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348 .&rdquo; He believed in the Over-Soul as a light guiding man, the light of intuitive perception, in God as the soul of the world, and in the human soul as one with that Over-Soul. He was not able to formulate these or other beliefs of his logically. Writing to his former colleague, Henry Ware, he said: &ldquo;I could not give an account of myself if challenged. . . . I do not know what arguments are in reference to any expression of a thought. I delight in telling what I think; but if you ask me how I dare say so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless of mortal men.&rdquo; This continued to be his position to the end. He relied upon intuition, and thought that every one might bring himself into accord with God on that basis. He expressed what he felt at the moment, and some of his sayings, even in a single essay, seem to be mutually opposed. But, if the whole of his works be taken together, a type of thought may be discerned in the conflicting expressions, coherent and suggestive, like that presented by the photographs of several generations of a family superimposed on one plate. In the beginning he seems to have looked somewhat askance at science; but in the 1849 edition of &ldquo;Nature&rdquo; he prefixed some verses that said:

This came out ten years before Darwin's &ldquo;Origin of Species,&rdquo; and twenty years sooner than &ldquo;The Descent of Man.&rdquo; Lamarck's theories, however, had been popularized in 1844. But Emerson here showed how quick he was to seize upon the newest thought in science or elsewhere if it seemed to be true. Eleven years passed, and he declared in the essay on &ldquo;Worship,&rdquo; in &ldquo;Conduct of Life&rdquo;: &ldquo;The religion which is to guide and fulfil the present and coming ages must be intellectual. The scientific mind must have a faith which is science. . . . There will be a new church founded on moral science, at first cold and naked. . . but it will have heaven and earth for its beams and rafters, science for symbol and illustration. It will fast enough gather beauty, music, picture, poetry.&rdquo; While he thus advanced in viewing science, he advanced also in viewing all other subjects; but it was from the point of view of intuition and oneness with what he called the Over-Soul. Everything that he said must be looked at in the light of his own remark, &ldquo;Life is a train of moods.&rdquo; But his moods rest upon the certainty, to him, of his own intuition. Emerson's presentation of his views is generally in a large degree poetic. His poems sum up and also expand his prose. The seeming want of technical skill in his verse is frequently due to a more subtile art of natural melody which defied conventional rules of versification. The irregular lines, the flaws of metre and rhyme, remind us of the intermittent breathings of an Æolian harp. Emerson's poetic instrument may have been a rustic contrivance, but it answered to every impulse of the winds and the sighs of human feeling, from &ldquo;Monadnoc&rdquo; to the &ldquo;Threnody&rdquo; upon the death of his child-son. Sometimes he unconsciously so perfected his poetic lines that, as Dr. Holmes says, a moment after they were written they &ldquo;seemed as if they had been carved on marble for a thousand years,&rdquo; as this in &ldquo;Voluntaries&rdquo;:

Matthew Arnold has pronounced his essays &ldquo;the most important work done in prose&rdquo; in this century; but Prof. C. C. Everett, discussing the qualities of Emerson in the &ldquo;Andover Review&rdquo; for

March, 1887, describes his philosophy as that of a poet, and adds, &ldquo;so his ethics is the ethics of a poet.&rdquo; He regards the poems as the most complete and worthy expression of Emerson's genius. But Dr. Everett's discovery of passion in Emerson's poetry is not generally accepted by other critics. As has been well remarked by another writer, the verse, in general abstractly and intellectually beautiful, kindles to passion only when the chosen theme is distinctly American or patriotic. Emerson constantly preached by life and pen a new revelation, a new teacher of religion and morals, putting himself always in the place of a harbinger, a John crying in the wilderness. Julian Hawthorne has written of him: &ldquo;He is our future living in our present, and showing the world, by anticipation, what sort of excellence we are capable of.&rdquo; His own life conformed perfectly to the idealism that he taught; but he regarded himself as a modest link in the chain of progress. He made his generation turn their eyes forward instead of backward. He enforced upon them courage, self-reliance, patriotism, hope. People flocked to him from all quarters, finally, for advice and guidance. The influence that he exercised not only upon persons since grown eminent, such as Prof. Tyndall, who found a life's inspiration in his thought, but also upon thousands unknown, is one of his claims to recognition. Another is that, at a time when, it is conceded, the people of the United States were largely materialistic in their aims, he came forward as the most idealistic writer of the age, and also as a plain American citizen. He was greatly indebted to preceding authors. It has been ascertained that he named in his writings 3,393 quotations from 808 individuals, mostly writers. &ldquo;The inventor only knows how to quote,&rdquo; said Emerson; and, notwithstanding his drafts upon the treasury of the past, he is the most original writer as a poet, seer, and thinker that America possesses. The doctrine of the &ldquo;many in one,&rdquo; which he incessantly taught, is exemplified in himself and his works. The best extant accounts of Emerson are &ldquo;Ralph Waldo Emerson, his Life, Writings, and Philosophy,&rdquo; by George Willis Cooke (Boston, 1881); &ldquo;Ralph Waldo Emerson,&rdquo; by Oliver Wendell Holmes (Boston, 1884); &ldquo;Emerson at Home and Abroad,&rdquo; by Moncure D. Conway; &ldquo;Biographical Sketch,&rdquo; by Alexander Ireland; &ldquo;The Genius and Character of Emerson, Lectures at the Concord School of Philosophy,&rdquo; edited by F. B. Sanborn (Boston, 1885). See, also, F. B. Sanborn's &ldquo;Homes and Haunts of Emerson.&rdquo; J. E. Cabot, of Boston, has in charge a life authorized by Emerson's family, which may include extracts from his diaries and other unpublished matter.

EMERSON, William, clergyman, b. in Concord, Mass., 6 May, 1769; d. in Boston, Mass., 12 May, 1811. He was the father of Ralph Waldo Emerson. William was graduated at Harvard in 1789, and after teaching for two years returned to Cambridge as a student of divinity. He had been there but a few months when he began preaching, and on 23 May, 1792, was ordained pastor of the Unitarian church at Harvard, Mass. In 1799 he received a call from the 1st church in Boston, and remained there until his death. Of his abilities as a pulpit orator, Mr. George Ticknor wrote in 1849: &ldquo;Mr. Emerson possessed a graceful and dignified style of speaking, which was by no means without its attraction, but he lacked the fervor that could rouse the masses, and the original resources that could command the few.&rdquo; He was the founder and active promoter of the &ldquo;Christian Monitor&rdquo; society, whose publications were issued