EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN.
It is not with Americans as with other peoples. Our position is more
vague and difficult, because it is not primarily related to the senses.
I can easily find out where England or Prussia is, and recognize an
Englishman or German when we meet; but we Americans are not, to the
same extent as these, limited by geographical and physical boundaries.
The origin of America was not like that of the European nations; the
latter were born after the flesh, but we after the spirit. It is of the
first consequence to them that their frontiers should be defended, and
their nationality kept distinct. But, though I esteem highly all our
innumerable square miles of East and West, North and South, and our
Pacific and Atlantic coasts, I cannot help deeming them quite a
secondary consideration. If America is not a great deal more than these
United States, then the United States are no better than a penal
colony. It is convenient, no doubt, for a great idea to find a great
embodiment--a suitable incarnation and stage; but the idea does not
depend upon these things. It is an accidental--or, I would rather say,
a Providential--matter that the Puritans came to New England, or that
Columbus discovered the continent in time for them; but it has always
happened that when a soul is born it finds a body ready fitted to it.
The body, however, is an instrument merely; it enables the spirit to
take hold of its mortal life, just as the hilt enables us to grasp the
sword. If the Puritans had not come to New England, still the spirit
that animated them would have lived, and made itself a place somehow.
And, in fact, how many Puritans, for how many ages previous, had been
trying to find standing-room in the world, and failed! They called
themselves by many names; their voices were heard in many countries;
the time had not yet come for them to be born--to touch their earthly
inheritance; but, meantime, the latent impetus was accumulating, and
the Mayflower was driven across the Atlantic by it at last. Nor is this
all--the Mayflower is sailing still between the old world and the new.
Every day it brings new settlers, if not to our material harbors--to
our Boston Bay, our Castle Garden, our Golden Gate--at any rate, to our
mental ports and wharves. We cannot take up a European newspaper
without finding an American idea in it. It is said that a great many of
our countrymen take the steamer to England every summer. But they come
back again; and they bring with them many who come to stay. I do not
refer specially to the occupants of the steerage--the literal
emigrants. One cannot say much about them--they may be Americans or
not, as it turns out. But England and the continent are full of
Americans who were born there, and many of whom will die there.
Sometimes they are better Americans than the New Yorker or the
Bostonian who lives in Beacon Street or the Bowery and votes in the
elections. They may be born and reside where they please, but they
belong to us, and, in the better sense, they are among us. Broadway and
Washington Street, Vermont and Colorado extend all over Europe. Russia
is covered with them; she tries to shove them away to Siberia, but in
vain. We call mountains and prairies solid facts; but the geography of
the mind is infinitely more stubborn. I dare say there are a great many
oblique-eyed, pig-tailed New Englanders in the Celestial Empire. They
may never have visited these shores, or even heard of them; but what of
that? They think our thought--they have apprehended our idea, and, by
and by, they or their heirs will cause it to prevail.
It is useless for us to hide our heads in the grass and refuse to rise
to the height of our occasion. We are here as the realization of a
truth--the fulfilment of a prophecy; we must attest a new departure in
the moral and intellectual development of the human race; for whichever
of us does not, must suffer annihilation. If I deny my birthright as an
American, I shall disappear and not be missed, for an American will
take my place. It is not altogether a luxurious position to find
yourself in. You cannot sit still and hold your hands. All manner of
hard and unpleasant things are expected of you, which you neglect at
your peril. It is like the old fable of the mermaid. She loved a mortal
youth, and, in order that she might win his affection, she prayed that
she might have the limbs and feet of a human maiden. Her prayer was
answered, and she met her prince; but every step she took was as if she
trod on razors. It is a fine thing to sit in your chair and reflect on
being an American; but when you have to rise up and do an American's
duty before the world--how sharp the razors are!
Of course, we do not always endure the test; the flesh and blood on
this side of the planet is not, so far as I have observed, of a quality
essentially different from that on the other. Possibly our population
is too many for us. Out of fifty million people it would be strange if
here and there one appeared who was not at all points a hero. Indeed, I
am sometimes tempted to think that that little band of original
Mayflower Pilgrims has not greatly multiplied since their
disembarkation. However it may be with their bodily offspring, their
spiritual progeny are not invariably found in the chair of the Governor
or on the floor of the Senate. What are these Irish fellow-creatures
doing here? Well, Bridget serves us in the kitchen; but Patrick is more
helpful yet; he goes to the legislature, and is the servant of the
people at large. It is very obliging of him; but turn and turn about is
fair play; and it would be no more than justice were we, once in a
while, to take off our coat and serve Patrick in the same way.
