other. The good in the one scale is but dust when weighed against that in the other. Half unconsciously, they overlook the fact that the good of the past is the net sum and residue of all that countless generations have achieved; while the good in the other scale is just that which has been achieved by the men of a single generation. And still again, the folly of past generations, their manifold stupidities and unbeliefs, have all gone the way to dusty death; they offend us no more, and we only know that they ever existed when we grope amid the dead ashes in their sepulchres; while, on the other hand, the follies and stupidities of our own day confront us at every turn ; like the frogs of Egypt they come up into our bedchambers and our kneading-troughs; like the locusts, they seem to be devouring every green thing. But the frogs die, the locusts are driven away, and Nature retains no token that they ever were. To the widest observation all evil is transient and perishable; the good only survives, and is immortal. To the thinking man of no age has his own generation seemed an heroic one. Most turn to the far past for the Golden Age; some look for it in the far or near future; few in the immediate present. But if there be an all-wise, an all-good, an all-powerful Creator and Ruler of the universe, then it follows as a matter of certainty that the course of things must be ever tending toward the better, not toward the worse. Rather than be

case.

lieve otherwise, I would be an atheist. If we read history with open eyes, we shall see that such is the The world does move, and moves in the right direction. Doubtless there are periods when the movement seems checked, or even apparently reversed. Trace the Mississippi from its sources downward, and here and there it seems to the voyager that its course is checked or reversed, and that the current is flowing back to its fountains. But all the while the waters are circling around some obstacle which they will in the end either elude or sweep away. Could one mount high enough, and with sure vision survey the whole course, all these petty divergencies would vanish from the view, and he would perceive that the whole mighty flood is all the while moving onward to the ocean.

So it is with the general history of human generations. Doubtless there have been dark ages, miserable ages, ages seemingly altogether barren of good and unprofitable in every way. But yet the human race is growing better. How many of the best of the Hebrew patriarchs would be out of the penitentiary in any modern civilized community? Yet, beyond doubt, they were the best men of their times. The rear of the present good men of civilized races is farther on in morals than the vanguard of them was two, three, or four thousand years ago, and the bad are no worse. The advance is seen also in even savages races.

Do not the Esquimaux and the Zulus rank higher in the scale of being than did the cave-dwellers and men of the Stone Age, traces of whom every now and then crop up? Or, to sum up the whole in a sentence, is the world of to-day such as it was at the time of the Deluge, good for nothing in fact or in prospect, and fit only to be swept away to the last individual, saving only the eight souls who entered into the ark and were saved?

Whether this generation of ours is really one of the decadent generations is a matter which we are not called upon to discuss, only-Carlyle often, and Emerson sometimes to the contrarywe think it is not. Nay, more, we believe it to be very distinctively an age of progress and even of faith. We believe that to-day there are more men who look upon God and Nature face to face than there ever were before at one time upon earth. Indeed, notwithstanding Emerson's apparent pessimism, the whole tone of his writings is essentially optimist; and in none of them more so than in this book upon "Nature."

He does not always, if we understand him, use the term "Nature" in exactly the same sense. Sometimes he appears to mean by it the Supreme Mind from which all things proceed; sometimes apparently the phenomena of the outward world; sometimes the laws in virtue of which these phenomena manifest themselves to the individual man.

But in this book he gives a for

mal definition of Nature wide enough to include everything saving the inmost consciousness of each individual man and the Supreme Being. His definition stands thus:

WHAT NATURE IS.

"Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which philosophy distinguishes from the Not Me-that is, both Nature and Art, and all other men, and my own body-must be ranked under this name 'NATURE.' In enumerating the values of Nature and casting up their sum, I shall use the word in both senses-in its common and in its philosophical import. In inquiries so general as our present one, the inaccuracy is not material; no confusion of thought will occur. Nature, in the common sense, refers to essences unchanged by man: space, the air, the river, the leaf. Art is applied to the mixture of his will with the same things, as in a house, a canal, a picture, a statue. But his operations, taken together, are so insignificant —a little chipping, baking, patching, and washing—that in an impression so grand as that of the world on the human mind they do not vary the result."

He proceeds to lay down the end and purpose of all study, thought, and speculation.

THEORIES AND PHENOMENA.

"All science has one aim, namely, to find a theory of Nature. We have theories of races and of functions, but scarcely yet a remote approach to an idea of creation. We are now so far from the road to truth that

religious teachers dispute and hate each other, and speculative men are esteemed unsound and frivolous. But to a sound judgment the most abstract truth is the most practical. Whenever a true theory appears, it will be its own evidence. Its test is that it will explain all phenomena. Now, many are thought not only unexplained but inexplicable: language, sleep, madness, dreams, beasts, sex."

We do not believe that Mr. Emerson would claim that he has in any good degree arrived at such a general theory-one which explains all phenomena. We do not think that any finite mind can frame such a theory; or that, if framed by a higher power, that any finite mind could grasp it in anything like its full extent. But what Mr. Emerson has done in this book of his is to set forth many aspects in which Nature works for the weal of man. These varying aspects are presented in picturesque forms. Thus :

THE STARS.

"To go into solitude a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary while I read and write, though nobody is with me. But, if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design to give man in the heavenly bodies the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear only one night in a