those spiritual ideas which were tending to organic development at that particular stage of the world’s progress—“the foci in which the scattered rays of spiritual consciousness were concentrating themselves to be radiated forth with new intensity.” When Poe’s genius began to unfold itself the age was moving feverously and restlessly through processes of transition and development which seemed about to unsettle all things, yet gave no clear indication of whither they were leading us.
In our own country, Mr. Emerson’s assertion of the transcendental side of the ever-recurring question between idealism and materialism marked the reaction of intellectual and spiritual tendencies against the materialism and literalism of the churches. Through him the fine idealism of the German Mystics penetrated our literature and spiritualized our philosophies. His novel statements of truth had in them a strange force and directness, startling the sleepers like the naive cadences of a child’s voice heard amid the falsetto tones
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