[Footnote 4:  Pole-star.  Polaris is now the nearest conspicuous star to the north pole of the celestial equator.  Owing to the motion of the pole of the celestial equator around that of the ecliptic, this star will in course of time recede from its proud position, and the brilliant star Vega in the constellation Harp will become the pole-star.]

[Footnote 5:  It is now a well-recognized fact in the development of animal life that as any part of the body falls into disuse it in time disappears.  Good examples of this are the disappearance of powerful fangs from the mouth of man, the loss of power in the wings of barnyard fowls; and, vice versa, as new uses for a member arise, its structure changes to meet the new needs.  An example of this is the transformation from the hoof of a horse through the cloven hoofs of the cow to the eventual development of highly expert fingers in the monkey and man.  Emerson assumed the doctrine of evolution to be sufficiently established by the anatomical evidence of gradual development.  In his own words:  “Man is no up-start in the creation.  His limbs are only a more exquisite organization—­say rather the finish—­of the rudimental forms that have been already sweeping the sea and creeping in the mud.  The brother of his hand is even now cleaving the arctic sea in the fin of the whale, and innumerable ages since was pawing the marsh in the flipper of the saurian.”  A view afterwards condensed into his memorable couplet: 

   “Striving to be man, the worm
    Mounts through all the spires of form.”
]

[Footnote 6:  Stint.  A prescribed or allotted task, a share of labor.]

[Footnote 7:  Ridden.  Here used in the sense of dominated.]

[Footnote 8:  Monitory pictures.  Instructive warning pictures.]

[Footnote 9:  The Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus is the author of this saying, not “the old oracle.”  It occurs in the Encheiridion, or manual, a work put together by a pupil of Epictetus.  The original saying of Epictetus is as follows:  “Every thing has two handles, the one by which it may be borne, the other by which it may not.  If your brother acts unjustly, do not lay hold of the act by that handle wherein he acts unjustly, for this is the handle which cannot be borne:  but lay hold of the other, that he is your brother, that he was nurtured with you, and you will lay hold of the thing by that handle by which it can be borne.”]

[Footnote 10:  Every day, the sun (shines).]

[Footnote 11:  Beholden.  Emerson here uses this past participle with its original meaning instead of in its present sense of “indebted.”]

[Footnote 12:  Here we have a reminder of Emerson’s pantheism.  He means the inexplicable continuity “of what I call God, and fools nature,” as Browning expressed it.]

[Footnote 13:  His expanding knowledge will become a creator.]

[Footnote 14:  Know thyself.  Plutarch ascribes this saying to Plato.  It is also ascribed to Pythagoras, Chilo, Thales, Cleobulus, Bias, and Socrates; also to Phemonie, a mythical Greek poetess of the ante-Homeric period.  Juvenal (Satire XI. 27) says that this precept descended from heaven.  “Know thyself” and “Nothing too much” were inscribed upon the Delphic oracle.