English Prose | Page 2

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.

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.

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