! As if one shouldsay, "Woodchucks are often alive with fleas, and our fruit trees bloomin May. "

Emerson was so emboldened by what had been achieved through themastery of the earth's forces that he was led to say that "a wisegeology shall yet make the earthquake harmless, and the volcano anagricultural resource. " But this seems expecting too much. We haveharnessed the lightnings, but the earthquake is too deep and toomighty for us. It is a steed upon which we cannot lay our hands. Thevolcano we may draw upon for heat and steam, as we do upon the windsand streams for power, but it is utterly beyond our control. Thebending of the earth's crust beneath the great atmospheric waves issomething we cannot bridle. The tides by sea as by land are beyond us. 

Emerson had the mind of the prophet and the seer, and was given tobold affirmations. The old Biblical distinction between the scribesand the man who speaks with authority still holds. We may say of allother New England essayists and poets--Lowell, Whipple, Tuckerman, Holmes, Hillard, Whittier, Longfellow--that they are scribes only. Emerson alone speaks as one having authority--the authority of thespirit. "Thus saith the Lord"--it is this tone that gives him hisauthority the world over. 

I never tire of those heroic lines of his in which he sounds abattle-cry to the spirit:

 "Though love repine, and reason chafe, There came a voice without reply, -- ''T is man's perdition to be safe, When for the truth he ought to die. '"

The last time I saw Emerson was at the Holmes seventieth-birthdaybreakfast in 1879. The serious break in his health had resulted in amarked aphasia, so that he could not speak the name of his nearestfriend, nor answer the simplest question. Yet he was as serene asever. Let the heavens fall--what matters it to me? his look seemed tosay. 

Emerson's face had in it more of what we call the divine than had thatof any other author of his time--that wonderful, kindly, wisesmile--the smile of the soul--not merely the smile of good nature, butthe smile of spiritual welcome and hospitality. 

Emerson had quality. A good Emersonian will recognize any passage fromthe Sage in a book of quotations, even if no name is appended. 

We speak of Emerson as outgrown, yet only yesterday I saw in J. ArthurThomson's recent Gifford Lectures on "The System of Animate Nature, "repeated quotations from Emerson, mainly from his poetry. I think heis no more likely to be outgrown than are Wordsworth and Arnold. Yet Ido not set the same value upon his poetry that I do upon that ofWordsworth at his best. 

Emerson is the last man we should expect to be guilty ofmisinterpreting Nature, yet he does so at times. He does so in thispassage: "If Nature wants a thumb, she makes it at the cost of thearms and legs. " As if the arm were weaker or less efficient because ofthe thumb. What would man's power be as a tool-using animal withouthis strong, opposable thumb? His grasp would be gone. 

He says truly that the gruesome, the disgusting, the repellent are notfit subjects for cabinet pictures. The "sacred subjects" to which heobjects probably refer to the Crucifixion--the nails through the handsand feet, and the crown of thorns. But to jump from that fact to theassertion that Nature covers up the skeleton on the same grounds, isabsurd. Do not all vertebrates require an osseous system? In theradiates and articulates she puts the bony system on the outside, butwhen she comes to her backbone animals, she perforce puts her osseoussystem beneath. She weaves her tissues and integuments of flesh andskin and hair over it, not to hide it, but to use it. Would you have aman like a jellyfish?

The same want of logic marks Carlyle's mind when he says: "The drop bycontinually falling bores its way through the hardest rock. The hastytorrent rushes over it with hideous uproar, and leaves no tracebehind. " But give the "hasty torrent" the same time you give the drop, and see what it will do to the rock!

Emerson says, "A little more or a little less does not signifyanything. " But it does signify in this world of material things. Isone man as impressive as an army, one tree as impressive as a forest?"Scoop a little water in the hollow of your palm; take up a handful ofshore sand; well, these are the elements. What is the beach but acresof sand? what is the ocean but cubic miles of water? A little more ora little less signifies nothing. " It is the mass that does impress us, as Niagara does, as the midnight sky does. It is not as parts of this"astonishing astronomy, " or as a "part of the round globe under theoptical sky"--we do not think of that, but the imagination is moved bythe vast sweep of the ocean and its abysmal depths, and its ceaselessrocking. In some cases we see the All in the little; the law thatspheres a tear spheres a globe. That Nature is seen in leasts is anold Latin maxim. The soap bubble explains the rainbow. Steam from theboiling kettle gave Watt the key to the steam engine; but a tumbler ofwater throws no light on the sea, though its sweating may help explainthe rain. 

Emerson quotes Goethe as saying, "The beautiful is a manifestation ofsecret laws of nature which, but for this appearance, had been foreverconcealed from us. " As if beauty were an objective reality instead ofa subjective experience! As if it were something out there in thelandscape that you may gather your arms full of and bring in! If youare an artist, you may bring in your vision of it, pass it throughyour own mind, and thus embalm and preserve the beauty. Or if you area poet, you may have a similar experience and reproduce it, humanized, in a poem. But the beauty is always a distilled and re-created, or, shall we say, an incarnated beauty--a tangible and measurablesomething, like moisture in the air, or sugar in the trees, or quartzin the rocks. There is, and can be, no "science of beauty. " Beauty, like truth, is an experience of the mind. It is the emotion you feelwhen in health you look from your door or window of a May morning. Ifyou are ill, or oppressed with grief, or worried, you will hardlyexperience the emotion of the beautiful. 

Emerson said he was warned by the fate of many philosophers not toattempt a definition of beauty. But in trying to describe it andcharacterize it he ran the same risk. "We ascribe beauty to that whichis simple, " he said; "which has no superfluous parts; which exactlyanswers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the meanof many extremes. " Is a boot-jack beautiful? Is a crow-bar? Yet theseare simple, they have no superfluous parts, they exactly serve theirends, they stand related to all things through the laws of chemistryand physics. A flower is beautiful, a shell on the beach is beautiful, a tree in full leaf, or in its winter nudity, is beautiful; but thesethings are not very simple. Complex things may be beautiful also. Avillage church may be beautiful no less than a Gothic cathedral. Emerson was himself a beautiful writer, a beautiful character, and hisworks are a priceless addition to literature. 

"Go out of the house to see the moon, " says Emerson, "and it is meretinsel; it will not please as when its light shines upon yournecessary journey. " This is not true in my experience. The stars donot become mere tinsel, do they, when we go out to look at theoverwhelming spectacle? Neither does the moon. Is it not a delight initself to look at the full moon--

 "The vitreous pour of the full moon, just tinged with blue, "

as Whitman says?

 "The moon doth look round her with delight when the heavens are bare, "

says Wordsworth, and equally with delight do we regard the spectacle. The busy farmer in the fields rarely sees the beauty of Nature. He hasnot the necessary detachment. Put him behind his team and plough inthe spring and he makes a pleasing picture to look upon, but the mindmust be open to take in the beauty of Nature. 

Of course Emerson is only emphasizing the fact of the beauty ofutility, of the things we do, of the buildings we put up for use, andnot merely for show. A hut, a log cabin in a clearing, a farmer'sunpainted barn, all have elements of beauty. A man leading a horse towater, or foddering his cattle from a stack in a snow-covered field, or following his plough, is always pleasing. Every day I pass along aroad by a wealthy man's estate and see a very elaborate stone wall ofcobblestones and cement which marks the boundary of his estate on thehighway. The wall does not bend and undulate with the inequalities ofthe ground; its top is as level as a foundation wall; it is an offenseto every passer-by; it has none of the simplicity that should mark adivision wall; it is studied and elaborate, and courts youradmiration. How much more pleasing a rough wall of field stone, or"wild stone, " as our old wall-layer put it, with which the farmerseparates his fields! No thought of looks, but only of utility. Theshowy, the highly ornate castle which the multimillionaire builds onhis estate--would an artist ever want to put one of them in hispicture? Beauty is likely to flee when we make a dead set at her. 

Emerson's exaggerations are sometimes so excessive as to be simplyamusing, as, when speaking of the feats of the imagination, he says, "My boots and chair and candlestick are fairies in disguise, meteorsand constellations. " The baseball, revolving as it flies, may suggestthe orbs, or your girdle suggest the equator, or the wiping of yourface on a towel suggest the absorption of the rain by the soil; butdoes the blacking of your shoes suggest anything celestial? Hinges andlevers and fulcrums are significant, but one's old hat, or old boots, have not much poetic significance. An elm tree may suggest acathedral, or a shell suggest the rainbow, or the sparkling frostsuggest diamonds, or the thread that holds the beads symbolize the lawthat strings the spheres, but a button is a button, a shoestring ashoestring, and a spade a spade, and nothing more. 

I cherish and revere the name of Emerson so profoundly, and owe himsuch a debt, that it seems, after all, a pity to point out the flawsin his precious amber. 

Let us keep alive the Emersonian memories: that such a man has livedand wrought among us. Let us teach our children his brave and heroicwords, and plant our lives upon as secure an ethical foundation as hedid. Let us make pilgrimages to Concord, and stand with uncoveredheads beneath the pine tree where his ashes rest. He left us an estatein the fair land of the Ideal. He bequeathed us treasures that thievescannot break through and steal, nor time corrupt, nor rust nor mothdestroy. [2]

[Footnote 2: At the onset of the author's last illness he attempted torearrange and improve this essay, but was even then unequal to it, and, after a little shifting and editing, gave it up. "Do what you canwith it, " he said; and when I asked him if he could not add a fewwords to close it, he sat up in bed, and wrote the closing sentences, which proved to be the last he ever penned. --C. B. ]

III

ANOTHER WORD ON THOREAU

I

After Emerson, the name of no New England man of letters keeps greenerand fresher than that of Thoreau. A severe censor of his countrymen, and with few elements of popularity, yet the quality of his thought, the sincerity of his life, and the nearness and perennial interest ofhis themes, as well as his rare powers of literary expression, winrecruits from each generation of readers. He does not grow stale anymore than Walden Pond itself grows stale. He is an obstinate factthere in New England life and literature, and at the end of his firstcentennial his fame is more alive than ever. 

Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts, July, 1817, and passedmost of his life of forty-five years in his native town, minding hisown business, as he would say, which consisted, for the most part, inspending at least the half of each day in the open air, winter andsummer, rain and shine, and in keeping tab upon all the doings of wildnature about him and recording his observations in his Journal. 

The two race strains that met in Thoreau, the Scottish and the French, come out strongly in his life and character. To the French he owes hisvivacity, his lucidity, his sense of style, and his passion for thewild; for the French, with all their urbanity and love of art, turn tonature very easily. To the Scot he is indebted more for his characterthan for his intellect. From this source come his contrariness, hiscombativeness, his grudging acquiescence, and his pronouncedmysticism. Thence also comes his genius for solitude. The man who inhis cabin in the woods has a good deal of company "especially themornings when nobody calls, " is French only in the felicity of hisexpression. But there is much in Thoreau that is neither Gallic norScottish, but pure Thoreau. 

The most point-blank and authoritative criticism within my knowledgethat Thoreau has received at the hands of his countrymen came from thepen of Lowell about 1864, and was included in "My Study Windows. " Ithas all the professional smartness and scholarly qualities whichusually characterize Lowell's critical essays. Thoreau was vulnerable, both as an observer and as a literary craftsman, and Lowell lets himoff pretty easily--too easily--on both counts. 

The flaws he found in his nature lore were very inconsiderable: "Tillhe built his Walden shack he did not know that the hickory grew nearConcord. Till he went to Maine he had never seen phosphorescentwood--a phenomenon early familiar to most country boys. At forty hespoke of the seeding [_i. E. _, flowering][3] of the pine as a newdiscovery, though one should have thought that its gold-dust ofblowing pollen might have earlier caught his eye. "

[Footnote 3: See "Walking" in _Excursions_. He was under thirty-threewhen he made these observations (June, 1850). ]

As regards his literary craftsmanship, Lowell charges him only withhaving revived the age of _concetti_ while he fancied himself goingback to a preclassical nature, basing the charge on such a far-fetchedcomparison as that in which Thoreau declares his preference for "thedry wit of decayed cranberry-vines and the fresh Attic salt of themoss-beds" over the wit of the Greek sages as it comes to us in the"Banquet" of Xenophon--a kind of perversity of comparison all toofrequent with Thoreau. 

But though Lowell lets Thoreau off easily on these specific counts, hemore than makes up by his sweeping criticism, on more general grounds, of his life and character. Here one feels that he overdoes the matter. 

It is not true, in the sense which Lowell implies, that Thoreau'swhole life was a search for the doctor. It was such a search in noother sense than that we are all in search of the doctor when we takea walk, or flee to the mountains or to the seashore, or seek to bringour minds and spirits in contact with "Nature's primal sanities. " Hissearch for the doctor turns out to be an escape from the conditionsthat make a doctor necessary. His wonderful activity, those long walksin all weathers, in all seasons, by night as well as by day, drenchedby rain and chilled by frost, suggest a reckless kind of health. Adoctor might wisely have cautioned him against such exposures. Nor wasThoreau a valetudinarian in his physical, moral, or intellectualfiber. 

It is not true, as Lowell charges, that it was his indolence thatstood in the way of his taking part in the industrial activities inwhich his friends and neighbors engaged, or that it was his lack ofpersistence and purpose that hindered him. It is not true that he waspoor because he looked upon money as an unmixed evil. Thoreau'spurpose was like adamant, and his industry in his own proper pursuitswas tireless. He knew the true value of money, and he knew also thatthe best things in life are to be had without money and without price. When he had need of money, he earned it. He turned his hand to manythings--land-surveying, lecturing, magazine-writing, growing whitebeans, doing odd jobs at carpentering, whitewashing, fence-building, plastering, and brick-laying. 

Lowell's criticism amounts almost to a diatribe. He was naturallyantagonistic to the Thoreau type of mind. Coming from a man near hisown age, and a neighbor, Thoreau's criticism of life was an affront tothe smug respectability and scholarly attainments of the class towhich Lowell belonged. Thoreau went his own way, with an air ofdefiance and contempt which, no doubt, his contemporaries were moreinclined to resent than we are at our distance. Shall this man in hishut on the shores of Walden Pond assume to lay down the law and thegospel to his elders and betters, and pass unrebuked, no matter onwhat intimate terms he claims to be with the gods of the woods andmountains? This seems to be Lowell's spirit. 

"Thoreau's experiment, " says Lowell, "actually presupposed all thatcomplicated civilization which it theoretically abjured. He squattedon another man's land; he borrows an axe; his boards, his nails, hisbricks, his mortar, his books, his lamp, his fish-hooks, his plough, his hoe, all turn state's evidence against him as an accomplice in thesin of that artificial civilization which rendered it possible thatsuch a person as Henry D. Thoreau should exist at all. " Very clever, but what of it? Of course Thoreau was a product of the civilization hedecried. He was a product of his country and his times. He was born inConcord and early came under the influence of Emerson; he was agraduate of Harvard University and all his life availed himself, moreor less, of the accumulated benefits of state and socialorganizations. When he took a train to Boston, or dropped a letter in, or received one through, the post office, or read a book, or visited alibrary, or looked in a newspaper, he was a sharer in these benefits. He made no claims to living independently of the rest of mankind. Hisonly aim in his Walden experiment was to reduce life to its lowestterms, to drive it into a corner, as he said, and question andcross-question it, and see, if he could, what it really meant. And heprobably came as near cornering it there in his hut on Walden Pond asany man ever did anywhere, certainly in a way more pleasing tocontemplate than did the old hermits in the desert, or than didDiogenes in his tub, though Lowell says the tub of the old Greek had asounder bottom. 

Lowell seemed to discredit Thoreau by attacking his philosophy andpointing out the contradictions and inconsistencies of a man whoabjures the civilization of which he is the product, overlooking thefact that man's theories and speculations may be very wide of thetruth as we view it, and yet his life be noble and inspiring. NowThoreau did not give us a philosophy, but a life. He gave us fresh andbeautiful literature, he gave us our first and probably only natureclassic, he gave us an example of plain living and high thinking thatis always in season, and he took upon himself that kind of noblepoverty that carries the suggestion of wealth of soul. 

No matter how much Thoreau abjured our civilization, he certainly madegood use of the weapons it gave him. No matter whose lands he squattedon, or whose saw he borrowed, or to whom or what he was indebted forthe tools and utensils that made his life at Walden possible, --thesethings were the mere accidents of his environment, --he left a recordof his life and thoughts there which is a precious heritage to hiscountrymen. The best in his books ranks with the best in theliterature of his times. One could wish that he had shown moretolerance for the things other men live for, but this must not make usoverlook the value of the things he himself lived for, though withsome of his readers his intolerance doubtless has this effect. Wecannot all take to the woods and swamps as Thoreau did. He had agenius for that kind of a life; the most of us must stick to our farmsand desks and shops and professions. 

Thoreau retired to Walden for study and contemplation, and because, ashe said, he had a little private business with himself. He found thatby working about six weeks in the year he could meet all his livingexpenses, and then have all his winter and most of his summers freeand clear for study. He found that to maintain one's self on thisearth is not a hardship, but a pastime, if one will live simply andwisely. He said, "It is not necessary that a man should earn hisliving by the sweat of his brow unless he sweats easier than I do. "Was not his experiment worth while?

"Walden" is a wonderful and delightful piece of brag, but it is muchmore than that. It is literature; it is a Gospel of the Wild. It madea small Massachusetts pond famous, and the Mecca of many devoutpilgrims. 

Lowell says that Thoreau had no humor, but there are many pages in"Walden" that are steeped in a quiet but most delicious humor. Hishumor brings that inward smile which is the badge of art's felicity. His "Bean-Field" is full of it. I venture to say that never before hada hermit so much fun with a field of white beans. 

Both by training and by temperament Lowell was disqualified fromentering into Thoreau's character and aims. Lowell's passion for booksand academic accomplishments was as strong as was Thoreau's passionfor the wild and for the religion of Nature. When Lowell went toNature for a theme, as in his "Good Word for Winter, " his "My GardenAcquaintance, " and the "Moosehead Journal, " his use of it was mainlyto unlock the treasures of his literary and scholarly attainments; hebedecked and be jeweled Nature with gems from all the literatures ofthe world. In the "Journal" we get more of the flavor of librariesthan of the Maine woods and waters. No reader of Lowell can doubt thathe was a nature-lover, nor can he doubt that he loved books andlibraries more. In all his nature writings the poverty of thesubstance and the wealth of the treatment are striking. The finaltruth about Lowell's contributions is that his mind was essentially aprose mind, even when he writes poetry. Emerson said justly that histone was always that of prose. What is his "Cathedral" but versifiedprose? Like so many cultivated men, he showed a talent for poetry, butnot genius; as, on the other hand, one may say of Emerson that heshowed more genius for poetry than talent, his inspiration surpassedhis technical skill. 

One is not surprised when he finds that John Brown was one ofThoreau's heroes; he was a sort of John Brown himself in anothersphere; but one is surprised when one finds him so heartily approvingof Walt Whitman and traveling to Brooklyn to look upon him and hearhis voice. He recognized at once the tremendous significance ofWhitman and the power of his poetry. He called him the greatestdemocrat which the world had yet seen. With all his asceticism and hisidealism, he was not troubled at all with those things in Whitman thatare a stumbling-block to so many persons. Evidently his longintercourse with Nature had prepared him for the primitive andelemental character of Whitman's work. No doubt also his familiaritywith the great poems and sacred books of the East helped him. At anyrate, in this respect, his endorsement of Whitman adds greatly to ourconception of the mental and spiritual stature of Thoreau. 

 * * * * *

I can hold my criticism in the back of my head while I say with myforehead that all our other nature writers seem tame and insipidbeside Thoreau. He was so much more than a mere student and observerof nature; and it is this surplusage which gives the extra weight andvalue to his nature writing. He was a critic of life, he was aliterary force that made for plain living and high thinking. Hisnature lore was an aside; he gathered it as the meditative saunterergathers a leaf, or a flower, or a shell on the beach, while he ponderson higher things. He had other business with the gods of the woodsthan taking an inventory of their wares. He was a dreamer, anidealist, a fervid ethical teacher, seeking inspiration in the fieldsand woods. The hound, the turtle-dove, and the bay horse which he saidhe had lost, and for whose trail he was constantly seeking, typifiedhis interest in wild nature. The natural history in his books is quitesecondary. The natural or supernatural history of his own thoughtabsorbed him more than the exact facts about the wild life aroundhim. He brings us a gospel more than he brings us a history. Hisscience is only the handmaid of his ethics; his wood-lore is the foilof his moral and intellectual teachings. His observations arefrequently at fault, or wholly wide of the mark; but the flower orspecimen that he brings you always "comes laden with a thought. " Thereis a tang and a pungency to nearly everything he published; thepersonal quality which flavors it is like the formic acid which thebee infuses into the nectar he gets from the flower, and which makesit honey. 

I feel that some such statement about Thoreau should precede or goalong with any criticism of him as a writer or as an observer. He was, first and last, a moral force speaking in the terms of the literarynaturalist. 

Thoreau's prayer in one of his poems--that he might greatly disappointhis friends--seems to have been answered. While his acquaintances wentinto trade or the professions, he cast about to see what he could doto earn his living and still be true to the call of his genius. In hisJournal of 1851 he says: "While formerly I was looking about to seewhat I could do for a living, some sad experiences in conforming tothe wishes of friends being fresh in my mind to tax my ingenuity, Ithought often and seriously of picking huckleberries; that surely Icould do, and its small profits might suffice, so little capital isrequired, so little distraction from my wonted thoughts. " He couldrange the hills in summer and still look after the flocks of KingAdmetus. He also dreamed that he might gather the wild herbs and carryevergreens to such villagers as loved to be reminded of the woods. Buthe soon learned that trade cursed everything, and that "though youtrade in messages from heaven, the whole curse of trade attaches tothe business. " The nearest his conscience would allow him to approachany kind of trade was to offer himself to his townsmen as aland-surveyor. This would take him to the places where he liked to be;he could still walk in the fields and woods and swamps and earn hisliving thereby. The chain and compass became him well, quite as wellas his bean-field at Walden, and the little money they brought him wasnot entirely sordid. 

In one of his happy moods in "Walden" he sets down in ahalf-facetious, half-mystical, but wholly delightful way, his variousavocations, such as his self-appointment as inspector of snow-stormsand rain-storms, and surveyor of forest paths and all across-lotroutes, and herdsman of the wild stock of the town. He is never moreenjoyable than in such passages. His account of going into business atWalden Pond is in the same happy vein. As his fellow citizens wereslow in offering him any opening in which he could earn a living, heturned to the woods, where he was better known, and determined to gointo business at once without waiting to acquire the usual capital. Heexpected to open trade with the Celestial Empire, and Walden was justthe place to start the venture. He thought his strict business habitsacquired through years of keeping tab on wild Nature's doings, hiswinter days spent outside the town, trying to hear what was in thewind, and his early spring mornings before his neighbors were astir tohear the croak of the first frog, all the training necessary to ensuresuccess in business with the Celestial Empire. He admits, it is true, that he never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but doubtednot that it was of the last importance only to be present at it. Allsuch fooling as this is truly delightful. When he goes about hissylvan business with his tongue in his cheek and a quizzical, good-humored look upon his face in this way, and advertises the hound, the bay horse, and the turtle-dove he lost so long ago, he is the trueThoreau, and we take him to our hearts. 

One also enjoys the way in which he magnifies his petty occupations. His brag over his bean-field is delightful. He makes one want to hoebeans with him:

 When my hoe tinkled against the stones, that music echoed to the woods and the sky and was an accompaniment to my labor which yielded an instant and immeasurable crop. It was no longer beans that I hoed, nor I that hoed beans; and I remembered with as much pity as pride, if I remembered at all, my acquaintances who had gone to the city to attend the oratorios. The nighthawk circled overhead in the sunny afternoons--for I sometimes made a day of it--like a mote in the eye, or in heaven's eye, falling from time to time with a swoop and a sound as if the heavens were rent, torn at last to very rags and tatters, and yet a seamless cope remained; small imps that fill the air and lay their eggs on the ground on bare sand or rocks on the top of hills, where few have found them; graceful and slender like ripples caught up from the pond, as leaves are raised by the wind to float in the heavens; such kindredship is in nature. The hawk is aërial brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to the elemental unfledged pinions of the sea. Or sometimes I watched a pair of hen-hawks circling high in the sky, alternately soaring and descending, approaching and leaving one another, as if they were the embodiment of my own thoughts. Or I was attracted by the passage of wild pigeons from this wood to that, with a slight quivering winnowing sound and carrier haste; or from under a rotten stump my hoe turned up a sluggish portentous and outlandish salamander, a trace of Egypt and the Nile, yet our contemporary. When I paused to lean on my hoe, these sounds and sights I heard and saw anywhere in the row, a part of the inexhaustible entertainment which the country offers. 

All this is in his best style. Who, after reading it, does not longfor a bean-field? In planting it, too what music attends him!

 Near at hand, upon the topmost spray of a birch, sings the brown thrasher--or red mavis, as some love to call him--all the morning, glad of your society, that would find out another farmer's field if yours were not here. While you are planting the seed he cries, --"Drop it, drop it, --cover it up, cover it up, --pull it up, pull it up, pull it up. " But this was not corn, and so it was safe from such enemies as he. You may wonder what his rigmarole, his amateur Paganini performances on one string or on twenty, have to do with your planting, and yet prefer it to leached ashes or plaster. It was a cheap sort of top dressing in which I had entire faith. 

What lessons he got in botany in the hoeing!

 Consider the intimate and curious acquaintance one makes with various kinds of weeds, --it will bear some iteration in the account, for there was no little iteration in the labor, --disturbing their delicate organizations so ruthlessly, and making such invidious distinctions with his hoe, levelling whole ranks of one species, and sedulously cultivating another. That's Roman worm-wood, --that's pigweed, --that's sorrel, --that's pipergrass, --have at him, chop him up, turn his roots upward to the sun, don't let him have a fibre in the shade, if you do he'll turn himself t' other side up and be as green as a leek in two days. A long war, not with cranes, but with weeds, those Trojans who had sun and rain and dews on their side. Daily the beans saw me come to their rescue armed with a hoe, and thin the ranks of their enemies, filling up the trenches with weedy dead. Many a lusty crest-waving Hector, that towered a whole foot above his crowding comrades, fell before my weapon and rolled in the dust. 

 I have occasional visits in the long winter evenings, when the snow falls fast and the wind howls in the wood, from an old settler and original proprietor, who is reported to have dug Walden Pond, and stoned it, and fringed it with pine woods; who tells me stories of old time and of new eternity; and between us we manage to pass a cheerful evening with social mirth and pleasant views of things, even without apples or cider, --a most wise and humorous friend, whom I love much, who keeps himself more secret than ever did Goffe or Whalley; and though he is thought to be dead, none can show where he is buried. An elderly dame, too, dwells in my neighborhood, invisible to most persons, in whose odorous herb garden I love to stroll sometimes, gathering simples and listening to her fables; for she has a genius of unequalled fertility, and her memory runs back farther than mythology, and she can tell me the original of every fable, and on what fact every one is founded, for the incidents occurred when she was young. A ruddy and lusty old dame, who delights in all weathers and seasons, and is likely to outlive all her children yet. 

