ly human than Carlyle's. How direct this
inspiration is is a matter of personal viewpoint, temperament, perhaps
inheritance. Augustine Birrell says he does not feel it--and he seems
not to even indirectly. Apparently "a non-sequacious author" can't
inspire him, for Emerson seems to him a "little thin and vague." Is
Emerson or the English climate to blame for this? He, Birrell, says a
really great author dissipates all fears as to his staying power.
(Though fears for our staying-power, not Emerson's, is what we would
like dissipated.) Besides, around a really great author, there are no
fears to dissipate. "A wise author never allows his reader's mind to be
at large," but Emerson is not a wise author. His essay on Prudence has
nothing to do with prudence, for to be wise and prudent he must put
explanation first, and let his substance dissolve because of it. "How
carefully," says Birrell again, "a really great author like Dr. Newman,
or M. Renan, explains to you what he is going to do, and how he is
going to do it." Personally we like the chance of having a hand in the
"explaining." We prefer to look at flowers, but not through a botany,
for it seems that if we look at them alone, we see a beauty of Nature's
poetry, a direct gift from the Divine, and if we look at botany alone,
we see the beauty of Nature's intellect, a direct gift of the
Divine--if we look at both together, we see nothing.

Thus it seems that Carlyle and Birrell would have it that courage and
humility have something to do with "explanation"--and that it is not "a
respect for all"--a faith in the power of "innate virtue" to perceive
by "relativeness rather than penetration"--that causes Emerson to
withhold explanation to a greater degree than many writers. Carlyle
asks for more utility, and Birrell for more inspiration. But we like to
believe that it is the height of Emerson's character, evidenced
especially in his courage and humility that shades its quality, rather
than that its virtue is less--that it is his height that will make him
more and more valuable and more and more within the reach of
all--whether it be by utility, inspiration, or other needs of the human
soul.

Cannot some of the most valuable kinds of utility and inspiration come
from humility in its highest and purest forms? For is not the truest
kind of humility a kind of glorified or transcendent democracy--the
practicing it rather than the talking it--the not-wanting to level all
finite