How to seek truth is the subject of the next essay, ‘Intellect,’ a tribute to the spontaneous action of the mind. We do not control our thoughts but are controlled by them. All we can do is to clear away obstructions and ‘suffer the intellect to see.’ Pursue truth and it avoids you. Relax the energy of your pursuit and it comes to you; yet the pursuit was as necessary as the subsequent relaxation. In the final essay, on ‘Art,’ the large, simple, and homely elements are praised, the qualities which appeal to universal human nature. In the paintings of the Old World one thinks to be astonished by something new and strange, and he is struck by the familiar look. He is reminded of what he had always known. The second series of _Essays_ treats of ‘The Poet,’ ‘Experience,’ ‘Character,’ ‘Manners,’ ‘Gifts,’ ‘Nature,’ ‘Politics,’ of ‘Nominalist and Realist;’ there is also a lecture on ‘New England Reformers.’ Emerson notes the shallow nature of a theory of poetry busied only with externals. Neither is that poetry which is written ‘at a safe distance from our own experience.’ The poet is representative. ‘He stands among common men for the complete man, and apprises us not of his wealth but of the commonwealth.’ ‘Experience’ is in praise of a mode of life which consists in living without making a fuss about it, filling the time, taking hold where one can and exhausting the possibilities. Only fanatics say it is not worth while. ‘Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, to-day. Let us treat the men and women well; treat them as if they were real; perhaps they are.’ ‘Character’ and ‘Manners’ are related studies. There is a moral order in the world. Nothing can withstand it. ‘Character is this moral order seen through the medium of an individual nature.’ Society has raised certain artificial distinctions. But they must be recognized. Society is real, and grows out of a genuine need. ‘The painted phantasm Fashion casts a species of derision on what we say. But I will neither be driven from some allowance to Fashion as a symbolic institution, nor from the belief that love is the basis of courtesy.’ ‘Gifts’ is a fine bit of paradox. ‘The gift, to be true, must be the flowing of the giver unto me, correspondent to my flowing unto him. When the waters are at level, then my goods pass to him, and his to me.’ To give useful things denies the relation. Hence the fitness of beautiful things.