VOLUMES IN THIS
SERIES
Published and in Preparation
Edited by
ARNOLD
WILL D. HOWE Stuart P.
BROWNING
Sherman
William Lyon Phelps
BURNS
William Allan Neilson
CARLYLE
Bliss
Perry
DANTE
Alfred M. Brooks
DEFOE
William P. Trent
DICKENS
........
EMERSON
....
HAWTHORNE
THE
.
.
BIBLE
Richard Burton
Samuel McChord Crothers George Edward Woodberry George Hodges
....... Archibald Henderson LAMB ......... Will D. Howe STEVENSON ....... Richard A. Rice IBSEN
TENNYSON
.
WHITMAN WORDSWORTH
.
.
Raymond Mac donald Aid en Brand Whitlock C. T. Winchester
Ralph Waldo Emerson
HOW TO KNOW HIM By
Samuel
McChord
Crothers
^Author of
THE GENTLE READER, THE PARDONER S WALLET OLIVER WENDEL HOLMES AND HIS FELLOW BOARDERS ETC., ETC.
WITH FOR TRAIT
INDIANAPOLIS
THE SOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT 1921
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
.Printed in the United States of America
wees or BRAUNWORTH ft CO. BOOK MANUFACTURERS BROOKLYN, N.
V.
INTRODUCTORY The mind
Emerson was a
of
searchlight re
vealing not itself but the various objects on which it
successively turned.
beam of
An
intense
would shoot through the darkness some object. Then it would pick up
light
and reveal
another object which would have
of in
and narrow
visibility.
The
its
brief
moment
landscape was never revealed
any one view.
The only way
to
know Emerson
is
to join
him
In spite of his per of no one with whom we
in his intellectual exercises.
sonal aloofness
I
know
can more readily come to a feeling of intellectual intimacy.
He had no pretensions and no
reserves.
In clear sentences he told us what from time to
He made no attempt
to connect
these thoughts into a coherent system.
For any
time he thought.
one
else to
attempt to do this would be to misrep
resent him.
In the short chapters which follow
*
i >
4p>
Ct
<i*0
>
i
I
have
INTRODUCTORY treated as is
Emerson as a contemporary
a writer of the
last generation.
rather than
His thought
as pertinent to the twentieth century as to the
nineteenth. spects
who
Indeed
we may
I
think that in
many
re
be nearer to him than were those
first listened
to him.
The
prejudices which
he encountered have largely died away. The prob lems over which he was meditating remain. I
wish to make grateful acknowledgment to
Houghton Mifflin Company for special permis sion to make extracts from their authorized and copyright editions of
Emerson s works.
Also to
Doctor Edward Emerson for the use of tion of his father s journals.
S.
his edi
M. M.
CONTENTS CHAPTER I II
III
PAGE
THE APPROACH
A
EMERSON
1
DISCRIMINATING OPTIMIST
16
THE OPENER
TO
OF DOORS
29
IV THE PARISH OF YOUNG MEN V SPENT THE DAY AT ESSEX JUNCTION VI FRIENDSHIP WITHOUT INTIMACY VII I HATE THIS SHALLOW AMERICANISM
THE POET IX THE POETRY
40
...
47
....
56
.
.
VIII
X XI XII XIII
OF SCIENCE
95
PIETY
108
THOU SHALT NOT PREACH THE LURE OF THE WEST EMERSON
......
ELUSIVE SMILE
133
QUIET REVOLUTIONIST MEDITATIONS ON POLITICS
142
S
XVI THE CANDID FRIEND XVII AMONG His BOOKS XVIII
XIX
116 122
XIV THE
XV
68 75
OF
ENGLAND
XXII TERMINUS
172 181
EMERSON S HISTORIC SENSE PEACE AND WAR
XX THE FORTUNES OF THE XXI THE CUTTING EDGE
158
....
POOR
197
209 215
223 230
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
EMERSON CHAPTER
I
THE APPROACH TO EMERSON "But,
critic,
spare thy vanity,
Nor show thy pompous parts, To vex zvith odious subtlety The cheerer of men s hearts." Emerson
SOwho He had for,
and with smiling lips thoughts to whosoever chose to listen.
"sat
uttered his
writes of the Persian poet Saadi
in the
sun"
nothing to prove, nothing to apologize
nothing to lament.
who
who will, will deny, pile the hills to scale the sky ;
"Denounce
And
Let theist, atheist, pantheist, Define and wrangle how they
list,
Fierce conserver, fierce destroyer, But thou, joy-giver and enjoyer."
We
are so used to wrangling and defining, to 1
EMERSON
"2
building systems of thought, and with odious sub tlety
other
criticizing
hardly
know how
man
that
systems,
we
to get along without these in
tellectual exercises.
a literary
men s
What
is
there to say about
or a philosopher
who
cares for
none of these things? To become acquainted with Emerson we must discard any conventional idea of the literary
We
or the philosopher.
much
man
must not become too
We
must be gen in the things he was thinking
interested in his works.
uinely interested
about, so as to find joy in comparing notes.
was not a man of
letters in the sense
He
of a maker
of books, and he was careless about the articula tion of his thought,
those
who
try to
and so he
"place"
is
the despair of
him.
There are those who think they can explain a man of genius by means of painstaking investi gation of the
town he
lived in, the folks he knew,
the books he read, the party to which he belonged,
and the family into which he was born. deal can be explained in this way, in fact
A
great
all
those
things in which he was like the thousands of other
THE APPROACH TO EMERSON persons
who were
But what about in
subjected to similar influences.
his genius,
which
is
the one thing
which he differed from those who were about happens that it is this difference which the matter of vital moment.
him? is
3
It
There are indeed great men whose difference from their contemporaries is in the quantity of their
endowment
They
ity.
rather than in
its
essential qual
think and feel as does the average
man, they share
his
opinions
and habits of
thought, only they have everything in greater
abundance. in
w hich r
They
are representative of the time
they lived and
we can not
think of them
any other place or period. This The is perhaps what we mean by a great man. term is quantitative. as belonging to
But there are others whose genius
They owe very
timeless.
ate environment.
where or
at
any
little
is
They might have
time,
essentially
to their
immedi
lived
any and the substance and man
ner of their thinking would have been very the same. order.
much
Ralph Waldo Emerson was of
this
In one sense he was a typical American,
EMERSON
4
more than
that he
was a
New
Englander, and his
thought was colored by the experience of the
But
passing day. ture
born
was not at the
it
was only
The
colored.
tex
That he was
peculiar to America.
beginning of the nineteenth century,
the descendant of a long line of Puritan preach ers, that
he was educated at Harvard College, and
became for a time the minister of a Unitarian Church, that he was interested in what was called the Transcendental Movement, that he traveled
about the country delivering lyceum lectures, that
he took a worthy part in all sorts of reform move ments, and that he lived in Concord to a good old age
all
these are interesting facts.
If
pen to be interested in Emerson, we like about them. But they do not enable us
what manner of man he was, or what have for
to
gift
know
he
may
us.
Indeed,
may
we hap to know
if
we
take such facts too seriously,
we
obscure the real Emerson, for he certainly
did not take them very seriously, and
was rather
absent-minded in regard to them.
was one of
It
his whimsies to profess a great contempt for for-
THE APPROACH TO EMERSON
5
Concord was good enough for him and he could see all that was most worth seeing eign travel.
without wandering from the vicinity of the town house.
But
this
was not because he had any un
usual prejudice for a particular locality, but that
he had means of getting away from
One
neighbors did not possess. as another to one
whose mind
it
that his
is
as
place is
free
good
of the
universe.
Emerson
mind was
s
in the
most
literal sens*?
cosmopolitan he was a citizen of the world, as no
*
;
The globe
mere traveler can become.
lured on by the expectation of
trotter
is
coming to foreign
Emerson did not think of any portion of It was all of a piece. world as foreign.
parts.
the
Wherever he happened
to be, he
was confronted
by the marvel of the whole which manifested it He was like the citizen in a self in every part. great metropolis,
who
leaves to strangers the tran-
sitory joys of sightseeing.
He
own
gladly conscious
business,
and yet he
is
goes about his all
the time that he belongs to the mighty aggre gation.
,
EMERSON
6
is
In dealing with such a person, the biographer always more or less of an intruder. To Emer
son the inner
life
was much more important than
the events and circumstances of the outer
To
the inner life as disclosed by himself,
life.
we may
Thus only we know what manner of man he was. He was describing himself when he go
directly.
wrote
:
an external
which
is
educated at
school, taught to read, write, cipher,
and trade;
"There is
taught to grasp
all
life,
boy can
the
get,
urging him to
put himself forward, to make himself useful and agreeable in the world, to ride, run, argue, and contend, unfold his talents, shine, conquer, and possess. "But
the inner life
sits at
home, and does not
learn to do things, nor value these feats at
Tis a quiet, wise perception. cause
it is itself
now
it
loves right,
it
be
knows noth
makes no progress; was as wise memory of it as now; is just the same
ing else; but in our first
real;
It loves truth,
all.
it
in maturity,
and hereafter
in age, as
it
was
in
THE APPROACH TO EMERSON youth.
7
We have grown to manhood and woman
hood we have powers, connection, children, repu this makes no account of tations, professions ;
:
them
It lives in the great present; it
all.
This tranquil, well-founded,
the present great.
wide-seeing soul
no magistrate
A
man
much
of
no
it lies
:
world.
is
no attorney, the sun, and broods on the
express-rider,
in
person of this temper once said to a activity,
pardon you that that I do nothing.
I will
you do so much, and you me
And
makes
Euripides says that Zeus hates busybodies
and those who do too much/
mind of
All this is, quite foreign to the typical American.
It
the nineteenth century.
why Emerson If,
It is
not easy to explain
should have turned up
however,
it is
Emerson, and to
the
was not characteristic of
when he
necessary for us to
classify him,
it
did.
"place"
might be as well
and put him among those with whom his ways of thinking and speaking would have been most congenial.
to ignore the accident of his birth,
He was a
philosopher, not in the
modern
sense,
EMERSON
8
but in the simpler ancient sense of a lover of
He
wisdom.
who
in
belonged in a
way with
Athens liked to walk about
in the
the
men
gardens
discoursing about the nature of the good, the
and the
Perhaps the Greek dia lectic might have wearied his more direct mind. It would have seemed a too roundabout way of true,
beautiful.
getting at moral truths. I rather
at
think that he would have been
home with
less sophisticated thinkers,
more let
us
say with the lovers of wisdom in the land of Uz,
who
gathered around Job, in his happier days be
fore Satan mingled with his affairs.
It is in the
and they gather at the gate, and Job discourses on the pleasant mysteries of life. And people who had been bearing the heat cool of the evening,
and burden of the day, and whose souls were In their arid parched, came for refreshment. lives, it
was wonderful
to meet a
man who was
thinking aloud. "My speech dropped upon them, and they waited for me as for the rain." Such speech comes in sentences that are easily
remembered.
In the land of
Uz
people do not
THE APPROACH TO EMERSON from books, but from the
get their ideas
a
man who
9
lips
of
has the gift of direct address.
In process of time scribes gather these scattered
we have collections of what the Hebrew scholars call Wisdom Litera ture. So we have the Proverbs, The Wisdom of sentences into volumes, and
Solomon, and the
They contain tions of
Wisdom
Son of
of the
Sirach.
the observations and the medita
men who had found
time for such things.
are enjoyed by those of kindred temper.
They Emerson erature.
s
essays belong to this
They
are gnomic, that
consist of pregnant sentences.
ment
is
Wisdom
is
Lit
to say, thjgy
Their arrange
a matter largely of accident.
Had he lived
in the land of
Uz, Emerson would
have uttered these sentences to a the city gate,
little group at and trusted to their memories for
the preservation of what
was of
Being an American in the nineteenth century, he jotted
them down
in his note-book
value.
when they occurred
and then as opportunity offered presented them to groups of his fellow-citizens, gathered on to him,
winter evenings in poorly ventilated
halls.
All
EMERSON
10 the
way from
Massachusetts to Iowa he found his
audience, and gave
acting as his
them
freely of his best.
own scribe, he gathered
Then
the sentences
together into the form familiar to us.
To
get his general point of view, read the ninth
chapter of Proverbs
:
hath builded her house, she hath
"Wisdom
hewn out her seven beasts
;
pillars; she
hath killed her
she hath mingled her wine ; she hath also
She hath
furnished her table.
sent forth her
maidens: she crieth upon the highest places of the city. Come, eat of my bread, and .
.
.
drink of the wine which I have
It is all
very simple and natural.
the builder. plan,
mingled."
She
builds according
and when the house
is
Wisdom is to her own
furnished, she
makes
her feast and sends forth her maidens with the invitation to her table.
And
the thinker,
architect,
who
is
he?
He
is
he did not plan the building.
he the high priest ordering the
sacrifice.
not the
Nor
He
is
does
THE APPROACH TO EMERSON not take himself so solemnly. the invited guests,
wondering
down
who
is
only one of
has not lost the sense of
He
curiosity.
He
11
can not churlishly
sit
to the feast without being introduced to the
He
wanders about among all the mar vels, seeking her. For, says the son of Sirach. is the chief point of Wisdom to know whose hostess.
"It
gift
it
is."
In the nineteenth century Ralph
son lived a
life that
was
He
antique philosophers.
has been thought to be tion. all
The
those
practised an art
lost
it
which
the art of medita
fruit of his meditations
whom
Waldo Emer
as simple as that of the
he offered to
might concern.
Emerson was a man
thinking.
There
is
no
Emersonian system of philosophy, only an Emer sonian way of looking at things, and that is per fectly simple. prejudice,"
There
which
is
is
a legal phrase,
"without
used of parties to a contro
versy, implying that should the negotiations
fail,
nothing that has passed shall be taken advantage of thereafter.
Thus should the defendant
offer
without prejudice to pay half the claim, the plain-
EMERSON
12
tiff
can not consider this offer as an admission of
his
having the right to some payment.
To
read the words of
Emerson
in the spirit in
which they were written, we must remember to take what he says without prejudice. Each sen
makes
tence
its
own
determine whether
it
appeal,
and
it
is
rings true or false.
for us to
But we
must not hold him responsible for the inferences which we may draw. He was not uttering though the form might sometimes seern oracular. He aimed to challenge us rather than
oracles,
to secure docile acceptance of his ideas.
He
did
not attempt at any one time to state the whole truth.
He
preferred to state a half truth in such
a manner that other half. ions,
we
should be ready to supply the
Instead of avoiding extreme opin
he wished to have them confront each other
in the
same mind.
This
But our geom etry cannot span the extreme points and reconcile them. What to do? By obeying each thought is true,
that other
frankly, by harping, or if
is
true.
you
will,
pounding on
THE APPROACH TO EMERSON each string,
we
learn at last
same obedience to others theirs
its
power.
thoughts,
13
By the we learn
and then comes some reasonable hope of
harmonizing
them."
The method which he recommended and which he followed was in the highest degree unsyste
method of taking up in turn each of the leading topics which belong to our matic.
was
It
"the
scheme of human agreeable to the
same
and by stating all that is experience on one hand, and doing life,
justice to the
limitations will appear.
opposing
Any
facts, the true
excess of emphasis
on one part would be corrected and a just ance
bal
made."
In other words, Emerson would never assume the cool judicial attitude in regard to any vital question. side
He would
speak as an advocate of the
which for the moment seemed to him most
important.
But he would always reserve the
right to state the other side just as strongly.
Not
only did he claim the right to take both sides, but also to change the subject as often as he liked.
EMERSON
14
He
believed that there were certain general prin
which were applicable to all the various pro fessions and callings. One \vho was in Milton s
ciples
phrase
"a
of
skillful considerer
human
things"
had a rigHt to express his opinions, for in spite of all the modern division of labor, life is still
made up of a few
simple elements.
In the following chapters I have made no at tempt to harmonize the views of Emerson. That
would only obscure the sharp outlines of each separate view. One who would know Emerson
word with
must not read
his
mere
He must
disciple.
and match It is the
the docility of a
rather take
it
as a
game
his wits against a quick antagonist.
mental attitude which that unconven
tional sixteenth-century preacher,
Bishop
Hugh
Latimer, sought to inspire in his congregation. In his
his
famous Sermon on the Cards, he challenged congregation to play a game of cards, which
in those days
was
Quoth Latimer
called :
"Triumph."
"Whereas,
ye are wont to cele
brate Christmas in playing at cards, I intend
God
s
grace to deal unto
you Christ
s
cards.
by
The
THE APPROACH TO EMERSON game we
shall play at shall
(trump) which
if it
15
be called the triumph
be well played, he that deal-
eth shall win, the players shall likewise win, and
the standers and lookers
asmuch
that there
play at this
they shall
is
on
do the same, in
no man that
Triumph with
all
shall
willing to
is
these cards but that
be winners, and no losers.
therefore every Christian at these cards, that they
man and w oman r
may
Let play
have and obtain the
triumph; you must mark also that the triumph must apply to fetch home with him all the other cards whatsoever suit they be of. take ye this
shewed
to
then
card which must appear and be
first
you as
In some such
Now
followeth."
way Emerson
in his favorite recreation.
thought in which
"he
invites us to join
It is the free play
of
that dealeth shall \vin, the
players shall likewise
win and the standers and
lookers on shall do the
same."-
CHAPTER
II
A DISCRIMINATING OPTIMIST "I
am
a willow of the wilderness,
Loving the wind that bent
ONE
me."
of the most familar terms of reproach
in these
is
days
clever literary persons
It is
"Victorian."
who have
used by
rebelled against
the standards of their immediate predecessors. It implies
which
is
a certain smugness and self-satisfaction very irritating to persons
who
are con
scious of the cruel realities of this unfinished
world.
The
incorrigible
Victorians are supposed to have been optimists
who
mistook the Fool
Paradise in which they lived for the place of humanity. respectabilities,
s
final resting
They were worshipers of
the
and were content with the cant of
liberalism as their fathers
had been content with
the cant of Toryism.
To-day, however,
we
are taught that
duty to face the grimmest 16
realities,
it is
our
and not to
A DISCRIMINATING OPTIMIST when we
flinch
threatening. lives,
see something that
We
must
and we must
see
how
17
ugly and
is
the other half
free ourselves
from amiable
delusions.
In turning from the work of our painfully sin cere realists to Emerson, the that
of
we
first
impression
is
are going back to that discredited state 7
mind, the early Victorian optimism// For
Emerson face.
faces the existing world with a smiling
He takes
for granted that there
is
liness in its laws,
and that the ultimate
not to be feared.
He
a friend reality is
has a frank predilection for
beauty and does not feel
duty to feed his and unwholesome. ugly He is always glad to be alive, and glad to find so many other creatures alive at the same time. Sometimes he has a too debonair way of making imagination on what
it
his
is
light of the evils that are encountered
by earnest
people.
But those who look upon the optimism of
Emerson
as a part of the conventionalism of his
time are,
I think, superficial in their
In the
first place,
judgments.
he was not a Victorian, but an
EMERSON
18
American,
who was
good queen and her
not under the spell of the court.
No
one was
less dis
posed to imitate the literary conventions then dominant in England. He was no more a Vic torian than
was Abraham Lincoln.
nothing smug in his optimism.
There was
He was
not an
apologist for the existing state of things, nor in terested in proving that this is the best of all possible worlds.
He
did not try to
agreeable by calling evil good. existence of an enormous cruel things.
"Nature
as
He
make himself
recognized the
number of bad and
we know
her
is
no
saint."
He
taught that nature does not coddle us, nor
provide ready-made houses or clothes. She leaves us to make these things for ourselves. And the process of experiment
is
never an easy one.
It is
a long and tedious way by which we travel toward truth.
Nature does not
us; to discover this
is
tell
us what
is
good for
part of our experience.
compared notes with one of my friends wlio iexpects everything of the Universe and is disap"I
A DISCRIMINATING OPTIMIST pointed, and
found that
19
began at the other am always full and extreme, expecting nothing, of thanks for moderate blessings." I
I
from denying or seeking to hide the darker and more painful aspects of the world, he
So
far
admitted them and placed them where they be long, at the beginning.
They belong
to the realm
of chaos and night
But the outstanding fact is that there has been a gradual emergence from chaos. The existence of
man
as a reasoning creature becomes
wonderful as we think of the odds against good thing can be had without effort.
But the while?"
real question
You may say
is,
"Is
that
it is
know whether or not you
more
it.
No
the effort worth
You do not
not.
shall succeed,
and there
fore you will not try.
Emerson iously "A
declares that the effort
worth while.
man
is
It reveals the
is
most glor
joy of creation.
a golden impossibility.
Power keeps
quite another road than the turnpike of choice
and
will,
namely, the subterranean and invisible
EMERSON
20
tunnels and channels of
Life
life.
is
a series of
and would not be worth taking and Nature hates cal keeping if it were not. culators, her methods are saltatory and impulsive. surprises
.
.
.
.
.
The mind goes antagonizing on, and never
.
prospers but by
....
born, everything
We
fits.
Every man is
is
thrive on casualties.
an impossibility
impossible
till
we
till
see
he
is
it
a
success."
At
this point
Emerson
s
if
would be well
down
essay on Experience and do a
meditating on the words, nizing
to lay
"the
little
mind goes antago
on."
Here
a philosophy that goes behind the old dispute between the optimist and the pessimist. is
The ordinary no
real
and the
optimist tries to prove that there
is
antagonism between the facts of nature ideals of the
human
soul.
Everything
exquisitely fitted to produce happiness.
The
is
pessi
mist denies this and insists on the flagrant opposi tion between
what
is
and what ought to
be.
He
A DISCRIMINATING OPTIMIST,
21
arranges a deadly parallel between the world of
and the world of hard
the ideals
Emerson answers
The human which
and
ereignty,
covery of
That
is
its
the
"The
in
it.
its
power.
way
is
must not be
spirit
beneath
lies
that there
reality.
It
must
resistance
it
an antagonism.
by that
bullied
assert its sov
makes the
It goes "antagonizing
dis on."
of the conqueror.
essence of tragedy does not seem to
me
any list of particular evils. After we have enumerated famine, fever, inaptitude, muti lation, rack, madness and loss of friends, we have
to
lie in
not yet included the proper tragic element, which is
Terror, and which does not respect definite
evils
but
indefinite;
an ominous
spirit
which
haunts the afternoon and night, idleness and
soli
tude."
A low
haggard
spirit sits
by our
side,
"casting
the fashion of uncertain evils, a sinister presenti
ment, a power of the imagination to disclose things orderly and cheerful and
show them
in
EMERSON
22 startling array.
Hark, what sounds on the night
wind? the cry of murder in see those marks of stamping
The whisper
that friendly house,
of hidden
feet,
riot.
overhead, the detected glance, the
glare of malignity, ungrounded fears, suspicions, half knowledge and mistakes, darken the
and is
chill the
heart of man.
And
brow
accordingly
it
natures not clear, nor of quick and steady per
ceptions,
but imperfect characters from which
something
is
hidden that
most from these
move
all
others see, that suffer
In those persons
causes.
who
the profoundest pity, tragedy seems to con
temperament, not in events. There are people who have an appetite for grief; pleasure is not strong enough, and they crave pain, Misist
in
which must be fed on poi soned bread, natures so downed that no prosperity thridatic stomachs
can soothe their ragged and dishevelled desola tion.
They mishear and
and dread.
They handle every
on every snake It is
misbelieve, they suspect nettle,
and tread
in the meadow."
here that Emerson
made
his stand.
It is
not necessary for us to apologize for facts or to
A DISCRIMINATING OPTIMIST attempt to vindicate Eternal Providence.
come and we must
we must There
is
tivated
not yield
a health of the
we
this spirit
Events
But the Terror
face them. to,
23
can overcome.
which
may
and which makes us immune
be cul
to evil in
fluences.
The optimism of Emerson was not pressed in the phrase,
of
things."
There it."
is
That
is
"looking
the lazy
a homelier phrase,
to be ex
at the bright side
man
s
optimism. the best of
"making
Let the circumstances be what they may, the
brave
man
of them. all his
accepts
And
them resolved to make the
the surprise
is
best
that when he puts
strength into the task, the result is
thing better than he had planned.
some
Even when
worst has come to worst, the hero turns upon the Hostile powers and finds the Best which he has
worshiped afar now realized in his "Trembler, do not whine and Art thou not also real ?
Why shouldst thou
own
will.
chide,
stoop to poor excuse
Turn on the accuser roundly, Here am I, here will I abide
say,
;
EMERSON
24
Forever to myself soothfast. Go thou, sweet Heaven, or at thy pleasure stay!
Already Heaven with thee
The most complete
its lot
has
cast."
Emerson
expression of
s
discriminating optimism can be found in his essay
on Fate.
Here he
states the
pessimist in the strongest terms.
work which bring pain and laws which we can not control. at
edies
which are
argument of the There are forces There- are
loss.
There are trag
But the good man Emerson believed that
inevitable.
confronts the evil
fate.
was the creation of a
the result of that conflict
higher good than had before been perceived.
The
struggle with Fate produced power.
"Thus
morals
we
trace Fate,
thought and character as well. It bound or limitation. But Fate has tation
mind, and
in matter,
in race, in retardations of strata,
its
limits
;
is
different seen
is
and
in
everywhere
its
lord
;
limi
from above and
from below from within and from without. For, ;
though Fate
is
immense, so
is
power, which
is
the
A DISCRIMINATING OPTIMIST other fact in the dual world, immense. follows and
If Fate
power, power attends and an
limits
tagonizes Fate.
25
We must respect
Fate as natural
history, but there
is
more than natural
For who and what
is
this criticism that pries into
the matter?
and
Man
sack, belly
is
history.
not order of nature, sack
and members,
link in a chain,
nor
any ignominious baggage, but a stupendous an tagonism, a dragging together of the poles of
He
the universe.
below him
betrays his relation to
thick-skulled,
quadrumanous
what
small-brained,
is
fishy,
quadruped ill-disguised, hardly and has paid for the new
escaped into biped,
powers by
loss of
some of the old
lightning which explodes and
maker of planet and suns, elemental
order,
is
ones.
