Page:Studies of a Biographer 4.djvu/167

 'Oversoul,' 'Compensation,' 'Circles,' and the like, may be futile considered as philosophical dogmas; and there is not even a pretence of proving their truth. They may still be regarded as studies of the spirit in which a man may serenely front the trials of life and find comfort from forebodings. Emerson has been often compared to the great stoic moralists, and like them, he indulges in the hyperbolic and paradoxical. Macaulay in the essay upon Bacon, in which Emerson found the typical Lockist, suggests an 'amusing fiction' illustrative of the contrast. Two travellers find a village full of small-pox. The Baconian traveller vaccinates the sufferers. The Stoic assures the villagers that to the wise man disease and the loss of friends is no evil. A merchant has lost his ship. The Baconian makes a diving-bell and fishes up the cargo; while the Stoic exhorts him not to seek happiness in things outside himself. That is the difference, says Macaulay, between the 'philosophy of words' and the 'philosophy of works.' When Baconians have suppressed disease and disaster, the Stoic will doubtless have less call for his consolations. While such things remain with us some sort of moral discipline will have its uses; and if the Stoic