art”?
“Probably,” MR. EMERSON said.
HENRY HEDGE found another type of the Apollo in the Egyptian Horus.
MRS. RUSSELL asked if the two Greek vowels had not once stood for Isis
and Osiris. If so, they would have a natural connection with the oracle.
I remembered the inscription on the statue of Isis, “I am all that has
been and that shall be, and none among mortals has taken off my veil.”
The “I am” of the Jews, and the “Thou art” of the Delphic temple are
epigrammatic, but the same.
EMERSON, replying somewhat curtly to Mrs. Russell, said there were
various explanations.
The story of Phaeton came next.
HENRY HEDGE asked how Presumption should be the child of Genius.
“Genius must be self-confident,” Margaret said, “and that might
predominate.”
I asked if real Genius did not know its own resources and husband them.
MARGARET thought Genius often attempted more than it could do.
I said a man might have genius and presume, but that if _he were a
genius_ I should expect him to be modest. Still, as it must have a crowd
of imitators, it might become the father of presumption. The substance
creates the shadow.
WILLIAM STORY said no product could be as great as the producing power;
but that did not seem to me to touch the point, for the question was not
whether Apollo could not give birth to something less than himself, but
whether the possession of power could create an unfounded claim to it.
The story of Latona followed.
HENRY HEDGE said that the word meant concealment.
MARGARET thought this very expressive, and said that the isolation which
Goethe and other geniuses had been craving since the world began Apollo
had no need to seek. His mother was concealment. The oracle was then
discussed,—how it was possible to consult it many times and receive each
time a different answer,—how it could be bribed, as by Alexander, or
would give two answers in one; but nothing very new was said.
I remembered the double answer of the Pythoness to Crœsus when he
meditated crossing the Halys. “Thou shalt destroy a great empire,” she
said. He thought it was the enemy’s: fate decided it should be his own.
SOPHIA RIPLEY thought the oracle belonged to Wisdom rather than Genius.
MARGARET said Minerva dwelt in men’s houses. It was necessary a voice
from Heaven should speak.
Some one wondered that Jupiter had not possessed himself of the oracle,
which led MARGARET back to her exponents, and she confessed that she was
not quite satisfied with her own definition of Jupiter as Will.
EMERSON suggested that experience was a prominent feature in the
Jupiter, and named him Character.
Character is educated Will, said MARGARET, hesitating, and paused, for
the term did not suit her.
Juno was then spoken of as passive Will, and her traits were dwelt upon.
It is amusing to see how weak the Queen of Olympus can be in opposition
to its King. The peacock was probably made sacred to her on account of
the beauty of its plumage, while the eagle was consecrated to Jupiter on
account of its strength.
I said that the peacock, strutting with conceit, glancing at its
ill-shaped feet and vexed enough to bawl in consequence, easily suggested
the scolding Juno.
Some one asked a question about Æsculapius. MARGARET said he was genius
made practical.
HENRY HEDGE thought that Apollo by his own connection with the healing
art became the symbol of physical life and beauty.
WILLIAM STORY thought no statue could bear comparison with the Apollo
Belvedere.
MARGARET preferred the Antinous.
JAMES CLARKE asked why Art should present a so much more inspiring view
of Greek Mythology than Poetry.
MARGARET said that all her ideas of it were deduced from Art. She did
not profess to know much of the Greek authors, and depended chiefly upon
Homer, but wished that some of the gentlemen who ought to know more would
speak.
WILLIAM STORY thought it was because the poets wrote for popular
applause, for recitation and its immediate effect. Sculptors labored more
purely for their Art.
I thought too that the dramatists often had a political aim, and
manœuvred Olympus to suit it!
JAMES CLARKE said that if in our time every public speaker must bend to
his audience to a degree, it was still more necessary in Greece.
We were told to consider Minerva for the next conversation, and to write
down our thoughts about her. For my part I don’t like using Latin names
for Greek deities. It greatly confuses my ideas. Jupiter and Zeus seem
very different to me.
In regard to the story that Apollo never saw a shadow, CAROLINE STURGIS
asked how Apollo could destroy an alien nature if he never met it.
There was quite an unsatisfactory talk about this, which would have ended
had anybody remembered how the sun solves the enigma every day. The
sun never sees the shadow it destroys. When its rays fall, light is. It
annihilates the alien by merely being. So Truth annihilates Falsehood,
yet cannot meet it. The two are never in one presence.