Thoreau taxed himself to find words and images strong enough toexpress his aversion to the lives of the men who were "engaged" in thevarious industrial fields about him. Everywhere in shops and officesand fields it appeared to him that his neighbors were doing penance ina thousand remarkable ways:

 What I have heard of Bramins sitting exposed to four fires and looking in the face of the sun; or hanging suspended, with their heads downward, over flames; or looking at the heavens over their shoulders "until it becomes impossible for them to resume their natural position, while from the twist of the neck nothing but liquids can pass into the stomach"; or dwelling, chained for life, at the foot of a tree; or measuring with their bodies, like caterpillars, the breadth of vast empires; or standing on one leg on the tops of pillars, --even these forms of conscious penance are hardly more incredible and astonishing than the scenes which I daily witness. . . . I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. 

Surely this disciple of the Gospel of the Wild must have disappointedhis friends. It was this audacious gift which Thoreau had for makingworldly possessions seem ignoble, that gives the tang to many pages ofhis writings. 

Thoreau became a great traveler--in Concord, as he says--and madeWalden Pond famous in our literature by spending two or more years inthe woods upon its shore, and writing an account of his sojourn therewhich has become a nature classic. He was a poet-naturalist, as hisfriend Channing aptly called him, of untiring industry, and thecountry in a radius of seven or eight miles about Concord was threadedby him in all seasons as probably no other section of New England wasever threaded and scrutinized by any one man. Walking in the fieldsand woods, and recording what he saw and heard and thought in hisJournal, became the business of his life. He went over the same groundendlessly, but always brought back new facts, or new impressions, because he was so sensitive to all the changing features of the dayand the season in the landscape about him. 

Once he extended his walking as far as Quebec, Canada, and once hetook in the whole of Cape Cod; three or four times he made excursionsto the Maine woods, the result of which gave the name to one of hismost characteristic volumes; but as habitually as the coming of theday was he a walker about Concord, in all seasons, primarily forcompanionship with untamed Nature, and secondarily as a gleaner in thefields of natural history. 

II

Thoreau was not a great philosopher, he was not a great naturalist, hewas not a great poet, but as a nature-writer and an original characterhe is unique in our literature. His philosophy begins and ends withhimself, or is entirely subjective, and is frequently fantastic, andnearly always illogical. His poetry is of the oracular kind, and isonly now and then worth attention. There are crudities in his writingsthat make the conscientious literary craftsman shudder; there aremistakes of observation that make the serious naturalist wonder; andthere is often an expression of contempt for his fellow countrymen, and the rest of mankind, and their aims in life, that makes thejudicious grieve. But at his best there is a gay symbolism, a felicityof description, and a freshness of observation that delight allreaders. 

As a person he gave himself to others reluctantly; he was, in truth, arecluse. He stood for character more than for intellect, and forintuition more than for reason. He was often contrary andinconsistent. There was more crust than crumb in the loaf he gave us. 

He went about the business of living with his head in the clouds, orwith an absolute devotion to the ideal that is certainly rare in ourliterary history. He declared that he aimed to crow like chanticleerin the morning, if only to wake his neighbors up. Much of his writingshave this chanticleerian character; they are a call to wake up, to rubthe film from one's eyes, and see the real values of life. To this endhe prods with paradoxes, he belabors with hyperboles, he teases withirony, he startles with the unexpected. He finds poverty moreattractive than riches, solitude more welcome than society, a sphagnumswamp more to be desired than a flowered field. 

Thoreau is suggestive of those antibodies which modern science makesso much of. He tends to fortify us against the dry rot of business, the seductions of social pleasures, the pride of wealth and position. He is antitoxic; he is a literary germicide of peculiar power. He istoo religious to go to church, too patriotic to pay his taxes, toofervent a humanist to interest himself in the social welfare of hisneighborhood. 

Thoreau called himself a mystic, and a transcendentalist, and anatural philosopher to boot. But the least of these was the naturalphilosopher. He did not have the philosophic mind, nor the scientificmind; he did not inquire into the reason of things, nor the meaning ofthings; in fact, had no disinterested interest in the universe apartfrom himself. He was too personal and illogical for a philosopher. Thescientific interpretation of things did not interest him at all. Hewas interested in things only so far as they related to Henry Thoreau. He interpreted Nature entirely in the light of his own idiosyncrasies. 

Science goes its own way in spite of our likes and dislikes, butThoreau's likes and dislikes determined everything for him. He wasstoical, but not philosophical. His intellect had no free play outsidehis individual predilection. Truth as philosophers use the term, wasnot his quest but truth made in Concord. 

Thoreau writes that when he was once asked by the Association for theAdvancement of Science what branch of science he was especiallyinterested in, he did not reply because he did not want to makehimself the laughing-stock of the scientific community, which did notbelieve in a science which deals with the higher law--his higher law, which bears the stamp of Henry Thoreau. 

He was an individualist of the most pronounced type. The penalty ofthis type of mind is narrowness; the advantage is the personal flavorimparted to the written page. Thoreau's books contain plenty of thepepper and salt of character and contrariness; even their savor ofwhim and prejudice adds to their literary tang. When his individualismbecomes aggressive egotism, as often happens, it is irritating; butwhen it gives only that pungent and personal flavor which pervadesmuch of "Walden, " it is very welcome. 

Thoreau's critics justly aver that he severely arraigns his countrymenbecause they are not all Thoreaus--that they do not desert their farmsand desks and shops and take to the woods. What unmeasured contempt hepours out upon the lives and ambitions of most of them! Need anature-lover, it is urged, necessarily be a man-hater? Is not man apart of nature?--averaging up quite as good as the total scheme ofthings out of which he came? Cannot his vices and shortcomings bematched by a thousand cruel and abortive things in the fields and thewoods? The fountain cannot rise above its source, and man is as goodas is the nature out of which he came, and of which he is a part. Mostof Thoreau's harsh judgments upon his neighbors and countrymen areonly his extreme individualism gone to seed. 

An extremist he always was. Extreme views commended themselves to himbecause they were extreme. His aim in writing was usually "to make anextreme statement. " He left the middle ground to the school committeesand trustees. He had in him the stuff of which martyrs and heroes aremade. In John Brown he recognized a kindred soul. But his literarybent led him to take his own revolutionary impulses out in words. Theclosest he came to imitation of the hero of Harper's Ferry and todefying the Government was on one occasion when he refused to pay hispoll-tax and thus got himself locked in jail overnight. It all seems apetty and ignoble ending of his fierce denunciation of politics andgovernment, but it no doubt helped to satisfy his imagination, whichso tyrannized over him throughout life. He could endure offensesagainst his heart and conscience and reason easier than against hisimagination. 

He presents that curious phenomenon of a man who is an extreme productof culture and civilization, and yet who so hungers and thirsts forthe wild and the primitive that he is unfair to the forces andconditions out of which he came, and by which he is at all timesnourished and upheld. He made his excursions into the Maine wildernessand lived in his hut by Walden Pond as a scholar and philosopher, andnot at all in the spirit of the lumbermen and sportsmen whose wildnesshe so much admired. It was from his vantage-ground of culture and ofConcord transcendentalism that he appraised all these types. It wasfrom a community built up and sustained by the common industries andthe love of gain that he decried all these things. It was from a townand a civilization that owed much to the pine tree that he launchedhis diatribe against the lumbermen in the Maine woods: "The pine is nomore lumber than man is; and to be made into boards and houses no moreits true and highest use than the truest use of man is to be cut downand made into manure. " Not a happy comparison, but no matter. If thepine tree had not been cut down and made into lumber, it is quitecertain that Thoreau would never have got to the Maine woods to utterthis protest, just as it is equally certain that had he not been amember of a thrifty and industrious community, and kept his hold uponit, he could not have made his Walden experiment of toying andcoquetting with the wild and the non-industrial. His occupations asland-surveyor, lyceum lecturer, and magazine writer attest how much heowed to the civilization he was so fond of decrying. This is Thoreau'sweakness--the half-truths in which he plumes himself, as if they werethe whole law and gospel. His Walden bean-field was only a prettypiece of play-acting; he cared more for the ringing of his hoe uponthe stones than for the beans. Had his living really depended upon theproduct, the sound would not have pleased him so, and the botany ofthe weeds he hoed under would not have so interested him. 

Thoreau's half-truths titillate and amuse the mind. We do not nod overhis page. We enjoy his art while experiencing an undercurrent ofprotest against his unfairness. We could have wished him to have shownhimself in his writings as somewhat sweeter and more tolerant towardthe rest of the world, broader in outlook, and more just andcharitable in disposition--more like his great prototype, Emerson, whocould do full justice to the wild and the spontaneous without doing aninjustice to their opposites; who could see the beauty of the pinetree, yet sing the praises of the pine-tree State House; who couldarraign the Government, yet pay his taxes; who could cherish Thoreau, and yet see all his limitations. Emerson affirmed more than he denied, and his charity was as broad as his judgment. He set Thoreau a goodexample in bragging, but he bragged to a better purpose. He exaltedthe present moment, the universal fact, the omnipotence of the morallaw, the sacredness of private judgment; he pitted the man of to-dayagainst all the saints and heroes of history; and, although he decriedtraveling, he was yet considerable of a traveler, and never tried topersuade himself that Concord was an epitome of the world. Emersoncomes much nearer being a national figure than does Thoreau, and yetThoreau, by reason of his very narrowness and perversity, and by hisintense local character, united to the penetrating character of hisgenius, has made an enduring impression upon our literature. 

III

Thoreau's life was a search for the wild. He was the great disciple ofthe Gospel of Walking. He elevated walking into a religious exercise. One of his most significant and entertaining chapters is on "Walking. "No other writer that I recall has set forth the Gospel of Walking soeloquently and so stimulatingly. Thoreau's religion and his philosophyare all in this chapter. It is his most mature, his most complete andcomprehensive statement. He says:

 I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks--who had a genius, so to speak, for _sauntering_, which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretence of going _à la Sainte Terre_, " to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a _Sainte-Terrer_, "--a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. . . . For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels. 

Thoreau was the first man in this country, or in any other, so far asI know, who made a religion of walking--the first to announce a Gospelof the Wild. That he went forth into wild nature in much the samespirit that the old hermits went into the desert, and was as devout inhis way as they were in theirs, is revealed by numerous passages inhis Journal. He would make his life a sacrament; he discarded the oldreligious terms and ideas, and struck out new ones of his own:

 What more glorious condition of being can we imagine than from impure to become pure? May I not forget that I am impure and vicious! May I not cease to love purity! May I go to my slumbers as expecting to arise to a new and more perfect day! May I so live and refine my life as fitting myself for a society ever higher than I actually enjoy!

 To watch for and describe all the divine features which I detect in nature! My profession is to be always on the alert to find God in nature, to know his lurking-place, to attend all the oratorios, the operas, in nature. 

 Ah! I would walk, I would sit, and sleep, with natural piety. What if I could pray aloud or to myself as I went along the brooksides a cheerful prayer like the birds? For joy I could embrace the earth. I shall delight to be buried in it. 

 I do not deserve anything. I am unworthy the least regard, and yet I am made to rejoice. I am impure and worthless, and yet the world is gilded for my delight and holidays are prepared for me, and my path is strewn with flowers. But I cannot thank the Giver; I cannot even whisper my thanks to the human friends I have. 

In the essay on "Walking, " Thoreau says that the art of walking "comesonly by the grace of God. It requires a direct dispensation fromHeaven to become a walker. You must be born into the family of theWalkers. " "I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least, --it is commonly more thanthat, --sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements. "

Thoreau made good his boast. He was a new kind of walker, aHoly-Lander. His walks yielded him mainly spiritual and ideal results. The fourteen published volumes of his Journal are mainly a record ofhis mental reactions to the passing seasons and to the landscape hesauntered through. There is a modicum of natural history, but mostlyhe reaps the intangible harvest of the poet, the saunterer, themystic, the super-sportsman. 

With his usual love of paradox Thoreau says that the fastest way totravel is to go afoot, because, one may add, the walker is constantlyarriving at his destination; all places are alike to him, his harvestgrows all along the road and beside every path, in every field andwood and on every hilltop. 

All of Thoreau's books belong to the literature of Walking, and are astrue in spirit in Paris or London as in Concord. His natural history, for which he had a passion, is the natural history of the walker, notalways accurate, as I have pointed out, but always graphic andinteresting. 

Wordsworth was about the first poet-walker--a man of letters who madea business of walking, and whose study was really the open air. But hewas not a Holy-Lander in the Thoreau sense. He did not walk to getaway from people as Thoreau did, but to see a greater variety of them, and to gather suggestions for his poems. Not so much the wild as thehuman and the morally significant were the objects of Wordsworth'squest. He haunted waterfalls and fells and rocky heights and lonelytarns, but he was not averse to footpaths and highways, and therustic, half-domesticated nature of rural England. He was anature-lover; he even calls himself a nature-worshiper; and he appearsto have walked as many, or more, hours each day, in all seasons, asdid Thoreau; but he was hunting for no lost paradise of the wild; norwaging a war against the arts and customs of civilization. Man andlife were at the bottom of his interest in Nature. 

Wordsworth never knew the wild as we know it in this country--thepitilessly savage and rebellious; and, on the other hand, he neverknew the wonderfully delicate and furtive and elusive nature that weknow; but he knew the sylvan, the pastoral, the rustic-human, as wecannot know them. British birds have nothing plaintive in theirsongs; and British woods and fells but little that is disorderly andcruel in their expression, or violent in their contrasts. 

Wordsworth gathered his finest poetic harvest from common nature andcommon humanity about him--the wayside birds and flowers andwaterfalls, and the wayside people. Though he called himself aworshiper of Nature, it was Nature in her half-human moods that headored--Nature that knows no extremes, and that has long been underthe influence of man--a soft, humid, fertile, docile Nature, thatsuggests a domesticity as old and as permanent as that of cattle andsheep. His poetry reflects these features, reflects the high moral andhistoric significance of the European landscape, while the poetry ofEmerson, and of Thoreau, is born of the wildness and elusiveness ofour more capricious and unkempt Nature. 

The walker has no axe to grind; he sniffs the air for new adventure;he loiters in old scenes, he gleans in old fields. He only seeksintimacy with Nature to surprise her preoccupied with her own affairs. He seeks her in the woods, the swamps, on the hills, along thestreams, by night and by day, in season and out of season. He skimsthe fields and hillsides as the swallow skims the air, and what hegets is intangible to most persons. He sees much with his eyes, but hesees more with his heart and imagination. He bathes in Nature as in asea. He is alert for the beauty that waves in the trees, that ripplesin the grass and grain, that flows in the streams, that drifts in theclouds, that sparkles in the dew and rain. The hammer of thegeologist, the notebook of the naturalist, the box of the herbalist, the net of the entomologist, are not for him. He drives no sharpbargains with Nature, he reads no sermons in stones, no books inrunning brooks, but he does see good in everything. The book he readshe reads through all his senses--through his eyes, his ears, his nose, and also through his feet and hands--and its pages are openeverywhere; the rocks speak of more than geology to him, the birds ofmore than ornithology, the flowers of more than botany, the stars ofmore than astronomy, the wild creatures of more than zoölogy. 

The average walker is out for exercise and the exhilarations of theroad, he reaps health and strength; but Thoreau evidently impaired hishealth by his needless exposure and inadequate food. He was aHoly-Lander who falls and dies in the Holy Land. He ridiculed walkingfor exercise--taking a walk as the sick take medicine; the walk itselfwas to be the "enterprise and adventure of the day. " And "you mustwalk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminateswhile walking. "

IV

Thoreau's friends and neighbors seem to have persuaded themselves thathis natural-history lore was infallible, and, moreover, that hepossessed some mysterious power over the wild creatures about him thatother men did not possess. I recall how Emerson fairly bristled upwhen on one occasion while in conversation with him I told him Ithought Thoreau in his trips to the Maine woods had confounded thehermit thrush with the wood thrush, as the latter was rarely or neverfound in Maine. As for Thoreau's influence over the wild creatures, Emerson voiced this superstition when he said, "Snakes coiled roundhis leg, the fishes swam into his hand, and he took them from thewater; he pulled the woodchuck out of its hole by the tail, and tookthe foxes under his protection from the hunters. " Of course Thoreaucould do nothing with the wild creatures that you or I could not dounder the same conditions. A snake will coil around any man's leg ifhe steps on its tail, but it will not be an embrace of affection; anda fish will swim into his hands under the same conditions that it willinto Thoreau's. As for pulling a woodchuck out of its hole by thetail, the only trouble is to get hold of the tail. The 'chuck ispretty careful to keep his tail behind him, but many a farm boy, aidedby his dog, has pulled one out of the stone wall by the tail, muchagainst the 'chuck's will. If Thoreau's friends were to claim that hecould carry _Mephitis mephitica_ by the tail with impunity, I can sayI have done the same thing, and had my photograph taken in the act. The skunk is no respecter of persons, and here again the trouble is toget hold of the tail at the right moment--and, I may add, to let go ofit at the right moment. 

Thoreau's influence over the wild creatures is what every manpossesses who is alike gentle in his approach to them. Bradford Torreysucceeded, after a few experiments, in so dispelling the fears of anincubating red-eyed vireo that she would take insect food from hishand, and I have known several persons to become so familiar with thechickadees that they would feed from the hand, and in some instanceseven take food from between the lips. If you have a chipmunk for aneighbor, you may soon become on such intimate terms with him that hewill search your pockets for nuts and sit on your knee and shoulderand eat them. But why keep alive and circulate as truth these animallegends of the prescientific ages?

Thoreau was not a born naturalist, but a born supernaturalist. He wastoo intent upon the bird behind the bird always to take careful noteof the bird itself. He notes the birds, but not too closely. He was attimes a little too careless in this respect to be a safe guide to thebird-student. Even the saunterer to the Holy Land ought to know theindigo bunting from the black-throated blue warbler, with its languid, midsummery, "Zee, zee, zee-eu. "

Many of his most interesting natural-history notes Thoreau got fromhis farmer friends--Melvin, Minott, Miles, Hubbard, Wheeler. Theireyes were more single to the life around them than were his; none ofthem had lost a hound, a turtle-dove, and a bay horse, whose trailthey were daily in quest of. 

A haunter of swamps and river marshes all his life, he had never yetobserved how the night bittern made its booming or pumping sound, butaccepted the explanation of one of his neighbors that it was producedby the bird thrusting its bill in water, sucking up as much as itcould hold, and then pumping it out again with four or five heaves ofthe neck, throwing the water two or three feet--in fact, turningitself into a veritable pump! I have stood within a few yards of thebird when it made the sound, and seen the convulsive movement of theneck and body, and the lifting of the head as the sound escaped. Thebird seems literally to vomit up its notes, but it does not likewiseemit water. 

Every farmer and fox-hunter would smile if he read Thoreau'sstatement, made in his paper on the natural history of Massachusetts, that "when the snow lies light and but five or six inches deep, youmay give chase and come up with the fox on foot. " Evidently Thoreauhad never tried it. With a foot and a half, or two feet of snow on theground, and traveling on snowshoes, you might force a fox to take tohis hole, but you would not come up to him. In four or five feet ofsoft snow hunters come up with the deer, and ride on their backs foramusement, but I doubt if a red fox ever ventures out in such a depthof snow. In one of his May walks in 1860, Thoreau sees the trail ofthe musquash in the mud along the river-bottoms, and he is taken bythe fancy that, as our roads and city streets often follow the earlytracks of the cow, so "rivers in another period follow the trail ofthe musquash. " As if the river was not there before the musquash was!

Again, his mysterious "night warbler, " to which he so often alludes, was one of our common everyday birds which most school-children know, namely, the oven-bird, or wood-accentor, yet to Thoreau it was a sortof phantom bird upon which his imagination loved to dwell. Emersontold him he must beware of finding and booking it, lest life shouldhave nothing more to show him. But how such a haunter of woods escapedidentifying the bird is a puzzle. 

In his walks in the Maine woods Thoreau failed to discriminate thesong of the hermit thrush from that of the wood thrush. The melody, no doubt, went to his heart, and that was enough. Though he saunteredthrough orchards and rested under apple trees, he never observed thatthe rings of small holes in the bark were usually made by theyellow-bellied woodpecker, instead of by Downy, and that the bird wasnot searching for grubs or insects, but was feeding upon the milkycambium layer of the inner bark. 

But Thoreau's little slips of the kind I have called attention tocount as nothing against the rich harvest of natural-history noteswith which his work abounds. He could describe bird-songs and animalbehavior and give these things their right emphasis in the life of thelandscape as no other New England writer has done. His account of thebattle of the ants in Walden atones an hundred-fold for the lapses Ihave mentioned. 

One wonders just what Thoreau means when he says in "Walden, " intelling of his visit to "Baker Farm": "Once it chanced that I stood inthe very abutment of a rainbow's arch, which filled the lower stratumof the atmosphere, tinging the grass and leaves around, and dazzlingme as if I looked through colored crystal. " Is it possible, then, toreach the end of the rainbow? Why did he not dig for the pot of goldthat is buried there? How he could be aware that he was standing atthe foot of one leg of the glowing arch is to me a mystery. When Isee a rainbow, it is always immediately in front of me. I am standingexactly between the highest point of the arch and the sun, and thelaws of optics ordain that it can be seen in no other way. You cannever see a rainbow at an angle. It always faces you squarely. Henceno two persons see exactly the same bow, because no two persons canoccupy exactly the same place at the same time. The bow you see isdirected to you alone. Move to the right or the left, and it moves asfast as you do. You cannot flank it or reach its end. It is about themost subtle and significant phenomenon that everyday Nature presentsto us. Unapproachable as a spirit, like a visitant from another world, yet the creation of the familiar sun and rain!

How Thoreau found himself standing in the bow's abutment will alwaysremain a puzzle to me. Observers standing on high mountains with thesun low in the west have seen the bow as a complete circle. This onecan understand. 

We can point many a moral and adorn many a tale with Thoreau'sshortcomings and failures in his treatment of nature themes. Channingquotes him as saying that sometimes "you must see with the inside ofyour eye. " I think that Thoreau saw, or tried to see, with the insideof his eye too often. He does not always see correctly, and many timeshe sees more of Thoreau than he does of the nature he assumes to belooking at. Truly it is "needless to travel for wonders, " but thewonderful is not one with the fantastic or the far-fetched. Forcibleexpression, as I have said, was his ruling passion as a writer. Onlywhen he is free from its thrall, which in his best moments he surelyis, does he write well. When he can forget Thoreau and remember onlynature, we get those delightful descriptions and reflections in"Walden. " When he goes to the Maine woods or to Cape Cod or to Canada, he leaves all his fantastic rhetoric behind him and gives us sane andrefreshing books. In his walks with Channing one suspects he often lethimself go to all lengths, did his best to turn the world inside out, as he did at times in his Journals, for his own edification and thatof his wondering disciple. 

To see analogies and resemblances everywhere is the gift of genius, but to see a resemblance to volcanoes in the hubs or gnarls on birchor beech trees, or cathedral windows in the dead leaves of theandromeda in January, or a suggestion of Teneriffe in a stone-heap, does not indicate genius. To see the great in the little, or the wholeof Nature in any of her parts, is the poet's gift, but to ask, afterseeing the andropogon grass, "Are there no purple reflections from theculms of thought in my mind?"--a remark which Channing quotes as verysignificant--is not to be poetical. Thoreau is full of theseimpossible and fantastic comparisons, thinking only of strikingexpressions and not at all about the truth. "The flowing of the sapunder the dull rind of the trees" is suggestive, but what suggestionis there in the remark, "May I ever be in as good spirits as awillow"? The mood of the scrub oak was more habitual with him. 

Thoreau was in no sense an interpreter of nature; he did not draw outits meanings or seize upon and develop its more significant phases. Seldom does he relate what he sees or thinks to the universal humanheart and mind. He has rare power of description, but is very limitedin his power to translate the facts and movements of nature into humanemotion. His passage on the northern lights, which Channing quotesfrom the Journals, is a good sample of his failure in this respect:

 Now the fire in the north increases wonderfully, not shooting up so much as creeping along, like a fire on the mountains of the north seen afar in the night. The Hyperborean gods are burning brush, and it spread, and all the hoes in heaven couldn't stop it. It spread from west to east over the crescent hill. Like a vast fiery worm it lay across the northern sky, broken into many pieces; and each piece, with rainbow colors skirting it, strove to advance itself toward the east, worm-like, on its own annular muscles. It has spread into their choicest wood-lots. Now it shoots up like a single solitary watch-fire or burning bush, or where it ran up a pine tree like powder, and still it continues to gleam here and there like a fat stump in the burning, and is reflected in the water. And now I see the gods by great exertions have got it under, and the stars have come out without fear, in peace. 

I get no impression of the mysterious almost supernatural character ofthe aurora from such a description in terms of a burning wood-lot or ahay-stack; it is no more like a conflagration than an apparition islike solid flesh and blood. Its wonderful, I almost said itsspiritual, beauty, its sudden vanishings and returnings, its spectral, evanescent character--why, it startles and awes one as if it were thedraperies around the throne of the Eternal. And then his mixedmetaphor--the Hyperborean gods turned farmers and busy at burningbrush, then a fiery worm, and then the burning wood-lots! But this isThoreau--inspired with the heavenly elixir one moment, and drunk withthe brew in his own cellar the next. 

V

Thoreau's faults as a writer are as obvious as his merits. Emerson hitupon one of them when he said, "The trick of his rhetoric is soonlearned; it consists in substituting for the obvious word and thought, its diametrical antagonist. " He praises wild mountains and winterforests for their domestic air, snow and ice for their warmth, and soon. (Yet Emerson in one of his poems makes frost burn and firefreeze. ) One frequently comes upon such sentences as these: "If I weresadder, I should be happier"; "The longer I have forgotten you, themore I remember you. " It may give a moment's pleasure when a writertakes two opposites and rubs their ears together in that way, but onemay easily get too much of it. Words really mean nothing when used insuch a manner. When Emerson told Channing that if he (Emerson) couldwrite as well as he did, he would write a great deal better, onereadily sees what he means. And when Thoreau says of one of hiscallers, "I like his looks and the sound of his silence, " thecontradiction pleases one. But when he tells his friend that hate isthe substratum of his love for him, words seem to have lost theirmeaning. Now and then he is guilty of sheer bragging, as when he says, "I would not go around the corner to see the world blow up. "

He often defies all our sense of fitness and proportion by the degreein which he magnifies the little and belittles the big. He says of thesinging of a cricket which he heard under the border of some rock onthe hillside one mid-May day, that it "makes the finest singing ofbirds outward and insignificant. " "It is not so wildly melodious, butit is wiser and more mature than that of the wood thrush. " His forcedand meaningless analogies come out in such a comparison as this: "Mostpoems, like the fruits, are sweetest toward the blossom end. " Which_is_ the blossom end of a poem?

Thoreau advised one of his correspondents when he made garden to plantsome Giant Regrets--they were good for sauce. It is certain that hehimself planted some Giant Exaggerations and had a good yield. Hisexaggeration was deliberate. "Walden" is from first to last a mostdelightful sample of his talent. He belittles everything that goes onin the world outside his bean-field. Business, politics, institutions, governments, wars and rumors of wars, were not so much to him as thehumming of a mosquito in his hut at Walden: "I am as much affected bythe faint hum of a mosquito making its invisible and unimaginable tourthrough my apartment at earliest dawn, when I was sitting with doorand windows open, as I could be by any trumpet that ever sang of fame. It was Homer's requiem; itself an Iliad and Odyssey in the air, singing its own wrath and wanderings. There was something cosmicalabout it. " One wonders what he would have made of a blow-fly buzzingon the pane. 

