“Bacon,” he says, “is a producer of conceptions and of sentences.  The matter being explored, he says to us:  ’Such it is; touch it not on that side; it must be approached from the other.’  Nothing more; no proof, no effort to convince; he affirms, and nothing more; he has thought in the manner of artists and poets, and he speaks after the manner of prophets and seers.  ’Cogita et visa,’—­this title of one of his books might be the title of all.  His process is that of the creators; it is intuition, not reasoning. . . .  There is nothing more hazardous, more like fantasy, than this mode of thought when it is not checked by natural and good strong common sense.  This common sense, which is a kind of natural divination, the stable equilibrium of an intellect always gravitating to the true, like the needle to the north pole, Bacon possesses in the highest degree.  He has a preeminently practical, even an utilitarian mind.”

It is significant, and is indeed the hidden seed or root out of which comes the explanation of much, if not the main part, of his life and writings, that Emerson comes of a long line of clergymen; that the blood in his veins has been teaching, and preaching, and thinking, and growing austere, these many generations.  One wonders that it is still so bounding and strong, so red with iron and quick with oxygen.  But in him seems to be illustrated one of those rare cases in the genealogy of families where the best is carried forward each time, and steadily recruited and intensified.  It does not seem possible for any man to become just what Emerson is from the stump, though perhaps great men have been the fruit of one generation; but there is a quality in him, an aroma of fine manners, a propriety, a chivalry in the blood, that dates back, and has been refined and transmitted many times.  Power is born with a man, and is always first hand, but culture, genius, noble instincts, gentle manners, or the easy capacity for these things, may be, and to a greater or a lesser extent are, the contribution of the past.  Emerson’s culture is radical and ante-natal, and never fails him.  The virtues of all those New England ministers and all those tomes of sermons are in this casket.  One fears sometimes that he has been too much clarified, or that there is not enough savage grace or original viciousness and grit in him to save him.  How he hates the roysterers, and all the rank, turbulent, human passions, and is chilled by the thought that perhaps after all Shakespeare led a vulgar life!

When Tyndall was here, he showed us how the dark, coarse, invisible heat rays could be strained out of the spectrum; or, in other words, that every solar beam was weighted with a vast, nether, invisible side, which made it a lever of tremendous power in organic nature.  After some such analogy, one sees how the highest order of power in the intellectual world draws upon and is nourished by those rude, primitive, barbaric human qualities that our culture and pietism tend to cut off and strain out.  Our culture has its eye on the other end of the spectrum, where the fine violet and indigo rays are; but all the lifting, rounding, fructifying powers of the system are in the coarse, dark rays—­the black devil—­ at the base.  The angel of light is yoked with the demon of darkness, and the pair create and sustain the world.