CAROLINE WELLS HEALEY.
March 20, 1841.
IV.
_March 26, 1841._
MARGARET opened our talk by saying that the subject of Wisdom presented
more conversable points than that of Genius. We could all think and talk
about Wisdom, and any man who had ever scratched his finger was to a
degree wise.
Minerva was the child of Counsel and Intelligent Will. She had no
infancy, but sprang full-armed into being. Ready, agile, she was in
herself the history of thought. She did not need that her life should be
one of incident. Her attendant emblems are expressive: the Sphinx, the
owl, the serpent, the cock, and the javelin suggest her whole story.
WILLIAM WHITE asked why Genius was masculine and Wisdom feminine.
MARGARET thought no one could find any difficulty in the fact that Genius
was masculine. It presented itself to the mind in the full glow of power.
The very outlines of the feminine form were yielding, and we could not
associate them with a prominent, self-conscious state of the faculties.
Wisdom was like woman, always ready for the fight if necessary, yet never
going to it; taking reality as a basis, and classifying and arranging
upon it all that Genius creates,—seeing the relations and proper values
of things.
GEORGE RIPLEY objected to this definition. He might have imbibed a Hebrew
idea, but the office of Wisdom was surely something more than this,—a
purely mechanical and orderly tact.
MARGARET said she had not meant to give _our_ view of it, only the Greek
idea as manifest in the story of Minerva. To William White she said,
smiling, that she supposed he had not wondered so much that Genius should
be masculine as that Wisdom should be feminine! But the Greeks were wise,
and she revered their keen perception.
ELISABETH HOAR said it seemed to her that Wisdom provided _means_. A hero
might be inspired by Genius, but Wisdom provided his armor, taught him to
distinguish the goal, and to perceive clearly the relation to it of any
onward step.
MARGARET agreed to this, and
WILLIAM STORY said that Genius was indebted to Wisdom for _means of
communication_. Genius thinks words impertinent, but Wisdom apprehends
its intuitions, and gives them shape.
MARGARET said further, that Wisdom must adopt instinctively the finest
medium.
It seemed to me that Wisdom not only gave power of communication, but
power of attainment. Walter Scott was a good instance of the union of
intuitive perception and human sagacity, but all these words about it
cleared up nothing.
MARGARET then proposed that we should take up the attributes of Minerva,
and so get at the facts.
MR. RIPLEY did not think it noble enough when she based Wisdom upon
realities.
WILLIAM STORY said Wisdom must have something to work upon. He thought
Wisdom compared the intuitions of Genius with realities.
CHARLES WHEELER thought the word _actual_ would help them out of their
difficulty.
I wanted to quote Emerson to the effect that the Ideal is more Real than
the Actual.
MARGARET agreed with Mr. Wheeler, and said that by reality she understood
anything incarnated,—whatever was tangible. She then went on to speak of
the Sphinx. What was it?
ELISABETH HOAR seemed surprised at the question. Was it not one thing to
everybody?
MARGARET called for her idea, but she would not give it.
MARGARET said that to herself it represented the development of a
thought, founding itself upon the animal, until it grew upward into calm,
placid power. She revered these good ancients, who did not throw away any
of the gifts of God; who were neither materialists nor immaterialists,
but who made matter always subservient to the highest ends of the Spirit.
WILLIAM WHITE asked if the festivals of the Gods, the highest source
of their influence over the people, did not show how little they had
penetrated to the spirit of things?
MARGARET thought ambrosia and nectar were proper emblems of Divine Joy.
They were not to be taken literally.
“But,” persisted WHITE, “the great body of the people thought them so.”
WILLIAM STORY said, with happy grace, that the great _body_ of the people
might be excused for such a thought.
MARGARET enjoyed the pun, and said that the great Greek body was sensuous
and ate, but that the Greek soul knew better than to suspect the Gods of
opening their mouths.
E. P. P. waked up at this moment, and asked what Margaret would say to
Berkeley’s theory.
MARGARET said she did not know what it was!
E. P. P. said, the evolution of all things from the soul, the
non-existence of matter.
JAMES P. CLARKE thought it very difficult to decide how far spirit and
matter were one. A man’s identity was not in the particles which came
and went every seven years, but in the spirit. Yet these particles
constituted the wall of separation between himself and others. His
identity was in his spirit.
