To Mr. Norton.

Cambridge, July 24, 1866.

A few days after I received the manuscript following your last note, I entrapped Gurney into listening to the new philosopher. It was a hot day; and, after I had read a little more than half, I desisted, — Gurney looked so weary and bored. And so we returned to worldly affairs and common thoughts, letting the philosopher lie in my drawer for three weeks or more. To-day, Gurney submitted to hear the rest, that we might, if possible, qualify our very unfavorable opinion of the first half. Long before I had finished it, the old expression of weariness came upon our friend, and made me pause to ask if he found it dreary. “A howling wilderness,” he answered. As we were emulous of godlike qualities, we persevered to the end, but have our redress in the following report: —

Utterly without method, the article is very deficient in mere literary excellences; and, though freer than is usual with transcendentalists from astonishing expressions, it lacks at the same time the genuine transcendental merit of suggestiveness. It is the mere dry husk of Hegelianism, — dogmatic, without the only merit of dogmatism, distinctness of definition.

I am not so much a positivist as to deny that mystical and poetical philosophies are valuable products of human genius; but then they must be works of real genius, — of a Plato, a Hegel, or an Emerson. No being is prosier than the uninspired disciple of the mystic. All that is stimulating — all the glorious vision — has melted away. Instead of clouds, we have left mere idiocy; blank staring at emptiness.