Running through prehistoric ages--coming down from them into the
daybreak of our records, founding theology, suffusing literature, and so
brought onward--(a sort of verteber and marrow to all the antique races
and lands, Egypt, India, Greece, Rome, the Chinese, the Jews, &c., and
giving cast and complexion to their art, poems, and their politics as
well as ecclesiasticism, all of which we more or less inherit,) appear
those venerable claims to origin from God himself, or from gods and
goddesses--ancestry from divine beings of vaster beauty, size, and power
than ours. But in current and latest times, the theory of human
origin that seems to have most made its mark, (curiously reversing the
antique,) is that we have come on, originated, developt, from monkeys,
baboons--a theory more significant perhaps in its indirections, or what
it necessitates, than it is even in itself. (Of the twain, far apart as
they seem, and angrily as their conflicting advocates to-day oppose
each other, are not both theories to be possibly reconcil'd, and even
blended? Can we, indeed, spare either of them? Better still, out of
them is not a third theory, the real one, or suggesting the real one, to
arise?)
Of this old theory, evolution, as broach'd anew, trebled, with indeed
all-devouring claims, by Darwin, it has so much in it, and is so needed
as a counterpoise to yet widely prevailing and unspeakably tenacious,
enfeebling superstitions--is fused, by the new man, into such grand,
modest, truly scientific accompaniments--that the world of erudition,
both moral and physical, cannot but be eventually better'd and broaden'd
in its speculations, from the advent of Darwinism. Nevertheless, the
problem of origins, human and other, is not the least whit nearer
its solution. In due time the Evolution theory will have to abate its
vehemence, cannot be allow'd to dominate every thing else, and will have
to take its place as a segment of the circle, the cluster--as but one of
many theories, many thoughts, of profoundest value--and re-adjusting
and differentiating much, yet leaving the divine secrets just as
inexplicable and unreachable as before--maybe more so.
_Then furthermore_--What is finally to be done by priest or poet--and by
priest or poet only--amid all the stupendous and dazzling novelties
of our century, with the advent of America, and of science and
democracy--remains just as indispensable, after all the work of the
grand astronomers, chemists, linguists, historians, and explorers of the
last hundred years--and the wondrous German and other metaphysicians of
that time--and will continue to remain, needed, America and here,
just the same as in the world of Europe, or Asia, of a hundred, or a
thousand, or several thousand years ago. I think indeed _more_ needed,
to furnish statements from the present points, the added arriere, and
the unspeakably immenser vistas of to-day. Only, the priests and poets
of the modern, at least as exalted as any in the past, fully absorbing
and appreciating the results of the past, in the commonalty of all
humanity, all time, (the main results already, for there is perhaps
nothing more, or at any rate not much, strictly new, only more important
modern combinations, and new relative adjustments,) must indeed recast
the old metal, the already achiev'd material, into and through new
moulds, current forms.
Meantime, the highest and subtlest and broadest truths of modern science
wait for their true assignment and last vivid flashes of light--as
Democracy waits for it's--through first-class metaphysicians and
speculative philosophs--laying the basements and foundations for those
new, more expanded, more harmonious, more melodious, freer American
poems.
"SOCIETY"
I have myself little or no hope from what is technically called
"Society" in our American cities. New York, of which place I have spoken
so sharply, still promises something, in time, out of its tremendous
and varied materials, with a certain superiority of intuitions, and the
advantage of constant agitation, and ever new and rapid dealings of
the cards. Of Boston, with its circles of social mummies, swathed in
cerements harder than brass--its bloodless religion, (Unitarianism,)
its complacent vanity of scientism and literature, lots of grammatical
correctness, mere knowledge, (always wearisome, in itself)--its zealous
abstractions, ghosts of reforms--I should say, (ever admitting its
business powers, its sharp, almost demoniac, intellect, and no lack, in
its own way, of courage and generosity)--there is, at present, little
of cheering, satisfying sign. In the West, California, &c., "society" is
yet unform'd, puerile, seemingly unconscious of anything above a driving
business, or to liberally spend the money made by it, in the usual
rounds and shows.
Then there is, to the humorous observer of American attempts at fashion,
according to the models of foreign courts and saloons, quite a
comic side--particularly visible at Washington city--a sort of
high-life-below-stairs business. As if any farce could be funnier,
for instance, than the scenes of the crowds, winter nights, meandering
around our Presidents and their wives, cabinet officers, western or
other Senators, Representatives, &c.; born of good laboring mechanic or
farmer stock and antecedents, attempting those full-dress receptions,
finesse of parlors, foreign ceremonies, etiquettes, &c.
Indeed, consider'd with any sense of propriety, or any sense at all,
the whole of this illy-play'd fashionable play and display, with their
absorption of the best part of our wealthier citizens' time, money,
energies, &c., is ridiculously out of place in the United States. As if
our proper man and woman, (far, far greater words than "gentleman"
and "lady,") could still fail to see, and presently achieve, not this
spectral business, but something truly noble, active, sane, American--by
modes, perfections of character, manners, costumes, social relations,
&c., adjusted to standards, far, far different from those.
