the paths of reason, and bathe your spirits. in light; learn to revere! learn to learn! Believe us, you shall not be "the less

for it.

meets

Let us move onward. The Essay on "Self-Reliance us next, and this is bolder still. "To believe your own thoughts, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,that is Genius." And happily this genius, we find, may be the lot of all, at least of every Emersonian: the fact is strongly urged upon them throughout these Essays. "Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense!" "But it will not do for us to be for ever quoting these eternal strummings upon one false note. Our readers must already see, that there is a unity of some kind in Mr. Emerson's multiplicities and contradictions.

But a very little more need be cited here: the precious fruits of this doctrine concerning individual infallibility must be seen to be estimated. Further on, then, we read: "No law can be sacred to me but that of my own nature: good or bad are but names, very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it." A convenient doctrine verily! We are ready to give Mr. Emerson credit for the best possible intentions; but perhaps his admirers will be disposed to admit, that such teaching is not quite safe.

We find it difficult to say, how infinitely petty this self-idolatry appears to us, as manifested in its fear of all influences, from without. Let us be ourselves! Let us live for whim, if we are only we! Let us not be swayed by fact or truth! Let us isolate our souls at any risk; and, then, we must be original, and, being infallible, must grow divine. And are there thousands of good people who have swallowed all this? Why do not they remember, that while they love God and man aright, nothing can deprive them of their individuality? Influenced they must indeed be, whether they like it or no, by a thousand foreign causes. They cannot grow up "all alone," and have a world to themselves! It is very hard, certainly; but God will guide us and control us; and even our fellow-creatures will sway us and form us, and in no slight degree govern us, however stern may be our resolve of independence. “Be a Non-conformist!" cries Mr. Emerson: so can you alone be great." Alas! we may protest on one or two special points; but, if we mean to live with our fellow-men, we must conform in all important particulars, or we shall find ourselves outlaws indeed.

66

After a strong fling on the part of our philosophic friend at "conformity and consistency," which he dooms as "ridiculous,"

and of which he devoutly hopes to have heard the last, we have much more repetition, and then some inflated pantheism or atheism, we prefer the plainer phrase. Much is prated respecting "Instinct" and "Intuition," on which it would be a pity to waste time and good paper. All things are to be wrought, not for the sake of good, absolute good, but to please the “ ego. We will not waste more words on this folly. Then prayers are denounced; all prayers, at least, save action: they are "a disease of will." Man himself is God, or at least the purest embodiment of the "over-soul." Prayer, therefore, is "meanness," nay, absurdity. "It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness." That is, it supposes man and God to be two, whereas they are only one. "Sancta simplicitas !" in people, who would stare at you grievously affronted, and would even have a right to be so, if you called them no Christians, and yet who admire this blasphemous rubbish. Ah, poor Emerson! can you believe this sad twaddle? or do you not happily vindicate here that character for inconsistency of which you are so proud? Have you really never had occasion to pray for a child, or wife, or for yourself? If not, how very great, or (in strictest confidence) how very small your soul must be! Are you really fearful, in your vanity, to acknowledge the Almighty providence above you, of which you are the unwilling servant, nay, the slave? For

66

Blindly the wicked work the will of Heaven!"

Not that we would believe you wicked; far from it! we think a human being could scarcely write with such weak audacity who realized his own theories. You must be better than you imagine, for.

The life of man is a life of grace: grace created, redeemed, sustains him. Didst thou make thyself, or thy world? Are not the evidences of infinite design around thee? Tell us not of an antiquated argument, when we utter the revelation of the human heart. Individuality is essential to every particle, to every form, in creation: a thing that is not individual is nothing. We may cheat ourselves with words, if we think fit; but A GOD, who could not love, who did not guide, who would not keep us, if we sought him, who did not in fine hear prayer, were no God at all, were nothing better than a non-entity. Either nature is divine and self-created, or there is One Supreme who permeates the visible universe, but to whom that universe is but as a viewless speck in a boundless ocean of glory. And to this All-Infinite nothing can be great, nothing small; He hears, He loves the humblest child of clay. But since, in truth, the human intellect might sink in the contemplation of this VOL. XII.-NO. XXIII.-SEPT. 1849.

L

amazing mystery, God has become visible in man, incarnate in the Lord Christ Jesus. This Revelation stands on a pinnacle, which all storms and tempests must assault in vain, lofty as the highest aspirations of the soul, yet broad and plain as truth. Unless we chose to believe our Lord and his Apostles (may we dare to write the word?) impostors, and the whole sacred volume one comprehensive falsehood, (and how, feeling its holiness, its sublimity, knowing the glorious self-sacrifice of its originators, can we attain to this Voltairean audacity?) what must remain for us? Nothing but to love, tremble, and adore!

We will not waste words on Mr. Emerson's most monstrous hypothesis, that "the Everlasting Son" proclaimed only the Godhead of all humanity when He announced his own. He must be

a narrow-minded fanatic indeed to his own vain and silly creed, who can persist in such an error as this. But Mr. Emerson's self-sufficiency never deserts him. "Men's creeds," he says, 66 are a disease of the intellect." He has said it! We had better let the subject rest, or this profound teacher will annihilate our simple faith.

And now the "teacher" digresses, and descends a little to anathematise "travelling." It is, he informs us, "a fool's paradise.”— "I seek the Vatican;" "I affect to be intoxicated," &c., but I am not intoxicated." We can well believe it. But are we really compelled to accept your standard, friend, because "a fact perceived by you becomes of necessity one for all ages?" If so, we wish you would cultivate more pleasant perceptions, and, on mature reflection, consent to think better even of travelling.

