Mr. Emerson in the Lecture Room

THE following reminiscences of a course of lectures by Emerson, delivered before the post-graduate class of Harvard University during April and May, 1870, were written in letters to an absent friend. They cannot be considered in any sense as reports of the lectures, but rather as memory-pictures of our New England master and teacher. To those persons who can recall the tones of Emerson’s voice and his manner in speaking, such fragments possess an interest apart from the thoughts they contain. Personal memories tinge the sentiments they convey, but they present, at least, a picture painted with reverence and affection.

BOSTON, April 28. 1870.

DEAR — : I have the happiness of being one of thirty persons who attend a course of lectures by Mr. Emerson, intended for the graduates of Harvard. . . . His general topic is Notes on the History of the Intellect, and he began his first lecture with a witty disclaimer against being considered a metaphysician himself, in any ordinary acceptation of that term. He said that Reid, Hamilton, Berkeley, Kant, give us less, with all their systems, than Montaigne, Montesquieu, Diderot, or even Rabelais, with his breadth of humor. “ The trouble is,” he continued, “ men ordinarily take no note of their thoughts. They say one thing to-day and another thing to-morrow, and forget them all. Our thoughts are our companions and our guides ; but sometimes we find ourselves less familiar with these interior friends than with exterior ones. It is the development of mind which makes the science of mind.

“ The miracle is the tally of thoughts to things. A new thought is retrospective. It is like fire applied to a train of gunpowder. It lights all that has gone before.

“ We are impatient of too much introspection. What the eye sees, and not the eye, is what we chiefly regard. We are broken into sparkles of thought, like the stars in the system of Copernicus. To Be is the great mystery! We are angles; each one makes an angle with Truth. Our thoughts are like facets cut on the jewel of Truth. Intellect is not a gift, but the presence of God.”

You will see from these morsels that I attempt nothing like a report in your behalf. Few things disturb Mr. Emerson so much as to see a note-book ; so we only have a right to carry away what we can put into the pocket of our memories. He seldom speaks an hour; once he gave us but twenty minutes ; indeed, I think half an hour is about the measure of his discourse. He said one day, “The mind is what has and sees and is seen. There is perfect unison between mind and matter ; hence the value of a new word, which is a gift to the world. Plato gave us one of the most valuable words and definitions when he used ‘ analogy.’ and defined it as ‘identity of ratios.’ No definition of genius, however, can equal the word, and Mr. Carlyle’s book on Heroism is at once outdone to the gentle mind by the presence of the hero.

“ The best study of metaphysics is physics. The subtle relations between things, the discovery that every system is but a part of the one great system, — this is the wonderful lesson the universe teaches us.

“ There is no stop ; all is pulsation, undulation. The world is framed of atoms, and in every atom we may discern Man.

“ Growth and birth and the sexes, — all these words belong also to the mind ; for there is assuredly sex in the mind, though not the same. A masculine mind is sometimes found in the woman, and a feminine in the man.

“ The mind is a deep, unfathomable cavern. Man is forever a stranger to himself, and what a blessing is he who can help us to a better acquaintance ! What a torch is that which can throw one gleam down into the spirit’s cavernous depths! We are to each other as our perception is. Perception is power. The first apprehension is the germ from which all science results.

“ Thoughts are rare ; whoever has one to give, that person is needed. Young people often feel as if they were bursting with them ; but when they try to deliver themselves, it is discovered to be all a false alarm. The heavens appear to be sown with countless stars ; but when we try to number those we really see, they only amount to a few hundreds. So it is with our thoughts. Herschel computed there were only about one hundred hours in the year when his great forty-foot telescope was of any avail for observations. Our hours of thought are as rare. It is not every undisturbed day which is fruitful in them. They belong to happy periods.

“ Perception is swiftness ; they who see first what to do can do it first, except some few inspired idiots, who are full and see much, but cannot be tapped anywhere. Words and definitions are often the result of this swift apprehension. Perception helps expression, which is but partial at best. If we could once but free our thought, we should be liberated into the universe.

“ Talent is ever in demand. A man who can do anything well is needed. We utilize talent too much in this age. It goes for nothing if it be not lucrative. A useful talent is wanted twelve hours in the day.

“ Bohemianism is the surrender of talent to money. Isocrates said of Protagoras, and that class of philosophers, that they would sell anything but their hope in the immortality of their own souls for four minæ. Talent is everywhere in great repute with us. To say clever things, to be sharp and brilliant, is to be well regarded.”

Mr. Emerson seldom announces any subject or subdivision of his general topic, but one afternoon he began by saying, “ My subject is Memory. Every machine must be perfect to be in running order. Wheels, cogs, teeth, must all match and hold well together. It is the healthy mind whose memory works perfectly. Memory should shut tight on its subject as the jaws of a bull-dog. It is cement, bitumen, matrix, to the mind, the cohesion which creates knowledge. It is retroactive, working backward as well as forward in an ever-lengthening chain. Akin to the power of creation is the joy of calling back into existence, by the compelling force of will, something which had disappeared from life.

“ Tenacity, accessibility or choice, and swiftness are qualities of memory. No memory holds a variety of subjects. We remember according to our affections. Napoleon could remember the army roll, but said his memory was so poor that an Alexandrine verse was impossible to him. If the army roll were put on one side, and all the great poems of the world on the other, he should choose the army roll. He wrote down everything else which it was important to record ; that he remembered without an effort.

