1
It has seemed to the writer, that Emerson is greater--his identity more
complete perhaps--in the realms of revelation--natural disclosure--than
in those of poetry, philosophy, or prophecy. Though a great poet and
prophet, he is greater, possibly, as an invader of the
unknown,--America's deepest explorer of the spiritual immensities,--a
seer painting his discoveries in masses and with any color that may lie
at hand--cosmic, religious, human, even sensuous; a recorder, freely
describing the inevitable struggle in the soul's uprise--perceiving
from this inward source alone, that every "ultimate fact is only the
first of a new series"; a discoverer, whose heart knows, with Voltaire,
"that man seriously reflects when left alone," and would then discover,
if he can, that "wondrous chain which links the heavens with earth--the
world of beings subject to one law." In his reflections Emerson, unlike
Plato, is not afraid to ride Arion's Dolphin, and to go wherever he is
carried--to Parnassus or to "Musketaquid."
We see him standing on a summit, at the door of the infinite where many
men do not care to climb, peering into the mysteries of life,
contemplating the eternities, hurling back whatever he discovers
there,--now, thunderbolts for us to grasp, if we can, and
translate--now placing quietly, even tenderly, in our hands, things
that we may see without effort--if we won't see them, so much the worse
for us.
We see him,--a mountain-guide, so intensely on the lookout for the
trail of his star, that he has no time to stop and retrace his
footprints, which may often seem indistinct to his followers, who find
it easier and perhaps safer to keep their eyes on the ground. And there
is a chance that this guide could not always retrace his steps if he
tried--and why should he!--he is on the road, conscious only that,
though his star may not lie within walking distance, he must reach it
before his wagon can be hitched to it--a Prometheus illuminating a
privilege of the Gods--lighting a fuse that is laid towards men.
Emerson reveals the less not by an analysis of itself, but by bringing
men towards the greater. He does not try to reveal, personally, but
leads, rather, to a field where revelation is a harvest-part, where it
is known by the perceptions of the soul towards the absolute law. He
leads us towards this law, which is a realization of what experience
has suggested and philosophy hoped for. He leads us, conscious that the
aspects of truth, as he sees them, may change as often as truth remains
constant. Revelation perhaps, is but prophecy intensified--the
intensifying of its mason-work as well as its steeple. Simple prophecy,
while concerned with the past, reveals but the future, while revelation
is concerned with all time. The power in Emerson's prophecy confuses it
with--or at least makes it seem to approach--revelation. It is prophecy
with no time element. Emerson tells, as few bards could, of what will
happen in the past, for his future is eternity and the past is a part
of that. And so like all true prophets, he is always modern, and will
grow modern with the years--for his substance is not relative but a
measure of eternal truths determined rather by a universalist than by a
partialist. He measured, as Michel Angelo said true artists should,
"with the eye and not the hand." But to attribute modernism to his
substance, though not to his expression, is an anachronism--and as
futile as calling today's sunset modern.
As revelation and prophecy, in their common acceptance are resolved by
man, from the absolute and universal, to the relative and personal, and
as Emerson's tendency is fundamentally the opposite, it is easier,
safer and so apparently clearer, to think of him as a poet of natural
and revealed philosophy. And as such, a prophet--but not one to be
confused with those singing soothsayers, whose pockets are filled, as
are the pockets of conservative-reaction and radical demagoguery in
pulpit, street-corner, bank and columns, with dogmatic
fortune-tellings. Emerson, as a prophet in these lower heights, was a
conservative, in that he seldom lost his head, and a radical, in that
he seldom cared whether he lost it or not. He was a born radical as are
all true conservatives. He was too much "absorbed by the absolute," too
much of the universal to be either--though he could be both at once. To
Cotton Mather, he would have been a demagogue, to a real demagogue he
would not be understood, as it was with no self interest that he laid
his hand on reality. The nearer any subject or an attribute of it,
approaches to the perfect truth at its base, the more does
qualification become necessary. Radicalism must always qualify itself.
Emerson clarifies as he qualifies, by plunging into, rather than
"emerging from Carlyle's soul-confusing labyrinths of speculative
radicalism." The radicalism that we hear much about today, is not
Emerson's kind--but of thinner fiber--it qualifies itself by going to
_A_ "root" and often cutting other roots in the process; it is usually
impotent as dynamite in its cause and sometimes as harmful to the
wholesome progress of all causes; it is qualified by its failure. But
the Radicalism of Emerson plunges to all roots, it becomes greater than
itself--greater than all its formal or informal doctrines--too advanced
and too conservative for any specific result--too catholic for all the
churches--for the nearer it is to truth, the farther it is from a
truth, and the more it is qualified by its future possibilities.
Hence comes the difficulty--the futility of attempting to fasten on
Emerson any particular doctrine, philosophic, or religious theory.