We have some more rather clever though paradoxical talk respecting Society's never advancing, but we cannot pause to examine it it is one of those few approaches to a half truth which this writer sometimes stumbles on, perhaps against his will.

Next, he treats of "Compensation:" his reprobation of a certain clergyman and his congregation is highly comic. The doctrine complained of is, the belief of mankind that another world is needed to set right the inequalities of this. Of course, there is compensation even here: in a certain sense, and in a degree, the good may be said to be the happy, and the evil the unhappy on our earth; but there is such a thing as callous triumphant sensuality, or as virtuous woe. Good hearts do break sometimes; bad hearts do rejoice, after their kind, up to the very hour of their departure. Who has not seen instances in his own individual experience? We will not follow Mr. Emerson's "arguments" on this head. We advance to another theme. When he tells us, then, the true doctrine of Omnipresence is, that God re-appears

with all his parts in every moss and cobweb, we can only repeat our former query, Can the man, who gives utterance to such wholesale rubbish, place any confidence in it himself? We trow

not.

In this Essay there are, however, some striking ideas, some few happy images, some self-evident indeed and very harmless truths, which are, nevertheless, utterances of the honest human understanding. The whole is one of those "talkifications" which make us hope that the man is better than his "philosophy."

Next, "Spiritual Laws" come on the tapis, and are discussed in the former strain: we find less and less of novel matter or treatment to record. Self-self-self-is the eternal cry, though it finds utterance in many illustrations, some happy and some unhappy. We do not altogether dislike a bold passage towards the conclusion, and, by way of fair play, we will quote it: "Let the great soul, incarnated in some woman's form, poor and sad and single, in some Doll or Jane, go out to service, and sweep chambers and scour floors, and its effulgent daybeams cannot be muffled or hid; but to sweep and scour will instantly appear supreme and beautiful actions, the top and radiance of human life, and all people will get mops and brooms, until, lo, suddenly the great soul has enshrined itself in some other form, and done some other deed, and that is now the flower and head of all living nature." There is truth in this, despite the grotesque exaggeration: how it agrees with the remainder of Mr. Emerson's system rests not with us to explain. It might have been Carlyle's.

Now comes a paper on 66 Love," which we rather like: but after an eloquent passage about lovers, which has some poetry in it, and much else that may, perhaps, by courtesy be counted "very clever," and to which we are anxious, as opponents, to give all due credit, the old troublesome notions show themselves, and suggestions are made that we should only love for the sake of what we get for self; that 66 our affections are but tents of a night," &c. But we will not pause for further cavils here, however just. We quote one pleasing passage, which recalls, as we fancy, something either in Washington Irving, or in Bulwer's "Eugene Aram," that book so striking and so artistic despite its partial immorality. rude village-boy teazes the girls about the school-house door; but to-day he comes running into the entry, and meets one fair child arranging her satchel: he holds her books, to help her, and instantly it seems to him as if she removed herself from him infinitely, and was a sacred precinct. Among the throng of girls he runs rudely enough, but one alone distances him and these two little neighbours, that were so close just now, have learnt to respect each other's personality." Oh! Mr. Emerson, if you

"The

would more frequently condescend to observe, and give up aspiring to teach! Be assured, nobody listens to your philosophic twaddle: nobody at least who has a mind, worthy of the name, an independent intellect such as you admire. But let us not be too crabbed

over this

paper.

The essay on "Friendship" is far more objectionable; inflated in language, and misty in sentiment. We cannot exactly make out what Mr. Emerson wants, whether his friends should be friends indeed, through weal and woe, or merely sympathisers, for he states the case both ways, backwards and forwards, twice or thrice, and we are not quite sure where he ultimately settles. There is all the difference in the world betwixt an alliance founded not only on mutual esteem, but also on mutual assurance of active and sincere regard, and a mere literary or æsthetic sympathy, which seems to be what this author aims at as his ideal of true friendship. These sympathies of taste or of imagination may be very pleasant things in their way, and are so; they are like some beautiful forestglade which we chance to encounter on our pilgrimage, where we rest for the noon-tide hour, but whence we start again with only a momentary regret; they make no deep impression on the heart. Compared with the substance of true friendship, they are only shadows, however fresh and green, and "kindly." When sympathy unites men on higher themes than those commanding a mere literary interest, (such a theme, for instance, as religion,) where both feel themselves working for a great good, the benefit of their fellow-men, or the glory of God, this communion of thought and feeling approaches the nature of true friendship, and, under favourable circumstances, may easily ripen into that noble bond. But we must not allow ourselves to be longer detained by Mr. Emerson's transcendental speculations.-Some part of what he says on "Prudence" seems sufficiently prudent, as far as we can make out a definite intention, and, indeed, there are various happy passages in this little essay which might repay perusal. Prudence, we may venture to remark, is little known to Mr. Emerson, though he discourses so learnedly on the theme. Were he gifted with that prudence, of which modesty seems an essential element, he would scarcely have perpetrated the majority of the essays before us, and we should therefore not have had to hold him up as a sad warning against the very error he condemns (Imprudence)

"To point his moral, and adorn his tale."

"Heroism" is, of course, another variation of the old strain "be thyself, and therefore all that is wonderful and perfect!" It is chiefly remarkable for its characteristic praises