orth's Ode on the Intimations of
Immortality as the high-water mark of the poetry of this century. It
sometimes seems as if he had accepted the lofty rhapsodies of this noble
Ode as working truths.

"Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home."

In accordance with this statement of a divine inheritance from a
preexisting state, the poet addresses the infant:--

"Mighty prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths do rest
Which we are toiling all our lives to find."--

These are beautiful fancies, but the philosopher will naturally ask the
poet what are the truths which the child has lost between its cradle and
the age of eight years, at which Wordsworth finds the little girl of
whom he speaks in the lines,--

"A simple child--
That lightly draws its breath
And feels its life in every limb,--
What should it know of death?"

What should it, sure enough, or of any other of those great truths which
Time with its lessons, and the hardening of the pulpy brain can alone
render appreciable to the consciousness? Undoubtedly every brain has its
own set of moulds ready to shape all material of thought into its own
individual set of patterns. If the mind comes into consciousness with a
good set of moulds derived by "traduction," as Dryden called it, from a
good ancestry, it may be all very well to give the counsel to the youth
to plant himself on his instincts. But the individual to whom this
counsel is given probably has dangerous as well as wholesome instincts.
He has also a great deal besides the instincts to be considered. His
instincts are mixed up with innumerable acquired prejudices, erroneous
conclusions, deceptive experiences, partial truths, one-sided
tendencies. The clearest insight will often find it hard to decide what
is the real instinct, and whether the instinct itself is, in theological
language, from God or the devil. That which was a safe guide for Emerson
might not work well with Lacenaire or Jesse Pomeroy. The cloud of glory
which the babe brings with it into the world is a good set of instincts,
which dispose it to accept moral and intellectual truths,--not the
truths themselves. And too many children come into life trailing after
them clouds which are anything but clouds of glory.

It may well be imagined that when Emerson proclaimed the new
doctrine,--new to his youn