GEORGE RIPLEY begged leave to disagree. He thought we knew as much about
matter as about spirit, and that Berkeley’s theory was as good as any.
MARGARET said that if God created matter, of course it was evolved from
spirit; that matter could not be antagonistic to that from which it was
evolved. To express a complete idea, we had only to say, “Jehovah, I am.”
“Or,” CHARLES WHEELER added, “to be silent.”
“Yes,” said MARGARET, “and in that lies the merit of Mythology. Every
faculty was, according to that, an incomplete statement. Therefore Mr.
Ripley did wrong to confound Minerva with the Logos.”
E. P. P. did not see that Berkeley’s statement was answered.
WILLIAM STORY came in with another pun. “If Berkeley thought so, it was
_no matter_!”
Some stupid person spoiled the wit by trying to explain it, and the
question remained to us just as much matter as ever.
They talked about the Sphinx again, yet said little. It holds more
meaning in its passive womb than talk will ever play the midwife to.
It was the child of the Destructive Element and Feeling,—Typhon and
Echidna,—the human heart experienced in misfortune touched by death.
Thought rooted in the actual and developed by tenderness was rooted in
this figure.
“Everybody knows that Wisdom stings,” said MARGARET, and so we went on to
the serpent.
Somebody spoke of the Greek Tartarus.
IDA RUSSELL thought its torment was not acute, but consisted of the
deprivation of comforts.
The wandering idleness of it would be intolerable to an active Greek,
ELISABETH HOAR thought, but more endurable than any device of a
priesthood. As for our serpent, no one seemed to know much about it.
MARGARET said that we owed it so much, that _she_ felt in duty bound to
know something of it.
JAMES F. CLARKE said that the Christian serpent was quite another thing.
Everybody laughed at the idea of a _Christian_ serpent.
WILLIAM WHITE professed great admiration for the reptile. We should have
had no Christianity but for its beguiling.
MARGARET agreed!—and said she supposed everybody felt that.
MRS. RUSSELL thought the casting of the skin very expressive.
JAMES F. CLARKE gave Coleridge’s exposition, to the effect that the
serpent was the common understanding! It would touch and handle all
things, and even sought to be as the Gods, knowing good from evil. Its
undulating motion—its belly now on the ground, now off—expressed both
the aspiration and the subserviency of the creature.
MARGARET asked if serpents ever swallowed their own tails?
CHARLES WHEELER said that must be an arbitrary form.
MARGARET replied, that she had been struck by the difference between the
Mexican and the Greek serpent. The Mexican was folded back upon itself.
Not always, I said. Its tail is sometimes in its mouth, and the
variations seem to be occasioned by the architectural necessity.
JAMES F. CLARKE spoke of a Virginia snake that moves in a circle, and
asked if when Mr. Emerson talked about “coming full circle” he was not
thinking of that?
MARGARET laughed, and declared that serpent must be of Yankee invention.
Æsculapius bore two on his staff, Mercury two on his divining-rod, and
the cock was also sacred to Æsculapius.
I asked if this did not indicate a certain subjection of these Gods to
Wisdom?
Some questions written on paper were here read. One asked why Minerva was
born of the stroke of Vulcan, and why she was the patroness of weavers,
and what that had to do with the story of Arachne.
MARGARET replied with ill temper to the first, that it was because Vulcan
held the hammer,—to the second, that she did not know.
But was there really so little meaning in the fact that Mechanic Art so
ministered to Intelligent Will that she could afford to miss the point?
She said we could see that Minerva was told to marry Vulcan, but
declined; would have nothing to do with the sooty cripple.
SOPHIA RIPLEY said, aptly enough, that Minerva had been changing her mind
ever since!
IDA RUSSELL thought that when Mechanic Art was married to Beauty, it
might charm even Wisdom.
GEORGE RIPLEY said she might well have despised the brute force, but as
it grew into something more noble, have learned to love it. Dr. Dana[2]
was the servant of the Lowell corporation. In these days no corporation
could exist without its man of science. His salary was a mere pittance,
and when he made a discovery with which all Europe rang, he asked for a
part of the profits. “We will consider,” said the soulless corporation,
and they decided that they had a legitimate right to all that could be
made out of their servant!
“Thus,” I said, “Wisdom sows for the Mechanic Art to reap?”
“Exactly so,” was the reply; “and this contains the essence of the Yankee
philosophy.”
The life of Wisdom was one long struggle for something beyond a merely
serviceable knowledge. Bending alike to art and artisan, she still
refused to love the latter till he had wooed Beauty to their common
service. But Wisdom has of late married Vulcan. He no longer limps, and
has washed his face in the springs of love and thought, and sits in
holiday robes beside his bride.
Somebody said that the story of Arachne was an instance of the Goddess’s
vindictiveness.
MARGARET hoped that the vindictiveness was a popular interpolation. If
so, the story of Marsyas shows that she was malicious. She brought his
misfortunes upon him. If her own voice was discordant, there was no
reason why his voice should please!
“Divinities have a right to be indignant,” said somebody. Did Margaret
blush?
In speaking of the artistic representations of Minerva, MARGARET said
some beautiful things. Minerva was as tall and large as she could be,
without being masculine. Her face was thoughtful and serene, without
being sweet. Her eye was so full and clear that it had no need to be deep.
The talk was closed by Margaret’s reading the Essay that E. P. P. had
sent in, and the criticisms upon it.
E. P. P. began by speaking of the _conservatism_ which disinclined
Jupiter to the birth of Minerva.
“Yes,” MARGARET said, “the good was always opposed to the better.”
E. P. P. then spoke of the Parthenon, upon which, according to the
Homeric Hymn, the story of Minerva’s birth was sculptured.
MARGARET said it had been difficult to believe that the Greeks would put
so ugly a thing upon their temple, but the ruins showed a Vulcan with his
hammer in his hand, and the form of the Goddess hovering over the cloven
skull.
Why, asked E. P. P., did Ulysses represent Wisdom in the Odyssey?
MARGARET thought he represented the history of a thought in life, when
he tired us all out with his long story, and so pushed us to decision.
E. P. P. alluded to the different conceptions of Minerva in the Iliad and
the Odyssey, and this led to the question of priority of composition.
MARGARET thought the Odyssey was written when Homer was young and
romantic; but E. P. P. and myself stood out stoutly for the precedence of
the Iliad. I said, without the least bit of real knowledge, that I should
not wonder if there were two centuries between the poems, they seemed to
indicate such entirely different states of society; but certainly the
Odyssey was latest.
CHARLES WHEELER said that the best scholars seemed all of one mind. The
Iliad was written first by Homer,—the Odyssey long after by another hand.
E. P. P. said that there was a gem which represented Minerva as married
to a mortal, but she could tell nothing more about it.
JONES VERY said that when Wisdom falls into decay we call it Genius!
Does that mean that prophetic power fallen back from the moral nature to
the intellect is dwarfed accordingly?
CAROLINE W. HEALEY.
March 27, 1841.
V.
_April 2, 1841._
The story of Venus and Cupid and Psyche was discussed.
MARGARET said that of Venus she had less to say than of either of the
preceding Deities! She was not the expression of a thought, but of
a fact. She was the Greek idea of a lovely woman,—the best physical
development of woman. When we have said, “It is,” we have said all. The
birth of Beauty was the only ideal thing about her. She sprang from the
wave, from the flux and reflux of things, from the undulating line. On
this Venus, transitoriness had set its seal. As we look at her, we feel
that she must change. Her loveliness is too fair to last. Her beauty
would pass next moment. She could not live a year, we think, without
losing something of her full grace. It was peculiarly Greek to create a
beautiful symbol, and to pause in the symbol. The Greeks were very apt to
do this. They did it effectually in the Goddess of Love. She was sportive
in all her amours. They had no idea of an Everlasting Love. They enjoyed
themselves too much to abstract themselves. Venus seemed to Margaret a
merely human creature. She was not the type of Universal Beauty: the
Greek eye was closed to that. Still, their own embodiment did not satisfy
their own need. They filled out their ideal with Venus Urania, Hebe, and
all the attendant Hours and Graces, yet were not satisfied. Then came the
fable of Psyche and her three Cupids. Venus was only a pretty girl! Her
cestus, her doves, her pets, her jealousies, all betray it. The Venus
Urania was more. _She_ was the child of Celestial Light. Hebe was born of
immortal bloom. To fill out the gaps in their conception, Eros, or Love
in Sadness, Cupid a frolicsome boy, and the more noble, more creative
Love which brooded over Chaos were evolved from their consciousness.
