The Last Harvest

itanical Emerson, the heir of eight generations of clergy-men, the man who did not like to have Frederika Bremer play the piano in his

the Canadian wood-chopper who cut wood for his neighbor-he preferred t

ut Consistency would be better written, 'Damn Consistency.'" But try to fancy Emerson swearing like the men on the street! Once only he swore a sacred oath, and that he himself records: it was called out by the famous, and infamous

al. His son reports that Emerson enjoyed the talk of the stable-men and used to tell their anecdotes and boasts of their horses when he came home; for example, "In the stable you'd take him for a slouch, but lead him to the door, and when he lifts up his eyes, and look

, and on Monday the showers fell. When I spoke of the speed with which his prayers were answered, the good man looked modest." There is another prayer-for-rain story that he enjoys telling:

ey had morning prayers at college. "We ha

chaise at a stable in Cambridge. "Shall I put in a buffalo?" inquired th

to rake up his hay, I well remember his pleading, almost reproachful looks at the sky when the thunder gust was coming up to spoil the hay. He raked very fast, then looked at the cl

, and came home befuddled in the small hours, and was frequently hauled over the coals by his wife. One night he again came home late, and was greeted with the usual upbraiding in the morn

Indiana near the Michigan line. The line was resurveyed, and the authorities set her farm in Michigan. The old lady

notes with approval another remark of his wife's: "A human being should beware how he laughs, for then he shows all his faults." What he thought of the loud, surprising laugh with which Carlyle often ended his bitter sentences, I do not know th

bishop: There was a dispute in a vestry at Providence between two hot

ho I am! I am a humble Christia

ion less than ministers, as none enjoyed food so little a

as on the subject and could not say what God is or is not. At the age of twenty-one he wrote in his Journal, "I know that I know next to nothing." A very unus

God is not a plan-that would be Destiny, [

od, nothing can be predicated, neither being, no

d builds his temple in the heart on

," he says, "but not available to us

an? why does it take this form? he woul

ipresent, and Omnipotent? Of what use are our sounding-lines in a bottomless sea? How are we to apply our conceptions of personality to the all-life, to that which transcends all limitations, to that which is everywhere and yet nowhere? Shall we assign a local habitation and a name to the universal energy? As the sunlight puts out our lamp or candle, so our mental lights grow pale in the presence of the Infinite Light. We can deal with the solid bodies on the surface of the earth, but the earth as a sphere in the heavens baffles us. All our terms of over and under, up and down, east and w

our names for the human faculties, as the will, the reason, the understanding, the imagination, conscience, instincts, and so on, are arbitrary divisions of a whole, to suit our own convenience, like the days of the week, or the seasons of the year. Out of unity we make diversity for purposes of our practical needs. Thought tends to the one, action to the many. We must have small change for everything in the universe, becaus

ture. God is the All, but the All is a hard mass to digest. It means hell as well as heaven, demon as well as seraph, geology as well as biology, devolution as well as evolution, earthquake as wel

e borders, and terrible things in the interior. Shall we have one

uable to us till we can make it up into a man." And when we make it up into a man we have got a true compendium of nature; all the terrific and unholy elemen

e God-question at all will probably always think of the

"Natural history," he says, "by itself has no value; it is like a single sex; but marry it to human history and it is poetry. Whole Floras, all Linn?us', and Buffon's volumes conta

n the physical world no doubt affords clues to the method of Nature in the non-physical, or supersensuous world. But apart from that, it is incredible that a mind like Emerson's took no interest in natural knowledge for its own sake. The fact that two visible and inodorous gases like hydrogen and oxygen-one combustible and the other the supporter of combustion-when chemically combined produce water, which extinguishes fire, is intensely interesting as affording us a glimpse of the contradictions and paradoxes that abound everywhere in Nature's methods. If there is any ethics or any poetry in it, let him have it who can extract it. The great facts of nature, such as the sphericity of the cosmic bodies, their circular motions, t

n I am in the life under the stones. The significance of the metamorphosis of the grub into the butterfly does not escape me, but I am more occupied with the way the caterpillar weaves her cocoon and hangs herself up for the winter than I am in this lesson. I had rather see a worm cast its skin than see a king crowned. I had rather see Ph?be building her mud nest than the preacher writing his sermon. I had rather see

is worthy of Emerson at his best, but to claim that this is their sole or main use is to push idealism to the extreme. The poet, the artist, the nature

to undervalue the facts of natural science, as such, and to belittle the works of the natural historian because he does not give us poetry and lessons in morals instead of botany and geology and ornithology, pure and simple. "Everything," he says, "should be treated poetically-law, politics, housekeeping, money. A judge and a banker must driv

at brought man, brought his dog and horse. Did Emerson, indeed, only go to nature as he went to the bank, to make a draft upon it? Was his walk barren that brought him no image, no new idea? Was the day wasted that did not add a new line to his verse? He appears to have gone up and down the land seeking images. He was so firmly persuaded that there is not a passage in the human soul, p

o imagination or sensibility to beauty, Nature has no charm anyhow, but if he have these gif

vel less? After the geologist has told us all he has found out about the earth's crust and the rocks, when we quarry our building-stone, do we plough and hoe and plant its soil with less interest and veneration? No, science as the pursuit of truth causes light to spring out of the abysmal darkness, and en

ead chemistry a little," he said, "and you will quickly see that its laws and experiments will furnish an alphabet or vocabulary for all of your moral observations." He found a lesson in composition in the fact that the diamond and lampblack are the same substance differently arranged. Goo

and symbols for transcendental use. He says, "Whenever you enumerate a physical law, I hear in it a moral law." His final inte

ure, than to understand the circulation of the sap and the formation of buds." His insight into Nature, and the prophetic character of his g

horse; no fish begets a bird. But the concurrence of new conditions necessitates a new object in which these conditions meet and flower. When the hour is struck in onward nature, announcing that all

vance in Nature is perpetual transf

irst chemical relation exhibited by the first atom. If we had eyes to see it, this bit of quartz woul