capability, which might be hereafter developed into some special
beauty or power. By means of this penetrating, this prophetic
insight, she gave each to himself, acted on each to draw out his
best nature; gave him an ideal, out of which he could draw strength
and liberty, hour by hour. Thus her influence was ever ennobling,
and each felt that in her society he was truer, wiser, better, and
yet more free and happy than elsewhere. The 'dry light,' which Lord
Bacon loved, she never knew: her light was life, was love, was warm
with sympathy and a boundless energy of affection and hope. Though
her love flattered and charmed her friends, it did not spoil them,
for they knew her perfect truth; they knew that she loved them, not
for what she imagined, but for what she saw, though she saw it only
in the germ. But as the Greeks beheld a Persephone and Athene in
the passing stranger, and ennobled humanity into ideal beauty,
Margaret saw all her friends thus idealized; she was a balloon of
sufficient power to take us all up with her into the serene depth
of heaven, where she loved to float, far above the low details of
earthly life; earth lay beneath us as a lovely picture--its sounds
came up mellowed into music."
"Margaret was, to persons younger than herself, a Makaria and
Natalia. She was wisdom and intellectual beauty, filling life with
a charm and glory 'known to neither sea nor land.' To those of her
own age, she was sibyl and seer,--a prophetess, revealing the
future, pointing the path, opening their eyes to the great aims
only worthy of pursuit in life. To those older than herself, she
was like the Euphorion in Goethe's drama, child of Faust and
Helen,--a wonderful union of exuberance and judgment, born of
romantic fulness and classic limitation. They saw with surprise her
clear good sense, balancing her flow of sentiment and ardent
courage. They saw her comprehension of both sides of every
question, and gave her their confidence, as to one of equal age,
because of so ripe a judgment."
"An interview with her was a joyous event; worthy men and women who
had conversed with her, could not forget her, but worked bravely on
in the remembrance that this heroic approver had recognized their
aims. She spoke so earnestly, that the depth of the sentiment
prevailed, and not the accidental expression, which might chance to
be common. Thus I learned the other day, that in a copy of Mrs.
Jameson's 'Italian Painters,' against a passage describing Coreggio
as a true servant of God in his art, above sordid ambition, devoted
to truth, 'one of those superior beings of whom there are so few;'
Margaret wrote on the margin: 'And yet all might be such.' The book
lay long on the table of the owner, in Florence, and chanced to be
read there by an artist of much talent. 'These words' said he,
months afterwards, 'struck out a new strength in me. They revived
resolutions long fallen away, and made me set my face like a
flint.'"
"'Yes, my life is strange;' she said, 'thine is strange. We are,
we shall be, in this life, mutilated beings, but there is in my
bosom a faith, that I shall see the reason; a glory, that I can
endure to be so imperfect; and a feeling, ever elastic, that fate
and time shall have the shame and the blame, if I am mutilated. I
will do all I can,--and if one cannot succeed, there is a beauty in
martyrdom.'"
"'Would not genius be common as light if men trusted their higher
selves?'"
"She won the confidence and affection of those who attracted her,
by unbounded sympathy and trust. She probably knew the cherished
secrets of more hearts than any one else, because she freely
imparted her own. With a full share both of intellectual and of
family pride, she preeminently recognized and responded to the
essential brotherhood of all human kind, and needed but to know
that a fellow being required her counsel or assistance, to render
her not merely willing, but eager to impart it. Loving ease,
luxury, and the world's good opinion, she stood ready to renounce
them all, at the call of pity or of duty. I think no one, not
radically averse to the whole system of domestic servitude, would
have treated servants, of whatever class, with such uniform and
thoughtful consideration--a regard which wholly merged their
factitious condition in their antecedent and permanent humanity. I
think few servants ever lived weeks with her, who were not
dignified and lastingly benefited by her influence and her
counsels. They might be at first repelled, by what seemed her too
stately manner and exacting disposition, but they soon learned to
esteem and love her.
"I have known few women, and scarcely another maiden, who had the
heart and the courage to speak with such frank compassion, in mixed
circles, of the most degraded and outcast portion of the sex. The
contemplation of their treatment, especially by the guilty authors
of their ruin, moved her to a calm and mournful indignation, which
she did not attempt to suppress nor control. Others were willing to
pity and deplore; Margaret was more inclined to vindicate and to
redeem.
"'In the chamber of death,' she wrote, 'I prayed in very early
years: "Give me truth; cheat me by no illusion." O, the granting of
this prayer is sometimes terrible to me! I walk over burning
ploughshares, and they sear my feet; yet nothing but truth will do;
no love will serve that is not eternal, and as large as the
universe; no philanthropy, in executing whose behests I myself
become unhealthy; no creative genius which bursts asunder my life,
to leave it a poor black chrysalid behind; and yet this last is too
true of me.'"