“ Quintilian has said, ‘ Memory is the measure of mind.’ Frederick the Great knew every man in his army and every bottle in his wine-cellar. Boileau, coming to read a poem to Daguesseau, many pages in length, the latter, on Boileau’s ceasing to read, immediately repeated the whole after him, saying he had heard it before. Boileau was at first distressed, but soon discovered it to be simply a feat of memory. Dr. Johnson could repeat whole books which he had read but once. This power failed somewhat after he was forty years old.

“ The faculty of memory does not appear to grow ; there is some wildness in it. Horses possess in their wild state a swiftness which is never attained after they are broken ; so the sleep of savages and children, which people of culture and care never know again. Such is the undisturbed power of memory in childhood. We never forget what is absorbed in those few first years of existence. The power of vivid remembrance seems to make time very long to children. We hear one who can scarcely speak say to his companion, ‘ Can’t you berember how we used to make mud pies and play in puddles?’ — yet perhaps it was to us a very short time before, though seeming years to them. This wild memory belongs both to children and to the childhood of the world. There is an Eastern poem in existence, said to be longer than the Iliad and Odyssey, which exists only in the memories of its people.

“ Memory is not only subject to will, but it has a will of its own. It is like a looking-glass, because it reflects what passes before it; yet, unlike a lookingglass, it retains, and at will reproduces, any figure that is wanted in the very centre of the plate. What the power is by which a subject is often unconsciously retained, through years, uncalled for, and is suddenly produced when needed, no one has ever been able to turn himself inside out quick enough to discover.

“ There is a bit of journal, written by an English gentleman after a pleasant visit to a country-house, in which he says, ‘ I left Lady —’s house several days ago. I heard many good things there which I have been intending to set down, but have not yet found time. I take a look at them now and then, in my memory, to be sure they are quite safe.’

“Who of us has not known kindred experiences ! Memory accelerates life, and lengthens it. How a short period may be made a long one by a diversity of subjects being presented to us which are worth remembering, we all know. So a person of quick perception to behold and memory to secure will be possessed of something of which a slower man, having the same experience, may be altogether unconscious of. What a convenience and resource is memory! To have what is needed always on demand ! It was said of a German professor that he was a third university ; he carried a whole library in his head.

“ This memory is after all so rare that let a man read what everybody else has read, just one year later and he will appear to other people to be a sphinx. The swiftness of memory distinguishes it. To immediately produce the thing wanted, — that is the point. It is no marvel to see anybody perform the feats of Safford with pen and paper. Everybody can do that ! But at the age of ten, with a multiplicand of fifteen figures and a multiplier of fifteen figures, to give the result at once, was indeed a marvel, and this ten years before he came to our university. Nevertheless, memory appears to be no test of the original power of the mind. With a certain ideal class it seems rather to interfere. Wordsworth and Goethe, for instance, could never bring the memory to explain the meaning and connection of certain passages written in their youth. Whatever coherence there was in their own minds with what went before or came after was not easily perceived by others, nor to be explained by themselves. Not unfrequently, however, the connection between thoughts, lost by the author, may be discovered by other imaginative minds brought to bear upon the subject. There is something ideal in memory. What is addressed to the imagination is oftentimes retained, if everything beside be lost. When we discover that a man remembers many things we have not; when we perceive that he does not do this by a knot in his handkerchief, or a bit of worsted, or by any trick, but by some hidden and fine relation between subject and subject, which we cannot discern, then we feel the greatness of the power, and we seem to talk with Jove.

“ The memory of beautiful things retards time; music conceals it. Thus the allegory of Siva, when he comes to ask the god to give him one of three princes in marriage for his daughter. As he approaches the oracle he hears sounds of music, which appear to him so beautiful that he delays a while to listen ; and while he delays the first strain ceases, and another begins, which he also waits to hear. When at last there is silence he asks the god for one of the three princes. He is assured that it is impossible ; for not only the three princes, but all their children and great-grandchildren to the third generation, have already married while he was listening to the music.

“ Memory, with most people, consists of a record of what notes are given and when the payment is due ; with others, it is formative and a token of love. We naturally hate all docked or shallowthoughted men. Simonides is called the Father of Memory. It is recorded on the tomb of Abelard that he knew all that was kuowable. The best office of memory is to forget all that is painful, and remember only our joys. Fate is an artist, and lets us forget what we should forget. Most of us remember only what we have remembered before ; but deep thought holds in solution all facts. The best art of memory is to understand things thoroughly. New knowledge always calls upon old knowledge. Memory should enshrine principles instead of traditions.”

The serious significance of this lecture was lightened for the public mind by a number of humorous illustrations. Mr. Emerson said that there were various directions as to how memory may be acquired. “ I remember reading,” he continued, “ in an old book called Fullom’s Casket of Memory, that it is good to make a gargle, to be taken warm in the morning, to be composed of a concoction of flowers, new milk, and pennyroyal ! Dr. Johnson said he could remember the man he had kicked last.” Speaking, one day, of imagination, Mr. Emerson quoted Sir Thomas Browne, who said, " The severe schools shall never laugh me out of the philosophy of Hermes, that this visible world is but a picture of the invisible, wherein as in a portrait, things are not, truly, but in equivocal shapes, and as they counterfeit some more real substance in that invisible fabric.”