Emerson wrings the neck of any law, that would become exclusive and
arrogant, whether a definite one of metaphysics or an indefinite one of
mechanics. He hacks his way up and down, as near as he can to the
absolute, the oneness of all nature both human and spiritual, and to
God's benevolence. To him the ultimate of a conception is its vastness,
and it is probably this, rather than the "blind-spots" in his
expression that makes us incline to go with him but half-way; and then
stand and build dogmas. But if we can not follow all the way--if we do
not always clearly perceive the whole picture, we are at least free to
imagine it--he makes us feel that we are free to do so; perhaps that is
the most he asks. For he is but reaching out through and beyond
mankind, trying to see what he can of the infinite and its
immensities--throwing back to us whatever he can--but ever conscious
that he but occasionally catches a glimpse; conscious that if he would
contemplate the greater, he must wrestle with the lesser, even though
it dims an outline; that he must struggle if he would hurl back
anything--even a broken fragment for men to examine and perchance in it
find a germ of some part of truth; conscious at times, of the futility
of his effort and its message, conscious of its vagueness, but ever
hopeful for it, and confident that its foundation, if not its medium is
somewhere near the eventual and "absolute good" the divine truth
underlying all life. If Emerson must be dubbed an optimist--then an
optimist fighting pessimism, but not wallowing in it; an optimist, who
does not study pessimism by learning to enjoy it, whose imagination is
greater than his curiosity, who seeing the sign-post to Erebus, is
strong enough to go the other way. This strength of optimism, indeed
the strength we find always underlying his tolerance, his radicalism,
his searches, prophecies, and revelations, is heightened and made
efficient by "imagination-penetrative," a thing concerned not with the
combining but the apprehending of things. A possession, akin to the
power, Ruskin says, all great pictures have, which "depends on the
penetration of the imagination into the true nature of the thing
represented, and on the scorn of the imagination for all shackles and
fetters of mere external fact that stand in the way of its
suggestiveness"--a possession which gives the strength of distance to
his eyes, and the strength of muscle to his soul. With this he slashes
down through the loam--nor would he have us rest there. If we would dig
deep enough only to plant a doctrine, from one part of him, he would
show us the quick-silver in that furrow. If we would creed his
Compensation, there is hardly a sentence that could not wreck it, or
could not show that the idea is no tenet of a philosophy, but a clear
(though perhaps not clearly hurled on the canvas) illustration of
universal justice--of God's perfect balances; a story of the analogy or
better the identity of polarity and duality in Nature with that in
morality. The essay is no more a doctrine than the law of gravitation
is. If we would stop and attribute too much to genius, he shows us that
"what is best written or done by genius in the world, was no one man's
work, but came by wide social labor, when a thousand wrought like one,
sharing the same impulse." If we would find in his essay on Montaigne,
a biography, we are shown a biography of scepticism--and in reducing
this to relation between "sensation and the morals" we are shown a true
Montaigne--we know the man better perhaps by this less presentation. If
we would stop and trust heavily on the harvest of originality, he shows
us that this plant--this part of the garden--is but a relative thing.
It is dependent also on the richness that ages have put into the soil.
"Every thinker is retrospective."
Thus is Emerson always beating down through the crust towards the first
fire of life, of death and of eternity. Read where you will, each
sentence seems not to point to the next but to the undercurrent of all.
If you would label his a religion of ethics or of morals, he shames you
at the outset, "for ethics is but a reflection of a divine
personality." All the religions this world has ever known, have been
but the aftermath of the ethics of one or another holy person; "as soon
as character appears be sure love will"; "the intuition of the moral
sentiment is but the insight of the perfection of the laws of the
soul"; but these laws cannot be catalogued.
If a versatilist, a modern Goethe, for instance, could put all of
Emerson's admonitions into practice, a constant permanence would
result,--an eternal short-circuit--a focus of equal X-rays. Even the
value or success of but one precept is dependent, like that of a
ball-game as much on the batting-eye as on the pitching-arm. The
inactivity of permanence is what Emerson will not permit. He will not
accept repose against the activity of truth. But this almost constant
resolution of every insight towards the absolute may get a little on
one's nerves, if one is at all partial-wise to the specific; one begins
to ask what is the absolute anyway, and why try to look clear through
the eternities and the unknowable even out of the other end. Emerson's
fondness for flying to definite heights on indefinite wings, and the
tendency to over-resolve, becomes unsatisfying to the impatient, who
want results to come as they walk. Probably this is a reason that it is
occasionally said that Emerson has no vital message for the rank and
file. He has no definite message perhaps for the literal, but messages
are all vital, as much, by reason of his indefiniteness, as in spite of
it.
There is a suggestion of irony in the thought that the power of his
vague but compelling vitality, which ever sweeps us on in spite of
ourselves, might not have been his, if it had not been for those
definite religious doctrines of the old New England theologians. For
almost two centuries, Emerson's mental and spiritual muscles had been
in training for him in the moral and intellectual contentions, a part
of the religious exercise of his forebears. A kind of higher
sensitiveness seems to culminate in him. It gives him a power of
searching for a wider freedom of soul than theirs. The religion of
Puritanism was based to a great extent, on a search for the unknowable,
limited only by the dogma of its theology--a search for a path, so that
the soul could better be conducted to the next world, while Emerson's
transcendentalism was based on the wider search for the unknowable,
unlimited in any way or by anything except the vast bounds of innate
goodness, as it might be revealed to him in any phenomena of man,
Nature, or God. This distinction, tenuous, in spite of the
definite-sounding words, we like to believe has something peculiar to
Emerson in it. We like to feel that it superimposes the one that makes
all transcendentalism but an intellectual state, based on the theory of
innate ideas, the reality of thought and the necessity of its freedom.
For the philosophy of the religion, or whatever you will call it, of
the Concord Transcendentalists is at least, more than an intellectual
state--it has even some of the functions of the Puritan church--it is a
spiritual state in which both soul and mind can better conduct
themselves in this world, and also in the next--when the time comes.
The search of the Puritan was rather along the path of logic,
spiritualized, and the transcendentalist of reason, spiritualized--a
difference in a broad sense between objective and subjective
contemplation.
The dislike of inactivity, repose and barter, drives one to the
indefinite subjective. Emerson's lack of interest in permanence may
cause him to present a subjectivity harsher on the outside than is
essential. His very universalism occasionally seems a limitation.