But the
fashions planets,
in him.
sandstone and
On one granite,
side,
rock-
ledges, peat-bog, forest, sea and shore; and, on
the other part, thought, the spirit
which composes
and decomposes nature here they are, side by side, God and devil, mind and matter, king and conspirator, belt and spasm, riding peacefully to
gether in the eye and brain of every man.
EMERSON
26 "Nor
can he blink the
the contradiction
freedom
Fate
is all
;
then
freedom of man.
is
we
So
And though
far as a
nothing
is
If
wells
man
you and
side of Fate, is
the
up the impulse
of choosing and acting in the soul. nuls Fate.
hazard
a part of Fate
say,
For ever
To
necessary.
on the
please to plant yourself say,
free-will.
Intellect
thinks, he
is
an
free.
more disgusting than
the
crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Indepen dence/ or the statute right to vote, by those who
have never dared to think or to
wholesome to man to look not other way: the practical view
sound relation to these
mand, not
too
much
meanness.
name
is
the other.
it
is
His
and com
Look not on Na
fatal/ said the oracle.
The
contemplation of these limits induces
They who
talk
birth-star, etc., are in a
and
yet
at Fate, but the
is
facts is to use
to cringe to them.
ture, for her
act,
much
of destiny, their
lower dangerous plane,
invite the evils they fear.
A DISCRIMINATING OPTIMIST
and heroic races as
cited the instinctive
"I
27
proud believers in Destiny. They conspire with But it; a loving resignation is with the event. the it
is
dogma makes a different impression, when held by the weak and lazy. Tis weak and
vicious people
who
right use of Fate
cast the is
The
blame on Fate.
up our conduct to Rude and invincible ex
to bring
the loftiness of nature.
So
man
cept
by themselves are the elements.
be.
Let him empty his breast of his windy con
and show
ceits,
on the
by manners and deeds Let him hold his purpose
his lordship
scale of nature.
as with the tug of gravitation. persuasion, no bribe, shall point.
A
with a
river,
have not
let
No
make him
power, no give
up
his
man
ought to compare advantageously an oak, or a mountain. He shall
less the flow,
the expansion, and the re
sistance of these. "
age.
Tis the best use of Fate to teach a fatal cour
Go
face the fire at sea, or the cholera in
your friend
s
house, or the burglar in your own,
or what danger
lies in
the
way
of duty, knowing
EMERSON
28
you are guarded by the cherubim of Destiny. you believe in Fate to your harm, believe it, least,
it,
at
for your good.
"For,
of
If
if
Fate
is
so prevailing,
and can confront Fate with
man
also
is
part
Fate."
-
CHAPTER
III
THE OPENER OF DOORS "Be
an opener of doors for such as come after make the Universe a blind
thee and do not try to alley."
EMERSON
S
JOURNAL (1841).
are certain minds which have exer
THERE
cised a vast influence over the thought of
the world, as constructors of intellectual systems.
Their ambition has been to reduce a
formula.
all
things to
They become masters of
existing
knowledge and arrange it in orderly fashion. Thus
Thomas Aquinas summed up
the thought of the
middle ages in a solid theology to be received by all
who came
John Calvin, with law same thing for sixteenth-
after him.
yer-like logic, did the
Herbert Spencer, with
century Protestantism.
prodigious industry, gathered an immense ber of facts and attempted to bring them
an agreement with
Up
his
own
scientific
to a certain point the
29
num
all
into
formula.
system-maker
is
a
EMERSON
30 helper to
those
all
intellectual life.
who would
He shows
live a reasonable
us where to put our
and to a certain degree how to use them. The difficulty comes when new facts are discov facts
ered which do not
into the system, or
fit
when
the course of our intellectual development
come upon a fresh point of view. Then the system becomes a blind are led into there
is
no
it
by a perfectly
logical
way
round and round and of
its
own
effort
The
It is
more of
conscious of the futility
universe
reality
when we become
We
The mind goes
it.
than
is
narrowed to
The system now
the dimensions of a rigid creed. shuts out
we
logical process, but
out of is
alley.
in
it
explains.
conscious of the dangers
of making the universe a blind alley and becom ing entrapped in rigid forms that
we
appreciate
the function of philosophers like William James
and Bergson. tellect.
They
In their keen criticism of dogmatic sys
tems they show us a sure us,
of
it.
are emancipators of the in
is
way
out.
Reality, they as
something vaster than any definition
THE OPENER OF DOORS Emerson belonged
to this
little
31
company of
emancipators, and he went about his business in
a very simple and yet effective way. the assumption that sistency
is
a virtue.
often quoted, and
"A
tle
what
No
is
He
attacked
usually called con
saying of his
is
more
more generally misunderstood
foolish consistency
minds, adored by
phers and divines.
is
little
lit
statesmen and philoso
With
soul has nothing to do.
the hobgoblin of
:
consistency a great
He may
as well concern
himself with his shadow on the wall.
Speak what you think now in hard words, and to morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard
words again, though said
it
contradict everything
you
to-day."
That may be made to seem like a plea for care and irresponsible ways of thinking and speak What standard are we to have by which ing.
less
to test
our mental processes?
words quoted
as if they offered
tellectual lawlessness.
I
have heard the
an excuse for
in
EMERSON
32
We
approach Emerson
serious
s
meaning only
when we emphasize
the adjective.
consistency which
the hobgoblin of
The fundamental
is
The
what?"
but of
Let
me
mind
see
What
!
little
is
it
says,
what
"This
repeated and there
that of yesterday,
is felt
is
little
must
Then,
?"
s state
the satisfaction
really different
and can not be expressed
accurately by the same phrase? the
an
I said yesterday.
did I say yesterday
which comes with duty done. But what if to-day s fact
from
with
When
with solemn conscientiousness, yesterday
ment
minds.
"consistency
previous utterances.
consistent with
a foolish
thinking not of reality
is
to be expressed,
is
made
be
own
its
opinion
little
is
question
It is
mind does not
This possibility
entertain.
It will
not
allow itself to be contradicted, and so the process goes on which St. Paul describes, "they measur ing themselves by themselves,
themselves
Emerson
we must
among s
and comparing
themselves, are not
real plea is
wise."
for consistency.
But
be consistent not with a form of words
THE OPENER OF DOORS
33
which we have adopted, but with a living reality which we encounter day by day. What have you seen to-day ? What have you
What new
done?
come in
clear to
aspect of the universe has be
What
you?
are the facts revealed
your present consciousness?
These are the
questions that are asked of a person his mind.
And
his
who
is
using
answers are valuable only as
they are simple and direct.
In a court of justice this simplicity
The
witness
who
is
trying to
consistent with one another
ceived theory
is
sure to
come
make
is
required.
his answers
and with a precon to grief.
The
cross-
questioner will discover flaws in the evidence.
The only safe course
is
to
tell
the facts as they oc
curred.
Most of our
intellectual
confusion comes from
the attempts to arrange our opinions according to an artificial order.
The catechism
is
arranged
advance of experience. The questions follow one another in logical order, and each ques in
tion has its appropriate answer.
It is all
very
EMERSON
34
satisfactory until the answers are sharply chal
How
do we happen to know so much? are we able to answer so glibly?
lenged.
How
To Emerson
the chief value of a catechism lay
in the questions, not in the answers.
That the
deepest and most persistent questions have no sat isfactory answers did not depress him.
proved that both the
mind
that asks
It
only
and the uni
verse which delays the answer are greater than
thought.
we
Their meaning can not be expressed in
any form of words. to the Soul
He
hears the Sphinx saying
:
"Thou
art the
unanswered question ;
Couldst see thy proper eye, Alway it asketh, asketh; And each answer is a lie. So take thy quest through nature, It through thousand natures ply; Ask on, thou clothed eternity;
Time
The joy of is
is
the false
reply."
the follower of Truth and Beauty
wonderfully expressed in the
<c
Forerunners."
We
little
poem
called
are out-of-doors, and the
THE OPENER OF DOORS air
is
What our
bracing,
does
matter that
it
"happy
and the distant
guides"?
free to follow.
life that is
It is
are alluring.
not catch up with
enough that we are
Let others sing of the satisfac
tions of achievement.
a
we do
hills
35
Emerson
is
satisfied
with
a continual quest.
I followed happy guides, could never reach their sides Their step is forth, and, ere the day
"Long
I
;
Breaks up their leaguer, and away. Keen my sense, my heart was young, Right good-will my sinews strung, But no speed of mine avails To hunt upon their shining trails. On and away, their hasting feet Make the morning proud and sweet; Flowers they strew I catch the scent ;
Or
tone of silver instrument
Leaves on the wind melodious trace; Yet I could never see their face. On eastern hills I see their smokes, Mixed with mist by distant lochs. I
met many
travellers
Who the
road had surely kept ; saw not my fine revellers, They had crossed them while they ^These Some had heard their fair report, In the country or the court.
slept.
EMERSON
36
Fleetest couriers alive
Never yet could once arrive, As they went or they returned, At the house where these sojourned. Sometimes their strong speed they
Though they
slacken,
are not overtaken;
In sleep their jubilant troop is near, I tuneful voices overhear; It may be in wood or waste, At unawares tis come and past. Their near camp my spirit knows
signs gracious as rainbows. thenceforward, and long after, Listen for their harp-like laughter,
By I
And carry
in
my
heart, for days,
Peace that hallows rudest It is
ways."
not merely the poetic imagination which
opens the doors into an enchanted country where
one
may wander endlessly. Jhe
sober reason has
an emancipatory power. There are realities which lie beyond the limits which the dogmatist also
defines.
They may not be
logically justified but
they are nevertheless a part of the order of the universe.
When we
cease to dogmatize
we be
come conscious of an order more wonderful than that exist
which we had imagined possible. Things side by side which we had supposed to be
THE OPENER OF DOORS We
absolutely incompatible.
37
can not logically
reconcile them, but there they are.
"The
world refuses to be analyzed by addition
When
and subtraction.
much time and with
all
young, we spend
pains in filling our note-books
definitions of
Politics, Art, in the
a few years,
\ve are
we
Religion,
hope
shall
Love, Poetry,
that, in the course of
have condensed into our
encyclopedia the net value of
all
the theories at
which the world has yet arrived. But year after year our tables get no completeness, and at last
we
discover that our curve
is
a parabola, whose
arcs will never meet. "Neither
by detachment, neither by aggrega
tion, is the integrity
to
its
of the intellect transmitted
works, but by a vigilance which brings the greatness and best state to operate
intellect in its
every moment.
which nature
It
has.
must have the same wholeness Although no diligence can
build the universe in a model,
re
by the best accumu world
lation or disposition of details, yet does the
reappear in miniature in every event, so that
all
EMERSON
38
the laws of nature
The
fact.
in its
intellect
be read in the smallest
may
must have the
apprehension and in
Along with Emerson freedom
like perfection
its works."
s insistence
on an absolute
we must remember
in thinking
his
em
phasis on the principle of identity which he dis
The
covers everywhere. tells
us
is
not a blind
universe, he continually
alley, neither is it
welter of conflicting forces. complicated, but touch find
it
it
consistent with
stand one part of
at
It is
a mere
marvelously
any point and you will Could we under
itself.
it
we would have
is
represented in every one of
the key to
all
mysteries.
"The
its
universe
particles.
Everything in nature contains
the powers of nature.
Everything
is
all
made of one
hidden stuff; as the naturalist sees one type under every metamorphosis, and regards a horse as
running man, a
fish as
a
swimming man, a
as a flying man, a tree as a rooted man.
new form
repeats not only the
a.
bird
Each
main character of
THE OPENER OF DOORS
39
the type, but part for part all the details, all the
aims,
hindrances,
furtherances,
whole system of every other. is
trade, art, transaction,
emblem of human
its trials, its
enemies,
each one must
man, and
its
and
Every occupation,
a compend of the world
and a correlative of every entire
energies,
Each one
other.
life;
of
course,
its
and
is
an
good and
ill,
its
somehow accommodate
And
end.
the whole
recite all his destiny.
world globes itself in a drop of dew. The microscope cannot find the animalcule which is "The
less
perfect for being
little.
Eyes, ears, taste,
smell, motion, resistance, appetite,
and organs of
reproduction that take hold on eternity
room
to consist in the small creature.
put our
life into
omnipresence
is,
parts in every
every that
act.
God
The
all
find
So do we
true doctrine of
reappears with
moss and cobweb.
all his
The value of
the universe contrives to throw itself into every point. affinity, tation."
If the
good
is
there, so
so the repulsion;
if
is
the evil; if the
the force, so the limi
CHAPTER IV THE PARISH OF YOUNG MEN
My parish is young men
E
MERSON S
many
did
their
not
"young
way."
include
Indeed he was very
young men.
with the typical are
parish
"inquiring
ill
at ease
And
person/
all
there
anecdotes which indicate that the young
person shared the embarrassment. ousness of youth with
its
The
gregari-
tumultuous mass move
ments were rather appalling to one of his tem perament. Nor was he fitted for the difficult role of spiritual adviser.
Emerson
s
widely scattered parish was
made
up of another kind of young men. They were young men who were not seeking to find out his way, but their own.
That made them
He
encouraged them in
his debtors for
it.
life.
These parishioners of his could not possibly be gathered into one congregation. They formed no
40
THE PARISH OF YOUNG MEN cult
or party.
Each was so absorbed
endeavor that he had
special
the acquaintance of his
41
in his
make
time to
little
own
fellow parishioner, but
each in the formative period of his
life
He
ceived the stimulus he most needed.
had
had been
bewildered by the conflicting counsels of his ders.
Each counsellor had
Then one
clear voice
said,
like
"Be
had suggested,
re
"Why
el
me."
not be
yourself?"
The suggestion was reasonable that it was
man found
so unexpected and yet so acted upon.
himself, which
The young
the one discovery
is
that counts.
America prides itself on being the land of the free. We have had many political emancipators, but the
roll
of intellectual emancipators
Having dethroned of public opinion.
kings,
we
live
is
short.
under the fear
The aggregate mind There
tyrannizes
a deadly
over the individual
intellect.
average which
not considered safe for one
it
is
is
to pass.
To
his parish of
young men Emerson was
ways preaching that the world
is
al
in dire need of
EMERSON
42
men with
who are not The "average
fresh insight
things as they are.
satisfied man"
with
should
not be content with the average attainment. He has within him powers which rightly used could lift
him
far above his present condition.
and of right ought
A
soul.
to be,
He
is,
a free and independent
decent respect for the opinion of the
world demands that he should declare his inde pendence in unmistakable terms.
"What
strikes
us in the fine genius
is
that
which belongs of right to every one. A man should know himself for a necessary actor.
A
was wanting between two craving parts of nature, and he was hurled into being as the bridge link
over that yawning need, the mediator betwixt two
His two parents held each of one of the wants, and the union of for
else
unmarriageable
facts.
eign constitutions in him enables him to do gladly
and gracefully what the assembled human race could not have sufficed to do. He knows his ma terials;
he applies himself to
his
work; he can not
read, or think, or look, but he unites the hitherto
THE PARISH OF YOUNG MEN separated
strands
into
a
perfect
43
The
cord.
thoughts he delights to utter are the reason of his incarnation.
Is
it
for
him
to account himself
cheap and superfluous, or to linger by the wayside
Did he not come into being because something must be done which he and no other is and does ? If only he sees, the world for opportunities?
will be visible
He
enough.
need not study where
to stand, nor to put things in favorable lights
him
the light,
is
from him
nated to their centre.
all
What
;
in
things are illumi
patron shall he ask
for employment and reward?
Hereto was he
born, to deliver the thought of his heart from the
universe to the universe, to do an office which
nature could not forego, nor he be discharged
from rendering, and then immerge again the holy silence and eternity out of which
man he
arose.
God
is rich,
into as a
and many more men
than one he harbours in his bosom, biding their time and the needs and the beauty of this the theory of every
man
s
Why then goest thou as some Boswell worshipper to
this saint
all.
Is
not
genius or faculty?
or to that?
or listening
That
is
the
EMERSON
44 only lese-majesty.
Here
art thou with
whom
so
long the universe travailed in labor; darest thou
whom
think meanly of thyself
the stalwart Fate
brought forth to unite his ragged the gulf, to reconcile the
As
for the chill
counsels, let the
sides, to shoot
irreconcilable?"
wisdom of age with
young man defy
it.
days does not bring wisdom unless
its
timid
Length of it is accom
panied by a power of spiritual rejuvenation, and then
becomes the wisdom of perpetual youth-
it
fulness.
"Why
the
should
new hour?
we import
rags and relics into
Nature abhors the
age seems the only disease; this one.
We
call
it
all
all
the
way onward.
no need of above
us,
it.
inertia,
We
fever, in
and crime; they
forms of old age; they are
atism, appropriation,
and old
others run into
many names
by
temperance, insanity, stupidity, are
old,
rest,
conserv
not newness, not
grizzle every day.
I see
Whilst we converse with what
we do not grow
old,
is
but grow young.
Infancy, youth, receptive, aspiring, with religious
THE PARISH OF YOUNG MEN eye looking upward, counts
abandons
itself
45
nothing, and
the instruction flowing from
itself to
But the man and woman of seventy
all sides.
assume to know
all,
they have outlived their hope,
they renounce aspiration, accept the actual for the necessary, and talk
down
to the young. Let them,
become organs of the Holy Ghost; let them be lovers; let them behold truth; and their eyes
then,
are uplifted, their wrinkles smoothed, they are
perfumed again with hope and power. This old age ought not to creep on a human mind. In nature every
moment
is
new; the past
is
always
swallowed and forgotten; the coming only is sa cred. Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing
No
spirit.
or covenant to secure
No
in the light of
wish to be is
settled
;
it
new
may
be
trivial
thoughts.
to
People
only as far as they are unset
there any hope for
The reader
bound by oath
against a higher love.
it
truth so sublime but
morrow tled
love can be
them."
will observe that
midst of his praise of the
spirit
Emerson
in the
of youth gives a
EMERSON
46 sly dig at
There
one of the foibles of his parishioners.
a quality of bumptiousness which is often found in early life. Emerson treats it as is
a kind of premature verse with what
senility.
above us
is
Conversely the person
who
"Whilst
we do
we con
not grow
cannot look up
old."
religi
ously to something above his present attainments
had aged
rapidly.
A person maybe a dotard while
yet in the twenties.
This was a sobering thought
not un frequently presented to the parish of young
men.
CHAPTER V SPENT THE DAY AT ESSEX JUNCTION 16,
"August
Vermont with
1868. Ellen.
Came home
last night
from
Middlebury on the discourse on Greatness,
Stopped
at
nth, Tuesday, and read my and the good work and influence of heroic scholars. On Wednesday spent the day at Essex Junction, and traversed the banks and much of the bed of the Winooski river, much admiring the falls, and the noble mountain peaks of Mansfield and Camel s Hump (which there appears to be the highest), and the view of the Adirondacks across the lake" intent
ONE
erson
Oversoul,
on becoming intimate with
Em
well
might postpone reading the he had meditated on the text,
till
Perhaps no junction point in all New England has been the innocent cause of more vituperation than Essex "Spent
the
Junction.
Day
at
Essex
Junction."
Here, for more than a generation, im
patient people have alighted
and waited for trains
which were not arranged for their convenience. To the commercial traveler, Essex Junction rep-
47
EMERSON
48
To
resents a sheer waste of time. tourist It is
it
the
summer
means a postponement of enjoyment. way to somewhere else.
a place on the
But to Emerson, Essex Junction was not con ceived of as a point of departure until the hour
came when he must not
actually depart.
This was
In the meantime, he was living in Essex Junction rather than merely passing till
evening.
There was no hurry, so that he had ample time to enjoy the banks of the Winooski river and the view of the distant mountains.
through
at
it.
Emerson was on
the
which he arrived
in
way
to
Mount
Mansfield,
due time. The next morn
ing at the Mountain Hotel
"a
man went through
the house ringing a loud bell and shouting rise/
and everybody dressed
down
to the
piazza."
in haste
Emerson joined
Sun
and went the eager
procession and had his look with the rest of them.
many sharp looks at the heavens and we descended to breakfast. I found in this
"After
earth,
company many agreeable In this
recital
losophy of
life.
people."
you have a glimpse of his phi Essex Junction, Mount Mans-
DAY AT ESSEX JUNCTION field
and
the
troop
of
were not
In
all alike.
But they were
different.
who
fellow-boarders
snatched a hasty sunrise on the fast
49
fact,
all
to break
way
they were quite
The
equally real.
contemplation of them absorbed successive
ments of his conscious
Each
life.
for a
mo little
while occupied the foreground of his mind and
became the representative of the cosmos. in its place and in its time was interesting. it
came
to the question
teresting,
he would
let
Each
When
which was the most in
them
it
fight
out
among
themselves.
This was the philosophy of the Mountain and the Squirrel.
am not so large as you, You are not so small as I And not half so
"I
spry."
That
talents differ
is
the fact
on which we must
agree before there can be any toleration or ap preciation.
Most of us have a bad
habit of taking
a personal preference and elevating versal standard of value.
it
into a uni
Each new
object
is
EMERSON
50
and found wanting. We and therefore it is not worth
weighed
in the balance
say, this
is
not that,
The word
our attention.
on a
criminate
are likely to say
The word
against."
takes
"discrimination"
We
hostile meaning.
"dis
has
"criticize"
also a suggestion of unfriendliness, for
con
it is
cerned with the perception of differences.
Emerson
habitual point of view
s
This
appreciative discrimination.
course not;
makes alike, its
it
it is
it
is
quite different
Even where
interesting.
is
was
that of
not that, of
that
is
what
the tubs look
pleasant to consider that each stands
own bottom. What is the most
important place in
all
on
the
For you it is the place where you actu are at this moment. This is the only point
world? ally
from which is visible
to you.
not need a sunrise.
at this particular time the universe
man
If
The day has "The
you are
with a
bell to its
inevitable
Finds them
truly alive,
clear
call.
morning
who
you do
summon you
in cellars be
to the
DAY AT ESSEX JUNCTION
51
And
be sure that all-loving Nature Will smile in a factory.
Yon ridge of purple landscape, Yon sky beneath the walls, Hold
all the hidden wonders In their scanty intervals."
There
is
a curious restlessness which
Not
mistaken for idealism.
our
in
real environment,
somewhere
desire to be
ness becomes chronic, there ing"
often
finding satisfaction
we
else.
is
are
filled
When is
"that
with the
this restless
driven feel
which transforms the pursuit of happiness
into a hurried flight
from unhappiness.
Even
our holidays become nerve-destroying tasks, as with jaded minds we are carried about to the places
come.
And
with our eyes on our watches,
we must hurry if we next sight that we have paid
know the
where we wait for sensations that do not
that
Palestine
when
was not a
we
are not to miss for.
tourist country in the days
the author of Ecclesiastes wrote of the va
rious vanities he
had seen under the sun ;
else
he
might have added a lamentation over the futility of an empty mind going about in search of cul-
EMERSON
52 This
ture.
a
a vanity
old,
I
have seen.
man who came
foolish
rich,
and
is
and that had a great
I
have seen
to a city strange history.
Yet did
he not seek to know what that history was, nor did he save an hour for quiet meditation on what
He
he saw. place
spent
where the
much
city was,
and when he was there
he worried over the delay that foolish rich
gold to come to the
in getting
man remembered
away.
And
nothing of the
a dinner which was not so good as he might have had at home. city except
Because he found so much to interest him at
home Emerson
takes a whimsical pleasure
in
speaking against foreign travel as a means of cul
But he evidently had
ture.
sive value that
and
its
was
in his
in
mind
the exces
day put upon Europe
traditions.
His disparagement of travel did not arise from any incuriosity. He had an eager desire to see all the world.
But he was
like a small
ing learned that the procession
own
is
boy who, hav to pass by his
house, takes his position on his
own door
DAY AT ESSEX JUNCTION Why
step.
at
home he
is
"It
should he go is
sure to see
away when by the show ?
53
staying
for want of self -culture that the super
stition of Travelling,
whose
idols are Italy,
Eng
land, Egypt, retains its fascination for all
edu
cated Americans.
They who made England,
Italy,
or Greece venerable in the imagination did so by sticking fast
where they were,
like
an axis of the
earth.
In manly hours,
we
place.
The
traveller; the wise
soul
stays at home,
on any
and when
occasion, call
foreign lands, he
men
no
is
sensible
is
feel that
and
home
still,
and
by the expression of
and not "I
visits cities
man
his house, or into
nance, that he goes the missionary of virtue,
our
his necessities, his duties,
him from
at
is
duty
and men
like
shall
his
make
counte
wisdom and a sovereign,
an interloper or a valet. have no churlish objection to the circum like
navigation of the globe, for the purposes of art,
of study, and benevolence, so that the
man
is first
domesticated, or does not go abroad with the
EMERSON
54
hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows.
He who travels to
be amused, or to get somewhat
which he does not
carry, travels
self,
and grows old even
away from him
in
youth among old In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind
things.
He
have become old and dilapidated as they. carries ruins to ruins. "Travelling is
a fool
Our
s paradise.
first
jour
neys discover to us the indifference of places.
home
I
dream
that at Naples, at
Rome,
intoxicated with beauty, and lose
pack
my
trunk, embrace
the sea, and at last beside
me
is
my
wake up
my
friends,
I
At
can be
sadness.
I
embark on
in Naples,
and there
the stern fact, the sad self, unrelent
ing, identical, that I fled from.
can, and the
palaces.
I seek
I affect to
the Vati
be intoxicated
with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxi cated. My giant goes with me wherever I go."
There are times when the medium at a seance ex cuses herself for her inability to put the sitter in
communication with departed
spirits.
She does
DAY AT ESSEX JUNCTION not
know what
are not
the matter, but
"the
conditions
right."
Every ficulty.
is
55
traveler has experienced a similar dif
He
has spent time and
famous spot;
money
to
go to a
but not his soul.
body has been transported There are inhibitions that pre
vent imaginative
communion with
his
the mighty
past
Emerson preferred to be in Essex Junction when the spiritual conditions were right rather than in
Rome when
functioning. if
his
mind was not properly
Essex Junction
one happens to be in the
is
a wonderful place
mood
for seeing
it.
