Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/774

Rh 730 AMERICAN LITERATURE majesty consists in work.&quot; Retaining from the mystics his belief in the supremacy of the higher emotions, he substi tutes for a religious creed an idealised view of modern physical science. His combination of stern practical recti tude with an ideal standard is his point of contact with Puritanism. A chivalric nobility, in which beauty and goodness are blended, is at once the goal, the sanction, and the motive of his ethical system. Praise of the virtue which, transcending all prudence and disdaining all conse quences, is its own reward, is the refrain of his moral monologue. His severe censure of Goethe s artistic indif ferentism recalls the age when the Bible and theological commentaries were regarded as the sum of honest literature. He writes of our great dramatist in the spirit of the men who closed the theatres : &quot; He was the master of the revels to mankind&quot; a sentence far removed from the spirit of modern art-worship. But those which follow, protesting against the opposite extremes of austerity, indicate his divergence on the other side from the old faith of New England. Mr Emerson is, we believe, most widely known in this country by his Representative, Men: by no means the most satisfactory of his works. A series of generally acute criti cisms, pervaded by no well-marked ethical idea, it leaves on the mind a somewhat indefinite impression. Its cate gories are not exhaustive, and it is difficult to determine on what principle they are chosen : but it serves as an interest ing point of comparison with the corresponding lectures of the great English advocate of hero-worship, to the sugges tions of which it probably owes its existence. Mr Caiiyle, whose whole faith is centred in strong individualities, adopts the view of history which practically resolves it into a series of biographies. Mr Buckle, caring little for persons, and confiding rather in general laws, resolves biography into history. Mr Emerson on this question steers a middle course. He believes in great men, &quot; to educate whom the state exists, with the appearance of whom the state expires;&quot; but he regards them as inspired mouthpieces of universal or national ideas rather than as controlling forces. Their mission is not so much to regulate our action as to &quot;fortify our hopes.&quot; Possessed of a larger share of the Over Soul which &quot; makes the whole world kin,&quot; they appre hend and explain phenomena which have hitherto passed unheeded; but their indirect services are the best. Their examples, more weighty than their acts or discoveries, are perpetual encouragements. The great man is an encyclo paedia of fact and thought; the belief born in his brain spreads like a current over humanity, and he becomes for a time the golden key to the ill-defined ideal of the multi tude. But his career should rouse us to a like assertion of our liberties. We ought not to obey, but to follow some times by not obeying him. Our author accepts the position upheld by Aristotle and popularised by Macaulay, that different forms of government are adapted to different social conditions; but maintains that the tendency of modern times, attaching more weight to the equality of persons and less to the inequalities of property, is towards Democracy, with which and the industrialism of his age he has in the main a cordial sympathy. He believes in collective wisdom as the best check on collective folly, and, allowing that the state exists for its members, he thinks they can act best in union when all are subject to the fewest external restraints. He differs from Thorcau and others of his disciples in having no share in their selfish isolation. His best essays, woven of two curiously intersecting threads, present us with a unique conjunction of shrewdness and idealism. There never was a mystic with so much of the spirit of the good farmer, the inventor, or the enterprising merchant. As regards form, Mr Emerson is the most unsystematic of writers. The concentration of his style resembles that of a classic, but, as with others who have adopted the aphoristic mode of conveying their thoughts, he everywhere sacrifices unity to riches of detail. His essays are bundles of loose ideas tacked together by a common title, handfuls of scraps tossed down before his audience like the contents of a conjuror s hat. He delights in proverbs and apt quotations; he exaggerates like an American, loves a con tradiction for itself, and prefers a surprise to an argument. His epigrams are electric shocks. He sacrifices everything to directness. His terse refinement of phrase and trenchant illustrations are his charm. His ideas are on the scale of a continent; hia sentences are adapted for a cabinet of curiosities bits of mosaic work, sweeping generalisations given in essences. His style, armed with points like the bristles of a hedgehog, wants repose. This feature is con spicuous in the English Traits, where his estimates of men and things, frequently felicitous and generally racy, are often marred by an unpruned violence. His eye is keen, but its range is narrow, and he is ignorant of the fact. Unconsciously infected by the haste which he condemns, he looks at other nations through the folding telescope of a tourist. His representations of our leading writers and statesmen seldom rise above the level of Mr Willis s Pen- cillings by the Way. His taste is constantly at fault, and an incessant straining after mots often leads him. into caricature. His judgments of those whose lives and writ ings do not square with his theories are valueless ; and in dealing with foreign languages he betrays the weakness of his scholarship. One qualification for a good critic is a well-defined artistic standard, another is the dramatic capacity of placing himself for the time in the position of the person who is being criticised. Mr Emerson has neither of these. With the spirit of a fearless inquirer, he unfortunately blends so much presumption as to feel an absolute indif ference regarding the opinions of others; and this in excess constitutes a moral as well as an artistic defect. Thought is free, and the expression of it ought to be so; but when our thought wanders very far from that of the majority of the wise and good, we are bound to watch it, to sift its conclusions, and to state them moderately. Mr Emerson s thought does wander far, and ifc runs fast; he does not know what moderation in expression means, and his almost childish love of contradiction perpetually, and often justly, provokes offence. He rides rough-shod over the most cherished convictions, or waves them aside with a com placent smile and a sort of divine impudence. Every claim of authority he receives as a challenge to his per sonal rights, and he stabs the bull Apis, in utter disregard of the historian s warning. His impatient anticipationes natures detract from his reliability in matters of detail, while by a similar carelessness he repeats and contradicts himself with equal frequency. His soundest judgments relate to the men around him, of whom he is at once the panegyrist and the censor. All that is weak and foolish in their mode of life he condemns, all that is noblest and most hopefiil he applauds. Mr Emerson has left his mark on the century; to use a favourite phrase of his own, &quot; lie cannot be skipped.&quot; Even where his results are least satisfactory, his intense suggestiveness is the cause of thought in others; and as one of the &quot;genetic&quot; powers of modern literature, his fer tilising influence will survive his inconclusive speculations. His faults are manifest: a petulant irreverence, frequent superficiality, a rash bravery, an inadequate solution of diffi culties deeming itself adequate, are among the chief. But he is original, natural, attractive, and direct limpid in phrase and pure in fancy. His best eloquence flows as easily as a stream. In an era of excessive reticence and cautious hypocrisy he lives within a case of crystal where