eminent and successful; everything of his doctrine and discipline
comes commended by its elegance and humanity, and justifies the
name he bore of the golden-souled Samian, and founder of Greek
culture. He seems to have stood in providential nearness to human
sensibility, as if his were a maternal relation as well, and he
owned the minds whom he nurtured and educated. The first of
philosophers, taking the name for its modesty of pretension, he
justified his claim to it in the attainments and services of his
followers; his school having given us Socrates, Plato, Pericles,
Plutarch, Plotinus, and others of almost equal fame, founders of
states and cultures.... He was reverenced by the multitude as one
under the influence of divine inspiration. He abstained from all
intoxicating drinks, and from animal food, confining himself to a
chaste nutriment; hence his sleep was short and undisturbed; his
soul vigilant and pure; his body in state of perfect and invariable
health. He was free from the superstitions of his time, and
pervaded with a deep sense of duty towards God, and veneration for
his divine attributes and immanency in things. He fixed his mind so
intently on the attainment of wisdom, that systems and mysteries
inaccessible to others were opened to him by his magic genius and
sincerity of purpose. The great principle with which he started,
that of being a seeker rather than a possessor of truth, seemed
ever to urge him forward with a diligence and activity
unprecedented in the history of the past, and perhaps unequalled
since. He visited every man who could claim any degree of fame for
wisdom or learning; whilst the rules of antiquity and the simplest
operations of nature seemed to yield to his researches; and we
moderns are using his eyes in many departments of activity into
which pure thought enters, being indebted to him for important
discoveries alike in science and metaphysics."
It is evident that the New England sage made the Greek philosopher his
model in other respects than the adoption of his philosophical method
implied. The rules of personal conduct and behavior, of social
intercourse, and civil association, were studiously practised on by the
American disciple, who seemed never to forget the dignified and gracious
figure whose fame charmed him.
Mr. Alcott's philosophical ideas are not many, but they are profound and
significant.
"The Dialectic, or Method of the Mind,"--he says in "Concord Days,"
under the head of Ideal Culture,--"constitutes the basis of all
culture. Without a thorough discipline in this, our schools and
universities give but a showy and superficial training. The
knowledge of mind is the beginning of all knowledge; without this,
a theology is baseless, the knowledge of God impossible. Modern
education has not dealt with these deeper questions of life and
being. It has the future in which to prove its power of conducting
a cultus answering to the discipline of the Greek thinkers,
Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle."
"As yet we deal with mind with far less certainty than with matter;
the realm of intellect having been less explored than the world of
the senses, and both are treated conjecturally rather than
absolutely. When we come to perceive that intuition is the primary
postulate of all intelligence, most questions now perplexing and
obscure will become transparent; the lower imperfect methods then
take rank where they belong, and are available. The soul leads the
senses; the reason the understanding; imagination the memory;
instinct and intuition include and prompt the Personality entire."
"The categories of imagination are the poet's tools; those of the
reason, the implements of the naturalist. The dialectic philosopher
is master of them both. The tools to those only who can handle them
skilfully. All others but gash themselves and their subject at
best. Ask not a man of understanding to solve a problem in
metaphysics. He has neither wit, weight, nor scales for the task.
But a man of reason or of imagination solves readily the problems
of understanding, the moment these are fairly stated. Ideas are
solvents of all mysteries, whether in matter or in mind."
"Having drank of immortality all night, the genius enters eagerly
upon the day's task, impatient of any impertinences jogging the
full glass.... Sleep and see; wake, and report the nocturnal
spectacle. Sleep, like travel, enriches, refreshes, by varying the
day's perspective, showing us the night side of the globe we
traverse day by day. We make transits too swift for our wakeful
senses to follow; pass from solar to lunar consciousness in a
twinkling; lapse from forehead and face to occupy our lower parts,
and recover, as far as permitted, the keys of genesis and of the
fore worlds. 'All truth,' says Porphyry, 'is latent;' but this the
soul sometimes beholds, when she is a little liberated by sleep
from the employments of the body, and sometimes she extends her
sight, but never perfectly reaches the objects of her vision."