“ No one, perhaps, has given us a better exposition of this doctrine than Emmanuel Swedenborg. The substance of his teaching is how, out of the shows of things, to obtain reality. Imagination predicts Nature, and leads our thought upward from point to point. To discern the thought beneath the form is its office. The imagination following the steps of a new thought hears it echoed from pole to pole. The symbol plays a large part in our speech. We could not do without it. Few can either give or receive unrelieved thought in conversation. A symbol or trope lightens it. We remember a happy comparison all our lives. Machiavelli said the papacy was a great stone in the wound of Italy to keep it from healing. Genius shows itself in sprightly suggestion. A good analogy to my thought is far more to me than to find that Plato or Swedenborg agree with it. To find that the elm-tree nods assent to it and that running waters conform to it, — this alone is confirmation.

“ Dante’s poetry has hands and feet. I went into a painter’s studio once, where I found he had modeled the figures of Dante’s characters in clay before beginning to paint his picture ; and I was half persuaded the poet did the same himself.”

All this seems like a wretched prose translation of what Mr. Emerson said. The lectures themselves are poetry and music. Speaking of dreams, he continued, “ More than what Plato or any philosopher can or ever shall give us is sometimes unveiled in these unaccountable experiences. No drama in five acts ever written can compare with the drama in fifty acts unfolded to the dirtiest sluggard upon the floor of the watchhouse.

“ The words Fancy and Imagination are frequently used without discrimination. It is a mistake. Fancy is full of accidental surprises, and amuses the vacant or idle mind. Imagination silences Fancy, which becomes speechless in its presence. Imagination deals with the identity of things. It is real, central, tragic. Sometimes we think it makes all we call Nature.

“ My friend Thoreau was full of fanciful suggestions from natural objects : such as ‘ the tanager setting the woods on fire as he flies through them;’ ‘the golden-rod waving its yellow banners, and marching eastward to the Crusade ; ’ ‘ the dewy cobwebs, handkerchiefs dropped by fairies.’ And of Wachusett as seen from Concord he used to say, ‘ Look at the back of that great whale just under our bows ! They have stuck a harpoon in him, and he is plowing his way off across the continent.’ I can never see it without that thought coming again to my mind. Imagination gives us the like romantic elements for our life, and feeds us with commanding thoughts.

“ Every one would he a poet if his intellectual digestion were perfect.

“ The transition from the subject of Imagination to that of Inspiration is easy. No fable of metamorphosis, but a truth, is this which inspiration works in us. Plato has said no man who always understands himself can ever be a poet. There is an essence which passes from an intelligence higher than ourselves, and sways us. We cannot compel it by our will. We throw up our work for it (wishing it may come), to no purpose. When we least hope for it in lyric glances, it shines upon us. Unstable in its course, it fills the agitated soul.

“ Wordsworth said he cared little for those poets who understood what they did, like Byron and Scott. He much preferred William Blake. We never know the depth of the notes we accidentally sound. Heat is necessary. We must have heat. Enthusiasm daring ruin for its object.

“Pit-coal,—where to find it! We may have engines which work as perfectly as watches, but they are all nothing if we cannot strike the mine.

“ There is contagion in inspiration. Tt was said of Mirabeau that ‘ to-morrow was no impostor to him ; ’ all who came near him learned how much the hours meant to him. We love to be magnetized.

“ The story of the Pleiades, — by what poet has it not been sung ! Every nun in retirement makes the lost Pleiad the subject of her song. I think there must be a universal chord struck in the idea, which is that of a lost thought. How to obtain thoughts is the question.

“ Condensation, concentration, high flights of the soul,— these are some of the means by which thoughts visit us. But there is no continuance, no permanency, in their presence. They are subject to continual ebb and flow; beside, we lose much by the breaking up of hours and by sleep. We are sometimes like the cat’s back, breaking out all over in sparkles of thought. Are these moods within control ? Where is the Franklin for this fluid ? Poetry is full of apostrophe to inspiration, much of it commonplace enough; but Herrick’s little poem is worth reading; also the preface written by William Blake to his poems. A certain recognition of this power beyond themselves is often manifested by great men, as when Kepler said he could afford to wait one hundred years for a reader, since God had waited five thousand years for such an astronomer as himself.

“ How many sources of inspiration can we count ? As many as are our affinities. First, I would say health ; second, sleep. Life is in short periods ; cut into strips, as it were. We lie down spent; we rise with powers new born. As a third source of inspiration I would choose solitary converse with nature. What student does not know this? The mornings, the deep woods, the yellow autumn-time. There is much in that French motto, ‘Il n’y a que le matin.’ Thought is clear then ; life is new and strong. But to save the hours, to prevent the frightening away of thought! It is a difficult problem. At home I shut myself up, frequently with great detriment to my affairs (being small farmer as well as householder), and must not be interrupted. But the only safe refuge is a country inn or a city hotel. There no one can call you, and the hours flow on in astronomic leisure. Years ago, I remember, Mr. Carlyle projected a study at the top of his house, subject to no housemaid. Late in life this plan of his was accomplished, and Frederick the Great was the result. Cold is another enemy. George Sand says, somewhere, she never had an idea that the slightest chill could not drive away from her. To some, a fine view, the face of external nature, is a hindrance. William Blake said nature was a disturbance to his work. Sir Joshua Reynolds disliked Richmond, and said his landscape was the human face divine.

“ We remember the plainness of Goethe’s study. New poetry, too, is inspiration. I mean for the most part old poetry read for the first time; so also with new words. Almost we say, not even friends ! a word is best.

