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. 



