, for it ignored
what Emerson's modesty forbade him to recognize,--the vast difference
between his own nature and bent and that of most men. When ordinary men
and women tried to imitate him the result was sometimes a lamentable
failure. But _he_ was genuine and lofty always. He failed in no homely
duty. The great trial and discipline to him was the alternation in
himself of the commonplace with the high. In individuals he was forever
disappointed, always looking for heroes, saints, and saviors, and seldom
finding them. His own work bore little visible fruit; his own teaching
fell for a long time on scornful ears. This perpetual disappointment he
took with perpetual constancy, always serene under disappointment,
gracious to the dull, indifferent to fame, careless of his own obscurity.
The typical man of letters has his own besetting sins,--neglect of homely
duties, self-consciousness, vanity,--from all of which Emerson was free.

The faults we allege against his philosophy--its scanty recognition of
sin and sorrow--were the natural incidents of his character and work.
They do not debase, though they sometimes limit, his influence for good;
his is always the speech of an angel; it strengthens, uplifts, gladdens
us. There are other angels to whom we must listen,--others, perhaps, who
speak more nearly the speech of our own experience,--but his music always
chords with theirs.

In Emerson, a soul inheriting centuries of Catholic and Puritan training,
until obedience was its instinct and purity its native atmosphere,--a
soul endowed with genius,--spread its wings and flew with the suddenness
and joy of a young bird's first flight. He saw good everywhere, beauty
everywhere, and was glad with the gladness of a seer and savior. He is
one of those of whom he speaks, as belonging to a better world which is
yet to come, and who touch us with a sense of a heaven on which we are
just beginning to enter.

Though he professes an idealist philosophy, and that way of thinking can
be traced in all his writings, he never makes of it a creed or dogma.
His children are welcome to worship in the church which has lost its
attraction for him. The skeptic may freely question immortality,--nay,
Emerson himself sometimes feels uncertainty. The personal God, and man's
personal immortality, which the idealist is wont to affirm as definite
certainties, Emerson will not explicitly avow or define. Universal good,
beauty, order,--these h