REVIEW.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1354, 17 June 1878, Page 3

REVIEW.

EMERSON’S SOCIAL AIMS*

[from the press.J There must be few readers who do not know, and knowing both like and enioy the writings of the American author, Ralph Waldo Emerson. To explain this liking to others may be a difficult task. His ideas are neither conceived nor arranged in strict logical order. As Mrs poyeer would say, his thoughts run away with him. But in spite of this drawback there is a beauty and a fitness and a. power in those thoughts which make them very pleasant and helpful reading. We have a real feast of reason and flow of soul. His immense reading —making him a walking encyclopcedia—sits lightly on him. It is used to delight, not to oppress, Tho glimpses of eminent men, tho sharply cut paradox, or the pithy pictorial phrase, seize, feed, and stimulate the imagination. Carlyle may have been Emerson’s model, but he certainly is not Ids master. Tho American has a way of his own. He thinks for himself, sometimes very boldly, and lie expresses himself in no manner but his o wn.

The two familiar volumes published by Bobu, are now supplemented by a third in which arc collected the letters, lectures, and essays of Emerson’s later years, while most of the old qualities are present in the new book, wo think wo notice more of the lucid order that was wanting in the earlier works. The branches of each topic are most distinctly apparent, The sentences too are not quite so short and choppy, after the manner of Macaulay, as they used to ue. it is impossibly to read wrbti comfort a long string of sentences made up on the average of eight words. Kant, as Do Quineey says, went to the opposite extreme, lie has sentences which can be measured by u foot-rule, and some of them run two feet eight by fix inches. Surely common sense suggests a judicious mingling of short and nmderah'y long sentences ahl thiii Mi. dimer jOh in hid hat volume has suepoorled in doing, it is said that no statesman has a finer imagination than our own Disraeli, and Ire himself has sdd that no man can be a true politician without t his gift. Emerson has an instructive chapter on this subject. “ Nothing,” lie says “ so marts a man as imaginative expressions., A figurative statement avreafco attention; and’ rt membored rod repealed. Ifow often has a phr,,jj : oi this kind made a reputation. Pythagoras’ golden sayings were such, and Socrates’ and Mirabeau’s, and Burke’s and Bonaparte’s. Genius thus makes the transfer from one part of Nature to a remote part, and betrays the rhymes and echoes that polo makes with pole, . . , - Mark the

Letters ami {Social Aims.” By Balph Waldo Emerson. (Jhatto and Winders, (Wood and Co., High street, Christchurch.)

delight of an audience in an imago. When some familiar truth or fact appears in a new dress, mounted as on a fine horse, equipped with a grand pair of ballooning wings, we cannot enough testify our surprise and pleasure There is no more welcome gift to men than a new symbol. That satiates, transports, converts them. _ They assimilate themselves to it—deal with it in all ways—and it will last a hundred years. Then comes a new genius and brings another. Thus the Greeks called the sea “ the tear of Saturn.” The return of the soul was described as a “ flask of water broken in the sea.” The aged Michael Angelo indicates his perpetual study as in boyhood —“ I carry my satchel still.” (p. 13.) “The poet discovers that what men value as substances have a higher value as symbols ; that nature is the immense shadow of man. A man’s action is only the picture book of his creed. Ho docs after what he believes. Your condition, your employment is the fable of you. The world is thoroughly anthropomorphized, as if it had passed through the body and mind of man, and it takes his mould and form. Indeed, good poetry is always personification, and heightens every special of force in nature by giving it human volition.” (p. 21) Similar thoughtful and penetrating passages are found in the chapters on Social Aims, Eloquence, Resources, The Comic, Originality, Progress, Inspiration, Greatness, and Immortality. In all these Mr Emerson is a powerful lay preacher. Every address or essay, like many of Huxley’s, is a lay sermon. His forte lies in the perception of analogies, and in unfolding and enforcing the minor moralities of life, and as the teacher and apostle of culture, Emerson is the Matthew Arnold of America.