make the preparations he would read
an essay in my room. On that occasion Emerson read a paper on
"Poetry," in which he stated fully and clearly the doctrine of
evolution. This was five years before the appearance of the papers of
Darwin and Wallace in the journal of the Linnaean Society (1858),
though I find in Emerson's essay as published ("Letters and Social
Aims," Chatto & Windus, 1876) that Darwin is mentioned; otherwise that
essay is precisely the same that was read to us in 1853. I well
remember how we were startled that afternoon by Emerson's emphatic
declaration--"There is one animal, one plant, one matter, and one
force." He said also: "Science does not know its debt to imagination.
Goethe did not believe that a great naturalist could exist without
this faculty. He was himself conscious of that help, which made him a
prophet among doctors. From this vision he gave grave hints to the
geologist, the botanist, and the optician." The name of Emerson would
now be set beside that of Goethe by every man of science in America.
While as yet "The Vestiges of Creation" was trampled on by preachers
and professors, Emerson affirmed its principle to be true, and during
some years, in which no recognized man of science ventured to accept
Darwin's hypothesis, he sustained its claim by references to the
scientific authorities of Europe. For the rest, this essay, read to us
at Divinity College, did for some who heard it very much the same that
the generalization of Darwin has done for vast numbers of minds. The
harmony of nature and thought was in it, clouds floated into light,
and though poets were present, it appeared the truest New World poem
that we were gathered there around the seer in whose vision the
central identity in nature flowed through man's reason, gently did
away with discords through their promise of larger harmonies. That
which the Brahmans found in the far East, our little company there in
the West knew also--"From the poisonous tree of the world two species
of fruit are produced, sweet as the waters of life: Love, or the
society of beautiful souls, and Poetry, whose taste is like the
immortal juice Vishnu." When Emerson had finished there was a hush of
silence, the usual applause of his listeners; it seemed hardly broken
when Otto Dresel performed some "songs without words."

Emerson was the first man of high social position in America who
openly took the anti-slavery position. On May 29, 1831, he admitted a