ARNOLD'S VIEW OF EMERSON AND CARLYLB 145 



to digested systems which have no one valuable 

 suggestion." It would be almost impossible to 

 condense any of his essays; they are the last results 

 of condensation; we can only cut them up and 

 abridge them. So far as this criticism tells against 

 Emerson as a literary artist, it must be allowed. 



Emerson speaks slightingly of logic, but his own 

 prose is undoubtedly the best when it is the most 

 logical, — that is, the most consecutive and flow- 

 ing. Logic in this sense is no more the enemy of 

 spontaneity than his method of bold guessing is. 

 "Logic," he says, "is the procession or proportion- 

 ate unfolding of the intuition." This "unfolding" 

 is indispensable to all good prose, and Arnold did 

 not lay too much stress upon it. Emerson's prose 

 does not always have it; and just in proportion 

 as it is without it, is it unsound prose. When the 

 reader comes upon a continuous passage in the 

 Essays, one in which the thought is unfolded and 

 carried along from point to point, how easily and 

 joyously the mind passes over it! It is like a con- 

 tinuous path, after we have been picking our way 

 from one isolated stone to another. The first chap- 

 ter in " Eepresentative Men," on the use of great 

 men, is a stony and broken path; the mind labors 

 more or less in getting through it; but the chapters 

 that follow have much more unity and wholeness, — 

 much more smoothness and continuity of thought. 

 So has "English Traits" more consecutiveness and 

 unity than the essays. Among the essays those 

 on Books, on Immortality, on Nature, on Beauty, 



