es the bald dazzling white and deadly cold poles of the earth
from the prolific tropical climates.' Not only, as Professor Tyndall
says, is Emerson's religious sense entirely undaunted by the discoveries
of science; all such discoveries he comprehends and assimilates. 'By
Emerson scientific conceptions are continually transmuted into the finer
forms and warmer lines of an ideal world.'

That these transmutations are often carried by Emerson to the extent of
vain and empty self-mystifications is hard to deny, even for those who
have most sympathy with the general scope of his teaching. There are
pages that to the present writer, at least, after reasonably diligent
meditation, remain mere abracadabra, incomprehensible and worthless.
For much of this in Emerson, the influence of Plato is mainly
responsible, and it may be noted in passing that his account of Plato
(_Representative Men_) is one of his most unsatisfactory performances.
'The title of Platonist,' says Mill, 'belongs by far better right to
those who have been nourished in, and have endeavoured to practise
Plato's mode of investigation, than to those who are distinguished only
by the adoption of certain dogmatical conclusions, drawn mostly from the
least intelligible of his works.' Nothing is gained by concealing that
not every part of Emerson's work will stand the test of the Elenchus,
nor bear reduction into honest and intelligible English.

One remarkable result of Emerson's idealism ought not to be passed over.
'The visible becomes the Bestial,' said Carlyle, 'when it rests not on
the invisible.' To Emerson all rested on the invisible, and was summed
up in terms of the invisible, and hence the Bestial was almost unknown
in his philosophic scheme. Nay, we may say that some mighty phenomena in
our universe were kept studiously absent from his mind. Here is one of
the profoundest differences between Emerson and most of those who, on as
high an altitude, have pondered the same great themes. A small trait
will serve for illustration. It was well known in his household that he
could not bear to hear of ailments. 'There is one topic,' he writes,
'peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals,
namely, their distempers. If you have not slept, or if you have slept,
or if you have headache, sciatica, or leprosy, or thunder-stroke, I
beseech you by all angels to hold your peace, and not pollute the
morning, to which all the housemates bring serene and