Philosophy, a more sympathetic cataloguer may say, that Emerson
inspires courage of the quieter kind and delight of the higher
kind.

The same well-bound school teacher who told the boys that Thoreau
was a naturalist because he didn't like to work, puts down
Emerson as a "classic," and Hawthorne as a "romantic." A loud
voice made this doubly TRUE and SURE to be on the examination
paper. But this teacher of "truth AND dogma" apparently forgot
that there is no such thing as "classicism or romanticism." One
has but to go to the various definitions of these to know that.
If you go to a classic definition you know what a true classic
is, and similarly a "true romantic." But if you go to both, you
have an algebraic formula, x = x, a cancellation, an apercu, and
hence satisfying; if you go to all definitions you have another
formula x > x, a destruction, another apercu, and hence
satisfying. Professor Beers goes to the dictionary (you wouldn't
think a college professor would be as reckless as that). And so
he can say that "romantic" is "pertaining to the style of the
Christian and popular literature of the Middle Ages," a Roman
Catholic mode of salvation (not this definition but having a
definition). And so Prof. B. can say that Walter Scott is a
romanticist (and Billy Phelps a classic--sometimes). But for our
part Dick Croker is a classic and job a romanticist. Another
professor, Babbitt by name, links up Romanticism with Rousseau,
and charges against it many of man's troubles. He somehow likes
to mix it up with sin. He throws saucers at it, but in a
scholarly, interesting, sincere, and accurate way. He uncovers a
deformed foot, gives it a name, from which we are allowed to
infer that the covered foot is healthy and named classicism. But