RETROSPECT.
129
But this is not all of his self-communing just now on the present subject. His record goes on: "And as far as we accord with his (the biogra pher s) judgment, we take the picture for a Stand ard Man, and so let every line accuse or approve our own ways of thinking and living by comparison." (Journals III, p. 249.) Two points are here noted, both of them deeply significant for Emerson s fu ture. In the first place he announces his conception of the Standard
Man, underlying, imbreathing, yea
A
wonderful glimpse right Biography. of a science of a than forecast less that, nothing its with genetic principle, the Standard Biography, creating
all
is
Man, incarnating himself in the individual man. But it is as yet only a glimpse, a prophecy, a farJust off foreview of the new kind of life-writing. about the most needed thing in to-day
s literature
conception of the Standard Man, but his in ner process should also be shown, the very move ment and law of his soul as it embodies itself in the is this
events of the particular person, through which as its transparent medium it is to shine self-revealing.
Will Emerson ever make real his grand prevision, will he ever organize chaotic Biography ? He is now entering a one above
new all
stage of his career, just the creative Let the reader watch him
others.
with keen discrimination, but also with generous hope. likewise a second noteworthy thought in Emerson implies that in the above cited passage.
There
is
every written
life
which we read, we are
to look for