no touch of the unctuous fraternizer. He had the rebuffs that all must
encounter who try to break down the partition wall between classes.
In an attempt to solve, according to the Golden Rule, the problem of
a servant’s status in the household, he was thoroughly beaten and
laughingly acknowledged it. He did his share, but the servant refused
to fraternize.
He was a good citizen, an excellent neighbor, prompt in the
acknowledgment of all homely duties. His was a large-souled, benignant,
and gracious nature. There was something healing in his mere presence,
though no word was spoken.
III
THE WRITER
Emerson gave sound advice on the art of writing, like a professor of
rhetoric. He commended the sentences that would stand the test of the
voice. This is applying physiology to literature. He laughed at the
habit of exaggeration, though he also said, ‘The superlative is as
good as the positive if it be alive.’ His rules are excellent, and if
followed must give distinction to whatever page of writing they are
applied. But while they go no deeper than other suggestions, they point
out the obvious characteristics of his style.
For example, Emerson thought clarity all-important. He aimed at it,
and attained it. He believed in the use of the right word, and was
dissatisfied unless it could be found. The right word is always
illuminating, and as a result Emerson’s English is full of surprises.
Even when the term employed shocks by its unexpectedness, we presently
feel that after all the choice was not grotesque. In practice Emerson
was no spendthrift of words, that currency which loses weight and value
in the ratio of one’s prodigality, but delighted in economy. No doubt
his style is aphoristic--that is a natural result of writing aphorisms.
But if no less aphoristic, it is far more logical than is commonly
reported. The want of sequence in Emerson’s work has been exaggerated,
often to the point of absurdity.
There are writers who have two distinct literary styles, as they have
two faces, one to be photographed in, and one for natural wear. Emerson
had one style, which was dual-toned, each tone taking the color of his
prevailing thought, and each shading imperceptibly into the other. A
dozen pages picked at random from his best essays will hardly fail to
show how sublimated his diction could be at times. Then does it come
near to the line dividing poetry from prose, from which it presently
falls away to the level of everyday need. Poetic as Emerson’s diction
frequently is, it is always controlled. On the other hand, when it
sinks to plain prose it never loses the air of distinction and breeding.
IV
_NATURE, ADDRESSES, AND LECTURES_
In the introduction of his first book, _Nature_, Emerson announces
his favorite doctrine, the necessity of seeing the world through our
own eyes, of being original, not imitative. He then proceeds with his
interpretation. Nature not only exalts man, giving him a pleasure so
tonic that it admonishes to temperance, but also renders him certain
services. They may be classified under Commodity, Beauty, Language,
and Discipline. The first, albeit the lowest, is perfect in its kind;
men everywhere comprehend the ‘steady and prodigal provision’ that has
been made for their comfort. Beauty is the second, and meets a nobler
want. ‘Nature satisfies by its loveliness,’ and ‘without any mixture of
corporeal benefit.’ ‘Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp
of emperors ridiculous.’ This is not enough, there must be a spiritual
element. Such element is found in the will and virtue of man. An act
of truth or heroism ‘seems at once to draw to itself the sky as its
temple.’ Beauty in Nature also becomes an object of the intellect. It
reforms itself in the mind, leads to a new creation, and hence Art.
Nature is the source of language, words being the signs of natural
facts. But ‘every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.’
In brief, ‘the world is emblematic.’ Nature is a discipline of the
understanding, devoting herself to forming the common-sense. Nature
is the discipline of the will, after which she becomes the ally
of Religion. In short, so great is the part played by Nature in
disciplining man that the ‘noble doubt’ perpetually arises ‘whether
the end be not the Final Cause of the Universe; and whether nature
outwardly exists.’
What then? It makes no difference ‘whether Orion is up there in heaven
or some god paints the image in the firmament of the soul.’ Culture
has the uniform effect of leading us to regard nature as a phenomenon,
not a substance. Nature herself gives us the hint of Idealism. The
poet teaches the same lesson. The philosopher seeking, not Beauty, but
Truth, dissolves the ‘solid seeming block of matter’ by a thought.
Intellectual science begets ‘invariably a doubt of the existence of
matter.’ Ethics and religion have the same effect of degrading ‘nature
and suggesting its dependence on spirit.’
