198 THOREAU. 



what grim silence of foregone dissent ! It was our Yan- 

 kee version of a lecture by Abelard, our Harvard par- 

 allel to the last public appearances of Schelling. 



We said that the Transcendental Movement was the 

 protectant spirit of Puritanism seeking a new outlet and 

 an escape from forms and creeds which compressed 

 rather than expressed it. In its motives, its preaching, 

 and its results, it differed radically from the doctrine of 

 Carlyle. The Scotchman, with all his genius, and his 

 humor gigautesque as that of Rabelais, has grown shrill- 

 er and shriller with years, degenerating sometimes into a 

 common scold, and emptying very unsavory vials of wrath 

 on the head of the sturdy British Socrates of worldly 

 common-sense. The teaching of Emerson tended much 

 more exclusively to self-culture and the independent de- 

 velopment of the individual man. It seemed to many 

 almost Pj^thagorean in its voluntary seclusion from com- 

 monwealth affairs. Both Carlyle and Emerson were 

 disciples of Goethe, but Emerson in a far timer sense ; 

 and while the one, from his bias toward the eccentric, 

 has degenerated more and more into mannerism, the 

 other has clarified steadily toward perfection of stjde, — 

 exquisite fineness of material, unobtrusive lowncss of tone 

 and simplicity of fashion, the most high-bred garb of 

 expression. Whatever may be said of his thought, 

 nothing can be finer than the delicious limpidness of his 

 phrase. If it was ever questionable whether democracy 

 could develop a gentleman, the problem has been affirma- 

 tively solved at last. Carlyle, in his cynicism and his 

 admiration of force in and for itself, has become at last 

 positively inhuman ; Emerson, reverencing strength, 

 seeking the highest outcome of the individual, has found 

 that society and politics are also main elements in the 

 attainment of the desired end, and has drawn steadily 

 xnanward and worldward. The two men represent re- 



