As a writer, he sought to make all the old thoughts appear trivial in the light of his audacious affirmations. He stood ready at all times to strike his colors to the man who could bring a larger generalization than his own. All his knowledge, all his opinions, were at the mercy of the new idea. He did not tread the beaten paths, or seek truth in the logical way; he sought for it by spurts and sallies of the mind. He called himself an “experimenter,” and said he did not pretend to settle anything as true or false. “I unsettle all things. No facts are to me sacred; none are profane: I simply experiment; an endless seeker with no Past at my back.” In his random, prophetic way he hits on many sublime truths--hits on them by sheer force of affirmation, like the truth of evolution, and of the correlation of forces. Indeed, there are few great thoughts current in our time that were not indicated by the bold guessing of Emerson. The fragmentary and projectile-like character of his thinking is often very effective. He spent no force upon logic, upon fortifying his position, but sent his single bullet as far and as deep as he could. Emerson’s hope and confidence in the new is shown in his serious prophecy and expectancy of the coming man. He was apparently always on the lookout for a new and greater man than had yet appeared. He was always sweeping the horizon for this strange sail. “A new person,” he says, “is to me a great event, and keeps me from sleep.” He met every stranger with a curious, expectant glance. He looked at you and waited for you to speak, as if the thought that perhaps here is the man I am waiting for, was never absent from his mind. “If the companions of our childhood,” he says, “should turn out to be heroes, and their condition regal, it would not surprise us.” But the experience of most persons, I fancy, points just the other way: we are always incredulous when told that our playmates have turned out to be heroes; just as the whole world, except the Emersons in it, are skeptical of the worth of the new idea, or of the new invention. Emerson does not so much expound a philosophy as he celebrates a sentiment or a law. He does not inculcate a virtue, but quickens our moral sense. He does not teach a religion, but shows all nature as religious. His method is not that of the analyst; he celebrates and presents whole what others give in detail. His mind is deficient in continuity, but strong in affirmation, strong in its separate sallies and flights. He has not a definite, practical bent like Carlyle; he seldom lays his hand on any current evil or want, but rather glorifies the world as it is. He is abstract in his aim, and concrete in his methods. He fixes his eye on the star, but would make it draw his wagon. Carlyle was like an engine tied to its iron rails,--he turned aside for nothing; Emerson was more like a sailing yacht that hovers about all shores and takes advantage of every breeze. XIII THOREAU’S WILDNESS.