"The

old." "Who can set bounds to the possibilities of man?" "Man has access to the entire mind of the Creator, is himself the creator in the finite." reason why the world lacks unity and lies broken and in heaps, is because man is disunited with himself."

"When a faithful thinker, resolute to detach every object from personal relations, and see it in the light of thought, shall, at the same time, kindle science with the fire of the holiest affections; then will God go forth anew into the creation." "Nature is not fixed, but fluid. Spirit alters, moulds, makes it. The immobility or bruteness of Nature is the absence of spirit; to pure spirit it is fluid, it is volatile, it is obedient." "All good is eternally reproductive. The beauty of Nature reforms itself in the mind, and not for barren contemplation but for new creation."

This, Emerson's first work, ends with these great words:- 66 The kingdom of man over Nature, which cometh not with observation, a dominion such as now is beyond his dream of God, — he shall enter without more wonder than the blind man feels who is gradually restored to perfect sight." Forty years later the prophecy rose again when Clifford said: "Those who can read the signs of the times read in them that the kingdom of Man is at hand.”

A

XVI.

EVOLUTION.

CCORDING to an American myth, when Emerson visited Egypt the Sphinx said to him, "You're another!"

The enigmatic element, of which many complained in Emerson's earliest writings, is now explicable enough. He spoke from a generalisation at once poetic and scientific, which as yet had nothing corresponding to it in the popular mind. He could not prove it, but it was perfectly clear to him that the method of nature is evolution, and it organised the basis of his every statement. Thus in August, 1841, addressing the Literary Society of Waterville College, occur such passages as these: "The wholeness we admire in the order of the world is the result of infinite distribution. Its smoothness is the smoothness of the pitch of the cataract. Its permanence is a perpetual inchoation. Every natural fact is an emanation, and that from which it emanates is an emanation also, and from every emanation is a new emanation." "We can point nowhere to anything final; but tendency appears on all hands planet, system, constellation, total Nature, is growing like a field of maize in July; is becoming somewhat else; is in rapid metamorphosis. The em

bryo does not more strive to be man than yonder burr of light we call a nebula tends to be a ring, a comet, a globe, and parent of new stars." "How silent, how spacious, what room for all, yet without place to insert an atom, in graceful succession, in equal fulness, in balanced beauty, the dance of the hours goes forward still. Like an odour of incense, like a strain of music, like a sleep, it is inexact and boundless. It will not be dissected, nor unravelled, nor shewn. Away, profane philosopher! seekest thou in nature the cause? This refers to that, and that to the next, and the next to the third, and everything refers. Thou must ask in another mood, thou must feel it and love it, thou must behold it in a spirit as grand as that by which it exists, ere thou canst know the law. Known it will not be, but gladly beloved and enjoyed." "There is no revolt in all the kingdoms from the commonweal; no detachment of an individual. Hence the catholic character which makes every leaf an exponent of the world." "The termination of the world in a man appears to be the last victory of intelligence." "See the play of thoughts! what nimble gigantic creatures are these! what saurians, what palæotheria, shall be named with these agile movers." How simple these thoughts have become to the post-Darwinian world!

It is notable that simultaneously with "The Vestiges of Creation" in England, namely, in 1844, Emerson's second essay on "Nature" appeared. It is a prophetic hymn to the ascending star whose light was already leading wise men towards the truth, taking form in exact science, whereof the "Vestiges" was a halfclad forerunner. "Let us no longer omit our homage

to the Efficient Nature, natura naturans, the quick cause before which all forms flee as the driven snows, itself secret, its works driven before it in flocks and multitudes (as the ancients represented nature by Proteus, a shepherd), and in undescribable variety. It publishes itself in creatures, reaching from particles and specula, through transformation on transformation, to the highest symmetries, arriving at consummate results without shock or leap. A little heat, that is, a little motion, is all that differences the bald, dazzling white and deadly poles of the earth from the prolific tropical climates. All changes pass without violence, by reason of the two cardinal conditions of boundless space and boundless time. Geology has initiated us into the secularity of nature, and taught us to disuse our dame-school measures and exchange our Mosaic and Ptolemaic schemes for her large style. We knew nothing rightly for want of perspective. Now we learn what patient periods must round themselves before the rock is formed, then before the rock is broken, and the first lichen race has disintegrated the thinnest external plate into soil, and opened the door for the remote flora, fauna, Ceres and Pomona, to come in. How far off yet is the trilobite! how far the quadruped! how inconceivably remote is man! All duly arrive, and then race after race of men. It is a long way from granite to the oyster; farther yet to Plato and the preaching of the immortality of the soul. Yet all must come as surely as the atom has two sides."

In this passage the "Spirit" of Emerson's first work ("Nature," published eight years before) re-appears as

the Natura Naturans; but this again, paraphrased as "Efficient Nature," "quick (living) cause," is an intellectual Declaration of Independence. "Man," he says, "carries the world in his head, the whole astronomy and chemistry suspended in a thought. Because the history of nature is charactered in his brain, therefore is he the prophet and discoverer of her secrets. Every known fact in natural science was divined by the presentiment of somebody before it was actually verified."

The publication of "The Vestiges of Creation" had the good effect of popularising the idea of evolution, and the bad effect of stating the facts so inaccurately that men of science were prejudiced against the general hypothesis. The panic of the pulpit also led some to commit themselves against a theory so crudely stated. The book did not advance the theory so far as Emerson had already gone, for it still supposed "leaps" in the development of organisation. But Emerson would admit no shock or leap." He was also repelled by the mechanic Theos which the author of the "Vestiges" imported. The old phrases "Supreme Architect,"

Almighty," "Providence," had become fossil to him whose deity had become subjective. However, he once told me that he thought the book had done good service in diffusing many valuable discoveries and generalisations of the German and French savants; and while it was trampled on by preachers and professors, he affirmed its main principle to be true. One of his steadfast warnings was that in his essay on "Circles' -printed three years before the "Vestiges:" "Fear not the new generalisation. Does the fact look crass