Margaret Fuller did justice to the character of Fourier, admired his
enthusiasm, honored his devotion, acknowledged the terrible nature of
the evils he gave the study of a life-time to correct, and paid an
unstinting tribute to the disinterested motives that impelled him; but
with his scheme for refashioning society she had no sympathy. William H.
Channing was an intimate friend, whose sincerity had her deepest
respect, whose enthusiasm won her cordial admiration; she listened to
his brilliant expositions of socialism, but was not persuaded. Practical
difficulties always appeared, and she never could believe that any
rearrangement of circumstances would effect the regeneration of mankind.
She was acquainted from the first with the experiment of Brook Farm;
knew the founders of it; watched with genuine solicitude the
inauguration of the scheme and its fortunes; talked over the principles
and details of it with the leading spirits; visited the community;
examined for herself the working of the plan; gave her talent to the
entertainment and edification of the associates; discerned with clear
eye the distinctions between this experiment and those of European
origin; but still questioned the practical wisdom of the institution,
and declined to join the fraternity, even on the most flattering terms,
for the reason that, interested as she was in the experiment, it was, in
her judgment, too purely an experiment to be personally and practically
sanctioned by one who had no more faith in its fundamental principles
than she.
She was not to be thrown off from her essential position, the primacy
and all sufficiency of the soul. No misery or guilt daunted her, no
impatience at slowness tempted her to resort to artificial methods of
cure. Her visit to Sing Sing, and her intercourse with the abandoned
women there was exceedingly interesting in this view.
"'They listened with earnest attention, and many were moved to
tears. I never felt such sympathy with an audience as when, at the
words "Men and Brethren," that sea of faces, marked with the scars
of every ill, were up-turned, and the shell of brutality burst
apart at the touch of love. I knew that at least heavenly truth
would not be kept out by self complacence and dependence on good
appearances.... These women were among the so-called worst, and all
from the lowest haunts of vice. Yet nothing could have been more
decorous than their conduct, while it was also frank; and they
showed a sensibility and sense of propriety which would not have
disgraced any society.'"
"She did not hesitate to avow that, on meeting some of these
abused, unhappy sisters, she had been surprised to find them
scarcely fallen morally below the ordinary standard of
womanhood,--realizing and loathing their debasement; anxious to
escape it; and only repelled by the sad consciousness that for them
sympathy and society remained only so long as they should persist
in the ways of pollution."
Margaret Fuller's loyalty to principles was proof against bad taste;
which is saying a good deal, for many a reformer is of opinion that
blunders are worse than crimes, and that vulgarity is more offensive
than wickedness. She found the Fourierites in Europe terribly wearisome,
and yet did not forget that they served the great future which neither
they nor she would live to see. At home she could not endure the
Abolitionists--"they were so tedious, often so narrow, always so rabid
and exaggerated in their tone. But, after all, they had a high motive,
something eternal in their desire and life; and if it was not the only
thing worth thinking of, it was really something worth living and dying
for, to free a great nation from such a blot, such a plague." In Europe
she was disgusted at hearing Americans urging the same arguments against
the freedom of the Italians that they urged at home against the
emancipation of the blacks; the same arguments in favor of the
spoliation of Poland that they used at home in favor of the conquest of
Mexico. With her, principles were independent of time and place. She
always believed in liberty as a condition of enlightenment, and in
enlightenment as a condition of progress. This practical faith in the
intellectual and moral nature is the key to all her work. Every chamber
that opened she entered and occupied, fearless of ghosts and goblins.
The chambers that opened not she was content to leave unopened
altogether.
On the table where the writer pens this poor tribute to a most
remarkable woman, are the bulky volumes of her unpublished letters and
diaries, revealing some things too personal for the public eye, but
nothing in the least incongruous with the best things recorded by her
biographers and suggested here; and how much they tell that illustrates
and confirms the moral nobleness and sweetness of her nature. They
contain a psychometric examination from two letters, given after the
manner familiar to those interested in such things, by one of the chief
of these spiritual vaticinators. We shall not transcribe it, for it is
long and indistinct. The indistinctness is the one interesting feature
of the sketch. The sensitive reporter confessed herself put out by the
singular commingling of moods and dispositions, and seemed to be
describing several persons in one. But through them all the same general
impression was clear; the impression of a fascinating, lovable, earnest
and lofty spirit, which, whether sad or gay, intellectual or
sentimental, bore itself like a queenly woman.
When the news of her death reached Boston, one of Boston's eminent men
in letters and public affairs quietly remarked: "it is just as well so."
