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Emerson and Other Essays by John Jay Chapman
page 20 of 162 (12%)
his philosophy. One moment of inspiration was in him own brother to the
next moment of inspiration, although they might be separated by six
weeks. When he came to put together his star-born ideas, they fitted
well, no matter in what order he placed them, because they were all
part of the same idea.

His works are all one single attack on the vice of the age, moral
cowardice. He assails it not by railings and scorn, but by positive and
stimulating suggestion. The imagination of the reader is touched by
every device which can awake the admiration for heroism, the
consciousness of moral courage. Wit, quotation, anecdote, eloquence,
exhortation, rhetoric, sarcasm, and very rarely denunciation, are
launched at the reader, till he feels little lambent flames beginning to
kindle in him. He is perhaps unable to see the exact logical connection
between two paragraphs of an essay, yet he feels they are germane. He
takes up Emerson tired and apathetic, but presently he feels himself
growing heady and truculent, strengthened in his most inward vitality,
surprised to find himself again master in his own house.

The difference between Emerson and the other moralists is that all these
stimulating pictures and suggestions are not given by him in
illustration of a general proposition. They have never been through the
mill of generalization in his own mind. He himself could not have told
you their logical bearing on one another. They have all the vividness of
disconnected fragments of life, and yet they all throw light on one
another, like the facets of a jewel. But whatever cause it was that led
him to adopt his method of writing, it is certain that he succeeded in
delivering himself of his thought with an initial velocity and carrying
power such as few men ever attained. He has the force at his command of
the thrower of the discus.
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