s individual thought and feeling.

+21. View of Life.+ Every writer of originality and power takes a
fundamental view of life. He has settled convictions of some sort in
regard to the world in which he lives. Sometimes this view comes from
religion and sometimes from philosophy or science, though in any case
it is apt to be influenced by the writer's physical condition. German
philosophy has influenced many able writers,--Coleridge, Carlyle,
Emerson, and others in England and America; and at the present time the
theory of evolution is leaving a deep impress on literature.

Whence came this magnificent universe? What is the origin and destiny of
man? Is the general drift of human affairs upward or downward? These are
great fundamental questions, and the answers we give them lie at the
bottom of our thinking and give tone to our writing. The world is not
the same to the Christian theist and to the agnostic. Human life has a
deeper significance to the man who believes in the loving providence of
God than to the man who believes only in the existence of matter and
natural law. The man who believes in the presence and sovereignty of God
in all things looks hopefully to the future. He is optimistic rather
than pessimistic. The presence of an exuberant vitality reveals itself
in a cheerful, buoyant tone. Scott's exuberant spirit forms a pleasing
contrast with Carlyle's dyspeptic cynicism.

It is often highly important to understand the fundamental beliefs of a
writer. His works may be in a measure unintelligible till his standpoint
is fully understood. Sometimes his various writings are only an
expansion and application of one or two great fundamental principles.
The works of Herbert Spencer, for example, are in the main an
elaboration of the theory of evolution. Byron represented a skeptical
reaction against the conventional manners and beliefs of his day. The
essential feature of Emerson's work is found in a single sentence in
"Nature." "We learn," he says, "that the Highest is present to the soul
of man, that the dread universal Essence, which is not wisdom, or love,
or beauty, or power, but all in one, and each entirely, is that for
which all things exist, and that by which they are; that spirit creates;
that behind nature, throughout nature, spirit is present; that spirit is
one, and not compound; that spirit does not act upon us from without,
that is, in space and time, but spiritually, or through ourselves."

+22. Li