He was thinking of the agitation she might cause by her brilliant
conversations and her lightning pen, if she brought back from her
Italian heroisms the high spirit of liberty. The times were growing dark
in America. The Slave Power was drawing its lines closer about the
citadel of freedom. The brave voices were few and fewer; the
conservatives were glad when one was hushed by death. The movement she
had encouraged was waning. The high enthusiasm was smouldering in
breasts that anticipated the battle which came ten years later. The
period of poetic aspiration and joy was ended, and the priestess, had
she survived, would have found a deserted shrine.
No accessible portrait of Margaret Fuller exists, that worthily presents
her. Thomas Hicks painted a likeness, of cabinet size, in Rome, which
her friends approved. The daguerreotype was too painfully literal to be
just; the sun having no sentiment or imagination in his eye. She was not
beautiful in youth, nor was she one of those who gain beauty with years.
Her physical attractions were of the kind that time impairs soon, and
though she died at forty, her personal charm was gone. Intellect gave
her what beauty she had, and they saw it who saw her intellect at play.
Her image, therefore, is best preserved in the memory of her friends.
They cannot put it on exhibition.
XII.
THE PREACHER.
Transcendentalism is usually spoken of as a philosophy. It is more
justly regarded as a gospel. As a philosophy it is abstract and
difficult--purely metaphysical in character, resting on no basis of
observed and scientifically-proven fact, but on the so-called data of
consciousness, which cannot be accurately defined, distinctly verified,
or generally recommended. It must be, therefore, inexact and
inconclusive; so far from uniform in its structure, that it may rather
be considered several systems than one. As a gospel, it possesses all
the qualities desirable for effect. It is worth remarking that its chief
disciples have been clergymen. In Germany, Schleiermacher--if we may
count him a Transcendentalist; he was the author of the doctrine, that
the essence of religion consisted in the _sense of dependence_, which
figured largely in the sermons of New England divines--was a clergyman;
Fichte assumed the prophetic tone; the German professors associated
religious teaching with the duties of their chairs. In England,
Coleridge was a preacher by practice, and, part of his life, by
profession; Carlyle was never anything else, his essays and even his
histories being sermons in disguise, and disguise of the most
transparent sort. In New England, Emerson began his career as a
Unitarian minister; so did Walker; so did Ripley; so did W. H. Channing;
so did J. S. Dwight; so did C. P. Cranch. Dr. Channing, a
Transcendentalist without knowing it, was the greatest preacher of his
generation. Brownson was a preacher of all orders in succession; Bartol
preaches still; Clarke preaches still. Of the younger men, Johnson,
Longfellow, Wasson, Higginson, are, or were, Unitarian clergymen. Alcott
is a preacher without a pulpit. The order of mind that was attracted to
the ministry was attracted to the Transcendental ideas.
The explanation is easy; Transcendentalism possessed all the chief
qualifications for a gospel. Its cardinal "facts" were few and
manageable. Its data were secluded in the recesses of consciousness, out
of the reach of scientific investigation, remote from the gaze of vulgar
skepticism; esoteric, having about them the charm of a sacred privacy,
on which common sense and the critical understanding might not intrude.
Its oracles proceeded from a shrine, and were delivered by a priest or
priestess, who came forth from an interior holy of holies to utter them,
and thus were invested with the air of authority which belongs to
exclusive and privileged truths, that revealed themselves to minds of a
contemplative cast. It dealt entirely with "divine things," "eternal
realities;" supersensible forms of thought; problems that lay out of the
reach of observation, such as the essential cause, spiritual laws, the
life after death, the essence of the good, the beautiful, the true; the
ideal possibilities of the soul; its organ was intuition; its method was
introspection: its brightness was inspiration. It possessed the
character of indefiniteness and mystery, full of sentiment and
suggestion, that fascinates the imagination, and lends itself so easily
to acts of contemplation and worship. The German Mystics were in spirit
Transcendentalists. The analogies are close between Boehme and
Schelling; between Eckardt and Fichte; Frederick Schlegel had much in
common with Boehme; Coleridge acknowledged his debt to him and to other
Mystics; even Hegel ran in line with them on some of his high roads.
Minds as opposite as Alcott and Parker met in communion here--Alcott
going to the Mystics for inspiration; Parker resorting to them for rest.
The Mystics were men of feeling; the Transcendentalists were men of
thought: but thought and feeling sought the same object in the same
region. Piety was a feature of Transcendentalism; it loved devout hymns,
music, the glowing language of aspiration, the moods of awe and
humility, emblems, symbols, expressions of inarticulate emotion,
silence, contemplation, breathings after communion with the Infinite.
The poetry of Transcendentalism is religious, with scarcely an
exception; the most beautiful hymns in our sacred collections, the only
deeply impressive hymns, are by transcendental writers.