CHAPTER
VI
FRIENDSHIP WITHOUT INTIMACY is a strange face in the Freshman class I should like to know very much. He has a great deal of character in his features and should be a fast friend or a bitter enemy. His name is / shall endeavor to become better ac "There
whom
.
quainted with him and wish, if possible, to recall at a future period the singular sensations which his presence produced in me." JOURNAL, 1820.
was an upper classman,
EMERSON only seventeen years of thus of Martin
age,
albeit
when he wrote
Gay of Hingham, afterward a
distinguished analytical chemist living in Boston.
Emerson
s son,
that there
is
commenting on
no evidence that
college or afterward, ever
ward
his father, either in
made any advances
further acquaintance.
that he ever really
knew him,
interested to hear of him,
untimely death in 1850.
56
this passage, says
It
to
does not appear
yet he
was always
and was grieved at his The two men were en-
FRIENDSHIP WITHOUT INTIMACY tirely different in their ests,
5?
temperaments and inter
Gay being known by
his classmates as
"cool
Gay."
This capacity for shy admirations for his opposites, and for friendly interests in people with
whom
he would find
was
versation,
it
difficult to
characteristic of
keep up a con
Emerson.
He
was sometimes painfully conscious of it as a bar rier which prevented him from really "getting
at"
people
whom
he wished to know.
he defended the attitude that
and so made a virtue of his
To most ship
is
ject,
state
persons,
At other times
was natural
to him,
necessity.
Emerson
s
essay on Friend
unsatisfactory as an exposition of the sub
though it is very revealing of the author s of mind. "Friendship," says Emerson, "like
the immortality of the soul, lieved."
And
is
too good to be be
his account of friendship has a fine
aloofness that befits the love for a disembodied spirit rather
than a
warm
attachment to an im
perfect creature of flesh and blood.
One of make
the conditions that
in a treaty of
Emerson would
friendship would be that
EMERSON
58
neither party should trespass on the personality
of others.
It
was friendship by
"absent
treat
ment."
we
should
"Why
desecrate noble and beautiful
by intruding on them?
souls
personal relations with
and know
his house,
Why
sisters?
Why
insist
your friend ?
his
on rash
Why
go to mother and brother and
be visited by him at your
own?
Are
these things material to our covenant ? Leave
this
touching and clawing.
Let him be to
me
a
spirit. "To
suffices
friend I write a letter, and
my
I receive
a
you
from him little.
come nearer to a man by
shall not
into his house.
In
to
It
me.
"You
should
That seems
letter.
we
intrude
all this
high horse.
We
we
why
?"
feel that
It is
getting
see the noble afar off,
a shy
Emerson was
man s way
riding his
of comforting
himself for something that he unfortunately lacks, x
but which he would give anything to possess.
He
FRIENDSHIP WITHOUT INTIMACY was, to use Paul ties.
ship
s
59
phrase, glorying in his infirmi
That which he was praising was not friend but sublimated hero-worship, which is quite
a different thing. In the privacy of his note-books he treats his
He
infirmity in quite a different spirit.
laments
was not a good mixer. Like so Englanders, it was difficult for him to
the fact that he
many New
establish personal relations.
At
the age of twenty,
when looking forward
to the ministry, he makes this self-criticism
:
comparison of myself with my mates that six or seven, perhaps sixteen or seventeen, "Every
years have
made has convinced me
exists a signal defect of character
which neutral
izes in great part the just influence
ought to of
have."
common
He
sympathies."
mean the absence of "Its
expresses
bitter fruits are
By
it
that there
my
as the
talents
"absence
this he seems to
the material for
"small talk."
a sore uneasiness in the
com
pany of most men and women, a frigid fear of offending and jealousy of disrespect, an inability to lead
and an unwillingness to follow the cur-
EMERSON
60
...
rent conversation.
am
ation I
In
my
frequent humili
compelled to remember the poor boy
who cried, I told you, father, they would find He sums up his youthful confession, me out. "What is called a warm heart, I have it 5
not."
When same book:
he was
He
limitation. "Barriers
he was conscious of the
sixty,
of
jotted
man
down
in his note
They who
impassable.
should be friends cannot pass into each other.
Friends are
fictitious,
tary experience.
founded on some
But what we want
is
momen consecu-
tiveness."
All this It
is
not evidence of lack of a
was rather a
what he
felt.
lack of an easy
The
chill
in the atmosphere that
way
was not
warm heart.
of expressing
in himself, but
was about him. But there
was evidently a personal experience behind
this
generalization about society.
"Society,
derstand
like wealth, is
it.
who do
It is
good for those who un
a foolish waste of time for
seems impossible for any one to expand in a crowd to his natural dimen-
those
not.
It
FRIENDSHIP WITHOUT INTIMACY All character seems to fade
sions.
61
away from
all
Every woman seems suffering and you accuse yourself and com
the accomplices.
for a chair,
miserate those you talk
There
to."
something delightfully amusing in analysis of his own failure as a con
is
Emerson
s
versationalist
seemed, as
"It
I
mused
in the streets of
Bos
ton on the unpropitious effect of the town on
my
humor, that there needs a certain deliberation and tenacity in the entertainment of a thought tain longanimity to
that confidence
a cer
and
sta
which can meet the demands others make
bility
on
make
us.
I
am
too quick-eyed and unstable.
thoughts are too short, as they say
my
My
sentences
along from stone to stone over the Lethe which gurgles around my path, but the I step
are.
companion encounters me just leave one stone, and before my foot has well
odds arc that as I
my
reached the other, and water.
down
I
tumble into Lethe
But the man of long wind who
receives
EMERSON
62
his thought with a certain phlegmatic entertain
ment, and unites himself to
it
for the time, as a
a boat, has a better principle of poise not easily moved from the perpendicular."
sailor to
and
is
With
the remarkable group of
men who made
Concord famous, Emerson was on terms of miliar friendship.
fa
For Bronson Alcott he cher
ished an admiration which seems extravagant.
He
loved to walk and talk with the shy poet,
Thoreau was for two years an inmate of Emerson s house, and the two men
Ellery Channing.
worked
in the
garden together.
In Boston
Emer
son was a member of the Saturday Club, where
he continually met Longfellow, Holmes, Agassiz
and the
rest.
Yet he was not a man to shine
in sucH society.
His mind was contemplative, rather than conver sational.
He
did not care to
"hold
his
own"
in
a controversy. Why should he ? "Emerson was a good citizen and a good neighbor with his neigh bors, always
went to town meeting and
intently to the strong spirits
who
listened
ruled the dis-
FRIENDSHIP WITHOUT INTIMACY cussions, without taking
in
any part
63
them him
self."
The most
Thomas
notable of his friendships
The correspondence between
Carlyle.
them continued for many
many
was with
years,
expressions of esteem.
and there were
The
was
friendship
a real one, but the fact that the broad Atlantic
them was a great aid to their good For though the two men liked each
lay between fellowship.
other, they did not like the
same
things.
Carlyle threatened to visit America, and
may
we
be sure that he would not have enjoyed the
visit.
Emerson
s
common
cheery faith in the
man seemed
to the testy
Scotchman a
mentalism.
They both
believed in hero-worship,
bit
of senti-
but they did not worship the same heroes.
New
England Transcendentalism did not agree
\vith
Carlyle
s
temper.
Emerson
sent a copy of the Dial to his friend.
Carlyle writes,
course
I
of what
read is
"The
it
Dial No.
with interest;
1
came
it is
duly.
Of
the utterance
youngest in your land, pure, etherial
as the voices of the morning!
And
yet
you
EMERSON
64
know me theoretic ;
for all
me
it
is
too etherial, speculative,
theory becomes more and more con
inadequate, untrue,
fessedly
most a kind of mocking "Faithful
to
me."
wounds of a
are the
al
unsatisfactory,
And
friend."
these tokens of friendship were seldom absent
from the
letters
that passed between the two.
Emerson s
Carlyle writes of the impression
says made upon him
"It
is
a sermon to
terances are ; a real
me
as
your deliberate ut word which I feel to be such all
almost or altogether the one such, in a
alas,
world
es
:
all
full
of jargons, hearsays, echoes and
vain noises which cannot pass with
me
for words.
a praise far beyond any literary one; literary praises are not worth repeating in com parison. For the rest I have to object still (what This
is
you will
we
call
objecting to the
Law
of Nature) that
you a speaker indeed, but as it were a soliloquizer on the eternal mountain tops only, in find
vast solitudes where
men and
their affairs
lie all
hushed in a dim remoteness; and only the
man
FRIENDSHIP WITHOUT INTIMACY and the
stars are visible,
whom
65
so fine a fellow
we could perpetually punch into and say, We won t you come and help us then? Why have terrible need of one man like you down seems he,
cold and vacant
up there noth ing paintable but rainbows and emotions; come down and you shall do life pictures, passions,
among
us
facts
which transcend
It is
!
stuttering
all
;
thought, and leave
it
To which he an and stammering! won t, can t and doesn t want to (as
swers that he
the cockneys have
it)
:
so I leave
You Western Gymnosophist ford one man for that, too. This
is all
!
him and
Well,
we
say,
can af
very well for a friendship carried on
by correspondence. Carlyle thinks of himself as a man who is dealing with concrete realities, while
Emerson
is
dealing in remote abstractions.
But had they
lived in the
same town with
opportunity to discuss the practical questions of politics
and
social welfare, they
into collision.
much
The
fact
was
would have come
that
Emerson was
as
interested in concrete realities as Carlyle,
EMERSON
66
but he came to different conclusions in regard to
them.
Carlyle believed in government by strong
Frederick the Great and Cromwell.
like
men,
Democracy was an abomination to him.
man
like Lincoln,
who
A states
thought of himself as an
was altogether Liberalism of the modern
interpreter of the popular will,
outside his sympathy. sort
seemed to him utter weakness and muddle-
headedness.
Emerson, though he preferred to write about principles rather than their immediate applica tions,
on.
was never
The
in doubt as to
principles
which side he was
which he preached were the
ones which were being applied by the democratic
reformers of his
movements
at
own
He
day.
believed in the
which Carlyle scoffed. he says
his friend s criticism,
Answering
:
you say now and heretofore respecting the remoteness of my writing and thinking from "What
real life,
criticism
what
though
I
hear substantially the same
made by my countrymen,
it means."
I
do not know
FRIENDSHIP WITHOUT INTIMACY Indeed,
Emerson
s idea
of real
67
life differed
so
profoundly from Carlyle s that their minds sel dom met. To him the laws of the universe were not only the great
realities,
but the most intimate
Every person and every action
realities.
trated them.
He
illus
believed in the principles of
democracy which Carlyle scorned. These funda mental differences would have been accentuated
The
in daily intercourse.
to
New
that
it
visit
England never took
did not;
"for,"
the style
we demand
establish
it
in flesh
of the Scotchman
place,
and
says Emerson,
it
was well
"the
higher
of friendship the less easy to
and
blood."
CHAPTER
HATE THIS SHALLOW AMERICANISM
I
"I
VII
hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to
get rich by credits, to get knowledge by raps on mid night tables, to learn the economy of mind by phre nology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship, or sale of goods through pretending they will sell, or power through making believe you are powerful. They think they have got it, but they
have got something
else"
of Emerson was Judge
Haliburton of Nova Scotia, the creator of AONTEMPORARY
Sam
Mr. Slick of
Slick.
was a
typical
Yankee
Slickville, Connecticut,
as seen by neighbors across
the northern border.
He was
shrewd, enterpris
good-humored, and in his way re was an ardent patriot, with his eye on
ing, inquisitive, ligious.
the still
He
main chance. better at
He was
an argument
tude in the transaction.
good
at a bargain,
and
in defense of his recti
He was no hypocrite,
for
he saw no reason to pretend to be something
68
SHALLOW AMERICANISM which he was
not.
He was
ican citizen and he didn
were thousands was.
He
t
simply a plain
care
who knew
in Connecticut just as
felt it
69
it.
Amer There
good as he
a privilege to represent the Great
Republic.
The
blatant
Americanism of Sam Slick must
be compared with the solid English complacency of Mr. Podsnap. tional
failings
Both were caricatures of na
which were
easily
recognizable.
Emerson was enough of an American to under stand Sam Slick and to laugh with him as well as to laugh at him, but he recognized that this
shallow Americanism had
its
dangers.
The very ease with which the American could make a living made him overestimate his own powers.
He
took the gifts of nature in a new
continent for rewards for his as he
was and
own
merit.
Bold
self-assertive in little things, he
lacked in any standard by which to judge him self.
He was
gregarious in his mental habits,
and curiously averse to strenuous
intellectual
effort.
The
timidity of our public opinion
is
our
dis-
EMERSON
70 ease,
or shall
I
say the publicness of our opinion,
Good nature
the absence of private opinion. plentiful but fight
down
duced a
we want justice with the
proud."
sufficient
stinctively
expansive
side,
heart of steel to
America has not pro
number of men who
throw themselves
ness, of youth, of
"on
find
legislative
hope; on the
liberal,
blood.
sumed
mend
weak
on the
never on the defensive, the con system."
no expression in our State papers or debate in our lyceums or churches,
especially in feeling,
will in
the side of
serving, the timorous, the lock-and-bolt
"I
is
our newspapers, of a high national
no lofty counsels that rightfully stir the I speak of those organs which can be pre to speak a popular sense.
They recom
conventional virtues, whatever will earn
and preserve property; always the
capitalist, the
college, the church, the hospital, the theater, the
hotel, the road, the ship, the capitalist,
goes to secure, adorn, enlarge these ever jeopardizes any of these
is
whatever
good what ;
is damnable."
SHALLOW AMERICANISM
71
This description of a familiar kind of Ameri
canism
The
1844
in
is
1920.
easily recognizable in
shallow reformers are equally familiar.
"Many
rubbish, class.
a reformer perishes in the removal of
and that makes the offensiveness of
are partial, they are not equal to the
They
work they
this
They
pretend.
lose their
way
in the
on the kingdom of darkness; they expend their energy on some accidental evil, and lose
assault all
their sanity
moment social
man
and power of
that one or
system be corrected, but of
be in his
No
benefit.
It is
of
two or twenty errors
much
little
in
our
that the
senses."
foreign critic has ever pointed out
clearly the faults of the
more
American temperament.
But shallow Americanism, with its boast fulness and its conventionality, can not blind him to the ideal
America
that lies far deeper.
It is yet in the
making. "We
cannot look on the freedom of this coun-
EMERSON
72 try, in
connection with
its
youth, without a pre
sentiment that here shall laws and institutions exist
on some
of nature.
scale of proportion to the majesty
To men
legislating for the area be
twixt the two oceans, betwixt the snows and the
somewhat of the grandeur of nature
tropics,
infuse
itself
into
the
code.
population crowding on
all
A
ships
will
heterogeneous
from
all
corners
of the world to the great gates of North America,
New
namely, Boston,
York, and
New
Orleans,
and thence proceeding inward to the prairie and the mountains, and quickly contributing their private thought to the public opinion, their to the treasury,
and
toll
their vote to the election,
it
cannot be doubted that the legislation of this country should become more catholic and cos
mopolitan than that of any other. easy for
America
expansive and
to inspire
humane
It
seems so
and express the most
spirit;
new-born,
free,
healthful, strong, the land of the labourer, of the
democrat, of the philanthropist, of the believer,
of the
saint, she
It is the
should speak for the
human
race.
country of the future. Like Washington,
SHALLOW AMERICANISM c
proverbially
through
73
the city of magnificent distances/
and
all its cities, States,
Territories,
it is
a country of beginnings, of projects, of designs,
and expectations. "Gentlemen,
there
is
Destiny by which the
a sublime and friendly
human
race
is
guided
the
race never dying, the individual never spared to results affecting masses
narrow and
selfish,
and
what
his
day
in
are
and voluntary
is
not discovered
It is
activity,
befalls, with or without their
Emerson
Men
but the Genius or Destiny
not narrow, but beneficent. in their calculated
ages.
but in
design."
much
as the politicians of
Manifest Destiny.
But he hoped for
believed as
the country a destiny greater than that politicians planned.
The commercial
w hich T
the
progress of
was something to rejoice in as a part of a great onward movement. But commercialism was not the end toward which the nation was the day
moving. "Our
part
is
plainly not to
throw ourselves
across the track, to block improvement, and
sit
EMERSON
74
t
till
we
are stone, but to watch the uprise of suc
and to conspire with the work Government has been a fossil; it
cessive mornings,
of
new
days.
should be a plant.
I conceive that the office
of
law should be to express, and not to im pede the mind of mankind. New thoughts, new Trade was one instrument, but Trade things. statute
and must give way to some thing broader and better, whose signs are already is
also for a time,
dawning
in the
sky."
CHAPTER
VIII
THE POET
am born a poet of a low class without doubt, but a poet. That is my nature and vocation. My singing, to be sure, is very husky and is for the most part in prose. Still I am a poet in the sense of a perceiver and dear lover of the harmonies that are in the soul and in matter, and specially of the corre "I
spondence between
them."
S estimate of was given EMERSON
in
a
his poetical gifts
letter to his
future wife.
When
he so
seems
ungracious to agree with his critical
-clearly points
ment, but one must do in the sense of a
so.
out his limitations,
He was
it
judg
not a poet
maker of mighty harmonies. He
did not walk like Milton, with his
"singing
robes"
But he was a poet in the sense of being a perceiver and dear lover of natural har monies, and he made us sharers of his perception. about him.
His singing voice was certainly very husky. Only a few of his poems stand the test of being 75
EMERSON
76
read aloud with perfect pleasure. are conscious of a metrical
jolt.
Frequently
Not only
ear pained by dissonance, but there
is
is
we the
a sense that
the poetical inspiration has suddenly given out. I
am
he had frankly adopted "free For though he was a poet, he was not a
have been happier verse/
if
In
natural rhymster.
"Merlin"
he makes a decla
which would please our
ration of independence
new
Emerson would
inclined to think that
poets.
"Great
is
the art
Great be the manners, of the bard. He shall not his brain encumber
With
And
the coil of
rhythm and
number."
then he weakens his declaration by add
ing: "But,
The
leaving rule and pale forethought, aye climb
He
shall
For
his
critic is
rhyme."
tempted to ask,
rhyme go rather than climb
Why
for it?
not
let
the
Emerson
s
rhymes were often most unhappy, and had the air of being forced into service.
Read
his
rhymes
like
THE POET
77
You
will find jingling
"May Day."
"Not
Nor
for a regiment s parade, laws or rulers made,
evil
Blue Walden
We have such lines
rolls its cannonade."
as these
:
"Every tree and stem and chink Gushed with syrup to the brink.
The
air stole into the streets of towns,
Refreshed the wise, reformed the
clowns."
After these rhymes that are easy to a
have others that are
difficult:
fault,
as almanac
we and
coming-back, Superior Lake and Mackinac, cava liers is
and
travelers.
Sometimes an obsolete word
introduced for the sake of an imperfect rhyme
"They
shook the snow from hats and shoon, their April raiment
They put
on."
All this needs to be said at the beginning. is
when
full
lapses that
son
s real
:
allowance
we
is
made
are prepared to appreciate
poetical gifts.
It
for his poetical
Emer
While he had no power
EMERSON
78
of sustained verbal melody, he has given an un
number of
usual
In
perfect lines.
"Voluntaries"
we have a
succession of
com
monplace verses, and then come upon the lines that seemed chiseled by some great artist, aus terely beautiful and true: "So
nigh
is
grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, Thou must, The Youth replies, I can."
In
"Forerunners"
word.
There
"Each
and
is
one would not change a
a gladness of adventure.
All,"
"The
Problem,"
sources of endless delight.
In
"Two
Emerson expresses melodiously his
He
is
"Days,"
are
Rivers,"
poetical creed.
a perceiver and dear lover of the corre
spondence between the outer and the inner worlds.
The
little
river that runs through
symbol of the
Concord
the
eternities.
summer
voice, Musketaquit, Repeats the music of the rain, But sweeter rivers pulsing flit Through thee, as thou through Concord "Thy
is
plain.
THE POET "Thou
in thy
narrow bed
79
art pent,
The stream I love unbounded goes Through flood and sea and firmament, Through light, through life, it forward In the longer poems, like "Woodnotes,"
there
is
flows."
"Monadnock"
nothing consecutive.
and
One
might read them as Emerson himself was ac customed to read, beginning at the last page and turning back the leaves in search of a rewarding
But there
sentence.
and a sense of the
a sparkling atmosphere
is
New
England woods and
hills.
Twas one of the charmed days When the genius of God doth flow,
"
The wind may
alter
A tempest cannot
Emerson
is
as revealed in
the poet of nature, and
New
England.
light parks of beech berries, the
twenty ways,
blow."
and
We
pine,"
it is
nature
see the
and the purple
upland pastures, the delicate mosses,
the granite ledges, over which the brooks go bling, the grass,"
mountain lakes
the
"twi
"damp
fields
"edged
known
tum
with sand and
to bird
and
fox."
EMERSON
80
Nowhere land
is
far to the primitive granite, yet the
is it
not bare.
Even on
like pine roots crosswise
the ledges
grown"
"the
give a
rope-
home
like invitation.
Nature
though there
a trace of austerity about her
is
is
everywhere friendly,
welcome.
But
to the poet the
outward forms of nature
are but symbols.
me truths, am weary of surfaces,
"Give
For
I
And
die of
inanition."
Flashing through woods and mountains and sky, he sees truths that strengthen
What he ".
.
and
seeks to express in his poetry
.
inspire.
is
the sweet affluence of love and song,
The rich results of the divine consents Of man and earth, of world beloved and
is
lover."
Every poet who has any distinctive quality and not merely an imitator of other poets sees
something which he wants to express. sight
is
his
real
contribution.
The
This in skill
witfi
THE POET which he
is
able to
81
communicate what he sees
is
another matter.
The
poets of the most universal appeal are
those
who
more
intensely,
see
what everybody else sees, only and who can tell their story in Robert
words which every one understands. Burns, Whittier, James interpreters.
Whitcomb
Riley, need
They themselves are
interpreting
what we have already experienced. There are other poets whose endeavor
make
no
is
to
us see something which, without their help,
we might
miss, or at least treat as something un-
Browning saw a greater complexity in human conduct and character than we usually rec
poetical.
ognize, and he sought to present this complexity
to the imagination as well as to the reason.
This
involved a good deal of explanation on his part,
and explanatory remarks are always prose. But the true Browning lover knows what his poet is driving at and helps him out
when he
gets into
difficulties.
Walt Whitman saw
the poetry
bulk and the sublimity that
is
which
is
in
mere
in great bare spaces.
EMERSON
82
Let others sing of the finished products of art and nature; he would celebrate the glory of the im perfect, the
To
romance of the raw material.
his
mind a catalogue of the most ordinary things was suggestive. It was the stuff poems are made of. was an inventory of the wealth we hold in com mon. He repeats the names of American states It
and
as Milton repeated the names of the
cities
places old in story,
for
all sorts
which
in his imagination stood
of vague sublimities.
we
If
catch
something of this imaginative enthusiasm for crude bulk and wide spaces and overflowing vi tality,
then
Otherwise, in the
we greet Whitman as a we make nothing of him.
adds, if is
says Paul,
world,"
and no voice
is
without
we do
talking,
he
is
"many
great poet "There
are
kinds of voices,
But he
its significance/*
not understand the person
a barbarian to us and
we
who
are as
barbarians to him.
The
poetry of
out of a peculiar
man saw
Emerson has a
quality
way of looking at
things in the rough.
growing
Whit
things. "Here
is
what
moves in magnificent masses, careless of partial-
THE POET Emerson saw
lars."
83
the motion of masses, but
he was not careless of particulars.
was
upon the mass but on the particles was composed. And his quick eye
fixed not
of which
it
perceived that these particles
of
His attention
its
had each a motion
own, and that the motion was bewilderingly
rapid.
Our dull eyes
see results but not processes.
talk of the quickness of thought, but
we
We
are really
very slow-witted creatures and seldom see what is
going on.
The
things which
we watch and
talk
about are really the things which have already happened, just as
which only
light,
current events
not
strictly
The
be looking at a star by
was shining some Our judgment on what we call
centuries ago.
is
we may
is
tells
us that
it
apt to be misleading because
it
contemporaneous.
great illusion
is
that of arrested motion.
Things seem to us to stand
still,
which
in reality
are whirling about with inconceivable velocity.
Our
sciences
have demonstrated what our senses
can not perceive, and that which staggers our imagination.
EMERSON
84
The astronomer tells ball
on which we
live
us of the
way
goes hurtling through space.
But even the astronomer does not
The chemist molecules.
tells
this earthen
feel the
motion.
us of the wild dances of the
We in a dull way perceive the
fact of
growth and decay and attraction and repulsion, but we do not perceive them as incessantly hap
When
pening.
a powder mill
is
destroyed,
we
But of the multi
are startled by the explosion.
tude of tiny explosions, which result in the open ing of a rose, or the scattering of thistledown,
we
are unconscious.
Now
Emerson was profoundly
stirred
by
thought of the explosive power of nature. InHeed his world was always exploding. He at tempts to express the sense of these sudden hap penings in his poetry.
He
is
preeminently the
poet of swift motion. "Hearken!
Hearken!
If thou wouldst know the mystic song Chanted when the sphere was young. Aloft, abroad, the paean swells ; wise man! hear st thou half it tells?
O
THE POET
85
O
wise man! hear st thou the least part? Tis the chronicle of art. To the open air it sings Sweet the genesis of things,
Of tendency through endless ages, Of star dust, and star-pilgrimages, Of rounded w orlds, of space and time, Of the old flood s subsiding slime, Of chemic matter, force and form, Of poles and pow ers, cold, wet and warm: The rushing metamorphosis r
r
Dissolving all that fixture is, Melts things that be to things that seem, And solid nature to a dream.
O,
listen to the
undersong, ever young And, far within the cadent pauses, The chorus of the ancient Causes
The ever
old, the
;
!"
