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simplicity than ours? Only the wit to say or sing these the poet needs; and of this our neighborhood has not less than many sounding cities. Plain as our landscape is, it has special attractions for the scholar who courts quiet surroundings, scenery not too exciting, yet stimulating to genial and uninterrupted studies. If the hills command no very broad horizon, the prospect is sufficiently sylvan to give an agreeable variety without confusing the mind, while the river in good part compensates for the sameness, as it winds sluggishly along the confines of the village, flowing by the monument into the distance through the meadows. Thoreau, writing of it, jocosely says: "It is remarkable for the gentleness of its current, which is hardly perceptible, and some have ascribed to its influence the proverbial moderation of the inhabitants of Concord, as celebrated in the Revolution and on other occasions. It has been suggested that the town should adopt for its coat-of-arms a field verdant with the Concord River circling nine times round it."

EPHEMERAL READING.

(From "Table-Talk.")

Not in stirring times like ours, when the world's affairs come posted with the successive sun rising or setting, can we ignore magazines, libraries, and ephemera of the press. Newspapers intrude into every house, almost supersede the primers and text-books of the schools, proffering alike to hand and eye intelligence formerly won only by laborious studies and much expense of time and money. Cheap literature is now in vogue; the age, if not profound, has chances for attaining some superficial knowledge, at least, of the world's doings and designings; the experiments of the few being hereby popularized for the benefit of the many everywhere, the humblest even partaking largely of the common benefit.

IDEALISM AND IDEALISTS.

(From "Table-Talk.")

Life and literature need the inspiration which idealism quickens and promotes. The history of thought shows that a people given to sensationalism and the lower forms of materialism have run to ruin. Only that which inspires life and nobility of thought can maintain and preserve itself from speedy and ignoble decay.

And we have too palpable evidences of corruption, public and private, to leave us in doubt as to the tendency of not a little of the cultivation and teachings in our times. . . . The idealists have given deeper insight into life and nature than other schools of thought. If inclined to visionariness, and seemingly sometimes on the verge of lunacy even, they have revealed depths of being, a devotion to the spirit of universality, that renders their works most edifying. They, more than any other, hold the balance between mind and matter, and illuminated literature, while they furthered the science, art, and religion of all times. An age deficient in idealism has ever been one of immorality and superficial attainment, since without the sense of ideas, nobility of character becomes of rare attainment, if possible.

PREACHING.

(From "Table-Talk.")

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If the speaker cannot illuminate the parlor, shall he adorn the pulpit? Who takes most of private life into the desk comes nearest heaven and the children who have not lapsed out of it. Is it not time in the world's history to have less familiarity with sin and the woes of the pit? Commend me to him who holds me fast by every sense, persuades me against every bias of temperament, habit, training, culture to espouse the just and lovely, and he shall be in my eyes thereafter the Priest of the Spirit and the Sent of Heaven. It is undeniable that, with all our teaching and preaching admirable as these often are the current divinity falls behind our attainment in most things else; the commanding practical sense and adventurous thoughts of our time being unawakened to the concerns wherein faith and duty have their seats, and from whose fountains life and thought are spiritualized and made lovely to men. Though allegory is superseded in good part by the novel, the field for this form of writing is as rich and inviting as when Bunyan wrote. A sacred allegory, treating of the current characteristics of the religious world, would be a powerful instrumentality for awaking and stimulating the piety of our times.

DOGMAS.

(From "Table-Talk.")

Every dogma embodies some shade of truth to give it seeming currency. Take the theological trinity as an instance which

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has vexed the literal Church from its foundation, and still perplexes its learned doctors. An intelligible psychology would interpret the mystery even to the unlearned and unprofessional. Analyse the attributes of your personality which you name yourself- and you will find herein the threefold attributes of instinct, intelligence, will, incarnate plainly in your own person: the root plainly of the trinitarian dogma. Not till we have fathomed the full significance of what we mean when we pronounce "I myself," is the idea of person clearly discriminated, philosophy and religion established upon immutable foundations.

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CONSCIENCE.

(From "Table-Talk.")

Ever present and operant is That which never becomes a party in one's guilt, conceives never an evil thought, consents never to an unrighteous deed, never sins; but holds itself impeccable, immutable, personally holy the Conscience — counsellor, comforter, judge, and executor of the spirit's decrees. None can flee from the spirit's presence, nor hide from himself. The reserved powers are the mighty ones. Side by side sleep the Whispering Sisters and the Eumenides. Nor is Conscience appeased till the sentence is pronounced. There is an oracle in the breast, an unsleeping police; and ever the court sits, dealing doom or deliverance. Our sole inheritance is our deeds. While remorse stirs the sinner, there remains hope of his redemption. "Only he to whom all is one, who draweth all things to one, and seeth all things in one, may enjoy true peace and rest of spirit." None can escape the Presence. The Ought is everywhere and imperative. Alike guilt in the soul and anguish in the flesh affirm His ubiquity. Matter in particle and planet, mind and is quick with spirit.

