could not give an account of myself if challenged. I could not possibly give you one of the arguments you cruelly hint at, on which any doctrine of mine stands. For I do not know what arguments are in reference to any expression of a thought. I delight in telling what I think; but if you ask me why I dare say so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless of mortal men. When I see myself suddenly raised to the importance of a heretic, I am very uneasy when I advert to the supposed duties of such a personage, who has to make good his thesis against all comers. I certainly shall do no such thing. I shall read what you and other good men write, as I have always done, glad when you speak my thoughts and skipping the page that has nothing for me. I shall go on just as before, seeing whatever I can, and telling what I see.

Unlike some leaders in thought, Emerson was not afraid to acknowledge how much he had been benefited by others. He was as glad "when others spoke his thoughts," as he was when he himself set seal on them in language of his own. Intuitional, and wholly undogmatic, he had no faith in any system that relied on reasonings, however strong or subtle; he believed in instinct, or rather in inspiration, as the full development and realisation of the finer instincts. His writings are full of confessions to this purport. In the essay on "Intellect," he says:—

If we consider what persons have stimulated and profited us we shall perceive the superiority of the spontaneous or intuitive principle over the arithmetical or logical. The first contains the second, but virtual and latent. We want in every man, a long logic; we cannot pardon the absence of it, but it must not be spoken. Logic is the procession, or proportionate unfolding, of the intuition, but its virtue is as silent method; the moment it would appear as propositions, and have a separate value, it is worthless. In every man's mind some images, words, and facts remain, without effort on his part to imprint them, which others forget, and afterwards these illustrate to him important laws. All our progress is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason. It is vain to hurry it. By trusting it to the end it shall ripen into truth, and you shall know why you believe.

Sympathy, and the self-devotion that comes of true sympathy, Emerson held to be the basis of all insight; it was of more importance to feel deeply than to think correctly; to act in accordance with honest feeling than to distinguish and define. He welcomed from whatever source anything that quickened impulse, that gave wings to thought and made it expansive, diffusive, benevolently selfjustifying. "Only that good profits which we can talk with all doors open, and which serves all men." The spirit in such case must be eminently eclectic, however individual may be the style. With it there exclusiveness cannot exist, nor anathema, nor setting up of walls of separation; but rather the ready tribute, the right hand to any and everyone who points, however inadequately, the upward path.

To receive was as genuine a source of joy as to give ; where there was no disparity in good-will and its reciprocities. With Emerson therefore there could be no assumption of egotistic originality, as if no man had aforetime spoken a true word; but rather a hearty welcome to everyone who could suggest or inspire. Probably when Emerson first read Sampson Reed's book, he was still a busy and anxious Unitarian minister. Though he had already come to pretty clear terms with himself, he had not then made his first appearance in print, which he only did in 1830, with a sermon delivered at the ordination of H. B. Goodwin, to be followed by a Sermon and Letter" to his church-the second church of Boston-in 1832. In December of 1833, in the hope of benefit to his health as well as a desire to see the new world and some of its celebrities, he set out for Europe, sailed up the Mediterranean in a vessel bound for Sicily, went eastward to Malta, and returning saw Walter Savage Landor at Florence" noble and courteous, living in a cloud of pictures at his villa Gherardesca-a fine house commanding a beautiful landscape." Then he visited France, and in July reached London, made a pilgrimage to Scotland, took up his abode with Samuel Brown in Edinburgh, preached a memorable sermon in the Unitarian church there, and made that historic pilgrimage to Craigenputtock to see Carlyle, and walked with him over the desolate heathery hills, and talked upon all the great questions that interested him. After he returned to America he gave lectures, he wrote essays. In 1836 his famous. book on "Nature" appeared. Though only a small volume of some ninety-five pages, it was distinctly an epoch-making book. From it dates the birth of an original literature of thought in America. It is truly surprising to read that it met with a very small sale-only some 500 copies having been disposed of in twelve years. But it is one of the books that have to create the taste by which they are to be judged, and that is always a slow process-one that must be exceptionally slow among a people like the Americans, where social conditions are as yet unfixed compared with those of an old country. Oration followed oration-each emphasising the impression the former had produced of a new power in literature and philosophya truly original mind which could dip deep into Plato and the Oriental mystics, and yet maintain an independent foothold, transfiguring all that it borrowed and thus touching men to high practical issues. In 1840, the "Dial" was begun, and in 1841 appeared the first volume of Emerson's essays, including those on "Self-reliance," "Compensation," "Spiritual Laws," "Love," "Friendship," "the Over-soul," and "Intellect." A second series of essays appeared in 1844, containing

