ys. The first essay
is a forlorn hope. See what the chances are: "The world exists for the
education of each man.... He should see that he can live all history in
his own person. He must sit solidly at home, and not suffer himself to
be bullied by kings or empires, but know that he is greater than all
the geography and all the government of the world; he must transfer the
point of view from which history is commonly read from Rome and Athens
and London to himself, and not deny his conviction that he is the court,
and, if England or Egypt have anything to say to him, he will try the
case; if not, let them forever be silent." In every essay that follows,
there are the same great odds and the same electric call to the youth
to face them. It is, indeed, as much a world of fable and romance that
Emerson introduces us to as we get in Homer or Herodotus. It is true,
all true,--true as Arthur and his knights, or Pilgrim's Progress, and I
pity the man who has not tasted its intoxication, or who can see nothing
in it.

The intuitions are the bright band, without armor or shield, that
slay the mailed and bucklered giants of the understanding. Government,
institutions, religions, fall before the glance of the hero's eye. Art
and literature, Shakespeare, Angelo, Aeschylus, are humble suppliants
before you, the king. The commonest fact is idealized, and the whole
relation of man to the universe is thrown into a kind of gigantic
perspective. It is not much to say there is exaggeration; the very start
makes Mohammed's attitude toward the mountain tame. The mountain _shall_
come to Mohammed, and, in the eyes of all born readers of Emerson, the
mountain does come, and comes with alacrity.

Some shrewd judges apprehend that Emerson is not going to last; basing
their opinion upon the fact, already alluded to, that we outgrow him, or
pass through him as through an experience that we cannot repeat. He is
but a bridge to other things; he gets you over. He is an exceptional
fact in literature, say they, and does not represent lasting or
universal conditions. He is too fine for the rough wear and tear of
ages. True, we do not outgrow Dante, or Cervantes, or Bacon; and I doubt
if the Anglo-Saxon stock at least ever outgrows that king of romancers,
Walter Scott. These men and their like appeal to a larger audience, and
in some respects a more adult one, at least one more likely to be found
in every age and people. Their achievement was more from