“They say that by electro-magnetism, your salad shall be grown from the seed, whilst your fowl is roasting for dinner:  it is a symbol of our modern aims and endeavors,—­of our condensation and acceleration of objects; but nothing is gained:  nature cannot be cheated:  man’s life is but seventy salads long, grow they swift or grow they slow.”

This is pretty and pleasant, but as to the literal value of the prediction, M. Jules Verne would be the best authority to consult.  Poets are fond of that branch of science which, if the imaginative Frenchman gave it a name, he would probably call Onditologie.

It is not to be supposed that the most sanguine optimist could be satisfied with the condition of the American political world at the present time, or when the Essay on “Politics” was written, some years before the great war which changed the aspects of the country in so many respects, still leaving the same party names, and many of the characters of the old parties unchanged.  This is Emerson’s view of them as they then were:—­

“Of the two great parties, which, at this hour, almost share the nation between them, I should say that one has the best cause, and the other contains the best men.  The philosopher, the poet, or the religious man, will, of course, wish to cast his vote with the democrat, for free trade, for wide suffrage, for the abolition of legal cruelties in the penal code, and for facilitating in every manner the access of the young and the poor to the sources of wealth and power.  But he can rarely accept the persons whom the so-called popular party propose to him as representatives of these liberties.  They have not at heart the ends which give to the name of democracy what hope and virtue are in it.  The spirit of our American radicalism is destructive and aimless; it is not loving; it has no ulterior and divine ends; but is destructive only out of hatred and selfishness.  On the other side, the conservative party, composed of the most moderate, able, and cultivated part of the population, is timid, and merely defensive of property.  It indicates no right, it aspires to no real good, it brands no crime, it proposes no generous policy, it does not build nor write, nor cherish the arts, nor foster religion, nor establish schools, nor encourage science, nor emancipate the slave, nor befriend the poor, or the Indian, or the immigrant.  From neither party, when in power, has the world any benefit to expect in science, art, or humanity, at all commensurate with the resources of the nation.”

The metaphysician who looks for a closely reasoned argument on the famous old question which so divided the schoolmen of old will find a very moderate satisfaction in the Essay entitled “Nominalism and Realism.”  But there are many discursive remarks in it worth gathering and considering.  We have the complaint of the Cambridge “Phi Beta Kappa Oration,” reiterated, that there is no complete man, but only a collection of fragmentary men.