“ Next, I would put conversation. Good conversation is a wonderful promoter of intellectual activity. We become emulous. If one says better things than we could, or different, we are stimulated in turn. Conversation is the right metaphysical professor. Sincere and happy conversation always doubles our power.”

On another day, in approaching the subject of Genius, Mr. Emerson said, " Walter Scott described it as Perseverance, and it has also been described as Attention ; but I hold that Genius is Veracity, and with it always the year is one and the emperor present. With Genius there is always youth, and never the obituary eloquence of memory. Who taught Raphael and Correggio to paint ? They were taught of God in a dream.

“ Shakespeare, Voltaire, Byron, Daniel Webster, and Father Taylor were equally interesting to all classes; for there are two brains in every man of genius. Talent is vice-president and presiding officer, never the king. Truth is sensibility to the laws of the world, and genius is always governed by truth. Genius deals with the elemental, the roots of things, and takes nothing second hand.”

Once, in speaking of common sense, Mr. Emerson said, “ It is a power all esteem. It reaps, plows, sows, threshes, sweats. No one would be without it. Bonar said, ’ Common sense and genius make the world,’not wit; that is only a side issue. Artists affect sticking to facts. Goethe was full of this. Like Pericles, he needed a helmet to conceal the dreaded infirmity of his head, He had a large air-chamber; but if any of his neighbors caught him creeping into the chamber of the Muses, he would deny it point blank, saying, ‘ No, no ; I was going to the county jail.’ Some nations appear more distinguished for this quality than others. I think the English excel ; although with them it is apt to degenerate into brutality. The French people perhaps manage it more courteously ; yet a republic is a better field for its development. With a monarchy and the small circle of aristocracy come idealism and exemption. In a republic all find use for hands and feet. Napoleon conversing with an officer on a matter of business, the functionary said, ‘I can hardly talk with you as I should like about this, for I am not a witty man.’ Napoleon answered, ’ I do not want your wit. I want the work ! ’ One of the German princes, to whom Mr. Osborne, of England, was sent as minister, being interested in ghostly appearances, assured Mr. Osborne, if he would accompany him at twelve o’clock midnight to the neighboring churchyard, he would show him a ghost. ’ If I may take six grenadiers with me, who shall shoot at the apparition when it comes, I will accompany your majesty gladly,’ was the reply. The rendezvous did not take place. The Duke of Wellington having a bullet-proof shirt brought him by the inventor, ’ Bullet-proof, you say ?’ asked the duke. ’ Yes,’ was the reply, ’ Will you put it on yourself, and allow me to order in six soldiers to shoot at it ? ’ The man did not press his suit.— nor wear it. Lord Palmerston, being asked to serve on the cholera committee in Edinburgh, declined, saying, ’ They would do better to obey the laws of health.’ Sir Fowell Buxton’s book is full of common sense regarding Parliament and the character of speeches there. Many of the rules he lays down would be good for more Parliaments than that of England.

“ Common sense was a great characteristic of Dr. Johnson, and his conversation can never be overrated. It will live when much of the Rambler will be forgotten.

“The primal facts of Intellect lie close under the surface of Nature. Sometimes we feel Nature to be a chamber lined with mirrors, wherein we see reflected the disguised man. The analogy between processes of thought and those of the physical world is perfect, thorough. Good work does itself; there is growth in the night.

“ The fame of the Mons pear came from the saliency of the trees as well as the excellence of the fruit. The shoots were continually cut off and new graftings made. Saliency of the mind may be encouraged by use. We need saliency. Nothing is more simple than the fact discovered yesterday, nothing more wonderful than the fact to be discovered to-morrow. In the old schools of Italy they would dry up a man to make a grammarian. We will hope that the mended humanity of republics will save us.

“ We are inspired by every kind of true vigor. We do not need to meet vigor of our own kind, but misalliance, misassociation, must be shunned. It is of no avail. Genius ill-companioned is no genius ; without identity of base, chaos must be forever. We are surprised by occult sympathies. In each form of nature we seem to see ourselves in some distorting glass. Nature is saturated with Deity. The solar architecture, upon which we gaze in wonder, is not so marvelous as the same system in the revolving mind.

“ Thoughts run parallel with the creative law ; to unveil them, to understand their action from the laws of the world, — this is imagination, this is the poetic gift. Among the laws of the mind are powers and analogies which should be considered. First among them stands Identity ; then follow Metamorphosis, Flux ”... Here Mr. Emerson paused, his sentence still unfinished, while he seemed to search among his papers for its conclusion. After a few moments, finding nothing to advance the subject satisfactorily, he rose, and so ended the lecture of the day.

On another occasion Mr. Emerson renewed this subject. “ The detachment and flux of our natures,” he said, “are the metres of their strength. Nothing remains ; everything is becoming other than it is; this doctrine is the secret of things. Wisdom consists in keeping the soul fluent, resisting petrifaction. We see this in all things; we are asked why there is a hole in the bottom of the flower-pot! The moment there is fixation, petrifaction and death ensue. The very word Nature makes us to know this : ’ natura ; ’ becoming about to be born. We are immortal by the force of transits. The law of the world is transition, and our power lies in that. No wonder children delight in masks and plays, — in being other than they are; so do older children; it is the instinct of the universe.

