tors. It is observed in
old couples, or in persons who have been house-inmates for a course of
years, that they grow alike: if they should live long enough we should
not be able to know them apart. Nature abhors such complaisances, which
threaten to melt the world into a lump, and hastens to break up such
maudlin agglutinations.' But Darby and Joan in the chimney-corner are
not types of mankind at large.

'Right ethics are central, and go from the soul outward. Gift is
contrary to the law of the universe. Serving others is serving myself. I
must absolve me to myself.' And what is myself? Let Fichte answer. 'I
affirm that in what we call the knowledge or the contemplation of
things, it is always ourselves that we know or contemplate: in every
sentiment of consciousness it is only modifications of ourselves that we
feel.' And again: 'The universe lives. From it arises a marvelous
harmony that resounds deliciously in the very depths of my heart. I live
in all that surrounds me. I recognize myself in every manifestation of
Nature, in the various forms of the beings about me, as a sunbeam that
sparkles in the million dew-drops that reflect it.... Within me Nature
is flesh, nerves, muscles; without, turf, plant, animal.'

Thus the semi-poetical Pantheism of the Bhagvat-Gita is reproduced,
beautiful, dreamy and mythical, but without the shadow of an addition.
Emerson presents to us the primeval faith in its imposing majesty and
terrible unity, but omits to mention its final winding up in the sacred
Maya or Illusion of the Hindoos. Though his early essays are brilliant
with many noble thoughts, the principles he advocates in them are
thoroughly unprogressive and unpractical. Plato is to him the
'exhaustive generalizer,' beyond whom it is folly to aspire, and by
whose stature he measures the nations. Boethius, Rabelais, Erasmus,
Bruno, are only brisk young men translating into the vernacular wittily
his good things. St. Augustine, Copernicus, Newton, Behmen, Swedenborg
also 'say after him.' Emerson either addresses men whose ignorance he
greatly exaggerates, or else the ideal men of some centuries hence. His
mission is to the Past or the Future, not to the Present. His theories,
fine and venerable, as they are as here expressed, will never save a
soul, and men are still convinced that one sharp, decisive action is
worth a thousand fine strategic points on paper. Yet he won an enviable
and wide reputation by these his early work