metimes obscure, and once in a while almost,
if not quite, unintelligible. We can, for this reason, understand why
the great lawyer turned him over to his daughters, and Dr. Walter
Channing complained that his lecture made his head ache. But it is not
always a writer's fault that he is not understood. Many persons have
poor heads for abstractions; and as for mystics, if they understand
themselves it is quite as much as can be expected. But that which is
mysticism to a dull listener may be the highest and most inspiring
imaginative clairvoyance to a brighter one. It is to be hoped that no
reader will take offence at the following anecdote, which may be found
under the title "Diogenes," in the work of his namesake, Diogenes
Laertius. I translate from the Latin version.

"Plato was talking about ideas, and spoke of _mensality_ and _cyathity_
[_tableity_, and _gobletity_]. 'I can see a table and a goblet,' said
the cynic, 'but I can see no such things as tableity and gobletity.'
'Quite so,' answered Plato, 'because you have the eyes to see a goblet
and a table with, but you have not the brains to understand tableity and
gobletity.'"

This anecdote may be profitably borne in mind in following Emerson into
the spheres of intuition and mystical contemplation.

Emerson was an idealist in the Platonic sense of the word, a
spiritualist as opposed to a materialist. He believes, he says, "as
the wise Spenser teaches," that the soul makes its own body. This, of
course, involves the doctrine of preexistence; a doctrine older than
Spenser, older than Plato or Pythagoras, having its cradle in India,
fighting its way down through Greek philosophers and Christian fathers
and German professors, to our own time, when it has found Pierre Leroux,
Edward Beecher, and Brigham Young among its numerous advocates. Each has
his fancies on the subject. The geography of an undiscovered country and
the soundings of an ocean that has never been sailed over may belong to
romance and poetry, but they do not belong to the realm of knowledge.

That the organ of the mind brings with it inherited aptitudes is a
simple matter of observation. That it inherits truths is a different
proposition. The eye does not bring landscapes into the world on its
retina,--why should the brain bring thoughts? Poetry settles such
questions very simply by saying it is so.

The poet in Emerson never accurately differentiated itself from the
philosopher. He speaks of Wordsw