EMERSON 161 
deficiency here. You cannot have broad, massive 
effect, deep lights and shade, or a torrent of power, 
with such extreme refinement and condensation. 
The superphosphates cannot take the place of the 
coarser, bulkier fertilizers. Especially in poetry do 
we require pure thought to be well diluted with the 
human, emotional qualities. In the writing most 
precious to the race, how little is definition and in- 
tellectual formula, and how much is impulse, emo- 
tion, will, character, blood, chyle, etc.! We must 
have liquids and gases and solvents. We perhaps 
get more of them in Carlyle. Emerson’s page has 
more serene astral beauty than Carlyle’s, but not 
that intense blast-furnace heat that melts down the 
most obdurate facts and characters into something 
plastic and poetical. Emerson’s ideal is always the 
scholar, the man of books and ready wit; Carlyle’s 
hero is a riding or striding ruler, or a master worker 
in some active field. 
The antique mind no doubt affords the true type 
of health and wholeness in this respect. The Greek 
could see, and feel, and paint, and carve, and speak 
nothing but emotional man. In nature he saw no- 
thing but personality, — nothing but human or super- 
human qualities; to him the elements all took the 
human shape. Of that vague, spiritual, abstract 
something which we call Nature he had no concep- 
tion. He had no sentiment, properly speaking, but 
impulse and will-power. And the master minds 
of the world, in proportion to their strength, their 
spinal strength, have approximated to this type. 