Somewhere here may lie a weakness--real to some, apparent to others--a
weakness in so far as his relation becomes less vivid--to the many;
insofar as he over-disregards the personal unit in the universal. If
Genius is the most indebted, how much does it owe to those who would,
but do not easily ride with it? If there is a weakness here is it the
fault of substance or only of manner? If of the former, there is
organic error somewhere, and Emerson will become less and less valuable
to man. But this seems impossible, at least to us. Without considering
his manner or expression here (it forms the general subject of the
second section of this paper), let us ask if Emerson's substance needs
an affinity, a supplement or even a complement or a gangplank? And if
so, of what will it be composed?
Perhaps Emerson could not have risen to his own, if it had not been for
his Unitarian training and association with the churchmen emancipators.
"Christianity is founded on, and supposes the authority of, reason, and
cannot therefore oppose it, without subverting itself." ... "Its office
is to discern universal truths, great and eternal principles ... the
highest power of the soul." Thus preached Channing. Who knows but this
pulpit aroused the younger Emerson to the possibilities of intuitive
reasoning in spiritual realms? The influence of men like Channing in
his fight for the dignity of human nature, against the arbitrary
revelations that Calvinism had strapped on the church, and for the
belief in the divine in human reason, doubtless encouraged Emerson in
his unshackled search for the infinite, and gave him premises which he
later took for granted instead of carrying them around with him. An
over-interest, not an under-interest in Christian ideal aims, may have
caused him to feel that the definite paths were well established and
doing their share, and that for some to reach the same infinite ends,
more paths might be opened--paths which would in themselves, and in a
more transcendent way, partake of the spiritual nature of the land in
quest,--another expression of God's Kingdom in Man. Would you have the
indefinite paths ALWAYS supplemented by the shadow of the definite one
of a first influence?
A characteristic of rebellion, is that its results are often deepest,
when the rebel breaks not from the worst to the greatest, but from the
great to the greater. The youth of the rebel increases this
characteristic. The innate rebellious spirit in young men is active and
buoyant. They could rebel against and improve the millennium. This
excess of enthusiasm at the inception of a movement, causes loss of
perspective; a natural tendency to undervalue the great in that which
is being taken as a base of departure. A "youthful sedition" of Emerson
was his withdrawal from the communion, perhaps, the most socialistic
doctrine (or rather symbol) of the church--a "commune" above property
or class.
Picking up an essay on religion of a rather remarkable-minded
boy--perhaps with a touch of genius--written when he was still in
college, and so serving as a good illustration in point--we
read--"Every thinking man knows that the church is dead." But every
thinking man knows that the church-part of the church always has been
dead--that part seen by candle-light, not Christ-light. Enthusiasm is
restless and hasn't time to see that if the church holds itself as
nothing but the symbol of the greater light it is life itself--as a
symbol of a symbol it is dead. Many of the sincerest followers of
Christ never heard of Him. It is the better influence of an institution
that arouses in the deep and earnest souls a feeling of rebellion to
make its aims more certain. It is their very sincerity that causes
these seekers for a freer vision to strike down for more fundamental,
universal, and perfect truths, but with such feverish enthusiasm, that
they appear to overthink themselves--a subconscious way of going
Godward perhaps. The rebel of the twentieth century says: "Let us
discard God, immortality, miracle--but be not untrue to ourselves."
Here he, no doubt, in a sincere and exalted moment, confuses God with a
name. He apparently feels that there is a separable difference between
natural and revealed religion. He mistakes the powers behind them, to
be fundamentally separate. In the excessive keenness of his search, he
forgets that "being true to ourselves" IS God, that the faintest
thought of immortality IS God, and that God is "miracle."
Over-enthusiasm keeps one from letting a common experience of a day
translate what is stirring the soul. The same inspiring force that
arouses the young rebel, brings later in life a kind of
"experience-afterglow," a realization that the soul cannot discard or
limit anything. Would you have the youthful enthusiasm of rebellion,
which Emerson carried beyond his youth always supplemented by the
shadow of experience?
Perhaps it is not the narrow minded alone that have no interest in
anything, but in its relation to their personality. Is the Christian
Religion, to which Emerson owes embryo-ideals, anything but the
revelation of God in a personality--a revelation so that the narrow
mind could become opened? But the tendency to over-personalize
personality may also have suggested to Emerson the necessity for more
universal, and impersonal paths, though they be indefinite of outline
and vague of ascent. Could you journey, with equal benefit, if they
were less so? Would you have the universal always supplemented by the
shadow of the personal? If this view is accepted, and we doubt that it
can be by the majority, Emerson's substance could well bear a
supplement, perhaps an affinity. Something that will support that which
some conceive he does not offer. Something that will help answer Alton
Locke's question: "What has Emerson for the working-man?" and questions
of others who look for the gang-plank before the ship comes in sight.
Something that will supply the definite banister to the infinite, which
it is said he keeps invisible. Something that will point a crossroad
from "his personal" to "his nature." Something that may be in Thoreau
or Wordsworth, or in another poet whose songs "breathe of a new morning
of a higher life though a definite beauty in Nature"--or something that
will show the birth of his ideal and hold out a background of revealed
religion, as a perspective to his transcendent religion--a counterpoise
in his rebellion--which we feel Channing or Dr. Bushnell, or other
saints known and unknown might supply.
If the arc must be completed--if there are those who would have the
great, dim outlines of Emerson fulfilled, it is fortunate that there
are Bushnells, and Wordsworths, to whom they may appeal--to say nothing
of the Vedas, the Bible, or their own souls. But such possibilities and
conceptions, the deeper they are received, the more they seem to reduce
their need. Emerson's Circle may be a better whole, without its
complement. Perhaps his "unsatiable demand for unity, the need to
recognize one nature in all variety of objects," would have been
impaired, if something should make it simpler for men to find the
identity they at first want in his substance. "Draw if thou canst the
mystic line severing rightly his from thine, which is human, which
divine." Whatever means one would use to personalize Emerson's natural
revelation, whether by a vision or a board walk, the vastness of his
aims and the dignity of his tolerance would doubtless cause him to
accept or at least try to accept, and use "magically as a part of his
fortune." He would modestly say, perhaps, "that the world is enlarged
for him, not by finding new objects, but by more affinities, and
potencies than those he already has." But, indeed, is not enough
manifestation already there? Is not the asking that it be made more
manifest forgetting that "we are not strong by our power to penetrate,
but by our relatedness?" Will more signs create a greater sympathy? Is
not our weak suggestion needed only for those content with their own
hopelessness?