When we get into a tight place we are apt to try to slip out of it
under some plea of a European precedent. But it used to be supposed
that it was precisely European precedents that we came over here to
avoid. I am not profoundly versed in political economy, nor is this the
time or place to discuss its principles; but, as regards protection,
for example, I can conceive that there may be arguments against it as
well as for it. Emerson used to say that the way to conquer the foreign
artisan was not to kill him but to beat his work. He also pointed out
that the money we made out of the European wars, at the beginning of
this century, had the result of bringing the impoverished population of
those countries down upon us in the shape of emigrants. They shared our
crops and went on the poor-rates, and so we did not gain so much after
all. One cannot help wishing that America would assume the loftiest
possible ground in her political and commercial relations. With all due
respect to the sagacity and ability of our ruling demagogues, I should
not wish them to be quoted as typical Americans. The domination of such
persons has an effect which is by no means measurable by their personal
acts. What they can do is of infinitesimal importance. But the mischief
is that they incline every one of us to believe, as Emerson puts it, in
two gods. They make the morality of Wall Street and the White House
seem to be a different thing from that of our parlors and nurseries.
"He may be a little shady on 'change," we say, "but he is a capital
fellow when you know him." But if he is a capital fellow when I know
him, then I shall never find much fault with his professional
operations, and shall end, perhaps, by allowing him to make some
investments for me. Why should not I be a capital fellow too--and a
fellow of capital, to boot! I can endure public opprobrium with
tolerable equanimity so long as it remains public. It is the private
cold looks that trouble me.
In short, we may speak of America in two senses--either meaning the
America that actually meets us at the street corners and in the
newspapers, or the ideal America--America as it ought to be. They are
not the same thing; and, at present, there seems to be a good deal more
of the former than of the latter. And yet, there is a connection
between them; the latter has made the former possible. We sometimes see
a great crowd drawn together by proclamation, for some noble
purpose--to decide upon a righteous war, or to pass a just decree. But
the people on the outskirts of the crowd, finding themselves unable to
hear the orators, and their time hanging idle on their hands, take to
throwing stones, knocking off hats, or, perhaps, picking pockets. They
may have come to the meeting with as patriotic or virtuous intentions
as the promoters themselves; nay, under more favorable circumstances,
they might themselves have become promoters. Virtue and patriotism are
not private property; at certain times any one may possess them. And,
on the other hand, we have seen examples enough, of late, of persons of
the highest respectability and trust turning out, all at once, to be
very sorry scoundrels. A man changes according to the person with whom
he converses; and though the outlook is rather sordid to-day, we have
not forgotten that during the Civil War the air seemed full of heroism.
So that these two Americas--the real and the ideal--far apart though
they may be in one sense, may, in another sense, be as near together as
our right hand to our left. In a greater or less degree, they exist
side by side in each one of us. But civil wars do not come every day;
nor can we wish them to, even to show us once more that we are worthy
of our destiny. We must find some less expensive and quieter method of
reminding ourselves of that. And of such methods, none, perhaps, is
better than to review the lives of Americans who were truly great; to
ask what their country meant to them; what they wished her to become;
what virtues and what vices they detected in her. Passion may be
generous, but passion cannot last; and when it is over, we are cold and
indifferent again. But reason and example reach us when we are calm and
passive; and what they inculcate is more likely to abide. At least, it
will be only evil passion that can cast it out.
I have said that many a true American is doubtless born, and lives,
abroad; but that does not prevent Emerson from having been born here.
