biographer, there is little but commendation for Mr.
Weiss. With admirable clearness and strength he rings out the full tone
of thought and belief among that earnest school of thinkers and doers of
which Theodore Parker was the representative. Full as are these goodly
octavos with the best legacies of him whose life is written, we have
returned no less frequently to the deeply reflective arguments and acute
criticisms of Mr. Weiss. Let the keen discrimination of a passage taken
almost at random justify us, if it may.

"Some people say that they are not indebted to Mr. Parker for a single
thought. The word 'thought' is so loosely used that a definition of
terms must precede our estimate of Mr. Parker's suggestiveness and
originality. Men who are kept by a commonplace-book go about raking
everywhere for glittering scraps, which they carry home to be sorted in
their aesthetic junk-shop. Any portable bit that strikes the fancy is a
thought. There are literary rag-pickers of every degree of ability; and
a great deal of judgment can be shown in finding the scrap or nail you
want in a heap of rubbish. Quotable matter is generally considered to be
strongly veined with thought. Some people estimate a writer according to
the number of apt sentences imbedded in his work. But who is judge of
aptness itself? What is apt for an epigram is not apt for a revolution:
the shock of a witty antithesis is related to the healthy stimulus of
creative thinking, as a small electrical battery to the terrestrial
currents. Well-built rhetorical climaxes, sharp and sudden contrasts,
Poor Richard's common-sense, a page boiled down to a sentence, a fresh
simile from Nature, a subtle mood projected upon Nature, a swift
controversial retort, all these things are called thoughts. The pleasure
in them is so great, that one fancies they leave him in their debt. That
depends upon one's standard of indebtedness. Now a penny-a-liner is
indebted to a single phrase which furnishes his column; a clergyman near
Saturday night seizes with rapture the clue of a fine simile which spins
into a 'beautiful sermon'; for the material of his verses a rhymester is
'indebted' to an anecdote or incident. In a higher degree all kinds of
literary work are indebted to that commerce of ideas between the minds
of all nations, which fit up interiors more comfortably, and upholster
them better than before. And everything that gets into circulation is
called a thought, be it a disco