This was the aspect of Transcendentalism that fascinated Theodore
Parker. His intellect was constructed on the English model. His acute
observation; his passion for external facts; his faith in statistics;
his hunger for information on all external topics of history and
politics; his capacity for retaining details of miscellaneous knowledge;
his logical method of reasoning; his ability to handle masses of raw
mental material, to distribute and classify;--all indicate intellectual
power of the English rather than of the German type. It was his custom
to speak slightingly of the "Bridgewater Treatises" and works of a
similar class, in which the processes of inductive argument are employed
to establish truths of the "Pure Reason;" but he easily fell into the
same habit, and pushed the inductive method as far as it would go. His
discourses on Providence, the Economy of Pain and Misery, Atheism,
Theism, in the volume entitled "Theism, Atheism, and The Popular
Theology," are quite in the style of the "Bridgewater Treatises." Parker
was, in many respects, the opposite of a Mystic; he was a realist of the
most concrete description, entirely at home among sensible things, a
good administrator, a safe investor of moneys, a wise counsellor in
practical affairs. But along with this intellectual quality which he
inherited from his father, was an interior, sentimental, devotional
quality, derived from his mother. The two were never wholly blended;
often they were wide apart, occupying different spheres, and engaged in
different offices; sometimes they were in apparent opposition. Neither
could subdue or overshadow the other; neither could keep the other long
in abeyance. As a rule, the dominion was divided between them: the
practical understanding assumed control of all matters pertaining to
this world; the higher reason claimed supremacy in all matters of
faith. But for the tendency to poetic idealism, which came to him from
his mother, Parker might, from the constitution of his mind, have
belonged to an opposite school. A passage in the letter from Santa Cruz,
entitled "Theodore Parker's Experience as a Minister," is curious, as
showing how the two tendencies of his mind overlapped; he is speaking of
the two methods of developing the contents "of the instinctive
intuitions of the divine, the just, and the immortal,"--the inductive
and the deductive. After a few words respecting the inductive method of
gathering facts from the history of mankind, he speaks thus of the
deductive: "Next, from the primitive facts of consciousness given by the
power of instinctive intuition, I endeavored to deduce the true notion
of God, of justice, and futurity." Then, forgetting that the power of
instinctive intuition must be self-authenticating--cannot, at any rate,
be authenticated by miscellaneous facts in the religious history of
mankind--he continues:
"To learn what I could about the spiritual faculties of man, I not
only studied the sacred books of various nations, the poets and
philosophers who professedly treat thereof, but also such as deal
with sleep-walking, dreams, visions, prophecies, second-sight,
oracles, ecstasies, witchcraft, magic-wonders, the appearance of
devils, ghosts, and the like. Besides, I studied other works which
lie out from the regular highway of theology; the spurious books
attributed to famous Jews and Christians; Pseudepigraphy of the Old
Testament, and the Apocrypha of the New; with the strange fantasies
of the Neoplatonists and Gnostics."
Very important reading all this for one who studied to qualify himself
to instruct his fellow men in the natural history of the world's
religions; but not so valuable as illustrating the "instinctive
intuitions of human nature." Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Boehme,
Eckardt, never worked by that method, which may properly be called the
method of Sensationalism applied to Transcendentalism. Parker, on the
religious side, was a pure Transcendentalist without guile, accepting
the transcendental ideas with no shadow of qualification; stating them
with the concrete sharpness of scientific propositions, and applying
them with the exactness of mathematical principles. He took them as he
found them in the writings of the great German thinkers; shaped them as
he, better than any body else, could shape thought in form of words,--as
he shaped the formula of republican government--"government of the
people, by the people, for the people"--from the looser statement of
Daniel Webster,--and laid them down as corner-stones of a new
theological structure. The materials were furnished by Schleiermacher,
Spinoza, Jacobi, Schelling; the architectural skill was his own.
Consciousness he did not undertake to analyze; the "facts of
consciousness" he took on others' verification; their spiritual import
he perceived, developed and applied. Transcendentalism put into his
hands the implements he was in special need of.
It is not easy to determine the precise period at which Parker fully
accepted, with all its consequences, the transcendental philosophy. He
was not a Transcendentalist--not distinctly and avowedly one--at the
time of his ordination, in 1837; he clearly was in 1840, the date of
the Levi Blodgett letter, which contains the most thorough-going
statement of the transcendental idea to be found in any single tractate.
The probability is, that he always was one in sentiment, and became more
and more consciously one in thought, as he found it necessary to shift
his position in order to save his faith. So long as the beliefs he
cherished seemed to be satisfactorily supported on the old grounds, he
was content; but as the old grounds, one after another, gave way, the
beliefs were transferred to the keeping of new principles. Then the
sentiments of his youth hardened into ideas; the delicate creatures that
lived and gleamed beneath the waters of faith's tropical ocean, became
reefs of white stone, that lifted their broad surface above the level of
the sea, and offered immovable support to human habitations.