THE PARISH OF YOUNG MEN
“_My parish is young men inquiring their way._”
Emerson’s parish did not include all young men. Indeed he was very ill
at ease with the typical “young person.” And there are many anecdotes
which indicate that the young person shared the embarrassment. The
gregariousness of youth with its tumultuous mass movements were
rather appalling to one of his temperament. Nor was he fitted for the
difficult rôle of spiritual adviser.
Emerson’s widely scattered parish was made up of another kind of young
men. They were young men who were not seeking to find out _his_ way,
but their own. He encouraged them in it. That made them his debtors for
life.
These parishioners of his could not possibly be gathered into one
congregation. They formed no cult or party. Each was so absorbed
in his own special endeavor that he had little time to make the
acquaintance of his fellow parishioner, but each in the formative
period of his life had received the stimulus he most needed. He had
been bewildered by the conflicting counsels of his elders. Each
counsellor had said, “Be like me.” Then one clear voice had suggested,
“Why not be yourself?”
The suggestion was so unexpected and yet so reasonable that it was
acted upon. The young man found himself, which is the one discovery
that counts.
America prides itself on being the land of the free. We have had many
political emancipators, but the roll of intellectual emancipators
is short. Having dethroned kings, we live under the fear of public
opinion. The aggregate mind tyrannizes over the individual intellect.
There is a deadly average which it is not considered safe for one to
pass.
To his parish of young men Emerson was always preaching that the world
is in dire need of men with fresh insight who are not satisfied with
things as they are. The “average man” should not be content with the
average attainment. He has within him powers which rightly used could
lift him far above his present condition. He is, and of right ought
to be, a free and independent soul. A decent respect for the opinion
of the world demands that he should declare his independence in
unmistakable terms.
“What strikes us in the fine genius is that which belongs of right to
every one. A man should know himself for a necessary actor. A link
was wanting between two craving parts of nature, and he was hurled
into being as the bridge over that yawning need, the mediator betwixt
two else unmarriageable facts. His two parents held each of one of
the wants, and the union of foreign constitutions in him enables
him to do gladly and gracefully what the assembled human race could
not have sufficed to do. He knows his materials; he applies himself
to his work; he can not read, or think, or look, but he unites the
hitherto separated strands--into a perfect cord. The thoughts he
delights to utter are the reason of his incarnation. Is it for him to
account himself cheap and superfluous, or to linger by the wayside
for opportunities? Did he not come into being because something must
be done which he and no other is and does? If only he _sees_, the
world will be visible enough. He need not study where to stand, nor
to put things in favorable lights; in him is the light, from him all
things are illuminated to their centre. What patron shall he ask for
employment and reward? Hereto was he born, to deliver the thought of
his heart from the universe to the universe, to do an office which
nature could not forego, nor he be discharged from rendering, and then
immerge again into the holy silence and eternity out of which as a
man he arose. God is rich, and many more men than one he harbours in
his bosom, biding their time and the needs and the beauty of all. Is
not this the theory of every man’s genius or faculty? Why then goest
thou as some Boswell or listening worshipper to this saint or to that?
That is the only lese-majesty. Here art thou with whom so long the
universe travailed in labor; darest thou think meanly of thyself whom
the stalwart Fate brought forth to unite his ragged sides, to shoot
the gulf, to reconcile the irreconcilable?”
As for the chill wisdom of age with its timid counsels, let the
young man defy it. Length of days does not bring wisdom unless it is
accompanied by a power of spiritual rejuvenation, and then it becomes
the wisdom of perpetual youthfulness.
“Why should we import rags and relics into the new hour? Nature abhors
the old, and old age seems the only disease; all others run into
this one. We call it by many names--fever, intemperance, insanity,
stupidity, and crime; they are all forms of old age; they are rest,
conservatism, appropriation, inertia, not newness, not the way onward.
We grizzle every day. I see no need of it. Whilst we converse with
what is above us, we do not grow old, but grow young. Infancy, youth,
receptive, aspiring, with religious eye looking upward, counts
itself nothing, and abandons itself to the instruction flowing from
all sides. But the man and woman of seventy assume to know all,
they have outlived their hope, they renounce aspiration, accept the
actual for the necessary, and talk down to the young. Let them, then,
become organs of the Holy Ghost; let them be lovers; let them behold
truth; and their eyes are uplifted, their wrinkles smoothed, they are
perfumed again with hope and power. This old age ought not to creep
on a human mind. In nature every moment is new; the past is always
swallowed and forgotten; the coming only is sacred. Nothing is secure
but life, transition, the energizing spirit. No love can be bound
by oath or covenant to secure it against a higher love. No truth so
sublime but it may be trivial to-morrow in the light of new thoughts.
People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there
any hope for them.”
The reader will observe that Emerson in the midst of his praise of
the spirit of youth gives a sly dig at one of the foibles of his
parishioners. There is a quality of bumptiousness which is often found
in early life. Emerson treats it as a kind of premature senility.
“Whilst we converse with what is above us we do not grow old.”
Conversely the person who cannot look up religiously to something above
his present attainments had aged rapidly. A person may be a dotard
while yet in the twenties. This was a sobering thought not unfrequently
presented to the parish of young men.