This was the theme of Emerson
was
s poetry.
the genesis of things as revealed by
science
He was It
modern
and interpreted by the poetic imagination. the poet of the
was a world
in
"rushing
metamorphosis."
which there was persistent The world soul
force and ever-changing form. cries,
It
EMERSON
86 "Hearken
once more
I will tell thee the
Older
am
Change
I
!
mundane
lore.
than thy numbers wot, may, but I pass not. I
Hitherto all things fast abide, And anchored in the tempest ride. Trenchant Time behooves to hurry All to yean and all to bury All the forms are fugitive, But the substances survive." :
And
that calm for which philosophers have
always yearned, standing
how
shall
we
Not by
attain it?
seeking refuge in some venerable
still,
form, but by flinging ourselves into the swift cur rent,
and yielding ourselves
It is possible for
with nature
a
man
s
to the eternal power.
thought to keep step
triumphant piercing sight," seeing the end toward which all things move.
"On
"with
him
the light of star and
moon
with purer radiance down Shall All constellations of the sky Shed their virtue through his eye, Him Nature giveth for defence His formidable innocence; fall
;
The mounting All spheres,
all
sap, the shells, the sea, stones his helpers be.
THE He
shall
87
POET]
never be old
Nor
his fate shall be foretold
He
shall
Without wailing, without
The Actual
;
meet the speeding year
is
fear."
swift, but the Ideal is swifter.
"Thee gliding through a sea of form, Like the lightning through a storm,
Somewhat not Somewhat not
No No
to be possessed, to be caressed,
feet so fleet could ever find,
perfect form could ever bind, Thou eternal fugitive, Hovering over all that live, Quick and skilful to inspire
Sweet, extravagant
desire."
There are poems of Emerson whicH we can make nothing of unless we have happened to brood over the same problems. There is "Initial, Daemonic and Celestial Love." It is unreadable, unless one reads between the lines.
When we ask that
it
is
what
it is all
about? the answer
an attempt to follow that
metamorphosis" that \ve call love.
name we speak of
is
"rushing
Under one
the attraction of sex which
EMERSON
88
man
shares with
all
the animal world,
is
a passion in
capable
of
its
and the
affections.
Here
beginning sensuous and
selfish,
highest and most disinterested
infinite
refinement
till
becomes
it
Between love as a natural im
purely spiritual.
pulse and love as a religious experience there are
innumerable subtle gradations.
Emerson s
lines
suggest the swiftness of the transitions.
At
first
love
"He
is
unmoral.
is
wilful, mutable,
Shy, untamed, inscrutable, Swifter- fashioned than the # # #
For Cupid goes behind
all
fairies.
law.
are impulses that are Restless, predatory, hasting; And they pounce on other eyes "There
As lions on their prey. And round their circles
is writ Plainer than the day, Underneath, within, above, Love love love love."
Out of
these primitive instincts arise the higher
kinds of love.
They do not develop
in logical
THE POET They are
order.
89
rather fierce and sudden pas
sions which, however, tend
toward nobleness.
was made of social earth, Child and brother from his birth, Tethered by a liquid cord Of blood through veins of kindred
"Man
poured."
There
developed a loyalty to family and
is
There come
tribe.
There
"throbs
of a wild
religion."
is
of a richer vein Graces of a subtler strain."
"Beauty
After a time love
is
drawn
to
its
object, not
a blind urgency, but a conscious choice. lover
is
The
open-eyed.
doth elect
"He
The
And And
beautiful and fortunate, the sons of intellect,
Who But
by
this
the souls of ample fate, the Future s gate unbar."
love
with
all
its
possibilities
of
EMERSON
90
chivalry and romance
own, and scorns
its
Draws men
but
"the
is
It seeks
all else.
to their likeness
a love that
Daemon ever
pulse which unites
So
divides.
at heart selfish.
Daemons are self-seeking, fierce and limitary will
"The
Their
There
is
it
"Ever
is
a
wall."
road,"
That im
met by an impulse which
happens that
the Daemonic love
Is the ancestor of
But these
to build a
"delights
builds
still."
wars."
and passions do not exhaust the meaning of love. There is a partial preferences
celestial love.
"But
God
I will
There
There truth.
is
It is
perfection.
kind.
said,
have a purer is
smoke
a love that a passion It
gift,
in the flame/ is
still,
comes with
"
one with justice and but
it is
a passion for
insight of a swifter
THE POET
91
must mount for love all form In one only form dissolves.
"Thou
Into vision where
*
*
#
for a beam "Pray Out of that sphere, Thee to guide and to redeem. O, what a load of care and toil, By lying use bestowed, From his shoulders falls who sees
The
The
true
astronomy."
love of the one becomes the symbol of
good-will to "Not
Of
all.
glad, as the low-loving herd,
self in
other
still
preferred,
But they have
heartily designed
The
benefit of
broad mankind.
And
they serve
After their Without a
own
men
austerely,
genius, clearly,
false humility;
For this is Love s nobility, Not to scatter bread and gold, Goods and raiment bought and sold But to hold fast his simple sense,
:
And speak the speech of innocence, And with hand, and body, and blood, To make his bosom-counsel good. For he that feeds men serveth few He serves all who dares be ;
true."
EMERSON
92 In
all this
ophy.
Emerson
But he does
it
is
expressing his philos
not as a formal teacher,
but as a poet.
In the
"Threnody,"
in
which he sought com
fort after the death of a dearly loved child, there is
the same sense of the quick transitions between
He summons
the physical and the spiritual.
his
faltering thought to follow his
regions of the unknown.
of possibilities of
It is
boy into the vast not a void but full
life.
"When frail
Nature can no more,
Then
My
the Spirit strikes the hour : servant Death, with solving rite,
Pours
finite into
The loved form
infinite."
disappears, but the love goes
in search of its object.
on
Change their must be, but
change does not mean destruction of real values.
Emerson is
finds strength in the thought that
"excellent
nence
is
is
permanent."
And
that
what
perma
not of form but of force.
"Wilt
Whose
thou freeze love s tidal flow, streams through nature circling go ?
THE POET
93
Nail the wild star to its track the half -climbed zodiac?
On
Light
Blood Life
is
light
is
which
radiates,
blood which circulates,
is life
which generates,
And many-seeming
life
is
one,
Wilt thou transfix and make
it
none?
onward
force too starkly pent In figure, bone, and lineament? Wilt thou, uncalled, interrogate, Talker! the unreplying Fate? Nor see the genius of the whole Its
Ascendant in the private soul, Beckon it when to go and come, Self-announced its hour of doom? Fair the soul s recess and shrine, Magic-built to last a season; Masterpiece of love benign Fairer that expansive reason
Whose omen
tis, and sign. Wilt thou not ope thy heart to know What rainbows teach, and sunsets show ? Verdict which accumulates
From
lengthening scroll of
human
fates,
Voice of earth to earth returned, Prayers of saints that inly burned, Saying,
What
As God
lives, is
is
excellent,
permanent
;
Hearts are dust, hearts loves remain, Heart s love will meet thee again
EMERSON
94
Revere the Maker; fetch thine eye Up to his style, and manners of the sky. Not of adamant and gold Built he heaven stark and cold; No, but a nest of bending reeds, Flowering grass, and scented weeds; Or like a traveller s fleeing tent, Or bow above the tempest bent Built of tears and sacred flames, And virtue reaching to its aims Built of furtherance and pursuing, ;
;
Not of
spent deeds, but of doing. Silent rushes the swift Lord
Through ruined systems still Broadsowing, bleak and void
restored,
to bless, Plants with worlds the wilderness; Waters with tears of ancient sorrow Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow. House and tenant go to ground,
Lost in God, in Godhead
found."
CHAPTER
IX
THE POETRY OF SCIENCE always goes abreast with the just eleva keeping step with religion and meta physics; or the state of science is an index of selfknozvledge. Since everything in Nature answers to a moral power, if any phenomenon remains brute and dark it is because the corresponding faculty in "Science
man
tion of the
the observer
is
not yet
S
EMERSON gence keeping itual faculties is
active"
idea of the scientific step with the
intelli
moral and
an illuminating one.
It
spir
suggests
to us what happened in the nineteenth century,
and gave
The
rise to so
much
confusion.
orderly progress of the
human mind was
broken up by the sudden and unprecedented ad vance of the physical sciences.
In a single gener
ation knowledge advanced with great leaps, which carried
it
into regions
been entered. the scientific
which had never before
There was a penetrating power in method which amazed those who 95
EMERSON
96 used
it.
The
geologist, the chemist, the biologist,
were daily enlarging the sphere of knowledge. Political economists were claiming the whole sphere of morals as their own.
But
all this
advance of
Was
progress was one-sided.
the
scientific
knowledge only another name for disenchantment? Was the bloom of the world to be brushed off, never
The
turn?
mood
to re
poets and the artists and idealistic
Those who picture Age as one
moralists were panic-stricken. the
more
of the so-called Victorian
of
smug complacency forget the predominant feeling of its men of literary and artistic genius.
Ruskin, Tennyson, Matthew Arnold agree in la
menting the
dom
fact that "knowledge
lingers."
world.
A
comes but wis
glory had departed from the
We are in danger, they thought, of know
ing too much.
Matthew Arnold voiced in his
poem,
"The
Future."
boat that floats upon
beginning
it
was a
this
despondent
Man was
born in a
the River of Time.
clear flowing
moo d
At
the
mountain stream,
THE POETRY OF SCIENCE
97
and looking out upon the romantic mountains the voyager
s
heart
"As
So
Our
is
was
full
of joy.
the world on the banks the mind of the man."
is
fathers lived in a world of poetry.
Life to
them was simple but full of mystery. It was easy But the tract to believe and wonder and enjoy. which the River of Time now flows through is the level plain, bordered by cities, crowded with
Our world
traffic.
ourselves to is
it
is
as best
prosaic,
and we must adapt
we may.
All that remains
a melancholy resignation.
was against this mood of depression that Emerson always protested. The man of science, It
he says, does not divest the world of mystery. He does not "explain away" anything. His explana tions are but the translating one
another.
His knowledge
is
never
mystery into final.
It re
veals deep behind deep.
The
trouble
is
with ourselves.
imagination to grow torpid.
We
allow our
In the processes of
EMERSON
98
nature are the materials not only for scientific investigation, but for poetry also.
universe
is
An
evolving
a theme that can never be exhausted.
Emerson had not science, but
the equipment of the
man
of
he had the imagination which sympa
thized with the tendencies of scientific investiga
seemed to him that they were confirma tions of the intuition of the poets. That matter
tion.
It
is
not dead but thrilling with energy; that space
is
not empty but
is
the
medium through which
all
things are related; that
forces operate; that
lower forms of
ward
life
that which
are always reaching out to
higher; that there
is
is
a ten
dency for the organism to grow more complex and therefore more wonderful, these were dis coveries that ought to kindle the poetic imagina tion.
Emerson Hid not
flatter
ability to express the
The new poetry he without losing
"For
it is
its
himself that he had
new view of believed
ttie
the universe.
would be
realistic
charm.
dislocation
and detachment from
trie
THE POETRY OF SCIENCE of
life
who
God
that
makes things
99
The poet
ugly.
and the whole
reattaches things to nature
reattaching even artificial things and violations of
nature to nature by a deeper insight
very easily of the most disagreeable
That to the true poet
all
things are poetical
a teaching that he repeats continually. this belief that
made him
of
Grass"
fronted.
Whittier,
it is
fire.
his recognition of the
I
in
It
was was
Walt Whitman
1855 the
"Leaves
appeared, the literary world was af
tion copy into the
"I
greet
When
with such effusion.
disposes
facts."
said,
threw
his presenta
Emerson, almost alone in
new
note, wrote,
give you joy of your free and brave thought.
have great joy
in
it.
I find
incomparable things,
said incomparably well, as they
must
be.
I find
the courage of treatment which so delights us,
and which large perception only can
you
at the beginning of a great
But when Walt,
in the
give.
I greet
career."
exuberance of joy over
the appreciation, published a
new
edition with
EMERSON
100
Emerson
commendation printed on the cover, the Concord poet was displeased. There were s
later interviews, but
man became
each
of the limitations of the other. ing,
simmering,
simmering,"
Emerson brought me
to
said
boil."
conscious
was simmer
"I
Whitman, "and Emerson ap
proved the ideas which were simmering
in the
younger poet s mind, but when they actually boiled over he was inclined to get out of the way. This was not mere fastidiousness. different conclusion call
"agreed
the creed of versal
a
drawn from what lawyers Walt Whitman expresses
Emerson
in his
"Song
of the Uni
:"
"Come,
Sing Sing
facts."
It indicated
said the Muse,
me a song no poet me the Universal.
yet has chanted,
broad earth of ours the measureless grossness and the slag, Enclosed and safe within its central heart "In
this
Amid
Nestles the seed perfection.
a share or more or less, but it is born concealed or Unconcealed the seed is waiting. "By
every
life
None born
THE POETRY OF SCIENCE
M
the mountain growths, disease and sorrow, uncaught bird is ever hovering, hovering,
"Over
An
in the purer happier air.
High
"From imperfection s murkiest cloud Darts always forth one ray of perfect One flash of heaven s glory.
light,
fashion s, custom s discords, the mad Babel din, the deafening orgies, Soothing each lull a strain is heard, just heard, From some far shore the final chorus sounding. "To
To
the blest eyes, the happy hearts, see, that know the guiding thread so fine Along the mighty labyrinth." "O
That
That
spiritual realities are
wrapped up
in the
material world, and that the seed of perfection
may
be found amid the apparent grossness of the
earth,
was a
which both poets fervently be But what had it to do with the poet s art ?
lieved.
creed,
Whitman,
was bility
in his
universal,
feast of
good
faith that
goodness
from the responsi Nature had invited him to a
felt
of choice.
robust relieved
things.
He would
and enjoy the rude plenty.
take pot luck,
This he conceived
EMERSON
102
to be the very essence of democracy.
He
would
take good things in the bulk.
Emerson
also chanted the praise of the uni
versal, but with a
He was
somewhat
different emphasis.
interested in the grossness
and the slag
only for the sake of the seed perfection that lay
hidden in
It is the
it.
above the mountain,
now and
that
clouds, that
it is
uncaught bird that
flies
the ray of perfect light
then flashes through the
must be the theme of
murky The poetry.
poet must follow the guiding thread or he is lost in the labyrinth. There must be discrimination.
Nature has
There of
is
something
more than
fecundity.
an austere rejection of the lower forms
life in
tinual refinement going on.
of nature ination he
There
favor of the higher.
is
To interpret
in
harmony with
a con
this side
In this discrim
the function of art.
was
is
the scientific atti
tude.
The man of curiosity.
the
He
science does not yield to an idle selects the objects
method to be
cluttered
up with
used.
all
The
of his study and
laboratory
is
not
the objects which a naturalist
THE POETRY OF SCIENCE
103
Only such objects as are fitted for the purpose are selected. Should not the poet exercise the same kind of discrimina might encounter
in his walks.
tion?
Whitman
how on Beacon
us
tells
Street in
Boston he walked with Emerson for two hours, discussing their agreements and differences.
these
"During
two hours he was the
talker
and
was an argument, statement, reconnoitering, review, attack and pressing home
I the listener.
against
all
It
that could be said against
Children of
Adam.
Emerson
unanswerable, no judge plete or convincing.
better put,
statement was
charge ever more
and pursue
I felt
down
in
my
my own
soul the
not necessary for us to decide.
in the presence of nature. its
all,
way."
As between Emerson and Whitman
in
com
and unmistakable conviction to disobey
clear
it is
poems,
could never hear the points
I
and then
s
s
my
obvious aspects,
its
as poets,
Both stood
Whitman sheer bulk,
delighted its
prodi-
EMERSON
104
gality,
its
Emerson was more
endless variety.
interested in the laws
which
it
the unseen forces which
move
it.
ing to the is
"chorus
what made
science
who
illustrated
He was
of the ancient
and
listen
This
causes."
words so precious to the men of the nineteenth century were wag
his
in
ing a battle against ancient formulas which ob scured the meaning of their researches.
Professor Tyndall, in his famous address to the British Association in
from Emerson, to
whom
1870, took his text
many
other places
he acknowledged his indebtedness.
His theme
was
"The
Scientific
in
Use of
the
Imagination,"
and he began by repeating Emerson I have already quoted, beginning
s lines
which
:
"If
thou wouldst
know
the mystic song
Chanted when the sphere was Here, he spirit
of
said,
modern
is
young."
the poetic expression of the
science.
In another essay, Professor Tyndall denies the
common
notion that advances in science are
made
simply by the patient pushing out of boundaries
THE POETRY OF SCIENCE
105
Be
of knowledge according to a prosaic system. the region of actual light
yond
clearly seen, there
a
is
where
field
intuition
facts are
a penumbral region.
intuition goes
"Here
knowledge.
combining
is
where
in
Here
advance of
the investigator proceeds
and
verification.
He
by
ponders
the knowledge he possesses and tries to push further; he guesses
and checks
jectures and confirms or .
.
.
alist
Thus
con
his guess, he
rejects his conjecture.
the vocation of the true experiment
be defined as the continued use of spir
may
itual
it
insight,
realization.
of which his
and
its
and
incessant correction
His experiments constitute a body purified intuitions are as it were the
soul."
Those
"purified intuitions,"
which Tyndall de were
clares constituted the very soul of science,
to
Emerson
the essence of poetry.
scientist discovered to be true, the poet
beautiful.
was not
Both recognized the
fixed but fluid.
We
phases of an endless genesis.
What saw
the
to be
fact that nature
see the successive
EMERSON
106 "The
lover of nature
outward senses are
who
other;
he whose inward and
is
still
truly adjusted to each
has retained the
even into the era of manhood.
of infancy
spirit
His intercourse
with heaven and earth becomes part of his daily In the presence of nature, a wild delight food. runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows.
Nature all
he
says,
is
my
creature,
and maugre
his imperfect griefs, he shall be glad with me.
Not
the sun of the
and season
yields
summer
its
alone, but every
hour
tribute of delight; for every
hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from breathless
noon that
to
fits
grimmest midnight. Nature is a setting equally well a comic or a mourning piece.
In good health, the air Crossing a
virtue.
is
a cordial of incredible
bare
common,
in
snow-
puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without
having in
my
good fortune, tion.
I
am
woods, too, a his slough,
thoughts any occurrence of special I
have enjoyed a perfect exhilara
glad to the brink of fear.
man
and
at
In the
casts off his years, as the snake
what period soever of
life,
is
THE POETRY OF SCIENCE always a
In the woods
child.
is
107
perpetual youth.
Within these plantations of God a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not
how he
should
tire
thousand years.
In the woods
reason and faith.
There
I
of them in a
we
feel that
return to
nothing can
me in life, no disgrace, no calamity (leav me my eyes), which nature cannot repair.
befall
ing
Standing on the bare ground,
head bathed
and uplifted into infinite space, mean egotism vanishes. I become a trans
by the all
my
blithe air,
I
parent eyeball;
am
nothing; I see
all;
the cur
rents of the Universal
Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and acci dental; to be
brothers,
master or servant turbance.
mortal
I
am
beauty."
is
to
be
then a
acquaintances, trifle
and a
dis
a lover of uncontained and im
CHAPTER X PIETY
"We
love the venerable house
Our
-fathers built to
God;
In heaven are kept their grateful vows, Their dust endears the sod. holy thoughts a light have shed* a radiant face,
"Here
From many
And prayers
of humble virtue
The perfume of "And
made
the place.
anxious hearts have pondered here
The mystery of
life,
And
prayed the eternal Light Their doubts, and aid their
"From
to clear strife.
humble tenements around
Came up
the pensive train, in the church a blessing found That filled their homes again;
And
faith and peace and mighty love That from the Godhead flow, Showed them the life of Heaven above "For
Springs from the
life
108
below.
PIETY
109
live with God; their homes are dust; Yet here their children pray,
"They
And To "On
in this fleeting lifetime trust find the narrow way.
him zvho by
On him
the altar stands,
thy blessing
fall,
his lips thy pure heart that lovest all!
Speak through
Thou
A MONG
commands,
the strange adventures of words,
\_which are continually losing their original meanings and taking up with new associations, j
none stranger than that of the word To the Romans it was preeminently a
there
is
Piety.
manly
virtue.
ness about
strong
There was no suggestion of weak
it.
It
represented the behavior of the
man toward
or benefactors.
his parents, kinsmen, country
It implied
a
fine
There was a sober
sense of the fitness of things. affection for all that lations.
courtesy and a
was permanent
in
human
re
Antoninus Pius represented the kind of
loyalty which the Romans most admired. It is this piety in the ancient sense which Emer
son
s
hymn
represents.
conventional pietism.
It is
the very opposite of
To him
the
New
England
EMERSON
110
meeting-house was venerable, because of ciations with
its
asso
what was most sacred and enduring
in the life of his
own
people.
Whittier himself
has not expressed more tenderly his appreciation of the personal influences which have bound the generations together in
The same
note
is
sounded
worship.
in the
hymn sung
at
Concord Monument, April
the completion of the 19,
common
1836/
the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April s breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world. "By
foe long since in silence slept ; Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; And Time the ruined bridge has swept Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. "The
"On
this
green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone That memory may
When, "Spirit,
To
like
that
our
sires,
made
;
their deed
redeem, our sons are gone.
those heroes dare
and leave their children free, Bid Time and Nature gently spare The shaft we raise to them and Thee." die,
PIETY In the
lines entitled
tion of the debt society of
"Grace"
111 there
is
a recogni
which the individual owes to the
which he
is
a part, and by which he
is
protected.
much, preventing God how much I owe the defences thou hast raund me set; 1
"How
To
Example, custom, fear, occasion slow, These scorned bondmen were my parapet. dare not peep over this parapet glance the roaring gulf below, The depth of sin to which I had descended Had not these me against myself defended." I
To gauge which
In considering the individualism of Emerson
we have really
to take account of the fact that he never
broke with the
past,
nor did he consider
it
necessary to do so in order to achieve freedom.
He
acknowledged his indebtedness to those who had gone before him. But his reverence for their
example led him not to stand perpetually where they stood but rather to go on in the same direc ;
which they were going. All who heard Emerson in the pulpit bear wit ness to the atmosphere of reverence which pertion in
EMERSON
112
vaded writes
his utterances.
One who
listened to
him
:
"One
day there came into our pulpit the most
gracious of mortals with a face
all
benignity
who
gave out the first hymn and made the first prayer as an angel might have read or prayed. Our a was but its best choir was pretty good one, coarse and discordant after
remember definite
Emerson
s voice.
I
sermon only that it had an in charm of simplicity and wisdom, with oc the
casional illustrations
from Nature, which were
about the most delicate and dainty things of the kind if
I
had ever heard.
I
could understand them,
not the fresh philosophical novelties of the dis
course."
Emerson was remarkably
incurious in regard
to the problems propounded by formal theolo gians, but he
was a profound
ligion of experience.
Piety,
believer in the re
whether manifest
toward God or man, was something altogether natural.
PIETY "Ineffable
113
man and God in simplest person, who
the union of
is
The
every act of the soul.
in his integrity worships
God, becomes God; yet
for ever and ever the influx of this better and universal self
awe and
spires
new and
is
unsearchable.
astonishment.
How
in
It
how
dear,
soothing to man, arises the idea of God, peopling the lonely place, effacing the scars of our mistakes
and disappointments! When we have broken our god of tradition, and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may God fire the heart with His presence.
It is the
doubling of the heart
itself,
nay, the infinite enlargement of the heart with a
power of growth It inspires in
new
to a
man an
infinity
on every
infallible trust.
He
has not
the conviction, but the sight, that the best true,
and may
side.
is
the
in that thought easily dismiss all
particular uncertainties
and
fears,
and adjourn
to the sure revelation of time, the solution of his
private riddles.
He
is
sure that his welfare
dear to the heart of being.
law to
his
mind, he
so universal that
it
is
is
In the presence of
overflowed with a reliance
sweeps away
all
cherished
EMERSON
114
hopes and the most stable projects of mortal con
He
dition in its flood.
believes that he cannot
The
escape from his good.
things that are really
You are running to Let your feet run, but your If you do not find him, will you
for thee gravitate to thee.
seek your friend.
mind need
not.
not acquiesce that find
it is
him? for there
him
is
best that
you should not
a power, which, as
it is
in
and could therefore very well bring you together, if it were for the best. You are preparing with eagerness to go and render you,
is
in
also,
a service to which your talent and your taste in vite you, the love of
Has
it
men and
the hope of fame.
not occurred to you that you have no right
to go unless you are equally willing to be pre
vented from going? that every sound that
O, believe, as thou is
livest,
spoken over the round
world, which thou ought to hear, will vibrate on thine ear
word
!
that belongs to thee for aid or comfort,
shall surely
come home through open or winding
Every friend whom not thy fantastic but the great and tender heart in thee crav-
passages. will,
Every proverb, every book, every by
PIETY
115 \
eth,
shall lock thee in his embrace.
because the heart in thee
a
valve, not
a
wall, not
is
And
this,
the heart of all; not
an intersection
is
there
anywhere in nature, but one blood rolls uninter ruptedly an endless circulation through all men, as the water of the globe seen,
its
tide
is
one."
is all
one
sea, and, truly
CHAPTER
XI
THOU SHALT NOT PREACH "
A new
commandment, said the smiling Muse, darling son, Thou shalt not preach
7 give my
"
one sense Emerson was always a preacher. His main interest was in the moral law and in
IN
the development of character.
When
he
left the
was only chang ing one congregation for another. In the Uni tarian ministry to which he belonged, the sermon
pulpit for the lecture platform he
and the essay were not always
clearly differenti
ated.
But
Emerson obeyed the pro smiling muse. He had no genius
in another sense
hibition of the
for exhortation, nor had he any desire to enforce
upon unwilling minds. He lacked the fervor of the true evangelist, and could not
his precepts
cry,
"Turn
ye! turn ye!
why
116
will
ye
die?"
He
THOU SHALT NOT PREACH
117
could not enforce the gospel of liberalism as did his friend, like that
Theodore Parker.
man
of the
his investigation.
Now
investigate
you think of In
the
of science to the subject of
"Here is
the truth as
I see
it.
what
for yourselves and see
it
it."