“ Pace is yet another power or quality of mind. The swift mind is capable of spiritual sculpture, and can build a statue in the air with every word. The artist values himself on his speed. Saadi says, ’ With the budding out of the leaf this work began, and was ended with the falling of the same.’ Shakespeare seems to have lived faster than any other man ; he appears to have been a thousand years old when he wrote his first line, and his judgment is as wonderful to us as his pace. Quick wit is always a miracle, but for l’esprit de l’escalier we have no respect; everybody has that. Good fortune is only another name for quick perceptions. Improvisation is simply acceleration. We have nothing of value in literature done that way ; what is gained in one direction is lost in another. It is thought our pace is injured by civilization ; untutored peoples are said to do what they do more rapidly than we. When results are shown to us without the processes by which they were produced, we are lost in wonder. In this way Sir George Beaumont made Wilkie’s sudden reputation in London. He went about saying, ‘ Here ’s a young man who has just come to London, who went at once to see a picture by Teniers, and then ran home and painted The Village Politicians.’

“ Each power, when largely developed, exhausts some other. The Delphian prophetess at her altar is herself a victim. But the pace of Nature is strong ! We never hear that she has sprained her foot. We become spent, and fail; she thanks ‘ God that she breathes very well.’

“ We find grown people, with quick perceptions, whose judgment is two years old, — Hercules with a withered arm ! This element of Time is a wonderful magician. I once went to a beautiful fête, where was a little old man in a gray coat. Presently some one asked him for one of Dolland’s great telescopes; and he produced it immediately, no larger at first than a microscope, from his waistcoat pocket. Soon after a lady stepped up, and said she should like a Turkey carpet laid on the lawn, if he had one about him ; and the little gray man took that out, too, and presently a marquee was added to the rest. Time, the little gray man, has made, and is making, changes as wonderful upon every one of us. No Turkey carpets nor marquee tents can be so extraordinary as the processes in chemistry, miraculous to our uninstructcd eyes.

“ Bias is yet another quality or power of the mind to be considered, — power to resist shocks of contending temperaments. Faraday discovered that certain minerals would obey the two poles of the magnet, north and south, while others would only seek those diametrically opposed. Polarity is a universal law ; every mind is a magnet, with a new north.

“ We soon discern whether a man speaks from himself, or is giving us something at second hand. We see through all his paint; he may as well wash it off at once. He who made the world lets that speak for itself, and does not employ a town-crier. So shall each soul speak for itself as God made it. Opinions are organic. They should be fostered by our studies into a healthy natural growth. We say of a man, ’ Where is his home ? ’ There where he is incessantly called.

“ Do not fear to push these individualizations to their farthest divergence. Excellence is an inflamed personality. Power fraternizes with power, and wishes you to be not like himself. We acquiesce in what we are. We do not wish conformity or fair words ; yea and nay will suffice. God makes but one man of each kind. ’ My son will not be like me, and can never fill my place,’ said Napoleon, ‘ but he will fulfill his own destiny.’ A human soul is a momentary fixation of power. The tenacity of retention must be in proportion to the idea it represents.

“ Everybody can do his best work easiest. While the master works in his own way, and draws on his own power, he cannot be supplanted. Man resents the rule which cripples him. We must do our best in our own way. We do not wish praise ; we never forgive over-appreciation. Reserve, pique, — both these can help to stimulate us. Do not fear to be a monotone ! We wish every man to truly please himself ; then he will please us.”

Mr. Emerson read in connection with this subject a passage from Varnhagen von Ense upon Vicarious Sacrifice. He said it was so fine that it would not be out of place anywhere, and belonged to the philosophy of history.

One day he remarked that he had always considered a course of lectures at Harvard University would be incomplete if a series upon Plato and the Platonists were omitted. " Thought has subsisted for the most part on one root; the Norse mythology, the Vedas, Shakespeare, have served for ages. The history of our venerable Bible, — what heights, what lights, what strength, does this contain ! We see how Nature loves to cross her stocks ; the invaded by the invader. We see this in the history of the Aryans, of the Pelasgi as invaded by the Ionians, of the East by Alexander, and so on continually. There must be both power and provocation to develop the highest in man.

“ The systems of philosophy are few, and repeat each other ; there is little that is new. One philosopher unfolds the doctrine of materialism ; the next will unfold the same doctrine, but after the fashion of his own mind ; another will dispute sense and talk non-sense ; the fourth will take a middle ground, until we have Materialism. Idealism, Dogmatism, Skepticism, and few new thoughts.

“ When Orientalism in Alexandria found the Platonists, a new school was produced. The sternness of the Greek school, feeling its way forward from argument to argument, met and combined with the beauty of Orientalism. Plotinus, Proclus, Porphyry, and Jamblicus were the apostles of the new philosophy.

“ Some truths were then, perhaps, first unveiled : such as, pure power is more felt than anything purely intellectual ; Mind is the source of things, the truth of absolute units ; Being, or First Cause, creates to the end of imparting happiness. This philosophy was the consolation of the human race. The principles of Plato were distilled in various schools, and at last went down with the greatness of Rome. Then came, not until the third century of our era, Plotinus. He was the founder of the new Platonism. The wisdom of its method is great and worthy of profound study. Music, Love, Philosophy, were the three powers of which he has left us a beautiful analysis.” Mr. Emerson read carefully selected passages from Plotinus, and afterward gave the history of his life so far as it is known ; then, taking up an octavo volume translated by Thomas Taylor, of Norwich, which contained the essay of Synesius on Providence, he spoke of its untold value to the world. His audience could understand at least how precious the book was to him. Doubtless many a reader, remembering his words concerning it, has turned its mystic pages; but the readers must be few who have seen the mysterious light shining in them which the poet found.

