Page:Henry Mulford Tichenor - A Guide to Emerson (1923).djvu/56

 Rh meadows spread at their base, whereon flocks graze, and shepherds pipe and dance.

"But every insight from this realm of thought is felt as initial, and promises a sequel. I do not make it; I arrive there, and behold what was there already. I make! Oh, no! I clap my hands in infantine joy and amazement before the first opening to me of this august magnificence, old with the love and homage of innumerable ages, young with the life of life, the sunbright Mecca of the desert."

"The Chinese Mencius," writes Emerson, "has not been the least successful in his generalization. 'I fully understand language,' he said, 'and nourish well my vast-flowing vigor.'—'I beg to ask what you call vast-flowing vigor?' said his companion. 'The explanation,' replied Mencius, 'is difficult. This vigor is supremely great, and in the highest degree unbending. Nourish it correctly, and do it no injury, and it will fill up the vacancy between heaven and earth. This vigor accords with and assists justice and reason, and leaves no hunger.

"We dress our garden, eat our dinners, discuss the household with our wives, and these things make no impression, are forgotten next week; but in the solitude to which every man is always returning, he has a sanity and revelations, which in his passage into new worlds he will carry with him. Never mind the ridicule, never mind the defeat; up again, old heart!—it seems to say, there is victory yet for all justice; and the true romance which the world