with the laws of things. But it disclosed also an equally real world, the world of ideas, moved by moral energies in accordance with the laws, perhaps less clearly understood, of ideas. One world is associated with the other as the eye is associated with seeing; yet seeing, not the instrument of sight, is the sovereign matter. An important continuation of the Emersonian influence in our times, Professor Irving Babbitt, takes as the point of departure for his own developments these lines from Emerson's Ode to W. H. Channing:
Not reconciled,—
Law for man, and law for thing;
The last builds town and fleet,
But it runs wild, and doth the man unking.
As philosopher, Emerson conceives it his chief business to explore the "law for man," to formulate it, and to obtain recognition of it as the supreme authority in human relationships. His entire effort aims at establishing human independence and a human mastership. Man liberates himself and exchanges servitude for mastery in proportion as he obeys the "law for man" and learns to make the "law for things" serve him. In thus firmly insisting upon a radical distinction between the two parallel planes of experience, Emerson is in accord with the wisdom of the ages and at variance with the folly of the times, which tends to obliterate distinctions