Back of all nature, then, is spirit. ‘The world proceeds from the same
spirit as the body of man. It is a remoter and inferior incarnation of
God.’ At present man has not come into his whole kingdom. He depends on
his understanding alone. Let him apply all his powers, the reason as
well as the understanding.
Brief as it is, this little book shows to perfection the richness of
Emerson’s thought, his skill in the apothegm, his economy of phrase,
the poetic cast of his mind, and the beauty of his diction.
Nine addresses and lectures are printed along with _Nature_ in the
definitive edition of Emerson’s writings. The first is the Phi Beta
Kappa Oration, ‘The American Scholar,’ in which Emerson sounds with
resonant tone that note of independence so marked in all his teaching.
It was time, he thought, for the ‘sluggard intellect’ of America to
‘look from under its iron lids’ and prove itself equal to something
more than ‘exertions of mechanical skill.’ We have been too long the
bond slave of Europe.
True emancipation consists in freedom from the idea that only a few
gifted ones of the earth are privileged to learn truth at first hand.
Let us not be cowed by great men.
Emerson notes three influences acting upon the scholar. First, nature,
always with us and taking the impress of our minds. Second, books,
which, noble as they are in theory, have their danger: ‘I had better
never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own
orbit.’ Third, life, everything which is the opposite of mere thinking.
‘If it were only for a vocabulary the scholar would be covetous of
action. Life is our dictionary.’
Above all, he praises the obscure scholar who without hope of visible
reward, reckoning at true value the seesaw of public whim and fancy,
patient of neglect, patient of reproach, ‘is happy if he can satisfy
himself alone that this day he has seen something truly.’
‘The Divinity Address,’ as it is called, was thought in its day nothing
short of outrageous radicalism. The now well-known Emersonian plea for
a noble individuality is made in terms the most inspiring. He bewails
the helplessness of mankind. ‘All men go in flocks to this saint or
that poet, avoiding the God who seeth in secret.’ Emerson would drive
out the spirit which prompts a man to content himself with being ‘an
easy secondary to some Christian scheme, or sectarian connection, or
some eminent man.’ He would have men follow no one leader, however
distinguished or gifted, but seek truth at first hand, know God face to
face. And while he grants that nothing is of value in comparison with
the soul of a good and great man, even a great man becomes a source of
danger if we propose to rest in the shadow of his achievement rather
than develop our own gift.
‘The Method of Nature’ is a rhapsody in praise of the spontaneous and
unreasoning as over against the logical and definite. Nature looks
to great results, not to little ones, to the type rather than the
individual.
In ‘Man the Reformer’ Emerson preaches another favorite doctrine, the
necessity of manual work. There is nothing fanciful in his view. He
did not set himself against division of labor. He did not insist that
every man should be a farmer ‘any more than that every man should be a
lexicographer.’ His ‘doctrine of the Farm’ is that ‘every man ought to
stand in primary relations with the work of the world.’
This address should be read in connection with the one on ‘The Times,’
which supplements it. The ideal reformer is not he who has some cause
at heart in comparison with which all other causes are naught. The
reformer is the ‘Re-maker of what man has made; a renouncer of lies, a
restorer of truth and good, imitating that great Nature which embosoms
us all, and which sleeps no moment on an old past.’
A reading of this address ought to be followed by a reading of the one
entitled ‘The Conservative.’ As he had advised reformers of the danger
to which they were exposed, he now warns conservatives not to forget
that they are the retrograde party. By their theory of life sickness is
a necessity and the social frame a hospital. Yet in a planet ‘peopled
with conservatives one Reformer may yet be born.’
In the lecture on ‘The Transcendentalist’ Emerson comes to a tempered
defence of his own. He defines the new movement; it is merely Idealism
as it shows itself in 1840--an old thing under a new name. He is very
patient with the Transcendentalists, whose chief idiosyncrasy is that
they have ‘struck work.’ ‘Now every one must do after his kind, be
he asp or angel, and these must.’ American literature and spiritual
history will profit by the turmoil. This heresy will leave its mark, as
any one will admit who knows ‘these seething brains, these admirable
radicals, these talkers who talk the sun and moon away.’
