est generalizer with all the particulars deducible from his genius. Plato is philosophy, and philosophy Platoat once the glory and the shame of mankind; thus neither Saxon nor Roman have availed to add any idea to his categories. No wife, no children has he; and the thinkers of all civilized nations are his posterity and are tinged with his mind. How many great men Nature is incessantly sending up out of night to be his men— Platonists! The Alexandrians, a constellation of genius; the Elizabethans, not less, Sir Thomas More, Henry More, John Hales, John Smith, Francis Bacon, Jeremy Taylor, Ralph Cudworth, Sydenham, Thomas Taylor, Marcilius Ficinus, and Picus Mirandola. Calvinism is in his Phado; Christianity is in it. Mohammedanism draws all its philosophy, in its hand-book of morals-the Akhlak-y-Jalaly—from him. Mysticism finds in Plato all its texts. The citizen of a town in Greece is no villager or patriot. An Englishman reads, and says, "How English!" A German "How Teutonic!" an Italian, "How Roman and how Greek!" As they say that Helen of Argos had that universal beauty that everybody felt related to her, so Plato seems, to a reader in New England, an American genius. His broad humanity transcends all sectional lines.-Representative Men. SWEDENBORG. His books have no melody, no emotion, no humor, no relief to the dead prosaic level. The entire want of poetry in so transcendent a mind betokens the disease; and, like a hoarse voice in a beautiful person, is a kind of warning. I think sometimes he will not be read longer. His great name will turn a sentence. His books have become a monument. His laurel is so largely mixed with cypress, a charnel-breath so mingles with the temple-incense, that boys and maidens will shun the spot. Yet in this immolation of genius and fame at the shrine of conscience is a merit sublime beyond praise. He lived to purpose, he gave a verdict. He elected Goodness as the clew to which the soul must cling in all this labyrinth of Nature. I think of him as of some transmigrating votary of Indian legend, who says, "Though I be dog, or jackal, or pismire in the last rudiments of nature, under what integument of ferocity, I cleave to the right as a sure ladder that leads up to man and to God. Swedenborg has rendered a double service to mankind, which is now only beginning to be known. By the science of experiment and use he made his first steps. He observed and published the laws of Nature, and, ascending by just degrees from events to their summits and causes, he was fired with piety at the harmonies he felt, and abandoned himself to their joys and worship. This was his first service. If the glory was too bright for his eyes to bear, if he staggered under the trance of delight, the more excellent is the spectacle he saw-the realities of Being which beam and blaze through him, and which no infirmities of the prophet are suffered to obscure; and he renders a second passive service to men not less than the first -perhaps in the great circle of being, and in the retribution of spiritual Nature, not less glorious or less. beautiful to himself.-Representative Men. The volumes entitled Conduct of Life, Society and Solitude, Letters and Social Aims are made up of separate papers, with no special relation to each other; any one of them might as well have been placed in any other of the volumes. They may be properly considered as so many new series of the Essays. IMMORTALITY. Of Immortality, the soul when well employed, is incurious. It is so well, that it is sure it will be well. It asks no questions of the Supreme Power. The son of Antiochus asked his father when he would join battle: "Dost thou fear," replied the King, "that thou only in all the army wilt not hear the trumpet?" It is a high thing to confide that, if it is best that we should live, we shall live. It is a higher thing to have this conviction than to have the lease of indefinite centuries and millenniums and æons. Higher than the question of our duration is the question of our deserving. Immortality will come to such as are fit for it; and he who would be a great soul in the future must be a great soul now. It is a doctrine too grand to rest on any legend—that is, on any man's experience but our own. It must be proved, if at all, from our own activity and designs, which imply an interminable future for their display.The Conduct of Life. ILLUSIONS THEMSELVES ILLUSIONARY. There is no chance and no anarchy in the universe. Every god is there sitting in his sphere. The young mortal enters the hall of the firmament; there he is alone with them alone; they pouring on him benedictions and gifts, and beckoning up to their thrones. On the instant, and incessantly, fall snowstorms of illusions. He fancies himself in a vast crowd, which sways this way and that, and whose movements and doings he must obey; he fancies himself poor, orphaned, insignificant. The mad crowd drives him hither and thither, now furiously commanding this thing to be done, now that. What is he that he should resist their will, and think on himself? Every moment new changes and new showers of deceptions to baffle and distract him. And when, by-and-by, for an instant, the air clears and the cloud lifts a little, there are the gods still sitting around him on their thrones-they alone with him alone.-The Conduct of Life. A SERENE OLD AGE. When life has been well-spent, age is a loss which it can well spare-muscular strength, organic instincts, gross bulk and works that belong to these. But the central wisdom, which was old in infancy, is young in fourscore years; and dropping off obstructions, leaves, in happy subjects, the mind purified and wise. I have heard that whenever the name of man is mentioned, the doctrine of immortality is announced; it cleaves to the constitution. The mode of it baffles our wit, and the whisper comes to us from the other side. But the inference from the intellect, hiving knowledge, hiving skill-at the end of life just ready to be born-affirms the inspirations of affection and of the moral sentiments. -Society and Solitude. THE ULTIMATE GREATNESS. Men are ennobled by morals and by intellect; but these two elements know each other, and always beckon to each other, until at last they meet in the man, if he is to be truly great. The man who sells you a lamp shows you that the flame of oil, which contented you before, casts a strong shade in the path of the petroleum which he lights behind it; and this again casts a shadow in the path of the electric light. So does intellect when brought into the presence of character. Character puts out that light. We are thus forced to express our instinct of the truth by expressing the failure of experiences. The man whom we have not seen, in whom no regard of self degraded the explorer of the laws; who by governing himself governed others; sportive in manner, but inexorable in act; who sees longevity in his cause; whose aim is always distinct to him; who carries fate in his eye-he it is whom we seek, encouraged in every good hour that here or hereafter he shall be found.-Letters and Social Aims. Considering that Emerson wrote verse at intervals from boyhood up to near the close of his life, his poetical productions are of no considerable bulk. The longest of these does not exceed six hundred lines, and few of them have more than fifty. The little poem Brahma presents a Buddhist view of universal existence. BRAHMA. If the red slayer think he slays, Far or forgot to me is near: Shadow and sunlight are the same; And one to me are shame and fame. They reckon ill who leave me out; And I the hymn the Brahmin sings. Find me, and turn thy back on heaven. Some of Emerson's most characteristic poems are prefixed by way of mottoes to one or another of his Essays: The Lords of Life, the Lords of Life, I saw them pass In their own guise, Like and unlike, Portly and grim, Use and Surprise, Succession swift and spectral Wrong, Omnipresent without a name. Among the legs of his guardians tall, To-morrow they will wear another face : -Essays. This is he who felled by foes, Sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows: |