English Prose | Page 2

two short stories at the end, as examples of narration with a plot.\
Much attention has been given to the suggestions at the end of the volume with the aim of making them practically serviceable and, at the same time, as free as possible from duplication of class work. This aim, the editors came to believe, could best be attained by providing for each group of selections definite suggestions of theme-subjects to be derived by the student from supplementary readings closely related to that group.\
F.W.R. G.R.E.\
MADISON, WISCONSIN, May, 1913.\
\pard\pardeftab720\sa140\ql\qnatural
\cf0 \
\pard\pardeftab720\ql\qnatural
\cf0 CONTENTS\
I. THE PERSONAL LIFE.\
1. Self-Reliance...............RALPH WALDO EMERSON\
2. Early Education at Herne Hill.............JOHN RUSKIN\
3. A Crisis in My Mental History............JOHN STUART MILL\
4. Old China...................CHARLES LAMB\
II. EDUCATION.\
5. What is Education?..........THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY\
6. Knowledge Viewed in Relation to Learning .....JOHN HENRY NEWMAN\
7. Literature and Science......MATTHEW ARNOLD\
8. How to Read.................FREDERIC HARRISON\
III. RECREATION AND TRAVELS.\
9. On Going a Journey..........WILLIAM HAZLITT\
10. Regrets of a Mountaineer....LESLIE STEPHEN\
IV. SOCIAL LIFE AND MANNERS.\
11. Behavior....................RALPH WALDO EMERSON\
12. Manners and Fashion.........HERBERT SPENCER\
13. Talk and Talkers............ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON\
V. PUBLIC AFFAIRS.\
14. The Social Value of the College-bred.......WILLIAM JAMES\
15. The Law of Human Progress............HENRY GEORGE\
16. The Morals of Trade.........HERBERT SPENCER\
VI. SCIENCE.\
17. The Physical Basis of Life...................THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY\
18. Mental Powers of Men and Animals...........CHARLES DARWIN\
19. The Importance of Dust......ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE\
VII. NATURE.\
20. The Battle of the Ants......HENRY DAVID THOREAU\
21. A Windstorm in the Forests............JOHN MUIR\
22. Walden Pond.................HENRY DAVID THOREAU\
23. Extracts from Modern Painters...........JOHN RUSKIN\
VIII. CONDUCT AND INNER LIFE.\
24. The Stoics.. .............WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY\
25. Enthusiasm of Humanity......JOHN ROBERT SEELEY\
26. Loyalty and Insight.........JOSIAH ROYCE\
IX. LITERATURE AND ART.\
27. Poetry for Poetry's Sake.... A.C. BRADLEY\
28. Greek Tragedy................G. LOWES DICKINSON\
29. Shakespeare..................THOMAS CARLYLE\
30. Charles Lamb.................WALTER PATER\
31. Dr. Heidegger's Experiment...NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE\
32. Markheim.....................ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON\
SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS.\
With some topics for Discussion and Composition.\
\pard\pardeftab720\sa140\ql\qnatural
\cf0 \
\pard\pardeftab720\ql\qnatural
\cf0 ENGLISH PROSE\
\
SELF-RELIANCE[1]\
RALPH WALDO EMERSON\
I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. Always the soul hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,--that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for always the inmost becomes the outmost--and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato and Milton is that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.\
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. It is not without preestablished harmony, this sculpture in the memory. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. Bravely let him speak the utmost syllable of his confession. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. It needs a divine man to exhibit anything divine. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace. It