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nine papers on "The Poet," " Experience," " Character," "Manners," "Gifts," "Nature," "Politics," "Nominalist and Realist," and " New England Reformers" (a lecture). And this brings us up (or down) to the date at which Emerson, under impulse of friendship, transmitted to his friend, Dr. Samuel Brown, Sampson Reed's "Growth of the Mind." He had not lost sight of it; he had not changed his opinion of it it was often looked at, re-read, and cherished, else he had not deemed it a gift worthy of him to send by the hands of a friend over sea to the hand of a friend in Europe. The leading idea of Sampson Reed's book is, that all apprehension of truth is indirect, more a matter of moral activity than of intellectual subtlety, which can but appropriate fragments out of relation, that memory itself is nothing apart from emotion and imagination, that the language of truth is the symbol, that all nature is in perpetual flux-a storehouse of symbols, which man only masters as he realises the moral quality of his own mind. Hence we find him writing eloquently in words of such aim and pitch as must have arrested Emerson in the first reading as presenting in embryo some of the leading ideas of his book on Nature, which may be briefly summarised thus:-Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Nature becomes a means of expression for these spiritual truths and experiences which could not otherwise be interpreted. Its laws, also, are moral laws when applicable to man; and so they become to man the language of the Divine Will. Because the physical laws become moral laws the moment they are related to human conduct, Nature has a much higher purpose than that of beauty or language-in that it is a discipline. Now, let us present the most express passage on this point from Sampson Reed :

There is a language not of words, but of things. When this language shall have been made apparent, that which is human shall have answered its end, and, being as it were resolved into its original elements, will lose itself in nature. The use of language is the expression of our feelings and desires-the manifestation of the mind. But everything which is, whether animal or vegetable, is full of the expression of that use for which it is designed, as of its own existence. If we did but understand its language what could our words add to its meaning? It is because we are unwilling to hear, that we find it necessary to say so much; and we drown the voice of nature with the discordant jangle of ten thousand dialects. Let a man's language be confined to the expression of that which actually belongs to his own mind; and let him respect the smallest blade which grows and permit it to speak for itself. Then there may be poetry, which may not be written, but which may be felt as a part of our being. Everything which surrounds us is full of the utterance of one word, completely expressive of its nature. This word is its name; for God, even now, could we but see it, is creating all things, and giving a name to every work of His love, in its perfect adaptation to that for which it is designed. But man has abused his power, has lost his moral eyesight, and has become insensible to the real character of nature.

"The Universe," says Emerson, in his essay on "The Poet," is the externisation of the soul. Whatever the life is, that bursts into appearance around it. Our science is sensual and therefore superficial. . . . Science always goes abreast with the just elevation of the man, keeping step with religion and metaphysics; or the state of science is an index of our self-knowledge. Since everything in nature answers to a moral power, if any phenomena remains brute and dark, it is because the corresponding faculty in the observer is not yet active. No wonder, then, if these waters be so deep, we hover over them with a religious regard. The beauty of the fable proves the importance of the sense, to the poet and to all others; or, if you please, every man is so far a poet as to be susceptible of those enchantments of nature; for all men have the thought whereof the universe is the celebration. I find that the fascination resides in the symbol. Who loves nature? Who does not? Is it only poets and men of leisure and cultivation who live with her? No; but also hunters, farmers, grooms, and butchers, though they express their affection in their choice of life and not in their choice of words. The writer wonders what the coachman or the hunter values in riding, in horses, and dogs. It is not superficial qualities. When you talk with him, he holds these at as slight a rate as you. His worship is sympathetic; he has no definitions, but he is commanded by nature, by the living power which he feels to be there present. No imitation, or playing of these things, would content him; he loves the earnest of the north wind, of rain, of stone, and wood, and iron. A beauty not explicable is dearer than a beauty which we can see the end of. It is nature the symbol, nature certifying the supernatural, body overflowed with life, which he worships, with coarse but sincere rites.

