all human actions, and we act at all only in virtue of it,—­just as truly as we move and work only in virtue of the forces which make the spheres revolve, or think by help of the meaning which presses upon us from the thought-woven world, through all the pores of sense.  A true ethics, like a true psychology, or a true science of nature, must lean upon metaphysics, and it cannot pretend to start ab initio.  We live in the Copernican age, which puts the individual in a system, in obedience to whose laws he finds his welfare.  And this is simply the assertion of an optimistic creed, for it implies a harmonious world.

But, though this is true, it must be remembered that this faith is a prophetic anticipation, rather than acquired knowledge.  We are only on the way towards reconstructing in thought the fact which we are, or towards bringing into clear knowledge the elemental power which manifests itself within us as thought, desire, and deed.  And, until this is achieved, we have no full right to an optimistic creed.  The revelation of the unity which pervades all things, even in the natural world, will be the last attainment of science; and the reconciliation of nature and man and God is still further in the future, and will be the last triumph of philosophy.  During all the interval the world will be a scene of warring elements; and poetry, religion, and philosophy can only hold forth a promise, and give to man a foretaste of ultimate victory.  And in this state of things even their assurance often falters.  Faith lapses into doubt, poetry becomes a wail for a lost god, and its votary exhibits, “through Europe to the AEtolian shore, the pageant of his bleeding heart.”  The optimistic faith is, as a rule, only a hope and a desire, a “Grand Perhaps,” which knows no defence against the critical understanding, and sinks dumb when questioned.  If, in the form of a religious conviction, its assurance is more confident, then, too often, it rests upon the treacherous foundations of authoritative ignorance, which crumble into dust beneath the blows of awakened and liberated reason.  Nay, if by the aid of philosophy we turn our optimism into a faith held by reason, a fact before which the intellect, as well as the heart, worships and grows glad, it still is for most of us only a general hypothesis, a mere leap to God which spurns the intermediate steps, a universal without content, a bare form that lacks reality.

Such an optimism, such a plunge into the pure blue and away from facts, was Emerson’s.  Caroline Fox tells a story of him and Carlyle which reveals this very pointedly.  It seems that Carlyle once led the serene philosopher through the abominations of the streets of London at midnight, asking him with grim humour at every few steps, “Do you believe in the devil now?” Emerson replied that the more he saw of the English people the greater and better he thought them.  This little incident lays bare the limits of both these great men.