"The good alone dream divinely. Our dreams are characteristic of
our waking thoughts and states; we are never out of character;
never quite another, even when fancy seeks to metamorphose us
entirely. The Person is One in all the manifold phases of the Many,
through which we transmigrate, and we find ourself perpetually,
because we cannot lose ourself personally in the mazes of the many.
'Tis the one soul in manifold shapes. Ever the old friend of the
mirror in other face, old and new, yet one in endless revolution
and metamorphosis, suggesting a common relationship of forms at
their base, with divergent types as these range wider and farther
from their central archetype, including all concrete forms in
nature, each returning into other, and departing therefrom in
endless revolution."
"What is the bad but lapse from good,--the good blindfolded?"
"One's foes are of his own household. If his house is haunted, it
is by himself only. Our choices are our Saviors or Satans."
"The celestial man is composed more largely of light and ether. The
demoniac man of fire and vapor. The animal man of embers and
dust."
"The sacraments, symbolically considered, are
Baptism, or purification by water;
Continence, or chastity in personal indulgences;
Fasting, or temperance in outward delights;
Prayer, or aspiring aims;
Labor, or prayer in act or pursuits.
These are the regimen of inspiration and thought."
The following, from the chapter entitled "Genesis and Lapse," in
"Concord Days," extends Mr. Alcott's principle to a deep problem in
speculative truth. He quotes Coleridge thus:
"The great maxim in legislation, intellectual or physical, is
_subordinate_, not _exclude_. Nature, in her ascent, leaves nothing
behind; but at each step subordinates and glorifies,--mass,
crystal, organ, sensation, sentience, reflection."
Then he proceeds:
"Taken in reverse order of descent, spirit puts itself before; at
each step protrudes faculty in feature, function, organ, limb,
subordinating to glorify also,--person, volition, thought,
sensibility, sense, body,--animating thus and rounding creation to
soul and sense alike. The naturalist cannot urge too strongly the
claims of physical, nor the plea of the idealist be too vigorously
pressed for metaphysical studies. One body in one soul. Nature and
spirit are inseparable, and are best studied as a unit. Nature ends
where spirit begins. The idealist's point of view is the obverse of
the naturalist's, and each must accost his side with a first love
before use has worn off the bloom, and seduced their vision....
"Whether man be the successor or predecessor of his inferiors in
nature, is to be determined by exploring faithfully the realms of
matter and of spirit alike, and complementing the former in the
latter. Whether surveyed in order, descending or ascending, in
genesis or process, from the side of the idealist or of the
materialist, the keystone of the arch in either case is an ideal,
under-propped by nature or upheld by mind."
"Man, the sum total of animals, transcends all in being a Person, a
responsible creature. Man is man, in virtue of being a Person, a
self-determining will, held accountable to a spiritual Ideal. To
affirm that brute creatures are endowed with freedom and choice,
the sense of responsibility, were to exalt them into a spiritual
existence and personality; whereas, it is plain enough that they
are not above deliberation and choice, but below it, under the sway
of Fate, as men are when running counter to reason and conscience.
The will bridges the chasm between man and brute, and frees the
fated creature he were else. Solitary, not himself, the victim of
appetite, inmate of the den, is man, till freed from individualism,
and delivered into his free Personality."
The next extract is from the Chapter on Ideals:
"Enthusiasm is essential to the successful attainment of any high
endeavor; without which incentive, one is not sure of his equality
to the humblest undertakings even. And he attempts little worth
living for, if he expects completing his task in an ordinary
lifetime. This translation is for the continuance of his work here
begun; but for whose completion, time and opportunity were all too
narrow and brief. Himself is the success or failure. Step by step
one climbs the pinnacles of excellence; life itself is but the
stretch for that mountain of holiness. Opening here with humanity,
'tis the aiming at divinity in ever-ascending circles of aspiration
and endeavor. Who ceases to aspire, dies. Our pursuits are our
prayers, our ideals our gods."