Sampson Reed's practical application is wholly in the line of Emerson's teachings:

It remains for us to become more thoroughly acquainted with the laws of moral mechanism. Instead of making unnecessary and ineffectual exertions in the direct attainment of truth, it remains for us to make equal efforts to cleanse our own minds and to do good to others; and what was before unattainable will become easy, as the rock which untutored strength cannot move, may be raised by the touch of the finger.

An elevated individualism thus results which can afford to pass by trifles, and to regard others as companions and not merely as instruments of development, after the Goethean model, assured that the highest results of culture are those which are not most directly aimed at or attained. So Sampson Reed writes, in a passage which has been marked by Emerson as admirable :

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It becomes us to seek and to cherish this peculium of our minds, as the patrimony which is left us by our Father in Heaven-as that by which the branch is united to the Vine-as the forming power within us, which gives to our persons that by which they are distinguished from others; and, by a life entirely governed by the commandments of God, to leave on the duties we are called to perform the full impress of our real characters. Let a man's ambition to be great disappear in a willingness to be what he is; then may he fill a high place without pride, and a low one without dejection. As our desires become more and more concentrated to those objects which correspond to the peculiar organisation of our minds, we shall

have a foretaste of that which is coming, in those internal tendencies of which we are conscious. As we become obedient to this law, performing with alacrity whatever duty presents itself before us, we shall perceive in our hearts a kind of preparation for every external event or occurrence of our lives, even the most trivial, springing from the all-pervading tendency of the Providence of God, to present the opportunity of being useful wherever there is the disposition.

Which may well find suggestive parallel in these words from the essay on "Spiritual Laws : "—

A little consideration of what takes place around us every day would show us that a higher law than that of our will regulates events; that our painful labours are unnecessary and fruitless; that only in our easy, simple, spontaneous action are we strong, and by contenting ourselves with obedience we become divine. Belief and love-a believing love will relieve us from a vast load of care. O my brothers, God exists! There is a soul at the centre of nature, and over the will of every man, so that none of us can wrong the Universe. It has so infused its strong enchantments into nature that we prosper when we accept its advice, and when we struggle to wound its creatures, our hands are glued to our sides, or they beat our own breasts. The whole course of things goes to teach us faith. We need only obey. There is a guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word. Why need you choose so painfully your place and occupation and associates, and modes of action and of entertainment? Certainly there is a possible right for you that precludes the need of balance and wilful election. For you there is a reality, a fit place, and congenial duties. Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment. Then you put all gainsayers in the wrong.

Then again, as regards the poet, the essential thought uttered by Reed is emphasised by Emerson in one paragraph of his characteristic preface to the "Gulistan of Saadi," to which the reader may turn whilst we give two excerpts from the less-known author :

The poet stands on the mountain with the face of nature before him, calm and placid. If we would enter into his views, we must go where he is. We must catch the direction of his eye, and yield ourselves up to the instinctive guidance of his will, that we may have a secret foretaste of his meaning; that we may be conscious of the image in its first conception; that we may perceive its beginnings and gradual growth, till at length it becomes distinctly depicted on the retina of the mind. Without this, we may take the dictionary in our hands and settle the definition of every word, and still know as little of the lofty conceptions of the author as the weary traveller who passes round in the farthest which is visible from the mountain knows of no scenery which is seen from verge the summit. It has been truly said that Johnson was incapable of conceiving the beauties of Milton. Yet Johnson was himself a living dictionary of Milton's language. The true poet, when his mind is full, fills his language to overflowing; and it is left to the reader to preserve what the words cannot contain. It is that part which cannot be defined; that which is too delicate to endure the unrestrained gaze; that which shrinks instinctively from the approach of anything less chaste than itself, and though present, like the inhabitants of the other world, is unperceived by flesh and blood, and is worth all the rest. They acknowledge no dwelling-place but the mind.