So far as the outward accidents of generation and descent go, he could
not have been more American than he was. Of course, one prefers that it
should be so. A rare gem should be fitly set. A noble poem should be
printed with the fairest type of the Riverside Press, and upon fine
paper with wide margins. It helps us to believe in ourselves to be told
that Emerson's ancestry was not only Puritan, but clerical; that the
central and vital thread of the idea that created us, ran through his
heart. The nation, and even New England, Massachusetts, Boston, have
many traits that are not found in him; but there is nothing in him that
is not a refinement, a sublimation and concentration of what is good in
them; and the selection and grouping of the elements are such that he
is a typical figure. Indeed, he is all type; which is the same as
saying that there is nobody like him. And, mentally, he produces the
impression of being all force; in his writings, his mind seems to have
acted immediately, without natural impediment or friction; as if a
machine should be run that was not hindered by the contact of its
parts. As he was physically lean and narrow of figure, and his face
nothing but so many features welded together, so there was no adipose
tissue in his thought. It is pure, clear, and accurate, and has the
fault of dryness; but often moves in forms of exquisite beauty. It is
not adhesive; it sticks to nothing, nor anything to it; after ranging
through all the various philosophies of the world, it comes out as
clean and characteristic as ever. It has numberless affinities, but no
adhesion; it does not even adhere to itself. There are many separate
statements in any one of his essays which present no logical
continuity; but although this fact has caused great anxiety to many
disciples of Emerson, it never troubled him. It was the inevitable
result of his method of thought. Wandering at will in the flower-garden
of religious and moral philosophy, it was his part to pluck such
blossoms as he saw were beautiful; not to find out their botanical
interconnection. He would afterward arrange them, for art or harmony's
sake, according to their color or their fragrance; but it was not his
affair to go any farther in their classification.
This intuitive method of his, however little it may satisfy those who
wish to have all their thinking done for them, who desire not only to
have given to them all the cities of the earth, but also to have
straight roads built for them from one to the other, carries with it
its own justification. "There is but one reason," is Emerson's saying;
and again and again does he prove without proving it. We confess, over
and over, that the truth which he asserts is indeed a truth. Even his
own variations from the truth, when he is betrayed into them, serve to
confirm the rule. For these are seldom or never intuitions at first
hand--pure intuitions; but, as it were, intuitions from previous
intuitions--deductions. The form of statement is the same, but the
source is different; they are from Emerson, instead of from the
Absolute; tinted, not colorless. They show a mental bias, very slight,
but redeeming him back to humanity. We love him the more for them,
because they indicate that for him, too, there was a choice of ways,
and that he must struggle and watch to choose the right.
We are so much wedded to systems, and so accustomed to connect a system
with a man, that the absence of system, either explicit or implicit, in
Emerson, strikes us as a defect. And yet truth has no system, nor the
human mind. This philosopher maintains one, that another thesis. Both
are true essentially, and yet there seems a contradiction between them.
We cannot bear to be illogical, and so we enlist some under this
banner, some under that. By so doing we sacrifice to consistency at
least the half of truth. Thence we come to examine our intuitions, and
ask them, not whether they are true in themselves, but what are their
tendencies. If it turn out that they will lead us to stultify some past
conclusion to which we stand committed, we drop them like hot coals. To
Emerson, this behavior appeared the nakedest personal vanity.
Recognizing that he was finite, he could not desire to be consistent.
If he saw to-day that one thing was true, and to-morrow that its
opposite was true, was it for him to elect which of the two truths
should have his preference? No; to reject either would be to reject
all; it belonged to God alone to reconcile these contradictious.
Between infinite and finite can be no ratio; and the consistency of the
Creator implies the inconsistency of the creature.
Emerson's Americanism, therefore, was Americanism in its last and
purest analysis, which is giving him high praise, and to America great
hope. But I do not mean to pay him, who was so full of modesty and
humility, the ungrateful compliment of holding him up as the permanent
American ideal. It is his tendencies, his quality, that are valuable,
and only in a minor, incipient degree his actual results. All human
results must be strictly limited, and according to the epoch and
outlook. Emerson does not solve for all time the problem of the
universe; he solves nothing; but he does what is far more useful--he
gives a direction and an impetus to lofty human endeavor. He does not
anticipate the lessons and the discipline of the ages, but he shows us
how to deal with circumstances in such a manner as to secure the good
instead of the evil influence. New conditions, fresh discoveries,
unexpected horizons opening before us, will, no doubt, soon carry us
beyond the scope of Emerson's surmise; but we shall not so easily
improve upon his aim and attitude. In the spaces beyond the stars there
may be marvels such as it has not entered into the mind of man to
conceive; but there, as here, the right way to look will still be
upward, and the right aspiration be still toward humbleness and
charity. I have just spoken of Emerson's absence of system; but his
writings have nevertheless a singular coherence, by virtue of the
single-hearted motive that has inspired them. Many will, doubtless,
have noticed, as I have done, how the whole of Emerson illustrates
every aspect of him.
