ot respect them: he sees
them as a rack of clouds, or a fleet of ripples which the wind
drives over the surface of the water. But this is flat rebellion.
Nature will not be Buddhist: she resents generalizing, and
insults the philosopher in every moment with a million of fresh
particulars."

_New England Reformers_.--Would any one venture to guess how Emerson
would treat this subject? With his unsparing, though amiable radicalism,
his excellent common sense, his delicate appreciation of the ridiculous,
too deep for laughter, as Wordsworth's thoughts were too deep for tears,
in the midst of a band of enthusiasts and not very remote from a throng
of fanatics, what are we to look for from our philosopher who unites
many characteristics of Berkeley and of Franklin?

We must remember when this lecture was written, for it was delivered on
a Sunday in the year 1844. The Brook Farm experiment was an index of the
state of mind among one section of the Reformers of whom he was writing.
To remodel society and the world into a "happy family" was the aim
of these enthusiasts. Some attacked one part of the old system, some
another; some would build a new temple, some would rebuild the old
church, some would worship in the fields and woods, if at all; one was
for a phalanstery, where all should live in common, and another was
meditating the plan and place of the wigwam where he was to dwell apart
in the proud independence of the woodchuck and the musquash. Emerson had
the largest and kindliest sympathy with their ideals and aims, but he
was too clear-eyed not to see through the whims and extravagances of the
unpractical experimenters who would construct a working world with the
lay figures they had put together, instead of flesh and blood men and
women and children with all their congenital and acquired perversities.
He describes these Reformers in his own good-naturedly half-satirical
way:--

"They defied each other like a congress of kings; each of whom had a
realm to rule, and a way of his own that made concert unprofitable.
What a fertility of projects for the salvation of the world! One
apostle thought all men should go to farming; and another that no
man should buy or sell; that the use of money was the cardinal evil;
another that the mischief was in our diet, that we eat and drink
damnation. These made unleavened bread, and were foes to the death
to fermentation. It was in v