76 INDOOR STUDIES 



was divined by the presentiment of somebody be- 

 fore it was actually verified." Thus that stupendous 

 result of modern experimental science, that heat is 

 only a mode of motion, was long before (in 1844) a 

 fact in Emerson's idealism. "A little heat, that 

 is a little motion, is all that dififerences the bald, 

 dazzling white and deadly cold poles of the earth 

 from the prolific tropical climates. All changes 

 pass without violence, by reason of the two cardinal 

 conditions of boundless space and boundless time. 

 Geology has initiated us into the secularity of na- 

 ture, and taught us to disuse our dame-school meas- 

 ure and exchange our Mosaic and Ptolemaic schemes 

 for her large style. We knew nothing rightly, for 

 want of perspective. Now we learn what patient 

 periods must round themselves before the rock is 

 formed; then before the rock is broken, and the 

 first lichen race has disintegrated the thinnest exter- 

 nal plate into soil, and opened the door for the re- 

 mote Mora, !Fauna, Ceres, and Pomona to come in. 

 How far off yet is the trUobite! how far the quad- 

 ruped ! how inconceivably remote is man ! All duly 

 arrive, and then race after race of men. It is a 

 long way from granite to the oyster; farther yet to 

 Plato and the preaching of the immortality of the 

 soul. Yet all must come as surely as the first atom 

 has two sides." 



Indeed, most of Emerson's writings, including his 

 poems, seem curiously to imply science, as if he had 

 all these bold deductions and discoveries under his 

 feet, and was determined to match them in the 