V
_THE ESSAYS_, _REPRESENTATIVE MEN_, _ENGLISH TRAITS_, _CONDUCT OF LIFE_
When the _Essays_ appeared, Emerson found a larger audience. He now
spoke through the medium of a recognized literary form. If all readers
do not read essays, they at least know what they are and stand in
no fear of them. Some buyers may have been tempted by the table of
contents. Titles such as ‘Self-Reliance,’ ‘Compensation,’ ‘Friendship,’
‘Heroism,’ had an encouraging sound and promised useful advice.
In the essay on ‘History,’ Emerson reaffirms the doctrine of the unity
of human nature. There is ‘one mind,’ history is its record. What we
possess in common with the men of the past enables us to comprehend and
interpret the actions of the men of the past. The facts must square
with our own experience.
The theme is continued in ‘Self-Reliance.’ As there is one mind common
to all men, and as what belongs to greatness of the Past belongs also
to us, it is suicide to descend to imitation. ‘Speak your latent
conviction and it shall become the universal sense.’ The whole essay
is a glowing exhortation to men to live largely and stand on their own
feet, facing the world with the nonchalance begotten of health, good
humor, and the sense of possession.
In ‘Compensation’ the essayist notes those inexorable forces by which
a balance is kept in the world, the laws by virtue of which ‘things
refuse to be mismanaged long.’ In ‘Spiritual Laws’ he shows the
importance of living the life of nature. Let no man import into his
mind ‘difficulties which are none of his.’ The essay on ‘Love’ is a
prose poem in honor of that passion which ‘makes the clown gentle, and
gives the coward heart.’ Following it is the essay on ‘Friendship’
with its austere definitions. ‘I do not wish to treat friendships
daintily, but with roughest courage.’ ‘Friendship implies sincerity,
and sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and authority, only
to the highest rank.’
Emerson writes on ‘Prudence’ in order to balance those fine lyric
words of Love and Friendship with words of coarser sound. Prudence
considered in itself is naught; but recognized as one of the conditions
of existence, it deserves our utmost attention. It keeps a man from
standing in false and bitter relations to other men. Emerson had
no patience with people who, because they have genius or beauty,
expect an exception of the laws of Nature to be made in their case.
Notwithstanding their gifts, they must toe the mark.
‘Heroism,’ the eighth essay in this volume, contains a definition of
the hero which does not coincide with the popular conception. We are
so accustomed to seeing our heroes crowned with wreaths and overwhelmed
with lecture engagements the day following the act of valor that we
are surprised to read: ‘Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of
mankind.’ Emerson gives a new turn to the old phrase ‘the heroic in
everyday life.’ Life, he says, has its ‘ragged and dangerous front.’ It
is full of evils against which the man must be armed. ‘Let him hear in
season that he is born into a state of war.’ To this ‘militant attitude
of the soul’ Emerson gave the name of heroism. In its rudest form it is
‘contempt for safety and ease.’
To some readers the essay on ‘The Over-Soul’ is at once the clearest
and the most darkened, the plainest and the most enigmatic of the
essays in this book. But there is no misapprehending the value of this
effort to put, not in rigid scientific terms, but in glowing and lofty
imagery, the dependence of man on the Infinite, the marvel of that
Immensity which is the background of our being. ‘From within or from
behind, a light shines through us upon things, and makes us aware that
we are nothing, but the light is all.’ It is the universal mind by
which all being is enveloped and interpenetrated.
The essay on ‘Circles’ contains this thought: Outside every circle
another may be drawn. Opinion seeks to crystallize at a certain limit,
to insist that there is nothing beyond. The soul bursts these barriers
to set new limits, which in turn are good only for a time. Man must
therefore keep himself always open to the conception of a larger
circle. Let him ‘prefer truth to his past apprehension of truth.’
How to seek truth is the subject of the next essay, ‘Intellect,’ a
tribute to the spontaneous action of the mind. We do not control our
thoughts but are controlled by them. All we can do is to clear away
obstructions and ‘suffer the intellect to see.’ Pursue truth and it
avoids you. Relax the energy of your pursuit and it comes to you; yet
the pursuit was as necessary as the subsequent relaxation.
In the final essay, on ‘Art,’ the large, simple, and homely elements
are praised, the qualities which appeal to universal human nature. In
the paintings of the Old World one thinks to be astonished by something
new and strange, and he is struck by the familiar look. He is reminded
of what he had always known.
