laid down principles which, when applied, would inevitably lead to
progress and reform; but he took little part in the imperfect
step-by-step process of actual reforming. He probably would have been an
ineffective worker in any field of reform; and, at any rate, strenuous
labor on applications of his philosophy would have prevented him from
maintaining the flow of his philosophic and prophetic visions. The work
of giving practical effect to his thought was left for other men to
do,--indeed for generations of other serviceable men, who, filled with
his ideals, will slowly work them out into institutions, customs, and
other practical values.

When we think of Emerson as a prophet, we at once become interested in
the dates at which he uttered certain doctrines, or wrote certain
pregnant sentences; but just here the inquirer meets a serious
difficulty. He can sometimes ascertain that a given doctrine or sentence
was published at a given date; but he may be quite unable to ascertain
how much earlier the doctrine was really formulated, or the sentence
written. Emerson has been dead twenty-one years, and it is thirty years
since he wrote anything new; but his whole philosophy of life was
developed by the time he was forty years old, and it may be doubted if
he wrote anything after 1843, the germinal expression of which may not
be found in his journals, sermons, or lectures written before that date.
If, therefore, we find in the accepted thought, or established
institutions, of to-day recent developments of principles and maxims
laid down by Emerson, we may fairly say that his thought outran his
times certainly by one, and probably by two generations of men.

* * * * *

I take up now the prophetic teachings of Emerson with regard to