Psyche, who did not appear until the age of Augustus, who was too modern
to be mythological, yet glowing with mythic beauty, was only another
evidence of their imperfect idea. Her story expresses more than that of
Venus. It tells not only the story of human love, but represents the
pilgrimage of a soul. The jealousy of Venus was that which the good must
always feel toward the better which is to supersede it, and as soon as
Psyche looked upon her sleeping lover she became immortal. The soul in
the fulness of Love became conscious of Destiny.
JAMES CLARKE asked what was the difference between the girl-mother—the
Madonna—and the Greek Venus.
MARGARET replied, with more patience than I was capable of, that the
Madonna represented more than passing womanly beauty. She was prophetic,
and lived again in her child.
Then, persisted JAMES F., why was Vulcan the _husband_ of Beauty, to
which Margaret gave no satisfactory answer. He then gave his own thought,
to which I can do no justice, although it was what I tried in vain to
say at the last conversation. It amounted to this,—that in seeking for
beauty we lose it, but in aiming at utility through hard labor we find
perfect proportion—and consequently perfect beauty. He said that he and
his sister Sarah had often spoken to each other about this, and he felt
that the time would come when essays would be written about our ships,
as we now write essays about the Pyramids and the Greek Art. Posterity
might find the proof of our search after beauty in the graceful prow
and swelling hold and tall, tapering mast or shrouds of shredded jet;
in the bellying canvas and the patron saint which watches the wake from
the stern. But we know that the ship, the most beautiful object in our
modern world, was the product of labor, gradually evoked, according to
the law of fitness, compass, and general proportion. To bring its form
into a natural relation to wind and wave, was to find perfect harmony
and beauty. At first the prow was too sharp, and the water had rushed
over it; the hold was too shallow, and she sat ungracefully where she now
rides as mistress.
EMERSON quoted some German author to the same effect.
MR. CLARKE said there was something in one of R. W. E.’s own Essays which
expressed the same thing.
EMERSON laughed and said, “Very important authority,” and would have
changed the subject, when—
WILLIAM WHITE said that it did not tally well with James Clarke’s theory
that the ugly steamer had succeeded the beautiful clipper.
MR. CLARKE said the theory failed only because there was no noble end in
view. The steamer was not intended to be in harmony with Nature.
EMERSON asked if the Greeks had no symbol for natural beauty. Several
were suggested that he would not accept, but he finally took Diana on
Charles Wheeler’s suggestion.
WHEELER then spoke of the birth of Venus. He said many writers thought
the story as late as that of Psyche, and the line of Hesiod relating to
it an interpolation.
MARGARET thought she should have suspected this if she had never heard
it. The thought it expressed was too comprehensive to be in keeping with
the remainder of her story.
CHARLES WHEELER would not accept the criticism, but went on to talk about
the marriage of Venus with Mars, which had amazed Olympus.
MARGARET said the Olympian Deities were like modern men, who talk to
women forever about their softness and delicacy, until women imagine
that the only good thing in man is a strong arm. The girl elopes with
a red coat, and the indignant lords of creation wonder why she did not
appreciate their modest merit and unobtrusive virtues. Poor Beauty _weeps
out_ the crimson stain upon her escutcheon in a long age of suffering.
A laugh followed this bright sally, and then somebody said that Venus
once married Mercury.
MARGARET declared that must be an interpolation, for there were no points
of sympathy between the Goddess of beauty and the God of craft.
JAMES CLARKE did not know about that; he thought that the finish and
completeness of the late robbery of Davis, Palmer, & Co. constituted a
_kind of beauty_!
MARGARET said that affair was altogether grand; she had never heard of
anything so Greek as Williamson’s exclaiming, “Gentlemen! you will not
deprive me of the implements of my trade?” She could not help respecting
his impudence! The Greeks ought to be respected for developing every
human faculty into deity. She thought lying, stealing, and so forth
only excesses of a good faculty; and so did the Greeks, for in their
mistaken way they had deified Mercury. The Spartans taught their children
to steal, and the Greeks universally acknowledged that to cheat was
honorable if it could be concealed.
I remembered the passage in the “Republic” where Polemarchus confesses
that he had learned from Homer to admire Autolycus, grand sire of
Ulysses, distinguished above all men for his thefts and oaths!
Thrasymachus said that the unjust were both prudent and good, if they
were able to commit injustice to _perfection_! Is the immortality of
Autolycus the destiny of Williamson?