Mr. Dewey's mind was too logical in its methods for entire intellectual
sympathy with Mr. Emerson; but that he thoroughly appreciated his
spiritual insight is shown by the following passage from a manuscript
sermon on Law, preached 13th August, 1868, on the occasion of the
earthquake of that year in South America: "But the law [of retribution]
does stand fast. Nothing ever did, ever shall, ever can escape it. Take
any essence-drop or particle of evil into your heart and life, and you
shall pay for it in the loss, if not of gold or of honor, yet of the
finest sense and the finest enjoyment of all things divinest, most
beautiful and most blessed in your being. I know of no writer among
us who has emphasized this fact, this law, more sharply than Waldo
Emerson, and I commend his pages to you in this view. Freed from all
conventionalism, whether religious or Scriptural, though he has left
the ranks of our faith, yet he has gone, better than any of us, to the
very depth of things in this matter."
To Rev. William Ware.
NEW YORK, Nov. 7, 1836.
MY DEAR WARE,--Shall I brood over my regrets in secret, or shall I tell
you of them? I sometimes do not care whether any human being knows
what is passing in [159] me; and then again my feelings are all up in
arms for sympathy, as if they would take it by storm. I declare I have
a good deal of liking for that other,--that sullenness, or sadness,
or what you will; it is calmer and more independent. So I shall say
nothing, only that I miss you even more than I expected.{16} Never, in
all this great city, will a face come through my door that I shall like
to see better than yours,--I doubt if so well.
{FN 16: See p. 86.}
The next nearest thing to you is Furness's book. Have you got it? Is
it not charming? It is a book of beauty and life. Spots there are upon
it,--they say there are upon the sun. Certes, there are tendencies to
naturalism in Furness's mind which I do not like,--do not think the
true philosophy; but it is full of beauty, and hath much wisdom in it
too.
I write on the gallop. My dinner is coming in three minutes, and a
wagon is coming after that to carry me to Berkshire, that is, by
steamboat to Hudson as usual. But I am going to send this, though it be
worth nothing but to get a letter from you.
If letters, like dreams, came from the multitude of business, I should
write of nothing but that tragedy extempore,-for I am sure it was
got up in a minute,-the argument whereof was your running away. It
positively is the staple of conversation. And I think it is rather hard
upon me, too. I am here; but that seems to go for nothing. All their
talk is of your going away,--running away, I say,--desertion,--and help
yourself if you can. . . .
My love to Henry Ware, and the love of me and mine to you and yours.
Yours ever,