The second series of _Essays_ treats of ‘The Poet,’ ‘Experience,’
‘Character,’ ‘Manners,’ ‘Gifts,’ ‘Nature,’ ‘Politics,’ of ‘Nominalist
and Realist;’ there is also a lecture on ‘New England Reformers.’
Emerson notes the shallow nature of a theory of poetry busied only with
externals. Neither is that poetry which is written ‘at a safe distance
from our own experience.’ The poet is representative. ‘He stands among
common men for the complete man, and apprises us not of his wealth but
of the commonwealth.’
‘Experience’ is in praise of a mode of life which consists in living
without making a fuss about it, filling the time, taking hold where one
can and exhausting the possibilities. Only fanatics say it is not worth
while. ‘Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, to-day. Let us treat
the men and women well; treat them as if they were real; perhaps they
are.’
‘Character’ and ‘Manners’ are related studies. There is a moral order
in the world. Nothing can withstand it. ‘Character is this moral order
seen through the medium of an individual nature.’ Society has raised
certain artificial distinctions. But they must be recognized. Society
is real, and grows out of a genuine need. ‘The painted phantasm Fashion
casts a species of derision on what we say. But I will neither be
driven from some allowance to Fashion as a symbolic institution, nor
from the belief that love is the basis of courtesy.’
‘Gifts’ is a fine bit of paradox. ‘The gift, to be true, must be the
flowing of the giver unto me, correspondent to my flowing unto him.
When the waters are at level, then my goods pass to him, and his to
me.’ To give useful things denies the relation. Hence the fitness of
beautiful things.
There is bold imagery in the essay on ‘Nature.’ ‘Plants are the young
of the world, but they grope ever upward toward consciousness; the
trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted
to the ground. The animal is the novice and probationer of a more
advanced order. The men though young, having tasted the first drop from
the cup of thought, are already dissipated: the maples and ferns are
still uncorrupt; yet no doubt when they come to consciousness they too
will curse and swear.’ Thus does Emerson describe that glimpse he had
of a ‘system in transition.’
A healthy optimism pervades the essay on ‘Politics.’ In spite of
meddling and selfishness the foundations of the State are very secure.
‘Things have their laws, as well as men; and things refuse to be
trifled with.’ By a higher law property will be protected. The same
necessity secures to each nation the form of governing best suited
to it. Yet all forms are defective. Good men ‘must not obey the laws
too well.’ Perfect government rests on character at last. There are
dreamers who do not despair of seeing the State renovated ‘on the
principle of right and love.’
_Representative Men_ consists of lectures on Plato, Swedenborg,
Montaigne, Shakespeare, Napoleon, and Goethe, together with an
introduction on the ‘Uses of Great Men.’
Plato is the man who makes havoc with originalities, the philosopher
whose writings have been for twenty-two hundred years the Bible of the
learned, but who has his defects. Intellectual in aim, and therefore
literary, he attempts a system of the universe and fails to complete it
or make it intelligible.
Swedenborg is the representative of mysticism, great with its power,
weak with its defects.
Out of the eternal conflict between abstractionist and materialist
arises another type of mind, one that laughs at both philosophies
for being out of their depth and pushing too far. He is the sceptic,
Montaigne, for example. The type was peculiarly grateful to Emerson,
admiring as he did a man who talked with shrewdness, was not literary,
who knew the world, used the positive degree, never shrieked, and had
no wish to annihilate time and space.
Shakespeare meets our conception of the Poet, ‘a heart in unison
with his time and country,’ whose production comes ‘freighted with
the weightiest convictions and pointed with the most determined aims
which any man or class knows of in his times.’ He demonstrated the
possibility of translating things into song. The ear is ravished by
the beauty of his lines, ‘yet the sentence is so loaded with meaning
and so linked with its foregoers and followers, that the logician is
satisfied.’ And he had the royal trait of cheerfulness.
In Napoleon we have ‘the strong and ready actor’ who in the ‘universal
imbecility, indecision, and indolence of men’ knows how to take
occasion by the beard. His life is an answer to cowardly doubts.
Emerson calls Napoleon ‘the agent or attorney of the middle class of
modern society.’ It was he who showed what could be done by the use
of common virtues. His experiment failed because he had a selfish and
sensual aim. In the last analysis Napoleon was not a gentleman.
