oulder; 'you can't prove _me_ a
transcendentalist; I defy you to do it; I despise the name.'

Why so? Let us know what it is that you despise. Is it the sound of the
word? Is it not sufficiently euphonious? Does it not strike your ear as
smoothly as Puseyite, or Presbyterian?

'Nonsense!' said he; 'you don't suppose I am to be misled by the sound of
a word; it is the meaning to which I object. I despise transcendentalism;
therefore I do not wish to be called transcendentalist.'

Very well; but we shall never 'get ahead' unless you define
transcendentalism according to your understanding of the word.

'That request is easily made, but not easily complied with. Have you
Carlyle or Emerson at hand?'

Here I took down a volume of each, and read various sentences and
paragraphs therefrom. These passages are full of transcendental ideas; do
you object to them?

'No,' said my friend; 'for aught I can perceive, they might have been
uttered by any one who was _not_ a transcendentalist. Let me see the
books.'

After turning over the leaves a long while, he selected and read aloud a
passage from Carlyle, one of his very worst; abrupt, nervous, jerking, and
at the same time windy, long-drawn-out, and parenthetical; a period
filling a whole page.

'There,' said he, stopping to take breath, 'if that is not enough to
disgust one with transcendentalism, then I know nothing of the matter.'

A very sensible conclusion. Bless your soul, that is _Carlyle-ism_, not
transcendentalism. You said but now that you were not to be misled by the
sound of a word; and yet you are condemning a principle on account of the
bad style of a writer who is supposed to be governed by it. Is that right?
Would you condemn Christianity because of the weaknesses and sins of one
of its professors?

'Of course not,' replied he; 'I wish to be fair. I cannot express my idea
of the meaning of transcendentalism without tedious circumlocution, and I
begin to despair of proving my position by quotations. It is not on any
particular passage that I rest my case. You have read this work, and will
understand me when I say that it is to its general intent and spirit that
I object, and not merely to the author's style.'

I think I comprehend you. You disregard the mere form in which the author
expresses his thoughts; you go beyond and behind that, and judge him by
the thoughts themselves; not by one or by two, but by the sum and
_substance_ of the whole. You strip