day, is not
Emerson's kind--but of thinner fiber--it qualifies itself by going to
_A_ "root" and often cutting other roots in the process; it is usually
impotent as dynamite in its cause and sometimes as harmful to the
wholesome progress of all causes; it is qualified by its failure. But
the Radicalism of Emerson plunges to all roots, it becomes greater than
itself--greater than all its formal or informal doctrines--too advanced
and too conservative for any specific result--too catholic for all the
churches--for the nearer it is to truth, the farther it is from a
truth, and the more it is qualified by its future possibilities.

Hence comes the difficulty--the futility of attempting to fasten on
Emerson any particular doctrine, philosophic, or religious theory.
Emerson wrings the neck of any law, that would become exclusive and
arrogant, whether a definite one of metaphysics or an indefinite one of
mechanics. He hacks his way up and down, as near as he can to the
absolute, the oneness of all nature both human and spiritual, and to
God's benevolence. To him the ultimate of a conception is its vastness,
and it is probably this, rather than the "blind-spots" in his
expression that makes us incline to go with him but half-way; and then
stand and build dogmas. But if we can not follow all the way--if we do
not always clearly perceive the whole picture, we are at least free to
imagine it--he makes us feel that we are free to do so; perhaps that is
the most he asks. For he is but reaching out through and beyond
mankind, trying to see what he can of the infinite and its
immensities--throwing back to us whatever he can--but ever conscious
that he but occasionally catches a glimpse; conscious that if he would
contemplate the greater, he must wrestle with the lesser, even though
it dims an outline; that he must struggle if he would hurl back
anything--even a broken fragment for men to examine and perchance in it
find a germ of some part of truth; conscious at times, of the futility
of his effort and its message, conscious of its vagueness, but ever
hopeful for it, and confident that its foundation, if not its medium is
somewhere near the eventual and "absolute good" the divine truth
underlying all life. If Emerson must be dubbed an optimist--then an
optimist fighting pessimism, but not wallowing in it; an optimist, who
does not study pessimism by learning to enjoy it, whose imagination is
greater than his curiosity, who seeing the