Of Proclus Mr. Emerson said, “ I am always astonished at Ids strength. He has purple deeps which I can never fully sound. What literature should be, he is. Proclus first called attention to Chaldaic oracles. There are hardly men athletic enough to read him. How insignificant and far behind Proclus is what we call Scotch philosophy. It is like comparing Phidias and Uncle Toby.

“ For a period of the world’s history Plato and the Platonists were almost lost, as it appeared. But the disciples always reappear; thus, curiously, in our age have these doctrines revived. As surely as Wilkinson is the pupil of Swedenborg, and as surely as everything must come round, so here in our time arrives a scholar who sets the Platonists on their legs again, and calls everybody to hear these sages who wrote fifteen hundred years ago. Thomas Taylor was a man of singular character: a rugged Englishman, without one refreshing stroke of wit, or even of good sense, haughtily believing in his work, he accepted poverty proudly to the end of its accomplishment. He cannot suppress his high contempt for those who are ignorant of Greek philosophy. He equals Gibbon in his pride, and Johnson in his gloom. There is little recorded of his life, but I draw much of my information from Person. Thomas Taylor says, ’ No living author beside myself has devoted himself to Plato.’ Elsewhere he speaks of his ‘solitary road; ’ and indeed it was a road no man had traversed for centuries. Niebuhr has a touching reference to him ; the name is not given, but it can be no one else. Sydenham also, whom I should hardly quote here but for his strange fate and the interest his early death excites in us.

“Taylor tilts against many notable windmills. Like Coleridge, he thanked God that he knew no French. He calls Christianity a gigantic impiety. Like Winckelmann, he was a man born out of due time. Taylor had no faith in the education of the masses ; his whole idea of government was founded on Plato’s republic; he eagerly dissuaded the uneducated from reading his books. He received scorn for scorn. Even learned England knew nothing of him, gave him no attention. Hallam had never heard of him, nor Milman, nor, I think, had Macaulay. I met a gentleman who thought he could find out something for me, but the whole result of the inquiry was that Taylor’s eldest son was named Proclus. There are very few facts beside. His wife married him suddenly, when she was about to be compelled to marry a rich man in his stead, and for a year or more they subsisted on seven shillings a week, which he made by copying. His labors were immense. Aristotle, Plato, Plotinus, Proclus, Synesius, all exist from his hand, and many other works. He was turned out of a good boarding-place because he wished to sacritiee a bull to Jupiter Olympus in the best parlor. His translation of Synesius will live with Comus, Laodamia, and a few other things of that nature.”

The next afternoon Mr. Emerson said his subject was The Conduct of the Intellect. “ I have arranged,” he continued, “ with some amplitude the study of the working agents of the mind, that we may become conscious as far as possible how system and power may be reached by persons desirous of true culture. First, we will consider Attention, which is the natural prayer we make to Truth that she will discover herself to us. Attention is perpetual application of the will. Sir Isaac Newton said that what he had accomplished was done by always intending his mind. Goethe said that he believed every child should learn drawing; for it unfolds attention, the highest of our skills and virtues. This power cannot always be called into its fullest force, and it is differently excited in different persons, or In the same persons at different times. When you cannot flog your mind into power in your library, you go to family and friends, where it becomes refreshed. Some men have found the public their school and study. They go to their audience as others go to their closet, and learn there what they should say.

“ This brings me again to Bias, that indispensable condition of all true influence. Each makes and should make one reserve in the canon of nature, namely, himself ! Not the fact, but what he makes of it, is its value, after all. Be yourself! Don’t walk one way and look another. Straining, tour de force, will accomplish for the time, but the result is always weariness and waste. You cannot disguise your opinions. This faculty is your lot in life; therefore make the most of it, instead of wishing it something else. Abandon yourself to your real love and hate ! That which burns you can alone set other minds in flame. Labor, drudge, and wrestle for it; profound sincerity is the only basis of character. Beware of the temptation to patronize Providence. Set down a wise man in the centre of a town, and he will create a new consciousness of wealth. He will show the rich their mistakes and poverty, and to the poor he will discover their own resources. He will establish an immovable equality.

“Most books of travel tell us nothing ; but take the men born to travel and to see, and we recognize at once that they are inspired for discoverers. The poet sees also, and if he sees only in fragments he paints those with what energy he has.

“ The primary quality of Genius is Veracity. ’ What he would write, he was before he writ,’ said Lord Brooke. Youth and truth should be inseparable. No proselytizing adviser is then needed. I want nothing less Truth. I will wear her garment, rather than array myself in a red rag of any borrowed garniture. I see how grand it is.

“The condition of sanity is to keep down talent and to preserve instinct. Otherwise we find talent substituted for genius, sensuality for art. There is an organic order in every mind, therefore there is natural order in our thought; but bad artists do not foresee the end from the beginning.”

Mr. Emerson here spoke of the Classic and Romantic schools of art, and of the essential quality of Affirmation.

