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become just what Emerson is from the stump, though perhaps great men
have been the fruit of one generation; but there is a quality in him, an
aroma of fine manners, a propriety, a chivalry in the blood, that dates
back, and has been refined and transmitted many times. Power is born
with a man, and is always first hand, but culture, genius, noble
instincts, gentle manners, or the easy capacity for these things, may
be, and to a greater or a lesser extent are, the contribution of the
past. Emerson's culture is radical and ante-natal, and never fails him.
The virtues of all those New England ministers and all those tomes of
sermons are in this casket. One fears sometimes that he has been too
much clarified, or that there is not enough savage grace or original
viciousness and grit in him to save him. How he hates the roysterers,
and all the rank, turbulent, human passions, and is chilled by the
thought that perhaps after all Shakespeare led a vulgar life!

When Tyndall was here, he showed us how the dark, coarse, invisible heat
rays could be strained out of the spectrum; or, in other words, that
every solar beam was weighted with a vast, nether, invisible side, which
made it a lever of tremendous power in organic nature. After some such
analogy, one sees how the highest order of power in the intellectual
world draws upon and is nourished by those rude, primitive, barbaric
human qualities that our culture and pietism tend to cut off and strain
out. Our culture has its eye on the other end of the spectrum, where
the fine violet and indigo rays are; but all the lifting, rounding,
fructifying powers of the system are in the coarse, dark rays--the
black devil--at the base. The angel of light is yoked with the demon of
darkness, and the pair create and sustain the world.

In rare souls like Emerson, the fruit of extreme culture, it is
inevitable that at least some of the heat rays should be lost, and we
miss them especially when we contrast him with the elder masters. The
elder masters did not seem to get rid of the coarse or vulgar in human
life, but royally accepted it, and struck their roots into it, and drew
from it sustenance and power: but there is an ever-present suspicion
that Emerson prefers the saints to the sinners; prefers the prophets and
seers to Homer, Shakespeare, and Dante. Indeed, it is to be distinctly
stated and emphasized, that Emerson is essentially a priest, and that
the key to all he has said and writte