spirits! But the divine effort is never relaxed; the carrion in the sun will convert itself to grass and flowers; and man, though in brothels, or jails, or gibbets, is on his way to all that is good and true." And at another place he writes: "The destiny of organized Nature is amelioration, and who en tell its limits? Whilst he lives, to scatter the seeds of science and of song, that climate, corn, animals, men, may be milder, and: the germs of love and benefit may be multiplied."
Emerson believed in living in the Present—not in the Past, nor in the Future. He writes: "Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say 'I think,' 'I am,' but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time to them, There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.
"Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with Nature in the present, above time.
"This should be plain enough. Yet see what
