29 March–4 April 1869

Alcott came, and talked Plato and Socrates, extolling them with gravity. I bore it long, and then said, that was a song for others, not for him. He should find what was the equivalent for these masters in our times ; for surely the world was always equal to itself, and it was for him to detect what was the counter-weight and compensation to us. Was it natural science? Was it the immense dilution of the same amount of thought into nations? I told him to shut his eyes, and let his thoughts run into reverie or whithersoever, — and then take an observation. He would find that the current went outward from man, not to man. Consciousness was up- stream.