characteristic question and end with an equally characteristic
affirmation. The question is--

"Can rules or tutors educate
The semigod whom we await?"

The affirmation is that the man of culture is one who

"to his native centre fast,
Shall into Future fuse the Past,
And the world's flowing fates in his own mould recast."

According to this definition Abraham Lincoln, with his slight knowledge
of the best things of the past, but with the power to fuse such
knowledge as he had and to recast it in his own mould, was a man of
culture. And all true Americans would agree with him.

Emerson, like the "sociable, accessible, republican sort of man" that he
was, was the foe of special privilege. The best things were, in his
judgment, the property of all. He would take religion from the custody
of the priests, and culture from the hands of schoolmasters, and restore
them to their proper place, among the inalienable rights of man. They
were simply forms of the pursuit of happiness of which the Declaration
of Independence speaks. It is a right of which no potentates can justly
deprive the citizen.

Above all, he would protest against everything which tends to deprive
anyone of the happiness of the forward look. There was a cheerful
confidence that the great forces are on our side. Now and then the
clouds gather and obscure the vision, but: