But Emerson stands smiling behind this group of admirers and says, "To be great is to be misunderstood." Yes, he did say, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines;" but he soon adds, "Of one will the actions will be harmonious however unlike they seem." Emerson despises the consistency of the surface because he holds to the consistency of the depths, and every sentence he speaks is an action of the one will, and however unlike they seem they are harmonious, and, we can add, they are philosophical; and, what may seem to these anxious friends more daring, they are not only in harmony with each other, they are in deepest harmony with the spirit of modern philosophy, with a creed which ought to be taught by the most critical scholars of Harvard's Philosophy Hall. What is the essence of Emerson's doctrine in the realm of philosophy? It seems like sacrilege to formulate anything he said in the dry terms of technical philosophy. We must tear from it all the richness and splendor of his style, we must throw off the glory of his metaphor, and we must leave out his practical wisdom and his religious emotion. It seems as if we must lose all we love. It is as if we were to take a painting of Raphael and abstract not only from the richly colored gowns of the persons in it, but from their flesh and blood, till only the skeletons of the figures remained. All beauty would be gone, and yet we know that Raphael himself drew at first the skeletons of his figures, knowing too well that no pose and no gesture is convincing, and no drapery beautiful if the bones and joints fit not correctly together. And such a skeleton of theoretical ideas appears not only without charm, it appears necessarily also uninteresting, without originality, commonplace. All the philosophies, from Plato to Hegel, brought down to their technical formulas, sound merely like new combinations of trivial elements, and yet they have made the world, have made revolutions and wars, have led to freedom and peace, have been mightier than traditions and customs; and it is true for every one of them that, as Emerson said, "A philosopher must be more than a philosopher."