would effloresce into mere rhetoric. He shaped an ideal for
the commonest life, he proposed an object to the humblest seeker after
truth. Look for beauty in the world around you, he said, and you shall
see it everywhere. Look within, with pure eyes and simple trust, and you
shall find the Deity mirrored in your own soul. Trust yourself because
you trust the voice of God in your inmost consciousness.
There are living organisms so transparent that we can see their hearts
beating and their blood flowing through their glassy tissues. So
transparent was the life of Emerson; so clearly did the true nature of
the man show through it. What he taught others to be, he was himself.
His deep and sweet humanity won him love and reverence everywhere
among those whose natures were capable of responding to the highest
manifestations of character. Here and there a narrow-eyed sectary may
have avoided or spoken ill of him; but if He who knew what was in man
had wandered from door to door in New England as of old in Palestine, we
can well believe that one of the thresholds which "those blessed feet"
would have crossed, to hallow and receive its welcome, would have been
that of the lovely and quiet home of Emerson.
INDEX.
[For many references, not found elsewhere, see under the general
headings of _Emerson's Books, Essays, Poems_.]
Abbott, Josiah Gardiner, a pupil of Emerson, 49, 50.
Academic Races, 2, 3. (See _Heredity_.)
Action, subordinate, 112.
Adams, John, old age, 261.
Adams, Samuel, Harvard debate, 115.
Addison, Joseph, classic, 416.
Advertiser, The, Emerson's interest in, 348.
Aeolian Harp, his model, 329, 340.
(See _Emerson's Poems_,--Harp.)
Aeschylus, tragedies, 253. (See _Greek_.)
Agassiz, Louis:
Saturday Club, 222;
companionship, 403.
Agriculture:
in Anthology, 30;
attacked, 190;
not Emerson's field, 255, 256, 365.
Akenside, Mark, allusion, 16.
Alchemy, adepts, 260, 261.
Alcott, A. Bronson:
hearing Emerson, 66;
speculations, 86;
an idealist, 150;
The Dial, 159;
sonnet, 355;
quoted, 373;
personality traceable, 389.
Alcott, Louisa M., funeral bouquet, 351.
Alexander the Great:
allusion, 184;
mountain likeness, 322.
Alfred the Great, 220, 306.
Allston, Washington, unfinished picture, 334.
(See _Pictures_.)
Ambition, treated in Anthology, 30.
America:
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