interest, who prefer to stand on the plain, and then insist they
see from the summit. Indolent legs supply the strength of eye for
their inspiration. The intellect is never a whole. It is where
the soul finds things. It is often the only track to the over-
values. It appears a whole--but never becomes one even in the
stock exchange, or the convent, or the laboratory. In the
cleverest criminal, it is but a way to a low ideal. It can never
discard the other part of its duality--the soul or the void where
the soul ought to be. So why classify a quality always so
relative that it is more an agency than substance; a quality that
disappears when classified. "The life of the All must stream
through us to make the man and the moment great." A sailor with a
precious cargo doesn't analyze the water. Because Emerson had
generations of Calvinistic sermons in his blood, some
cataloguers, would localize or provincialize him, with the
sternness of the old Puritan mind. They make him THAT, hold him
THERE. They lean heavily on what they find of the above influence
in him. They won't follow the rivers in his thought and the play
of his soul. And their cousin cataloguers put him in another
pigeon-hole. They label him "ascetic." They translate his outward
serenity into an impression of severity. But truth keeps one from
being hysterical. Is a demagogue a friend of the people because
he will lie to them to make them cry and raise false hopes? A
search for perfect truths throws out a beauty more spiritual than
sensuous. A sombre dignity of style is often confused by under-
imagination and by surface-sentiment, with austerity. If
Emerson's manner is not always beautiful in accordance with
accepted standards, why not accept a few other standards? He is
an ascetic, in that he refuses to compromise content with manner.
But a real ascetic is an extremist who has but one height. Thus