1883.] Mr. Conway on "Emerson and his Views of Nature" 217 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, February 9, 1883. 



Henry Pollock, Esq. Manager, in the Chair. 



MoNcuRE D. Conway, Esq. M.A. 



" Emerson and his Views of Nature." 



When the statue of Carlyle was unveiled, the speaker on that occa- 

 sion (Dr. Tyndall) expressed the hope that some day a memorial of 

 Ealph Waldo Emerson might be placed beside it. The long friend- 

 ship between those men, which defied dissimilarities and differences 

 to sunder their hearts, was due to their profound moral relationship. 

 They were children of the Human Age of Literature. Indeed Lite- 

 rature is hardly a large enough word to describe the works of men 

 whose words were " half-battles " and victories. The artist of the 

 Carlyle memorial has significantly piled Carlyle's books beneath his 

 chair. For Emerson, however, the intellectual and poetic life and 

 work were precisely those which circumstances made the most prac- 

 tical and humane. Although, by moral and humane aims, the 

 descendant of the Puritans and the descendant of the Covenanters 

 were brothers, the chief influence on the intellect of Emerson was 

 rather that of Wordsworth, whose poetry raised in him the vision of 

 a loving life with nature. When Emerson visited Eydal Mount in 

 1833, Wordsworth warmly advised him against too much intel- 

 lectual culture. He may have recognised the fact that Emerson 

 was at that time chiefly interested in the discussions which had 

 followed the controversy between Geoffrey St. Hilaire and Cuvier. 

 Of all that literature which prepared the way for Charles Darwin's 

 great generalisation, in French, German, and English, Emerson 

 was an assiduous student. Perhaps his first lecture was one given 

 in the Winter of 1833-34, on ' Tlie Relation of Man to the Globe.' 

 It has not been published or reported, but Dr. Emerson has explored 

 it for me, and it contains passages showing elation at meeting the 

 dawn of a great truth. " By the study of the globe in very recent 

 times we have become acquainted with a fact the most surprising — 

 I may say, the most sublime — to wit, that man, who stands in the 

 globe so proud and powerful, is no upstart in the creation, but has been 

 prophesied in nature for a thousand, thousand ages before he appeared ; 

 that from times incalculably remote there has been a progressive 