Others may lead others to him, but he finds his problem in making
"gladness hope and fortitude flow from his page," rather than in
arranging that our hearts be there to receive it. The first is his
duty--the last ours!
2
A devotion to an end tends to undervalue the means. A power of
revelation may make one more concerned about his perceptions of the
soul's nature than the way of their disclosure. Emerson is more
interested in what he perceives than in his expression of it. He is a
creator whose intensity is consumed more with the substance of his
creation than with the manner by which he shows it to others. Like
Petrarch he seems more a discoverer of Beauty than an imparter of it.
But these discoveries, these devotions to aims, these struggles toward
the absolute, do not these in themselves, impart something, if not all,
of their own unity and coherence--which is not received, as such, at
first, nor is foremost in their expression. It must be remembered that
"truth" was what Emerson was after--not strength of outline, or even
beauty except in so far as they might reveal themselves, naturally, in
his explorations towards the infinite. To think hard and deeply and to
say what is thought, regardless of consequences, may produce a first
impression, either of great translucence, or of great muddiness, but in
the latter there may be hidden possibilities. Some accuse Brahms'
orchestration of being muddy. This may be a good name for a first
impression of it. But if it should seem less so, he might not be saying
what he thought. The mud may be a form of sincerity which demands that
the heart be translated, rather than handed around through the pit. A
clearer scoring might have lowered the thought. Carlyle told Emerson
that some of his paragraphs didn't cohere. Emerson wrote by sentences
or phrases, rather than by logical sequence. His underlying plan of
work seems based on the large unity of a series of particular aspects
of a subject, rather than on the continuity of its expression. As
thoughts surge to his mind, he fills the heavens with them, crowds them
in, if necessary, but seldom arranges them, along the ground first.
Among class-room excuses for Emerson's imperfect coherence and lack of
unity, is one that remembers that his essays were made from lecture
notes. His habit, often in lecturing, was to compile his ideas as they
came to him on a general subject, in scattered notes, and when on the
platform, to trust to the mood of the occasion, to assemble them. This
seems a specious explanation, though true to fact. Vagueness, is at
times, an indication of nearness to a perfect truth. The definite glory
of Bernard of Cluny's Celestial City, is more beautiful than
true--probably. Orderly reason does not always have to be a visible
part of all great things. Logic may possibly require that unity means
something ascending in self-evident relation to the parts and to the
whole, with no ellipsis in the ascent. But reason may permit, even
demand an ellipsis, and genius may not need the self-evident part. In
fact, these parts may be the "blind-spots" in the progress of unity.
They may be filled with little but repetition. "Nature loves analogy
and hates repetition." Botany reveals evolution not permanence. An
apparent confusion if lived with long enough may become orderly.
Emerson was not writing for lazy minds, though one of the keenest of
his academic friends said that, he (Emerson) could not explain many of
his own pages. But why should he!--he explained them when he discovered
them--the moment before he spoke or wrote them. A rare experience of a
moment at daybreak, when something in nature seems to reveal all
consciousness, cannot be explained at noon. Yet it is a part of the
day's unity. At evening, nature is absorbed by another experience. She
dislikes to explain as much as to repeat. It is conceivable, that what
is unified form to the author, or composer, may of necessity be
formless to his audience. A home-run will cause more unity in the grand
stand than in the season's batting average. If a composer once starts
to compromise, his work will begin to drag on HIM. Before the end is
reached, his inspiration has all gone up in sounds pleasing to his
audience, ugly to him--sacrificed for the first acoustic--an opaque
clarity, a picture painted for its hanging. Easy unity, like easy
virtue, is easier to describe, when judged from its lapses than from
its constancy. When the infidel admits God is great, he means only: "I
am lazy--it is easier to talk than live." Ruskin also says: "Suppose I
like the finite curves best, who shall say I'm right or wrong? No one.
It is simply a question of experience." You may not be able to
experience a symphony, even after twenty performances. Initial
coherence today may be dullness tomorrow probably because formal or
outward unity depends so much on repetition, sequences, antitheses,
paragraphs with inductions and summaries. Macaulay had that kind of
unity. Can you read him today? Emerson rather goes out and shouts: "I'm
thinking of the sun's glory today and I'll let his light shine through
me. I'll say any damn thing that this inspires me with." Perhaps there
are flashes of light, still in cipher, kept there by unity, the code of
which the world has not yet discovered. The unity of one sentence
inspires the unity of the whole--though its physique is as ragged as
the Dolomites.
Intense lights--vague shadows--great pillars in a horizon are difficult
things to nail signboards to. Emerson's outward-inward qualities make
him hard to classify, but easy for some. There are many who like to say
that he--even all the Concord men--are intellectuals. Perhaps--but
intellectuals who wear their brains nearer the heart than some of their
critics. It is as dangerous to determine a characteristic by manner as
by mood. Emerson is a pure intellectual to those who prefer to take him
as literally as they can. There are reformers, and in "the form" lies
their interest, who prefer to stand on the plain, and then insist they
see from the summit. Indolent legs supply the strength of eye for their
inspiration. The intellect is never a whole. It is where the soul finds
things. It is often the only track to the over-values. It appears a
whole--but never becomes one even in the stock exchange, or the
convent, or the laboratory. In the cleverest criminal, it is but a way
to a low ideal. It can never discard the other part of its duality--the
soul or the void where the soul ought to be. So why classify a quality
always so relative that it is more an agency than substance; a quality
that disappears when classified. "The life of the All must stream
through us to make the man and the moment great." A sailor with a
precious cargo doesn't analyze the water. Because Emerson had
generations of Calvinistic sermons in his blood, some cataloguers,
would localize or provincialize him, with the sternness of the old
Puritan mind. They make him THAT, hold him THERE. They lean heavily on
what they find of the above influence in him. They won't follow the
rivers in his thought and the play of his soul. And their cousin
cataloguers put him in another pigeon-hole. They label him "ascetic."
