and was only able in vague and turbid torrents of words to hide a
shallow and obsolete lesson. His confession to Emerson, quoted above,
looks as if at last he had found this out for himself.

If Emerson stood thus well towards the social and political drift of
events, his teaching was no less harmoniously related to the new and
most memorable drift of science which set in by his side. It is a
misconception to pretend that he was a precursor of the Darwinian
theory. Evolution, as a possible explanation of the ordering of the
universe, is a great deal older than either Emerson or Darwin. What
Darwin did was to work out in detail and with masses of minute evidence
a definite hypothesis of the specific conditions under which new forms
are evolved. Emerson, of course, had no definite hypothesis of this
sort, nor did he possess any of the knowledge necessary to give it
value. But it was his good fortune that some of his strongest
propositions harmonise with the scientific theory of the survival of the
fittest in the struggle for material existence. He connects his
exhortation to self-reliance with the law working in nature for
conservation and growth,--to wit, that 'Power is in nature the essential
measure of right,' and that 'Nature suffers nothing to remain in her
kingdom which cannot help itself.' The same strain is constantly
audible. Nature on every side, within us and without, is for ever
throwing out new forms and fresh varieties of living and thinking. To
her experiments in every region there is no end. Those succeed which
prove to have the best adaptation to the conditions. Let, therefore,
neither society nor the individual check experiment, originality, and
infinite variation. Such language, we may see, fits in equally well with
democracy in politics and with evolution in science. If, moreover,
modern science gives more prominence to one conception than another, it
is to that of the natural universe of force and energy, as One and a
Whole. This too is the great central idea with Emerson, repeated a
thousand times in prose and in verse, and lying at the very heart of his
philosophy. Newton's saying that 'the world was made at one cast'
delights him. 'The secret of the world is that its energies are
_solidaires_.' Nature 'publishes itself in creatures, reaching from
particles and spicula, through transformation on transformation to the
highest symmetries. A little heat, that is, a little motion, is all that
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