“ The affirmative position of the mind,” he continued ; “ knowing what we like best, and acknowledging it; discovering the grand basis where lies the joy of the great masters that they are all alike ; not dealing with petty differences ; not seeing less than the immortal, — this is the duty of every healthy soul. It is the causal fact in every forward nature that he shall look affirmatively upon subjects. An affirmative talker is always safe. I think it is the main guard not to accept degrading views. Don’t try to make the universe a blind alley. We must march under the banner of the advancing cause. There is no limit to the strength of affirmation ; we can go on, sky over sky and through soundless deeps, and the follower learns that truth has steeps unapproachable to the profane foot. No negative evidence can be worth one affirmative. It is the mind, never the body, which will conquer, and will burst up to carry all away as with a sea-stroke. The true poet, if such could be embodied, would electrify us with truth, once heard. What is now the capital would be so no longer : grass would grow in its streets ; it would soon be superseded. Good order, analogy, health, benefit, — to each and all of these the assenting soul sings pæan! Said a good saint once to me, ‘ The Lord gives, but he never takes away.’ We must cleave to God against the name of God.

“ I think Keats’s best lines are those in Hyperion : —

“ The contagion of an affirmative disposition is very great, and the gift or acquirement of this generosity is one of the consolations of life. Therefore use the faculty ; labor, drudge, for it. Put to it the spirit of Napoleon when he was asked to repeat an order, and replied, ‘ Pensez, fripon ! I never repeat; it is for you to remember,’ Go, and be like Napoleon ! Let his endeavor be your constant type and exemplar. He was always on the offensive, and, as he said himself, never on the defensive, except in the night, when lie could not see his enemy. Use your powers, and put them to a better use than Napoleon put his. Use them all; otherwise we shall be like the Indians, with thick legs and thin arms. We need all our resources to live in the world which is to be used and decorated by us. Socrates understood this well. His humility was sincere, but he used it also with exquisite tact, making of it a better eyeglass to penetrate farther than the vision of other men.

“ We must lie in wait for thoughts, for times when the intellect is facile; think with the flower of the soul. Be confident that a man cannot exhaust the abilities of his nature, and the best is never attained but at the price of continual labor. Success depends on previous preparation. If principles and high conduct be sustained by continual practice, their virtue will lie inexhaustible. The question always is how to keep up to the top of my condition !

“ A good day’s work is too valuable to be broken in upon lightly. Continence must be attained. A certain continence is always to be remembered. Seven silences for one word. Let the thinker keep his secret ; we hate a leaky mind. Continuity, — we must strive also for that, although true thoughts arrange themselves. I But let us be no chiffoniers ; have a piece of twine, and it will lead to royal truths. Have control : it is indispensable ! Primal powers will not sit for their portraits, and are always melting into each other; but he who gains control shall use a ladder of lightning, and efface his steps as he mounts.

“ Following upon our labor for thought come sometimes periods of fullness, when the whole being is fused, yet we cannot express a word. We are lifted above expression, and filled with a sublime life. This joy compensates. The question must always be whether the mind possesses control of its thoughts, or they of it. We sometimes go to sects to ask of some member the secret of his peace or progression, but we find he cannot formulate. He impresses those who know him by the honesty and truth of his worship, but he cannot convey the ground of his satisfaction to us. George Fox was filled with groanings that could not be uttered; and so it has ever been. Wordsworth called his brother ‘ a voiceless poet,’ and the world is filled with these dumb souls. The primary rule is to have control of the thoughts without losing the natural action ; this is the power of the prophets.

“ But you must formulate your thought, or you have all stars and no sky ! It is a want of self-possession not to learn this control. Has a metaphysician no art for his bad memory or attention ? Has he no balloon to send up into the empyrean, to bring down its wonderful hues ? Father Taylor’s grand seahorses have always drawn him up and down only on condition that he shall not guide them. The faculties are continual assertors of immortality for what never could be said. Locomotive destiny must be hitched on to the curs in which we all are.

“ There is a sense of power attendant always upon the period when thought comes. We stand like Atlas, on our legs, and feel as if we could move the world. We have such debility of nature that a new thought is as a god to us. We can no more manage it than a thunderbolt. But after a time its affinities begin to appear ; we become accustomed to its presence ; we can call it by name and grow familiar with it; then we can compare it with others, and begin to distribute them.

“ The endless procession of thoughts is the miracle of every day. What shall we say of these potentates? To the healthy man there is always one waiting at the door when he awakes. Wonderful they are in their relation to each other. What is written in the mind in indelible ink is brought out by the fire of thought.

“ Certain medicinal value is in all intellectual action. Sit down to work with weak eyes, and when your imagination begins to work your eyes become strong. Dumont, in his life of Mirabeau, says, when the husband of Madame Clavière was about to be elected to the ministry she became ill of nervous fever ; but when he was elected, her physician declared that in four days she would be able to appear in public; which proved true, for at the end of that time she appeared in perfect health as the mistress of her own salon, in the new hôtel assigned her husband.

“ Despair shows we have been living on a low plane, in the sense or understanding. It is a sign of the decay of thought. The brave uplift us. Jamblicus tells us some have been burned, and not apprehended it. After the last great defeat of the Athenians there was evident loss of power for wide thought.

“ We must all recognize the influence of two distinct classes of persons. One class of men and women appear to bring their power from a moral source, and the other from intellectual forces. Thus Dr. Channing, the oracle of morals and religion forty years ago, drew his power clearly from a moral force instinct within him ; and this as contrasted with what we call intellectual power, exemplified in such men as Michael Angelo, Shakespeare, and others. In the first class we find men of strength, whose names are unheard of by the world, often in humble company and perhaps without a talent by which to express themselves ; nevertheless, their power is indisputable and puts all talent to shame. We do not, however, pause upon their thought; it is something higher than that which sways us. The power of man is twofold : one part man and one woman, the masculine and feminine elements, the moral and intellectual ; the soul in which one predominates is ever watchful and jealous ; where intellect leads it grows skeptical, narrow, worldly, and runs down into talent. On the other hand, clear-thoughted minds complain of the opposing class as of wandering spirits, who cannot formulate their faith or make their light evident. Aristotle said the origin of reason is not in itself, but in something better ; and one of the ancients says, ’ The two elements are united at their summit in being God.’

