bling ourselves whether they agree.' When we
remember the inadequateness of human language, the infirmities of our
vision, and all the imperfections of mental apparatus, the wise men will
not disdain even partial glimpses of a scene too vast and intricate to
be comprehended in a single map. To complain that Emerson is no
systematic reasoner is to miss the secret of most of those who have
given powerful impulses to the spiritual ethics of an age. It is not a
syllogism that turns the heart towards purification of life and aim; it
is not the logically enchained propositions of a _sorites_, but the
flash of illumination, the indefinable accent, that attracts masses of
men to a new teacher and a high doctrine. The teasing _ergoteur_ is
always right, but he never leads nor improves nor inspires.

Any one can see how this side of the Emersonian gospel harmonised with
the prepossessions of a new democracy. Trust, he said, to leading
instincts, not to traditional institutions, nor social ordering, nor the
formulae of books and schools for the formation of character; the great
force is real and elemental. In art, Mr. Ruskin has explained the
palpable truth that semi-civilised nations can colour better than we do,
and that an Indian shawl and China vase are inimitable by us. 'It is
their glorious ignorance of all rules that does it; the pure and true
instincts have play, and do their work; and the moment we begin teaching
people any rules about colour, and make them do this or that, we crush
the instinct, generally for ever' (_Modern Painters_, iii. 91). Emerson
said what comes to the same thing about morals. The philosophy of
democracy, or the government of a great mixed community by itself, rests
on a similar assumption in politics. The foundations of a self-governed
society on a great scale are laid in leading instincts. Emerson was
never tired of saying that we are wiser than we know. The path of
science and of letters is not the way to nature. What was done in a
remote age by men whose names have resounded far, has no deeper sense
than what you and I do to-day. What food, or experience, or succour have
Olympiads and Consulates for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, for the Kanaka
in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter? When he is
in this vein Emerson often approaches curiously near to Rousseau's
memorable and most potent paradox of 1750, that the sciences corrupt
manners.[8]

[Footnote 8: What so good, asks Rouss