They translate his outward serenity into an impression of severity. But
truth keeps one from being hysterical. Is a demagogue a friend of the
people because he will lie to them to make them cry and raise false
hopes? A search for perfect truths throws out a beauty more spiritual
than sensuous. A sombre dignity of style is often confused by
under-imagination and by surface-sentiment, with austerity. If
Emerson's manner is not always beautiful in accordance with accepted
standards, why not accept a few other standards? He is an ascetic, in
that he refuses to compromise content with manner. But a real ascetic
is an extremist who has but one height. Thus may come the confusion, of
one who says that Emerson carries him high, but then leaves him always
at THAT height--no higher--a confusion, mistaking a latent exultation
for an ascetic reserve. The rules of Thorough Bass can be applied to
his scale of flight no more than they can to the planetary system.
Jadassohn, if Emerson were literally a composer, could no more analyze
his harmony than a guide-to-Boston could. A microscope might show that
he uses chords of the 9th, 11th, or the 99th, but a lens far different
tells us they are used with different aims from those of Debussy.
Emerson is definite in that his art is based on something stronger than
the amusing or at its best the beguiling of a few mortals. If he uses a
sensuous chord, it is not for sensual ears. His harmonies may float, if
the wind blows in that direction, through a voluptuous atmosphere, but
he has not Debussy's fondness for trying to blow a sensuous atmosphere
from his own voluptuous cheeks. And so he is an ascetic! There is a
distance between jowl and soul--and it is not measured by the fraction
of an inch between Concord and Paris. On the other hand, if one thinks
that his harmony contains no dramatic chords, because no theatrical
sound is heard, let him listen to the finale of "Success," or of
"Spiritual Laws," or to some of the poems, "Brahma" or "Sursum Corda,"
for example. Of a truth his Codas often seem to crystallize in a
dramatic, though serene and sustained way, the truths of his
subject--they become more active and intense, but quieter and deeper.
Then there comes along another set of cataloguers. They put him down as
a "classicist," or a romanticist, or an eclectic. Because a prophet is
a child of romanticism--because revelation is classic, because
eclecticism quotes from eclectic Hindu Philosophy, a more sympathetic
cataloguer may say, that Emerson inspires courage of the quieter kind
and delight of the higher kind.
The same well-bound school teacher who told the boys that Thoreau was a
naturalist because he didn't like to work, puts down Emerson as a
"classic," and Hawthorne as a "romantic." A loud voice made this doubly
TRUE and SURE to be on the examination paper. But this teacher of
"truth AND dogma" apparently forgot that there is no such thing as
"classicism or romanticism." One has but to go to the various
definitions of these to know that. If you go to a classic definition
you know what a true classic is, and similarly a "true romantic." But
if you go to both, you have an algebraic formula, x = x, a
cancellation, an apercu, and hence satisfying; if you go to all
definitions you have another formula x > x, a destruction, another
apercu, and hence satisfying. Professor Beers goes to the dictionary
(you wouldn't think a college professor would be as reckless as that).
And so he can say that "romantic" is "pertaining to the style of the
Christian and popular literature of the Middle Ages," a Roman Catholic
mode of salvation (not this definition but having a definition). And so
Prof. B. can say that Walter Scott is a romanticist (and Billy Phelps a
classic--sometimes). But for our part Dick Croker is a classic and job
a romanticist. Another professor, Babbitt by name, links up Romanticism
with Rousseau, and charges against it many of man's troubles. He
somehow likes to mix it up with sin. He throws saucers at it, but in a
scholarly, interesting, sincere, and accurate way. He uncovers a
deformed foot, gives it a name, from which we are allowed to infer that
the covered foot is healthy and named classicism. But no Christian
Scientist can prove that Christ never had a stomach-ache. The
Architecture of Humanism [Footnote: Geoffrey Scott (Constable & Co.)]
tells us that "romanticism consists of ... a poetic sensibility towards
the remote, as such." But is Plato a classic or towards the remote? Is
Classicism a poor relation of time--not of man? Is a thing classic or
romantic because it is or is not passed by that biologic--that
indescribable stream-of-change going on in all life? Let us settle the
point for "good," and say that a thing is classic if it is thought of
in terms of the past and romantic if thought of in terms of the
future--and a thing thought of in terms of the present is--well, that
is impossible! Hence, we allow ourselves to say, that Emerson is
neither a classic or romantic but both--and both not only at different
times in one essay, but at the same time in one sentence--in one word.
And must we admit it, so is everyone. If you don't believe it, there
must be some true definition you haven't seen. Chopin shows a few
things that Bach forgot--but he is not eclectic, they say. Brahms shows
many things that Bach did remember, so he is an eclectic, they say.
Leoncavallo writes pretty verses and Palestrina is a priest, and
Confucius inspires Scriabin. A choice is freedom. Natural selection is
but one of Nature's tunes. "All melodious poets shall be hoarse as
street ballads, when once the penetrating keynote of nature and spirit
is sounded--the earth-beat, sea-beat, heart-beat, which make the tune
to which the sun rolls, and the globule of blood and the sap of the
trees."