School
Divinity
startled his hearers
address,
Emerson
by a bold prophecy.
look for the hour
"I
His attitude was
when
that supreme Beauty
which ravished the soul of these Eastern men, Hebrews, and through
and
chiefly of those
lips
spake oracles to
West
also.
all
their
time, shall speak in the
The Hebrew and
the Greek scriptures
contain immortal sentences that have been the
bread of integrity,
life to millions.
are
But they have no
fragmentary,
their order to the intellect.
Teacher that
shall
are not I
look for the
in
new
follow so far these shining
laws that he shall see them come round shall see the
epical
shown
full circle
world to be the mirror of the
shall see the identity
;
soul,
of the law of gravitation
with purity of heart; and shall show that the
118
EMERSON
Ought, that Duty
is
Beauty and "Virtue
much at
an
will.
one thing with Science, with
Joy."
is
He who
infinite
said
vitiated,"
Emerson,
"by
too
aims at progress should aim
not at a special
forms whose fame now
The
benefit.
the land with
fills
perance, Anti-slavery, Non-Resistance,
re
Tem
no Gov
ernment, Equal Labor, fair and generous as each appears, are poor, bitter things
for themselves as an end.
.
.
when prosecuted The soul can .
be appeased not by a deed, but by a
The born preacher appeals to change
He
is
its
He
direction.
instant in season
tendency."
to the will and seeks
pleads and threatens.
and out of season.
Only on a few great occasions did Emerson adopt that The greatest truths seemed to him to be tone. In their presence
self -evidencing.
equal.
"The
down on
is
pressed
the shoulders of each moral agent to task."
us have nothing
evidence.
minds were
weight of the universe
hold him to his "Let
all
There
is
now
surely
but what
is its
own
enough for the heart
THOU SHALT NOT PREACH
Let us not be pestered with
in the religion itself.
half-truths "There
and assertion and
will be
a
and naked, a babe in a the algebra and mathematics of
at first cold
manger
again,
shawms, or
snuffle.
new church founded on moral
science,
ethical law, the
119
church of
men
psaltery, or sackbut
heaven and earth for
its
to come, without ;
but
beams and
ence for symbol and illustration;
it
will
have
rafters; sci it
will
fast
enough gather beauty, music, picture, poetry. never stoicism so stern and exigent as this
Was
shall be.
solitude,
It shall
send
shame these
man home
to his central
social, supplicating
manners,
and make him know that much of the time he
must have himself to
no cooperation, he
his friend.
He
shall expect
shall
walk with no companion.
Jhe nameless Thought,
the nameless Power, tHe
super-personal Heart,
he
that.
He
fame can
Laws
good
no bad fame can hurt him.
The
own
verdict.
are his consolers, the good
are alive, they
on
No
needs only his help,
shall repose alone
know
if
we have
Laws
themselves
kept them, they
animate him with the leading of great duty and
EMERSON
120
an endless horizon.
Honor and
him who always recognizes
fortune exist to
the neighborhood of
the great, always feels himself in the presence of
high
causes."
To have
all this
the preacher might answer,
"You
out of your account something which
left
very important in weakness.
human
nature,
The ordinary man
namely,
lives
is its
amid the
wonders of nature, but he may be very little affected by them. He needs some strong voice to urge him to open his eyes to what If
it is
is
around him.
so with the most obvious sights,
more so with moral and
is it
spiritual beauty ?
not
Is not
the preacher needed as well as the philosopher
and
poet?"
No
one would be more willing to acknowledge
this than
Emerson.
His criticism of Plato would
be equally true of himself. "Plato,
lover of limits, loved the illimitable,
saw the enlargement and nobility that came from truth itself and good itself, and attempted as if on the part of the human intellect to do it ade-
THOU SHALT NOT PREACH quate homage.
...
It
remains to say that the only that which re
defect of Plato in
is
sults
quality.
inevitably
power from his
and therefore
lectual in his aim,
Mounting
literary.
121
He
is
intel
in expression
into heaven, diving into the
expounding the laws of the state, the passion of love, the remorse of crime, the hope of the
pit,
parting soul, he It is
is
literary
and never otherwise.
almost the sole deduction from Plato that
his writings
have not
what
is
no doubt incident
to this regnancy of intellect in his
w ork r
the
which the screams of the prophets and the sermons of unlettered Arabs and Jews vital authority
There
possess.
contact
is
is
an interval; and to cohesion
necessary.
...
I
know
not what
can be said in reply to this criticism but that
we
have come to a fact in the nature of things; an
oak
is
not an orange.
The
qualities of
main with sugar, and those of
salt
with
sugar re salt."
CHAPTER XII THE LURE OF THE WEST I had a pocket full of money I think J should go down the Ohio and up and down the Mississippi by way of antidote to what small remains of Orien talism (so endemic in these parts) there may still be in me to cast out, I mean, the passion for Europe, by the passion for America; and our reverence -for Cambridge, which is only a part of our reverence for London, must be transferred across the Alleghany ridge." EMERSON TO MARGARET FULLER. "If
NEW an
England has always been the home of intense
Jhe
patriotism.
spirit
of
Bunker Hill and Lexington Has never been
Nor can
quenched.
it
be said that any part of
the country has sent out more
taken part in an effective
way
men who have
in large national
enterprises.
Yet
in the Hays before the Civil
Boston became conscious of center,
it
was open
itself
War, when as a literary
to the charge of not having
122
THE LURE OF THE WEST yet discovered America.
England that models.
it
This, I take
was
of those
belonged to a
It
New
looked to Old England for
still
the literary circles
but
123
it,
was always
its
more of
true
than of the mass of the people,
that which determined the admiration
who
aspired to
As Daniel
"culture."
in
Babylon prayed with his windows opened toward Jerusalem, so the Boston literati, when they took pen in hand, wrote with their study windows open toward London. As to what was happening in the great hinterland
cared
little.
who were the
And
beyond the Hudson, they
the people in the hinterland,
so busy opening up the resources of
continent
that
they
hadn
time
t
literary, resented in
a good-natured
tonian attitude.
had that
It
way
"certain
to
be
the Bos-
condescen
which Lowell resented on the part of Euro peans, but from which he and his friends were not sion"
altogether free sentative I think
men it is
when they encountered
the repre
of the West. fair to say that
Emerson did more
than any one else to redeem the
New
England group of authors from the kind of provincialism
EMERSON
124
which was
He
their darling sin.
did
it
a two
in
by attacking their imitation o things English, and then by inculcating a hearty admiration for the America that was growing up fold
way:
in the
In
first,
West. Traits"
"English
he pays tribute to the
sturdy virtues of the English character
wealth of English
But he
talent.
insists
and the
on
treat
ing England not as the Mother Country, but as a different country,
He
admires
it,
but
as different as France or Italy. it is
with a
critical
detachment.
Hawthorne wrote of England as The Old Home. Emerson had very little of the Old Home idea. There were
ties
of deep friendship, but he recog
nized that the genius of Britain and the genius of
America were
He
different.
admired the
differ
ences.
"The
wealth of the source
tude of English nature.
and
talent,
what
is
What
facility
seen in the pleni variety of
power
and plenteousness of
knighthood, lordship, ladyship, royalty, loyalty;
what a proud chivalry
is
indicated in
Collin s
THE LURE OF THE WEST
125
What
peerage* through eight hundred years. dignity resting on
What
what
reality
and stoutness.
courage in war, what sinew in labor, what
cunning unknown, what inventors and engineers,
what
seamen
and
what
pilots,
clerks
and
scholars."
But
this admiration has
provincial
of those "Go
s
nothing in
and privilege Had one said,
attitude to the greatness
who
belong to the
capital.
thou and do and be
Emerson
likewise,"
would not have budged an inch. His toward the sturdy Englishman would be attitude
toward the Churchman
"I
of the
it
attitude like his
:
a cowl, a prophet of the soul,
like a church, I like
I love
Yet not for
Would
I
all
his faith can see
that cowled
churchman
Emerson had an admiration
be."
for the true-born
Englishman, but not for the anglicized Ameri can.
He
believed in culture, but there
must be
an American culture that must grow out of the
126
EMERSON
conditions of our
own
life.
In his lines entitled
he defined the cultivated
"Culture"
man
as one
who his native center fast, Shall into Future fuse the Past, And the world s flowing fates in his "To
own mould
And when fates, his
recast."
he thought of the world
s
flowing
mind turned westward.
things were happening.
A
There great new civilization was be
ing created. There was nothing condescending in the attitude of the thinker to these men of action,
who on an new
unparalleled stage were beginning a
act.
Against the fastidious
critics
of Boston,
son defends the rough and ready
West,
who were
men
Emer of the
already making their influences
felt in politics.
"As
long as our people quote English standards,
they dwarf their
own
proportions.
lawyer of eminence said to
A
Western
me he wished
it
were
a penal offence to bring an English lawbook info court in this country, so pernicious had he found
THE LURE OF THE WEST in his experience
127
our deference to English prece
The very word commerce has only an
dent.
English meaning and
is
pinched to the cramp
exigencies of English experience.
The commerce
of rivers, the commerce of railroads, and
knows but the commerce of
who must
air balloons
give an American extension to the pond-hole of admiralty. standards,
As
long as our people quote English
miss the
they will
of
sovereignty
power."
Even before
the
War Emerson
Civil
dis
cerned clearly the significance of the Middle West
and the great part
it
was destined to play
development of civilization. states
The
had a tradition that was
The
in the
old thirteen
essentially British.
great states which had been established in
the Mississippi valley
were
in their origin purely
There was no colonial background to Here the pioneer spirit had de history.
American. their
veloped freely.
It
was
the spirit of Daniel
Boone
and Davy Crockett and Peter Cartwright.
Emerson reminds there
is
his
fastidious
an explosive energy
in
friends that
young America.
EMERSON
128 "Men
of this surcharge of arterial blood can
not live on nuts and herb tea and elegies, cannot read novels and play whist, cannot satisfy
all
wants at the Thursday lecture or the Boston Athenaeum. They pine for adventure, and must their
go to Pikes Peak, had rather a Pawnee than
day and every day
sit all
counting-room desk.
die of the hatchet of
They
are
made
at
a
for war,
for the sea, for mining, hunting and clearing, for hairbreadth adventures,
venturous
living.
.
.
.
huge risks and ad Their friends and
governors must see that some vent for their ex provided.
The
roisterers
are destined for infamy at
home
will cover
plosive complexion
who
is
you with glory and come back heroes arid gen erals. There are Oregons, Calif ornias and explor ing expeditions enough appertaining to America to find
them
in files to
gnaw and
crocodiles to
eat."
Emerson could not
satisfy all his
wants
in the
Boston Athenaeum or the Saturday Club. Every year he escaped from his neighbors for a lecture
THE LURE OF THE WEST tour in the West.
Pullman
car,
meant roughing
He
It
was before
and traveling
129
the days of the
in interior
America
it.
did not put on any airs as a missionary of
He could not make a living as a books. He must earn something as an
culture.
writer
of
itiner
ant lecturer.
comes to
bet you fifty dollars a weeks that day you will not leave your library and wade and freeze and ride and run, and suffer all manner of indignities, and stand up "It
this.
I
ll
for three
for an hour every night reading in a hall I will.
I
do
it
The ways pleasant.
on the
and win the nine hundred
"Two
me
by another
a canal boat, where the cushion
for a bed tier
was crossed
at the knees
of sleepers as long-limbed as
am
in .the deep
mud
I,
legs."
In 1853 he writes from Springfield, I
dollars."
nights in a rail car and a third
so that the air was a wreath of
"Here
I bet
of the lecturer were not always
floor of
allowed
!
Illinois,
of the prairies.
It
EMERSON
130 rains
and thaws incessantly and
short street
mud.
we go up
My
chamber
if
we
to the shoulders perhaps in
a cabin,
is
boarders are legislators.
Two
my
on
we
are
all
fellow-
or three governors
or ex-governors live in the house. prairie
step off a
But
new men, and must not
in the
stand
trifles."
In mid-winter he makes this entry in his .
journal:
"My
chief adventure
was the
necessity
of riding in a buggy forty-eight miles to Grand
Rapids; then after lecture twenty more in return,
and the next morning back to Kalamazoo in time for the train hither at twelve." This was at a time
when Kalamazoo was a name
strange to
Bostonian ears. It
was not comfortable
traveling through bliz
zards to discourse to audiences which gathered in chilly or stuffy halls, but is
"Here
raw.
and
tis
It is
it
was
in the
a pity to drive only fair to add that Emerson
tion of the
interesting.
making, America in the does not want much to go to lecture,
America
But
it
it."
new West was
s apprecia
intellectual rather
than
THE LURE OF THE WEST He saw
intimately social. treated
it
in a symbolic
nificance of the western
131
and
in the large,
it
He saw
way.
man s
the sig
boast fulness over
He
liked to watch growth of the country. towns grow. He would have delighted in the Chicago man s remark that when Chicago turned
the
to culture
it
Emerson
after
That was
would make culture hum. s
own
heart,
and
which he wished to infuse into
it
was
that spirit
his well-beloved
Boston.
In 1839 he writes,
me
"It
is
a sort of maxim with
never to harp on the omnipotence of limita
do we need any suggestion of checks and measures, as if New England were Least of
tions.
all
anything
else.
row
we have
rill,
like to see like
ing,
.
.
Our
nan
virtue runs in a
never a freshet.
One w oul4 r
Boston and Massachusetts
a wave with some generosity,
mad
agitated,
for learn
for music, for philanthropy, for freedom,
for art. if
.
We have
insight
and
sensibility
enough
we had constitution enough." The old Puritan capital of Massachusetts has
become a great cosmopolitan
city,
and what were
EMERSON
132
then raw towns of the
hum, but
culture
son
s
work
judgments.
West
are to-day making
interesting to read
it is
He
insisted
that the rough
which the pioneers were doing, clearing the
forest, building railroads, laying
incidentally
idealists
arts.
were
of an heroic
doing big things.
The
time.
fierce
materialistic.
sort.
The
cities
They were
big
men
come
in
energy with which they did at length to the finer
greeted them as the makers of a
civilization.
and
They were
amenities would
work would be turned
He
out
speculating in corner lots did not
indicate that they
their
Emer
The men of
the
West knew
new
all this
But they were glad to have Mr. Emerson come out and confirm them in their splendid an
before.
ticipations.
CHAPTER XIII EMERSON "Uprose
And
the
S
ELUSIVE SMILE
merry Sphinx
crouched no more in
stone"
was only the accident of local contiguity that made Doctor Holmes attempt a biography of
IT
The men were
Emerson. their
minds seldom met.
was
Holmes an
to
altogether unlike, and
Emerson
intellectual
s
mysticism
frailty
covered over by a friendly apology.
to
doctor, though averse to transcendentalism,
He
a good judge of wit and humor.
no one can
fully appreciate
be
But the
tells
was
us that
Emerson who has
not seen the quick smile with which he read pas sages which his sober-minded disciples took as oracles to be pondered, while to
him they were
flashes of wit.
Emerson
certainly
had
wit,
but he \vas not
witty in the ordinary sense, nor did he really
133
EMERSON
134
He
enjoy the broader kinds of humor.
how he went with
little
Waldo
"The
pered,
till
his antics.
perform
the clown
Waldo whis
funny man makes me want
to
His father adds that he was of
home."
It
opinion.
when
to
was a
us
to the circus and
they enjoyed themselves hugely
came out
tells
go his
sore trial to him, therefore,
was sometimes expected In preparing them for to play the funny man. the press he, to the disappointment of some of in his lectures he
his friends, cut out the enlivening anecdotes
more
his
Play of wit there was, but solitaire.
which
austere taste disapproved.
The
great wits like
was a game of Sidney Smith need it
antagonists and spectators for their play. Theirs is
the quick give and take, or the unexpected
word
that sets the table in a roar.
we have sational
He
was strangely deficient in conver aptitude, and had no power of repartee. seen,
complains of the
down by
Emerson, as
way
clever talkers.
in
"A
which he was put
snipper snapper eats
me whole." Many
of those
who had been
attracted by his
EMERSON S ELUSIVE SMILE writings were disappointed
him
"whose
phrase,
it
"the
w as,
wit
s
fruit
r
of
to use
reason"
was produced
was a
lexicon and classic.
It
human
part of
He
"the
smile
reasoning.
Emerson
grammar is
s
like
philosophy.
a schoolboy with
hard work, and the schoolboy task.
The frown
grim determination, which is making hard work of it,
the lesson in time.
But
his serious
cates also that he does not yet
of the words he
To
trying to read a Latin
frowns as he bends to the cates his
They are
over the incongruities developed in
him the man thinking was
sign.
s
mind, these happenings having no particu
the course of It
William Penn It
solitude."
lar relation to time or place.
of
remunerative."
thought that took place in his
collisions of
own
which he had sug
conversation was less
Emerson
to
hard to get at him. Henry declares that he knew of no one
They found
James, the elder,
by
when they came
to talk over the subjects
gested.
135
is
is
a good
will learn
demeanor
know
indi
indi
the meaning
painfully puzzling over.
For
they were written in lighter vein and contain a
EMERSON
136
merry jest. When the meaning flashes forth, the words are forgotten, and the boy smiles understandingly.
Emerson
quick but illusive smile came
s
when
he perceived the meaning of something which had
seemed
ex
futile
The sphinx is a very To Emerson the indeed.
understand.
to
solemn
riddle of
most men the cause of
istence seems to effort
The
to be meaningless.
character
He
mystery was not a cause of complaint. pected the sphinx of practical jokes.
sus
She was
concealing something from us.
heard a poet answer Aloud and cheerfully, Say on, sweet Sphinx thy dirges Are pleasant songs to me. Deep love lieth under "I
!
These pictures of time; That fade in the light of Their meaning sublime/
When thus "The
challenged old Sphinx bit her thick lip, taught thee me to name ?
Said, I
am Of
Who
thy
spirit,
thine eye
yoke-fellow, I
am
eyebeam.
EMERSON S ELUSIVE SMILE Then and
the frowning face gave
"up
more
in
The
rose the
to a smile,
merry sphinx and crouched no
stone."
conception of a
liciously
way
137
Emersonian.
the bitter satirist.
"merry
The
The
sphinx"
is
tables are turned
satirist smiles
de-
upon
when he
what men expect receive, between what
sees the incongruity between
and what they actually they profess to be and what they are. In all this it is assumed that the reality is worse than the Things are not what they seem.
expectation.
Quite
so,
says Emerson, but they are not al
ways worse than they seem. infinitely
better than they seem.
They
are often
We are all the We are dull
time entertaining angels unawares. creatures,
If
and are slow to recognize our
amusing to unmask a hypocrite, is it not more amusing to discover that the common
it is
still
place individual is
betters.
whom we
have been patronizing
really a king in disguise?
not beyond thy cottage wall Redeemers that can yield thee all, While thou sittest at the door "Seek
On
the desert s yellow floor,
EMERSON
138
Listening to the grey-haired crones, Saadi, see they rise in stature To the height of mighty Nature, And the secret stands revealed. Fraudulent Time in vain concealed, !
The
blessed gods in servile
masks
Plied for thee thy household
And when
<
tasks."
the performance does not
come up
to the expectation, the sudden discovery
is
not
always unpleasant. "The
to be
essence of
all
jokes, of all
comedy seems
an honest and well-intentioned
non-performance of what formed.
The
half-ness,
a
intended to be per
is
balking of the
intellect,
the frus
trated expectation, the break of the continuity in the intellect
is comedy."
Emerson was very seldom known outright, sion.
and indeed rather
But he was exceedingly
in the continuity of the
naturally logical.
to
laugh
disliked that explo sensitive to
intellect."
"breaks
His mind was
If this be so, that will follow,
But he was quick-witted to see that sometimes the thing which he expected did not
he argued.
EMERSON S ELUSIVE SMILE follow.
He
139
could not help but smile at the con
tradiction to his logic,
"This
is
The
literature.
and truth
the radical joke of life and then of
presence of the ideal of right
in all action
makes the yawning
delin
quencies of practice remorseful to the conscience, tragic to the interest, but droll to the
This
intellectual
perception
is
intellect."
necessary for
our sanity.
have no deeper interest than our integrity, and that we should be aware by joke and by stroke of any lie we entertain. Besides, a perception of "We
the comic seems a balance wheel in our meta physical structure.
It
appears to be an essential
element in a fine character. lect is constructive it will
absence of
it
oracular soul. tie
Wherever the
be found.
We
as a defect in the noblest
The
intel
feel the
and most
perception of the comic
is
a
of sympathy with other men, and a protection
from those perverse tendencies and gloomy in sanities in which fine intellects sometimes lose
EMERSON
140
A rogue alive to the ludicrous
themselves.
If that sense
convertible.
can do
little
for him.
is still
his fellow
is lost,
men
5
The rogue who can laugh
at himself
may
be
But the sentimentalist who takes him
converted.
self too seriously is in
is
"Society
infested
an unsalvable condition.
by persons who, seeing that
the sentiments please, counterfeit the expression
These we
of them.
who
call sentimentalists
talkers
mistake the description for the thing, saying
for having.
They
love of nature; poetry; roses
;
virtue
"dear
whatever merit
make
they adore poetry and
and the moon, and the cavalry regiment,
and the governor they ship
O
an intense
tell us,
have, they
it
is
"dear
liberty
Yes,
virtue."
in
good
repute,
hateful with their praise.
their expressions, the colder
with cold.
A
little
we
;"
they
they
wor adopt
and almost
The warmer
feel;
we
shiver
experience acquaints us with
the inconvertibility of the sentimentalist, the soul ithat is lost
by mimicking
soul.
Cure the drunk-
EMERSON S ELUSIVE SMILE
141
ard, heal the insane, mollify the homicide, civilize
the Pawnee, but
what
lessons can be devised for
the debauchee of sentiment?
Was
ever one con
verted?"
happened that Emerson attracted many of these sentimentalists and he was not unconscious It
of the
humor
of the situation.
CHAPTER XIV THE QUIET REVOLUTIONIST Past has baked my loaf, and in the strength bread I break up the old oven"
"The
of
its
EMERSON is
S
JOURNAL.
not easy for some people to understand
ITEmerson
s
attitude
toward the revolutionary
forces that are all the time threatening the sta bility
of society.
One can
appreciate the fierce
energy of the revolutionist who, believing that the social structure
destroy
who
it.
On
is
altogether bad, seeks to
the other hand, there are those
look with alarm at every project that involves
radical change.
But here was a quiet householder who habit ually uttered the most revolutionary sentiments were the most natural thoughts in the Of course the institutions which we see
as if they
world.
around us are not permanent. real things with
They
which we have to do. 142
are not the
They
are
THE QUIET REVOLUTIONIST
143
what took place yesterday; they are yielding to what is taking place to-day. The only reality is the force which makes and unmakes the results of
them.
Laws, customs,
constitutions,
churches,
are the results of the revolutionary impulse in
man.
They
restless
You
are the temporary embodiments of
thought.
Everything follows thought.
think of armies, and priesthoods, and courts
of justice, as necessities. sities
of thought.
change their form.
Yes, they are neces
Change the thought and they
The temple
that seems to
have grown out of the solid earth has in
grown out of shipper.
It
reality
the vague aspirations of the
grew as the
wor
tree grows, through a
power of working from within.
It
was
built as
the bird builds its nest, through an instinct which
was
irresistible.
thou what wove yon woodbird Of leaves, and feathers from her breast? Or how the fish outbuilt her shell, Painting with morn each annual cell? Or how the sacred pine tree adds To her old leaves new myriads ? "Know st
s nest
144
EMERSON
^
Such and so grew these holy
piles,
Whilst love and terror laid the tiles. Earth proudly wears the Parthenon, As the best gem upon her zone, And morning opes with haste her lids
To
gaze upon the Pyramids
;
O er England s abbeys bends the sky, As on
its
friends, with kindred eye
;
For out of Thought s interior sphere There wonders rose to upper air."
One might watch the face of a man in the act of thinking. As one thought follows another, the mobile features change.
respond to the impulses curve
Nerves and muscles
now downward, now upward,
quiver, the eyes dilate
wrinkles
The
from within.
and then
appear upon the
close,
forehead,
lips
the cheeks tell-tale
the
chin
grows firm and then is relaxed, the pose of the head is now defiant and again it droops. The
man
is lost in
he appears.
Two
thought, and unconscious of
To him the thought
how
is all.
One is a may To him the pose and features are every He imagines himself to be a realist, and thing. his ambition is to portray the man as he actually painters
literalist.
be watching him.
THE QUIET REVOLUTIONIST
145
is.
Now
all
the changing expressions on a single canvas.
it is
So what
the painter does
to seize one attitude
is
were permanent. The result something hard and unyielding. We recognize
and is
obviously impossible literally to put
treat
it
as if
it
no suggestion of the of a change of mood. It is not, as we
the likeness, but there possibility
is
say, a speaking likeness.
The
other painter
is
a real
artist.
To him
and the
features are quivering with expression,
expression changes at every instant. subject as alive.
muscles the
thinking about.
is
of the head
tell
He
sees his
smile, the frown, the tense
mean something.
all
man
The
the
They indicate what The shape and poise
whether nature has endowed him
with the capacity to have thoughts that are signi ficant.
the
The aim of
man
s
the artist
mind and then
is first
to get inside
to interpret that
mind
through the outward features. If
he succeeds, we say his picture
limitation of his art
demands
is alive.
that he shall present
only the attitude of a single moment, but ceive that attitude
is
The
about to change.
we per
He
is
in
EMERSON
146
the act of doing something, and there
part a feeling of expectancy. are mobile, he
hand
on
is
is
it
he
with
is
ways the suggestion of something that marks the work of genius.
Now
s lips
soldier s
about to grasp
his might.
all
on our
orator
The
about to speak.
his sword,
firmly and wield
The
is
it
It is al
that is
coming
two ways of looking at human from without or from within. We
there are
institutions,
may
look at laws and customs as
fixed
and
final.
They
carved in stone. existing order,
Or we may
We
they were
if
are the features of a giant
be idolaters of the
may
worshipping the carved image.
be iconoclasts, ready to give
smashing blow. But to one who seeks to look at
it
all
it
a
from
within, the institutions represent but the transi
tory glory of features of the Great Being.