In the journals of Theodore Parker, Mr. Alcott is represented as taking
an active part in the thinking and talking of the period immediately
preceding the establishment of the "Dial," and as expressing audacious
opinions; among others, this--which suggests Hegel, though it might have
reached Mr. Alcott from a different quarter--that the Almighty
progressively unfolds himself towards His own perfection; and this, that
the hideous things in nature are reflections of man's animalism; that
the world being the product of all men, man is responsible for its evil
condition; a doctrine similar to the Augustinian doctrine of the Fall,
hinted at also in the Book of Genesis. It was the doctrine of Jacob
Boehme, one of Mr. Alcott's seers, that as the inevitable consequence of
sin, the operation of the Seven Qualities in Lucifer's dominion became
perverted and corrupted. The fiery principle, instead of creating the
heavenly glory, produced wrath and torment. The astringent quality, that
should give stability and coherence, became hard and stubborn. The sweet
was changed to bitter; the bitter to raging fury. This earth--once a
province of the heavenly world--was broken up into a chaos of wrath and
darkness, roaring with the din of conflicting elements. Eden became a
waste; its innocence departed, its friendly creatures began to bite and
tear one another, and man became an exile and a bondsman to the elements
he once controlled.
In 1837 Mr. Alcott--not Mr. Emerson--was the reputed leader of the
Transcendentalists, none being more active than he in diffusing the
ideas of the Spiritual Philosophy, and none being so uncompromising in
his interpretations of them. He was generally present at the meetings of
the informal Club which, under different names, held meetings at the
private houses of members, from 1836 to 1850. Mr. Ripley had
consultations with him in regard to the proposed community which was
later established at Brook Farm. When Mr. Garrison founded the American
Anti-Slavery Society, Mr. Alcott joined that cause, and was faithful to
it till the end. With the movement for the emancipation and elevation of
women, he was a sympathizer. He was one of the reformers who met at
Chardon Street Chapel, in 1840, to discuss plans of universal
reform--Garrison, Edmund Quincy, Henry C. Wright, Theodore Parker,
William H. Channing, Christopher Greene, Maria Chapman and Abby Kelly
being of the number. In those days he was intimate with Emerson, Ripley,
Hedge, Brownson, Clarke, Bartol, Stetson, and well known as a leader in
speculative thought. His period of Pythagorean discipline had already
begun. In 1835 he put away the use of animal food. Declining to join
either the Brook Farm community, or that of Adin Ballou, at Milford, he
undertook to do his part towards the solution of the "labor and culture
problem," by supporting himself by manual labor in Concord, working
during the summer in field and garden, and in winter chopping wood in
the village woodlands, all the time keeping his mind intent on high
thoughts. To conventional people he was an object of ridicule, not
unmingled with contempt, as an improvident visionary. But Dr. Channing
held him in admiration.
"Mr. Alcott," he wrote to a friend, "little suspects how my heart
goes out to him. One of my dearest ideas and hopes is the union of
_labor_ and _culture_. I wish to see labor honored and united with
the free development of the intellect and heart. Mr. Alcott, hiring
himself out for day labor, and at the same time living in a region
of high thought, is perhaps the most interesting object in our
commonwealth. I do not care much for Orpheus, in "The Dial," but
Orpheus at the plough is after my own heart. There he teaches a
grand lesson, more than most of us teach by the pen."
The Orpheus in "The Dial" perplexed others beside Dr. Channing, and
amused nearly all he perplexed--all whom he did not exasperate and
enrage. The "Orphic Sayings"--Mr. Alcott's contribution to the
magazine--attracted the attention of the critics, who made them an
excuse for assailing with ridicule, the entire transcendental party.
"Identity halts in diversity." "The poles of things are not integrated."
"Love globes, wisdom orbs, all things." "Love is the Genius of Spirit."
"Alway are the divine Gemini intertwined,"--the very school-boys
repeated these dark sayings, with a tone that consigned the "Dial" and
its oracles to the insane asylum. Yet the thought was intelligible, and
even simple. In ordinary prose it would have sounded like common-place.