An intuitive sense of values, tends to make Emerson use social,
political, and even economic phenomena, as means of expression, as the
accidental notes in his scale--rather than as ends, even lesser ends.
In the realization that they are essential parts of the greater values,
he does not confuse them with each other. He remains undisturbed except
in rare instances, when the lower parts invade and seek to displace the
higher. He was not afraid to say that "there are laws which should not
be too well obeyed." To him, slavery was not a social or a political or
an economic question, nor even one of morals or of ethics, but one of
universal spiritual freedom only. It mattered little what party, or
what platform, or what law of commerce governed men. Was man governing
himself? Social error and virtue were but relative. This habit of not
being hindered by using, but still going beyond the great truths of
living, to the greater truths of life gave force to his influence over
the materialists. Thus he seems to us more a regenerator than a
reformer--more an interpreter of life's reflexes than of life's facts,
perhaps. Here he appears greater than Voltaire or Rousseau and helped,
perhaps, by the centrality of his conceptions, he could arouse the
deeper spiritual and moral emotions, without causing his listeners to
distort their physical ones. To prove that mind is over matter, he
doesn't place matter over mind. He is not like the man who, because he
couldn't afford both, gave up metaphysics for an automobile, and when
he ran over a man blamed metaphysics. He would not have us get
over-excited about physical disturbance but have it accepted as a part
of any progress in culture, moral, spiritual or aesthetic. If a poet
retires to the mountain-side, to avoid the vulgar unculture of men, and
their physical disturbance, so that he may better catch a nobler theme
for his symphony, Emerson tells him that "man's culture can spare
nothing, wants all material, converts all impediments into instruments,
all enemies into power." The latest product of man's culture--the
aeroplane, then sails o'er the mountain and instead of an
inspiration--a spray of tobacco-juice falls on the poet. "Calm
yourself, Poet!" says Emerson, "culture will convert furies into muses
and hells into benefit. This wouldn't have befallen you if it hadn't
been for the latest transcendent product of the genius of culture" (we
won't say what kind), a consummation of the dreams of poets, from David
to Tennyson. Material progress is but a means of expression. Realize
that man's coarseness has its future and will also be refined in the
gradual uprise. Turning the world upside down may be one of its lesser
incidents. It is the cause, seldom the effect that interests Emerson.
He can help the cause--the effect must help itself. He might have said
to those who talk knowingly about the cause of war--or of the last war,
and who would trace it down through long vistas of cosmic, political,
moral evolution and what not--he might say that the cause of it was as
simple as that of any dogfight--the "hog-mind" of the minority against
the universal mind, the majority. The un-courage of the former fears to
believe in the innate goodness of mankind. The cause is always the
same, the effect different by chance; it is as easy for a hog, even a
stupid one, to step on a box of matches under a tenement with a
thousand souls, as under an empty bird-house. The many kindly burn up
for the few; for the minority is selfish and the majority generous. The
minority has ruled the world for physical reasons. The physical reasons
are being removed by this "converting culture." Webster will not much
longer have to grope for the mind of his constituency. The
majority--the people--will need no intermediary. Governments will pass
from the representative to the direct. The hog-mind is the principal
thing that is making this transition slow. The biggest prop to the
hog-mind is pride--pride in property and the power property gives.
Ruskin backs this up--"it is at the bottom of all great mistakes; other
passions do occasional good, but whenever pride puts in its word ... it
is all over with the artist." The hog-mind and its handmaidens in
disorder, superficial brightness, fundamental dullness, then cowardice
and suspicion--all a part of the minority (the non-people) the
antithesis of everything called soul, spirit, Christianity, truth,
freedom--will give way more and more to the great primal truths--that
there is more good than evil, that God is on the side of the majority
(the people)--that he is not enthusiastic about the minority (the
non-people)--that he has made men greater than man, that he has made
the universal mind and the over-soul greater and a part of the
individual mind and soul--that he has made the Divine a part of all.
Again, if a picture in economics is before him, Emerson plunges down to
the things that ARE because they are BETTER than they are. If there is
a row, which there usually is, between the ebb and flood tide, in the
material ocean--for example, between the theory of the present order of
competition, and of attractive and associated labor, he would
sympathize with Ricardo, perhaps, that labor is the measure of value,
but "embrace, as do generous minds, the proposition of labor shared by
all." He would go deeper than political economics, strain out the
self-factor from both theories, and make the measure of each pretty
much the same, so that the natural (the majority) would win, but not to
the disadvantage of the minority (the artificial) because this has
disappeared--it is of the majority. John Stuart Mill's political
economy is losing value because it was written by a mind more "a
banker's" than a "poet's." The poet knows that there is no such thing
as the perpetual law of supply and demand, perhaps not of demand and
supply--or of the wage-fund, or price-level, or increments earned or
unearned; and that the existence of personal or public property may not
prove the existence of God.
Emerson seems to use the great definite interests of humanity to
express the greater, indefinite, spiritual values--to fulfill what he
can in his realms of revelation. Thus, it seems that so close a
relation exists between his content and expression, his substance and
manner, that if he were more definite in the latter he would lose power
in the former,--perhaps some of those occasional flashes would have
been unexpressed--flashes that have gone down through the world and
will flame on through the ages--flashes that approach as near the
Divine as Beethoven in his most inspired moments--flashes of
transcendent beauty, of such universal import, that they may bring, of
a sudden, some intimate personal experience, and produce the same
indescribable effect that comes in rare instances, to men, from some
common sensation. In the early morning of a Memorial Day, a boy is
awakened by martial music--a village band is marching down the street,
and as the strains of Reeves' majestic Seventh Regiment March come
nearer and nearer, he seems of a sudden translated--a moment of vivid
power comes, a consciousness of material nobility, an exultant
something gleaming with the possibilities of this life, an assurance
that nothing is impossible, and that the whole world lies at his feet.
