Emerson is moulded upon this pattern.
It is no mush and milk that you get at this table. "A great man is
coming to dine with me; I do not wish to please him; I wish that he
should wish to please me." On the lecture stand he might be of
wood, so far as he is responsive to the moods and feelings of his
auditors. They must come to him; he will not go to them: but they
do not always come. Latterly the people have felt insulted, the
lecturer showed them so little respect. Then, before a promiscuous
gathering, and in stirring and eventful times like ours, what
anachronisms most of his lectures are, even if we take the high
ground that they are pearls before swine! The swine may safely
demand some apology of him who offers them pearls instead of corn.
Emerson's fibre is too fine for large public uses. He is what he
is, and is to be accepted as such, only let us _know_ what he is.
He does not speak to universal conditions, or to human nature in
its broadest, deepest, strongest phases. His thought is far above
the great sea level of humanity, where stand most of the world's
masters. He is like one of those marvelously clear mountain lakes
whose water-line runs above all the salt seas of the globe. He is
very precious, taken at his real worth. Why find fault with the
isolation and the remoteness in view of the sky-like purity and
depth?
Still I must go on sounding and exploring him, reporting where I
touch bottom and where I do not.
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