Great Being
is
to come, he
is
earth.
thinking, he
is
The
dreaming of things
planning his dwelling place upon
The thoughts come
the acts follow each after
its
thick
and
fast,
and
kind.
Humanity, conceived of as a great composite
THE QUIET REVOLUTIONIST being, of
which we are
quivering with aspiration.
with the work of
its
all
is
parts,
alive
and
never satisfied
It is
own
147
hands, and
it
never
gives up working. Thousands of human beings are at a given time impelled by one spirit, and co
Their actions are not rational
operate to one end.
in the sense that each individual
is
able to give a
reason, or least the right reason, for does. is
And
yet the process, looked at as a whole,
not irrational. There
it all,
of which
us time and
all
is
It is
is
some big thought behind
the action
we can see
Humanity perience.
what he
is
expressive.
Give
the outlines of the thought. It
thinking.
up Even what we
is
storing
a creative force.
call matinalistic progress, is itself
o>
but the follow
ing of an idea.
"And
what
Like
if
Trade sow
cities
along the shore, And thatch with towns the prairie broad With railways ironed o er? They are but sailing foam bells shells
Along Thought
s
causing stream,
And take their shape and sun color From him that sends the dream."
EMERSON
148
The
historian
the
alism,
of the
tells
the
Crusades,
These are tremendous nothing
till
we
see
ask
how
the
who
to
idea that
one lies
facts
mean
Royalty as an institution
has never
behind
is
without
does not take the trouble to
toward
feels
And democracy
who
Revolution.
But the
facts.
subject
loyal
anointed king.
name
French
born democrat who
incredible to the
imagination, and
Empire, Feud
them as the expression of suc
cessive states of mind. is
Roman
felt
is
his
an empty
the thrill of the
it.
In looking back from the vantage ground of several centuries,
ation of
it is
men may
determines
all
their achievements.
generation, and lo It is as if
of the Great Being
how
a gener
be obsessed by an idea that
that idea lose hold
interest.
possible to see
We may
see
upon the mind of the next all the mighty works lose all one moment we saw the face
all
aquiver with interest.
Then
suddenly the light fades and he turns away from the
work of
But
it is
his
own
hands.
not so easy to realize that the mighty
works of our own day owe
their existence,
and
THE QUIET REVOLUTIONIST
149
depend for their security on the same transitory support of thought. They represent our present thinking,
and when we come
to think differently
they will disappear. "Ah,"
but
we
say,
"we
go down to hard
\Ye build upon the granite of
actuality, not
anything so unsubstantial as mere
Emerson would answer.
facts.
on
thought."
"You
think of the
Ask the granite mountain peak as unchanging. geologist to tell you what he knows about Monad-
To him
nock. old. It is
the mountain does not seem very
Its present
form
is
but a transitory thing.
but a bubble upon the earth that
through stars with
The
poet
who
is
sailing
all its history."
has learned the lesson of geology
hears the mountain confess
its
own
instability,
him heed who can and will Enchantment fixed me here
"Let
To
;
stand the hurts of time, until In loftier chant I disappear. If thou trowest
How
the chemic eddies pliy, Pole to pole, and what they say And that these gray crags
;
EMERSON
150
Not on crags are hung, But beads are of a rosary On prayer and music strung And, credulous, through the granite seem ;
ing,
Seest the smile of Reason beaming;
"Knowest
thou this?
wandering not amiss Already my rocks lie light, And. soon my cone will spin." pilgrim,
Older than the mountain
which
it
sprang.
And
that
is
power from
the
power
!
is
only inter
preted by Thought. "Monadnock is a mountain strong, Tall and good my kind among; But well I know, no mountain can,
Zion or Meru, measure with man. For it is on zodiacs writ
Adamant is soft to wit And when the greater comes again With my secret in his brain, :
1 shall pass, as glides
Daily over "When
hill
and
my shadow
meadow."
the greater comes
again."
That was
what Emerson was always murmuring to himself. The greatness that he recognized was the great ness of thought.
THE QUIET REVOLUTIONIST He was
151
men
therefore always eager to meet
who were
dissatisfied
with existing things and
He
making plans for betterment. he listened
hospitably,
received
them That
sympathetically.
schemes involved radical changes did not It seemed to be in the order of frighten him.
their
nature. It
was
not enough that their proposal should be
for
But he always applied the same different.
something greater,
It
must
test.
also be something
and the greater includes the
the greater thought comes,
it
shall
less.
When
make us under
stand and appreciate the good that already exists. It will
make
"song
of
universal
Human
what
progress"
is
now
partial.
The
he expresses in the
song of nature. "I
Of
wrote the past in characters rock and fire the scroll,
The The
building of the coral sea, planting of the coal.
"Let war and trade and creeds and song Blend, ripen race on race, The sunburnt world a man shall breed Of all the zones and countless days.
EMERSON
152
"No
My And
dimmed, no atom worn, is good as new, the fresh rose on yonder thorn
ray
is
oldest force
Gives back the bending heavens in
dew."
way in which the view of nature hopes for human nature are blended. Out
Notice the
and the
of a few ancient elements, nature
making new and amazing is
destroyed,
is
continually
combinations. Nothing is
everything
same conservation of energy he discerns
The elements of
manity.
One may trasting
toward
it
see
in
hu
character are old as
the race, but no one can prophesy fection can be obtained
The
transformed.
what new per
from them.
Emerson
s
thought best by con
with that of a poet whose mind turned
the
same
Emerson both loved
subject.
Wordsworth and
to personify nature,
and
in
communion with nature they found refreshment of spirit. But Emerson, who was not accustomed sometimes spoke more harshly of Wordsworth than of any other to use terms of disparagement,
modern English poet. The fact was that the two men looked
at nature
THE QUIET REVOLUTIONIST with quite different eyes. ture
was the arch
153
To Wordsworth, na Over against
conservative.
the vain commotion of humankind was the great
brooding presence of a power that could be relied upon because it was ever the same. And after his first
fever of revolutionary ardor,
Words
worth returned to nature as to a refuge from all innovations. Here was the calm of an established and the more nearly human
order,
conformed
to this stability, the better for them.
To Emerson, what
is
nature was not the symbol of
unchanging;
it
was
eager, flashing, eva
nescent, infinitely suggestive.
same.
institutions
When
it
It
was never the
seemed the same
because our eyes are so dull that
it
we can
was only not catch
all the transitions.
And
which helps us in our contact with the natural world is not its soothing lullabys. It is the challenge which comes to join in the quick that
and rude play of the forces which are creating and recreating the world. Come out-of-doors, the voice cries, and
know what
it is
to live.
EMERSON
154 "
leave thy sloth urbane, greater spirit bids thee forth Than the gray dreams that thee detain. Mark how the climbing Oreads Beckon thee to their arcades, Youth, for a moment free as they, Teach thy feet to feel the ground Ere yet arrives the wintry day When Time thy feet has bound. Take the bounty of thy birth Taste the Lordship of the earth.
A
Bookworm,
heard, and I obeyed, Assured that he who made the claim Well known, but loving not a name, Was not to be gainsaid." "I
Nature does not rebuke our impatience when we break up old forms in order to make better.
She
We
our accomplice, and conspires with us. misrepresent her when we try to imitate her. is
Only
in
some stroke of
her challenge. is
not to see at
To
originality
do we accept
see only repetition in nature
all.
"Alas, thine is the bankruptcy, Blessed nature so to see.
THE QUIET REVOLUTIONIST
155
thee leave thy merchandise,
"Behind
Thy churches and thy chanties, And leave thy peacock wit behind. Enough for thee the primal mind That flows in streams, that breathes in wind. Leave all thy pedant lore apart God hid the whole world in thy heart. Love shuns the sage, the child it crowns, Gives all to them who all renounce. The rain comes when the wind calls, ;
The
knows
river
Without a Blessing
all
the
way
to the sea,
runs and falls, lands with its charity.
pilot
it
The sea tosses and foams to find Its way up to the cloud and wind. The shadow sits close to the flying ball, The date fails not on the palm tree tall,
And
thou, go burn thy wormy pages, Shalt outsee seers and outwit sages."
That which he saw
human
effort that
loved to "which
call
it
was
in nature
free
the Newness.
he saw in every
and spontaneous.
The Newness
is
He that
reconciles impossibilities, atones for short
comings, expiates sins or makes them virtues, buries in oblivion the
crowded
historical
past,
sinks religions, philosophies, persons to legends,
reverses the score of opinion of fame, reduces
EMERSON
156
makes the thought of the the universe and the egg of
science to opinion, and
moment
the key to
history to
come."
Hoe and
Divine Newness.
"The
and pen,
spade,
sword
and
prizes,
pictures, gardens, laws, bibles
only they were means
He
sometimes used.
So
with astronomy, music, arithmetic, castes, feud alism
we
garment.
kiss
We
with devotion these hems of His
them for Him, they
mistake
crumble in ashes on our
lips."
To the worshipper of the was nothing
terrible in the voices of eager in
novators, for innovation
and
"the
Divine Newness, there
good human
is
in the order of nature,
race outlives
them
all,
and
forever in the heart abides the old sovereign senti
ment requiring
and good-will to all, and rebuilds the decayed temples, and with new names justice
chants again the praises of Eternal
"The
idea which
now
Right."
begins to agitate society
has a wider scope than our daily employments,
our households and the
institutions of property.
THE QUIET REVOLUTIONIST
157
We are to revise the whole of our social structure, the state, the school, religion, marriage, trade, science,
and explore
nature
we
;
their foundations in
the former men, but
fits us,
and
of every usage which has not
What
mind.
is
a
lies;
and which
own a Re
roots in our
for but to be
man
has made; a re-
a restorer of truth and good,
imitating that great all,
own
to clear ourselves
its
man born
former, a Re-maker of what
nouncer of
our
are to see that the world not only fitted
sleeps
Nature which embosoms us
no moment on an old
past,
but every hour repairs herself, yielding us every
morning a new day, and \vith every pulsation a new life? Let him renounce everything which is
not true to him, and put
all
his practices back
and do nothing for which he has not the whole world for his reason. If on
their first thoughts,
there are inconveniences, and in the
what
is
called ruin
way, because we have so enervated and
maimed
ourselves, yet
perfumes to sink
it
would be
like
dying of
in the effort to re-attach the
deeds of every day to the holy and mysterious re cesses of
life."
CHAPTER XV MEDITATIONS ON POLITICS "In dealing with the State, we ought to remember that its institutions are not aboriginal, though they existed before we were born; that they are not su perior to the citizen, that every one of them was the act of a single man, every law and usage was a
man s
expedient to meet a particular
WHAT
in the
into account
case"
has been said of Emerson "Divine
when we
Like the Epistles of
Newness"
things hard to be understood,
it
I
politics.
contains
"which
unlearned and unstable wrest to their tion."
faith
must be taken
read his essay on St. Paul,
s
some
they that are
own destruc
have seen an anarchistic pamphlet which
was made up almost
entirely of quotations
from
Emerson. Indeed, on the face of
it,
argument not only against
it
political parties,
is
This
but
is
because
thrown upon what we usually
call the
against government in general.
doubt
appears to be an
158
MEDITATIONS ON POLITICS
159
Emerson did
foundations of organized society.
not believe that government fed any foundations.
He
did not think of
upon a
rock,
as a building solidly resting
it
and where one stone
is fitted
perpetually being renewed and having a
This organism so long as
motion.
can adapt
aim of
itself to all
politics is
Before s
tution
is
The
death.
Emerson on
diatribes
Politics,
read
on the French Revolution.
the British Constitution
English mansion.
It
was a
stately
was the home of ordered
Generations have worked upon this
Liberty.
new
healthy
not to prevent change, but to
reading
To Burke
the
it is
wonderful tributes to the British Consti
and
mighty
power of
kinds of conditions.
prevent stagnation, which
Burke
upon
He thought of the state as a living body
another.
edifice.
It
was founded by
generations could add to
it.
vandal attempt to dislodge one stone. preserved in tion once
all its
original beauty.
formed became
solicitude.
It
itself
was not a
the fathers;
But It
The
let
no
must be institu
the object of pious
tool to be used, but a
sacred symbol of the nation
s life.
EMERSON
160
Emerson did not tion
feel that
had such sanctity as
citizen,"
repose,
he says,
men and
"That
any
all
oak
trees
arrange themselves
may
suddenly become
movement and compel
around
young
lies in rigid
there are no such roots and
particle
the system
it."
kind of government which prevails
the expression of
what
society which permits
memorandum.
We
is
cultivation exists in the it.
The law
is
only a
are superstitious and esteem
the statute somewhat.
the character of living
He
the
But the old statesman knows
is fluid;
the center of the to gyrate
"To
society
"organized
as best they can.
centers, but
political institu
institutions rooted like
to the center around which
that society
any
that.
So much
men
is its
life as it
has in
force."
then considers the two objects for which
governments exist persons and property. He shows how it is the tendency of the propertied) classes to get control of the
the laws.
This
is
government and make
so even in a democracy.
The
MEDITATIONS ON POLITICS
161
protection of property then becomes the business
of governments rather than the welfare of per sons.
"Ordinarily
our parties are parties of circum
and not of
stances
est in conflict
principle, as the planting inter
with the commercial, parties which
are identical in their moral character, and
w hich
can easily change ground with each other in
many
of their
The
r
measures."
conservative party
may
be composed of
kind-hearted and excellent people, but be trusted
when property
personal rights.
it
can never
interests conflict with
conservative party,
"The
com
posed of the most moderate, able and cultivated part of the community, fensive of property. aspires to
no
It
real good,
is
timid and merely de
vindicates no right,
it
brands no crime,
it
it
proposes no generous policy,
it
does not build, nor
cherish the arts, nor foster religion, nor establish schools,
nor encourage
science,
nor emancipate
the slave, nor befriend the poor, or the Indian,
or the
immigrant."
EMERSON
162
We
Americans boast of our
political institu
tions.
our
"But
with the
spirit
from the
though in coincidence
institutions,
of the age, have not any exemption
practical defects
other forms.
Every
which have discredited
actual state is corrupt.
Good
men must not obey the laws too well. What satire on government can equal the
severity of censure
conveyed in the word
which for ages has
politic,
signified cunning, intimating that the state is a trick. "We
pay
a very low state of the world and governments founded on
live in
unwilling tribute to
force."
The
essay ends with a glowing picture of a
society
of perfect freedom, in which reliance
would be put on moral forces
alone,
and
"the
pri
vate citizen might be reasonable and a good neigh
bor without the hint of a
As we come start,
"This
jail
or
confiscation."
to this conclusion,
we
say with a
mild-spoken gentleman has
been
MEDITATIONS ON POLITICS saying something which sounds very
what the revolutionary
163
much
like
have been preach He has brought us
radicals
ing with lamentable results.
to the edge of the precipice of philosophic
an
archy."
Perhaps is
so,
but the mild-mannered gentleman
not an anarchist, and
it
has never entered his
head to jump off the precipice. He has come to look at the view and he intends to return home by way of the turnpike.
What Emerson
has been saying
is
that political
institutions are not ends in themselves, it is
and that
a superstition to regard them as such. They
are expedients that are always capable of improve
ment.
The
resort to physical coercion
be necessary in a perfect society.
meantime, what are
mon
sense
"Let
we
to
would not
But
Emerson
do?
in the s
com
makes answer.
not the most conservative and timid fear
anything from the premature surrender of the bayonet and the system of force.
For according
to the order of Nature, wliich
quite superior
is
EMERSON
164 to our will,
it
stands thus
:
there will always be a
government of force where men are
when they are pure enough force, they will be wise
selfish;
and
to abjure the code of
enough
to see
how
the
public ends of the post-office, of the highway, of
commerce, and the exchange of property, of mu seums, libraries, institutions of art and science can be
answered."
Emerson would agree with
the philosophical
anarchist in saying that a society
possible in
is
which men and women can regulate
their affairs
without the consciousness of any coercive govern
mental force.
He would
But when
to strive after such a free society.
came
to the practical question as to
this ideal, they
archist
would
how
would part company.
say,
"Let
we ought
agree also that
to attain
The an
us abolish government,
and then we
shall
each one of
whom will be a law unto himself."
have a community of individuals
Emerson would
You
it
say,
"I
can not follow you.
put the cart before the horse.
You have
MEDITATIONS ON POLITICS
165
fallen into the political superstition against
which
I
You
have been protesting.
to the
attribute
absence of government power which the legalists attribute to governmental control.
that law can
the lack of titude
is
make men
it
virtuous;
They
think
you think that
can perform the miracle.
My
at
that of Paul in regard to the observance
of the Jewish ceremonial law. availeth nothing,
creature/ "Yes,"
Circumcision
and uncircumcision but the new
"
the practical
man would
say,
"that
is all
how are you going to get the new creature? If we had better men, wise, temperate, just, tolerant, we should not need so many laws but how are we to produce such personalities?"
very well, but
;
At
this point, the
philosophy of the twentieth
century would take issue with the liberalism of the nineteenth century. the
power of
We
have more
institutions than
his contemporaries.
We
had Emerson and
are trying the experi
ment of free government under cult conditions.
faith in
The study of
much more
diffi
the social sciences
EMERSON
166 has
made us emphasize
May
cooperation.
not
through wise laws and well-conceived
society
own
institutions direct its
destinies?
To which Emerson would is
society
answer:
"Yes,
if
composed of enough wise and self-
But
reliant individuals.
on individual progress. stand alone before he
is
social progress
A
man must
depends
be able to
able to cooperate to
any
advantage."
His
faith
in
founded on the than their
the
destiny
of America
belief that the people
politics.
were better
There was a power there
be invoked in time of need.
We
by
that will
to
are as yet only
incompletely organized, but the power Little
was
is
there.
there will be created institutions
little
more adequately
represent the aspirations
of multitudes of private persons.
"When
I
look at the constellations of
which animate and
how daily
little
life,
illustrate the land,
cities
and see
the government has to do with their
how
families are
self -helped
and
self -directed all
knots of people in purely natural
MEDITATIONS ON POLITICS societies
societies
of trade, of kindred blood,
of habitual hospitality, house and house,
ing on
man by
167
man
act
weight of opinion, of longer or
better directed industry, the refining influence of
women, the invitation which experience and per manent causes open to youth and labors when I
how much whom all men see
each virtuous and gifted person, consider, lives affectionately with
scores of excellent people
who
are not
known
far
from home, and perhaps with great reason reckons these people his superiors in virtue and in the
symmetry and force of their qualities, I see what America has, and in these a better
cubic values certificate
mous
of civilization than great cities or enor
wealth."
In regard to the definite political issues of the
time,
expressed.
Emerson
s
sympathies
\vere
clearly
Slavery was always an abomination
to him, but he
was slow
the abolitionists.
to identify himself
with
Their narrowness and intoler
ance offended his sense of fair play, while their
courage attracted him.
When
the issue
became
EMERSON
168
one of the right to free speech, he stood squarely with them. Against the extension of slavery he protested vigorously.
When
Emerson threw himself was one of doubt pation came. did
more
till
War came,
heartily into the side of
Toward Lincoln
the Union.
the Civil
himself his attitude
the proclamation of emanci
After that there was no one
who
to interpret the soul of Lincoln to the
people.
But
in
one thing Emerson differed from most
of the
New
trust
in the
England
idealists.
He
did not put his
respectable classes alone.
He
lighted in the crude strength of the people.
de
His
conception of American politics was that which
Theodore Roosevelt so admirably illustrated in the generation following. It was the magnificent challenge to the reformer to
meet
come them
"A
men on
all
their
who was virile enough own ground and over
there.
timid
man/ Emerson
says,
"listening
to
the alarmist in Congress and in the newspapers
and observing the profligacy of party
sectional
MEDITATIONS ON POLITICS
169
urged with a fury which shuts
eyes
interests
to consequences, with a
extremities, ballot in
its
mind made up to desperate one hand and rifle in the
might easily believe that he and his country
other,
had seen
their best days
and harden himself the
best he can against the coming
ruin."
But he believed that there were elements of strength which the timid account. likely to
person
"Let
man
The rough and ready politician was be more nearly right than the fastidious
who
despairs of the republic.
these rough riders,
sleeves,
did not take into
legislators in shirt
Hoosier, Sucker, Wolverine, Badger,
or whatever hard head Arkansas, Oregon, or
Utah
sends, half orator, half assassin, to represent
wrath and cupidity at Washington, let these drive as they may; and the disposition of terri
its
tories
and public
and keeping
German,
lands, the necessity of balancing
bay the snarling majorities of and of native millions, will bestow
at
Irish,
promptness, address, and reason, at
last,
on our
EMERSON
170 buffalo-hunter,
The
manners.
and authority and majesty of instinct of the people is right.
expect from good
Whigs put
into offices
much
respectability of the country,
Men
by the
less skill to
own
deal with Mexico, Spain, Britain, or with our
malcontent members,
than
from some strong
transgressor, like Jefferson, or Jackson,
conquers his
own government, and
same genius
to conquer the foreigner.
ators
who
who, from
those
who knew
first
then uses the
dissented from Mr. Folk
war were not
who The
s
better,
sen
Mexican but those
political position, could afford
it;
not
Webster, but Benton and Calhoun. "These
Hoosiers and Suckers are really better
than the snivelling opposition. least of
a bold and manly
cast.
Their wrath
They
see,
from
at
against
the unanimous declarations of the people,
much crime
is
how
the people will bear; they proceed
step to step,
and they have calculated but
New Eng Honours, the New
too justly upon their Excellencies, the land governors, and upon
their
England legislators. The messages of the govern ors and the resolutions of the legislatures are a
MEDITATIONS ON POLITICS
171
proverb for expressing a sham virtuous indig nation, which, in the course of events, is sure to
be
belied."
Wisdom son
is justified
s political
the
next
Roosevelt
s
teachings bore fruit in a
man
is
Theodore
generation, "strenuous
position of the
Emer man of
of her children and
life"
Emersonian
Roosevelt.
was a popular ex
doctrine.
needed in a democracy.
The
He must
strong
under
stand the snarling majorities and the obstinate minorities.
He must enjoy the conflict. He must
play the game.
But he must
at the
same time
have a moral ideal of his own, simple and com manding. He must be not a statuesque statesman but a rough and ready
idealist.
CHAPTER XVI THE CANDID FRIEND OF ENGLAND "A wise traveller will naturally choose to visit the best of actual nations, and an American has more
reasons than another to visit
WHEN
in
Britain"
1833 Emerson
land, his chief interest
men whose writings had to see their faces.
first visited
was
inspired
in
Eng
a few great
him with a
desire
He met Coleridge, Wordsworth,
Landor and Carlyle; but he had few opportuni to become acquainted with the English people.
ties
In 1847 he was invited to give a course of lec tures
before
Mechanics
various
different parts of England.
This
Institutes visit
in
gave him
an opportunity to compare the Englishman at home with his own countrymen. The results of his observations titled
were embodied
"English Traits."
the other works of
in a
volume en
This book differs from
Emerson 172
in that
it
follows a
CANDID FRIEND OF ENGLAND distinct
method.
The
173
writer gives us a picture
of England and the English as he saw them in the
The book
middle years of the nineteenth century.
gives the impressions of a philosophic traveler
who was anxious
to get beneath the surface
get at the secrets of power.
He
and
treats of wealth,
race, literature, journalism, aristocracies, religion,
education.
Emerson cans in
contemporary Ameri treating England not as "the mother
is
from
his
The
but as a foreign country.
country,"
of this
differs
result
a detachment of mind \vhich enables him
judgments which are free from prejudice. The thing which impressed Emerson the most
to give
was
the robustness of the people.
There was a
rude vigor which had not been impaired by cen turies of civilization.
The Englishman seemed
better animal than the American. sense, in practical sagacity,
In
a
common
in the adoption of
means to ends the English manifested themselves to be a masterful race.
"Their
self-respect,
their
faith
in
causation,
EMERSON
174
and
means
their realistic logic or coupling of
them the leadership of the
to ends have given
modern world. have true
Montesquieu
common
in
England/
of
all
This
sense but those
common
No
said,
people
who were born
sense
is
a perception
the conditions of our earthly existence, of
laws that can be stated, and of laws that cannot be stated, or that are learned only by practice, in
which allowance for
friction is
made.
They
are
impious in their skepticism of theory, and in high departments they are cramped and
But the unconditional surrender to choice of
means to reach
able as with ants "The
They
and
and the
their ends, are as
admir
bees.
bias of the nation
is
a passion for
utility.
love the lever, the screw and pulley, the
Flanders
draught-horse,
mills, tide mills, the sea
their freight-ships. i-noor,
facts,
sterile.
which
the
and the wind
More than
glitters
among
wind
waterfall,
to bear
the diamond
their
they prize that dull pebble which
is
Koh-
crown- jewels, wiser than a
man, whose poles turn themselves to the poles of whose axis is parallel to the axis
the world, and
CANDID FRIEND OF ENGLAND of the world. galvanism.
Now,
They
their toys are
175
steam and
are heavy at the fine arts, but
adroit at the coarse; not
mosaics, but the best
good in jewelry or iron-masters, colliers, wood-
combers, and tanners in Europe.
They apply
themselves to agriculture, to draining, to resisting
encroachment of
sea,
and wet subsoil; to indispensable
wind, travelling sands, cold fishery, to
plumbago,
salt,
staples,
wool, glass, pottery and brick,
worms; and by succeed.
A
manufacture of
to bees
leather,
and
silk
their steady combinations they
manufacturer
sits
down
to dinner
which was wool on a sheep s You dine with a gentleman on
in a suit of clothes
back at sunrise.
venison, pheasant, quail, pigeons, poultry,
rooms and pineapples,
They
all
growth of
his estate.
are neat husbands for ordering
tools pertaining to house kept.
the
There
is
and
field.
mush
all
their
All are well
no want and no waste.
They
study use and fitness in their building, in the order of their dwellings and in their dress.
man shirt.
The French
Englishman added the The Englishman wears a sensible coat
invented the
ruffle,
the
EMERSON
176
buttoned to the chin, of rough but solid and lasting texture.
If he
is
a lord he dresses a
than a commoner.