He made Walden Pond famous because he made it the center of theuniverse and found life rich and full without many of the things thatothers deem necessary. There is a stream of pilgrims to Walden at allseasons, curious to see where so much came out of so little--where aman had lived who preferred poverty to riches, and solitude tosociety, who boasted that he could do without the post office, thenewspapers, the telegraph, and who had little use for the railroad, though he thought mankind had become a little more punctual since itsinvention. 

Another conspicuous fault as a writer is his frequent use of falseanalogies, or his comparison of things which have no ground ofrelationship, as when he says: "A day passed in the society of thoseGreek sages, such as described in the Banquet of Xenophon, would notbe comparable with the dry wit of decayed cranberry-vines, and thefresh Attic salt of the moss-beds. " The word "wit" has no meaning whenthus used. Or again where he says: "All great enterprises areself-supporting. The poet, for instance, must sustain his body by hispoetry, as a steam planing-mill feeds its boilers with the shavings itmakes. " Was there ever a more inept and untruthful comparison? To findany ground of comparison between the two things he compared, he mustmake his poet sustain his body by the scraps and lines of his poemwhich he rejects, or else the steam planing-mill consume its finishedproduct. 

"Let all things give way to the impulse of expression, " he says, andhe assuredly practiced what he had preached. 

One of his tricks of self-justification was to compare himself withinanimate objects, which is usually as inept as to compare colors withsounds or perfumes: "My acquaintances sometimes imply that I am toocold, " he writes, "but each thing is warm enough of its kind. Is thestone too cold which absorbs the heat of the summer sun and does notpart with it during the night? Crystals, though they be of ice are nottoo cold to melt. . . . Crystal does not complain of crystal any morethan the dove of its mate. "

He strikes the same false note when, in discussing the question ofsolitude at Walden he compares himself to the wild animals around him, and to inanimate objects, and says he was no more lonely than theloons on the pond, or than Walden itself: "I am no more lonely than asingle mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or a sorrel, or a house-fly, or a humble-bee. I am no more lonely than the MillBrook, or a weather-cock, or the North Star, or the South Wind, or anApril Shower, or a January Thaw, or the first spider in a new house. "Did he imagine that any of these things were ever lonely? Man does getlonely, but Mill Brook and the North Star probably do not. 

If he sees anything unusual in nature, like galls on trees and plants, he must needs draw some moral from it, usually at the expense of thetruth. For instance, he implies that the beauty of the oak galls issomething that was meant to bloom in the flower, that the galls arethe scarlet sins of the tree, the tree's Ode to Dejection, yet hemust have known that they are the work of an insect and are as healthya growth as is the regular leaf. The insect gives the magical touchthat transforms the leaf into a nursery for its young. Why deceiveourselves by believing that fiction is more interesting than fact? ButThoreau is full of this sort of thing; he must have his analogy, trueor false. 

He says that when a certain philosophical neighbor came to visit himin his hut at Walden, their discourse expanded and racked the littlehouse: "I should not dare to say how many pounds' weight there wasabove the atmospheric pressure on every circular inch; it opened itsseams so that they had to be calked with much dulness thereafter tostop the consequent leak--but I had enough of that kind of oakumalready picked. " At the beginning of the paragraph he says that he andhis philosopher sat down each with "some shingles of thoughts welldried, " which they whittled, trying their knives and admiring theclear yellowish grain of the pumpkin pine. In a twinkling the threeshingles of thought are transformed into fishes of thought in a streaminto which the hermit and the philosopher gently and reverently wade, without scaring or disturbing them. Then, presto! the fish become aforce, like the pressure of a tornado that nearly wrecks his cabin!Surely this is tipsy rhetoric, and the work that can stand much ofit, as "Walden" does, has a plus vitality that is rarely equaled. 

VI

In "Walden" Thoreau, in playfully naming his various occupations, says, "For a long time I was reporter to a journal, of no very widecirculation, whose editor has never yet seen fit to print the bulk ofmy contributions, and, as is too common with writers, I got only mylabor for my pains. However, in this case my pains were their ownreward. " If he were to come back now, he would, I think, open his eyesin astonishment, perhaps with irritation, to see the whole bulk ofthem at last in print. 

His Journal was the repository of all his writings, and was drawn uponduring his lifetime for all the material he printed in books andcontributed to the magazines. The fourteen volumes, I venture to say, form a record of the most minute and painstaking details of what oneman saw and heard on his walks in field and wood, in a singletownship, that can be found in any literature. 

It seems as though a man who keeps a Journal soon becomes its victim;at least that seems to have been the case with Thoreau. He lived forthat Journal, he read for it, he walked for it; it was like a hungry, omnivorous monster that constantly called for more. He transcribed toits pages from the books he read, he filled it with interminableaccounts of the commonplace things he saw in his walks, tedious andminute descriptions of everything in wood, field, and swamp. There arewhole pages of the Latin names of the common weeds and flowers. Oftenhe could not wait till he got home to write out his notes. He walkedby day and night, in cold and heat, in storm and sunshine, all for hisJournal. All was fish that came to that net; nothing was tooinsignificant to go in. He did not stop to make literature of it, ordid not try, and it is rarely the raw material of literature. Itshuman interest is slight, its natural history interest slight also. For upwards of twenty-five years Thoreau seemed to have lived for thisJournal. It swelled to many volumes. It is a drag-net that nothingescapes. The general reader reads Thoreau's Journal as he does thebook of Nature, just to cull out the significant things here andthere. The vast mass of the matter is merely negative, like the thingsthat we disregard in our walk. Here and there we see a flower, or atree, or a prospect, or a bird, that arrests attention, but how muchwe pass by or over without giving it a thought! And yet, just as thereal nature-lover will scan eagerly the fine print in Nature's book, so will the student and enthusiast of Thoreau welcome all that isrecorded in his Journals. 

Thoreau says that Channing in their walks together sometimes took outhis notebook and tried to write as he did, but all in vain. "He soonputs it up again, or contents himself with scrawling some sketch ofthe landscape. Observing me still scribbling, he will say that heconfines himself to the ideal, purely ideal remarks; he leaves thefacts to me. Sometimes, too, he will say, a little petulantly, 'I amuniversal; I have nothing to do with the particular and definite. '"The truth was Channing had no Journal calling, "More, more!" and wasnot so inordinately fond of composition. "I, too, " says Thoreau, "would fain set down something beside facts. Facts should only be asthe frame to my pictures; they should be material to the mythologywhich I am writing. " But only rarely are his facts significant, orcapable of an ideal interpretation. Felicitous strokes like that inwhich he says, "No tree has so fair a bole and so handsome an instepas the birch, " are rare. 

Thoreau evidently had a certain companionship with his Journal. It waslike a home-staying body to whom he told everything on his return froma walk. He loved to write it up. He made notes of his observations ashe went along, night or day. One time he forgot his notebook and sosubstituted a piece of birch-bark. He must bring back somethinggathered on the spot. He skimmed the same country over and over; thecream he was after rose every day and all day, and in all seasons. 

He evidently loved to see the pages of his Journal sprinkled with theLatin names of the plants and animals that he saw in his walk. Acommon weed with a long Latin name acquired new dignity. Occasionallyhe fills whole pages with the scientific names of the common trees andplants. He loved also a sprinkling of Latin quotations and allusionsto old and little known authors. The pride of scholarship was strongin him. Suggestions from what we call the heathen world seemed toaccord with his Gospel of the Wild. 

Thoreau loved to write as well as John Muir loved to talk. It was hisruling passion. He said time never passed so quickly as when he waswriting. It seemed as if the clock had been set back. He evidentlywent to Walden for subject-matter for his pen; and the remarkablething about it all is that he was always keyed up to the writingpitch. The fever of expression was always upon him. Day and night, winter and summer, it raged in his blood. He paused in his walks andwrote elaborately. The writing of his Journal must have taken as muchtime as his walking. 

Only Thoreau's constant and unquenchable thirst for intellectualactivity, and to supply material for that all-devouring Journal, can, to me, account for his main occupation during the greater part of thelast two years of his life, which consisted in traversing the woodsand measuring the trees and stumps and counting their rings. Apparently not a stump escaped him--pine, oak, birch, chestnut, maple, old or new, in the pasture or in the woods; he must take its measureand know its age. He must get the girth of every tree he passed andsome hint of all the local conditions that had influenced its growth. Over two hundred pages of his Journal are taken up with barren detailsof this kind. He cross-questions the stumps and trees as if searchingfor the clue to some important problem, but no such problem isdisclosed. He ends where he begins. His vast mass of facts and figureswas incapable of being generalized or systematized. His elaboratetables of figures, so carefully arranged, absolutely accurate, nodoubt, are void of interest, because no valuable inferences can bedrawn from them. 

"I have measured in all eight pitch pine stumps at the Tommy Wheelerhollow, sawed off within a foot of the ground. I measured the longestdiameter and then at right angles with that, and took the average, andthen selected the side of the stump on which the radius was of averagelength, and counted the number of rings in each inch, beginning at thecenter, thus:" And then follows a table of figures filling a page. "Ofthose eight, average growth about one seventh of an inch per year. Calling the smallest number of rings in an inch in each tree one, thecomparative slowness of growth of the inches is thus expressed. " Thenfollows another carefully prepared table of figures. Before one isdone with these pages one fairly suspects the writer is mad, theresults are so useless, and so utterly fail to add to our knowledge ofthe woods. Would counting the leaves and branches in the forest, andmaking a pattern of each, and tabulating the whole mass of figures beany addition to our knowledge? I attribute the whole procedure, as Ihave said, to his uncontrollable intellectual activity, and theimaginary demands of this Journal, which continued to the end of hislife. The very last pages of his Journal, a year previous to hisdeath, are filled with minute accounts of the ordinary behavior ofkittens, not one item novel or unusual, or throwing any light on thekitten. But it kept his mind busy, and added a page or two to theJournal. 

In his winter walks he usually carried a four-foot stick, marked ininches, and would measure the depth of the snow over large areas, every tenth step, and then construct pages of elaborate tables showingthe variations according to locality, and then work out theaverage--an abnormal craving for exact but useless facts. Thirty-fourmeasurements on Walden disclosed the important fact that the snowaveraged five and one sixth inches deep. He analyzes a pensile nestwhich he found in the woods--doubtless one of the vireo's--and fillsten pages with a minute description of the different materials whichit contained. Then he analyzes a yellow-bird's nest, filling twopages. That Journal shall not go hungry, even if there is nothing togive it but the dry material of a bird's nest. 

VII

The craving for literary expression in Thoreau was strong andconstant, but, as he confesses, he could not always select a theme. "Iam prepared not so much for contemplation as for forceful expression. "No matter what the occasion, "forceful expression" was the aim. Nomeditation, or thinking, but sallies of the mind. All his paradoxesand false analogies and inconsistencies come from this craving for aforceful expression. He apparently brought to bear all the skill hepossessed of this kind on all occasions. One must regard him, not as agreat thinker, nor as a disinterested seeker after the truth, but as amaster in the art of vigorous and picturesque expression. To startle, to wake up, to communicate to his reader a little wholesome shock, ishis aim. Not the novelty and freshness of his subject-matter concernshim but the novelty and unhackneyed character of his literary style. That throughout the years a man should keep up the habit of walking, by night as well as by day, and bring such constant intellectualpressure to bear upon everything he saw, or heard, or felt, isremarkable. No evidence of relaxation, or of abandonment to the merepleasure of the light and air and of green things growing, or ofsauntering without thoughts of his Journal. He is as keyed up andstrenuous in his commerce with the Celestial Empire as any tradesmanin world goods that ever amassed a fortune. He sometimes wrote as hewalked, and expanded and elaborated the same as in his study. On oneoccasion he dropped his pencil and could not find it, but he managedto complete the record. One night on his way to Conantum he speculatesfor nearly ten printed pages on the secret of being able to state afact simply and adequately, or of making one's self the free organ oftruth--a subtle and ingenious discussion with the habitual craving forforceful expression. In vain I try to put myself in the place of a manwho goes forth into wild nature with malice prepense to give freeswing to his passion for forcible expression. I suppose allnature-writers go forth on their walks or strolls to the fields andwoods with minds open to all of Nature's genial influences andsignificant facts and incidents, but rarely, I think, with thestrenuousness of Thoreau--grinding the grist as they go along. 

Thoreau compares himself to the bee that goes forth in quest of honeyfor the hive: "How to extract honey from the flower of the world. Thatis my everyday business. I am as busy as the bee about it. I rambleover all fields on that errand and am never so happy as when I feelmyself heavy with honey and wax. " To get material for his Journal wasas much his business as it was the bee's to get honey for his comb. Heapparently did not know that the bee does not get honey nor waxdirectly from the flowers, but only nectar, or sweet water. The bee, as I have often said, makes the honey and the wax after she gets hometo the swarm. She puts the nectar through a process of her own, adds adrop of her own secretion to it, namely, formic acid, the waterevaporates, and lo! the tang and pungency of honey!

VIII

There can be little doubt that in his practical daily life we may creditThoreau with the friendliness and neighborliness that his friend Dr. Edward W. Emerson claims for him. In a recent letter to me, Dr. Emersonwrites: "He carried the old New England undemonstrativeness very far. Hewas also, I believe, really shy, prospered only in monologue, except ina walk in the woods with one companion, and his difficulties increasedto impossibility in a room full of people. " Dr. Emerson admits thatThoreau is himself to blame for giving his readers the impression thathe held his kind in contempt, but says that in reality he hadneighborliness, was dutiful to parents and sisters, showed courtesy towomen and children and an open, friendly side to many a simple, uncultivated townsman. 

This practical helpfulness and friendliness in Thoreau's case seems togo along with the secret contempt he felt and expressed in his Journaltoward his fellow townsmen. At one time he was chosen among theselectmen to perambulate the town lines--an old annual custom. One daythey perambulated the Lincoln line, the next day the Bedford line, thenext day the Carlisle line, and so on, and kept on their rounds for aweek. Thoreau felt soiled and humiliated. "A fatal coarseness is theresult of mixing in the trivial affairs of men. Though I have beenassociating even with the select men of this and adjoining towns, Ifeel inexpressibly begrimed. " How fragile his self-respect was! Yet hehad friends among the surrounding farmers, whose society andconversation he greatly valued. 

That Thoreau gave the impression of being what country folk call acrusty person--curt and forbidding in manner--seems pretty wellestablished. His friend Alcott says he was deficient in the humansentiments. Emerson, who, on the whole, loved and admired him, says:"Thoreau sometimes appears only as a _gendarme_, good to knock down acockney with, but without that power to cheer and establish whichmakes the value of a friend. " Again he says: "If I knew only Thoreau, I should think coöperation of good men impossible. Must we always talkfor victory, and never once for truth, for comfort, and joy?Centrality he has, and penetration, strong understanding, and thehigher gifts, --the insight of the real, or from the real, and themoral rectitude that belongs to it; but all this and all his resourcesof wit and invention are lost to me, in every experiment, year afteryear, that I make, to hold intercourse with his mind. Always someweary captious paradox to fight you with, and the time and temperwasted. " "It is curious, " he again says, "that Thoreau goes to a houseto say with little preface what he has just read or observed, deliversit in a lump, is quite inattentive to any comment or thought which anyof the company offer on the matter, nay, is merely interrupted by it, and when he has finished his report departs with precipitation. "

It is interesting in this connection to put along-side of these rathercaustic criticisms a remark in kind recorded by Thoreau in his Journalconcerning Emerson: "Talked, or tried to talk, with R. W. E. Lost mytime--nay, almost my identity. He, assuming a false opposition wherethere was no difference of opinion, talked to the wind--told me what Iknew--and I lost my time trying to imagine myself somebody else tooppose him. "

Evidently Concord philosophers were not always in concord. 

More characteristic of Emerson is the incident Thoreau relates of hisdriving his own calf, which had just come in with the cows, out of theyard, thinking it belonged to a drove that was then going by. From allaccounts Emerson was as slow to recognize his own thoughts when Alcottand Channing aired them before him as he was to recognize his owncalf. 

"I have got a load of great hardwood stumps, " writes Thoreau, andthen, as though following out a thought suggested by them, he adds:"For sympathy with my neighbors I might about as well live in China. They are to me barbarians with their committee works andgregariousness. "

Probably the stumps were from trees that grew on his neighbors' farmsand were a gift to him. Let us hope the farmers did not deliver themto him free of charge. He complained that the thousand and onegentlemen that he met were all alike; he was not cheered by the hopeof any rudeness from them: "A cross man, a coarse man, an eccentricman, a silent man who does not drill well--of him there is some hope, "he declares. Herein we get a glimpse of the Thoreau ideal which ledhis friend Alcott to complain that he lacked the human sentiment. Hemay or may not have been a "cross man, " but he certainly did not"drill well, " for which his readers have reason to be thankful. Although Thoreau upholds the cross and the coarse man, one wouldreally like to know with what grace he would have put up withgratuitous discourtesy or insult. I remember an entry in his Journalin which he tells of feeling a little cheapened when a neighbor askedhim to take some handbills and leave them at a certain place as hepassed on his walk. 

A great deal of the piquancy and novelty in Thoreau come from theunexpected turn he gives to things, upsetting all our preconceivednotions. His trick of exaggeration he rather brags of: "Expect notrivial truth from me, " he says, "unless I am on the witness stand. "He even exaggerates his own tendency to exaggeration. It is all a partof his scheme to startle and wake people up. He exaggerates his likes, and he exaggerates his dislikes, and he exaggerates his indifference. It is a way he has of bragging. The moment he puts pen to paper theimp of exaggeration seizes it. He lived to see the beginning of theCivil War, and in a letter to a friend expressed his indifference inregard to Fort Sumter and "Old Abe, " and all that, yet Mr. Sanbornsays he was as zealous about the war as any soldier. The John Browntragedy made him sick, and the war so worked upon his feelings that inhis failing state of health he said he could never get well while itlasted. His passion for Nature and the wild carried him to the extentof looking with suspicion, if not with positive dislike, upon all ofman's doings and institutions. All civil and political and socialorganizations received scant justice at his hands. He instantlyespoused the cause of John Brown and championed him in the most publicmanner because he (Brown) defied the iniquitous laws and fell a martyrto the cause of justice and right. If he had lived in our times, onewould have expected him, in his letters to friends, to pooh-pooh theWorld War that has drenched Europe with blood, while in his heart hewould probably have been as deeply moved about it as any of us were. 

Thoreau must be a stoic, he must be an egotist, he must be illogical, whenever he puts pen to paper. This does not mean that he was ahypocrite, but it means that on his practical human side he did notdiffer so much from the rest of us, but that in his mental andspiritual life he pursued ideal ends with a seriousness that few of usare equal to. He loved to take an air-line. In his trips about thecountry to visit distant parts, he usually took the roads and paths ormeans of conveyance that other persons took, but now and then hewould lay down his ruler on the map, draw a straight line to thepoint he proposed to visit, and follow that, going through the meadowsand gardens and door-yards of the owners of the property in his lineof march. There is a tradition that he and Channing once went througha house where the front and back door stood open. In his mentalflights and excursions he follows this plan almost entirely; the hardfacts and experiences of life trouble him very little. He can alwaysignore them or sail serenely above them. 

How is one to reconcile such an expression as this with what hisfriends report of his actual life: "My countrymen are to meforeigners. I have but little more sympathy with them than with themobs of India or China"? Or this about his Concord neighbors, as helooks down upon them from a near-by hill: "On whatever side I lookoff, I am reminded of the mean and narrow-minded men whom I havelately met there. What can be uglier than a country occupied bygrovelling, coarse, and low-minded men?--no scenery can redeem it. Hornets, hyenas, and baboons are not so great a curse to a country asmen of a similar character. " Tried by his ideal standards, hisneighbors and his countrymen generally were, of course, found wanting, yet he went about among them helpful and sympathetic and enjoyed hislife to the last gasp. These things reveal to us what a gulf theremay be between a man's actual life and the high altitudes in which hedisports himself when he lets go his imagination. 

IX

In his paper called "Life without Principle, " his radical idealismcomes out: To work for money, or for subsistence alone, is lifewithout principle. A man must work for the love of the work. Get a manto work for you who is actuated by love for you or for the work alone. Find some one to beat your rugs and carpets and clean out your well, or weed your onion-patch, who is not influenced by any moneyconsideration. This were ideal, indeed; this suggests paradise. Thoreau probably loved his lecturing, and his surveying, and hismagazine writing, and the money these avocations brought him did notseem unworthy, but could the business and industrial world safelyadopt that principle?

So far as I understand him, we all live without principle when we doanything that goes against the grain, or for money, or for breadalone. "To have done anything by which you earned money is to havebeen truly idle or worse. " "If you would get money as a writer orlecturer, you must be popular, which is to go down perpendicularly. "Yet his neighbor Emerson was in much demand as a lecturer, and earneda good deal of money in that way. Truly idealists like Thoreau arehard to satisfy. Agassiz said he could not afford to give his time tomaking money, but how many Agassiz are there in the world at any onetime? Such a man as our own Edison is influenced very little by thecommercial value of his inventions. This is as it should be, but onlya small fraction of mankind do or can live to ideal ends. Those whowork for love are certainly the lucky ones, and are exceptionallyendowed. It is love of the sport that usually sends one a-fishing ora-hunting, and this gives it the sanction of the Gospel according toThoreau. Bradford Torrey saw a man sitting on a log down in Floridawho told him, when he asked about his occupation, that he had no timeto work! It is to be hoped that Thoreau enjoyed his surveying, as heprobably did, especially when it took him through sphagnum swamps orscrub-oak thickets or a tangle of briers and thorns. The moredifficult the way, the more he could summon his philosophy. "You mustget your living by loving. " It is a hard saying, but it is a part ofhis gospel. But as he on one occasion worked seventy-six dayssurveying, for only one dollar a day, the money he received should notbe laid up against him. 

As a matter of fact we find Thoreau frequently engaging in manuallabor to earn a little money. He relates in his Journal of 1857 thatwhile he was living in the woods he did various jobs abouttown--fence-building, painting, gardening, carpentering:

 One day a man came from the east edge of the town and said that he wanted to get me to brick up a fireplace, etc. , etc. , for him. I told him that I was not a mason, but he knew that I had built my own house entirely and would not take no for an answer. So I went. 

 It was three miles off, and I walked back and forth each day, arriving early and working as late as if I were living there. The man was gone away most of the time, but had left some sand dug up in his cow-yard for me to make mortar with. I bricked up a fireplace, papered a chamber, but my principal work was whitewashing ceilings. Some were so dirty that many coats would not conceal the dirt. In the kitchen I finally resorted to yellow-wash to cover the dirt. I took my meals there, sitting down with my employer (when he got home) and his hired men. I remember the awful condition of the sink, at which I washed one day, and when I came to look at what was called the towel I passed it by and wiped my hands on the air, and thereafter I resorted to the pump. I worked there hard three days, charging only a dollar a day. 

 About the same time I also contracted to build a wood-shed of no mean size, for, I think, exactly six dollars, and cleared about half of it by a close calculation and swift working. The tenant wanted me to throw in a gutter and latch, but I carried off the board that was left and gave him no latch but a button. It stands yet, --behind the Kettle house. I broke up Johnny Kettle's old "trow, " in which he kneaded his bread, for material. Going home with what nails were left in a flower [_sic!_] bucket on my arm, in a rain, I was about getting into a hay-rigging, when my umbrella frightened the horse, and he kicked at me over the fills, smashed the bucket on my arm, and stretched me on my back; but while I lay on my back, his leg being caught under the shaft, I got up, to see him sprawling on the other side. This accident, the sudden bending of my body backwards, sprained my stomach so that I did not get quite strong there for several years, but had to give up some fence-building and other work which I had undertaken from time to time. 

 I built the common slat fence for $1. 50 per rod, or worked for $1. 00 per day. I built six fences. 

These homely and laborious occupations show the dreamer andtranscendentalist of Walden in a very interesting light. In hispractical life he was a ready and resourceful man and could set hisneighbors a good example, and no doubt give them good advice. But whatfun he had with his correspondents when they wrote him for practicaladvice about the conduct of their lives! One of them had evidentlybeen vexing his soul over the problem of Church and State: "Why notmake a very large mud pie and bake it in the sun? Only put no Churchnor State into it, nor upset any other pepper box that way. Dig out awoodchuck--for that has nothing to do with rotting institutions. Goahead. "

Dear, old-fashioned Wilson Flagg, who wrote pleasantly, but rathertamely, about New England birds and seasons, could not profit muchfrom Thoreau's criticism: "He wants stirring up with a pole. He shouldpractice turning a series of summer-sets rapidly, or jump up and seehow many times he can strike his feet together before coming down. Let him make the earth turn round now the other way, and whet his witson it as on a grindstone; in short, see how many ideas he canentertain at once. "

Expect no Poor Richard maxims or counsel from Thoreau. He would tellyou to invest your savings in the bonds of the Celestial Empire, orplant your garden with a crop of Giant Regrets. He says these areexcellent for sauce. He encourages one of his correspondents with thestatement that he "never yet knew the sun to be knocked down androlled through a mud puddle; he comes out honor bright from behindevery storm. "

X

All Thoreau's apparent inconsistencies and contradictions come fromhis radical idealism. In all his judgments upon men and things, andupon himself, he is an uncompromising idealist. All fall short. Addhis habit of exaggeration and you have him saying that the pigs in thestreet in New York (in 1843) are the most respectable part of thepopulation. The pigs, I suppose, lived up to the pig standard, but thepeople did not live up to the best human standards. Wherever the idealleads him, there he follows. After his brother John's death he said hedid not wish ever to see John again, but only the ideal John--thatother John of whom he was but the imperfect representative. Yet theloss of the real John was a great blow to him, probably the severestin his life. But he never allows himself to go on record as showingany human weakness. 

"Comparatively, " he says, "we can excuse any offense against theheart, but not against the imagination. " Thoreau probably lived in hisheart as much as most other persons, but his peculiar gospel is thework of his imagination. He could turn his idealism to practicalaccount. A man who had been camping with him told me that on suchexpeditions he carried a small piece of cake carefully wrapped up inhis pocket and that after he had eaten his dinner he would take asmall pinch of this cake. His imagination seemed to do the rest. 

The most unpromising subject would often kindle the imagination ofThoreau. His imagination fairly runs riot over poor Bill Wheeler, acripple and a sot who stumped along on two clumps for feet, and whoearned his grog by doing chores here and there. One day Thoreau foundhim asleep in the woods in a low shelter which consisted of meadow haycast over a rude frame. It was a rare find to Thoreau. A man who couldturn his back upon the town and civilization like that must be somegreat philosopher, greater than Socrates or Diogenes, living perhaps"from a deep principle, " "simplifying life, returning to nature, "having put off many things, --"luxuries, comforts, human society, evenhis feet, --wrestling with his thoughts. " He outdid himself. Heout-Thoreaued Thoreau: "Who knows but in his solitary meadow-hay bunkhe indulges, in thought, only in triumphant satires on men? [Moresevere than those of the Walden hermit?] I was not sure for a momentbut here was a philosopher who had left far behind him thephilosophers of Greece and India, and I envied him his advantageouspoint of view--" with much more to the same effect. 

Thoreau's reaction from the ordinary humdrum, respectable, andcomfortable country life was so intense, and his ideal of the free andaustere life he would live so vivid, that he could thus see in thisbesotted vagabond a career and a degree of wisdom that he loved tocontemplate. 

