hat it contained, and a good deal more, doubtless, besides; he was
the man of genius of the moment; he was the Transcendentalist _par
excellence_. Emerson expressed, before all things, as was extremely
natural at the hour and in the place, the value and importance of the
individual, the duty of making the most of one's self, of living by
one's own personal light and carrying out one's own disposition. He
reflected with beautiful irony upon the exquisite impudence of those
institutions which claim to have appropriated the truth and to dole it
out, in proportionate morsels, in exchange for a subscription. He
talked about the beauty and dignity of life, and about every one who
is born into the world being born to the whole, having an interest and
a stake in the whole. He said "all that is clearly due to-day is not
to lie," and a great many other things which it would be still easier
to present in a ridiculous light. He insisted upon sincerity and
independence and spontaneity, upon acting in harmony with one's
nature, and not conforming and compromising for the sake of being more
comfortable. He urged that a man should await his call, his finding
the thing to do which he should really believe in doing, and not be
urged by the world's opinion to do simply the world's work. "If no
call should come for years, for centuries, then I know that the want
of the Universe is the attestation of faith by my abstinence.... If I
cannot work, at least I need not lie." The doctrine of the supremacy
of the individual to himself, of his originality and, as regards his
own character, _unique_ quality, must have had a great charm for
people living in a society in which introspection, thanks to the want
of other entertainment, played almost the part of a social resource.

In the United States, in those days, there were no great things to
look out at (save forests and rivers); life was not in the least
spectacular; society was not brilliant; the country was given up to a
great material prosperity, a homely _bourgeois_ activity, a diffusion
of primary education and the common luxuries. There was therefore,
among the cultivated classes, much relish for the utterances of a
writer who would help one to take a picturesque view of one's internal
possibilities, and to find in the landscape of the soul all sorts of
fine sunrise and moonlight effects. "Meantime, while the doors of the
temple stand open, night and day, before every man, and the oracles of