force of the argument for theism. If we strive rather to comprehend their position than to cast odium upon them for it, it may presently be seen to arise out of their mental habits. Like others, scientific men frame their conjectures, theories, and hypotheses. They deem it wrong to accept these as truth until they have verified them by actual observation and experiment. Under this test of experimental verification, some of their anticipations turn out true, some false. Perhaps cases of the latter kind are more frequent than those of the former sort. To avoid error, then, they sternly control all theories by observation and experiment. Hypotheses that seemed logically valid can get, in many instances, no confirmation from experiment. Such are deemed, at least, not proven. Now, the scientist cannot obtain any such verification of the hypothesis of a personal God. That theory, he may say, is good in its abstract logical statement, but, as we cannot verify it, it must stand simply unproven. The cases of Tyndall and Faraday may possibly suggest how only verification can come apart from personal revelation.

The question between such thinkers and Emerson is, whether the phenomena of matter, force, and intelligence are simply manifestations of a hidden and unapproachable energy, or whether we have in them, or through them, a direct cognition of God. In this instance, the scientists surely have the best of it. On Emerson's theory, they ought to have the very same immediate perception of Deity which he has. They say that this is not true. Yet he and they look upon the same vast array of phenomena of force, life, and thought in the universe. When they say that these are manifestations of a force, personal or impersonal, which does not fall under the direct cognizance of scientific methods, they hold a much more reasonable position than Emerson, with his claim that they give him the immediate cognition of Deity. For, let the appeal be taken directly to facts. When men experience joy and pain, they at once understand and distinguish such mental states. They are not found to confuse the conditions of mind known as doubt and certainty. The populations of a hemisphere turn their eyes on a clear night to some awful portent flaming in the midnight sky, and not one of them doubts that he really sees something which has substantive existence in the heavens. What man ever had any such direct cognition of God? What sense has disclosed Him? Do we know at any time that God is present in our minds as we often know that joy, grief, and anxiety are? Mankind has no

consciousness of such

D

immediate cognition of Deity. This is the nearly universal testimony. The only contradictory voices proceed from men whose theories compel the contradiction. Such obvious facts as these could not help enforcing themselves upon the notice of even so unsystematic a thinker as Emerson. They subject him at once to serious embarrassment and self-contradiction. Emerson had said: "Ineffable is the union of God and man in every act of the soul. The simplest person who worships God becomes God." Such words imply that men need only inspect their minds to see this marvellous union of the Divine and human. For it can only be ineffable as being a primary fact of the universe. Emerson sees clearly that some account of the origin of our direct knowledge of God will be insisted on, hence he says: "The inquiry leads us at once to that source, the essence at once of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, while all later teachings are tuitions." But the statement that we came into this transcendent wisdom by intuition has this inconvenience, that instantly every man becomes a judge of the validity of this account of the matter. The intuitions are no private affair. Their notes being self-evidence, necessity, and catholicity, what they report can be no secret. Having got the business to this pass, the next thing would have been the legitimate retort from the human race, We know nothing of this.

Hence, the sage who could not wander in the solitary forest without seeing the presence of God flaming from every bush around him, nor cross the common without the thrill of rapture which marks the incoming Deity, nor get out into the open fields without being an inlet for the rushing tides of infinite truth and life, could not fail to see that awkward questions were coming. Contradictions now set in. Man grows more passive in seeing God. It becomes a rare privilege in life. Emerson tells us that ideas catch us up into their heaven, fix our attention so fully that we do not try to make them our own; presently we fall to earth again, and report, as well as we are able, what we have seen. "As far as we can recall these ecstasies, we carry away in the ineffaceable memory the result, and all men and all ages confirm it. It is called truth." Here the power is assigned all men in all ages to confirm what the seer learns in his loftiest visions; this should be borne in mind, since it will assist us in finding out when Emerson sees truth, and when he dreams dreams. Observe, too, that the results are ineffaceable from memory.

There is another passage wherein the author has set himself

most seriously to the task of explaining how this intuition of God can occur. Emerson had probably come to see that all men were not likely to confirm his alleged intuitions, and hence his explanations grew less explicit :

And now the highest truth on this subject remains unsaid, probably cannot be said; for all that we can say is the dim, faroff remembering of the intuition. That thought by which we can now approach nearest to say it is this, When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discover the footsteps of any other; you shall not hear any name; the way, the thought, the good shall be wholly new. It shall exclude example and experience. You take the way from man, not to man. The soul raised above passion beholds identity and eternal causation, perceives the selfexistence of truth and right, and calms itself with knowing that all things go well. This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach on this as on every topic, the resolution of the all into the everblessed One.