“ As a student of the laws of the mind, learning to believe more deeply in proportion to research into its divine potentiality, I do not believe in any objector who would make that responsible for vices and failure. Dumesnil calls Michael Angelo ‘ the conscience of Italy,’ and there is a probity of the intellect which demands more than any Bible has enjoined. All feel the mystery of this twofold genius at the head of creation. Looking back upon the philosophy of the ancients with this idea in my mind, I find this conception of the Highest present everywhere: in Plato, Plotinus, anti in the Hindoo books. There is always a light which is recognized as of older birth than the intellect. One says, ’ Intellect has twofold energies : some of these powers act as Intellect, others as Being inebriated with nectar.’ We say the soul grows by moral obedience. This is the only true foundation, and we find it treason in the philosopher to do wrong. The mind knows nature by sharing it, but religion, that home of genius, will strengthen the mind as it does the character. The obedience to a man’s genius is the particular of faith; the obedience to his religion, the general of faith. This sentiment is the affirmative of affirmatives ; it is love itself. Strength enters into us, a new life opens upon us, if we possess this truth.

“ A devout sentiment has the effect of genius uttered in society. How often we lament the development of talent when we see the heart of man disappear, and we say, ‘Happy are those who have no talent. Plato, Dante, Shakespeare, we could not do without; but the central guard of all is the quiet influences of society, — the men who have no talent, but who see the right and do it. Such moral forces are perhaps the highest in the scale.” Here Mr. Emerson quoted a passage from the novel " Counterparts.” He often spoke of this book as one possessing singular power and significance. " It would be easy,” he continued, “to show the irreligion of people, not from their writings, but from their table-talk and the asides of life. For wisdom, for sanity, you must have some entrance into the heart of humanity. He who is exclusive excludes himself. There is something very delicate in the moral sentiment; it is a flower which will not bear handling, but must lie gently in the mind and bear fruit there. Piety gives an elegance of manners which the court cannot teach ; we never obtain sincerity in any speech unless we feel a degree of tenderness. Christianity taught this : the beauty and the strength of this truth was only brought to perfection in the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness in wisdom. I ever hear in the voice of genius invariably the moral tone: the finer the sense of genius, the finer is the influence.

“ The one avenue to truth and wisdom is love. Here, then, is the foundation, — that all growth comes from moral obedience.

“ What we call poetical justice, that is real justice. We call the characters who rest on these foundations ’ real men,’ as distinguished from men of the world who act from other motives. Piety is the essential condition of science. When the time came that we had to praise John Brown of Ossawatomie, I remember what a world of old poetry fitted him exactly, — Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Herbert; indeed, there was no end to it!

“ It is common to find the contrary to much that I have said. Napoleon is an example of genius without morality, but Wellington spoke once to the effect that it was a moral failure which first made it possible for him to see how to defeat Napoleon. The exceptions still show the truth. How coarse and rude was the masculinity of the French Revolution, — how different from New England in its harshest days of creed ! Intellect is purged by humility ; no great intellect but is bankrupted by moral defects. Algernon Sidney, Marcus Antoninus, are noble examples of moral power. Some of the greatest statements of the truths of Christianity which are found outside of it are in the Hindoo literature.” Here Mr. Emerson quoted from the Purana, from Fox, Bellmen, Swedenborg, and others, where, as he said, “great sensibility of conscience has stood in lieu of mental development.”

Again, he continued, “ The persons generally most praised and esteemed are not those we most value. We praise talent and cheaper things ; we can make an inventory of affairs of the world, but we cannot do that with the hero. We can have only one hero, here and there, to preserve the line in the world; quiet and obscure they are, often, but keen and sure almost as Socrates when the time comes for then to observe. These are not men who are spoken of ; they are left alone, for the most part, as gods are; they are elemental, and not made for ball-rooms,— not heroes of communities ; nothing could be more private, but always able to come in exigency and ready for our sorriest plight. Such are strong in the drudgeries of endeavor; they excel in extricating us from bad society. To such a hero as I have described, men will listen as if they were under a perpetual spell. Such I call not so much men as influences ! I knew one; he was at this university; of all unknown and unseen. I will read you something he has left, to show you how he looked upon the world.” Here Mr. Emerson read Thoreau’s poem called The Stranger, and afterward, to illustrate his remarks upon eternity and patience to this end, he read also fragments from Sappho and Michael Angelo. Mr. Emerson then continued : “ The fondness of the mind for stability is a very remarkable fact. Whatever is ancient and long in time has attractions for us. The man of thought is willing to live, or living to die ; he probably sees the cord reaching both up and down. You shall not say ‘ Oh, my bishop. Oh, my pastor, is there any resurrection ? ’ or ‘ Did Channing believe ? ’ Go read Milton, Æschylus, Plato, St. Augustine, and ask no such school-dame questions as these ! True lives, those of prophets, philosophers, thinkers, students, such as I have quoted, suggest vast leisure. In reading some of their sentences you feel the certainty of immortality. Belief in the future of the mind is only such to those who use it.”

A. F.