It was the mystic phrase, and the perpetual reiteration of absolute
principles that made the propositions seem obscure. The extracts from
these "Sayings," given in a previous chapter, are remarkable for
crystalline clearness of conception, as well as of expression. The
writer's aim evidently was to deliver what he had to utter, in language
of exact outline, and with the utmost economy of words. A singular
sincerity characterized his mind and his life; he formed his beliefs on
ideal laws, and based his conduct on them. In conduct and bearing, as in
thought, he was a disciple of the philosopher of Samos. Fascinated by
his vision of an ideal society, and determined to commence with a scheme
of his own, he resolutely began by withdrawing from civil society as
constituted, declined to pay the tax imposed by the authorities, and was
lodged in Concord jail, where he would have stayed, had not his friend,
Samuel Hoar, father of Judge Hoar, paid the tax for him, against his
wish, and procured his immediate release. This was in 1843. The next
spring found him inspecting lands suitable for a community. The next
summer saw him, with some English friends, domesticated on the "Wyman
Farm," at Harvard, a piece of ninety acres, bordering the Nashua river,
with an old house on it. "Fruitlands"--for so the community was
named--did not justify its name. A single summer and autumn dissipated
the hopes planted there, and with them the faith that the world could be
refashioned by artificial arrangements of circumstances.
The surprising thing was, that such a man should ever have fallen into
the notion that it could; he was an idealist; his faith was in the
soul--not in organization of any sort; he was a regenerator, not a
reformer. All the good work he had done was of the regenerative kind,
through an awakening of the spiritual powers of individuals. His mission
was to educate--to draw out souls, whether of children or adults. Faith
in the soul was his inspiration and his guide. He early accepted the
office of teacher, made it the calling of his life, and in the exercise
of it, kept in mind this faith in the soul as the highest of
qualifications. To understand his enthusiasm, it is only necessary to
apprehend his idea. In the chapter on Childhood, in "Concord Days," that
idea is thus conveyed:
"To conceive a child's acquirements as originating in nature,
dating from his birth into his body, seems an atheism that only a
shallow metaphysical theology could entertain in a time of such
marvellous natural knowledge as ours. 'I shall never persuade
myself,' says Synesius, 'to believe my soul to be of like age with
my body.' And yet we are wont to date our birth, as that of the
babes we christen, from the body's advent, so duteously inscribed
in our family registers, as if time and space could chronicle the
periods of the immortal mind, and mark its longevity by our
chronometers. Only a God could inspire a child with the intimations
seen in its first pulse-plays; the sprightly attainments of a
single day's doings afford the liveliest proofs of an omniscient
Deity, revealing His attributes in the motions of the little
one!... Were the skill for touching its tender sensibilities,
calling forth its budding gifts, equal to the charms the child has
for us, what noble characters would graduate from our families--the
community receiving its members accomplished in the personal
graces, the state its patriots, the church its saints, all
glorifying the race."
The process of education was spiritual, therefore, to entice the
indwelling deity forth by sympathy. The first experiment made with set
purpose, with definite idea and calculated method, was tried in
Cheshire, Connecticut, in 1825. So original was it in design and
execution, and so remarkable in results, that the fame of it went
abroad. Rev. Samuel J. May, minister in Brooklyn, Conn., a zealous
friend of common-school education, being, along with the school
committee, convinced that the schools throughout the State needed
improvement, prepared a printed circular calling attention to the
subject, and propounding questions so framed as to draw out full and
precise information from every town. Among the letters received in
answer to the circular was one from Dr. Wm. A. Alcott, a "philosopher
and philanthropist," author of the "House I Live In," and other books on
physical and moral training, calling particular attention to this
remarkable school, kept on a very original plan, by his kinsman:
"His account," says Mr. May, "excited so much my curiosity to know
more of the American Pestalozzi, as he has since been called, that
I wrote immediately to Mr. A. B. Alcott, begging him to send me a
detailed statement of his principles and methods of teaching and of
training children. In due time came to me a full account of the
school of Cheshire, which revealed such a depth of insight into the
nature of man; such a true sympathy with children; such profound
appreciation of the work of education; and withal, so
philosophically arranged and exquisitely written, that I at once
felt assured the man must be a genius, and that I must know him
more intimately; so I wrote, inviting him urgently, to visit me. I
also sent the account of his school to Mr. William Russell, in
Boston, then editing the first Journal of Education ever published
in our country. Mr. Russell thought as highly of the article as I
did, and gave it to the public in his next October number."
"Mr. Alcott accepted my invitation; he came and passed a week with
me before the close of the summer. I have never, but in one other
instance, been so immediately taken possession of by any man I have
ever met in life. He seemed to me like a born sage and saint. He
was radical in all matters of reform; went to the root of all
things, especially the subjects of education, mental and moral
culture. If his biography shall ever be written by one who can
appreciate him, and especially if his voluminous writings shall be
properly published, it will be known how unique he was in wisdom
and purity."
The chief peculiarity of the Cheshire School was the effort made there
to rouse and elevate individual minds. Single desks were substituted for
the long forms in common use; blackboards were introduced, and slates
which put the pupils on their mettle; a library was instituted of
carefully selected books, the reading whereof was diligently supervised
and directed; hopes were appealed to instead of fears; gentleness took
the place of severity; the affections and moral sentiments were
addressed, to give full action to the heart and conscience, the physical
being replaced by the spiritual scourge; light gymnastic exercises were
introduced; evening entertainments gladdened the school room after
working hours; even the youngest scholars were encouraged to clear their
minds by keeping diaries. In these and other ways, especially by the
enthusiasm and dignity of the master, knowledge was made attractive, and
the teacher's office was made venerable.
The plan, albeit nearly the same with that practised by Pestalozzi in
Switzerland, was original with Mr. Alcott, the product of his peculiar
philosophical ideas. Had those ideas been less deep and lofty, the
method might have commended itself to all as it did to Mr. May; but, had
they been less deep and lofty, it would not have been tried at all. A
profound faith in the soul suggested it, and certainly a profound faith
was required to sustain it. But faith in the soul was no more popular
then than it is now, implying, as it did, radical convictions on all
sorts of questions, and familiar assumption of the truth of the
opinions. Such a teacher is not permitted to be conventional. Mr. Alcott
showed himself the disciple of Pythagoras in that he was the worshipper
of ideal truth and purity, the uncompromising servant of the spiritual
laws. When this was fairly understood, as it was in two years, the
experiment was terminated.
The idea, which made the teacher suspected by the school committee
boards, was recognized and applauded by the finest spirits in New
England, New York and Pennsylvania. The reformers hailed the reformer;
the spiritualists welcomed the spiritualist. In Hartford, Drs. Gallaudet
and Barnard; in Boston, Dr. Channing and Mr. Garrison, the Mays,
Quincys, Phillipses, and other families of character and courage; in
Philadelphia, Dr. Furness, Matthew Cary, Robert Vaux, and the radical
Friends took him up. Mr. Emerson saluted him with high expectation, in
the words addressed by Burke to John Howard:
"Your plan is original, and as full of genius as of humanity; so do
not let it sleep or stop a day."
The project of a school on the new plan was started in Boston; Margaret
Fuller, Elizabeth Peabody, Miss Hoar, Mrs. Nath'l Hawthorne being among
the most deeply interested. It was kept in the Masonic Temple during the
year 1834. The account of this experiment has been so fully given by
Miss Peabody, the original scribe, in a volume entitled "Record of a
School," placed within easy reach by a Boston publisher, only two years
ago, and largely read, that to describe it here would be impertinent. In
her new preface, Miss Peabody, who of late years has become an
enthusiastic advocate of Froebel's method, which approaches the mind
from the outside, while Mr. Alcott approaches it from the inside,
frankly declares that she has
"Come to doubt the details of his method of procedure, and to
believe that Froebel's method of cultivating children through
artistic production in the childish sphere of affection and fancy
is a healthier and more effective way than self inspection, for at
least those years of a child's life before the age of seven."
While thus honestly declaring her abandonment of Mr. Alcott's plan, she
affirms her belief
"That his school was a marked benefit to every child with whom he
came into communication...."
"What I witnessed in his school room threw for me a new light into
the profoundest mysteries that have been consecrated by the
Christian symbols; and the study of childhood made there I would
not exchange for anything else I have experienced in life."