They have
little
worse
diffused the taste
for plain substantial hats, shoes arid coats through
Europe.
whose dress notice or
There
think
They is
so
fit
remember
is
him
the best dressed man,
for his use that
to describe
you cannot
it."
a delightful chapter on English
man
ners.
Englishman is very petulant and precise about his accommodation at inns and on the "The
roads ; a quiddle about his toast and his chop, and
every species of convenience, and loud and pun gent in his expressions of impatience at any neg lect.
his
His vivacity betrays
itself at all points, in
manners, in his respiration and the inarticulate
noises he
makes
in clearing the throat,
nificant of burly strength.
He
all
sig
has stamina; he can
take the initiative in emergencies.
He
has that
aplomb which results from a good adjustment of the moral and physical nature and the obedi-
CANDID FRIEND OF ENGLAND ence of
all
177
the powers to the will; as if the axes
of his eyes were united to his backbone and only
moved with
the trunk.
vigour appears in the incuriosity and
"This
stony neglect, each of every other.
Each man
walks, eats, drinks, shaves, dresses, gesticulates, and, in every manner, acts and suffers without
reference to the bystanders, in his
only careful not to interfere with
them; not that he
own man in his
affair,
he
convenience, as
centricity
is
I
is
really occupied with
much
country consults only his as a solitary pioneer in
know not
\vhere any personal ec
so freely allowed,
himself any concern with
walks in a pouring brella like a
them or annoy
and does not think of them. Every
this polished
Wisconsin.
fashion,
trained to neglect the eyes
is
of his neighbours,
own
rain,
walking
and no man gives
it.
An
swinging
stick;
Englishman
his closed
um
wears a wig, or a
shawl, or a saddle, or stands on his head, and no
remark
is
made.
And
for several generations "In
short, every
as he has been doing this it is
now
in the blood.
one of these islanders
is
an
EMERSON
178 island himself,
safe,
incommunicable.
tranquil,
In a company of strangers you would think him deaf; his eyes never wander from his table and
He
newspaper.
is
never betrayed into any curi
unbecoming emotion. They have all been trained in one severe school of manners, and osity or
never put off the harness. hand.
He
does not
let
does not give his
you meet
almost an affront to look a out being introduced.
He man
his eye.
It is
in the face with
In mixed or in select
com
panies they do not introduce persons; so that a presentation tract.
is
a circumstance as valid as a con
Introductions are sacraments.
holds his name. to whisper
it
At
the hotel he
is
He
with
hardly willing
to the clerk at the book-office.
If
he gives you his private address on a card, it is like an avowal of friendship; and his bearing on being introduced
is
cold,
even though he
ing your acquaintance and shall serve
is
studying
is
seek
how he
you."
In regard to America the Englishman was in those days apt to be condescending.
CANDID FRIEND OF ENGLAND
179
English dislike the American structure of
"The
society, whilst yet trade, mills, public education
and chartism are doing what they can to create America in England the same social condition. is
the paradise of the economists
;
is
the favourable
exception invariably quoted to the rules of ruin;
but
when he speaks
directly of the Americans,
the islander forgets his philosophy and his disparaging
Emerson saw
is
s
remembers
anecdotes."
criticism of the
England which he
of interest to-day because most English
men would
agree with
of a period that has
it.
now
It is
a penetrating study
passed away.
From
the
consideration of defects he turns to the wealth
and plenitude of the English nature, and the sential
"I
soundness of character.
feel in
regard to this aged England with the
possessions, honours
the
es
infirmities
around customs
her,
and
trophies,
and also with
of a thousand years gathering
inevitably committed to
many
old
which cannot be suddenly changed;
EMERSON
180
new and com
pressed upon by the transitions of trade, and
and
all
incalculable modes, fabrics, arts
peting populations,
weak but
well
I see
her not dispirited, not
remembering that she has seen dark
days before; indeed with a kind of instinct that she sees rather better in a cloudy day, and that in the storm of battle and calamity she has a secret
vigor and a pulse like a cannon. old age not decrepit but believe in her
I see
young and
still
power of endurance and
her in her daring to
expansion."
CHAPTER XVII AMONG
HIS BOOKS
put the duty of being read invariably on the author. If he is not read, whose fault is it?" EMERSON S JOURNAL, 1854. "I
as he did in the midst of the
E/ING
land colleges, one
son did not find a place
New Eng
may wonder why Emer in some chair of literature.
Longfellow, Lowell and Holmes were professors. Why was not Emerson sought for as a teacher of
youth ?
The
but he answers reason
him more than
once,
in a characteristic fashion.
The
question occurred to
why
it
he was not asked, he says, was because
those in authority thought he
was not
fitted for
such a position, and he had a suspicion that they
were I
right.
am
ready to concur in this judgment.
fessor Emerson,
I
am
sure,
181
Pro
would have been
EMERSON
182
embarrassed by a row of students conscientiously
and giving
taking notes
docile
assent to
his
challenging sentences with a keen eye to the marks that
were to be the reward of
Emerson
s
attempts to be didactic were uni
He
formly unfortunate.
moods
their attention.
could not
command
for any systematic exposition.
He
his
con
ways of the academic scholar were always an astonishment to him. His thoughts would not "stay put." In the course of a year fesses that the
He managed to get through with a respectable
amount of work, but it came occasionally. When he knew that he ought to write a lecture, it quick ened his wits to write a poem for the DM, and
when it
demanded a poem,
the editor of the Dial
stirred his
position.
mind
to a
new
Having found
swered best for his reconciled to
it,
but
own it
effort at prose
that this
method an
constitution, he
became
could not be recommended
by a professor to his students. favorite
com
Neither could his
method of reading, beginning
at the
end
of the book and reading backward, with wide intervals
between the
acts,
be recommended,
al-
AMONG though ing.
it
has
its
If there
is
basket have been
HIS BOOKS
183
advantages as a method of
test
a suspicion that the apples in a the skeptical buyer
"deaconed,"
The
which they appear. looks different bottom side up.
will reverse the order in fruit
But the chief
disability of
Emerson
as a formal
teacher of literature takes us back to the consider ation to which attention chapter.
His mind has
was drawn its
real affinity to the
whom
thinkers of antiquity, to
in the first
books were not an
The proper study of mankind was man and nature. The book was only object of special interest.
the record of
ulating his
"It
some fellow-student, useful
own
as stim
thought.
seems meritorious to read
;
but from every
thing but history or the works of the old
com
come back with the conviction
manding authors
I
that the slightest
wood
cant native emotion of
Bibliolatry, in the
thought, the least signifi
my
own,
is
more
to
me."
wide sense of book worship,
had no more uncompromising enemy.
"We
are
EMERSON
184 too
we
For a few golden sentences turn over and actually read a volume of books.
civil to
will
four or five hundred
pages."
One can imagine Emerson s intonation as he expressed his wonder that we would actually read four or five hundred pages for the sake of a
golden sentence which might be concealed in
The
them.
great art of the reader
was
to pass
quickly over the desert place in order to linger
long in the green
"The
oasis.
colleges, whilst they provide us
with
braries, furnish no professor of books; and,
think,
we
no chair
is
so
much wanted.
are surrounded by
in these paper
know
I
In a library
many hundreds
friends, but they are imprisoned
li
of dear
by an enchanter
and leathern boxes; and, though
and have been waiting two, ten, or twenty centuries for us, some of them, and are eager to give us a sign, and unbosom them they
selves,
it is
us,
the law of their limbo that they
must
not speak until spoken to; and as the enchanter
has dressed them,
like battalions
of infantry, in
AMONG
HIS BOOKS
one
coat and jacket o
cut,
185
by the thousand and
ten thousand, your chance of hitting on the right
computed by the arithmetical rule of Permutation and Combination, not a choice out one
is
to be
of three caskets, but out of half a million caskets all alike.
But
it
happens in our experience, that
in this lottery there are at least fifty or
blanks to a prize.
seems, then, as
It
the false books, and alighting
some char
if
itable soul, after losing a great deal of
a hundred
time
among
upon a few true
ones which made him happy and wise, would do a right act in naming those which have been bridges or ships to carry
him
safely over dark
morasses and barren oceans, into the heart of sacred
cities,
would be books ricii,
into
palaces
best done
who from
and temples.
This
by those great masters of
time to time appear,
the Fab-
the Seldens, Magliabechis, Scaligers, Miran-
whose eyes sweep the whole horizon of learning. But private readers, dolas,
Bayles, Johnsons,
reading purely for love of the book, would serve us by leaving each the shortest note of what he found.
EMERSON
186 "There
are books ; and
it is
practicable to read
We
them, because they are so few.
look over
with a sigh the monumental libraries of Paris, of the Vatican and the British
Museum.
number of printed books Library at Paris was estimated the
In 1858
in the
Imperial
at eight
hundred
thousand volumes, with an annual increase of twelve thousand volumes
;
so that the number of
printed books extant to-day
may
easily exceed
a
number of pages man can read in a day, and the
million. It is easy to count the
which a
number
diligent
of years which
human
life in
favourable
circumstances allows to reading; and to
demon
though he should read from dawn till dark, for sixty years, he must die in the first
strate that,
But nothing can be more deceptive than arithmetic, where none but a natural method
alcoves. this is
really pertinent.
bridge Library, and
I visit
I
occasionally the
Cam
can seldom go there with
out renewing the conviction that the best of is
already within the four walls of
home.
The
my
it all
study at
me who
inspection of the catalogue brings
continually back to the few standard writers
AMONG
HIS BOOKS
187
are on every private shelf; and to these
can
it
afford only the most slight and casual additions.
The crowds and
centuries of books are only
com
mentary and elucidation, echoes and weakeners of these few great voices of Time."
For
the
"And
mere book worm he had
yet
and yet
hesitate
I
little
to denounce
When
reading as aught inferior and mean.
my books come over me,
sions of
when
the remembrance of
accept sad,
it
respect.
as I
sit
vi
writing,
some poet comes,
with pure joy, and quit
my
I
thinking as
lumbering work, and hasten to
my
little
heaven/
There were not many authors who were ad mitted to his little heaven. They were so con genial to his
own mind
of mine and thine. subject
way.
was
The
so that
It it
was no question did not matter what the
that there
was
treated in a suggestive
great purpose of literature
late the faculty of thinking.
is
to stimu
EMERSON
188 "You
say,
Your reading
for you, not for me. If
I read.
read
it is
it till it is
now
It
irrelevant/
is
makes no
read
irrelevant, I
Yes,
difference it
what
deeper.
I
pertinent to Nature and the hour
A
good scholar will find Aris tophanes and Hafiz and Rabelais full of American
that
passes.
history." "**;..
His ambition for
his
own books was
might be treated in the same fashion. have
my books
read as
I
read
my
that they "I
would
favorite books,
not with explosion and astonishment, a marvel
and a
rocket, but as a friendly
and agreeable
in
fluence."
In his incursions into Book-land he followed the
same method, or
lack of method.
He
read
what pleased him. The best guide to such books he thought was common fame. Certain books had pleased generations of readers.
This proved that
they were readable.
"The
frt>m
best rule of reading will be a
method
nature, and not a mechanical one of hours
AMONG and pages.
It
HIS BOOKS
189
holds each student to a pursuit of
his native aim, instead of a desultory miscellany.
Let him read what his
memory on
is
proper to him, and not waste
a crowd of mediocrities.
whole nations have derived their culture
As
from a
as the Bible has been the literature
single book,
as well as the religion of large portions of Europe, as Hafiz
w as r
the eminent genius of the Persians,
Confucius
of
the
Spaniards;
so,
perhaps, the
be a gainer
if all
say, in
of
all
the
human mind would lost,
but Shakespeare, Milton
through the pro founder study so
drawn
to those
of his
own
let
Cervantes
the secondary writers were
England,
and Bacon,
Chinese,
wonderful minds.
With
this pilot
genius, let the student read one, or
him read many, he
will read advantageously.
Doctor Johnson said Whilst you stand deliber ating which book your son shall read first, another :
boy has read both read anything and you will soon be learned. "Nature is much our friend ;
Nature wine.
is
No
five
hours a day
in this matter.
always clarifying her water and her filtration
can be so perfect.
She does
EMERSON
190
the same thing by books as by Her gases and plants.
There
and then a
always a selection in writers,
is
selection
from the
selection.
All books
that get fairly into the vital air of the world were
written by the successful class, by the affirming
and advancing thousands
feel
class,
utter
though they cannot
Emerson s advice is books, but that "classics,"
who
we
that
what tens of say."
we should
read famous
should not approach them as
but with the same familiarity with
which we read the daily newspaper.
Plato s
Socrates was not a dignified literary person.
can
know him
farmer.
just as
He may
whose oddity
We
we know a shrewd Yankee
be to the reader a character
delights us.
was plain
as a
Quaker in habit ancl speech, affected low phrases and illustrations from cocks and quails, soup-pans, and sycamore-spoons, "He
grooms and especially if
farriers,
and unnamable
offices,
he talked with any superfine person.
He had a Franklin-like wisdom.
Thus, he showed
AMONG who was
one that
it
doors,
HIS BOOKS
afraid to go on foot to Olympia,
was no more than if
191
his daily
continuously extended
walk within
would
easily
reach. "Plain
old uncle as he was, with his great ears,
an immense
talker,
the
rumour
ran, that
on
one or two occasions, in the war with Boeotia, he
had shown a determination which had covered the retreat of a troupe;
and there was* some story that,
he had, in the city govern ment, when one day he chanced to hold a seat there, evinced a courage in opposing singly the under cover of
folly,
popular voice, which had well-nigh ruined him.
He
is
very poor, but then he
and can
live
on a few
hardy as a
soldier,
olives; usually,
in the
is
on bread and water, except when His necessary ex entertained by his friends. penses were exceedingly small, and no one else strictest sense,
He wore
no under garment his upper garment was the same for summer and winter; and he went barefooted; and it is said could live as he did.
;
procure the pleasure, which he loves, of talking at his ease all day with the most elegant that, to
EMERSON
192
and cultivated young men, he will now and then return to his shop and carve statues, good or bad, for sale.
However
that be,
certain that he
it is
had grown to delight in nothing else than this conversation and that, under his hypocritical pre tense of knowing nothing, he attacks and brings ;
down all
the fine speakers,
all
the fine philosophers
of Athens, whether natives, or strangers from
Asia Minor and the
islands.
to talk with him, he
is
ous to know; a if
Nobody can and
so honest,
man who was
refuse
really curi
willingly confuted
he did not speak the truth, and
who
willingly
confuted others asserting what was false; and not
less
pleased
when confuted than when con
futing; for he thought not any evil happened to
men of
such magnitude as false opinion respecting
the just and unjust.
knows
A
disputant,
pitiless
who
nothing, but the bounds of whose conquer
ing intelligence no
man had
ever reached ; whose
temper was imperturbable; whose dreadful logic was always leisurely and sportive so careless and ;
ignorant as to disarm the wariest and
draw them
AMONG in the pleasantest
HIS BOOKS
manner
193 doubts
into horrible
But he always knew the way out; knew it, yet would not tell it. No escape; he drives them to terrible choices by his dilemmas, and confusion.
and
tosses
their
the Hippiases
and Gorgiases, with
grand reputations, as a boy tosses his
The tyrannous
realist!
Meno
has discoursed a
thousand times at length on virtue before
companies and very but, at this
it
many
appeared to him;
moment, he cannot even
this cramp-fish
is,
well, as
balls.
tell
what
it
of a Socrates has so bewitched
him. "This
conceits,
hard-headed humourist, whose strange drollery and
bonhommle
diverted the
young patricians, whilst the rumour of his say ings and quibbles gets abroad every day, turns out, in the sequel, to
as his logic,
and
under cover of
have a probity as invincible
to be either insane, or, at least, this play, enthusiastic in his re
ligion."
In
like
manner Shakespeare
is
not to be thought
EMERSON
194
We
of in terms of mere literature. technicalities of his art.
who
liked to
criticism
was a
"He
man
full
talk."
and appreciating
able
"Some
forget the
critics
think no
on Shakespeare valuable that does not on the dramatic merit; that he is
rest purely
judged as poet and philosopher. I think as highly as these critics of his dramatic merit, falsely
but
still
who
think
it
He was
secondary.
man
a full
liked to talk; a brain exhaling thoughts and
images, which, seeking vent, found the drama
Had he been consider how well he
next at hand.
had
to
good a dramatist he was, the world.
say
is
But
we
should have
how
filled his place,
and he
is
the best in
turns out that what he has to
of that weight as to withdraw some atten
from the
tion
it
less
vehicle;
and he
is
like
some
saint
whose history is to be rendered into all languages, into verse and prose, into songs and pictures, and cut
up
into proverbs, so that the occasion
gave the saint tion,
s
which
meaning the form of a conversa
or of a prayer, or of a code of laws,
is
im-
AMONG
HIS BOOKS
195
material compared with the universality of
So
application.
it
fares with the wise Shakes
peare and his book of all
its
life.
He wrote
the airs for
our modern music; he wrote the text of modern of manners; he drew the
life; the text
man man
of
in England and Europe; the father of the America; he drew the man, and described the
day, and
what
is
done
men and women,
in it;
he read the hearts of
their probity
and
their second
thought and wiles; the wiles of innocence, and the transitions by which virtues and vices slide into their contraries
part
he could divide the mother
s
from the
father s part in the face of the
draw
the fine demarcations of freedom
child, or
and of
knew
fate; he
which make the sweets and
mind
;
all
the laws of
police of nature;
the terrors of
human
repression
and
all
the
lot lay in his
as truly but as softly as the landscape lies
And
on the
eye.
dom
life sinks
of
the importance of this wis
the form, as of
Tis
Drama
or Epic,
making a question con cerning the paper on which a king s message is out of notice.
written.
like
EMERSON
196
"Shakespeare is
as
much
of eminent authors, as he
With
is
out of the category
out of the
this conception of literature
crowd."
Emerson
not accept the doctrine of those realists that the highest praise of a literary it
gives an exact transcript of actual
are surrounded by actuality,
we
who
did
think
work
is
life.
We
that all
do not need to
have some one reproduce for us what we have every day an opportunity to see for ourselves.
What
the
man
of genius does
is
to allow us to
become acquainted with the working of his own mind. And the reader must make sure that it is the kind of
mind
that
is
worth knowing.
CHAPTER EMERSON
XVIII
HISTORIC SENSE
S
feel time passing away as an ebbing sea. I feel the eternity of man, the identity of his thought. The Greek had, it seems, the same felloiv beings as I. The sun and moon, water and fire, met his heart precisely as they meet mine. Then the vaunted dis tinction between Greek and English, between Classic and Romantic schools become superficial and pe dantic. When a thought of Plato becomes a thought to me, when a truth that fired the soul of Pindar "I
fires
me, time
is
no has
more."
declared
ARITIC lacking in the means cal
that
scholars.
historian
like
as
Emerson was
"historic sense."
Emerson had no
investigation
modern
that
it
He
By
aptitude for histori
could never have been an
the exact truth in regard to
He was
industry with which
he
has been developed by
Lord Acton, seeking to
periods of time.
this
all
at
the events of past
incapable of the fierce
Thomas 197
get
Carlyle investigated
EMERSON
198
the records of long dead Hohenzollerns.
One Emer
Hohenzollern would have been enough for son. He had no taste for antiquarian research.
But sense
to say that a is like
of humor. little
man
is
without the historic
accusing him of a lack of the sense
This
latter accusation usually
more than there
is
means
a difference in the taste
for jokes.
Instead of saying that toric sense,
which was
it
would be
Emerson lacked
the his
better to inquire as to that
characteristic in his attitude to history.
Only when we sympathize with that can we obtain any benefit from him. There are two ways of looking at human his One may fix his mind on the differences tory. between one period and another, or he
more profoundly he recognizes. In the former
may
interested in the identities
case,
what
is
seen
is
be
which
a succession
of events and personages each having
its
little
day and passing away forever. Each is different from the other, and it is the business of the his torian to note those differences.
He
is
the stage
EMERSON S HISTORIC SENSE
199
manager careful about the entrances and the exits of the actors, and about the way the lights are There are
arranged for each scene.
distinctly
marked periods of time, each with its beginning, middle and end. This is one way of looking at history.
Another way
is
that of the philosopher
who
is
interested primarily not in persons or events, but
in the forces of
manifestations.
which they are the temporary
He
perceives not so
dead
past.
So much of
He
s
did not care for the
as
it
the
This was Emerson
differences as the identities.
habitual point of view.
much
was
really
dead he
would decently bury. But that part of it which was alive he would incorporate into the living present and treat as of contemporary interest. It
was here that Emerson
s
historic sense
mani
fested itself.
In the volume called
Emerson "The
illustrates
his
"Representative
conception of History.
search after the great
men,"
dream of youth, and the most of
manhood."
And
yet
Men"
he
says,
"is
the
serious occupation
when we have found
the
EMERSON
200 great man, selves.
we
much
find a person very
our
like
We agree with him, which means that he
expresses thoughts that are very like our own.
We are conscious is in
of the fact that he reveals what
us as well as in him.
Plato, Shakespeare,
Montaigne, Napoleon, were representative men. There were millions of persons who had the same
The
qualities, but in less degree.
fact that they
have been appreciated proves their kinship to the multitude.
"The
genius of humanity
is
the right point of
view in history. The qualities abide; the men who exhibit them have no more nor less, and pass away; the qualities remain in another brow. No
more
experience
is
phoenixes,
now
familiar.
Once you saw
they are gone; the world
therefore disenchanted.
The
vessels
you read sacred emblems turn out to be pottery; but the sense of the picture
and you may
still
is
not
on which
common
is
sacred,
read them, transferred to the
walls of the world.
For a time our teachers
serve us personally, as meters or milestones of
EMERSON
201
Once they were angels of knowledge Then we drew
progress.
and
HISTORIC SENSE
S
their fig-ares touched the sky.
near,
saw
their
means, culture and limits and they
yielded their place to other geniuses.
Happy
if
a
few names remain so high that we have not been able to read them nearer, and age and compari son have not robbed them of a ray. But at last we shall cease to look in
men
shall content ourselves
with their social and dele
All that respects the individual
gated quality. is
for completeness and
temporary and prospective
himself,
who
is
ascending out of his limits into a
We
catholic existence.
true and best benefit of believe
him an
original
Here Emerson
To
have never come at the
any genius so long as we force."
differed
radically
his
Carlyle the hero
tion of the sixteenth century.
Cromwell and
Frederick the Great were treated as creatures
from
was an orig Luther was more than the Reforma
friend Carlyle. inal force;
like the individual
who were
the Prussians
whom
if
they were
unlike the Englishmen and
they governed.
To Emerson
EMERSON
202
men who
they were
best represented the ideals of
their countrymen.
To my mind Emerson s most
brilliant bit
of
is contained in his Essay on have been the descriptions of Napoleon. Many the life and character of the great Corsican ad
historical criticism
Emerson makes us
venturer.
Napoleon was. movi
men
was the
idol of
man com-
because he had in transcendent degree
the qualities
He was sitting
"Bonaparte
see the kind of
and powers of common men." man of stone and iron, capable of
"a
on horseback sixteen or seventeen hours,
of going
many days
together without rest or
and with the speed and action; a man not embar
food, except by snatches,
spring of a tiger in
rassed by any scruples; compact, instant,
selfish,
prudent, and of a perception which did not suffer to be balked or misled by any pretences of
itself
any superstition or any heat or haste own.
others, or
of his "I
call
Napoleon the agent or attorney of the
middle classes of modern society; of the throng
EMERSON S HISTORIC SENSE who
filled
203
the markets, shops, counting houses,
manufactories, ships of the
He was
to be rich.
modern world, aiming
the agitator, the destroyer of
the internal improver, the liberal,
prescription,
the radical, the inventor of means, the opener of
doors and markets, the subverter of monopoly
and
abuse."
Napoleon ist
to the
democrat
s
change from the young revolution
Emperor was nothing is
the
young
strange.
conservative.
The
The aristo
and gone to seed be stand on the one ground of the
crat is the democrat, ripe
cause both parties
supreme value of property, which one endeavors to get and the other to keep. Bonaparte may be said to represent the its
youth and
its
fate in his
Turn from Power.
its
whole history of
age, yes
this party,
and with poetic
justice
own."
the Essay on Napoleon to that
on
In the description of the village tavern
keeper you will recognize a poor relation of the great Napoleon.
There
is
the same combination
of force and unscrupulousness.
EMERSON
204 "I
knew a
burly Bonaface
who
for
many
years
kept a public house in one of our rural capitals.
He was He was
a knave
selfish.
There
whom
the
town could
ill
spare.
a social vascular creature, grasping and is
no crime which he did not or
But he made good friends of the selectmen, served them with his best chop when they supped at his house, and also with his could not commit.
honor the Judge he was very his hand.
He
introduced
all
cordial, grasping
the fiends, male
and
female, into the town, and united in his person the functions of bully, incendiary, swindler, bar
keeper and burglar. cut off the horses in the night.
He
He
tails
girdled the trees,
and
of the temperance people
led the
rummies and
radicals
town meeting. Meanwhile, he was civil, and easy in his house, and precisely the most
in the fat
public-spirited citizen.
He was
active in getting
and planted with shade trees; he subscribed for the fountains, the gas and the the roads repaired
telegraph, he introduced the
new
new horse
scraper, the baby- jumper
rake, the
and what not that
Connecticut sends to the admiring
citizens."
EMERSON S HISTORIC SENSE Schoolboys of
career
Europe?
the
dispute
question
205
Was
the
Napoleon Bonaparte beneficial to The same question arises in regard to
the public-spirited and disreputable tavern keeper.
Emerson
as an historian
He
give a final verdict. the facts
on both
would not attempt to would insist on having
would judge the value of the respondence with his
thing in
we
own
fact narrated
"The
me
And
sides presented. facts
then he
by their cor
experience.
must correspond to some
We
to be credible or intelligible.
as
read must become Greeks, Romans, Turks,
and king, martyr and executioner, must fasten the image to some reality in our secret ex
priest
perience, or
we
shall learn
nothing
rightly."
One
experiences history as he experiences re
ligion.
There are a few passions that are com
mon
to all men.
of the past.
