Page:Poems, Alexander Pushkin, 1888.djvu/27

Rh don't read Emerson; my garls do!" but the self-same decade brings a Darwin or a Heckel with his comparative embryos; and at the sight of these, not even a lawyer, be he even Chief Justice of Supreme Court, can distinguish between snake, fowl, dog, and man.

5. In time, however, Pushkin does become objective to himself, as any true soul that is obliged to reflect must sooner or later; and God ever sees to it that the soul be obliged to reflect if there be aught within. For it is the essence of man's life that the soul struggle; it is the essence of growth that it push upward; it is the essence of progress in walking that we fall forward. Life is a battle,—battle with the powers of darkness; battle with the diseases of doubt, despair, self-will. And reflection is the symptom that the disease is on the soul, that the battle is to go on.

6. Pushkin then does become in time objective, and contemplates himself. Pushkin the man inspects Pushkin the soul, and in the poem, "My Monument," he gives his own estimate of himself:—

A monument not hand-made I have for me erected;

The path to it well-trodden, will not overgrow;

Risen higher has it with unbending head

Than the monument of Alexander.