Critics have often written of the optimism of Emerson as if he were one of those who did not perceive the darker side of things.  Nothing could be more untrue to his temper of mind.  Emerson was cheerful, but he never pretended that the world was an altogether cheerful place to live in.  Indeed, it distinctly needed cheering up, and that, according to him, is what we are here for.

It might be possible to make out a list of matters of fact treated by Emerson and his friend Carlyle.  They would be essentially the same.  When it came to hard facts, one was as unflinching in his recognition as the other.  There was nothing smug in Emerson’s philosophy.  He never took an apologetic attitude nor attempted to minimize difficulties.  There was no attempt to justify the ways of God to man.  But while agreeing in regard to the facts the friends differed as to their conclusions.  In reading Carlyle one seems to stand at the end of a world struggle that has proved unavailing.  Everything has been tried, and everything has failed.  Alas!  Alas!

Emerson sees the same facts, but he seems to be standing at the beginning.  The moral world is still without form and void, but the creative spirit is brooding upon it.  “Sweet is the genesis of things.”  Emerson is pleased with the world, not because he thinks its present condition is very good, but because he sees so much room for it to become better.  It is a most promising experiment.  It furnishes an abundance of the raw materials of righteousness.

Nor does he flatter himself that the task of betterment is an easy one, or that the end is in sight.  It is not a world where wishes, even good wishes, are fulfilled without effort.  There are inexorable laws not of our making.  The whims of good people are not respected.

  “For Destiny never swerves
     Nor yields to man the helm.”

The struggle is stem and unrelenting.  It taxes all our energies.  And yet it is exhilarating.  There is a moral quick-wittedness which sees the smile behind the threatening mask of Fate.  Destiny is after all a good comrade for the brave and the self-reliant.

  “He forbids to despair,
     His cheeks mantle with mirth,
   And the unimagined good of man
     Is yeaning at the birth.”

The riddle of existence is seen not from the Old World point of view, but from that of the new.  It is of the nature of a surprise.  The Sphinx of Emerson is not carved in stone.  It is not silent and motionless, waiting for answers that do not come.

It is the American Sphinx leading in a game of hide-and-seek.  The mystery of existence baffles us, not because there is no answer, but because there are so many.  They are infinite in number, and all of them are true.  They wait for the mind large enough to harbor them in all their variety, and serene enough not to be annoyed because their contradictions are not at once reconciled.

The catalogue of ills may be never so long, but it fails to depress one who sees everything in the making.