Whether your discourse be of his religion, of his ethics, of his
relation to society, or what not, the picture that you draw will have
gained color and form from every page that he has written. He does not
lie in strata; all that he is permeates all that he has done. His books
cannot be indexed, unless you would refer every subject to each
paragraph. And so he cannot treat, no matter what subject, without
incorporating in his statement the germs at least of all that he has
thought and believed. In this respect he is like light--the presence of
the general at the particular. And, to confess the truth, I find myself
somewhat loath to diffract this pure ray to the arbitrary end of my
special topic. Why should I speak of him as an American? That is not
his definition. He was an American because he was himself. America,
however, gives less limitation than any other nationality to a generous
and serene personality.
I am sometimes disposed to think that Emerson's "English Traits" reveal
his American traits more than anything else he has written. We are
described by our own criticisms of others, and especially by our
criticisms of another nation; the exceptions we take are the mould of
our own figures. So we have valuable glimpses of Emerson's contours
throughout this volume. And it is in all respects a fortunate work; as
remarkable a one almost for him to write as a volume of his essays for
any one else. Comparatively to his other books, it is as flesh and
blood to spirit; Emersonian flesh and blood, it is true, and
semi-translucent; but still it completes the man for us: he would have
remained too problematical without it. Those who have never personally
known him may finish and solidify their impressions of him here. He
likes England and the English, too; and that sympathy is beyond our
expectation of the mind that evolved "Nature" and "The Over-Soul." The
grasp of his hand, I remember, was firm and stout, and we perceive
those qualities in the descriptions and cordiality of "English Traits."
Then, it is an objective book; the eye looks outward, not inward; these
pages afford a basis not elsewhere obtainable of comparing his general
human faculty with that of other men. Here he descends from the airy
heights he treads so easily and, standing foot to foot with his peers,
measures himself against them. He intends only to report their stature,
and to leave himself out of the story; but their answers to his
questions show what the questions were, and what the questioner. And we
cannot help suspecting, though he did not, that the Englishmen were not
a little put to it to keep pace with their clear-faced, penetrating,
attentive visitor.
He has never said of his own countrymen the comfortable things that he
tells of the English; but we need not grumble at that. The father who
is severe with his own children will freely admire those of others, for
whom he is not responsible. Emerson is stern toward what we are, and
arduous indeed in his estimate of what we ought to be. He intimates
that we are not quite worthy of our continent; that we have not as yet
lived up to our blue china. "In America the geography is sublime, but
the men are not." And he adds that even our more presentable public
acts are due to a money-making spirit: "The benefaction derived in
Illinois and the great West from railroads is inestimable, and vastly
exceeding any intentional philanthropy on record." He does not think
very respectfully of the designs or the doings of the people who went
to California in 1849, though he admits that "California gets civilized
in this immoral way," and is fain to suppose that, "as there is use in
the world for poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues," and
that, in respect of America, "the huge animals nourish huge parasites,
and the rancor of the disease attests the strength of the
constitution." He ridicules our unsuspecting provincialism: "Have you
seen the dozen great men of New York and Boston? Then you may as well
die!" He does not spare our tendency to spread-eagleism and
declamation, and having quoted a shrewd foreigner as saying of
Americans that, "Whatever they say has a little the air of a speech,"
he proceeds to speculate whether "the American forest has refreshed
some weeds of old Pictish barbarism just ready to die out?" He finds
the foible especially of American youth to be--pretension; and remarks,
suggestively, that we talk much about the key of the age, but "the key
to all ages is imbecility!" He cannot reconcile himself to the mania
for going abroad. "There is a restlessness in our people that argues
want of character.... Can we never extract this tapeworm of Europe from
the brain of our countrymen?" He finds, however, this involuntary
compensation in the practice--that, practically "we go to Europe to be
Americanized," and has faith that "one day we shall cast out the
passion for Europe by the passion for America." As to our political
doings, he can never regard them with complacency. "Politics is an
afterword," he declares--"a poor patching. We shall one day learn to
supersede politics by education." He sympathizes with Lovelace's theory
as to iron bars and stone walls, and holds that freedom and slavery are
inward, not outward conditions. Slavery is not in circumstance, but in
feeling; you cannot eradicate the irons by external restrictions; and
the truest way to emancipate the slave would be to educate him to a
comprehension of his inviolable dignity and freedom as a human being.