One catches eagerly at any evidence of tender human emotions inThoreau, his stoical indifference is so habitual with him: "I laughedat myself the other day to think that I cried while reading a patheticstory. " And he excuses himself by saying, "It is not I, but Nature inme, which was stronger than I. "

It was hard for Thoreau to get interested in young women. He once wentto an evening party of thirty or forty of them, "in a small room, warm and noisy. " He was introduced to two of them, but could not hearwhat they said, there was such a cackling. He concludes by saying:"The society of young women is the most unprofitable I have evertried. They are so light and flighty that you can never be surewhether they are there or not. "

XI

As a philosopher or expositor and interpreter of a principle, Thoreauis often simply grotesque. His passion for strong and striking figuresusually gets the best of him. In discussing the relation that existsbetween the speaker or lecturer and his audience he says, "Thelecturer will read best those parts of his lecture which are bestheard, " as if the reading did not precede the hearing! Then comes thisgrotesque analogy: "I saw some men unloading molasses-hogsheads from atruck at a depot the other day, rolling them up an inclined plane. Thetruckman stood behind and shoved, after putting a couple of ropes, oneround each end of the hogshead, while two men standing in the depotsteadily pulled at the ropes. The first man was the lecturer, the lastwas the audience. " I suppose the hogshead stands for the big thoughtsof the speaker which he cannot manage at all without the activecoöperation of the audience. The truth is, people assemble in alecture hall in a passive but expectant frame of mind. They are readyto be pleased or displeased. They are there like an instrument to beplayed upon by the orator. He may work his will with them. Withouttheir sympathy his success will not be great, but the triumph of hisart is to win their sympathy. Those who went to scoff when the GreatPreacher spoke, remained to pray. No man could speak as eloquently toempty seats, or to a dummy audience, as to a hall filled withintelligent people, yet Thoreau's ropes and hogsheads and pulling andpushing truckmen absurdly misrepresent the true relation that existsbetween a speaker and his hearers. Of course a speaker finds it uphillwork if his audience is not with him, but that it is not with him isusually his own fault. 

Thoreau's merits as a man and a writer are so many and so great that Ihave not hesitated to make much of his defects. Indeed, I have withmalice aforethought ransacked his works to find them. But after theyare all charged up against him, the balance that remains on the creditside of the account is so great that they do not disturb us. 

There has been but one Thoreau, and we should devoutly thank the godsof New England for the precious gift. Thoreau's work lives and willcontinue to live because, in the first place, the world loves a writerwho can flout it and turn his back upon it and yet make good; andagain because the books which he gave to the world have many and veryhigh literary and ethical values. They are fresh, original, andstimulating. He drew a gospel out of the wild; he brought messagesfrom the wood gods to men; he made a lonely pond in Massachusetts afountain of the purest and most elevating thoughts, and, with hisgreat neighbor Emerson, added new luster to a town over which the museof our colonial history had long loved to dwell. 

IV

A CRITICAL GLANCE INTO DARWIN

I

It is never safe to question Darwin's facts, but it is always safe toquestion any man's theories. It is with Darwin's theories that I ammainly concerned here. He has already been shorn of his selectiondoctrines as completely as Samson was shorn of his locks, but thereare other phases of his life and teachings that invite discussion. 

The study of Darwin's works begets such an affection for the man, forthe elements of character displayed on every page, that one is slow inconvincing one's self that anything is wrong with his theories. Thereis danger that one's critical judgment will be blinded by one'spartiality for the man. 

For the band of brilliant men who surrounded him and championed hisdoctrines--Spencer, Huxley, Lyall, Hooker, and others--one feelsnothing more personal than admiration; unless the eloquent andchivalrous Huxley--the knight in shining armor of the Darwiniantheory--inspires a warmer feeling. Darwin himself almost disarms oneby his amazing candor and his utter self-abnegation. The questionalways paramount in his mind is, what is the truth about this matter?What fact have you got for me, he seems to say, that will upset myconclusion? If you have one, that is just what I am looking for. 

Could we have been permitted to gaze upon the earth in the middlegeologic period, in Jurassic or Triassic times, we should have seen itteeming with huge, uncouth, gigantic forms of animal life, in the sea, on the land, and in the air, and with many lesser forms, but with nosign of man anywhere; ransack the earth from pole to pole and therewas no sign or suggestion, so far as we could have seen, of a humanbeing. 

Come down the stream of time several millions of years--to our owngeologic age--and we find the earth swarming with the human specieslike an ant-hill with ants, and with a vast number of forms not foundin the Mesozoic era; and the men are doing to a large part of theearth what the ants do to a square rod of its surface. Where did theycome from? We cannot, in our day, believe that a hand reached downfrom heaven, or up from below, and placed them there. There is noalternative but to believe that in some way they arose out of theantecedent animal life of the globe; in other words that man is theresult of the process of evolution, and that all other existing formsof life, vegetable and animal, are a product of the same movement. 

To explain how this came about, what factors and forces entered intothe transformation, is the task that Darwin set himself. It was amighty task, and whether or not his solution of the problem stands thetest of time, we must yet bow in reverence before one of the greatestof natural philosophers; for even to have conceived this problem thusclearly, and to have placed it in intelligible form before men'sminds, is a great achievement. 

Darwin was as far from being as sure of the truth of Darwinism as manyof his disciples were, and still are. He said in 1860, in a letter toone of his American correspondents, "I have never for a moment doubtedthat, though I cannot see my errors, much of my book ["The Origin ofSpecies"] will be proved erroneous. " Again he said, in 1862, "I lookat it as absolutely certain that very much in the 'Origin' will beproved rubbish; but I expect and hope that the framework will stand. "

Its framework is the theory of Evolution, which is very sure to stand. In its inception his theory is half-miracle and half-fact. He assumesthat in the beginning (as if there ever was or could be a "beginning, "in that sense) God created a few forms, animal and vegetable, and thenleft it to the gods of Evolution, the chief of which is NaturalSelection, to do the rest. While Darwin would not admit anypredetermining factors in Evolution, or that any innate tendency toprogressive development existed, he said he could not look upon theworld of living things as the result of chance. Yet in fortuitous, orchance, variation he saw one of the chief factors of Evolution. 

The world of Chance into which Darwinism delivers us--what can thethoughtful mind make of it?

That life with all its myriad forms is the result of chance is, according to Professor Osborn, a biological dogma. He everywhere usesthe word "chance" as opposed to law, or to the sequence of cause andeffect. This, it seems to me, is a misuse of the term. Is law, in thissense, ever suspended or annulled? If one chances to fall off hishorse or his house, is it not gravity that pulls him down? Are not thelaws of energy everywhere operative in all movements of matter in thematerial world? Chance is not opposed to law, but to design. Anythingthat befalls us that was not designed is a matter of chance. Thefortuitous enters largely into all human life. If I carelessly toss astone across the road, it is a matter of chance just where it willfall, but its course is not lawless. Does not gravity act upon it?does not the resistance of the air act upon it? does not the muscularforce of my arm act upon it? and does not this complex of physicalforces determine the precise spot where the stone shall fall? If, inits fall, it were to hit a bird or a mouse or a flower, that would bea matter of chance, so far as my will was concerned. Is not a meteoricstone falling out of space acted upon by similar forces, whichdetermine where it shall strike the earth? In this case, we mustsubstitute for the energy of my arm the cosmic energy that gives theprimal impetus to all heavenly bodies. If the falling aërolite were tohit a person or a house, we should say it was a matter of chance, because it was not planned or designed. But when the shells of thelong-range guns hit their invisible target or the bombs from theairplanes hit their marks, chance plays a part, because all thefactors that enter into the problem are not and cannot be on theinstant accurately measured. The collision of two heavenly bodies inthe depth of space, which does happen, is, from our point of view, amatter of chance, although governed by inexorable law. 

The forms of inanimate objects--rocks, hills, rivers, lakes--arematters of chance, since they serve no purpose: any other form wouldbe as fit; but the forms of living things are always purposeful. Is itpossible to believe that the human body, with all its complicatedmechanism, its many wonderful organs of secretion and excretion andassimilation, is any more matter of chance than a watch or aphonograph is? Though what agent to substitute for the word "chance, "I confess I do not know. The short cut to an omnipotent Creatorsitting apart from the thing created will not satisfy the naturalist. And to make energy itself creative, as Professor Osborn does, is onlyto substitute one god for another. I can no more think of the courseof organic evolution as being accidental in the Darwinian sense, thanI can think of the evolution of the printing-press or the aëroplane asbeing accidental, although chance has played its part. Can we think ofthe first little horse of which we have any record, the eohippus ofthree or four millions of years ago, as evolving by accidentalvariations into the horse of our time, without presupposing an equineimpulse to development? As well might we trust our ships to the windsand waves with the expectation that they will reach their severalports. 

Are we to believe that we live in an entirely mechanical andfortuitous world--a world which has no interior, which is only a mazeof acting, reacting, and interacting of blind physical forces?According to the chance theory, the struggle of a living body to existdoes not differ from the vicissitudes of, say, water seeking anequilibrium, or heat a uniform temperature. 

Chance has played an important part in human history, and in alllife-history--often, no doubt, the main part--since history began. Itwas by chance that Columbus discovered America; he simply blunderedupon it. He had set out on his voyage with something quite differentin view. But his ship, and the crew, and the voyage itself, were notmatters of chance but of purpose. 

According to the selectionists' theory, chance gave the bird itswings, the fish its fins, the porcupine its quills, the skunk itsfetid secretion, the cuttlefish its ink, the swordfish its sword, theelectric eel its powerful battery; it gave the giraffe its long neck, the camel its hump, the horse its hoof, the ruminants their horns anddouble stomach, and so on. According to Weismann, it gave us our eyes, our ears, our hands with the fingers and opposing thumb, it gave usall the complicated and wonderful organs of our bodies, and all theircirculation, respiration, digestion, assimilation, secretion, excretion, reproduction. All we are, or can be, the selectionistcredits to Natural Selection. 

Try to think of that wonderful organ, the eye, with all its marvelouspowers and adaptations, as the result of what we call chance orNatural Selection. Well may Darwin have said that the eye made himshudder when he tried to account for it by Natural Selection. Why, itsadaptations in one respect alone, minor though they be, are enough tostagger any number of selectionists. I refer to the rows of peculiarglands that secrete an oily substance, differing in chemicalcomposition from any other secretion, a secretion which keeps theeyelids from sticking together in sleep. "Behavior as lawless assnowflakes, " says Whitman--a phrase which probably stuck to him fromRousseau; but are snowflakes and raindrops lawless? To us creatures ofpurpose, they are so because the order of their falling is haphazard. They obey their own laws. Again we see chance working inside of law. 

When the sower scatters the seed-grains from his hand, he does not andcannot determine the point of soil upon which any of them shall fall, but there is design in his being there and in sowing the seed. Astronomy is an exact science, biology is not. The celestial eventsalways happen on time. The astronomers can tell us to the fraction ofa second when the eclipses of the sun and moon and the transit of theinferior planets across the sun's disk will take place. They know andhave measured all the forces that bring them about. Now, if we knewwith the same mathematical precision all the elements that enter intothe complex of forces which shapes our lives, could we forecast thefuture with the same accuracy with which the astronomers forecast themovements of the orbs? or are there incommensurable factors in life?

II

How are we to reconcile the obvious hit-and-miss method of Nature withthe reign of law, or with a world of design? Consider the seeds of aplant or a tree, as sown by the wind. It is a matter of chance wherethey alight; it is hit or miss with them always. Yet the seeds, say, of the cat-tail flag always find the wet or the marshy places. If theyhad a topographical map of the country and a hundred eyes they couldnot succeed better. Of course, there are vastly more failures thansuccesses with them, but one success in ten thousand trials is enough. They go to all points of the compass with the wind, and sooner orlater hit the mark. Chance decides where the seed shall fall, but itwas not chance that gave wings to this and other seeds. The hooks andwings and springs and parachutes that wind-sown seeds possess are notmatters of chance: they all show design. So here is design working ina hit-and-miss world. 

There are chance details in any general plan. The general forms whicha maple or an oak or an elm takes in the forest or in the field arefixed, but many of the details are quite accidental. All theindividual trees of a species have a general resemblance, but onediffers from another in the number and exact distribution of thebranches, and in many other ways. We cannot solve the fundamentalproblems of biology by addition and subtraction. He who sees nothingtranscendent and mysterious in the universe does not see deeply; helacks that vision without which the people perish. All organic andstructural changes are adaptive from the first; they do not neednatural selection to whip them into shape. All it can do is to serveas a weeding-out process. 

Acquired characters are not inherited, but those organic changes whichare the result of the indwelling impulse of development are inherited. So dominant and fundamental are the results of this impulse thatcross-breeding does not wipe them out. 

III

While I cannot believe that we live in a world of chance, any morethan Darwin could, yet I feel that I am as free from any teleologicaltaint as he was. The world-old notion of a creator and director, sitting apart from the universe and shaping and controlling all itsaffairs, a magnified king or emperor, finds no lodgment in my mind. Kings and despots have had their day, both in heaven and on earth. Theuniverse is a democracy. The Whole directs the Whole. Every particleplays its own part, and yet the universe is a unit as much as is thehuman body, with all its myriad of individual cells, and all its manyseparate organs functioning in harmony. And the mind I see in natureis just as obvious as the mind I see in myself, and subject to thesame imperfections and limitations. 

In following Lamarck I am not disturbed by the bogey of teleology, orthe ghost of mysticism. I am persuaded that there is somethingimmanent in the universe, pervading every atom and molecule in it, that knows what it wants--a Cosmic Mind or Intelligence that we musttake account of if we would make any headway in trying to understandthe world in which we find ourselves. 

When we deny God it is always in behalf of some other god. We arecompelled to recognize something not ourselves from which we proceed, and in which we live and move and have our being, call it energy, orwill, or Jehovah, or Ancient of Days. We cannot deny it because we area part of it. As well might the fountain deny the sea or the cloud. Each of us is a fraction of the universal Eternal Intelligence. Is itunscientific to believe that our own minds have their counterpart ortheir origin in the nature of which we form a part? Is our ownintelligence all there is of mind-manifestation in the universe? Wheredid we get this divine gift? Did we take all there was of it?Certainly we did not ourselves invent it. It would requireconsiderable wit to do that. Mind is immanent in nature, but in manalone it becomes self-conscious. Wherever there is adaptation of meansto an end, there is mind. 

Yet we use the terms "guidance, " "predetermination, " and so on, at therisk of being misunderstood. All such terms are charged with themeaning that our daily lives impart to them and, when applied to theprocesses of the Cosmos, are only half-truths. From our experiencewith objects and forces in this world, the earth ought to rest uponsomething, and that object upon something, and the moon ought to fallupon the earth, and the earth fall into the sun, and, in fact, thewhole sidereal system ought to collapse. But it does not, and willnot. As nearly as we can put it into words, the whole visible universefloats in a boundless and fathomless sea of energy; and that is all weknow about it. 

If chance brought us here and endowed us with our bodies and ourminds, and keeps us here, and adapts us to the world in which we live, is not Chance a good enough god for any of us? Or if Natural Selectiondid it, or orthogenesis or epigenesis, or any other genesis, have wenot in any of these found a god equal to the occasion? Darwin goeswrong, if I may be allowed to say so, when he describes orcharacterizes the activities of Nature in terms of our own activities. Man's selection affords no clue to Nature's selection, and the best toman is not the best to Nature. For instance, she is concerned withcolor and form only so far as they have survival value. We areconcerned more with intrinsic values. 

"Man, " says Darwin, "selects only for his own good; Nature only forthe good of the being which she tends. " But Nature's good is ofanother order than man's: it is the good of all. Nature aims at ageneral good, man at a particular good to himself. Man waters hisgarden; Nature sends the rain broadcast upon the just and the unjust, upon the sea as upon the land. Man directs and controls his plantingand his harvesting along specific lines: he selects his seed andprepares his soil; Nature has no system in this respect: she trustsher seeds to the winds and the waters, and to beasts and birds, andher harvest rarely fails. 

Nature's methods, we say, are blind, haphazard; the wind blows whereit listeth, and the seeds fall where the winds and waters carry them;the frosts blight this section and spare that; the rains flood thecountry in the West and the drought burns up the vegetation in theEast. And yet we survive and prosper. Nature averages up well. We seenothing like purpose or will in her total scheme of things, yet insideher hit-and-miss methods, her storms and tornadoes and earthquakes anddistempers, we see a fundamental benefaction. If it is not good-will, it amounts to the same thing. Our fathers saw special providences, butwe see only unchangeable laws. To compare Nature's selection withman's selection is like arguing from man's art to Nature's art. Nature has no art, no architecture, no music. Her temples, as thepoets tell us, are the woods, her harps the branches of the trees, herminstrels the birds and insects, her gardens the fields andwaysides--all safe comparisons for purposes of literature, but not forpurposes of science. 

Man alone selects, or works by a definite method. Might we not as wellsay that Nature ploughs and plants and trims and harvests? We pick outour favorites among plants and animals, those that best suit ourpurpose. We go straight to our object, with as little delay and wasteas possible. Not so Nature. Her course is always a round-about one. Our petty economies are no concern of hers. Our choice selection ofrich milkers, prolific poultry, or heavy-fleeced sheep is with herquickly sacrificed for the qualities of strength and cunning andspeed, as these alone have survival value. Man wants specific resultsat once. Nature works slowly to general results. Her army is drilledonly in battle. Her tools grow sharper in the using. The strength ofher species is the strength of the obstacles they overcome. 

What is called Darwinism is entirely an anthropomorphic view ofNature--Nature humanized and doing as man does. What is called NaturalSelection is man's selection read into animate nature. We see innature what we have to call intelligence--the adaptation of means toends. We see purpose in all living things, but not in the same sensein non-living things. The purpose is not in the light, but in the eye;in the ear, but not in the sound; in the lungs, and not in the air; inthe stomach, and not in the food; in the various organs of the body, and not in the forces that surround and act upon it. We cannot saythat the purpose of the clouds is to bring rain, or of the sun to givelight and warmth, in the sense that we can say it is the purpose ofthe eyelid to protect the eye, of the teeth to masticate the food, orof the varnish upon the leaves to protect the leaves. 

The world was not made for us, but we are here because the world wasmade as it is. We are the secondary fact and not the primary. Natureis non-human, non-moral, non-religious, non-scientific, though it isfrom her that we get our ideas of all these things. All parts andorgans of living bodies have, or have had, a purpose. Nature is blind, but she knows what she wants and she gets it. She is blind, I say, because she is all eyes, and sees through the buds of her trees andthe rootlets of her plants as well as by the optic nerves in heranimals. And, though I believe that the accumulation of variations isthe key to new species, yet this accumulation is not based uponoutward utility but upon an innate tendency to development--the pushof life, or creative evolution, as Bergson names it; not primarilybecause the variations are advantages, but because the formation of anew species is such a slow process, stretches over such a period ofgeologic time, that the slight variations from generation togeneration could have no survival value. The primary factor is theinherent tendency to development. The origin of species is on a scaleof time of enormous magnitude. What takes place among our domesticanimals of a summer day is by no means a safe guide as to what befelltheir ancestors in the abysses of geologic time. It is true thatNature may be read in the little as well as in the big, --_Natura inminimis existat_, --in the gnat as well as in the elephant; but shecannot be read in our yearly calendars as she can in the calendars ofthe geologic strata. Species go out and species come in; the book ofnatural revelation opens and closes at chance places, and rarely do weget a continuous record--in no other case more clearly than in that ofthe horse. 

The horse was a horse, from the first five-toed animal in Eocenetimes, millions of years ago, through all the intermediate forms offour-toed and three-toed, down to the one-toed superb creature of ourown day. Amid all the hazards and delays of that vast stretch of time, one may say, the horse-impulse never faltered. The survival value ofthe slight gains in size and strength from millennium to millenniumcould have played no part. It was the indwelling necessity towarddevelopment that determined the issue. This assertion does not deliverus into the hands of teleology, but is based upon the idea thatontogeny and phylogeny are under the same law of growth. In the littleeohippus was potentially the horse we know, as surely as the oak ispotential in the acorn, or the bird potential in the egg, whateverelement of mystery may enter into the problem. 

In fields where speed wins, the fleetest are the fittest. In fieldswhere strength wins, the strongest are the fittest. In fields wheresense-acuteness wins, the keenest of eye, ears, and nose are thefittest. 

When we come to the race of man, the fittest to survive, from ourmoral and intellectual point of view, is not always the best. Thelower orders of humanity are usually better fitted to survive than thehigher orders--they are much more prolific and adaptive. The tares arebetter fitted to survive than the wheat. Every man's hand is againstthe weeds, and every man's hand gives a lift to the corn and thewheat, but the weeds do not fail. There is nothing like original sinto keep a man or a plant going. Emerson's gardener was probably betterfitted to survive than Emerson; Newton's butler than Newton himself. 

Most naturalists will side with Darwin in rejecting the idea of AsaGray, that the stream of variation has been guided by a higher power, unless they think of the will of this power as inherent in everymolecule of matter; but guidance in the usual theological sense is notto be thought of; the principle of guidance cannot be separated fromthe thing guided. It recalls a parable of Charles Kingsley's which herelated to Huxley. A heathen khan in Tartary was visited by a pair ofproselytizing moollahs. The first moollah said, "O Khan, worship mygod. He is so wise that he made all things!" Moollah Number Two said, "O Khan, worship my god. He is so wise that he makes all things makethemselves!" Number Two won the day. 

IV

How often it turns out that a man's minor works outlive his major!This is true in both literature and science, but more often in theformer than in the latter. Darwin furnishes a case in the field ofscience. He evidently looked upon his "Origin of Species" as his greatcontribution to biological science; but it is highly probable that his"Voyage of the Beagle" will outlast all his other books. The "Voyage"is of perennial interest and finds new readers in each generation. Ifind myself re-reading it every eight or ten years. I have lately readit for the fourth time. It is not an argument or a polemic; it is apersonal narrative of a disinterested yet keen observer, and isalways fresh and satisfying. For the first time we see a comparativelyunknown country like South America through the eyes of a born andtrained naturalist. It is the one book of his that makes a wide appealand touches life and nature the most closely. 

We may say that Darwin was a Darwinian from the first, --a naturalistand a philosopher combined, --and was predisposed to look at animatenature in the way his works have since made us familiar with. 

In his trip on the Beagle he saw from the start with the eyes of aborn evolutionist. In South America he saw the fossil remains of theToxodon, and observed, "How wonderful are the different orders, at thepresent time so well separated, blended together in the differentpoints of the structure of the Toxodon!" All forms of life attractedhim. He looked into the brine-pans of Lymington and found that waterwith one quarter of a pound of salt to the pint was inhabited, and hewas led to say: "Well may we affirm that every part of the world ishabitable! Whether lakes of brine or those subterranean ones hiddenbeneath volcanic mountains, --warm mineral springs, --the wide expanseand depth of the ocean, --the upper regions of the atmosphere, and eventhe surface of perpetual snow, --all support organic beings. "

He studies the parasitical habit of the cuckoo and hits on anexplanation of it. He speculates why the partridges and deer in SouthAmerica are so tame. 

His "Voyage of the Beagle" alone would insure him lasting fame. It isa classic among scientific books of travel. Here is a traveler of anew kind: a natural-history voyager, a man bent on seeing and takingnote of everything going on in nature about him, in the non-human, aswell as in the human world. The minuteness of his observation and thesignificance of its subject-matter are a lesson to all observers. Darwin's interests are so varied and genuine. One sees in this volumethe seed-bed of much of his subsequent work. He was quite a young man(twenty-four) when he made this voyage; he was ill more than half thetime; he was as yet only an observer and appreciator of Nature, quitefree from any theories about her ways and methods. He says that thiswas by far the most important event of his life and determined hiswhole career. His theory of descent was already latent in his mind, asis evinced by an observation he made about the relationship in SouthAmerica between the extinct and the living forms. "This relationship, "he said, "will, I do not doubt, hereafter throw more light on theappearance of organic beings on our earth, and their disappearancefrom it, than any other class of facts. "

He looked into the muddy waters of the sea off the coast of Chile, andfound a curious new form of minute life--microscopic animals thatexploded as they swam through the water. In South America he saw anintimate relationship between the extinct species of ant-eaters, armadillos, tapirs, peccaries, guanacos, opossums, and so on, and theliving species of these animals; and he adds that the wonderfulrelationship in the same continent between the dead and the livingwould doubtless hereafter throw more light on the appearance oforganic beings on our earth, and their disappearance from it, than anyother class of facts. 

His observation of the evidences of the rise and fall of thousands offeet of the earth along the Cordilleras leads him to make this ratherstartling statement: "Daily it is forced home on the mind of thegeologist that nothing, not even the wind that blows, is so unstableas the level of the crust of the earth. "

There is now and then a twinkle of humor in Darwin's eyes, as when hesays that in the high altitude of the Andes the inhabitants recommendonions for the "puna, " or shortness of breath, but that he foundnothing so good as fossil shells. 

Water boils at such a low temperature in the high Andes that potatoeswill not cook if boiled all night. Darwin heard his guides discussingthe cause. "They had come to the simple conclusion that 'the cursedpot' (which was a new one) did not choose to boil potatoes. "

In all Darwin's record we see that the book of nature, which ordinarytravelers barely glance at, he opened and carefully perused. 

V

Natural Selection turns out to be of only secondary importance. It isnot creative, but only confirmative. It is a weeding-out process; itis Nature's way of improving the stock. Its tendency is to makespecies more and more hardy and virile. The weak and insufficientlyendowed among all forms tend to drop out. Life to all creatures ismore or less a struggle, a struggle with the environment, with theinorganic forces, --storm, heat, cold, sterile land, and engulfingfloods, --and it is a struggle with competing forms for food andshelter and a place in the sun. The strongest, the most amply endowedwith what we call vitality or power to live, win. Species have come tobe what they are through this process. Immunity from disease comesthrough this fight for life; and adaptability--through trial andstruggle species adapt themselves, as do our own bodies, to new andsevere conditions. The naturally weak fall by the wayside as in anarmy on a forced march. 

Every creature becomes the stronger by the opposition it overcomes. Natural Selection gives speed, where speed is the condition ofsafety, strength where strength is the condition, keenness andquickness of sense-perception where these are demanded. NaturalSelection works upon these attributes and tends to perfect them. Anygroup of men or beasts or birds brought under any unusual strain fromcold, hunger, labor, effort, will undergo a weeding-out process. Populate the land with more animal life than it can support, or withmore vegetable forms than it can sustain, and a weeding-out processwill begin. A fuller measure of vitality, or a certain hardiness andtoughness, will enable some species to hold on longer than others, and, maybe, keep up the fight till the struggle lessens and victory iswon. 

The flame of life is easily blown out in certain forms, and is verytenacious in others. How unequally the power to resist cold, forinstance, seems to be distributed among plants and trees, and probablyamong animals! One spring an unseasonable cold snap in May (mercury28) killed or withered about one per cent of the leaves on the lilacs, and one tenth of one per cent of the leaves of our crab-apple tree. Inthe woods around Slabsides I observed that nearly half the plants ofSolomon's-seal (_Polygonatum_) and false Solomon's-seal (_Smilacina_)were withered. The vital power, the power to live, seems stronger insome plants than in others of the same kind. I suppose this law holdsthroughout animate nature. When a strain of any kind comes, theseweaker ones drop out. In reading the stories of Arctic explorers, Isee this process going on among their dog-teams: some have greaterpower of endurance than others. A few are constantly dropping out orfalling by the wayside. With an army on a forced march the same thinghappens. In the struggle for existence the weak go to the wall. Ofcourse the struggle among animals is at least a toughening process. Itseems as if the old Indian legend, that the strength of the foeovercome passes into the victor, were true. But how a new speciescould arrive as the result of such struggle is past finding out. Variation with all forms of life is more or less constant, but it isaround a given mean. Only those acquired characters are transmittedthat arise from the needs of the organism. 

A vast number of changes in plants and animals are superficial and inno way vital. It is hard to find two leaves of the same tree that willexactly coincide in all their details; but a difference that was insome way a decided advantage would tend to be inherited and passedalong. It is said that the rabbits in Australia have developed alonger and stronger nail on the first toe of each front foot, whichaids them in climbing over the wire fences. The aye-aye has aspecially adapted finger for extracting insects from theirhiding-places. Undoubtedly such things are inherited. The snowshoesof the partridge and rabbit are inherited. The needs of the organisminfluence structure. The spines in the quills in the tails ofwoodpeckers, and in the brown creeper, are other cases in point. Thenuthatch has no spines on its tail, because it can move in alldirections, as well with head down as with head up. I have read of aserpent somewhere that feeds upon eggs. As the serpent has no lips ordistendable cheeks, and as its mechanism of deglutition acts veryslowly, an egg crushed in the mouth would be mostly spilled. So theeggs are swallowed whole; but in the throat they come in contact withsharp tooth-like spines, which are not teeth, but downward projectionsfrom the backbone, and which serve to break the shells of the eggs. Radical or vital variations are rare, and we do not witness them anymore than we witness the birth of a new species. And that is all thereis to Natural Selection. It is a name for a process of eliminationwhich is constantly going on in animate nature all about us. It is inno sense creative, it originates nothing, but clinches and toughensexisting forms. 

The mutation theory of De Vries is a much more convincing theory ofthe origin of species than is Darwin's Natural Selection. If thingswould only mutate a little oftener! But they seem very reluctant to doso. There does seem to have been some mutation among plants, --DeVries has discovered several such, --but in animal life where are themutants? When or where has a new species originated in this way?Surely not during the historic period. 

Fluctuations are in all directions around a center--the mean is alwaysreturned to; but mutations, or the progressive steps in evolution, aredivergent lines away from the center. Fluctuations are superficial andof little significance; but mutations, if they occur, involvedeep-seated, fundamental factors, factors more or less responsive tothe environment, but not called into being by it. Of the four factorsin the Darwinian formula, --variation, heredity, the struggle, andnatural selection, --variation is the most negligible; it furnishes aninsufficient handle for selection to take hold of. Something moreradical must lead the way to new species. 

As applied to species, the fittest to survive is a misleading term. All are fit to survive from the fact that they do survive. In a worldwhere, as a rule, the race is to the swift and the battle to thestrong, the slow and the frail also survive because they do not comein competition with the swift and the strong. Nature mothers all, andassigns to each its sphere. 

The Darwinians are hostile to Lamarck with his inner developing andperfecting principle, and, by the same token, to Aristotle, who isthe father of the theory. They regard organic evolution as a purelymechanical process. 

Variation can work only upon a variable tendency--an inherent impulseto development. A rock, a hill, a stream, may change, but it is notvariable in the biological sense: it can never become anything but arock, a hill, a stream; but a flower, an egg, a seed, a plant, a baby, can. What I mean to say is that there must be the primordial tendencyto development which Natural Selection is powerless to beget, andwhich it can only speed up or augment. It cannot give the wing to theseed, or the spring, or the hook; or the feather to the bird; or thescale to the fish; but it can perfect all these things. The fittest ofits kind does stand the best chance to survive. 

VI

After we have Darwin shorn of his selection theories, what has heleft? His significance is not lessened. He is still the mostimpressive figure in modern biological science. His attitude of mind, the problems he tackled, his methods of work, the nature and scope ofhis inquiries, together with his candor, and his simplicity anddevotion to truth, are a precious heritage to all mankind. 

Darwin's work is monumental because he belongs to the class ofmonumental men. The doctrine of evolution as applied to animatenature reached its complete evolution in his mind. He stated thetheory in broader and fuller terms than had any man before him; hemade it cover the whole stupendous course of evolution. He showed manonce for all an integral part of the zoölogic system. He elevatednatural history, or biology, to the ranks of the great sciences, aworthy member of the triumvirate--astronomy, geology, biology. Hetaught us how to cross-question the very gods of life in their councilchambers; he showed us what significance attaches to the simplestfacts of natural history. 

Darwin impresses by his personality not less than by his logic and hisvast storehouse of observations. He was a great man before he was agreat natural-history philosopher. His patient and painstakingobservation is a lesson to all nature students. The minutest factsengaged him. He studies the difference between the stamens of the sameplant. He counted nine thousand seeds, one by one, from artificiallyfertilized pods. Plants from two pollens, he says, grow at differentrates. Any difference in the position of the pistil, or in the sizeand color of the stamens, in individuals of the same species growntogether, was of keen interest to him. 

The best thing about Darwinism is Darwin--his candor, his patience, his simplicity, his devotion to truth, and his power of observation. This is about what Professor T. H. Morgan meant when he said: "It isthe spirit of Darwinism, not its formulæ, that we proclaim as our bestheritage. " He gave us a new point of view of the drama of creation; hegave us ideas that are applicable to the whole domain of humanactivities. It is true, he was not a pioneer in this field: he did notblaze the first trail through this wilderness of biological facts andrecords; rather was he like a master-engineer who surveys andestablishes the great highway. All the world now travels along thecourse he established and perfected. He made the long road ofevolution easy, and he placed upon permanent foundations the doctrineof the animal origin of man. He taught the world to think in terms ofevolution, and he pointed the way to a rational explanation of thediversity of living forms. 

V

WHAT MAKES A POEM?

Pope said that a middling poet was no poet at all. Middling things inart or in any field of human endeavor do not arouse our enthusiasm, and it is enthusiasm that fans the fires of life. There are alldegrees of excellence, but in poetry one is always looking for thebest. Pope himself holds a place in English literature which he couldnot hold had he been only a middling poet. He is not a poet of thehighest order certainly, but a poet of the third or fourth order--thepoet of the reason, the understanding, but not of the creativeimagination. It is wit and not soul that keeps Pope alive. 

Nearly every age and land has plenty of middling poets. Probably therewere never more of them in the land than there are to-day. Scores ofvolumes of middling verse are issued from the press every week. Themagazines all have middling verse; only at rare intervals do they havesomething more. The May "Atlantic, " for instance, had a poem by a (tome) comparatively new writer, Olive Tilford Dargan, that one wouldhardly stigmatize as middling poetry. Let the reader judge forhimself. It is called "Spring in the Study. " I quote only the secondpart:

 "What is this sudden gayety that shakes the grayest boughs? A voice is calling fieldward--'T is time to start the ploughs! To set the furrows rolling, while all the old crows nod; And deep as life, the kernel, to cut the golden sod. The pen--let nations have it;--we'll plough a while for God. 

 "When half the things that must be done are greater than our art, And half the things that must be done are smaller than our heart, And poorest gifts are dear to burn on altars unrevealed, Like music comes the summons, the challenge from the weald! 'They tread immortal measures who make a mellow field!'

 "The planet's rather pleasant, alluring in its way; But let the ploughs be idle and none of us can stay. Here's where there is no doubting, no ghosts uncertain stalk, A-traveling with the plough beam, beneath the sailing hawk, Cutting the furrow deep and true where Destiny will walk. "

Lafcadio Hearn spoke with deep truth when he said that "the measure ofa poet is the largeness of thought which he can bring to any subject, however trifling. " Certainly Mrs. Dargan brings this largeness ofthought to her subject. Has the significance of the plough ever beforebeen so brought out? She makes one feel that there should be a ploughamong the constellations. What are the chairs and harps and dippers incomparison?

The poetry of mere talent is always middling poetry--"poems distilledfrom other poems, " as Whitman says. The work of a genius is of adifferent order. Most current verse is merely sweetened prose put upin verse form. It serves its purpose; the mass of readers like it. Nearly all educated persons can turn it off with little effort. I havedone my share of it myself--rhymed natural history, but not poetry. "Waiting" is my nearest approach to a true poem. 

Wordsworth quotes Aristotle as saying that poetry is the mostphilosophical of all writing, and Wordsworth agrees with him. Therecertainly can be no great poetry without a great philosopher behindit--a man who has thought and felt profoundly upon nature and uponlife, as Wordsworth himself surely had. The true poet, like thephilosopher, is a searcher after truth, and a searcher at the veryheart of things--not cold, objective truth, but truth which is its owntestimony, and which is carried alive into the heart by passion. Heseeks more than beauty, he seeks the perennial source of beauty. Thepoet leads man to nature as a mother leads her child there--to instilla love of it into his heart. If a poet adds neither to my knowledgenor to my love, of what use is he? For instance, Poe does not make meknow more or love more, but he delights me by his consummate art. Bryant's long poem "The Ages" has little value, mainly because it ischarged with no philosophy, and no imaginative emotion. His "Lines toa Waterfowl" will last because of the simple, profound human emotionthey awaken. The poem is marred, however, by the stanza that he tackson the end, which strikes a note entirely foreign to the true spiritof the poem. You cannot by tacking a moral to a poem give it thephilosophical breadth to which I have referred. "Thanatopsis" has asolemn and majestic music, but not the unique excellence of thewaterfowl poem. Yet it may be generally said of Bryant that he has abroad human outlook on life and is free from the subtleties andingenious refinements of many of our younger poets. 

I know of only three poets in this century who bring a large measureof thought and emotion to their task. I refer to William Vaughn Moody, to John Russell McCarthy (author of "Out-of-Doors" and "Gods andDevils"), and to Robert Loveman, best known for his felicitous "RainSong, " a poem too well known to be quoted here. Any poet who has everlived might have been proud to have written that poem. It goes aslightly as thistle-down, yet is freighted with thought. Its philosophyis so sublimated and so natural and easy that we are likely to forgetthat it has any philosophy at all. The fifty or more stanzas of his"Gates of Silence" are probably far less well known. Let me quote afew of them:

 "The races rise and fall, The nations come and go, Time tenderly doth cover all With violets and snow. 

 "The mortal tide moves on To some immortal shore, Past purple peaks of dusk and dawn, Into the evermore. 

 * * * * *

 "All the tomes of all the tribes, All the songs of all the scribes, All that priest and prophet say, What is it? and what are they?

 "Fancies futile, feeble, vain, Idle dream-drift of the brain, -- As of old the mystery Doth encompass you and me. 

 * * * * *

 "Old and yet young, the jocund Earth Doth speed among the spheres, Her children of imperial birth Are all the golden years. 

 "The happy orb sweeps on, Led by some vague unrest, Some mystic hint of joys unborn Springing within her breast. "

What takes one in "The Gates of Silence, " which, of course, means thegates of death, are the large, sweeping views. The poet stridesthrough time and space like a Colossus and

 "flings Out of his spendthrift hands The whirling worlds like pebbles, The meshèd stars like sands. "

Loveman's stanzas have not the flexibility and freedom of those ofMoody and McCarthy, but they bring in full measure the largeness ofthought which a true poem requires. 

Some of Moody's poems rank with the best in the literature of his time. He was deeply moved by the part we played in the Spanish-American War. It was a war of shame and plunder from the point of view of many of thenoblest and most patriotic men of the country. We freed Cuba from theSpanish yoke and left her free; but we seized the Philippines andsubdued the native population by killing a vast number of them--morethan half of them, some say. Commercial exploitation inspired ourpolicy. How eloquently Senator Hoar of Massachusetts inveighed againstour course! We promised the Filipinos their freedom--a promise we havenot yet fulfilled. 

Moody's most notable poems are "Gloucester Moors, " "An Ode in Time ofHesitation" (inspired by the Shaw Monument in Boston, the work ofSaint-Gaudens), "The Brute, " "The Daguerreotype, " and "On a SoldierFallen in the Philippines. " In this last poem throb and surge themingled emotions of pride and shame which the best minds in thecountry felt at the time--shame at our mercenary course, and pride inthe fine behavior of our soldiers. It is true we made some pretense ofindemnifying Spain by paying her twenty million dollars, which wasmuch like the course of a boy who throws another boy down andforcibly takes his jack-knife from him, then gives him a few coppersto salve his wounds. I remember giving Moody's poem to Charles EliotNorton (one of those who opposed the war), shortly after it appeared. He read it aloud with marked emotion. Let me quote two of its stanzas:

 "Toll! Let the great bells toll Till the clashing air is dim. Did we wrong this parted soul? We will make it up to him. Toll! Let him never guess What work we set him to. Laurel, laurel, yes; He did what we bade him do. Praise, and never a whispered hint but the fight he fought was good; Never a word that the blood on his sword was his country's own heart's-blood. 

 "A flag for the soldier's bier Who dies that his land may live; O, banners, banners here, That he doubt not nor misgive! That he heed not from the tomb The evil days draw near When the nation, robed in gloom, With its faithless past shall strive. Let him never dream that his bullet's scream went wide of its island mark, Home to the heart of his darling land where she stumbled and sinned in the dark. "

When I say that every true poet must have a philosophy, I do not meanthat he must be what is commonly called a philosophical poet; fromsuch we steer clear. The philosophy in a poem must be like the iron inthe blood. It is the iron that gives color and vigor to the blood. Reduce it and we become an anæmic and feeble race. Much of the popularpoetry is anæmic in this respect. There is no virile thought in it. All of which amounts to saying that there is always a great natureback of a great poem. 

The various forms of verse are skillfully used by an increasing numberof educated persons, but the number of true poets is not increasing. Quite the contrary, I fear. The spirit of the times in which we livedoes not favor meditation and absorption in the basic things out ofwhich great poetry arises. "The world is too much with us. " Yet weneed not be too much discouraged. England has produced Masefield, andwe have produced John Russell McCarthy, who has written the bestnature poetry since Emerson. The genius of a race does not repeat. Weshall never again produce poets of the type of those that are gone, and we should not want to. All we may hope for is to produce poets asoriginal and characteristic and genuine as those of the past--poetswho as truly express the spirit of their time, as the greater poetsdid of theirs--not Emerson and Whitman over again, but a widedeparture from their types. 

Speaking of Whitman, may we not affirm that it is his tremendous andimpassioned philosophy suffusing his work, as the blood suffuses thebody, that keeps "Leaves of Grass" forever fresh? We do not go toWhitman for pretty flowers of poesy, although they are there, but wego to him for his attitude toward life and the universe, we go tostimulate and fortify our souls--in short, for his cosmic philosophyincarnated in a man. 

What largeness of thought Tennyson brings to all his themes! There isplenty of iron in his blood, though it be the blood of generations ofculture, and of an overripe civilization. We cannot say as much ofSwinburne's poetry or prose. I do not think either will live. Bignessof words, and fluency, and copiousness of verse cannot make up for thewant of a sane and rational philosophy. Arnold's poems always havereal and tangible subject matter. His "Dover Beach" is a great strokeof poetic genius. Let me return to Poe: what largeness of thought didhe bring to his subjects? Emerson spoke of him as "the jingle man, "and Poe, in turn, spoke of Emerson with undisguised contempt. Poe'spicture indicates a neurotic person. There is power in his eyes, butthe shape of his head is abnormal, and a profound melancholy seems torest on his very soul. What a conjurer he was with words and metersand measures! No substance at all in his "Raven, " only shadows--awonderful dance of shadows, all tricks of a verbal wizard. "TheBells, " a really powerful poem, is his masterpiece, unique in Englishliterature; but it has no intellectual content. Its appeal is to theeye and ear alone. It has a verbal splendor and a mastery over measureand rhythm far beyond anything in Shelley, or in any other poet of histime. It is art glorified; it is full of poetic energy. No wonderforeign critics see in Poe something far beyond that found in anyother American, or in any British poet!

Poe set to work to write "The Raven" as deliberately as a mechanicgoes to work to make a machine, or an architect to build a house. Itwas all a matter of calculation with him. He did not believe in longpoems, hence decided at the outset that his poem should not be morethan one hundred lines in length. Then he asked himself, what is thelegitimate end and aim of a poem? and answered emphatically, Beauty. The next point to settle was, what impression must be made to producethat effect? He decided that "melancholy is the most legitimate of allpoetic tones. " Why joy or gladness, like that of the birds, is notequally legitimate, he does not explain. Then, to give artisticpiquancy to the whole, he decided that there must be "some pivot uponwhich the whole structure might turn. " He found that "no one had beenso universally employed as the refrain. " The burden of the poem shouldbe given by the refrain, and it should be a monotone, and should havebrevity. Then his task was to select a single word that would be inkeeping with the melancholy at which he was aiming, and this he foundin the word _nevermore_. He next invented a pretext for the frequentbut varying use of _nevermore_. This word could not be spoken in theright tone by a human being; it must come from an unreasoningcreature, hence the introduction of the raven, an ill-omened bird, inharmony with the main tone of the poem. He then considered what wasthe most melancholy subject of mankind, and found it was death, andthat that melancholy theme was most poetical when allied to beauty. Hence the death of a beautiful woman was unquestionably the mostpoetic topic in the world. It was equally beyond doubt that the lipsbest suited for such topic were those of a bereaved lover. Thus heworked himself up, or rather back, to the climax of the poem, for hewrote the last stanza, in which the climax occurs, first. His ownanalysis of the poem is like a chemist's analysis of some new compoundhe has produced; it is full of technical terms and subtledistinctions. Probably no other famous poem was turned out in justthat studied and deliberate architectural way--no pretense ofinspiration, or of "eyes in fine frenzy rolling": just skilledcraftsmanship--only this and nothing more. 

Arnold's dictum that poetry is a criticism of life is, in a large andflexible sense, true. The poet does not criticize life as theconscious critic does, but as we unconsciously do in our most exaltedmoments. Arnold, I believe, did not appreciate Whitman, but onefunction of the poet upon which Whitman lays emphasis, is criticism ofhis country and times. 

 "What is this you bring, my America? Is it uniform with my country? Is it not something that has been better done or told before? Have you not imported this or the spirit of it in some ship? Is it not a mere tale? a rhyme? a pettiness?--is the good old cause in it? Has it not dangled long at the heels of the poets, politicians, literates of enemies, lands? Does it not assume that what is notoriously gone is still here? Does it answer universal needs? will it improve manners? Can your performance face the open fields and the seaside? Will it absorb into me as I absorb food, air, to appear again in my strength, gait, face? Have real employments contributed to it? Original makers, not mere amanuenses?"

Speaking of criticism, it occurs to me how important it is that apoet, or any other writer, should be a critic of himself. Wordsworth, who was a really great poet, was great only at rare intervals. Hishabitual mood was dull and prosy. His sin was that he kept on writingduring those moods, grinding out sonnets by the hundred--one hundredand thirty-two ecclesiastical sonnets, and over half as many onliberty, all very dull and wooden. His mill kept on grinding whetherit had any grist of the gods to grind or not. He told Emerson he wasnever in haste to publish, but he seems to have been in haste towrite, and wrote on all occasions, producing much dull and trivialwork. We speak of a man's work as being heavy. Let us apply the testliterally to Wordsworth and weigh his verse. The complete edition ofhis poems, edited by Henry Reed and published in Philadelphia in 1851, weighs fifty-five ounces; the selection which Matthew Arnold made fromhis complete works, and which is supposed to contain all that is worthpreserving, weighs ten ounces. The difference represents the deadwood. That Wordsworth was a poor judge of his own work is seen in theremark he made to Emerson that he did not regard his "Tintern Abbey"as highly as some of the sonnets and parts of "The Excursion. " Ibelieve the Abbey poem is the one by which he will longest beremembered. "The Excursion" is a long, dull sermon. Its didacticismlies so heavily upon it that it has nearly crushed its poetry--like astone on a flower. 

All poetry is true, but all truth is not poetry. When Burns treats anatural-history theme, as in his verses on the mouse and the daisy, and even on the louse, how much more there is in them than merenatural history! With what a broad and tender philosophy he clothesthem! how he identifies himself with the mouse and regards himself asits fellow mortal! So have Emerson's "Titmouse" and "Humble-Bee" abetter excuse for being than their natural history. So have McCarthy's"For a Bunny" and "The Snake, " and "To a Worm. "

THE SNAKE

 Poor unpardonable length, All belly to the mouth, Writhe then and wriggle, If there's joy in it!

 _My_ heel, at least, shall spare you. 

 A little sun on a stone, A mouse or two, And all that unreasonable belly Is happy. 

 No wonder God wasn't satisfied-- And went on creating. 

TO A WORM

 Do you know you are green, little worm, Like the leaf you feed on? Perhaps it is on account of the birds, who would like to eat you. But is there any reason why they shouldn't eat you, little worm?

 Do you know you are comical, little worm? How you double yourself up and wave your head, And then stretch out and double up again, All after a little food. 

 Do you know you have a long, strange name, little worm? I will not tell you what it is. That is for men of learning. You--and God--do not care about such things. 

WHAT MAKES A POEM?

 You would wave about and double up just as much, and be just as futile, with it as without it. Why do you crawl about on the top of that post, little worm? It should have been a tree, eh? with green leaves for eating. But it isn't, and you have crawled about it all day, looking for a new brown branch, or a green leaf. Do you know anything about tears, little worm?

Or take McCarthy's lines to the honey bee:

 "Poor desolate betrayer of Pan's trust, Who turned from mating and the sweets thereof, To make of labor an eternal lust, And with pale thrift destroy the red of love, The curse of Pan has sworn your destiny. Unloving, unbeloved, you go your way Toiling forever, and unwittingly You bear love's precious burden every day From flower to flower (for your blasphemy), Poor eunuch, making flower lovers gay. "

Or this:

GODLINESS

 I know a man who says That he gets godliness out of a book. 

 He told me this as we sought arbutus On the April hills-- Little color-poems of God Lilted to us from the ground, Lyric blues and whites and pinks. We climbed great rocks, Eternally chanting their gray elegies, And all about, the cadenced hills Were proud With the stately green epic of the Almighty. 

 And then we walked home under the stars, While he kept telling me about his book And the godliness in it. 

There are many great lyrics in our literature which have no palpableor deducible philosophy; but they are the utterance of deep, serious, imaginative natures, and they reach our minds and hearts. Wordsworth's"Daffodils, " his "Cuckoo, " his "Skylark, " and scores of others, livebecause they have the freshness and spontaneity of birds and flowersthemselves. 

Such a poem as Gray's "Elegy" holds its own, and will continue to holdit, because it puts in pleasing verse form the universal human emotionwhich all persons feel more or less when gazing upon graves. 

The intellectual content of Scott's poems is not great but the human andemotional content in them is great. A great minstrel of the borderspeaks in them. The best that Emerson could say of Scott was that "he isthe delight of generous boys, " but the spirit of romance offers aslegitimate a field for the poet as does the spirit of transcendentalism, though yielding, of course, different human values. 

Every poet of a high order has a deep moral nature, and yet the poetis far from being a mere moralist--

 "A reasoning, self-sufficing thing, An intellectual all-in-all. "

Every true poem is an offering upon the altar of art; it exists to noother end; it teaches as nature teaches; it is good as nature isgood; its art is the art of nature; it brings our spirits in closerand more loving contact with the universe; it is for the edificationof the soul. 

VI

SHORT STUDIES IN CONTRASTS

THE TRANSIENT AND THE PERMANENT

The clouds are transient, but the sky is permanent. The petals of aflowering plant are transient, the leaves and fruit are less so, andthe roots the least transient of all. The dew on the grass istransient, as is the frost of an autumn morning. The snows and therains abide longer. The splendors of summer and sunrise and sunsetsoon pass, but the glory of the day lasts. The rainbow vanishes in afew moments, but the prismatic effect of the drops of rain is a law ofoptics. Colors fade while texture is unimpaired. 

Of course change marks everything, living or dead. Even the pole starin astronomic time will vanish. But consider things mundane only. Howthe rocks on the seacoast seem to defy and withstand the waves thatbeat against them! "Weak as is a breaking wave" is a line ofWordsworth's. Yet the waves remain after the rocks are gone. The seaknows no change as the land does. It and the sky are the twounchanging earth features. 

In our own lives how transient are our moments of inspiration, ourmorning joy, our ecstasies of the spirit! Upon how much in the worldof art, literature, invention, modes, may be written the word"perishable"! "All flesh is grass, " says the old Book. Individuals, species, races, pass. Life alone remains and is immortal. 

POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE

Positive and negative go hand in hand through the world. Victory anddefeat, hope and despair, pleasure and pain. Man is positive, woman isnegative in comparison. The day is positive, the night is negative. But it is a pleasure to remember that it is always day in theuniverse. 

The shadow of the earth does not extend very far, nor the shadow ofany other planet. Day is the great cosmic fact. The masses of men arenegative to the few master and compelling minds. Cold is negative, heat is positive, though the difference is only one of degree. Thenegative side of life, the side of meditation, reflection, andreverie, is no less important than the side of action and performance. Youth is positive, age is negative. Age says No where it used to sayYes. It takes in sail. Life's hurry and heat are over, the judgment iscalm, the passions subdued, the stress of effort relaxed. Our temperis less aggressive, events seem less imminent. 

The morning is positive; in the evening we muse and dream and take ourease, we see our friends, we unstring the bow, we indulge our socialinstincts. 

Optimism is positive, pessimism is negative. Fear, suspicion, distrust--are all negative. 

On the seashore where I write[4] I see the ebbing tide, the exposedsand and rocks, the receding waves; and I know the sea is showing usits negative side; there is a lull in the battle. But wait a littleand the mad assault of the waves upon the land will be renewed. 

[Footnote 4: La Jolla, California. ]

PALM AND FIST

The palm is for friendship, hospitality, and good will; the fist is tosmite the enemies of truth and justice. 

How many men are like the clenched fist--pugnacious, disputatious, quarrelsome, always spoiling for a fight; a verbal fisticuff, if not aphysical one, is their delight. Others are more conciliatory andpeace-loving, not forgetting that a soft answer turneth away wrath. Roosevelt was the man of the clenched fist; not one to stir up strife, but a merciless hitter in what he believed a just cause. He always hadthe fighting edge, yet could be as tender and sympathetic as any one. This latter side of him is clearly shown in his recently published"Letters to His Children. " Lincoln was, in contrast, the man with theopen palm, tempering justice with kindness, and punishment withleniency. His War Secretary, Stanton, wielded the hard fist. 

PRAISE AND FLATTERY

"More men know how to flatter, " said Wendell Phillips, "than how topraise. " To flatter is easy, to condemn is easy, but to praisejudiciously and discriminatingly is not easy. Extravagant praisedefeats itself, as does extravagant blame. A man is rarely overpraisedduring his own time by his own people. If he is an original, forcefulcharacter, he is much more likely to be overblamed than overpraised. He disturbs old ways and institutions. We require an exalted point ofview to take in a great character, as we do to take in a greatmountain. 

We are likely to overpraise and overblame our presidents. Lincoln wasgreatly overblamed in his day, but we have made it up to his memory. President Wilson won the applause of both political parties during hisfirst term, but how overwhelmingly did the tide turn against himbefore the end of his second term! All his high and heroic service(almost his martyrdom) in the cause of peace, and for the league toprevent war, were forgotten in a mad rush of the populace to the otherextreme. But Wilson will assuredly come to his own in time, and takehis place among the great presidents. 

A little of the Scottish moderation is not so bad; it is always safe. A wise man will always prefer unjust blame to fulsome praise. Extremesin the estimation of a sound character are bound sooner or later tocorrect themselves. Wendell Phillips himself got more than his shareof blame during the antislavery days, but the praise came in due time. 

GENIUS AND TALENT

The difference between the two is seen in nothing more clearly than inthe fact that so many educated persons can and do write fairly goodverse, in fact, write most of the popular newspaper and magazinepoetry, while only those who have a genius for poetry write realpoems. Could mere talent have written Bryant's lines "To a Waterfowl"?or his "Thanatopsis"? or "June"? Or the small volume of selections ofgreat poetry which Arnold made from the massive works of Wordsworth?

Talent could have produced a vast deal of Wordsworth's work--all the"Ecclesiastical Sonnets" and much of "The Excursion. " Could talenthave written Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass"? It could have producedall that Whitman wrote before that time--all his stories and poems. Give talent inspiration and it becomes genius. The grub ismetamorphosed into the butterfly. 

"To do what is impossible to Talent is the mark of Genius, " saysAmiel. 

Talent may judge, Genius creates. Talent keeps the rules, Genius knowswhen to break them. 

"You may know Genius, " says the ironical Swift, "by this sign: All thedunces are against him. "

There is fine talent in Everett's oration at Gettysburg, but what adifferent quality spoke in Lincoln's brief but immortal utterance onthe same occasion! Is anything more than bright, alert talent shown inthe mass of Lowell's work, save perhaps in his "Biglow Papers"? If hehad a genius for poetry, though he wrote much, I cannot see it. Histone, as Emerson said, is always that of prose. The "Cathedral" is a_tour de force_. The line of his so often quoted--"What is so rare asa day in June?"--is a line of prose. 

The lines "To a Honey Bee" by John Russell McCarthy are the true goldof poetry. "To make of labor an eternal lust" could never have beenstruck off by mere talent. 

INVENTION AND DISCOVERY

Columbus discovered America; Edison invented the phonograph, theincandescent light, and many other things. If Columbus had notdiscovered America, some other voyager would have. If Harvey had notdiscovered the circulation of the blood, some one else would have. Thewonder is that it was not discovered ages before. So far as I know, noone has yet discovered the function of the spleen, but doubtless intime some one will. It is only comparatively recently that thefunctions of other ductless glands have been discovered. What did weknow about the thyroid gland a half-century ago? All the newdiscoveries in the heavens waited upon the new astronomic methods, andthe end is not yet. Many things in nature are still like an unexploredland. New remedies for the ills of the human body doubtless remain tobe found. In the mechanical world probably no new principle remains tobe discovered. "Keely" frauds have had their day. In the chemicalworld, the list of primary elements will probably not be added to, though new combinations of these elements may be almost endless. Inthe biological world, new species of insects, birds, and mammalsdoubtless remain to be discovered. Our knowledge of the naturalhistory of the globe is far from being complete. 

But in regard to inventions the case is different. I find myselfspeculating on such a question as this: If Edison had never been born, should we ever have had the phonograph, or the incandescent light? IfGraham Bell had died in infancy, should we ever have had thetelephone? Or without Marconi should we have had the wireless, orwithout Morse, the telegraph? Or, to go back still farther, withoutFranklin should we ever have known the identity of lightning andelectricity? Who taught us how to control electricity and make it doour work? One of the questions of Job was, "Canst thou sendlightnings, that they may go, and say unto thee, Here we are?" Yes, wecan. "We are ready to do your bidding, " they seem to say, "to run yourerrands, to carry your burdens, to grind your grist, to light yourhouses, to destroy your enemies. "

The new inventions that the future holds for us wait upon the new man. The discovery of radium--what a secret that was! But in allprobability had not Curie and his wife discovered it, some otherinvestigator would. 

Shall we ever learn how to use the atomic energy that is locked up inmatter? Or how to use the uniform temperature of the globe? Or thesecret of the glow-worm and firefly--light without heat?

The laws of the conservation of energy and of the correlation offorces were discoveries. The art of aviation was both an invention anda discovery. The soaring hawks and eagles we have always been familiarwith; the Wright brothers invented the machine that could do thetrick. 

"Necessity is the mother of invention. " As our wants increase, newdevices to meet them appear. How the diving-bell answered a real need!The motor-car also, and the flying-machine. The sewing-machine is agreat time-saver; the little hooks in our shoes in place of eyeletsare great time-savers; pins, and friction matches, and rubberovershoes, and scores on scores of other inventions answer to realneeds. Necessity did not call the phonograph into being, nor theincandescent light, but the high explosives, dynamite and T. N. T. (trinitrotoluol) met real wants. 

The Great War with its submarines stimulated inventors to deviseweapons to cope with them. Always as man's hand and eyes and ears haveneeded reënforcing or extending, his wit has come to his rescue. Infact, his progress has been contingent upon this very fact. Hisnecessities and his power of invention react upon one another; themore he invents, the more he wants, and the more he wants, the more heinvents. 

TOWN AND COUNTRY

I was saying to myself, why do not all literary men go to the countryto do their work, where they can have health, peace, and solitude?Then it occurred to me that there are many men of many minds, and thatmany need to be in the thick of life; they get more stimulus out ofpeople than out of nature. The novelist especially needs to be intouch with multitudes of men and women. But the poet and thephilosopher will usually prosper better in the country. A man likemyself, who is an observer and of a meditative cast, does better inthe country. Emerson, though city born and bred, finally settled inthe country. Whitman, on the other hand, loved "populous pavements. "But he was at home anywhere under the stars. He had no study, nolibrary, no club, other than the street, the beach, the hilltop, andthe marts of men. Mr. Howells was country-born, but came to the cityfor employment and remained there. Does not one wish that he had goneback to his Ohio boyhood home? It was easy for me to go back because Icame of generations of farmer folk. The love of the red soil was in myblood. My native hills looked like the faces of my father and mother. I could never permanently separate myself from them. I have always hada kind of chronic homesickness. Two or three times a year I mustrevisit the old scenes. I have had a land-surveyor make a map of thehome farm, and I have sketched in and colored all the different fieldsas I knew them in my youth. I keep the map hung up in my room here inCalifornia, and when I want to go home, I look at this map. I do notsee the paper. I see fields and woods and stone walls and paths androads and grazing cattle. In this field I used to help make hay; inthis one I wore my fingers sore picking up stones for these stonewalls; in this I planted corn and potatoes with my brothers. In thesemaple woods I helped make sugar in the spring; in these I killed myfirst ruffed grouse. In this field I did my first ploughing, withthoughts of an academy in a neighboring town at the end of everyfurrow. In this one I burned the dry and decayed stumps in the Aprildays, with my younger brother, and a spark set his cap on fire. Inthis orchard I helped gather the apples in October. In this barn wehusked the corn in the November nights. In this one Father sheared thesheep, and Mother picked the geese. My paternal grandfather clearedthese fields and planted this orchard. I recall the hired man whoworked for us during my time, and every dog my father had, and myadventures with them, hunting wood-chucks and coons. All these thingsand memories have been valuable assets in my life. But it is well thatnot all men have my strong local attachments. The new countries wouldnever get settled. My forefathers would never have left Connecticutfor the wilderness of the Catskills. 

As a rule, however, we are a drifting, cosmopolitan people. We areeasily transplanted; we do not strike our roots down into the geologyof long-gone time. 

I often wonder how so many people of the Old World can pullthemselves up and migrate to America and never return. The Scots, certainly a home-loving race, do it, and do not seem to suffer fromhomesickness. 

VII

DAY BY DAY

We often hear it said of a man that he was born too early, or toolate, but is it ever true? If he is behind his times, would he nothave been behind at whatever period he had been born? If he is aheadof his times, is not the same thing true? In the vegetable world theearly flowers and fruit blossoms are often cut off by the frost, butnot so in the world of man. Babies are in order at any time. Is apoet, or a philosopher, ever born too late? or too early? If Emersonhad been born a century earlier, his heterodoxy would have stood inhis way; but in that case he would not have been a heretic. Whitmanwould have had to wait for a hearing at whatever period he was born. He said he was willing to wait for the growth of the taste forhimself, and it finally came. Emerson's first thin volume called"Nature" did not sell the first edition of five hundred copies in tenyears, but would it have been different at any other time? A piece oftrue literature is not superseded. The fame of man may rise and fall, but it lasts. Was Watt too early with his steam-engine, or Morse tooearly with his telegraph? Or Bell too early with his telephone? OrEdison with his phonograph or his incandescent light? Or the Wrightbrothers with their flying-machine? Or Henry Ford with his motor-car?Before gasolene was discovered they would have been too early, butthen their inventions would not have materialized. 

The world moves, and great men are the springs of progress. But no manis born too soon or too late. 

 * * * * *

A fadeless flower is no flower at all. How Nature ever came to produceone is a wonder. Would not paper flowers do as well?

 * * * * *

The most memorable days in our lives are the days when we meet a greatman. 

 * * * * *

How stealthy and silent a thing is that terrible power which we haveunder control in our homes, yet which shakes the heavens in thunder!It comes and goes as silently as a spirit. In fact, it is nearer aspirit than anything else known to us. We touch a button and here itis, like an errand-boy who appears with his cap in his hand and meeklyasks, "What will you have?"

 * * * * *

A few days ago I was writing of meteoric men. But are we not all likemeteors that cut across the sky and are quickly swallowed up by thedarkness--some of us leaving a trail that lasts a little longer thanothers, but all gone in a breath?

Our great pulpit orator Beecher, how little he left that cold printdoes not kill! As a young man I used nearly to run my legs off to getto Plymouth Church before the doors were closed. Under histrumpet-like voice I was like a reed bent by the wind, but now when ina book made up of quotations I see passages from his sermons, theyseem thin and flimsy. Beecher's oratory was all for the ear and notfor the eye and mind. In truth, is the world indebted to the pulpitfor much good literature? Robertson's sermons can be read in thelibrary, and there are others of the great English divines. Butoratory is action and passion. "Great volumes of animal heat, " Emersonnames as one of the qualities of the orator. 

The speeches of Wendell Phillips will bear print because his oratorywas of the quiet, conversational kind. Webster's, of course, stand thetest of print, but do Clay's or Calhoun's? In our time oratory, assuch, has about gone out. Rarely now do we hear the eagle scream inCongress or on the platform. Men aim to speak earnestly andconvincingly, but not oratorically. President Wilson is a veryconvincing speaker, but he indulges in no oratory. The one who makes agreat effort to be eloquent always fails. Noise and fury andover-emphasis are not eloquent. "True eloquence, " says Pascal, "scorns eloquence. "

There is no moral law in nature, but there is that out of which themoral law arose. There is no answer to prayer in the heavens above, orin the earth beneath, except in so far as the attitude of sincereprayer is a prophecy of the good it pleads for. Prayer for peace ofmind, for charity, for gratitude, for light, for courage, is answeredin the sincere asking. Prayer for material good is often prayeragainst wind and tide, but wind and tide obey those who can rule them. 

Our ethical standards injected into world-history lead to confusionand contradiction. Introduced into the jungle, they would put an endto life there; introduced into the sea, they would put an end to lifethere; the rule that it is more blessed to give than to receive wouldput an end to all competitive business. Our ethical standards arenarrow, artificial, and apply only to civilized communities. Nationshave rarely observed them till the present day. 

 * * * * *

If the world is any better for my having lived in it, it is because Ihave pointed the way to a sane and happy life on terms within reach ofall, in my love and joyous acceptance of the works of Nature about me. I have not tried, as the phrase is, to lead my readers from Nature upto Nature's God, because I cannot separate the one from the other. Ifyour heart warms toward the visible creation, and toward your fellowmen, you have the root of the matter in you. The power we call Goddoes not sustain a mechanical or secondary relation to the universe, but is vital in it, or one with it. To give this power humanlineaments and attributes, as our fathers did, only limits andbelittles it. And to talk of leading from Nature up to Nature's God isto miss the God that throbs in every spear of grass and vibrates inthe wing of every insect that hums. The Infinite is immanent in thisuniverse. 

 * * * * *

"The faith that truth exists" is the way that William James begins oneof his sentences. Of course truth exists where the mind of man exists. A new man and there is new truth. Truth, in this sense, is a way oflooking at things that is agreeable, or that gives satisfaction to thehuman mind. Truth is not a definite fixed quantity, like the gold orsilver of a country. It is no more a fixed quantity than is beauty. Itis an experience of the human mind. Beauty and truth are what we makethem. We say the world is full of beauty. What we mean is that theworld is full of things that give us the pleasure, or awaken in us thesentiment which we call by that name. 

The broadest truths are born of the broadest minds. Narrow minds areso named from their narrow views of things. 

Pilate's question, "What is Truth?" sets the whole world by the ears. The question of right and wrong is another thing. Such questions referto action and the conduct of our lives. In religion, in politics, ineconomics, in sociology, what is truth to one man may be error toanother. We may adopt a course of action because it seems the moreexpedient. Debatable questions have two sides to them. In the moralrealm that is true which is agreeable to the largest number ofcompetent judges. A mind that could see further and deeper mightreverse all our verdicts. To be right on any question in the moralrealm is to be in accord with that which makes for the greatest goodto the greatest number. In our Civil War the South believed itselfright in seceding from the Union; the North, in fighting to preservethe Union. Both sections now see that the North had the larger right. The South was sectional, the North national. Each of the greatpolitical parties thinks it has a monopoly of the truth, but the truthusually lies midway between them. Questions of right and wrong do notnecessarily mean questions of true and false. "There is nothing eithergood or bad, " says Hamlet, "but thinking makes it so. " This may begood Christian Science doctrine, but it is doubtful philosophy. 

 * * * * *

Yesterday, as I stood on the hill above Slabsides and looked over thelandscape dotted with farms just greening in the April sun, thethought struck me afresh that all this soil, all the fertile fields, all these leagues on leagues of sloping valleys and rolling hills camefrom the decay of the rocks, and that the chief agent in bringingabout this decay and degradation was the gentle rain from heaven--thatwithout the rain through the past geologic ages, the scene I lookedupon would have been only one wild welter of broken or crumpled rockystrata, not a green thing, not a living thing, should I have seen. 

In the Hawaiian Islands one may have proof of this before his eyes. Onone end of the island of Maui, the rainfall is very great, and itsdeep valleys and high sharp ridges are clothed with tropical verdure, while on the other end, barely ten miles away, rain never falls, andthe barren, rocky desolation which the scene presents I can neverforget. No rain, no soil; no soil, no life. 

We are, therefore, children of the rocks; the rocks are our mother, and the rains our father. 

 * * * * *

When the stream of life, through some favoring condition, breaksthrough its natural checks and bounds, and inundates and destroyswhole provinces of other forms, as when the locusts, theforest-worms, the boll-weevil, the currant-worm, the potato beetle, unduly multiply and devastate fields and forests and the farmer'scrops, what do we witness but Nature's sheer excess and intemperance?Life as we usually see it is the result of a complex system of checksand counter-checks. The carnivorous animals are a check on theherbivorous; the hawks and owls are a check on the birds and fowls;the cats and weasels are a check on the small rodents, which are veryprolific. The different species of plants and trees are a check uponone another. 

 * * * * *

I think the main reason of the abundance of wealth in the country isthat every man, equipped as he is with so many modern scientificappliances and tools, is multiplied four or five times. He is equal tothat number of men in his capacity to do things as compared with themen of fifty or seventy years ago. The farmer, with hismowing-machine, his horse-rake, his automobile, his tractor engine andgang ploughs or his sulky ploughs, his hay-loader, his corn-planter, and so on, does the work of many men. Machinery takes the place ofmen. Gasolene and kerosene oil give man a great advantage. Dynamite, too, --what a giant that is in his service! The higher cost of livingdoes not offset this advantage. 

The condition in Europe at this time is quite different: there theenergies of men have been directed not to the accumulation of wealth, but to the destruction of wealth. Hence, while the war has enrichedus, it has impoverished Europe. 

 * * * * *

Why are women given so much more to ornaments and superfluities indress and finery than men? In the animal kingdom below man, save in afew instances, it is the male that wears the showy decorations. Themale birds have the bright plumes; the male sheep have the big horns;the stag has the antlers; the male lion has the heavy mane; the malefirefly has wings and carries the lamp. With the barnyard fowl themale has the long spurs and the showy comb and wattles. In the crowtribe, the male cannot be distinguished from the female, nor among thefly-catchers, nor among the snipes and plovers. But when we come tothe human species, and especially among the white races, the femalefairly runs riot in ornamentation. If it is not to attract the male, what is it for? It has been pretty clearly shown that what Darwincalls "sexual selection" plays no part. Woman wishes to excite thepassion of love. She has an instinct for motherhood; the perpetuity ofthe species is at the bottom of it all. Woman knows how to make herdress alluring, how to make it provocative, how much to reveal, howmuch to conceal. A certain voluptuousness is the ambition of allwomen; anything but to be skinny and raw-boned. She does not want tobe muscular and flat-chested, nor, on the other hand, to beover-stout, but she prays for the flowing lines and the plumpness thatbelong to youth. A lean man does not repel her, nor a rugged, bonyframe. Woman's garments are of a different texture and on a differentscale than those of man, and much more hampering. Her ruffles andribbons and laces all play their part. Her stockings even are a vitalproblem, more important than her religion. We do not care where sheworships if her dress is attractive. Emerson reports that a lady saidto him that a sense of being well-dressed at church gave asatisfaction which religion could not give. 

With man the male defends and safeguards the female. True that amongsavage tribes he makes a slave of her, but in the white races he willdefend her with his life. She does not take up arms, she does not goto sea. She does not work in mines, or as a rule engage in the roughwork of the world. In Europe she works in the field, and we have hadfarmerettes in this country, but I know of no feminine engineers orcarpenters or stone masons. There have been a few women explorers andAlpine climbers, and investigators in science, but only a few. Thediscovery of radium is chiefly accredited to a woman, and women have afew valuable inventions to their credit. I saw a valuable andingenious machine, in a great automobile factory, that was invented bya woman. Now that woman has won the franchise in this country, we arewaiting to see if politics will be purified. 

The "weaker sex, " surely. How much easier do women cry than men! howmuch more easily are they scared! And yet, how much more pain they canendure! And how much more devoted are they to their children!

 * * * * *

Why does any extended view from a mountain-top over a broad landscape, no matter what the features of that landscape, awaken in us theemotion of the beautiful? Is it because the eye loves a long range, abroad sweep? Or do we have a sense of victory? The book of thelandscape is now open before us, and we can read it page after page. All these weary miles where we tramped, and where the distance, as itwere, was in ambush, we now command at a glance. Big views expand themind as deep inhalations of air expand the lungs. 

Yesterday I stood on the top of Grossmont, [5] probably a thousand feetabove the landscape, and looked out over a wide expanse of what seemedto be parched, barren country; a few artificial lakes or ponds ofimpounded rains, but not a green thing in sight, and yet I was filledwith pleasurable emotion. I lingered and lingered and gazed and gazed. The eye is freed at such times, like a caged bird, and darts far andnear without hindrance. 

[Footnote 5: In San Diego County, California. ]

 * * * * *

 "The wings of time are black and white, Pied with morning and with night. "

Thus do we objectify that which has no objective existence, but ispurely a subjective experience. Do we objectify light and sound in thesame way? No. One can conceive of the vibrations in the ether thatgive us the sensation of light, and in the air that give us sound. These vibrations do not depend upon our organs. Time and tide, we say, wait for no man. Certainly the tide does not, as it has a realobjective existence. But time does not wait or hurry. It neither lagsnor hastens. Yesterday does not exist, nor to-morrow, nor the Now, forthat matter. Before we can say the moment has come, it is gone. Theonly change there is is in our states of consciousness. How the hourslag when we are waiting for a train, and how they hurry when we arehappily employed! Can we draw a line between the past and the present?Can you find a point in the current of the stream that is stationary?We speak of being lavish of time and of husbanding time, of improvingtime, and so on. We divide it into seconds and minutes, hours anddays, weeks, and months, and years. Civilized man is compelled to dothis; he lives and works by schedule, but it is his states ofconsciousness that he divides and measures. "Time is but a stream I gofishing in, " says Thoreau. The stream goes by, but the fish stay. Theriver of Time, the tooth of Time--happy comparisons. 

"I wasted time and now time wastes me, " says Shakespeare. "I have notime. " "You have all there is, " replied the old Indian. 

If time, like money, could be hoarded up, we could get all our workdone. Is there any time outside of man? The animals take no note oftime. 

 * * * * *

That is a good saying of Juvenal's, "He who owns the soil, owns up tothe sky. " So is this of Virgil's, "Command large fields, but cultivatesmall ones. "

 * * * * *

Can there be any theory or doctrine not connected with our practicallives so absurd that it will not be accepted as true by many people?How firmly was a belief in witchcraft held by whole populations for ageneration! My grandfather believed in it, and in spooks andhobgoblins. 

The belief in alchemy still prevails--that the baser metals, by theaid of the philosopher's stone, can be transmuted into gold andsilver. Quite recently there was a school in a large town inCalifornia for teaching alchemy. As it was a failure, its professorwas involved in litigation with his pupils. I believe the pupils werechiefly women. 

There is a sect in Florida that believe that we live on the inside ofa hollow sphere, instead of on the outside of a revolving globe. Ivisited the community with Edison, near Fort Myers, several years ago. Some of the women were fine-looking. One old lady looked like MarthaWashington, but the men all looked "as if they had a screw loosesomewhere. " They believe that the sun and moon and all the starryhosts of heaven revolve on the inside of this hollow sphere. All ourastronomy goes by the board. They look upon it as puerile andcontemptible. The founder of the sect had said he would rise from thedead to confirm its truth. His disciples kept his body till the Boardof Health obliged them to bury it. 

If any one were seriously to urge that we really walk on our headsinstead of our heels, and cite our baldness as proof, there arepersons who would believe him. It has been urged that flight to themoon in an aëroplane is possible--the want of air is no hindrance! Thebelief in perpetual motion is not yet dead. Many believe that snakescharm birds. But it has been found that a stuffed snake-skin will"charm" birds also--the bird is hypnotized by its own fear. 

 * * * * *

What has become of the hermits?--men and women who preferred to livealone, holding little or no intercourse with their fellows? In myyouth I knew of several such. There was old Ike Keator, who lived in alittle unpainted house beside the road near the top of the mountainwhere we passed over into Batavia Kill. He lived there many years. Hehad a rich brother, a farmer in the valley below. Then there was EriGray, who lived to be over one hundred years. He occupied a littlehouse on the side of a mountain, and lived, it was said, like the pigsin the pen. Then there was Aunt Deborah Bouton, who lived in a littlehouse by a lonely road and took care of her little farm and her fouror five cows, winter and summer. Since I have lived here on the Hudsonthere was a man who lived alone in an old stone house amid great filthon the top of the hill above Esopus village. 

In my own line of descent there was a Kelley who lived alone in a hutin the woods, not far from Albany. I myself must have a certain amountof solitude, but I love to hear the hum of life all about me. I liketo be secluded in a building warmed by the presence of other persons. 

 * * * * *

When I was a boy on the old farm, the bright, warm, midsummer dayswere canopied with the mellow hum of insects. You did not see them ordistinguish any one species, but the whole upper air resounded like agreat harp. It was a very marked feature of midday. But not for fiftyyears have I heard that sound. I have pressed younger and sharper earsinto my service, but to no purpose: there are certainly fewerbumblebees than of old, but not fewer flies or wasps or hornets orhoney bees. What has wrought the change I do not know. 

 * * * * *

If the movements going on around us in inert matter could be magnifiedso as to come within range of our unaided vision, how agitated theworld would seem! The so-called motionless bodies are all vibratingand shifting their places day and night at all seasons. The rocks aresliding down the hills or creeping out of their beds, the stone wallsare reeling and toppling, the houses are settling or leaning. Allinert material raised by the hand of man above the earth's surface isslowly being pulled down to a uniform level. The crust of the earth isrising or subsiding. The very stars in the constellations are shiftingtheir places. 

If we could see the molecular and chemical changes and transformationsthat are going on around us, another world of instability would berevealed to us. Here we should see real miracles. We should see theodorless gases unite to form water. We should see the building ofcrystals, catalysis, and the movements of unstable compounds. 

 * * * * *

Think of what Nature does with varying degrees of temperature--solids, fluids, gases. From the bottom to the top of the universe means simplymore or less heat. It seems like a misuse of words to say that ironfreezes at a high temperature, that a bar of red-hot or white-hot ironis frozen. Water freezes at a high temperature, the air freezes at avastly lower. Carbon dioxide becomes a solid at a very lowtemperature. Hydrogen becomes a liquid at 252° below zero centigrade, and a solid at 264°. The gas fluorine becomes a liquid at 210° belowzero centigrade. 

In a world of absolute zero everything would be as solid as the rocks, all life, all chemical reactions would cease. All forms of water arethe result of more or less heat. The circuit of the waters from theearth to the clouds and back again, which keeps all the machinery oflife a-going, is the work of varying degrees of temperature. The GulfStream, which plays such a part in the climate of Europe, is theresult of the heat in the Gulf of Mexico. The glacial periods whichhave so modified the surface of the earth in the past were the resultof temperature changes. 

 * * * * *

How habitually we speak of beauty as a positive thing, just as we doof truth! whereas what we call beauty is only an emotional experienceof our own minds, just as light and heat are sensations of our bodies. There is no light where there is no eye, and no sound where there isno ear. One is a vibration in the ether, and the other a vibration inthe air. The vibrations are positive. We do not all see beauty in thesame things. One man is unmoved where another is thrilled. We say theworld is full of beauty, when we mean that it is full of objects thatexcite this emotion in our minds. 

We speak of truth as if it, too, were a positive thing, and as ifthere were a fixed quantity of it in the world, as there is of gold orsilver, or diamonds. Truth, again, is an intellectual emotion of thehuman mind. One man's truth is another man's falsehood--moral andæsthetic truth, I mean. Objective truth (mathematics and science) mustbe the same to all men. 

A certain mode of motion in the molecules of matter gives us thesensation of heat, but heat is not a thing, an entity in itself, anymore than cold is. Yet to our senses one seems just as positive as theother. 

New truth means a new man. There are as many kinds of truth as thereare human experiences and temperaments. 

 * * * * *

How adaptive is animal life! It adds a new touch of interest to theforbidding cactus to know that the cactus wren builds her nest betweenits leaves. The spines probably serve to protect the bird from herenemies. But are they not also a menace to her and to her young? Butthis "procreant cradle" of a bird in the arms of the fanged desertgrowth softens its aspect a little. 

 * * * * *

The tree of forbidden fruit--the Tree of Knowledge--how copiously hasmankind eaten of it during these latter generations!--and the chaoticstate of the world to-day is the result. We have been forcing Nature'shand on a tremendous scale. We have gained more knowledge and powerthan we can legitimately use. We are drunk with the sense of power. Wechallenge the very gods. The rapid increase of inventions and theharnessing of the powers of Nature have set all nations tomanufacturing vastly more goods than they can use and they all becomecompetitors for world markets, and rivalries and jealousies spring up, and the seeds of war are planted. The rapid growth of towns and citiesis one of the results. The sobering and humanizing influence of thecountry and the farm are less and less in evidence; the excitement, the excesses, the intoxication of the cities are more and more. Thefollies and extravagances of wealth lead to the insolence andrebellion of the poor. Material power! Drunk with this power, theworld is running amuck to-day. We have got rid of kings and despotsand autocratic governments; now if we could only keep sober and makedemocracy safe and enjoyable! Too much science has brought us togrief. Behold what Chemistry has done to put imperial power in ourhands during the last decade!