But as the band turns the corner, at the soldiers' monument, and the
march steps of the Grand Army become fainter and fainter, the boy's
vision slowly vanishes--his "world" becomes less and less probable--but
the experience ever lies within him in its reality. Later in life, the
same boy hears the Sabbath morning bell ringing out from the white
steeple at the "Center," and as it draws him to it, through the autumn
fields of sumac and asters, a Gospel hymn of simple devotion comes out
to him--"There's a wideness in God's mercy"--an instant suggestion of
that Memorial Day morning comes--but the moment is of deeper
import--there is no personal exultation--no intimate world vision--no
magnified personal hope--and in their place a profound sense of a
spiritual truth,--a sin within reach of forgiveness--and as the hymn
voices die away, there lies at his feet--not the world, but the figure
of the Saviour--he sees an unfathomable courage, an immortality for the
lowest, the vastness in humility, the kindness of the human heart,
man's noblest strength, and he knows that God is nothing--nothing but
love! Whence cometh the wonder of a moment? From sources we know not.
But we do know that from obscurity, and from this higher Orpheus come
measures of sphere melodies [note: Paraphrased from a passage in Sartor
Resartus.] flowing in wild, native tones, ravaging the souls of men,
flowing now with thousand-fold accompaniments and rich symphonies
through all our hearts; modulating and divinely leading them.
3
What is character? In how far does it sustain the soul or the soul it?
Is it a part of the soul? And then--what is the soul? Plato knows but
cannot tell us. Every new-born man knows, but no one tells us. "Nature
will not be disposed of easily. No power of genius has ever yet had the
smallest success in explaining existence. The perfect enigma remains."
As every blind man sees the sun, so character may be the part of the
soul we, the blind, can see, and then have the right to imagine that
the soul is each man's share of God, and character the muscle which
tries to reveal its mysteries--a kind of its first visible
radiance--the right to know that it is the voice which is always
calling the pragmatist a fool.
At any rate, it can be said that Emerson's character has much to do
with his power upon us. Men who have known nothing of his life, have
borne witness to this. It is directly at the root of his substance, and
affects his manner only indirectly. It gives the sincerity to the
constant spiritual hopefulness we are always conscious of, and which
carries with it often, even when the expression is somber, a note of
exultation in the victories of "the innate virtues" of man. And it is
this, perhaps, that makes us feel his courage--not a self-courage, but
a sympathetic one--courageous even to tenderness. It is the open
courage of a kind heart, of not forcing opinions--a thing much needed
when the cowardly, underhanded courage of the fanatic would FORCE
opinion. It is the courage of believing in freedom, per se, rather than
of trying to force everyone to SEE that you believe in it--the courage
of the willingness to be reformed, rather than of reforming--the
courage teaching that sacrifice is bravery, and force, fear. The
courage of righteous indignation, of stammering eloquence, of spiritual
insight, a courage ever contracting or unfolding a philosophy as it
grows--a courage that would make the impossible possible. Oliver
Wendell Holmes says that Emerson attempted the impossible in the
Over-Soul--"an overflow of spiritual imagination." But he (Emerson)
accomplished the impossible in attempting it, and still leaving it
impossible. A courageous struggle to satisfy, as Thoreau says, "Hunger
rather than the palate"--the hunger of a lifetime sometimes by one
meal. His essay on the Pre-Soul (which he did not write) treats of that
part of the over-soul's influence on unborn ages, and attempts the
impossible only when it stops attempting it.
Like all courageous souls, the higher Emerson soars, the more lowly he
becomes. "Do you think the porter and the cook have no experiences, no
wonders for you? Everyone knows as much as the Savant." To some, the
way to be humble is to admonish the humble, not learn from them.
Carlyle would have Emerson teach by more definite signs, rather than
interpret his revelations, or shall we say preach? Admitting all the
inspiration and help that Sartor Resartus has given in spite of its
vaudeville and tragic stages, to many young men getting under way in
the life of tailor or king, we believe it can be said (but very broadly
said) that Emerson, either in the first or second series of essays,
taken as a whole, gives, it seems to us, greater inspiration, partly
because his manner is less didactic, less personally suggestive,
perhaps less clearly or obviously human than Carlyle's. How direct this
inspiration is is a matter of personal viewpoint, temperament, perhaps
inheritance. Augustine Birrell says he does not feel it--and he seems
not to even indirectly. Apparently "a non-sequacious author" can't
inspire him, for Emerson seems to him a "little thin and vague." Is
Emerson or the English climate to blame for this? He, Birrell, says a
really great author dissipates all fears as to his staying power.
(Though fears for our staying-power, not Emerson's, is what we would
like dissipated.) Besides, around a really great author, there are no
fears to dissipate. "A wise author never allows his reader's mind to be
at large," but Emerson is not a wise author. His essay on Prudence has
nothing to do with prudence, for to be wise and prudent he must put
explanation first, and let his substance dissolve because of it. "How
carefully," says Birrell again, "a really great author like Dr. Newman,
or M. Renan, explains to you what he is going to do, and how he is
going to do it." Personally we like the chance of having a hand in the
"explaining." We prefer to look at flowers, but not through a botany,
for it seems that if we look at them alone, we see a beauty of Nature's
poetry, a direct gift from the Divine, and if we look at botany alone,
we see the beauty of Nature's intellect, a direct gift of the
Divine--if we look at both together, we see nothing.
