1882.] 4:99 [Ames. 



vine, along with a clear perception of religious symbolism in all facts, that 

 made traditional outward observances at first a matter of indifference, and 

 then of oppressive unreality. In three years and a half, his pastoral rela- 

 tions were amicably dissolved, because he had reached conclusions es- 

 sentially like those of the Society of Friends concerning the valueless- 

 ness of the ordinances. 



The strain of these experiences was severe ; but the liberty which now 

 came to him was utilized to the advantage of mind and body by a voyage 

 to Europe, which brought him to personal acquaintance with the eminent 

 men whose genius had already lighted his way. On his return he estab- 

 lished himself for life in the quiet rural village of Concord, and entered 

 on a ministry for which no pulpit then seemed large or free enough — 

 a ministry which, running through forty-eight years, to his death, grad- 

 ually found through press and lecture platform its own fit audience ; 

 small at first, but, as the event has proved, sufficient to put him in vital 

 connection with the mind of the world. 



Carlyle, whose wine had not yet turned to vinegar, was then putting 

 forth his testimony in England" with a limited hearing. He, as well as 

 the American public, was indebted to Emerson for the reproduction of 

 "Sartor Resartus " and a volume of "Critical and Miscellaneous Es- 

 says" on this side the water. Coleridge and Carlyle had inoculated the 

 English mind with the nobler German literature ; Emerson was one of 

 those through whom it passed to America ; and to many an ingenuous 

 youth it was like the discovery of new worlds. 



But no imported mental fertilizer has proved more effective than the 

 native product. Emerson himself has probably influenced our ways of 

 thought and feeling and expression quite as much as any man of the cen- 

 tury ; and all this without the arts or qualities of popularity, and even in 

 spite of multitudinous protests. The semi-mystic qualitj^ of his thought 

 predisposed him to sj^mpathize with the subtle spirituality of Plato and 

 the great Germans; and the !^ew England mind, weary of the old me- 

 chanical theories of creation and revelation, was ripe for revolution. 

 Transcendentalism, which is a wholesale believing, came in good time to 

 save us from wholesale denials. Mr. Geo. W. Cooke describes this move- 

 ment as "an attempt of the human mind to recover a natural and assured 

 faith in moral things." This faith finds due warrant in our direct original 

 perception of spiritual realities, bj^ a power which transcends the senses — 

 a power which is proper to all men, and which is our share in that univer- 

 sal and absolute Reason out of which flows the whole order of the uni- 



The practical applications of such a philosophy are endless. Creation 

 being an expression of the Infinite Intelligence, poetry finds its divine 

 justification and vises into a hymn. Nature appears as a mirror of mind, 

 and all her laws and secrets correspond to our clearest inward discoveries, 

 so that science becomes a parable. And as reason is one thing in all men, 



PROC. AJIER. PHILOS. SOC. XX. 112. 3k. PRIXTEO DECEMBER 38, 1883. 