 * * * * *

The grand movements of history and of mankind are like the movementsof nature, under the same law, elemental, regardless of waste and ruinand delays--not the result of human will or design, but of forces wewot not of. They are of the same order as floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, a release of human forces that have slumbered. The chaosof Europe to-day shows the play of such elemental forces, unorganized, at cross-purposes, antagonistic, fighting it out in the attempt tofind an equilibrium. The pain, the suffering, the waste, the delays, do not trouble the gods at all. Since man is a part of nature, whyshould not masses of men be ruled by natural law? The human willreaches but a little way. 

VIII

GLEANINGS

I do not believe that one poet can or does efface another, as Arnoldsuggests. As every gas is a vacuum to every other gas, so every newpoet is a vacuum to every other poet. Wordsworth told Arnold that formany years his poems did not bring him enough to buy his shoestrings. The reading public had to acquire a taste for him. Whitman said, "I amwilling to wait for the growth of the taste of myself. " A man wholikes a poet of real worth is going to continue to like him, no matterwhat new man appears. He may not read him over and over, but he goesback to him when the mood is upon him. We listen to the same musicover and over. We take the same walk over and over. We readShakespeare over and over, and we go back to the best in Wordsworthover and over. We get in Tennyson what we do not get in Wordsworth, and we as truly get in Wordsworth what we do not get in Tennyson. Tennyson was sumptuous and aristocratic. Byron found his audience, buthe did not rob Wordsworth. 

It seems to me that the preëminence of Wordsworth lies in the factthat he deals so entirely with concrete things--men and objects innature--and floods or saturates them with moral meanings. There is nostraining, no hair-splitting, no contortions of the oracle, but it allcomes as naturally as the sunrise or the sunset. 

 * * * * *

Things not beautiful in themselves, or when seen near at hand, may anddo give us the sense of beauty when seen at a distance, or in mass. Who has not stood on a mountain-top, and seen before him a wild, disorderly landscape that has nevertheless awakened in him the emotionof the beautiful? or that has given him the emotion of the sublime?Wordsworth's "Daffodils, " "Three Years She Grew, " "The SolitaryReaper, " "The Rainbow, " "The Butterfly, " and many others are merelybeautiful. These lines from Whitman give one the emotion of thesublime:

 "I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems, And all I see multiplied as high as I can cipher edge but the rim of the farther systems. 

 "Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding, Outward and outward and forever outward. 

 "My sun has his sun and round him obediently wheels, He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit, And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them. "

All men may slake their thirst at the same spring of water, but allmen cannot be thrilled or soothed by beholding the same objects ofnature. A beautiful child captivates every one, a beautiful womanravishes all eyes. On my way to the Imperial Valley, I recently droveacross a range of California mountains that had many strikingfeatures. A lady asked me if I did not think them beautiful. I said, "No, they are hideous, but the hideous may be interesting. "

The snow is beautiful to many persons, but it is not so to me. It isthe color of death. I could stand our northern winters very well if Icould always see the face of the brown or ruddy earth. The snow, Iknow, blankets the fields; and Emerson's poem on the snowstorm isfine; at the same time, I would rather not be obliged to look at thewhite fields. 

 * * * * *

We are the first great people without a past in the European sense. Weare of yesterday. We do not strike our roots down deep into thegeology of long-gone ages. We are easily transplanted. We are amixture of all peoples as the other nations of the world are not. Onlyyesterday we were foreigners ourselves. Then we made the firstexperiment on a large scale of a democratic or self-governing people. The masses, and not a privileged few, give the tone and complexion tothings in this country. We have not yet had time to develop a trulynational literature or art. We have produced but one poet of thehighest order. Whitman is autochthonous. He had no precursor. He is anew type of man appearing in this field. 

 * * * * *

"What think ye of Whitman?" This is the question I feel like putting, and sometimes do put, to each young poet I meet. If he thinks poorlyof Whitman, I think poorly of him. I do not expect great things ofhim, and so far my test holds good. William Winter thought poorly ofWhitman, Aldrich thought poorly of him, and what lasting thing haseither of them done in poetry? The memorable things of Aldrich are inprose. Stedman showed more appreciation of him, and Stedman wrote twoor three things that will keep. His "Osawatomie Brown . . . He shovedhis ramrod down" is sure of immortality. Higginson could not standWhitman, and had his little fling at him whenever he got the chance. Who reads Higginson now? Emerson, who far outranks any other NewEngland poet, was fairly swept off his feet by the first appearance of"Leaves of Grass. " Whittier, I am told, threw the book in the fire. Whittier's fame has not gone far beyond New England. The scholarly andacademic Lowell could not tolerate Whitman, and if Lowell has everwritten any true poetry, I have not seen it. What Longfellow thoughtof him, I do not know. Thoreau saw his greatness at a glance and wentto see him. In England, I am told, Tennyson used to read him aloud inselect company. I know that the two poets corresponded. We catch aglimpse of Swinburne's spasmodic insight in his first burst ofenthusiasm over him, and then of his weakness in recanting. Swinburne's friend and house-mate, Watts Dunton, never could endurehim, but what has he done? So it has gone and still is going, thoughnow the acceptance of Whitman has become the fashion. 

I have always patted myself on the back for seeing the greatness ofWhitman from the first day that I read a line of his. I was bewilderedand disturbed by some things, but I saw enough to satisfy me of hisgreatness. 

Whitman had the same faith in himself that Kepler had in his work. Whitman said:

 "Whether I come to my own to-day, or in ten thousand, or ten million years, I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait. "

Kepler said: "The die is cast; the book is written, to be read eithernow or by posterity. I care not which. It may well wait a century fora reader, since God has waited six thousand years for an observer likemyself. "

 * * * * *

Judging from fragments of his letters that I have seen, Henry Jameswas unquestionably hypersensitive. In his dislike of publicity he wasextreme to the point of abnormality; it made him ill to see his namein print, except under just the right conditions. He wanted all thingsveiled and softened. He fled his country, abjured it completely. Thepublicity of it, of everything in America--its climate, its day, itsnight, the garish sun, its fierce, blazing light, the manner of itspeople, its politics, its customs--fairly made him cringe. During hislast visit here he tried lecturing, but soon gave it up. He fled toveiled and ripened and cushioned England--not to the country, but tosmoky London; and there his hypersensitive soul found peace and ease. He became a British subject, washed himself completely of everyvestige of Americanism. This predilection of his probably accounts forthe obscurity or tantalizing indirectness of his writings. The laststory I read of his was called "One More Turn of the Screw, " but whatthe screw was, or what the turn was, or whether anybody got pinched orsqueezed, or what it was all about, I have not the slightest idea. Hewrote about his visit here, his trip to Boston, to Albany, to NewYork, but which town he was writing about you could not infer from thecontext. He had the gift of a rich, choice vocabulary, but he wove itinto impenetrable, though silken, veils that concealed more than theyrevealed. When replying to his correspondents on the typewriter, hewould even apologize for "the fierce legibility of the type. "

 * * * * *

The contrast between the "singing-robes and the overalls ofJournalism" is true and striking. Good and true writing no magazine ornewspaper editor will blue-pencil. But "fine" writing is a differentthing--a style that is conscious of itself, a style in which thethought is commonplace and the language studied and ornate, everyjudicious editor will blue-pencil. Downrightness and sententiousnessare prime qualities; brevity, concreteness, spontaneity--in fact, allforms of genuine expression--help make literature. You know thegenuine from the spurious, gold from pinchbeck, that's the rub. Thesecret of sound writing is not in the language, but in the mind orpersonality behind the language. The dull writer and the inspiredwriter use, or may use, the same words, and the product will be goldin the one and lead in the other. 

 * * * * *

Dana's book ["Two Years Before the Mast"] is a classic because it tookno thought of being a classic. It is a plain, unvarnished tale, notloaded up with tedious descriptions. It is all action, a perpetualdrama in which the sea, the winds, the seamen, the sails--mainsail, main royal, foresail--play the principal parts. 

There is no book depicting life on the sea to compare with it. LatelyI have again tried to find the secret of its charm. In the firstplace, it is a plain, unvarnished tale, no attempt at fine writing init. All is action from cover to cover. It is full of thrilling, dramatic scenes. In fact, it is almost a perpetual drama in which thesea, the winds, the storms, the sails, and the sailors play theirparts. Each sail, from the smallest to the greatest, has its owncharacter and its own part to play; sometimes many of them, sometimesfew are upon the stage at once. Occasionally all the canvas was piledon at once, and then what a sight the ship was to behold! Scuddingunder bare poles was dramatic also. 

The life on board ship in those times--its humor, its tedium, itsdangers, its hardships--was never before so vividly portrayed. Thetyranny and cruelty of sea-captains, the absolute despotism of thatlittle world of the ship's deck, stand out in strong relief. Dana hada memory like a phonographic record. Unless he took copious notes onthis journey, it is incredible how he could have made it so complete, so specific is the life of each day. The reader craves more light onone point--the size of the ship, her length and tonnage. In settingout on the homeward journey they took aboard a dozen sheep, fourbullocks, a dozen or more pigs, three or four dozen of poultry, thousands of dressed and cured hides, as well as fodder and feed forthe cattle and poultry and pigs. The vessel seemed elastic; they couldalways find room for a few thousand more hides, if the need arose. Thehides were folded up like the leaves of a book, and they inventedcurious machinery to press in a hundred hides where one could not beforced by hand. By this means the forty thousand hides were easilydisposed of as part of the home cargo. 

The ship becomes a living being to the sailors. The Alert was soloaded, her cargo so _steved_ in, that she was stiff as a man in astrait-jacket. But the old sailors said: "Stand by. You'll see herwork herself loose in a week or two, and then she'll walk up to CapeHorn like a race-horse. "

It is curious how the sailors can't work together without a song. "Asong is as necessary to a sailor as the drum and fife are to thesoldier. They can't pull in time, or pull with a will, without it. "Some songs were much more effective than others. "Two or three songswould be tried, one after the other, with no effect--not an inch couldbe got upon the tackles, when a new song struck up seemed to hit thehumor of the moment and drove the tackles two blocks at once. 'Heaveround, hearty!' 'Captain gone ashore!' and the like, might do forcommon pulls, but in an emergency, when we wanted a heavy, raise-the-dead pull, which would start the beams of the ship, therewas nothing like 'Time for us to go!' 'Round the corner, ' or 'Hurrah!Hurrah! my hearty bullies!'"

 * * * * *

The mind of the professional critic, like the professional logicalmind, becomes possessed of certain rules which it adheres to on alloccasions. There is a well-known legal mind in this country which istypical. A recent political opponent of the man says:

 His is the type of mind which would have sided with King John against granting the Magna Charta; the type of mind which would have opposed the ratification of the Constitution of the United States because he would have found so many holes in it. His is the type of mind which would have opposed the Monroe Doctrine on the ground that it was dangerous. His is the type of mind which would have opposed the Emancipation Proclamation on the ground of taking away property without due process of law. His is the type of mind which would have opposed Cleveland's Venezuela message to England on the ground that it was unprecedented. His is the type of mind which did its best in 1912 to oppose Theodore Roosevelt's effort to make the Republican Party progressive. 

Such a mind would have no use for Roosevelt, for instance, becauseRoosevelt was not bound by precedents, but made precedents of his own. The typical critical mind, such as Arnold's, would deny the title ofphilosopher to a man who has no constructive talent, who could notbuild up his own philosophy into a system. He would deny another thetitle of poet because his verse has not the Miltonic qualities ofsimplicity, of sensuousness, of passion. Emerson was not a great manof letters, Arnold said, because he had not the genius and instinctfor style; his prose had not the requisite wholeness of good tissue. Emerson's prose is certainly not Arnold's prose, but at its best it isjust as effective. 

 * * * * *

It is a good idea of Santayana that "the function of poetry is toemotionalize philosophy. "

How absurd, even repulsive, is the argument of "Paradise Lost"! yethere is great poetry, not in the matter, but in the manner. 

 "Though fallen on evil days, on evil days though fallen. " "To shun delights and live laborious days. "

Common ideas, but what dignity in the expression!

 * * * * *

Criticism is easy. When a writer has nothing else to do, he cancriticize some other writer. But to create and originate is not soeasy. One may say that appreciation is easy also. How many personsappreciate good literature who cannot produce it!

 * * * * *

The rash and the audacious are not the same. Audacity means boldness, but to be rash often means to be imprudent or foolhardy. When a littledog attacks a big dog, as so often happens, his boldness becomesrashness. When Charles Kingsley attacked Newman, his boldness turnedout to be rashness. 

 * * * * *

Little wonder that in his essay on "Books" Emerson recommends Thomas àKempis's "Imitation of Christ. " Substitute the word Nature for God andChrist and much of it will sound very Emersonian. Emerson was a kindof New England Thomas à Kempis. His spirit and attitude of mind wereessentially the same, only directed to Nature and the modern world. Humble yourself, keep yourself in the background, and let theover-soul speak. "I desire no consolation which taketh from mecompunction. " "I love no contemplation which leads to pride. " "For allthat which is high is not holy, nor everything that is sweet, good. ""I had rather feel contrition, than be skilled in the definition ofit. " "All Scripture ought to be read in the spirit in which it waswritten. " How Emersonian all this sounds!

 * * * * *

In a fat volume of forty thousand quotations from the literature ofall times and countries, compiled by some patient and industriousperson, at least half of it is not worth the paper on which it isprinted. There seem to be more quotations in it from Shakespeare thanfrom any other poet, which is as it should be. There seem to be morefrom Emerson than from any other American poet, which again is as itshould be. Those from the great names of antiquity--the Bible, Sadi, Cicero, Æschylus, Euripides, Aristotle, and others--are all worthwhile, and the quotations from Bacon, Newton, Addison, Locke, Chaucer, Johnson, Carlyle, Huxley, Tennyson, Goethe are welcome. But thequotations from women writers and poets, --Mrs. Hemans, Mrs. Sigourney, Jean Ingelow, and others, --what are they worth? Who would expectanything profound from J. G. Holland or Chapin, O. W. Holmes, orAlger, or Alcott, or Helps, or Dickens, or Lewes, or Froude, orLowell? I certainly should not. 

Such a selection is good to leaf over. Your thought may be kindled orfanned here and there. The subjects are arranged alphabetically, andembrace nearly all themes of human interest from ability to zephyrs. There is very little from Whitman, and, I think, only one quotationfrom Thoreau. 

 * * * * *

The death of Howells gave me a shock. I had known him long, though notintimately. He was my senior by only one month. It had been two yearsor more since I had seen him. Last December I read his charming paper on"Eighty Years and After" and enjoyed it greatly. It is a masterpiece. Noother American man of letters, past or present, could have done that. Infact, there has been no other American who achieved the all-roundliterary craftsmanship that Mr. Howells achieved. His equal in his ownline we have never seen. His felicity on all occasions was a wonder. Hisworks do not belong to the literature of power, but to the literature ofcharm, grace, felicity. His style is as flexible and as limpid as amountain rill. Only among the French do we find such qualities in suchperfection. Some of his writings--"Their Wedding Journey, " forinstance--are too photographic. We miss the lure of the imagination, such as Hawthorne gave to all his pictures of real things. Only one ofHowells's volumes have I found too thin for me to finish--his "LondonFilms" was too filmy for me. I had read Taine's "London Notes" and feltthe force of a different type of mind. But Howells's "Eighty Years andAfter" will live as a classic. Oh, the felicity of his style! One of hislater poems on growing old ("On a Bright Winter's Day" it is called) isa gem. 

IX

SUNDOWN PAPERS

RE-READING BERGSON

I am trying again to read Bergson's "Creative Evolution, " with poorsuccess. When I recall how I was taken with the work ten or more yearsago, and carried it with me whenever I went from home, I am wonderingif my mind has become too old and feeble to take it in. But I do nothave such difficulty with any other of my favorite authors. Bergson'swork now seems to me a mixture of two things that won'tmix--metaphysics and natural science. It is full of word-splitting andconjuring with terms, and abounds in natural history facts. The styleis wonderful, but the logic is not strong. He enlarges upon theinability of the intellect to understand or grasp Life. The reason isbaffled, but sympathy and the emotional nature and the intuitionsgrasp the mystery. 

This may be true, the heart often knows what the head does not; but isit not the intellect that tells us so? The intellect understands thegrounds of our inability. We can and do reason about the limitationsof reason. We do not know how matter and spirit blend, but we knowthey do blend. The animals live by instinct, and we live largely inour emotions, but it is reason that has placed man at the head of theanimal kingdom. 

Bergson himself by no means dispenses with the logical faculty. Notehis close and convincing reasoning on the development of thevertebrate eye, and how inadequate the Darwinian idea of theaccumulation of insensible variations is to account for it. A closerand more convincing piece of reasoning would be hard to find. 

Bergson's conception of two currents--an upward current of spirit anda downward current of matter--meeting and uniting at a definite timeand place and producing life, is extremely fanciful. Where had theyboth been during all the geologic ages? I do not suppose they had beenany _where_. How life arose is, of course, one of the great mysteries. But do we not know enough to see that it did not originate in thissudden spectacular way?--that it began very slowly, in unicellulargerms?

At first I was so captivated by the wonderful style of M. Bergson, andthe richness of his page in natural history, that I could see no flawsin his subject-matter, but now that my enthusiasm has cooled off alittle I return to him and am looking closer into the text. 

Is not Bergson guilty of false or careless reasoning when he saysthat the relation of the soul to the brain is like that of a coat tothe nail upon which it hangs? I call this spurious or pinchbeckanalogy. If we know anything about it, do we not know that therelation of the two is not a mechanical or fortuitous one? and that itcannot be defined in this loose way?

"To a large extent, " Bergson says, "thought is independent of thebrain. " "The brain is, strictly speaking, neither an organ of thought, nor of feeling, nor of consciousness. " He speaks of consciousness asif it were a disembodied something floating around in the airoverhead, like wireless messages. If I do not think with my brain, with what do I think? Certainly not with my legs, or my abdomen, or mychest. I think with my head, or the gray matter of my brain. I lookdown at the rest of my body and I say, this is part of me, but it isnot the real me. With both legs and both arms gone, I should still beI. But cut off my head and where am I?

Has not the intelligence of the animal kingdom increased during thegeologic ages with the increase in the size of the brain?

REVISIONS

I have little need to revise my opinion of any of the great names ofEnglish literature. I probably make more strenuous demands upon himwho aspires to be a poet than ever before. I see more clearly thanever before that sweetened prose put up in verse form does not makepoetry any more than sweetened water put in the comb in the hive makeshoney. Many of our would-be young poets bring us the crude nectar fromthe fields--fine descriptions of flowers, birds, sunsets, and soon--and expect us to accept them as honey. The quality of the manmakes all the difference in the world. A great nature can describebirds and flowers and clouds and sunsets and spring and autumngreatly. 

Dean Swift quotes Sir Philip Sidney as saying that the "chief life ofmodern versifying consists in rhyme. " Swift agrees with him. "Versewithout rhyme, " he says, "is a body without a soul, or a bell withouta clapper. " He thinks Milton's "Paradise Lost" would be greatlyimproved if it had rhyme. This, he says, would make it "more heroicand sonorous than it is. "

Unobtrusive rhyme may be a help in certain cases, but what modernreader would say that a poem without rhyme is a body without a soul?This would exclude many of the noblest productions of Englishliterature. 

BERGSON AND TELEPATHY

Bergson seems always to have been more than half-convinced of thetruth of spiritualism. When we are already half-convinced of a thing, it takes but little to convince us. Bergson argues himself into abelief in telepathy in this wise: "We produce electricity at everymoment; the atmosphere is continually electrified; we move amongmagnetic currents. Yet for thousands of years millions of human beingshave lived who never suspected the existence of electricity. "

Millions of persons have also lived without suspecting the pull of thesun and moon upon us; or that the pressure of the atmosphere upon ourbodies is fifteen pounds to the square inch; or that the coast of thispart of the continent is slowly subsiding (the oscillations of theearth's crust); or without suspecting the incredible speed of thestars in the midnight sky; or that the earth is turning under ourfeet; or that electrons are shooting off from the candle or lamp bythe light of which we are reading. There are assuredly more things inheaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy, many of whichwe shall doubtless yet find out, and many more of which we shall neverfind out. Wireless messages may be continually going through ourhouses and our bodies, and through the air we breathe, and we neversuspect them. Shall we, then, infer that the air around us is full ofspirits of our departed friends? I hope it is, but I fail to see anywarrant for the belief in this kind of reasoning. It does not lendcolor even to the probability, any more than it does to theprobability that we shall yet be able to read one another's thoughtsand become expert mind-readers. Mind-reading seems to be a realitywith a few persons, with one in many millions. But I cannot thereforebelieve in spiritualism as I believe in the "defeat of the InvincibleArmada. " Fleets have been defeated in all ages. Facts are amenable toobservation and experiment, but merely alleged facts do not stand thelaboratory tests. 

If memory is not a function of the brain, of what is it a function? If"judgment, reasoning, or any other act of thought" are not functionsof the brain, of what are they the functions? The scientific method isadequate to deal with all questions capable of proof or disproof. Ifwe apply the scientific or experimental method to miracles, where doesit leave them? Ask Huxley. Thought-transference is possible, but doesthis prove spiritualism to be true?

I know of a man who can answer your questions if you know the answersyourself, even without reading them or hearing you ask them. He onceread a chemical formula for Edison which nobody but Edison had everseen. I am glad that such things are possible. They confirm our faithin the reality of the unseen. They show us in what a world of occultlaws and influences we live, but they tell us nothing of any otherworld. 

METEORIC MEN AND PLANETARY MEN

There are meteoric men and there are planetary men. The men who nowand then flash across our intellectual heavens, drawing all eyes forthe moment, these I call meteoric men. What a contrast they present tothe planetary men, who are slow to attract our attention, but whoabide, and do not grow dim! Poets like Emerson, Whitman, andWordsworth were slow to gain recognition, but the radiance of theirnames grows. I call such a poet as Swinburne meteoric, a poet of acertain kind of brilliant power, but who reads him now? StephenPhillips with his "Marpessa" had a brief vogue, and then disappearedin the darkness. When I was a young man, I remember, a Scottish poet, Alexander Smith, published a "Life Drama, " which dazzled the literaryworld for a brief period, but it is forgotten now. What attentionKidd's "Social Evolution" attracted a generation or more ago! But itis now quite neglected. It was not sound. When he died a few years agothere was barely an allusion to it in the public press. The same fatebefell that talented man, Buckle, with his "Civilization in England. "Delia Bacon held the ear of the public for a time with theBacon-Shakespeare theory. Pulpit men like Joseph Cook and AdirondackMurray blazed out, and then were gone. Half a century ago or more anEnglishman by the name of M. F. Tupper published a book called"Proverbial Philosophy" which had a brief season of popularity, andthen went out like a rush-light, or a blaze of tissue paper. Novelslike Miss Sprague's "Earnest Trifler, " Du Maurier's "Trilby, " andWallace's "Ben Hur" have had their little day, and been forgotten. Inthe art world the Cubists' crazy work drew the attention of the publiclong enough for it to be seen how spurious and absurd it was. Brownell's war poems turned out to be little more than brieffireworks. Joaquin Miller, where is he? Fifty years ago Gail Hamiltonwas much in the public eye, and Grace Greenwood, and Fanny Fern; andin Bohemian circles, there were Agnes Franz and Ada Clare, but theyare all quite forgotten now. 

The meteoric men would not appreciate President Wilson's wise sayingthat he would rather fail in a cause that in time is bound to succeedthan to succeed in a cause that in time is bound to fail. Such mencannot wait for success. Meteoric men in politics, like Elaine andConkling, were brilliant men, but were politicians merely. Whatfruitful or constructive ideas did they leave us? Could they forgetparty in the good of the whole country? Are not the opponents of theLeague of Nations of our own day in the same case--without, however, shining with the same degree of brilliancy? To some of ourPresidents--Polk, Pierce, Buchanan--we owe little or nothing. Roosevelt's career, though meteoric in its sudden brilliancy, willshine with a steady light down the ages. He left lasting results. Heraised permanently the standard of morality in politics and businessin this country by the gospel of the square deal. Woodrow Wilson, after the mists and clouds are all dispelled, will shine serenely on. He is one of the few men of the ages. 

THE DAILY PAPERS

Probably the worst feature of our civilization is the daily paper. Itscatters crime, bad manners, and a pernicious levity as a windscatters fire. Crime feeds upon crime, and the newspapers make surethat every criminally inclined reader shall have enough to feed upon, shall have his vicious nature aroused and stimulated. Is it probablethat a second and a third President of the United States would everhave been assassinated by shooting, had not such notoriety been givento the first crime? Murder, arson, theft, peculation, are ascontagious as smallpox. 

Who can help a pitying or a scornful smile when he hears of a schoolof journalism, a school for promoting crime and debauching the mannersand the conscience of the people?--for teaching the gentle art oflying, for manufacturing news when there is no news? The pupils aretaught, I suppose, how to serve up the sweepings from the streets andthe gutters and the bar-rooms in the most engaging manner. They aretaught how to give the great Public what it wants, and the one thingthe great Public wants, and can never get enough of is any form ofsensationalism. It clearly loves scandals about the rich, or anythingabout the rich, because we all want and expect to be rich, toout-shine our neighbors, to cut a wide swath in society. Give usanything about the rich, the Public says; we will take the mud fromtheir shoes; if we can't get that, give us the parings of theirfinger-nails. 

The inelastic character of the newspaper is a hampering factor--somany columns must be filled, news or no news. And when there is agreat amount of important news, see how much is suppressed that butfor this inelasticity would have been printed!

The professor at the school of journalism says: "I try to hammer itinto them day after day that they have got to learn to get thenews--that, whatever else a reporter can or cannot do, he isn't areporter till he has learned to get the news. " Hence the invasion ofprivate houses, the bribery, the stealing of letters, the listening atkey-holes, the craze for photographing the most sacred episodes, thebetrayals of confidence, that the newspapers are responsible for. They must get what the dear Public most likes to hear, if they have toscale a man's housetop, and come down his chimney. And if they cannotget the true story, they must invent one. The idle curiosity of thePublic must be satisfied. 

Now the real news, the news the Public is entitled to, is always easyto get. It grows by the wayside. The Public is entitled to publicnews, not to family secrets; to the life of the street and the mart, not to life behind closed doors. In the dearth of real news, the paperis filled with the dust and sweepings from the public highways andbyways, from saloons, police courts, political halls--sordid, ephemeral, and worthless, because it would never get into print ifthere were real news to serve up. 

Then the advertising. The items of news now peep out at us frombetween flaming advertisements of the shopmen's goods, like men on thestreet hawking their wares, each trying to out-scream the other andmaking such a Bedlam that our ears are stunned. [6]

[Footnote 6: This fragment is hardly representative of the attitude ofMr. Burroughs toward our worthy dailies, and, could he have expandedthe article, it would have had in its entirety a different tone. Helived on the breath of the newspapers; was always eager for legitimatenews; and was especially outspoken in admiration of the superb workdone by many newspaper correspondents during the World War. Furthermore, he was himself always most approachable and friendly tothe reporters, complaining, however, that they often failed to quotehim when he took real pains to help them get things straight; whilethey often insisted on emphasizing sensational aspects, and even putwords in his mouth which he never uttered. But the truth is, he valuedthe high-class newspapers, though regarding even them as a two-edgedsword, since their praiseworthy efforts are so vitiated by craze forthe sensational. --C. B. ]

THE ALPHABET

Until we have stopped to think about it, few of us realize what itmeans to have an alphabet--the combination of a few straight lines andcurves which form our letters. When you have learned these, and how toarrange them into words, you have the key that unlocks all thelibraries in the world. An assortment and arrangement of black lineson a white surface! These lines mean nothing in themselves; they arenot symbols, nor pictures, nor hieroglyphics, yet the mastery of themis one of the touchstones of civilization. The progress of the racesince the dawn of history, or since the art of writing has beeninvented, has gone forward with leaps and bounds. The prehistoricraces, and the barbarous races of our own times, had and have onlypicture language. 

