At just this point many stern critics have cried out against Emerson as a moral teacher, and have charged him with counselling an optimistic passivity. Emerson bids us go with the current. The stern critic snatches at a figure and comes away with an error. Have not all the orthodox doctors taught that the good man goes against the current? Such misapprehension is the penalty for being a poet—for not sticking faithfully to the technical jargon. Without resorting to that medium, however, it should be possible to clear Emerson of the charge of counselling a foolish optimism, an indiscreet or base passivity. It should, at any rate, be possible to clear him in the eyes of any one whose morals have, "like his, a religious basis—for example, in the eyes of the sad and strenuous author of that great line: "In la sua volontade è nostra pace—In his will is our peace." The point is, that Emerson does not urge us to confide in all currents, to yield to all tendencies. It is only after we have arrived by high thinking at a proud definition of man that we are to take for our motto: "I dare do all that may become a man." It is only after we have discovered by severe inquisition the law of our higher self that we are to trust our instincts and follow our nature. We are to be confident and passive. Yes: when we are doing the will of God.
What made Emerson's teaching take hold of his contemporaries, what should commend it to us today, is just its unfailingly positive character, the