Amelioration of outward circumstances will be the effect, but can never
be the means of mental and moral improvement. "Nothing is more
disgusting," he affirms, generalizing the theme, "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 Independence'
or the statute right to vote." But, "Our America has a bad name for
superficialness. Great men, great nations, have not been boasters and
buffoons, but perceivers of the terrors of life, and have nerved
themselves to face it." He will not be deceived by the clamor of
blatant reformers. "If an angry bigot assumes the bountiful cause of
abolition, and comes to me with his last news from Barbadoes, why
should I not say to him: 'Go love thy infant; love thy wood-chopper; be
good-natured and modest; have that grace, and never varnish your hard,
uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk a
thousand miles off!'"
He does not shrink from questioning the validity of some of our pet
institutions, as, for instance, universal suffrage. He reminds us that
in old Egypt the vote of a prophet was reckoned equal to one hundred
hands, and records his opinion that it was much underestimated. "Shall
we, then," he asks, "judge a country by the majority or by the
minority? By the minority, surely! 'Tis pedantry to estimate nations by
the census, or by square miles of land, or other than by their
importance to the mind of the time." The majority are unripe, and do
not yet know their own opinion. He would not, however, counsel an
organic alteration in this respect, believing that, with the progress
of enlightenment, such coarse constructions of human rights will adjust
themselves. He concedes the sagacity of the Fultons and Watts of
politics, who, noticing that the opinion of the million was the terror
of the world, grouped it on a level, instead of piling it into a
mountain, and so contrived to make of this terror the most harmless and
energetic form of a State. But, again, he would not have us regard the
State as a finality, or as relieving any man of his individual
responsibility for his actions and purposes. We are to confide in
God--and not in our money, and in the State because it is guard of it.
The Union itself has no basis but the good pleasure of the majority to
be united. The wise and just men impart strength to the State, not
receive it; and, if all went down, they and their like would soon
combine in a new and better constitution. Yet he will not have us
forget that only by the supernatural is a man strong; nothing so weak
as an egotist. We are mighty only as vehicles of a truth before which
State and individual are alike ephemeral. In this sense we, like other
nations, shall have our kings and nobles--the leading and inspiration
of the best; and he who would become a member of that nobility must
obey his heart.
Government, he observes, has been a fossil--it should be a plant;
statute law should express, not impede, the mind of mankind. In tracing
the course of human political institutions, he finds feudalism
succeeding monarchy, and this again followed by trade, the good and
evil of which is that it would put everything in the market, talent,
beauty, virtue, and man himself. By this means it has done its work; it
has faults and will end as the others. Its aristocracy need not be
feared, for it can have no permanence, it is not entailed. In the time
to come, he hopes to see us less anxious to be governed, in the
technical sense; each man shall govern himself in the interests of all;
government without any governor will be, for the first time,
adamantine. Is not every man sometimes a radical in politics? Men are
conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most
luxurious; conservatism stands on man's limitations, reform on his
infinitude. The age of the quadruped is to go out; the age of the brain
and the heart is to come in. We are too pettifogging and imitative in
our legislative conceptions; the Legislature of this country should
become more catholic and cosmopolitan than any other. Let us be brave
and strong enough to trust in humanity; strong natures are inevitable
patriots. The time, the age, what is that, but a few prominent persons
and a few active persons who epitomize the times? There is a bribe
possible for any finite will; but the pure sympathy with universal ends
is an infinite force, and cannot be bribed or bent. The world wants
saviors and religions; society is servile from want of will; but there
is a Destiny by which the human race is guided, the race never dying,
the individual never spared; its law is, you shall have everything as a
member, nothing to yourself. Referring to the communities of various
kinds, which were so much in vogue some years ago, he holds such to be
valuable, not for what they have done, but for the indication they give
of the revolution that is on the way. They place great faith in mutual
support, but it is only as a man puts off from himself all external
support and stands alone, that he is strong and will prevail. He is
weaker by every recruit to his banner. A man ought to compare
advantageously with a river, an oak, or a mountain. He must not shun
whatever comes to him in the way of duty; the only path of escape
is--performance. He must rely on Providence, but not in a timid or
ecclesiastical spirit; it is no use to dress up that terrific
benefactor in a clean shirt and white neckcloth of a student of
divinity. We shall come out well, whatever personal or political
disasters may intervene. For here in America is the home of man. After
deducting our pitiful politics--shall John or Jonathan sit in the chair
and hold the purse?--and making due allowance for our frivolities and
insanities, there still remains an organic simplicity and liberty,
which, when it loses its balance, redresses itself presently, and which
offers to the human mind opportunities not known elsewhere.
