cially Berkeley's new theory of vision and his theory of the visual language. Yet these two theories may be upheld by two concrete cases. There is the case of a woman in Pennsylvania who, having cataracts removed from both her eyes, declared that her sensations were indescribably delightful, but, at the same time, her newly recovered power of vision was for some time of very little use to her; she was perpetually stretching out her hands for fear of running against objects, being unable to distinguish their distances or magnitudes. Again he illustrates the justness of the observation, that in all our acquired perceptions we proceed according to the interpretation of signs, and whenever the sign of anything is presented, the mind naturally concludes that the thing signified is present. A gentleman passing along the streets of Philadelphia imagines that he perceives a steamboat in the Delaware at a distance, but upon approaching it, finds that he was deceived, for that the object he saw was a sign-post before an inn, upon which the representation of a steamboat was rudely painted.

We have here the subjective principle of interpretation brought against the Scottish common sense with its absolute and universal principles. Another instance of a similar sort is found in the doctrine of relativity, of a personal as against a public standard, as propounded by another of the lesser realists, Charles Nisbet. He explains that the old saying of Heracleitus— that a man cannot go into the same river twice-applies to the mental life. Every person may be said to have a certain relative measure of that which is peculiar to himself and suited to his own feelings, so that a lecture in philosophy may seem as long as a game of cards, though the latter be actually three times longer. Nevertheless,

when we are attentive to our own thoughts we discover a sort of pomp or procession of ideas which succeed one another in our minds with a regular pace or march, and this regularity could not exist unless we had a common measure without ourselves, a means whereby mankind can agree with each other with respect to the length of determinate things.

We could multiply instances of the lesser lights who discovered breaks in the system of common sense, but such men were not wanted and remained ignored. So it is that in reviewing the triumphant course of natural realism we get the illusion of unbroken ranks of believers, from the early Princeton leaders to the later Northern representatives. Throughout there was apparent agreement, from the official heads in the colleges to the popular exponents who held that Reid had said the last safe word in philosophy and that Kant opened up the abysses of skepticism.

With the rise of New England transcendentalism there came a life and death struggle between the old and the new. We have previously raised the question which system was destined to be the American philosophy. We can now suggest an answer. Which of the two forms of thought best fulfilled the requisite of native origin, of progressiveness, of liberality of spirit, and of toleration of other forms of thought? In regard to natural realism, it may be said that as it was foreign in its origin, so it remained an exotic in its characteristics, lacking those qualities on which the men of the New World prided themselves. First, it was unprogressive, being rightly accused of failure to advance; thus the two principal definitions of the movement, although seventy years apart, were in substance essentially the same. Again, it was illiberal towards unrestrained inquiry; being op

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posed to the speculative ferment of Hume and the free critical methods of Kant, it was rationalistic, but only within the limits fixed by respectability. Lastly, it was intolerant of other systems; as it fought the European forms of deism, idealism, and naturalism of the eighteenth century, so it came to look askance upon the French positivism, the German idealism, and the British evolutionary doctrines of the nineteenth. These are the shortcomings of realism, but, inasmuch as its aim was to be a safe and sound philosophy, they are to be considered not as fundamental deficiencies but only as the defects of its qualities. In marked contrast, however, to the Scottish realism was the New England transcendentalism, whose characteristics were the direct opposite of its chief rival. Instead of being a foreign importation brought over in the original form, it was essentially a native growth deeply rooted in its age and surroundings. Historic forces were visible in it, but these had been so assimilated that they appeared not so much initial impulses as remote resultants. Hence transcendentalism possessed the typical marks of the receptive American mind. First it was progressive; starting with the Platonism latent in Puritanism, it drew nourishment in turn from the Berkeleian, Kantian, and Hegelian idealism. Again it was liberal; instead of opposing the spirit of free inquiry, it exhibited a generous interest in regard to other systems, translating not merely the philosophical classics of France and Germany but, as in the case of Emerson, seeking inspiration from the sacred books of the East. This lenient attitude towards an unrestricted immigration of foreign thought brought about the last and most obvious characteristic of transcendentalism, its utter tolerance of other systems. Thus it took from the Puritans their

individualism, from the deists their arguments for design, from the idealists their phenomenalism, from the materialists their dynamic conception of the universe, from the realists themselves their doctrine of immediate intuition. This may be considered such an extreme eclecticism as not to deserve the name of a system; it may nevertheless be said in conclusion that whether or not transcendentalism was the coming philosophy of America, it at least furnished a native epitome of American philosophy as it was developed in its early schools.

CHAPTER VI

TRANSCENDENTALISM

1. EMERSON, INTERPRETER OF NATURE

THERE is an inscription on an old wall of Revolutionary days, that, ruined by the war, it was rebuilt more strongly out of the old materials. This, in a figure, explains the beginnings of transcendentalism in America. After the dark and sterile period in our philosophy, the movement in New England suddenly gathered up the forces of the previous times. Transcendentalism summed up in itself the marks of all three centuries,—the faith of the seventeenth, the reason of the eighteenth, the feeling of the nineteenth. As we may recall, the age of unreason, or dependency on inscrutable decrees, had been succeeded by that of reason, or the power of man fully to understand nature, and that in turn by the age of sentiment, the outpouring of the romantic spirit. It remained for one man to fuse these three factors into a system. Emerson believed in faith in self, or selfreliance; he believed in reason in nature, for nature was the present expositor of the divine mind; he believed in feeling toward his fellow-men, for he looked on man as a façade of a temple, wherein all wisdom and all good abide."

This fusion of the spirit of three centuries brought a new note into philosophy. No longer was man alone worshiped as admirable; no longer was nature considered as self-sufficient, but the two were counted com