EMERSON 169 
transmitted many times. Power is born with a 
man, and is always first hand, but culture, genius, 
noble instincts, gentle manners, etc., or the easy 
capacity for these things, may be, and to a greater 
or lesser extent are, the contribution of the past. 
Emerson’s culture is radical and ante-natal, and 
never fails him. The virtues of all those New Eng- 
land ministers and all those tomes of sermons are 
in this casket. One fears sometimes that he has 
been too much clarified, or that there is not enough 
savage grace or original viciousness and grit in him 
to save him. How he hates the roysterers, and all 
the rank, turbulent, human passions, and is chilled 
by the thought that perhaps after all Shakespeare 
led a vulgar life! 
When Tyndall was here he showed us how the 
dark, coarse, invisible heat rays could be strained 
out of the spectrum; or, in other words, that every 
solar beam was weighted with a vast, nether, invisi- 
ble side, which made it a lever of tremendous power 
in organic nature. After some such analogy, one 
sees how the highest order of power in the intellec- 
tual world draws upon and is nourished by those 
rude, primitive, barbaric human qualities that our 
culture and pietism tend to cut off and strain out. 
Our culture has its eye on the other end of the spec- 
trum, where the fine violet and indigo rays are; 
but all the lifting, rounding, fructifying powers of 
the system are in the coarse, dark rays —the black 
devil—at the base. The angel of light is yoked 
with the demon of darkness, and the pair create and 
sustain the world. 