Thus it seems that Carlyle and Birrell would have it that courage and
humility have something to do with "explanation"--and that it is not "a
respect for all"--a faith in the power of "innate virtue" to perceive
by "relativeness rather than penetration"--that causes Emerson to
withhold explanation to a greater degree than many writers. Carlyle
asks for more utility, and Birrell for more inspiration. But we like to
believe that it is the height of Emerson's character, evidenced
especially in his courage and humility that shades its quality, rather
than that its virtue is less--that it is his height that will make him
more and more valuable and more and more within the reach of
all--whether it be by utility, inspiration, or other needs of the human
soul.
Cannot some of the most valuable kinds of utility and inspiration come
from humility in its highest and purest forms? For is not the truest
kind of humility a kind of glorified or transcendent democracy--the
practicing it rather than the talking it--the not-wanting to level all
finite things, but the being willing to be leveled towards the
infinite? Until humility produces that frame of mind and spirit in the
artist can his audience gain the greatest kind of utility and
inspiration, which might be quite invisible at first? Emerson realizes
the value of "the many,"--that the law of averages has a divine source.
He recognizes the various life-values in reality--not by reason of
their closeness or remoteness, but because he sympathizes with men who
live them, and the majority do. "The private store of reason is not
great--would that there were a public store for man," cries Pascal, but
there is, says Emerson, it is the universal mind, an institution
congenital with the common or over-soul. Pascal is discouraged, for he
lets himself be influenced by surface political and religious history
which shows the struggle of the group, led by an individual, rather
than that of the individual led by himself--a struggle as much
privately caused as privately led. The main-path of all social progress
has been spiritual rather than intellectual in character, but the many
bypaths of individual-materialism, though never obliterating the
highway, have dimmed its outlines and caused travelers to confuse the
colors along the road. A more natural way of freeing the congestion in
the benefits of material progress will make it less difficult for the
majority to recognize the true relation between the important spiritual
and religious values and the less important intellectual and economic
values. As the action of the intellect and universal mind becomes more
and more identical, the clearer will the relation of all values become.
But for physical reasons, the group has had to depend upon the
individual as leaders, and the leaders with few exceptions restrained
the universal mind--they trusted to the "private store," but now,
thanks to the lessons of evolution, which Nature has been teaching men
since and before the days of Socrates, the public store of reason is
gradually taking the place of the once-needed leader. From the Chaldean
tablet to the wireless message this public store has been wonderfully
opened. The results of these lessons, the possibilities they are
offering for ever coordinating the mind of humanity, the culmination of
this age-instruction, are seen today in many ways. Labor Federation,
Suffrage Extension, are two instances that come to mind among the many.
In these manifestations, by reason of tradition, or the bad-habit part
of tradition, the hog-mind of the few (the minority), comes in play.
The possessors of this are called leaders, but even these "thick-skins"
are beginning to see that the MOVEMENT is the leader, and that they are
only clerks. Broadly speaking, the effects evidenced in the political
side of history have so much of the physical because the causes have
been so much of the physical. As a result the leaders for the most part
have been under-average men, with skins thick, wits slick, and hands
quick with under-values, otherwise they would not have become leaders.
But the day of leaders, as such, is gradually closing--the people are
beginning to lead themselves--the public store of reason is slowly
being opened--the common universal mind and the common over-soul is
slowly but inevitably coming into its own. "Let a man believe in God,
not in names and places and persons. Let the great soul incarnated in
some poor ... sad and simple Joan, go out to service and sweep chimneys
and scrub floors ... its effulgent day beams cannot be muffled..." and
then "to sweep and scrub will instantly appear supreme and beautiful
actions ... and all people will get brooms and mops." Perhaps, if all of
Emerson--his works and his life--were to be swept away, and nothing of
him but the record of the following incident remained to men--the
influence of his soul would still be great. A working woman after
coming from one of his lectures said: "I love to go to hear Emerson,
not because I understand him, but because he looks as though he thought
everybody was as good as he was." Is it not the courage--the spiritual
hopefulness in his humility that makes this story possible and true? Is
it not this trait in his character that sets him above all creeds--that
gives him inspired belief in the common mind and soul? Is it not this
courageous universalism that gives conviction to his prophecy and that
makes his symphonies of revelation begin and end with nothing but the
strength and beauty of innate goodness in man, in Nature and in God,
the greatest and most inspiring theme of Concord Transcendental
Philosophy, as we hear it.
And it is from such a world-compelling theme and from such vantage
ground, that Emerson rises to almost perfect freedom of action, of
thought and of soul, in any direction and to any height. A vantage
ground, somewhat vaster than Schelling's conception of transcendental
philosophy--"a philosophy of Nature become subjective." In Concord it
includes the objective and becomes subjective to nothing but freedom
and the absolute law. It is this underlying courage of the purest
humility that gives Emerson that outward aspect of serenity which is
felt to so great an extent in much of his work, especially in his codas
and perorations. And within this poised strength, we are conscious of
that "original authentic fire" which Emerson missed in Shelley--we are
conscious of something that is not dispassionate, something that is at
times almost turbulent--a kind of furious calm lying deeply in the
conviction of the eventual triumph of the soul and its union with God!
Let us place the transcendent Emerson where he, himself, places Milton,
in Wordsworth's apostrophe: "Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
so didst thou travel on life's common way in cheerful Godliness."
The Godliness of spiritual courage and hopefulness--these fathers of
faith rise to a glorified peace in the depth of his greater
perorations. There is an "oracle" at the beginning of the Fifth
Symphony--in those four notes lies one of Beethoven's greatest
messages. We would place its translation above the relentlessness of
fate knocking at the door, above the greater human-message of destiny,
and strive to bring it towards the spiritual message of Emerson's
revelations--even to the "common heart" of Concord--the Soul of
humanity knocking at the door of the Divine mysteries, radiant in the
faith that it will be opened--and the human become the Divine!