Whenever he touches upon the fundamental elements of social and
rational life, it is always to enlarge and illuminate our conception of
them. We are not wont to question the propriety of the sentiment of
patriotism, for instance. We are to swear by our own _lares_ and
_penates_, and stand up for the American eagle, right or wrong. But
Emerson instantly goes beneath this interpretation and exposes its
crudity. The true sense of patriotism, according to him, is almost the
reverse of its popular sense. He has no sympathy with that boyish
egotism, hoarse with cheering for our side, for our State, for our
town; the right patriotism consists in the delight which springs from
contributing our peculiar and legitimate advantages to the benefit of
humanity. Every foot of soil has its proper quality; the grape on two
sides of the fence has new flavors; and so every acre on the globe,
every family of men, every point of climate, has its distinguishing
virtues. This being admitted, however, Emerson will yield in patriotism
to no one; his only concern is that the advantages we contribute shall
be the most instead of the least possible. "This country," he says,
"does not lie here in the sun causeless, and though it may not be easy
to define its influence, men feel already its emancipating quality in
the careless self-reliance of the manners, in the freedom of thought,
in the direct roads by which grievances are reached and redressed, and
even in the reckless and sinister politics, not less than in purer
expressions. Bad as it is, this freedom leads onward and upward to a
Columbia of thought and art, which is the last and endless end of
Columbus's adventure." Nor is this poet of virtue and philosophy ever
more truly patriotic, from his spiritual standpoint, than when he
throws scorn and indignation upon his country's sins and frailties.
"But who is he that prates of the culture of mankind, of better arts
and life? Go, blind worm, go--behold the famous States harrying Mexico
with rifle and with knife! Or who, with accent bolder, dare praise the
freedom-loving mountaineer? I found by thee, O rushing Contoocook! and
in thy valleys, Agiochook! the jackals of the negro-holder.... What
boots thy zeal, O glowing friend, that would indignant rend the
northland from the South? Wherefore? To what good end? Boston Bay and
Bunker Hill would serve things still--things are of the snake. The
horseman serves the horse, the neat-herd serves the neat, the merchant
serves the purse, the eater serves his meat; 'tis the day of the
chattel, web to weave, and corn to grind; things are in the saddle, and
ride mankind!"
But I must not begin to quote Emerson's poetry; only it is worth noting
that he, whose verse is uniformly so abstractly and intellectually
beautiful, kindles to passion whenever his theme is of America. The
loftiest patriotism never found more ardent and eloquent expression
than in the hymn sung at the completion of the Concord monument, on the
19th of April, 1836. There is no rancor in it; no taunt of triumph;
"the foe long since in silence slept"; but throughout there resounds a
note of pure and deep rejoicing at the victory of justice over
oppression, which Concord fight so aptly symbolized. In "Hamatreya" and
"The Earth Song," another chord is struck, of calm, laconic irony.
Shall we too, he asks, we Yankee farmers, descendants of the men who
gave up all for freedom, go back to the creed outworn of medieval
feudalism and aristocracy, and say, of the land that yields us its
produce, "'Tis mine, my children's, and my name's"? Earth laughs in
flowers at our boyish boastfulness, and asks "How am I theirs if they
cannot hold me, but I hold them?" "When I heard 'The Earth Song,' I was
no longer brave; my avarice cooled, like lust in the child of the
grave" Or read "Monadnoc," and mark the insight and the power with
which the significance and worth of the great facts of nature are
interpreted and stated. "Complement of human kind, having us at vantage
still, our sumptuous indigence, oh, barren mound, thy plenties fill! We
fool and prate; thou art silent and sedate. To myriad kinds and times
one sense the constant mountain doth dispense; shedding on all its
snows and leaves, one joy it joys, one grief it grieves. Thou seest,
oh, watchman tall, our towns and races grow and fall, and imagest the
stable good for which we all our lifetime grope; and though the
substance us elude, we in thee the shadow find." ... "Thou dost supply
the shortness of our days, and promise, on thy Founder's truth, long
morrow to this mortal youth!" I have ignored the versified form in
these extracts, in order to bring them into more direct contrast with
the writer's prose, and show that the poetry is inherent. No other
poet, with whom I am acquainted, has caused the very spirit of a land,
the mother of men, to express itself so adequately as Emerson has done
in these pieces. Whitman falls short of them, it seems to me, though
his effort is greater.