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SPIRITUALITY.

(From "Table-Talk.")

Born daily out of a world of wonders into a world of wonders, that faith is most ennobling which, answering to one's highest aspirations, touches all things meanwhile with the hues of an invisible world. And how vastly is life's aspect, the sphere of one's present activity, widened and ennobled the moment there step spiritual agents upon the stage, and he holds conscious com

munication with unseen powers! "He to whom the law which he is to follow," says Jacobi, " doth not stand forth as a God, has only a dead letter which cannot possibly quicken him." The religious life transcends the scientific understanding, its light shining through the clouds to those alone whose eyes are anointed to look behind the veils by lives of purity and devotion.

In the "Conversations with Children on the Gospels," written in 1840, a whole generation before this book of "Table-Talk” appeared in print, Mr. Alcott developed somewhat of the fundamental idea which led him in after years to become an oral teacher.

CONVERSATION AS A MEANS OF INSTRUCTION.
(From "Spiritual Culture.")

In conversation all the instincts and faculties of our being are touched. They find full and fair scope. It tempts forth all the powers. Man faces his fellow man. He feels the quickening life and light; the social affections are addressed; and these bring all the faculties in train. Speech comes unbidden. Nature lends her images. Imagination sends abroad her winged words. We see thought as it springs from the soul, and in the very process of growth and utterance. Reason plays under the mellow light of fancy. The genius of soul is waked, and eloquence sits on her tuneful lip. Wisdom finds an organ worthy her serene utterance. Ideas stand in beauty and majesty before the soul. And genius has ever sought this organ of utterance. It has given full testimony in its favor. Socrates a name that Christians can see coupled with that of their Divine Sage descanted thus on the profound themes in which he delighted. The market-place, the work-shop, the public streets, were his favorite haunts of instruction. And the divine Plato has added his testimony, also, in those enduring works, wherein he sought to embalm for posterity both the wisdom of his master and the genius which was his own. Rich text-books these for the study of philosophic genius; next in finish and beauty to the specimens of Jesus as recorded by John.

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The Orphic Sayings" one hundred in number-appeared in The Dial for July, 1840, and January, 1841. They are pregnant and brief; sometimes of only a line or two; all told they fill barely a score of pages. Some of them are notable as indicative of the author's turn of thought at this period of his life.

SOME ORPHIC SAYINGS.

(From "Orphic Sayings.")

1. The Heart-dial. - Thou art, my heart, a soul-flower, feeling ever and following the motions of thy sun. Opening thyself to her vivifying ray, and pleading thy affinity with the celestial orbs. Thou dost the livelong day dial on Time thine own eternity.... VIII. Mysticism. Because the soul is herself mysterious, the saint is a mystic to the worldling. He lives to the soul; he partakes of her properties; he dwells in her atmosphere of light and hope. But the worldling, living to sense, is identified with the flesh; he dwells amidst the dust and vapors of his own lusts, which dim his vision, and obscure the heavens wherein the saint beholds the face of God. . . . x. Apotheosis. — Every soul feels at times her own possibility of becoming a God; she cannot rest in the human; she aspires to the godlike. Men shall become Gods. Every act of admiration, prayer, praise, worship, desire, hope, implies and predicts the future apotheosis of the soul. . . . xxv. The Prophet.—The prophet, by disciplines of meditation and valor, faithful to the spirit of the heart, his eye purified of the motes of tradition, his life of the vestiges of usage, ascends to the heights of immediate intuition. He rends the veil of sense; he bridges the distance between faith and sight, and beholds the spiritual verities without Scripture or meditation. In the presence of God he communes with Him face to face. . . . XXXVIII. Time. - Organizations are mortal; the seal of death is fixed on them even at birth. The young future is nurtured by the past, yet aspires to a nobler life, and revises in his maturity the traditions and usages of his day, to be supplanted by the sons and daughters whom he begets and ennobles. Time, like fabled Saturn, now generates, and, ere even their sutures be closed, devours his own offspring. Only the children of the soul are immortal; the births of time are premature and perishable. . . . XLVIII. Beauty. ... XLVIII. Beauty. All departures from perfect beauty are degradations of the divine image. God is the one type which the soul strives to incarnate in all organizations. Varieties are historical; the one form embodies all forms; all having a common likeness at the base of difference. Human heads are images, more or less perfect, of the soul's or God's head. But the divine features do not fix in flesh, in the coarse and brittle clay. Beauty is fluent; art of the highest order rep

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