They
It is
are the keys to
all
story
mere pedantry to explain
the
worship and the achievements of other ages as After all they are nothingif they were mysteries. strange.
We have
felt
the
same impulses.
EMERSON
206 "How
easily these old worships of Moses, of
Zoroaster,
of Menu,
of
themselves in the mind. tiquity in them. "I
have seen the
cannot find any an
I
are mine as
They
domesticate
Socrates,
first
much
as theirs.
monks and anchorets
More than
without crossing seas or centuries.
once some individual has appeared to
me
with
such negligence of labour and such commanding contemplation, a haughty beneficiary, begging in the
name of God,
as
made good
to the nineteenth
century Simeon the Stylite, the Thebais, and the first
Capuchins.
"The
priestcraft of the East
and West, of the
Magian, Brahmin, Druid, and Inca, in the individual s private
expounded
The cramping
life.
influence of a hard formalist
is
on a young
child in
repressing his spirits and courage, paralyzing the
understanding, and that without producing indig nation, but only fear
much sympathy with
and obedience, and even
tyranny,
explained to the child
is
a familiar fact
when he becomes a man,
only by seeing that the oppressor of his youth
is
himself a child tyrannized over by those names
EMERSON S HISTORIC SENSE
207
and words and forms, of whose influence he was
The
merely the organ to the youth.
fact teaches
him how Belus was worshipped, and how the Pyramids were
built,
better than the discovery
by Champollion of the names of
and the cost of every the
tile.
Mounds of Cholula
He
all
the
workmen
finds Assyria
at his door,
and
and himself
has laid the courses. "Again,
in ^hat protest
which each considerate
person makes against the superstition of his times,
he repeats step for step the part of old reformers,
and
in the search after truth finds like
perils to virtue.
vigour
is
stition.
He
learns again
them new
what moral
needed to supply the girdle of a super
A great licentiousness treads on the heels
of a reformation.
How many times in the history
of the world has the Luther of the day had to
lament the decay of piety in his
own
household!
Doctor/ said his wife to Martin Luther, one day,
how
is it that,
we prayed whilst now we
whilst subject to papacy,
so often and with such fervour,
pray with the utmost coldness and very seldom? "The
advancing
man
discovers
how deep a
EMERSON
208
property he has in literature,
He
as in all history.
in all fable as well
finds that the poet
was no
odd fellow who described strange and impossible situations, but that universal
man wrote by
his
pen a confession true for one and true for all. His own secret biography he finds in lines wonder fully intelligible to him, dotted
was
born.
One
after another he
down
before he
comes up
in his
private adventures with every fable of yEsop, of
Homer, of Scott,
and
hands."
Hafiz, of Ariosto, verifies
them with
of Chaucer, of
his
own head and
CHAPTER XIX PEACE AND
WAR
do not like to speak to the Peace Society, if so I am to restrain myself in so extreme a privilege as the use of sword and bullet. For the peace of a man who has forsworn the use of the bullet seems to me not peace, but a canting impotence; but with knife "I
and bullet and honor
in
my
cast
hands,
them
if I
from greater bravery
aside, then I
know
the glory of
peace."
1838 Emerson delivered a lecture on
INwhich has furnished many thoroughgoing
And
pacifists.
War
excellent texts for
yet in the
war
for
the preservation of the Union, he threw himself
unreservedly into the
conflict.
might seem that under the
stress
At
first sight, it
of circumstances
he had given up his earlier convictions.
Yet the words which
I
have placed
at the
head
of this chapter were written at the time he was
making position
his plea for universal peace.
was
Emerson
s
unchanged by the events 209
practically
EMERSON
210
He was
of his time.
was
a believer in peace, but it man armed. It was
the peace of the strong
peace established and maintained by
men who
were not to be coerced. that they
Having demonstrated were able to take care of themselves
they could lay aside their arms and trust to moral force.
His lecture was
in praise of the glory of
peace which he believed in the end would super sede the meretricious glories of war.
"War
perfects the physical constitution,
will,
men
educates the senses, calls into action the
into such swift
moments scale, feit,
that
on the
man
virtues
and
brings
close collision at critical
measures man. it lives, it
On
its
own
endures no counter
but shakes the whole society until every atom
falls into the
What
place
its specific
gravity assigns
it.
does war, beginning from the lowest races
and reaching up
to
man, signify? Is it not mani and beneficent principle
fest that it covers a great
which nature has deeply principle?
at heart?
It is self help.
life the instinct
What
is
that
Nature implants with
of self help, perpetual struggle
PEACE AND
WAR
211
to be, to resist opposition, to attain to
freedom
and the security of a permanent, self -de fended being, and to each creature these objects are made so dear that
it
risks its life continually in the
struggles for these
ends."
But because war has had such uses does
follow that
it
"At
it
must continue
in the past,
indefinitely?
a certain stage of his progress a
man
rights
he be of sound mind and body. At a higher stage he makes no offensive demonstration, but if
and of an unconquerable heart. At a still higher he comes into the region of holiness, passion has passed from him, his war he
is
like
alert to repel injury
nature
converted into an active medicinal
and accepts with wearisome tasks of denial and charity;
principle,
alacrity
is all
he
sacrifices himself,
but being attacked he bears
it
and turns the other
cheek, as one engaged throughout his being,
no
longer to the service of the individual but to the
common
soul of
man."
There are passages in praise of non-resistance jvhich sound very much like the words of doc-
212
EMERSON
trinaire pacifists.
But
the soldier
it is
who with arms
the non-resistance of in his
hand
will
not
cause
of
use them to revenge a private wrong.
"The
cause of peace
cowardice.
If peace
is
not the
is
sought to be defended
or preserved for the safety of the luxurious and
a shame and the peace will be base. If better and the peace will be broken.
the timid,
War
is
it is
must be by brave men who have come up to the same height of the hero, peace
is
to be maintained,
it
namely the will to carry their life in their hands, and have gone a step beyond the hero and will not seek another
man s
life
lectual insight or else
by
men who by their
tained such perception of
their intel
moral education at
their
own
intrinsic
worth that they do not think property or their own body a sufficient good to be saved by such dereliction of principle as treating a man like a sheep."
War
is
barbarous, peace has possibilities of
heroic achievement^ but are these not circum-
WAR
PEACE AND stances under which the
good man must
Emerson answered,
In 1838
213
"A
wise
fight?
man
will
never impawn his future being and action, and decide before-hand
When
the extreme event
unseasonable all its
through
do
in
a given
will
instruct
do."
In 1862 he wrote,
tancy.
the
to
shall
Nature and God
extreme event.
him what
what he
senility
came he had no
"It
of
is
hesi
wonderful to see
the
Peace
Party
masks, blinding their eyes to the
main feature of the war, namely
its
inevitable-
ness."
Heroism or in
is
w ar. r
after all the It
is
same whether
in peace
the deliberate choice of the
highest service possible under the circumstances.
He
who when war is in of duty as one who is
thinks of the soldier
evitable obeys the call sacrificed to
"But
He
make peace
possible.
best befriended of the
who,
God
in evil times,
Warned by an inward
voice,
Heeds not the darkness and the dread, Biding by his rule and choice, Feeling only the fiery thread
EMERSON
214
Leading over heroic ground, Walled with mortal terror round, To the aim which him allures, And the sweet heaven his deed secures. Peril around, all else appalling, in front and leaden rain,
Cannon
Him duty through the clarion calling To the van called not in vain. "Stainless
Knowing
on the walls, and knows no more, and whoso falls,
soldier this,
Whoso
fights,
[Justice
triumphs ever
more."
CHAPTER XX THE FORTUNES OF THE POOR "The
of the
whole
interest of history lies in the fortunes
poor."
Emerson
TO
the present-day reader
we
the problem of poverty.
satisfactory
call
is least
when he touches upon what
We
have
in
mind the condition of thousands of persons who through no fault of their own are condemned to live in city slums.
They
are,
we
believe, victims
They can be redeemed
of social misadjustment.
only by social effort.
When we
hear Emerson saying that the whole
interest of history lies in the fortunes of the poor,
we
expect to hear
upon our problem. abolish poverty? erty, it
has
he
tells us, is
many
him say something bearing
How
We
does he propose to
are disappointed.
not so bad after
advantages.
all.
Sometimes he
215
Pov Indeed
rises into
EMERSON
216
a strain that reminds us of Saint Francis of Assisi.
We
can only understand Emerson and Saint
Francis
When
when we
define the terms
they used.
my lady Pov not he was of the condition of those erty thinking who
He
Francis sang the praises of
lived in the hideous slums of great cities.
had
in
mind
the poverty of the Italian peas
whose fortunes he was glad to share. They were poor in this world s goods, but rich in spir ants
itual resources.
listened to the
in
They
song of
lived in the birds,
human companionship. The poverty which Emerson
poverty of the well-born It
open air, they and they were happy
was a
life
opportunity. sity
New
praised
England youth.
without luxury, but with endless
There was a stimulating of neces
acting upon natural ambition.
man s
was the
The poor
son could aspire to any station in
society.
The way was open to him. If he had health he was to be congratulated as one of the children of good
fortune.
never
tired.
This was a theme of which he
FORTUNES OF THE POOR
217 4
poor man s son is educated. There is many a humble house in every city, in every town, where talent and taste, and sometimes "The
genius, dwell with poverty
not seen,
and labour.
Who
has
and who can see unmoved, under a low
roof, the eager, blushing boys discharging as they
can their household chores, and hastening into the sitting-room to the study of to-morrow s merciless lesson, yet stealing time to read one
chapter
more of the novel hardly smuggled
the tolerance of father
and mother,
into
atoning for
the same by some pages of Plutarch or Gold
smith; the
warm sympathy
with which they kin
dle each other in school-yard, or in
barn or wood
shed, with scraps of poetry or song, with phrases
of the last oration, or mimicry of the orator; the
youthful criticism, on Sunday, of the sermons; the school declamation faithfully rehearsed at
home, sometimes to the
fatigue,
admiration of sisters; the literary vanity,
when
first
sometimes to the solitary joys of
the translation or the theme
has been completed, sitting alone near the top of the house; the cautious comparison of the attrac-
EMERSON
218
live advertisement of the arrival of
Macready, Booth, or Kemble, or of the discourse of a well-
known
speaker, with the expense of the enter
tainment;
the
affectionate
with which
delight
they greet the return of each one after the early separations which school or business require; the foresight with which, during such absences, they
hive the honey which opportunity offers, for the
ear and imagination of the others
;
and the unre
strained glee with which they disburden selves of their early mental treasures
when
that holds
hoop band of poverty, of excluding them
them staunch ?
the
What
holidays bring them again together? the
them
It is
is
the iron
necessity, of austerity, which,
from the sensual enjoyments
which make other boys too early old, has directed their activity in safe and right channels, and
made them,
despite themselves, reverers of the
grand, the beautiful, and the good.
Ah!
short
sighted students of books, of Nature, and of
man! too happy, could they know tages.
They
pine for freedom
parental yoke; they sigh
their
from
advan
that mild
for fine clothes,
for
FORTUNES OF THE POOR rides, for the theater,
dissipation, if their
219
and premature freedom and
which others
Woe
possess.
The
wishes were crowned!
to them,
angels that
dwell with them, and are weaving laurels of life for their youthful brows, are Toil,
and Truth, and Mutual
and Want,
Faith."
In the last fifty years there have been vast
America we have begun to feel the pressure of population on the means of The young man can not obtain a subsistence. social changes.
Even
in
farm by the simple device of going West. And yet America is still a land of opportunity. It is still poor man s country" even though the poor man has to be more alert than formerly in order "a
to
win
success.
It is still true that inherited
wealth
is
not nec
essary for the attainment of the most desirable things.
One may be born poor and
yet be a child
of good fortune. "In
est,
America, the necessity of clearing the for
laying out
town and
and building then church and
street,
every house and barn and fence,
EMERSON
220
town-house, exhausted such means as the Pil
grims brought, and made the whole population poor; and the
new
like necessity is still
found
in each
These needs
settlement in the Territories.
gave their character to the public debates in every village and state. I have been often impressed at
our country town-meetings with the accumulated virility, in
each village, of
who
ten men,
speak so well, and so easily handle
the affairs of the town.
of a
little
discussed
or six or eight or
five
I
often hear the business
town (with which
am
I
most familiar)
and thoroughness,
with a clearness
and with a generosity, too, that would have sat isfied me had it been in one of the larger cap itals.
I
am
sure each one of
parallel experience.
in every
tain
town or
number of
unpaid, a great est
And
city is
my
readers has a
every one knows that
always to be found a cer
public-spirited
men,
who
amount of hard work
perform,
in the inter
of the churches, of schools, of public grounds,
works of
taste
duties, so in social
men of
And as in civil power and duties. Our gentle
and refinement.
the old school, that
is,
of the school of
FORTUNES OF THE POOR
221
Washington, Adams, and Hamilton, were bred after English types, and that style of breeding furnished fine examples in the last generation;
though some of us have seen such,
but,
they are
all
With
gone.
But nature
is
I
doubt
not poorer to
our haste, and slipshod ways, and flippant self-assertion, I have seen examples of day.
new
grace and power in address that honour the
was
It
country.
my
all
my
fortune not long ago, with
eyes directed on this subject, to
an American
to be
proud
of.
I
fall in
said never
with
was
such force, good meaning, good sense, good ac
combined with such domestic lovely be haviour, such modesty and persistent preference
tion,
for others. factor.
Wherever he moved he was the bene
It is
shoot well,
of course that he should ride well,
sail well,
affairs well, but
the
keep house well, administer
he was the best
talker, also, in
company what with a perpetual ;
practical wis
dom, with an eye always to the working of the thing,
what with the multitude and
distinction of
(and one detected continually that he had a hand in everything that has been done), his facts
EMERSON
222 and
in the temperance with
which he parried
all
and opened the eyes of the person he Yet I talked with without contradicting him.
offence,
said to myself,
How little this man suspects, with
sympathy for men and his respect for lettered and scientific people, that he is not likely, in any
his
company, to meet a man superior to himself. And I think this is a good country, that can bear such a creature as he
is."
CHAPTER XXI THE CUTTING EDGE "It
(courage) gives the cutting edge to every pro
fession"
which Emerson
virtue
THE
was courage.
as essential
contacts of life
insisted
it is
common
upon
In the ruder
enough, but
it
is
needed equally in time of peace. "There
is
a courage of the cabinet as well as
a courage of the
field,
a courage of manners in
private assemblies that enables one
man
to speak
masterly to a hostile company whilst another
who can
easily face a
cannon
s
man
mouth does not
open his own. the courage of the merchant in deal
"There is
ing with his trade, by which dangerous turns of affairs are
met and prevailed
recognize as
much
over.
gallantry, well
223
Merchants
judged too, in
EMERSON
224
the conduct of a wise and upright
ness in
difficult times, as soldiers in
There
man a
of busi
soldier.
a courage in the treatment of every art by a master in architecture, in sculpture, in is
painting and in poetry, cheering the
mind of
spec
tator or receiver as by true strokes of genius,
which yet no wise implies the presence of phys ical
valor in the in
genius
every kind.
power belongs
The
artist.
This
A
is
the courage of
certain quantity
of
to a certain quantity of faculty.
beautiful voice in church goes sounding on,
and covers up in
its
volume, as in a cloak,
The
defects in the choir. yield to stinct,
it,
and so the
all
singers I observe
the all
fair singer indulges her in
and dares and dares because she knows she
can."
There could not be a more perfect illustration of the kind of courage which Emerson admired than the voice of the singer directed by a sure sense of power.
It
does not domineer and yet
it
dominates.
Emerson
felt
that
the
America of
his
day
THE CUTTING EDGE exhibited courage in
many
225
directions.
It faced
the material problems with an indomitable energy.
But he
felt
a lack of the cutting edge in dealing
with intellectual problems. ars seemed to
him
The American
schol
They were not
tame-spirited.
sure of themselves, and were followers rather
than leaders. In his oration before the Phi Society of
Harvard
in
Beta Kappa
made
1837, he
a bold
attack on the education of the day and ended with
a plea
for the
courage of the
intellect.
The
scholar must develop a heroism of his own. "In
self trust are all the virtues
Free should the scholar
comprehended.
free
be,
and brave.
Free even to the definition of freedom
any hindrance which does not constitution.
Brave
;
for fear
arise is
from
without his
own
a thing which a
scholar by his very function puts behind him.
Fear always springs from
He "If
ignorance."
does not belong to a protected
class.
he seeks a temporary peace by the diversion
of his thoughts from politics or vexed questions,
EMERSON
226
hiding his head like an ostrich in the flowering
peeping into microscopes and turning
bushes,
rhymes, as a boy whistles to keep his courage up. So is the danger a danger still; so is the fear
Manlike
worse.
him look its
spect
which
let
him turn and
into its eye,
its
no great way back he ;
extent ; he will have
made
his
its
its
through
The world pretension.
stone-blind custom,
behold
is
dealt
it
is
nature and
his
What
it
who
and pass can see
deafness,
what
what overgrown error you by your suf and you have already
there only by sufferance,
See
ferance.
nature, in
hands meet on the
other side, and can henceforth defy superior.
Let
will then find in
himself a perfect comprehension of
on
it.
see the whelping of this lion
origin
lies
and search
face
it
a mortal
to be a
lie
blow."
In 1876, in an address at the University of Virginia, "The
Emerson
scholar
is
returns to the
same theme.
the right hero.
He
is
brave
because he sees the omnipotence of that which inspires him.
Is there only one courage
and one
THE CUTTING EDGE warfare ? I
as
cannot manage sword and
I
not therefore be brave?
many
I
courages as men.
only hero?
Is
a
man
down
rifle
:
can
thought there were
Is
man
an armed
only the breach of a
the haft of a bowie knife? in righting
227
Men
gun or
of thought
malignity, because they
other armor than their own.
the
fail
wear
Let them decline
hence forward foreign methods and foreign cour
Let them do that which they can do.
ages.
them
fight
weakness.
Let
by their strength and not by their .
.
.
have many revivals of religion. We have had once what was called a revival of Letters. I "We
\vish to see
men
s sense
a revival of the
human mind. To
see
of duty extend to the cherishing and
use of their intellectual powers
:
their
religion
should go with their thought and hallow
it."
In his celebrated address to the Cambridge Divinity School,
Emerson
insisted
on a
spiritual
courage which makes of religion an independent force.
"Let
me admonish
you,
first
of
all,
to
go alone,
EMERSON
228
good models, even those which are sacred to the imagination of men, and dare to
to refuse the
love
God without mediator or will find
enough you emulation, prophets. say,
I also
who
will hold
Wesleys and Oberlins,
Thank God
am
"Yourself
a
man/
Friends
veil.
up
to
saints
your and
for these good men, but .
.
.
a new-born bard of the Holy Ghost,
you all conformity, and acquaint hand with Deity. Look to it first
cast behind
men only,
at first
that
fashion,
custom, authority, pleasure
and money are nothing to you,
are not bandages
over your eyes, that you cannot
see,
but live
with the privilege of the immeasurable mind. "Let
us study the grand strokes of rectitude;
a bold benevolence, an independence of friends, so that not the unjust wishes of those
us shall impair our freedom, but
we
who
love
shall resist
for truth s sake the freest flow of kindness, and
appeal to sympathies far in advance; and what the highest
form
element, that
it
in is
which we know
is
this beautiful
taken for granted, that the
THE CUTTING EDGE right, the brave, the
by
In the
lines entitled
same theme.
spiritual courage.
and
generous step will be taken
and nobody thinks of commending
it,
the
229
it
The
it."
he returns to
"Worship"
essence of real worship
It is the
"sword
of the
spirit,"
has a cutting edge.
is he, who, felled by foes, Sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows He to captivity was sold, But him no prison-bars would hold Though they sealed him in a rock, Mountain chains he can unlock "This
:
:
:
Thrown to lions for their meat, The crouching lion kissed his feet Bound to the stake, no flames appalled, :
But arched o er him an honouring vault. This is he men miscall Fate, Threading dark ways, arriving late, But ever coming in time to crown The truth, and hurl wrong-doers down.
He
is
the oldest, and best known,
More near than aught thou
call st
thy own,
Yet, greeted in another s eyes, Disconcerts with glad surprise.
This is Jove, who, deaf to prayers, Floods with blessings unawares. Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line Severing rightly his from thine,
Which
is
human, which
divine."
is
CHAPTER
XXII
TERMINUS "It
is
time fo be old*
To take in sail: The god of bounds,
Who
sets to seas a sHore, to me in his fatal rounds, said: more!
Came
And
No
No
farther shoot Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root, Fancy departs: no more invent; Contract thy firmament To compass of a tent. There s not enough for this and that, Make thy option which of two; Economise the failing river, Not the less revere the Giver, Leave the many and hold the few.
Timely wise accept the terms, Soften the fall with wary foot; A little while Still plan and smile, And, fault of novel germs, Mature the unf alien fruit.
Curse, if thou wilt, thy siresr
Bad husbands of their fires, Who, when they gave thee breath, Failed to bequeath
230
TERMINUS
231
The needful sinew stark as once, The Baresark marrow to thy bones, But
left a legacy of ebbing veins, Inconstant heat and nerveless reins, Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb,
Amid
the gladiators, halt and
numb.
"As the bird trims her to the gale, I trim myself to the storm of time, I man the rudder, reef the sail, Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime: * Lowly faithful, banish fear, Right onward drive unharmed; The port, well worth the cruise, is near.
And
r
X)
A
is
strong
every
the
wave
man
is
charmed/
of action the approach of age
dreaded because
man
"
it
means
defeat.
The
conscious of failing powers yields to
one stronger than himself because younger. To Emerson, as a man thinking, the great weakness of age was to be found in its lack of faith in ideals.
the actual
He saw
and denied the
had not been able
old
men who
accepted
possibility of what they
to achieve.
They
praised the
past time and looked askance at the threatening future.
From
the timidities of age which are
often mistaken for wisdom, he asked to be de livered,
and
his prayer
was
granted.
EMERSON
232
He had
lived through a transition period in
thought.
Almost
ing those
who were younger
all his
contemporaries, includ
left in their later utterances
sion.
Carlyle, Ruskin,
than himself, have
a record of
disillu
Matthew Arnold and Ten
nyson were inclined to sing dirges over a beauti ful age of faith which had vanished before the advance of
James Russell Lowell, with all his sturdy Americanism yielded to the same There was an acknowledgment of impulse. science.
might be expressed in gallant language, but the meaning was none the less spiritual defeat.
It
clear.
To Emerson another
during
this so-called disillusion
illusion.
all
He
speaks of the
was only
man
"who
his years of health has planted himself
on the side of progress, but who as soon as he begins to die, checks his forward play, calls in his troops,
and becomes conservative.
All con
from personal defects. They invalids, act on the defensive."
servatives are such
can only,
One
like
thing he resolved to do, to
"obey
the voice
TERMINUS at eve
obeyed at
233
In this he was emi
prime."
nently successful.
Doctor Holmes speaks delicately and discrimi natingly of faculties.
pened.
decline of
Emerson
s
working That exactly describes what hap
"the
The working
memory became
faculties gradually failed,
less clear,
and loyalty to youthful
but spiritual insight
ideals
remained to the
last.
While yet a young man, he had written down certain resolutions by which he wished to guide his
life.
Seldom has any one been more
consist
ent in following his principles.
"Thou
shalt not profess that
which thou dost
not believe. "Thou
shalt not
man when it God in thine own
heed the voice of
agrees not with the voice of soul. "Thou
shalt study
and obey the laws of the
Universe, and they will be thy fellow servants. "Nature
shall
be to thee as a symbol.
The
EMERSON
234 life
of the soul in conscious union with the In
finite shall
be for thee the only real existence.
men
"Teach
world afresh, ent
is
that each generation begins the
in perfect
freedom; that the pres
not the prisoner of the past, but that to-day
holds captive
all
the yesterdays, to judge, to ac
cept, to reject their teachings, as they are
by
own morning
its
shown
sun.
thy fellow countrymen thou shalt preach
"To
the gospel of the
America,
is
the
New home
World, that here, here of man, that here
is
in
the
promise of a new and more excellent social state than history has recorded."
As
to death, he had always been unafraid.
When year,
it
to him.
it
came
at the
found him
He
"Teach
end of his seventy-ninth
in the
mood
that
was
had long ago learned the
me your mood, O
habitual
lesson.
patient stars ! ancient sky,
Who climb each night the
Leaving on space no shade, no
No
trace of age,
no
fear to
THE END
scars,
die."
BOOKS BY
RALPH WALDO EMERSON From
the
list
of
HOUGHTON
MIFFLIN
COMPANY
His Authorized Publishers
EMERSON S JOURNALS
:
Edited by Edward W. Emerson and Waldo Emerson Forbes. A chronological record of Emerson s life from 1820 to 1876, published in a style uniform^ with the Cen tenary Edition of his Works. Complete in ten volumes, which are sold either separately or as a set. "No
its
more remarkable
history of the
human
intellect in
untrammeled development has ever been
written,"
Digest of this intimate record of Emerson s spiritual and intellectual development. All Emerson s nobility of thought and felicity of expres sion appear at their best in these volumes, while be yond this they have a deep human interest as a fresh and living picture of the man and his period. From every point of view the Journals rank with the best of Emerson s writings, and without them his Works are said the Literary
incomplete.
EMERSON S WORKS
:
New
Centenary Edition with portraits, biographical sketch, notes and index. Also published in the River side Pocket Edition. Flexible leather bindings: LETTERS AND SOCIAL AIMS NATURE, ADDRESSES, AND LECTURES POEMS ESSAYS: FIRST SERIES LECTURES AND BIOGRAPHIESSAYS SECOND SERIES CAL SKETCHES REPRESENTATIVE MEN MISCELLANIES ENGLISH TRAITS NATURAL HISTORY OF INTELCONDUCT OF LlFE LECT AND OTHER PAPERS SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE For information regarding the format and price of these and of the many other editions of Emerson s separate and :
collected writings, write to
4 Park
Street
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN
Boston, Mass.
14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED
LOAN
DEPT.
due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall.
This book
\*,
is
-."Oii
128?
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY