several years that of Emerson, who is his prophet. Both of them were
parts of one revolution. One of Emerson's articles of faith was that a
man's thoughts spring from his actions rather than his actions from his
thoughts, and possibly the same thing holds good for society at large.
Perhaps all truths, whether moral or economic, must be worked out in
real life before they are discovered by the student, and it was
therefore necessary that Garrison should be evolved earlier than
Emerson.

The silent years of early manhood, during which Emerson passed through
the Divinity School and to his ministry, known by few, understood by
none, least of all by himself, were years in which the revolting spirit
of an archangel thought out his creed. He came forth perfect, with that
serenity of which we have scarce another example in history,--that union
of the man himself, his beliefs, and his vehicle of expression that
makes men great because it makes them comprehensible. The philosophy
into which he had already transmuted all his earlier theology at the
time we first meet him consisted of a very simple drawing together of a
few ideas, all of which had long been familiar to the world. It is the
wonderful use he made of these ideas, the closeness with which they
fitted his soul, the tact with which he took what he needed, like a bird
building its nest, that make the originality, the man.

The conclusion of Berkeley, that the external world is known to us only
through our impressions, and that therefore, for aught we know, the
whole universe exists only in our own consciousness, cannot be
disproved. It is so simple a conception that a child may understand it;
and it has probably been passed before the attention of every thinking
man since Plato's time. The notion is in itself a mere philosophical
catch or crux to which there is no answer. It may be true. The mystics