17. The Physical Basis of Life...................THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 18. Mental Powers of Men and Animals...........CHARLES DARWIN 19. The Importance of Dust......ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE VII. NATURE. 20. The Battle of the Ants......HENRY DAVID THOREAU 21. A Windstorm in the Forests............JOHN MUIR 22. Walden Pond.................HENRY DAVID THOREAU 23. Extracts from Modern Painters...........JOHN RUSKIN VIII. CONDUCT AND INNER LIFE. 24. The Stoics.. .............WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY 25. Enthusiasm of Humanity......JOHN ROBERT SEELEY 26. Loyalty and Insight.........JOSIAH ROYCE IX. LITERATURE AND ART. 27. Poetry for Poetry's Sake.... A.C. BRADLEY 28. Greek Tragedy................G. LOWES DICKINSON 29. Shakespeare..................THOMAS CARLYLE 30. Charles Lamb.................WALTER PATER 31. Dr. Heidegger's Experiment...NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 32. Markheim.....................ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS. With some topics for Discussion and Composition. ENGLISH PROSE SELF-RELIANCE[1] RALPH WALDO EMERSON I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. Always the soul hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,--that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for always the inmost becomes the outmost--and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato and Milton is that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.