Goethe is the other phase of the genius of the age. There is a
provision for the writer in the scheme of things. Nature insists on
being reported. To Man the universe is something to be recorded.
The instinct exists in different degrees. One has the power to ‘see
connection where the multitude sees fragments.’ Lift this faculty to a
high degree and you have the great German poet who well-nigh restored
literature to its primal significance. ‘There must be a man behind the
book.’ ‘The old Eternal Genius who built the world has confided himself
more to this man than any other.’ Goethe is the type of culture. Here,
too, is his defect. For his devotion is not to pure truth, but to truth
for the sake of culture.
_Representative Men_ was succeeded by _English Traits_, a volume in
which Emerson taught his countrymen more about England than they had
hitherto known or fancied. Histories, statistical reports, treatises on
British art and British manufactures, are useful and sometimes dreary
reading; they give us facts heaped on facts. It is a relief to put
them down and take up _English Traits_ in order to learn what we have
been reading about.
Through Emerson’s eyes we can see this little island ‘a prize for the
best race,’ its singular people, chained to their logic, willing ‘to
kiss the dust before a fact,’ strong in their sense of brotherhood,
yet fond each of his own way, incommunicable, ‘in short every one of
these islanders an island in himself.’ They have a ‘superfluity of
self-regard’--which is a secret of their power; they are assertive,
crotchety, wholly forgetful of ‘a cardinal article in the bill
of social rights,’ that every man ‘has a right to his own ears;’
nevertheless Emerson concludes (and an Englishman would assure him no
other conclusion was possible) they are the best stock in the world.
Here is the typical islander as Emerson paints him. ‘He is a churl with
a soft place in his heart, whose speech is a brash of bitter waters,
but who loves to help you at a pinch. He says no, and serves you, and
your thanks disgust him.’
There are paragraphs and chapters on the Aristocracy, the Universities,
Religion, Literature, and the Press, that is, the ‘Times.’ Every page
glitters with wit. Every apothegm contains the full proportion of
truth and untruth which sayings of that sort are wont to contain. Says
Emerson: ‘The gospel the Anglican church preaches is, ‘“By taste are ye
saved.”’ Yet the more one reflects on this monstrous statement, the
more is he astonished at the amount of truth in it.
The volume entitled _Conduct of Life_ has a fine rough vigor. Here
are displayed to advantage Emerson’s robust habit of mind, searching
analysis, vivacity and picturesqueness of expression, epigrammatic
skill, homely plain sense, and lofty idealism. The first essay, ‘Fate,’
is an energetic and striking performance. One needs the optimism of
its last paragraphs to counteract the grim terror of the earlier ones.
Seldom has the relentless ferocity of Circumstance, Fate, Environment,
been set forth in terms equally emphatic. The companion essay, ‘Power,’
is a study of the influence of brute force (and its compensations) in
life and history. Emerson shows the value of the ‘bruiser’ in politics,
trade, and in society. This leads to the third subject, ‘Wealth.’ Money
must be had if only to buy bread. Nature insults the man who will
not work. ‘She starves, taunts, and torments him, takes away warmth,
laughter, sleep, friends and daylight, until he has fought his way to
his own loaf.’ But what men of sense want is power, mastery, not candy;
they esteem wealth to be ‘the assimilation of nature to themselves.’
To all this there must be a corrective; it is discussed in the essay
on ‘Culture.’ Nature ruins a man to gain her ends, makes him strong
in things she wants done, weak otherwise, and then robs him of his
sense of proportion so that he becomes an egotist. Culture restores the
balance. Culture rescues a man from himself, ‘kills his exaggeration.’
The simpler means to it are books, travel, society, solitude; and there
are nobler ones, not the least of which is adversity. The discussion
is continued in the practical essay on ‘Behavior’ and lifted to the
highest plane in the essay on ‘Worship.’ The whole state of man is a
state of culture, ‘and its flowering and completion may be described as
Religion or Worship.’ For all its beauty this chapter will not please
many people. They may take refuge in ‘Considerations by the Way,’ which
shows the ‘good of evil,’ or in the fine essay on ‘Beauty’ or the
ironical little closing piece called ‘Illusions.’
VI
THE POEMS