He lived too early and
at too great a distance from the forum of European thought to absorb the
ideas of evolution and give place to them in his philosophy. Evolution
does not graft well upon the Platonic Idealism, nor are physiology and
the kindred sciences sympathetic. Nothing aroused Emerson's indignation
more than the attempts of the medical faculty and of phrenologists to
classify, and therefore limit individuals. "The grossest ignorance does
not disgust me like this ignorant knowingness."
We miss in Emerson the underlying conception of growth, of development,
so characteristic of the thought of our own day, and which, for
instance, is found everywhere latent in Browning's poetry. Browning
regards character as the result of experience and as an ever changing
growth. To Emerson, character is rather an entity complete and eternal
from the beginning. He is probably the last great writer to look at life
from a stationary standpoint. There is a certain lack of the historic
sense in all he has written.
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