The Chinese have no alphabet. It is said that they are now accepting aphonetic alphabet. The Chinese system of writing comprises more thanforty thousand separate symbols, each a different word. It requiresthe memorizing of at least three thousand word-signs to read and writetheir language. The national phonetic script is made up of sixtydistinct characters that answer to our twenty-four. These charactersembrace every verbal sound of the language, and in combination make upevery word. The progress of China has been greatly hampered by thiswant of an alphabet. 

Coleridge says about the primary art of writing: "First, there is meregesticulation, then rosaries, or wampum, then picture language, thenhieroglyphics, and finally alphabetic letters, "--the last an evolutionfrom all that went before. But there is no more suggestion of analphabet in the sign language of the North American Indian than thereis of man in a crinoid. 

THE REDS OF LITERATURE

A class of young men who seem to look upon themselves as revolutionarypoets has arisen, chiefly in Chicago; and they are putting forth themost astonishing stuff in the name of free verse that has probablyever appeared anywhere. In a late number of "Current Opinion, " CarlSandburg, who, I am told, is their chosen leader, waves his dirtyshirt in the face of the public in this fashion:

 "My shirt is a token and a symbol more than a cover from sun and rain, My shirt is a signal and a teller of souls, I can take off my shirt and tear it, and so make a ripping razzly noise, and the people will say, 'Look at him tear his shirt!'

 "I can keep my shirt on, I can stick around and sing like a little bird, and look 'em all in the eye and never be fazed, I can keep my shirt on. "

Does not this resemble poetry about as much as a pile of dirty ragsresembles silk or broadcloth? The trick of it seems to be to takeflat, unimaginative prose and cut it up in lines of varying length, and often omit the capitals at the beginning of the lines--"shreddedprose, " with no "kick" in it at all. These men are the "Reds" ofliterature. They would reverse or destroy all the recognized rules andstandards upon which literature is founded. They show what Bolshevismcarried out in the field of poetry, would lead to. One of them whosigns himself H. D. Writes thus in the "Dial" on "Helios":

 "Helios makes all things right-- night brands and chokes, as if destruction broke over furze and stone and crop of myrtle-shoot and field-wort, destroyed with flakes of iron, the bracken-stone, where tender roots were sown blight, chaff, and wash of darkness to choke and drown. 

 "A curious god to find, yet in the end faithful; bitter, the Kyprian's feet-- ah, flecks of withered clay, great hero, vaunted lord-- ah, petals, dust and windfall on the ground--queen awaiting queen. "

What it all means--who can tell? It is as empty of intelligent meaningas a rubbish-heap. Yet these men claim to get their charter fromWhitman. I do not think Whitman would be enough interested in them tofeel contempt toward them. Whitman was a man of tremendouspersonality, and every line he wrote had a meaning, and his whole workwas suffused with a philosophy as was his body with blood. 

These Reds belong to the same class of inane sensationalists that theCubists do; they would defy in verse what the Cubists defy in form. 

I have just been skimming through an illustrated book called "NoaNoa, " by a Frenchman, which describes, or pretends to describe, avisit to Tahiti. There is not much fault to be found with it as anarrative, but the pictures of the natives are atrocious. Many of thefigures are distorted, and all of them have a smutty look, as if theyhad been rubbed with lampblack or coal-dust. There is not one simple, honest presentation of the natural human form in the book. When theParisian becomes a degenerate, he is the most degenerate of all--arefined, perfumed degenerate. A degenerate Englishman may be brutaland coarse, but he could never be guilty of the inane or theoutrageous things which the Cubists, the Imagists, the Futurists, andthe other Ists among the French have turned out. The degenerateFrenchman is like our species of smilax which looks fresh, shining, and attractive, but when it blooms gives out an odor of dead rats. 

I recently chanced upon the picture of a kneeling girl, by one of theReds in art, a charcoal sketch apparently. It suggests the crudeattempts of a child. The mouth is a black, smutty hole in the face, the eyes are not mates, and one of them is merely a black dot. Infact, the whole head seems thrust up into a cloud of charcoal dust. The partly nude body has not a mark of femininity. The body is verylong and the legs very short, and the knees, as they protrude fromunder the drapery, look like two irregular blocks of wood. 

To falsify or belie nature seems to be the sole aim of thesecreatures. The best thing that could happen to the whole gang of themwould be to be compelled to go out and dig and spade the earth. Theywould then see what things are really like. 

THE EVOLUTION OF EVOLUTION

It is interesting to note that the doctrine of evolution itself hasundergone as complete an evolution as has any animal species withwhich it deals. We find the germ of it, so to speak, in the earlyGreek philosophers and not much more. Crude, half-developed forms ofit begin to appear in the eighteenth century of our era and becomemore and more developed in the nineteenth, till they approximatecompletion in Darwin. In Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire in 1795 there areglimpses of the theory, but in Lamarck, near the beginning of thenineteenth century, the theory is so fully developed that itanticipates Darwin on many points; often full of crudities andabsurdities, yet Lamarck hits the mark surprisingly often. In 1813 Dr. W. C. Wells, an Englishman, read a paper before the Royal Society inLondon that contains a passage that might have come from the pages ofDarwin. In the anonymous and famous volume called "Vestiges ofCreation, " published in 1844, the doctrine of the mutability ofspecies is forcibly put. Then in Herbert Spencer in 1852 the evolutiontheory of development receives a fresh impetus, till it matures in theminds of Darwin and Wallace in the late fifties. The inherent impulsetoward development is also in Aristotle. It crops out again inLamarck, but was repudiated by Darwin. 

FOLLOWING ONE'S BENT

I have done what I most wanted to do in the world, what I was probablybest fitted to do, not as the result of deliberate planning orcalculation, but by simply going with the current, that is, followingmy natural bent, and refusing to run after false gods. Riches and fameand power, when directly pursued, are false gods. If a mandeliberately says to himself, "I will win these things, " he haslikely reckoned without his host. His host is the nature within andwithout him, and that may have something to say on the subject. But ifhe says, "I will do the worthy work that comes to my hand, the workthat my character and my talent bring me, and I will do it the best Ican, " he will not reap a barren harvest. 

So many persons are disappointed in life! They have had false aims. They have wanted something for nothing. They have listened to the callof ambition and have not heeded the inner light. They have tried shortcuts to fame and fortune, and have not been willing to pay the pricein self-denial that all worthy success demands. We find our positionin life according to the specific gravity of our moral andintellectual natures. 

NOTES ON THE PSYCHOLOGY OF OLD AGE[7]

The physiology of old age is well understood--general sluggishness ofall the functions, stiffness of the joints, more or less so-calledrheumatism, loss of strength, wasting tissues, broken sleep, failinghearing and eyesight, capricious appetite, and so on. But thepsychology of old age is not so easily described. The old man reasonswell, the judgment is clear, the mind active, the conscience alert, the interest in life unabated. It is the memory that plays the oldman tricks. His mind is a storehouse of facts and incidents andexperiences, but they do not hold together as they used to; theirrelations are broken and very uncertain. He remembers the name of aperson, but perhaps cannot recall the face or presence; or heremembers the voice and presence, but without the name or face. He maygo back to his school-days and try to restore the faded canvas ofthose distant days. It is like resurrecting the dead; he exhumes themfrom their graves: There was G----; how distinctly he recalls the nameand some incident in his school life, and that is all. There wasB----, a name only. There was R----, and the memory of the career hehad marked out for himself and his untimely death through a steamboataccident; but of his looks, his voice--not a vestige! It is a memoryfull of holes, like a net with many of the meshes broken. He recallshis early teachers, some of them stand out vividly--voice, look, manner--all complete. Others are only names associated with certainincidents in school. 

[Footnote 7: These fragments, which Mr. Burroughs intended to expandinto an article, were among the very last things he wrote. --C. B. ]

Names and places with which one has been perfectly familiar all hislife suddenly, for a few moments, mean nothing. It is as if the beltslipped, and the wheel did not go round. Then the next moment, away itgoes again! Or, shall we call it a kind of mental anæsthesia, ormental paralysis? Thus, the other day I was reading something aboutGeorgetown, South America. I repeated the name over to myself a fewtimes. "Have I not known such a place some time in my life? Where isit? Georgetown? Georgetown?" The name seemed like a dream. Then Ithought of Washington, the Capital, and the city above it, but had toask a friend if the name was Georgetown. Then suddenly, as if somechemical had been rubbed on a bit of invisible writing, out it came!Of course it was Georgetown. How could I have been in doubt about it?(I had lived in Washington for ten years. )

So we say, old age may reason well, but old age does not rememberwell. This is a commonplace. It seems as if memory were the mostuncertain of all our faculties. 

Power of attention fails, which we so often mistake for deafness inthe old. It is the mind that is blunted and not the ear. Hence weoctogenarians so often ask for your question over again. We do notgrasp it the first time. We do not want you to speak louder, we onlyneed to focus upon you a little more completely. 

Of course both sight and hearing are a little blunted in old age. Butfor myself I see as well as ever I did, except that I have to usespectacles in reading; but nowadays the younger observers hear thefiner sounds in nature that sometimes escape me. 

Some men mellow with age, others harden, but the man who does not insome way ripen is in a bad way. Youth makes up in sap and push what itlacks in repose. 

To grow old gracefully is the trick. 

To me one of the worst things about old age is that one has outlivedall his old friends. The Past becomes a cemetery. 

"As men grow old, " said Rochefoucauld, "they grow more foolish andmore wise"--wise in counsel, but foolish in conduct. "There is no foollike an old fool, " said Tennyson, but it is equally true that there isno fool like the young fool. If you want calm and ripe wisdom, go tomiddle age. 

As an octogenarian, I have found it interesting to collate many wisesayings of many wise men on youth and age. [8]

[Footnote 8: Here followed several pages of quotations from theancients and moderns. --C. B. ]

Cicero found that age increased the pleasure of conversation. It iscertainly true that in age we do find our tongues, if we have any. They are unloosed, and when the young or the middle-aged sit silent, the octogenarian is a fountain of conversation. In age one set ofpleasures is gone and another takes its place. 

Emerson published his essay on "Old Age" while he was yet in themiddle sixties, and I recall that in the "Emerson-CarlyleCorrespondence" both men began to complain of being old before theywere sixty. Scott was old before his time, and Macaulay too. Scottdied at sixty-one, Macaulay at fifty-nine, Tennyson at eighty-three, Carlyle at eighty-six, Emerson at seventy-nine, Amiel at sixty. 

I have heard it said that it is characteristic of old age to reverseits opinions and its likes and dislikes. But it does not reverse them;it revises them. If its years have been well spent, it has reached ahigher position from which to overlook life. It commands a wider view, and the relation of the parts to the whole is more clearly seen. . . . 

"Old age superbly rising"--Whitman. 

Age without decrepitude, or remorse, or fear, or hardness of heart!

FACING THE MYSTERY

I wish there were something to light up the grave for me, but there isnot. It is the primal, unending darkness. The faith of all the saintsand martyrs does not help me. I must see the light beyond with my owneyes. Whitman's indomitable faith I admire, but cannot share. My torchwill not kindle at his great flame. From our youth up our associationswith the dead and with the grave are oppressive. Our natural animalinstincts get the better of us. Death seems the great catastrophe. The silver cord is loosened, and the golden bowl is broken. Thephysical aspects of death are unlovely and repellent. And thespiritual aspects--only the elect can see them. Our physical sensesare so dominant, the visible world is so overpowering, that all elsebecomes as dreams and shadows. 

I know that I am a part of the great cosmic system of things, and thatall the material and all the forces that make up my being are asindestructible as the great Cosmos itself--all that is physical mustremain in some form. But consciousness, the real Me, is not physical, but an effect of the physical. It is really no more a thing than "achild's curlicue cut by a burnt stick in the night, " and as the one isevanescent, why not the other?

Nature is so opulent, so indifferent to that we hold most precious, such a spendthrift, evokes such wonders from such simple materials!Why should she conserve souls, when she has the original stuff ofmyriads of souls? She takes up, and she lays down. Her cycles ofchange, of life and death, go on forever. She does not lay up stores;she is, and has, all stores, whether she keep or whether she waste. Itis all the same to her. There is no outside, no beyond, to herprocesses and possessions. There is no future for her, only anever-lasting present. What is the very bloom and fragrance ofhumanity to the Infinite? In the yesterday of geologic time, humanitywas not. In the to-morrow of geologic time, it will not be. The verymountains might be made of souls, and all the stars of heaven kindledwith souls, such is the wealth of Nature in what we deem so precious, and so indifferent is she to our standards of valuation. 

This I know, too: that the grave is not dark or cold to the dead, butonly to the living. The light of the eye, the warmth of the body, still exist undiminished in the universe, but in other relations, under other forms. Shall the flower complain because it fades andfalls? It has to fall before the fruit can appear. But what is thefruit of the flower of human life? Surely not the grave, as the loosethinking of some seem to imply. The only fruit I can see is in fairerflowers, or a higher type of mind and life that follows in this world, and to which our lives may contribute. The flower of life has improvedthrough the ages--the geologic ages; from the flower of the brute, ithas become the flower of the man. You and I perish, but something goesout, or may go out, from us that will help forward a higher type ofmankind. To what end? Who knows? We cannot cross-question theInfinite. Something in the universe has eventuated in man, andsomething has profited by his ameliorations. We must regard him as alegitimate product, and we must look upon death as a legitimate partof the great cycle--an evil only from our temporary and personal pointof view, but a good from the point of view of the whole. 

THE END

INDEX

Adaptation, 247, 248. 

Agassiz, Louis, 163. 

Alchemy, 242, 243. 

Alcott, Amos Bronson, in Emerson's Journals, 26-29; on Thoreau, 156. 

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 253. 

Alphabet, the, 275, 276. 

American people, the, 252, 253. 

Amiel, Henri Frederic, 4-6; quoted, 223. 

Arnim, Elisabeth von, 34, 35. 

Arnold, Matthew, 213, 250, 260; in Emerson's Journals, 25; on Emerson, 87, 89, 90; his poetry, 209; on poetry, 212. 

Art, recent "isms" in, 278, 279. 

Audacity, 261. 

Aurora borealis, 140, 141. 

Batavia Kill, 244. 

Beauty, 98-101, 246, 247, 251, 252. 

Beecher, Henry Ward, 232. 

Bent, following one's, 280, 281. 

Benton, Myron, 26. 

Bergson, Henri, his "Creative Evolution, " revised estimate of, 264-66; and telepathy, 267, 268. 

Bettina, Goethe's, 34, 35. 

Bittern, pumping, 135. 

Boldness, 261. 

Bouton, Deborah, 244. 

Bryant, William Cullen, his poetry, 203, 204, 222. 

Burns, Robert, 213. 

Burroughs, John, chronic homesickness, 227, 228. 

Cactus, 248. 

Carlyle, Thomas, 34, 35, 43, 47, 97; contrasted with Emerson, 30; correspondence with Emerson, 39, 40, 61, 80, 81; on Webster, 61; as a painter, 76, 77; Emerson's love and admiration for, 79-82; his style, 82. 

Channing, William Ellery, 2d, 138-40; in Emerson's Journals, 9, 29, 30, 142; in Thoreau's Journal, 149. 

City, the, 226, 227. 

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, quoted, 276. 

Contrasts, 218-29. 

Country, life in the, 226-28. 

Critic, the professional, 259, 260. 

Criticism, 260. 

D. , H. , quoted, 277. 

Dana, Richard Henry, his "Two Years before the Mast, " 256-58. 

Dargan, Olive Tilford, quoted, 201, 202. 

Darwin, Charles, criticism of his selection theories, 172-89, 193-98; his "Voyage of the Beagle, " 189-93; his significance, 198-200. 

Days, memorable, 231. 

Death, thoughts on, 285-88. 

De Vries, Hugo, his mutation theory, 196, 197. 

Discovery, 223-25. 

Early and late, 230, 231. 

Eating, 77-79. 

Edison, Thomas A. , 243, 269. 

Electricity, 231. 

Emerson, Charles, 5. 

Emerson, Dr. Edward W. , on Thoreau, 155, 156. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 136, 214, 227, 239; Journals of, discussed, 1-85; a new estimate of, 1-4; and social intercourse, 6-8; self-reliance, 8, 31, 32; poet and prophet of the moral ideal, 9-11; his lectures, 11, 12, 64, 65, 162; his supreme test of men, 12, 13, 17; his "Days, " 14; his "Humble-Bee, " 14; "Each and All, " 15; "Two Rivers, " 15, 16; on Poe, 16; on Whitman's "Leaves of Grass, " 17; as a reader and a writer, 17, 18; his main interests, 18; on Jesus as a Representative Man, 20; on Thoreau, 22, 23, 141, 156, 157; and John Muir, 23, 24; alertness, 24; on Matthew Arnold, 25; on Lowell, 25, 26; on Alcott, 26-29; on Father Taylor, 28, 29; occupied with the future, 30; his "Song of Nature, " 30, 31; near and far, past and present, 31, 32; and human sympathy, 32, 33, 38, 39; "Representative Men, " 33; attitude towards Whitman, 34, 253; literary estimates, 34, 35; on Wordsworth, 36; correspondence with Carlyle, 39, 40; love of nature, 41-43; his book "Nature, " 41, 43, 88, 89, 230; his "May-Day, " 43; feeling for profanity and racy speech, 44-48; humor, 45-48; thoughts about God, 48-52; attitude towards science, 52-60; on Webster, 60-63; religion, 63, 64; self-criticism, 65-67; "Terminus, " 67; catholicity, 67-70; on the Bible, 70; his selection of words, 70, 71; ideas but no doctrines, 71, 72; his limitations, 73-75; and Hawthorne, 73-75; a painter of ideas, 76, 77; on eating and the artist, 77; love and admiration for Carlyle, 79-82; hungered for the quintessence of things, 84; the last result of Puritanism, 85; an estimate of, 86-92; attitude towards poverty, 89; weak in logic, 91; passion for analogy, 92; false notes in rhetoric, 92-94; speaking with authority, 95; at the Holmes breakfast, 95, 96; his face, 96; criticisms of, 96-101; on beauty, 98, 99; last words on, 102; compared with Thoreau, 126; intercourse with Thoreau, 156-58; incident related by Thoreau, 158; on Walter Scott, 216; on oratory, 232; a New England Thomas à Kempis, 261; old age, 284, 285. 

Esopus, N. Y. , 244. 

Ethical standards, 233. 

Everett, Edward, 223. 

Evolution, and the Darwinian theory, 174-89, 193-98; chance in, 175-81; the mutation theory, 196, 197; Bergson reread, 264-66; evolution of the doctrine, 279, 280. 

Farm, the home, 227, 228. 

Fist, the, 220, 221. 

Flagg, Wilson, Thoreau on, 165, 166. 

Flattery, 221, 222. 

Flowers, fadeless, 231. 

Fort Myers, 243. 

Fox, 135, 136. 

Fuller, Margaret, 7. 

Genius, and talent, 222, 223. 

Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, 280. 

Germans, the, 3, 4. 

Gilchrist, Anne, on Emerson, 88. 

God, Emerson's idea of, 48-52; Nature's, 233, 234. 

Goethe, 98. 

Gray, Eri, 244. 

Gray, Thomas, his "Elegy written in a Country Church-yard, " 216. 

Grossmont, Cal. , 240. 

H. D. , quoted, 277. 

Hawaiian Islands, 236. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, and Emerson, 73-75. 

Hearn, Lafcadio, quoted, 202. 

Heat, 246. 

Hermits, 244. 

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 253. 

History, the grand movements of, 249. 

Homesickness, 227-29. 

Howells, William Dean, 227; an estimate, 262, 263. 

Insects, hum of, 244, 245. 

Invention, 223-26. 

James, Henry, his hypersensitiveness, 255, 256. 

James, William, quoted, 234. 

Journals, 4, 5. 

Juvenal, quoted, 242. 

Keator, Ike, 244. 

Kepler, Johann, quoted, 254. 

Kidd, Benjamin, his "Social Evolution, " 270. 

Kingsley, Charles, a parable of, 189; and Newman, 261. 

Knowledge, the Tree of, 248. 

Lamarck, 280. 

Landor, Walter Savage, Emerson and, 34, 35, 43. 

Life, the result of a system of checks and counter-checks, 236, 237. 

Lincoln, Abraham, 220, 221, 223. 

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, in Emerson's Journals, 25. 

Loveman, Robert, his poetry, 204, 205; quoted, 204, 205. 

Lowell, James Russell, in Emerson's Journals, 25; criticism of Thoreau, 104-11; love of books and of nature, 110, 111; possessed talent but not genius, 223; and Whitman, 253. 

McCarthy, John Russell, his poems, 204, 208, 223; quoted, 214, 215, 223. 

Masefield, John, 208. 

Maui, 236. 

Meteoric men, 231, 232, 270-72. 

Milton, John, "Paradise Lost, " 260; quoted, 260. 

Montaigne, 8. 

Moody, William Vaughn, his poetry, 204-07; quoted, 207. 

Morgan, Thomas Hunt, on Darwin, 200. 

Movements, in inert matter, 245. 

Muir, John, 23. 

Mutation theory, 196, 197. 

Natural history, and ethical and poetic values, 54-56. 

Natural selection, criticism of the theory, 178-89, 193-98. 

Newspapers, 272-74. 

"Noa Noa, " 278. 

Old age, the psychology of, 281-85. 

Oratory, 232, 233. 

Osborn, Henry Fairfield, on chance in evolution, 175. 

Palm and fist, 220, 221. 

Pascal, Blaise, quoted, 233. 

Permanent, and transient, 218, 219. 

Phillips, Stephen, 270. 

Phillips, Wendell, 222, 232; quoted, 221. 

Poe, Edgar Allan, 203; Emerson on, 16, 74; his poetry, 209-11. 

Poets, do not efface one another, 250, 251. 

Poetry, only the best significant, 201; a discussion of, 201-17; B. 's own, 203; and philosophy, 203, 204, 207-09, 260; not sweetened prose put up in verse form, 267; red revolution in, 276-78. 

Pope, Alexander, 201. 

Positive and negative, 219, 220. 

Power, mankind drunk with, 248, 249. 

Praise, and flattery, 221, 222. 

Prayer, 233. 

Quotations, a book of, 261, 262. 

Rain, creative function of, 236. 

Rainbow, the, 137, 138. 

Rashness, 261. 

Reds of literature and art, the, 276-79. 

Reed, Sampson, 34, 35. 

Rhyme, 267. 

Ripley, Rev. Dr. Ezra, 45, 46. 

Robertson, Frederick William, 232. 

Rochefoucauld, quoted, 284. 

Roosevelt, Theodore, 220, 259, 272. 

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 179. 

Sandburg, Carl, quoted, 276, 277. 

Santayana, George, quoted, 260. 

Scott, Sir Walter, his poems, 216. 

Sea, the, 218. 

Sect, a queer, 243. 

Sexes, the, 238-40. 

Shakespeare, William, quoted, 242. 

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 74. 

Sidney, Sir Philip, quoted, 267. 

Smith, Alexander, 270. 

Snake, mechanism for crushing eggs, 196. 

Snow, 252. 

Spanish-American War, 206. 

Spencer, Herbert, 280. 

Spiritualism, 267-69. 

Stanton, Edwin M. , 221. 

Stedman, Edmund Clarence, 253. 

Style, 81-84, 256. 

Sublime, the, 251. 

Swift, Jonathan, 93, 267; quoted, 223. 

Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 209, 254. 

Talent, and genius, 222, 223. 

Taylor, Edward T. , 28, 29, 85. 

Telepathy, 267-69. 

Tennyson, Alfred, 41, 209, 250; and Whitman, 254. 

Theories, absurd, 242, 243. 

Thomas à Kempis, 261; quoted, 261. 

Thomson, J. Arthur, 96. 

Thoreau, Henry D. , Journal of, 4, 5; in Emerson's Journals, 20, 29; compared with Emerson, 20-22; his "Walden, " 21; "The Maine Woods, " 21, 22; "Cape Cod, " 22; Emerson on, 22, 23; false notes in rhetoric, 93; does not grow stale, 103; ancestry, 104; Lowell's criticism of, 104-11; industry, 106; philosophy and life, 108; accomplishment, 109, 110; his "Walden, " 110, 143, 147; humor, 110; approving of Whitman, 111, 112; as a nature writer, 112-20; his Journal quoted and criticized, 113, 128, 134-37, 139-61, 163-65, 169, 170; "Walden" quoted, 114-19, 137, 143, 146, 147; travels, 119, 120; uniqueness, 120, 121; and science, 122; individualism, 122, 123; an extremist, 123, 124; and civilization, 124, 125; compared with Emerson, 126; as a walker, 127-32; his "Walking, " 127-29; his natural-history lore, 133-41; faults as a writer, 141-46; love of writing, 150; literary activity, 153-55; personality, 155-59; and the Civil War, 159, 160; and John Brown, 160; inconsistencies, 160-62, 166; his "Life without Principle, " 162; idealism, 162-68; manual labor, 163-65; moralizing on Bill Wheeler, 167, 168; and human emotions, 168; and young women, 168, 169; as a philosopher, 169, 170; merits as a man and a writer, 170, 171; quoted, 242. 

Time, 241, 242. 

Timeliness, 230, 231. 

Torrey, Bradford, 134, 163. 

Town and country, 226-28. 

Transient, and permanent, 218, 219. 

Truth, 234, 235, 247. 

Verse, free, 276-78. 

Very, Jones, in Emerson's Journals, 9, 25; Emerson's high opinion of, 35. 

"Vestiges of Creation, " 280. 

Views, from mountain-tops, 240, 241. 

Virgil, quoted, 242. 

Walking, 127-32. 

Warbler, night, Thoreau's, 136. 

Wealth, 237, 238. 

Webster, Daniel, Emerson on, 60-63; Carlyle on, 61. 

Weismann, August, 178. 

Wells, Dr. W. C. , 280. 

Whitman, Walt, 94, 222, 227, 253, 278; Emerson on "Leaves of Grass, " 17; in Emerson's Journals, 25; Emerson's attitude towards, 34; receives "May-Day" from Emerson, 43; quoted, 100, 179, 202, 212, 250, 251, 254, 285; Thoreau's approval of, 111, 112; his philosophy, 208, 209; as a criterion, 253, 254; his faith in himself, 254. 

Whittier, John G. , 92, 93; and Whitman, 253. 

Wilkinson, Garth, 35. 

Wilson, Woodrow, 221, 232, 271. 

Winter, William, 253. 

Women, 238-40. 

Words, and style, 83, 84. 

Wordsworth, William, 216, 250, 251; Emerson's estimate of, 36; quoted, 100, 218; a poet-walker, 130, 131; on poetry and philosophy, 203; great only at rare intervals, 212, 213. 

Wren, cactus, 248. 

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