Page:Studies of a Biographer 4.djvu/158

true. If we can rise to a higher sphere we shall see that they are complementary instead of contradictory. But Montaigne has evidently another charm for Emerson. His amazing frankness, his delight in laying bare all his own weaknesses, makes his Essays an incomparable text-book for the student of human nature. Montaigne has no literary affectation; he talks rather than writes. 'Cut his words and they would bleed; they are vascular and alive.' Montaigne plays no antics; he is 'stout and solid; tastes every moment of the day; likes pain because it makes him feel himself and realise things, as we pinch ourselves to know that we are awake.' If Emerson could soar into mystic regions, he is equally delighted with the broad daylight, in which you can see the actual everyday play of human nature, stripped bare of every sort of conventional disguise. The man of genius, he says, must draw strength from pure reason, and his aim from common-sense. The two poles are equally necessary, if he is not to be either too mean or too vague. That, again, is one of the merits which he sees in Plato. Plato is the 'balanced soul.' He combines the mystical and the practical element. He can be transcendental, and yet is at home in common life. He