and who freezes me to silence when we promise to come nearest."

Human sentiment was known to Emerson mainly in the form of pain. His
nature shunned it; he cast it off as quickly as possible. There is a
word or two in the essay on Love which seems to show that the inner and
diaphanous core of this seraph had once, but not for long, been shot
with blood: he recalls only the pain of it. His relations with Margaret
Fuller seem never normal, though they lasted for years. This brilliant
woman was in distress. She was asking for bread, and he was giving her a
stone, and neither of them was conscious of what was passing. This is
pitiful. It makes us clutch about us to catch hold, if we somehow may,
of the hand of a man.

There was manliness in Horace Greeley, under whom Miss Fuller worked on
the New York Tribune not many years afterward. She wrote: "Mr. Greeley I
like,--nay, more, love. He is in his habit a plebeian, in his heart a
nobleman. His abilities in his own way are great. He believes in mine
to a surprising degree. We are true friends."

This anæmic incompleteness of Emerson's character can be traced to the
philosophy of his race; at least it can be followed in that philosophy.
There is an implication of a fundamental falsehood in every bit of
Transcendentalism, including Emerson. That falsehood consists in the
theory of the self-sufficiency of each individual, men and women alike.
Margaret Fuller is a good example of the effect of this philosophy,
because her history afterward showed that she was constituted like other
human beings, was dependent upon human relationship, and was not only a
very noble, but also a very womanly creature. Her marriage, her Italian
life, and her tragic death light up with the splendor of reality the
earlier and unhappy period of her life. This woman had been driven into