act in his memory, as I have already shown
in several instances. Another example is where he speaks of Quintus
Curtius, the historian, when he is thinking of Mettus Curtius, the
self-sacrificing equestrian. Little inaccuracies of this kind did not
concern him much; he was a wholesale dealer in illustrations, and could
not trouble himself about a trifling defect in this or that particular
article.

Emerson was a man who influenced others more than others influenced him.
Outside of his family connections, the personalities which can be most
easily traced in his own are those of Carlyle, Mr. Alcott, and Thoreau.
Carlyle's harsh virility could not be without its effect on his
valid, but sensitive nature. Alcott's psychological and physiological
speculations interested him as an idealist. Thoreau lent him a new set
of organs of sense of wonderful delicacy. Emerson looked at nature as a
poet, and his natural history, if left to himself, would have been as
vague as that of Polonius. But Thoreau had a pair of eyes which, like
those of the Indian deity, could see the smallest emmet on the blackest
stone in the darkest night,--or come nearer to seeing it than those of
most mortals. Emerson's long intimacy with him taught him to give an
outline to many natural objects which would have been poetic nebulae to
him but for this companionship. A nicer analysis would detect many
alien elements mixed with his individuality, but the family traits
predominated over all the external influences, and the personality stood
out distinct from the common family qualities. Mr. Whipple has well
said: "Some traits of his mind and character may be traced back to his
ancestors, but what doctrine of heredity can give us the genesis of his
genius? Indeed the safest course to pursue is to quote his own words,
and despairingly confess that it is the nature of genius 'to spring,
like the rainbow daughter of Wonder, from the invisible, to abolish the
past and refuse all history.'"

* * * * *

Emerson's place as a thinker is somewhat difficult to fix. He cannot
properly be called a psychologist. He made notes and even delivered
lectures on the natural history of the intellect; but they seem to have
been made up, according to his own statement, of hints and fragments
rather than of the results of systematic study. He was a man of
intuition, of insight, a seer, a poet, with a tendency to mysticism.
This tendency renders him so