Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/252

 of the old world, and all the transcendentalists of the new world can say about the original nobility of the soul, and her ability to keep herself noble by constantly having her regards fixed on the ideal, and by avoiding the rabble and the trash of the earth; and when the endeavours of the transcendentalists—when the divinely aspiring spark within us makes us acknowledge the poverty of this merely negative point of view, and our inability to attain to the highest requirement of our better nature; then how great and consolatory, how conclusive is the doctrine which says that the divine Spirit will put itself in connection with our spirit, and satisfy all our wants by the inflowing of its life!

This most extreme vitalising process, this “new birth” and new development, which the Scriptures often speak of as a marriage, as the coming of the bridegroom to the bride, as a new birth, which we may see every day exhibited in natural life—as, for instance, by the grafting of a noble fruit-tree upon a wild stock—is finally the only explanation of human life and its yearning endeavours.

This is what I wished to say to Emerson; what I endeavoured to say, but I know not how I did it. I cannot usually express myself either easily or successfully until I become warm, and get beyond or through the first thoughts: and Emerson's cool, and as it were, circumspect manner, prevented me from getting into my own natural region. I like to be with him, but when with him I am never fully myself. I do not believe that I now expressed myself intelligibly to him. He listened calmly and said nothing decidedly against it, nor yet seemed inclined to give his views as definite. He seemed to me principally to be opposed to blind or hypocritical faith.

“I do not wish,” said he, “that people should pretend to know or to believe more than they really do know and believe. The resurrection, the continuance of our being is granted,” said he also; “we carry the pledge