This being Emerson's most patient and strenuous effort to explain to us the nature of that direct cognition of God given us in intuition, we intend to submit it to careful scrutiny. We are at once struck with the fact that we no longer have to do with the results of vision stamped ineffaceably upon the memory, but with dim and far-off recollections of the intuition. We notice, in no carping temper, but because it is a fact, that these recollections grow dull and remote just when the need of explanation is most urgent. This is mentioned also in excuse for the statement that the highest truth remains unsaid, and, probably, will remain unsaid. This course awakens some disappointment. So lordly had been Emerson's air as he trampled upon and demolished all hostile systems, and so loud had been the proclamation of the new dogma as sure to purify Church and State, and make the round earth sweet again after so many evil ages, that something unimaginably great and divine was expected, At first, we are somewhat puzzled to know whether this momentous truth is to remain unspoken, because Emerson can see but cannot formulate it, or because profane ears are unworthy of the communication. After so many hints and suggestions of wonderful things to come, it would be rather hard to be assured that we are unfit to possess them. With no small satisfaction, then, do we gather from the statement that all we can know is a dim and far-off remembering of the intuition, that the seer's mind is not dark with excess of light, but is struggling with an insuperable obscurity of thought or recollection. We are thankful to

know that the difficulty does not spring from the insufficiency of human speech to report his wisdom, but from the nebulous haze of memories, in which, like a bewildered traveller, our philosopher wanders with hesitating steps. We see, too, that this sublime intuition is no every-day affair. Though proclamation was once made that the doors of this shrine stand open night and day, and that the oracles of this truth cease never, now that we would enter and listen, it turns out no easy matter. Formal preparation alone can dispose us for this rare privilege; only thus can we hope for the sacred and awful faceto-face vision of the Absolute and Eternal. One must give over his usual thoughts, forsake his wonted haunts, see no footstep, hear no name, and exclude custom, example, and experience. The exaltation of the soul over passion is the final effort of preparation. The hour of open vision comes on! The first act of the grand intuition is when the soul intuits or "beholds identity and eternal causation." The second act is when the soul has the intuition or "perception of the self-existence of truth and right." The third act is the comforting intuition or perception "that all things go well." The fourth act is the intuition of "the resolution of all into the ever-blessed One."

The oracle falls silent, and reflection and memory ensue. It is vain for Emerson to talk about going away from men to secure "a thought, a good, wholly new," in these mysteries and raptures. Never was he nearer men, never more fully under their influence, than in this supreme act of intuition. Instead of being a transaction unrelated to time, space, men, and matter, logic or philosophy, these ecstatic trances almost date and locate themselves. They come after Plato and the Alexandrian philosophers; after the Christian mystics, Spinoza, Kant, and Schelling. Had the seer cast his dazed eyes about him, he might have seen the Musketaquid dreaming in its reeds on its lazy way to the sea, and glimpsed Harvard College in dim remoteness. His very words prove this. Does not the "perception of identity" show that Emerson remembered the "absolute unity" of Plotinus, and Schelling's doctrine of the "absolute identity" of the subjective and objective worlds? Was Grecian Plato far away when our Yankee scer described the self-existence of truth and right? Has the "knowing that all things go well" no savour of Tauler, Behmen, or George Fox? And surely the whole school of pantheists looked on with approving eyes as "the resolution of all into the ever-blessed One rose before Emerson's vision. Even the eternal causation which appears.

in the first act of intuition reminds us of Schelling's lapse or “fall of the absolute." Thus only what he took with him in this towering flight of ecstatic contemplation, could the sage bring back to report to the world. Not a new thought, word, symbol, or image, has been added to our intellectual stores through this much vaunted, immediate intuition of the Absolute. Only the incurable delusion of the seer appears a little stronger, as though such an opening of the religious sense were in reality attended with peril of madness. Still our disappointment is extreme. Surely we may well give vent to gentle complaint, when, instead of the promised direct contemplation of the invisible Eternal, we are forced to put up with a kaleidoscopic jumble of philosophical schools. But one soon wearies of running down the formless shadows which people the dense metaphysic fogs that overhang Concord. The line of argument now completed fully justifies the following conclusions:

Despite occasional appearances to the contrary, Emerson distinctly and unhesitatingly rejects the Christian conception of God, and His relation to the universe. It seems strange now to look back to times when warm disputes prevailed over this question, and men were denounced as lacking charity because they were clear-sighted enough to deny that Christianity and Pantheism are one. The careless or casual reader might still think his doctrines in the main Christian. Passages are scattered throughout his writings, which, without any intention to mislead on his part, appear to justify these opinions. Such passages are overruled by the general drift of his writings. The citations hitherto made in this essay abundantly prove the pantheistic quality of his views.

Emerson is distinguished from the great chieftains of his school by the literary form given to his speculations, by their unsystematic and fragmentary character, and by his resting all his conclusions on intuition as their only safe basis. In this respect there is a most striking contrast between him and Spinoza, Schelling, and Hegel. In this procedure the mystical quality of his mind came into full action. Were his rejection of the logical faculty justifiable, it would effectually impeach the methods and work of his most famous predecessors. It likewise puts him into sharp antagonism with all the spiritualistic philosophers of his time. They hold that our cognition of God is not self-evident, necessary, nor catholic; hence is not intuitive. Emerson does not, cannot, show the contrary.

The serious attempt of Emerson to explain the nature of