Emerson is continually urging us to give heed to this grand voice of
hills and streams, and to mould ourselves upon its suggestions. The
difficulty and the anomaly are that we are not native; that England is
our mother, quite as much as Monadnoc; that we are heirs of memories
and traditions reaching far beyond the times and the confines of the
Republic. We cannot assume the splendid childlikeness of the great
primitive races, and exhibit the hairy strength and unconscious genius
that the poet longs to find in us. He remarks somewhere that the
culminating period of good in nature and the world is in just that
moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully
from nature, but their astringency or acidity is got out by ethics and
humanity.
It was at such a period that Greece attained her apogee; but our
experience, it seems to me, must needs be different. Our story is not
of birth, but of regeneration, a far more subtle and less obvious
transaction. The Homeric California of which Bret Harte is the reporter
does not seem to me in the closest sense American. It is a
comparatively superficial matter--this savage freedom and raw poetry;
it belongs to all pioneering life, where every man must stand for
himself, and Judge Lynch strings up the defaulter to the nearest tree.
But we are only incidentally pioneers in this sense; and the
characteristics thus impressed upon us will leave no traces in the
completed American. "A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont," says
Emerson, "who in turn tries all the professions--who teams it, farms
it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to
Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and
always, like a cat, falls on his feet--is worth a hundred of these city
dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not
studying a 'profession,' for he does not postpone his life, but lives
already." That is stirringly said: but, as a matter of fact, most of
the Americans whom we recognize as great did not have such a history;
nor, if they had it, would they be on that account more American. On
the other hand, the careers of men like Jim Fiske and Commodore
Vanderbilt might serve very well as illustrations of the above sketch.
If we must wait for our character until our geographical advantages and
the absence of social distinctions manufacture it for us, we are likely
to remain a long while in suspense. When our foreign visitors begin to
evince a more poignant interest in Concord and Fifth Avenue than in the
Mississippi and the Yellowstone, it may be an indication to us that we
are assuming our proper position relative to our physical environment.
"The _land_," says Emerson, "is a sanative and Americanizing influence
which promises to disclose new virtues for ages to come." Well, when we
are virtuous, we may, perhaps, spare our own blushes by allowing our
topography, symbolically, to celebrate us, and when our admirers would
worship the purity of our intentions, refer them to Walden Pond; or to
Mount Shasta, when they would expatiate upon our lofty generosity. It
is, perhaps, true, meanwhile, that the chances of a man's leading a
decent life are greater in a palace than in a pigsty.
But this is holding our author too strictly to the letter of his
message. And, at any rate, the Americanism of Emerson is better than
anything that he has said in vindication of it. He is the champion of
this commonwealth; he is our future, living in our present, and showing
the world, by anticipation, as it were, what sort of excellence we are
capable of attaining. A nation that has produced Emerson, and can
recognize in him bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh--and, still
more, spirit of her spirit--that nation may look toward the coming age
with security. But he has done more than thus to prophesy of his
country; he is electric and stimulates us to fulfil our destiny. To use
a phrase of his own, we "cannot hear of personal vigor of any kind,
great power of performance, without fresh resolution." Emerson, helps
us most in provoking us to help ourselves. The pleasantest revenge is
that which we can sometimes take upon our great men in quoting of
themselves what they have said of others.
It is easy to be so revenged upon Emerson, because he, more than most
persons of such eminence, has been generous and cordial in his
appreciation of all human worth. "If there should appear in the
company," he observes, "some gentle soul who knows little of persons
and parties, of Carolina or Cuba, but who announces a law that disposes
these particulars, and so certifies me of the equity which checkmates
every false player, bankrupts every self-seeker, and apprises me of my
independence on any conditions of country, or time, or human body, that
man liberates me.... I am made immortal by apprehending my possession
of incorruptible goods." Who can state the mission and effect of
Emerson more tersely and aptly than those words do it?
But, once more, he does not desire eulogiums, and it seems half
ungenerous to force them upon him now that he can no longer defend
himself. I prefer to conclude by repeating a passage characteristic of
him both as a man and as an American, and which, perhaps, conveys a
sounder and healthier criticism, both for us and for him, than any mere
abject and nerveless admiration; for great men are great only in so far
as they liberate us, and we undo their work in courting their tyranny.
The passage runs thus:--
"Let me remind the reader that I am only an experimenter. Do not set
the least value on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not,
as if I pretended to settle anything as true or false. I unsettle all
things. No facts to me are sacred; none are profane. I simply
experiment--an endless seeker, with no Past at my back!"