"For all men, all women, Time, your country, your condition, the invisible world are the interrogators: _Who are you? What do you? Can you obtain what you wish? Is there method in your consciousness? Can you see tendency in your life? Can you help any soul_? "Can he answer these questions? Can he dispose of them? Happy if you can answer them mutely in the order and disposition of your life! Happy for more than yourself, a benefactor of men, if you can answer them in works of wisdom, art, or poetry; bestowing on the general mind of men organic creations, to be the guidance and delight of all who know them." The Essay on "Plutarch" has a peculiar value from the fact that Emerson owes more to him than to any other author except Plato, who is one of the only two writers quoted oftener than Plutarch. _Mutato nomine_, the portrait which Emerson draws of the Greek moralist might stand for his own:-- "Whatever is eminent in fact or in fiction, in opinion, in character, in institutions, in science--natural, moral, or metaphysical, or in memorable sayings drew his attention and came to his pen with more or less fulness of record. "A poet in verse or prose must have a sensuous eye, but an intellectual co-perception. Plutarch's memory is full and his horizon wide. Nothing touches man but he feels to be his. "Plutarch had a religion which Montaigne wanted, and which defends him from wantonness; and though Plutarch is as plain spoken, his moral sentiment is always pure.-- "I do not know where to find a book--to borrow a phrase of Ben Jonson's--'so rammed with life,' and this in chapters chiefly ethical, which are so prone to be heavy and sentimental.--His vivacity and abundance never leave him to loiter or pound on an incident.-- "In his immense quotation and allusion we quickly cease to discriminate between what he quotes and what he invents.--'Tis all Plutarch, by right of eminent domain, and all property vests in this emperor. "It is in consequence of this poetic trait in his mind, that I confess that, in reading him, I embrace the particulars, and carry a faint memory of the argument or general design of the chapter; but he is not less welcome, and he leaves the reader with a relish and a necessity for completing his studies. "He is a pronounced idealist, who does not hesitate to say, like another Berkeley, 'Matter is itself privation.'-- "Of philosophy he is more interested in the results than in the method. He has a just instinct of the presence of a master, and prefers to sit as a scholar with Plato than as a disputant. "His natural history is that of a lover and poet, and not of a physicist.