Eminent and liberal foreigners, British or continental, must at times
have their faith fearfully tried by what they see of our New World
personalities. The shallowest and least American persons seem surest
to push abroad, and call without fail on well-known foreigners, who are
doubtless affected with indescribable qualms by these queer ones. Then,
more than half of our authors and writers evidently think it a
great thing to be "aristocratic," and sneer at progress, democracy,
revolution, etc. If some international literary snobs' gallery were
establish'd, it is certain that America could contribute at least her
full share of the portraits, and some very distinguish'd ones. Observe
that the most impudent slanders, low insults, &c., on the great
revolutionary authors, leaders, poets, &c., of Europe, have their origin
and main circulation in certain circles here. The treatment of Victor
Hugo living, and Byron dead, are samples. Both deserving so well of
America, and both persistently attempted to be soil'd here by unclean
birds, male and female.
Meanwhile I must still offset the like of the foregoing, and all it
infers, by the recognition of the fact, that while the surfaces of
current society here show so much that is dismal, noisome, and vapory,
there are, beyond question, inexhaustible supplies, as of true gold ore,
in the mines of America's general humanity. Let us, not ignoring the
dross, give fit stress to these precious immortal values also. Let it
be distinctly admitted, that--whatever may be said of our fashionable
society, and of any foul fractions and episodes--only here in America,
out of the long history and manifold presentations of the ages, has at
last arisen, and now stands, what never before took positive form
and sway, _the People_--and that view'd en masse, and while fully
acknowledging deficiencies, dangers, faults, this people, inchoate,
latent, not yet come to majority, nor to its own religious, literary, or
esthetic expression, yet affords, to-day, an exultant justification
of all the faith, all the hopes and prayers and prophecies of good
men through the past--the stablest, solidest-based government of
the world--the most assured in a future--the beaming Pharos to whose
perennial light all earnest eyes, the world over, are tending--and that
already, in and from it, the democratic principle, having been mortally
tried by severest tests, fatalities of war and peace, now issues from
the trial, unharm'd, trebly-invigorated, perhaps to commence forthwith
its finally triumphant march around the globe.
THE TRAMP AND STRIKE QUESTIONS: _Part of a Lecture proposed, (never
deliver'd)_
Two grim and spectral dangers--dangerous to peace, to health, to social
security, to progress--long known in concrete to the governments of the
Old World, and there eventuating, more than once or twice, in dynastic
overturns, bloodshed, days, months, of terror--seem of late years to
be nearing the New World, nay, to be gradually establishing themselves
among us. What mean these phantoms here? (I personify them in fictitious
shapes, but they are very real.) Is the fresh and broad demesne of
America destined also to give them foothold and lodgment, permanent
domicile?
Beneath the whole political world, what most presses and perplexes
to-day, sending vastest results affecting the future, is not the
abstract question of democracy, but of social and economic organization,
the treatment of working-people by employers, and all that goes along
with it--not only the wages-payment part, but a certain spirit and
principle, to vivify anew these relations; all the questions of
progress, strength, tariffs, finance, &c., really evolving themselves
more or less directly out of the Poverty Question, ("the Science of
Wealth," and a dozen other names are given it, but I prefer the severe
one just used.) I will begin by calling the reader's attention to a
thought upon the matter which may not have struck you before--the wealth
of the civilized world, as contrasted with its poverty--what does it
derivatively stand for, and represent? A rich person ought to have a
strong stomach. As in Europe the wealth of to-day mainly results from,
and represents, the rapine, murder, outrages, treachery, hoggishness, of
hundreds of years ago, and onward, later, so in America, after the same
token--(not yet so bad, perhaps, or at any rate not so palpable--we have
not existed long enough--but we seem to be doing our best to make it
up.)
Curious as it may seem, it is in what are call'd the poorest, lowest
characters you will sometimes, nay generally, find glints of the most
sublime virtues, eligibilities, heroisms. Then it is doubtful whether
the State is to be saved, either in the monotonous long run, or in
tremendous special crises, by its good people only. When the storm is
deadliest, and the disease most imminent, help often comes from strange
quarters--(the homoeopathic motto, you remember, _cure the bite with a
hair of the same dog.)_
The American Revolution of 1776 was simply a great strike, successful
for its immediate object--but whether a real success judged by the scale
of the centuries, and the long-striking balance of Time, yet remains to
be settled. The French Revolution was absolutely a strike, and a very
terrible and relentless one, against ages of bad pay, unjust division
of wealth-products, and the hoggish monopoly of a few, rolling in
superfluity, against the vast bulk of the work-people, living in
squalor.
If the United States, like the countries of the Old World, are also
to grow vast crops of poor, desperate, dissatisfied, nomadic,
miserably-waged populations, such as we see looming upon us of late
years--steadily, even if slowly, eating into them like a cancer of lungs
or stomach--then our republican experiment, notwithstanding all its
surface-successes, is at heart an unhealthy failure.
_Feb. '79._--I saw to-day a sight I had never seen before--and it
amazed, and made me serious; three quite good-looking American men,
of respectable personal presence, two of them young, carrying
chiffonier-bags on their shoulders, and the usual long iron hooks in
their hands, plodding along, their eyes cast down, spying for scraps,
rags, bones, &c.