an school of
philosophy which taught that pleasure should be man's chief aim and
that the highest pleasure is freedom.]

[Footnote 647: Dante. (See note 258.)]

[Footnote 648: Master of the revels, etc. Emerson always expressed
thankfulness for "the spirit of joy which Shakespeare had shed over
the universe." See what Carlyle says in _The Hero as Poet_, about
Shakespeare's "mirthfulness and love of laughter."]

[Footnote 649: Koran. The Sacred book of the Mohammedans.]

[Footnote 650: Twelfth Night, etc. The names of three bright, merry,
or serene plays by Shakespeare.]

[Footnote 651: Egyptian verdict. Emerson used Egyptian probably in the
sense of "gipsy." He compares such opinions to the fortunes told by
the gipsies.]

[Footnote 652: Tasso. An Italian poet of the sixteenth century.]

[Footnote 653: Cervantes. A Spanish poet and romancer of the sixteenth
century, the author of _Don Quixote_.]

[Footnote 654: Israelite. Such Hebrew prophets as Isaiah and
Jeremiah.]

[Footnote 655: German. Such as Luther.]

[Footnote 656: Swede. Such as Swedenborg, the mystic philosopher of
the eighteenth century of whom Emerson had already written in
_Representative Men_.]

[Footnote 657: A pilgrim's progress. As described by John Bunyan, the
English writer, in his famous _Pilgrim's Progress_.]

[Footnote 658: Doleful histories of Adam's fall, etc. The subject of
_Paradise Lost,_ the great poem by John Milton.]

[Footnote 659: With doomsdays and purgatorial, etc. As described by
Dante in his _Divine Commedia_, an epic about hell, purgatory, and
paradise.]

PRUDENCE

[Footnote 660: The essay on _Prudence_ was given as a lecture in
the course on _Human Culture_, in the winter of 1837-8. It was
published in the first series of _Essays_, which appeared in 1841.]

[Footnote 661: Lubricity. The word means literally the state or
quality of being slippery; Emerson uses it several times, in its
derived sense of "instability."]

[Footnote 662: Love and Friendship. The subjects of the two essays
preceding _Prudence_, in the volume of 1841.]

[Footnote 663: The world is filled with the proverbs, etc. Compare
with this passage Emerson's words in _Compensation_ on "the flights of
proverbs, whose teaching is as true and as omnipresent as that of
birds and flies."]

[Footnote 664: A good wheel or pin. That is, a part of a machine.]

[Footnote 665: The law of polarity. Having two opposite poles, the
properties of the one o