the rhinoceros of English, Emerson aspired to be its hippopotamus,--both pachyderms, and impenetrable to the bullets of criticism. We have called Cousin an eclecticist. His Philosophy is a positive one compared with that of Emerson. Here are scraps of Plato and Hegel, of Porphyry and Swedenborg, of AEschylus and De Stael. Like the _Lehrer zu Sais_, 'he looks on the stars, and imitates their courses and positions in the sand.' In the obscurity that proves him great, for 'To be great is to be misunderstood,' (is this the true 'misery of greatness' of Milton?) it is hard to grasp his individuality. His haughty assertions meet us at every turn. We no more dare to question them than so many 'centaurs or sphinxes or pallid gorgons' in a nightmare. But he relieves our perplexity and gives us the key to that enigma himself. 'I unsettle all things. No facts to me are sacred, none are profane. I simply experiment, an endless seeker, _with no past at my back_.' What is this but another version of Brahma? 'Far or forgot to me is near.' It is a reflection of the Veda. 'I myself never was not, nor thou, nor all the princes of the earth, nor shall we ever hereafter cease to be.' Spinoza, the God-intoxicated man, never ventured on a declaration so bold. 'The eternal wisdom of God, _Dei oeterna Sapientia_,' says he, more modestly, 'is manifested in all things, but mostly in the human mind, and most of all in Jesus Christ.' Here then we find the individuality of Emerson, in his pure Pantheism, and, like the sword of Martin Antolinez, it illumines all the field. Now we understand the constant warfare, the 'inevitable polarity,' in these pages. We forgive the occasional inconsistencies of a man who is at once, by his own confession, 'God in Nature and a weed by the wall.' His weakness strives after infinite power. Conscious of a divinity within, he struggles to express it worthily; but ah! says Hermes Trismegistus,--'It is hard to conceive God, but impossible to express him.' Freedom within chafes at the iron necessity without, 'a necessity deep as the world,' all-controlling, imperial, which he acknowledges in the very depths of his being. But the necessity of Emerson is a Hegelian element, such as every Aristophanic comedy reveals. It is not the necessity of Fichte. 'I, with all that relates to me, am imprisoned within the bonds of Necessity. I am one link of her inflexible chain. A time was when I was not, so those have assured me who were before me, and, as I have no consciousness of this time, I am constrained to believe their testimony.' This is the necessity of mere existence, which bears no relation to the will of the man, not that inflexible destiny to which Emerson refers, that underlies his continued being. The first does not oppose the 'instinct of an activity free, independent,' which Emerson afterwards acknowledges. But 'I am God in Nature,' he repeats. 'The simplest person who in his integrity proclaims God, becomes God.' 'This thorough integrity of