ments and forms some vigor of wild virtue. For every Stoic was a stoic; but in Christendom where is the Christian?

There is no more deviation in the moral standard than in the standard of height or bulk. No greater men are now than ever were. A singular equality may be observed between the 10 great men of the first and of the last

ages; nor can all the science, art, religion, and philosophy of the nineteenth century avail to educate greater men than Plutarch's heroes, three or four and twenty centuries ago. Not in time is the race progressive. Phocion, Socrates, Anaxagoras, Diogenes are great men, but they leave no class. He who is really of their class will not 20 be called by their name, but be wholly his own man, and in his turn the founder of a sect. The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume and do not invigorate men. The harm of the improved machinery may compensate its good. Hudson and Bering accomplished so much in their fishing-boats as to astonish Parry and Franklin, whose equipment exhausted 30 the resources of science and art. Galileo, with an opera-glass, discovered a more splendid series of facts than anyone since. Columbus found the New World in an undecked boat. It is curious to see the periodical disuse and perishing of means and machinery which were introduced with loud laudation a few years or centuries before. The great genius returns to essential 40 man. We reckoned the improvements

of the art of war among the triumphs of science, and yet Napoleon conquered Europe by the Bivouac, which consisted of falling back on naked

14. Plutarch's heroes, famous Greeks and Romans whose biographies were written by Plutarch, a Greek historian of the first century. 16. Phocion (402-817 B.C.), an Athenian statesman and general. 17. Anaxagoras (500-428 B.C.), a Greek philosopher. 26. Hudson, Henry. 27. Bering. Vitus (1680-1741), the Danish discoverer or the strait which bears his name. 28. Parry, Sir William (1790-1855), an English arctic navigator.

valor and disencumbering it of all aides. The Emperor held it impossible to make a perfect army, says Las Casas, "without abolishing our arms, magazines, commissaries, and carriages, until, in imitation of the Roman cus- 50 tom, the soldier should receive his supply of corn, grind it in his hand-mill, and bake his bread himself."

Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not. The same particle does not rise from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons who make up a nation today, die, and their experience dies 60 with them.

And so the reliance on property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of selfreliance. Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long that they have come to esteem what they call the soul's progress, namely, the religious, learned, and civil institutions, as guards of property, and they 70 deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is. But a cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property, ashamed of what he has, out of new respect for his being. Especially he hates what he has if he see that it is accidental, came to him by inherit- s0 ance, or gift, or crime; then he feels that it is not having; it does not belong to him, has no root in him, and merely lies there because no revolution or no robber takes it away. But that which a man is, does always by necessity acquire; and what the man acquires, is permanent and living property, which does not wait the beck of rulers, or mobs, or revolutions, or fire, or storm, 90 or bankruptcies, but perpetually re

47. Las Casas (1766-1842), a French historian, the companion of Napoleon at St. Helena.

news itself wherever the man is put. "Thy lot or portion of life," said the Caliph Ali, "is seeking after thee; therefore be at rest from seeking after it." Our dependence on these foreign goods leads us to our slavish respect for numbers. The political parties meet in numerous conventions; the greater the concourse and with each new up10 roar of announcement, The delegation from Essex! The Democrats from New Hampshire! The Whigs of Maine! the young patriot feels himself stronger than before by a new thousand of eyes and arms. In like manner the reformers summon conventions and vote and resolve in multitude. But not so, O friends! will the God deign to enter and inhabit you, 20 but by a method precisely the reverse. It is only as a man puts off from himself all external support and stands alone that I see him to be strong and to prevail. He is weaker by every recruit to his banner. Is not a man better than a town? Ask nothing of men, and, in the endless mutation, thou only firm column must presently

So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble with her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. But do thou leave as unlawful these winnings, and deal with Cause and Effect, the chancellors of God. In the Will work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance, and shalt always drag her after thee. A political victory, a rise of rents, the 50 recovery of your sick or the return of your absent friend, or some other quite external event raises your spirits and you think good days are preparing for Do not believe it. It can never be so. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

you.

Manners. 1. The first part of the motto is from Ben Jonson's Masque, Love Freed from Ignorance and Folly, the second from his Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue. State in one sentence the thought you expect to dominate the essay. 2. Why does Emerson put power first among the qualifications of a gentleman? Would people today agree with him?

3. What is the relation between the classes representing Power and Fashion? Are gentlemen to be found in the last named class? Does this paragraph contradict earlier paragraphs?

4. Are Emerson's statements about city and country true today?

5. How does Emerson account for the fact that fashionable circles are exclusive or aristocratic? Is it so in your town?

6. How does Emerson account for social ostracism? Does this explanation agree with your observation? Who are the loftier deities who see truly?

7. In the paragraph beginning, “As the first thing a man requires" (page 636, line 80) how does Emerson emphasize the importance of individuality? How is aloofness (in the paragraph beginning "The complement," page 637, line 84) etc., connected with individuality? Is it prized so highly in your community? In your school?

8. Does the paragraph on good taste or intelligence in manners seem to you more or less practical than the preceding discussion? Can it be applied to the manners in your school?

9. What is the part of benevolence in ideal

society? In our actual society? In your relations in the hall-way and classroom? Can you mention any crises which revealed "the existence and sovereignty" of truly courteous souls?

10. In his praise of women, what does each goddess stand for? What second class of American women does he describe? Are both types of women to be found in your community?

11. What humor does Emerson mingle with his advice to ambitious youth? Does his advice apply to young people today? What eloquence appears in the two closing paragraphs?

Self-Reliance. 1. From the three mottoes, one from the Latin, one from the Elizabethan period, and one by Emerson himself, frame a statement of what you judge will be the central thought of the essay. What tone or mood do you expect to see maintained in the essay? 2. State the reason for trusting yourself put forth in the first three paragraphs.

3. Do Emerson's remarks on the confidence of youth coincide with your experience and observation in school?

4. Emerson, as a public lecturer, was afraid of weakening the effect of his statements by introducing qualifications. For example, he says, "I will live then from the devil." Where else in the paragraph does he shock by unqualified assertion? What is the truth he wishes to present?

5. What instances does Emerson give of conformity to public opinion? Give other instances from adult life today; from school life.

6. What is Emerson's objection to consistency in one's actions? It would be interesting to examine the lives of each of the leaders of thought whom Emerson enumerates to discover how much opposition each had to meet to maintain his convictions consistently. Did all succeed? A separate pupil might be assigned to each name. Can you reconcile Emerson's objection to consistency with his declaration (page 649, line 87), "you shall be consistent in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour"?

7. What does Emerson mean by "Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age" (page 650, line 81)? There might be separate reports on several of the men cited by him, such as Julius Caesar, Martin Luther, George Fox, John Wesley. How is Emerson's meaning brought out in the allusions to Alfred the Great, Scanderbeg, and Gustavus Adolphus?

philosophical basis for it. To understand this explanation you must keep clearly in mind the meaning of the terms Emerson uses. By the "Self" he means man's share of divinity. "Spontaneity," "Instinct," "Intuition" are other terms for the Divinity or Reason which, he thinks, makes the whole universe one. Everything outside man's mind is one because it is the expression or symbol or embodiment of one Spirit. Every tree that grows, every bird that flies, is a visible form of this Soul. Thoughts that enter the mind are the same universal Reason flowing through each individual man. Consequently, truth is revealed directly to every man. He does not have to learn it from others. It flows into his "Self" from the all-embracing Spirit.

9. How does the philosophical belief just explained apply to the demand for (a) the isolation of each soul ("But now we are a mob," page 654) and (b) moral courage (“If we cannot at once," page 655, line 7)?

10. Can you apply what Emerson has to say about prayers to life today?

11. The sections (2 and 3) on traveling and imitation reveal Emerson's sturdy Americanism. State Emerson's argument clearly. State also, as persuasively as you can, the argument in favor of traveling and of following Greek or medieval models in our public buildings.

12. Emerson's belief that there is no progress has been held by many students of history. What evidence does he present? Emerson speaks of material progress; can you think of other types, such as social or political progress, which he seems to neglect? Compare page 627, last three paragraphs.

13. The last paragraph has been called "the final trumpet call of faith." What does the expression mean? Is the praise deserved?

14. Is any one of the leading ideas in this essay similar to the teaching of Wordsworth's "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality"?

15. Compare Emerson's insistence on individuality with Carlyle's criticism of the life of Burns.

16. Pupils who are familiar with Kipling's Kim, a story of a search after self, may show how the different efforts there described compare with Emerson's doctrine.

REVIEW

1. What has truth to do with making manners bad or good? Quote passages that bear this

out.

2. Can you show that self-reliance is the core of good manners? Again cite passages.