Essays By Ralph Waldo Emerson Part 14

[Footnote 101: White House, the popular name of the presidential mansion at Washington.]

[Footnote 102: Explain the phrase _eat dust_.]

[Footnote 103: Overlook, oversee, superintend.]

[Footnote 104: Res nolunt, etc. Translated in the previous sentence.]

[Footnote 105: The world ... dew. Explain the thought. What gives the earth its shape?]

[Footnote 106: The microscope ... little. This statement is not in accordance with the facts, if we are to understand _perfect_ in the sense which the next sentence would suggest.]

[Footnote 107: Emerson has been considered a pantheist.]

[Footnote 108: _[Greek: Hoi kyboi]_, etc. The translation follows in the text. This old proverb is quoted by Sophocles, (Fragm. LXXIV.2) in the form:

[Greek: Aei gar eu piptousin oi Dios kyboi],

Emerson uses it in _Nature_ in the form "Nature's dice are always loaded."]

[Footnote 109: Amain, with full force, vigorously.]

[Footnote 110: The proverb is quoted by Horace, Epistles, I, X.24:

"Naturam expelles furca, tamen usque recurret."

A similar thought is expressed by Juvenal, Seneca, Cicero, and Aristophanes.]

[Footnote 111: Augustine, Confessions, B. I.]

[Footnote 112: Jupiter, the supreme G.o.d of the Romans, the Zeus of the Greeks.]

[Footnote 113: Tying up the hands. The expression is used figuratively, of course.]

[Footnote 114: The supreme power in England is vested in Parliament.]

[Footnote 115: Prometheus stole fire from heaven to benefit the race of men. In punishment for this Jupiter chained him to a rock and set an eagle to prey upon his liver. Some unknown and terrible danger threatened Jupiter, the secret of averting which only Prometheus knew.

For this secret Jupiter offered him his freedom.]

[Footnote 116: Minerva, G.o.ddess of wisdom, who sprang full-armed from the brain of Jupiter. The secret which she held is told in the following lines.]

[Footnote 117: Aurora, G.o.ddess of the dawn. Enamored of t.i.thonus, she persuaded Jupiter to grant him immortality, but forgot to ask for him immortal youth. Read Tennyson's poem on _t.i.thonus_.]

[Footnote 118: Achilles, the hero of Homer's _Iliad_. His mother Thetis, to render him invulnerable, plunged him into the waters of the Styx. The heel by which she held him was not washed by the waters and remained vulnerable. Here he received a mortal wound.]

[Footnote 119: Siegfried, hero of the Nibelungenlied, the old German epic poem. Having slain a dragon, he bathed in its blood and became covered with an invulnerable h.o.r.n.y hide, only one small spot between his shoulders which was covered by a leaf remaining vulnerable. Into this spot the treacherous Hagen plunged his lance.]

[Footnote 120: Nemesis, a Greek female deity, G.o.ddess of retribution, who visited the righteous anger of the G.o.ds upon mortals.]

[Footnote 121: The Furies or Eumenides, stern and inexorable ministers of the vengeance of the G.o.ds.]

[Footnote 122: Ajax and Hector, Greek and Trojan heroes in the Trojan War. See Homer's _Iliad_. Achilles slew Hector and, lashing him to his chariot with the belt which Ajax had given Hector, dragged him round the walls of Troy. Ajax committed suicide with the sword which Hector had presented to him.]

[Footnote 123: Thasians, inhabitants of the island of Thasus. The story here told of the rival of the athlete Theagenes is found in Pausanias' _Description of Greece_, Book VI. chap. XI.]

[Footnote 124: Shakespeare, the greatest of English writers, seems to have succeeded entirely or almost entirely in removing the personal element from his writings.]

[Footnote 125: h.e.l.lenic, Greek.]

[Footnote 126: t.i.t for tat, etc. This paragraph is composed of a series of proverbs.]

[Footnote 127: Edmund Burke (1729?-1797), ill.u.s.trious Irish statesman, orator, and author.]

[Footnote 128: p.a.w.ns, the pieces of lowest rank in chess.]

[Footnote 129: What is the meaning of _obscene_ here? Compare the Latin.]

[Footnote 130: Polycrates, a tyrant of Samos, who was visited with such remarkable prosperity that he was advised by a friend to break the course of it by depriving himself of some valued possession. In accordance with this advice he cast into the sea an emerald ring which he considered his rarest treasure. A few days later a fisherman presented the monarch with a large fish inside of which the ring was found. Soon after this Polycrates fell into the power of an enemy and was nailed to a cross.]

[Footnote 131: Scot and lot, "formerly, a parish a.s.sessment laid on subjects according to their ability. Now, a phrase for obligations of every kind regarded collectively." (Webster.)]

[Footnote 132: Read Emerson's essay on _Gifts_.]

[Footnote 133: Worm worms, breed worms.]

[Footnote 134: Compare the old proverb "Murder will out." See Chaucer, _N.P.T._, 232 and 237, and _Pr. T._, 124.]

[Footnote 135:

"Et semel emissum volat irrevocabile verb.u.m."

HORACE, _EPIST._, I. XVIII. 65.

[Footnote 136: Stag in the fable. See _aesop_, LXVI. 184, _Cerva et Leo_; Phaedrus I. 12. _Cervus ad fontem_; La Fontaine, vi. 9, _Le Cerf se Voyant dans l'eau_.]

[Footnote 137: See the quotation from St. Bernard farther on.]

[Footnote 138: Withholden, old participle of _withhold_, now _withheld_.]

[Footnote 139: What is the etymology of the word _mob_?]

[Footnote 140: Optimism and Pessimism. The meanings of these two opposites are readily made out from the Latin words from which they come.]

[Footnote 141: St. Bernard de Clairvaux (1091-1153), French ecclesiastic.]

[Footnote 142: Jesus. Holmes writes of Emerson: "Jesus was for him a divine manifestation, but only as other great human souls have been in all ages and are to-day. He was willing to be called a Christian just as he was willing to be called a Platonist.... If he did not worship the 'man Christ Jesus' as the churches of Christendom have done, he followed his footsteps so nearly that our good Methodist, Father Taylor, spoke of him as more like Christ than any man he had known."]

[Footnote 143: The first _his_ refers to Jesus, the second to Shakespeare.]