Venus and Mercury.
I could not help thinking it might be an astral connection that was
indicated. On that remarkable day of his birth, Mercury was not content
with stealing the divining-rod from Apollo; he took also the cestus from
Venus, the voice from Neptune, the sword from Mars, the will from Zeus,
and his tools from Vulcan! Sagacity compassed all the deeps of divinity
to reach its end.
IDA RUSSELL asked if Venus and Astarte were not the same.
MARGARET said Astarte belonged to the stars.
Did not Venus, I wonder? But of course they are creations far asunder as
the poles.
CHARLES WHEELER thought Astarte and Venus Urania were the same.
IDA said that could not be. The first statues of Astarte were rough
blocks of wood, with veiled heads.
So, I said, were all first statues of Deities; so that was no argument.
When JAMES CLARKE asked Margaret to compare Venus with the Madonna, a
curious talk arose between Alcott, Margaret, Charles Wheeler, and Emerson.
ALCOTT wanted to know why Christ was not as much an impersonation of a
human faculty as either of the Greek Deities!
MARGARET said Jesus was not a thought. He was born on the earth, and
lived out a thought. He was no abstraction to her, but a brother.
ALCOTT wanted to know whether a purer mythology, suited to the wants
of coming time, might not arise from the mixed mythology of Persians,
Greeks, and Christians!
A very confusing and tiresome talk arose thereupon, which Charles Wheeler
smiled at, but did not join in, and which profited nobody.
CAROLINE WELLS HEALEY.
April 3, 1841.
VI.
CUPID AND PSYCHE.
_April 9, 1841._
MARGARET thought it would be very impertinent to begin by telling what
everybody knew,—the old story of Cupid and Psyche.
E. P. P. declared that Margaret never told it twice alike, and at last
she yielded and said:—
The beautiful young princess Psyche was envied by Venus, who sent Eros
to destroy her; but the God, finding Psyche wholly lovely, wedded her.
They lived happily until Psyche began to doubt. Eros had told her that
she must not seek to know him; but curiosity prevailed over faith, and
in looking at him as he slept she wounded and waked him. He left her in
dismay; and as a punishment the three trials which are the lot of mortals
were awarded to her. She must sort grain, she must bring three drops
from the river Styx, and must get the box of beauty from Proserpine. The
birds helped her with the grain; but when she reached the banks of the
Styx and stooped to fulfil the second task, she found the water too dark,
too cold, and the eagle came to her aid. At the prospect of the third
trial her soul sank; she refused to undertake it; but, winning from one
of the Gods the secret of self-dependence, she set off for Tartarus,
gave the usual sop to Cerberus, and returned with her prize. But she was
“possessed” with the idea that the treasures the box contained might
restore to her her husband’s love, and she opened the box as she came.
The noxious vapors which issued from it deprived her of consciousness,
and she fell. Eros, who had flown to seek her as soon as his wound was
healed, brought her the gift of Immortality which he had begged of
Jupiter.
ELISABETH HOAR asked what had become of Psyche’s sisters, whose
interference was a striking point in the story.
MARGARET said she knew nothing of them, and wished Miss Hoar would tell
us. Her own knowledge of the story was gained entirely from Raphael’s
original studies, and his frescos on the walls of a Roman palace.
ELISABETH HOAR recapitulated. The parents of Psyche were ordered by the
angry Venus to expose her upon a high mountain, when Zephyr carried her
to the embraces of Love, who dwelt in the depths of a quiet valley hard
by. Her sisters came to bewail her death, and Psyche begged Love to let
Zephyr bring them to rejoice in her happiness. For some time he refused,
telling her that it was not for her good, and that she could be happy
without them. This our foolish Psyche would not believe, and at last they
were permitted to come, only she must not tell them the little she knew
about her husband.
The first time Psyche had sent them away loaded with gifts. They had
questioned her about her husband, and Psyche replied that he was only
a lovely child. The year went round, and again the lovely bride longed
for her sisters’ presence. Again the God entreated her to be patient,
assuring her that if they came it would only be to make her miserable.
Psyche could not be quieted. Again they came, again they questioned. She
forgot the story she had previously told, and replied that he was an old
man, bent with years, but very kind to her. Then the envious women saw
that Psyche was herself ignorant of his true nature. They told her that
he was a dragon, and meant to devour her; that they had themselves seen
him as he passed through the fields. They begged her to take a knife and
lamp and kill him as he slept. The frightened Psyche consented.
The God was sleeping in radiant beauty at her side, and as she gazed
upon him she drew an arrow from his quiver and carelessly scratched
her finger. Impassioned by the wound, she bent over him, and a drop of
scalding oil fell from her lamp. Angry and confused, the God awoke, and,
irritated by the pain, flew away. Psyche clung to him; but she could
not support herself, and he was too angry to hold her. She fell to the
ground, and he, perched upon a neighboring tree, reproached her.
MARGARET did not know this, but said she remembered that Psyche tried to
drown herself.
ELISABETH said that was later. She despaired, and threw herself into
the river; but the river pitied her, and bore her to the shore. Venus,
growing tired of her guest, sent Mercury to advertise her. Psyche yielded
to the terms of the Goddess, rendered herself up, and was busy sorting
the gifts in the temple of Beauty when Custom was sent to berate her.
This, I suppose, is a condensation of the lovely allegory of Apuleius in
the second century of our era, but it seems to me Elisabeth made some
additions.
MARGARET said that everybody had to contend with the meddlesome sisters.
They were at the bottom of every fairy story, from that of Psyche to
Beauty and the Beast.
ELISABETH HOAR said it was always with the young soul as it was with
Psyche. It could give no account of the love which made it so happy.
So, I said, every human heart shrivels under a curious touch. Love
is angry that we wound him, and if he ever does return it is with
Immortality in his hand. When custom berates, God accepts.
JAMES CLARKE asked if there was not a celebrated statue of Cupid and
Psyche.
MARGARET had only heard of Canova’s, but James said he was sure there was
one older.
WILLIAM STORY asked if it were older than Apuleius, but James did not
know.
IDA RUSSELL said it was wrong for Psyche to look.
Yes, MARGARET said, but her temptations were strong; and if they had
not come through her sisters, they must have come through her own soul.
Everything was produced by antagonism. This morning she had taken up
Kreitzer, meaning to open the Greek volume, but took up the Indian. In
that Mythology which William Story called deep and all-embracing there
were the antagonist principles of Vishnu, or unclouded innocence, and
Brahm, who could only become pure by wading through all wickedness. There
seemed to be a need of sin, to work out salvation for human beings.
EMERSON said faith should work out that salvation. It was man’s privilege
to resist the evil, to strive triumphantly; to recognise it—never! Good
was always present to the soul,—was all the true soul took note of. It
was a duty not to look!
MARGARET thought it the climax of sin to despair. She believed evil to
be a good in the grand scheme of things. She would not recognize it as a
blunder. She must consider its scope a noble one. In one word, she would
not accept the world—for she felt within herself the power to reject
it—did she not believe evil working in it for good! Man had gained more
than he lost by his fall. The ninety-nine sheep in the parable were of
less value than the “lost found,” over which there was joy in heaven.
E. P. P. spoke of the Tree of Life,—which would have made immortal those
who ate of the Tree of Knowledge.
CAROLINE STURGIS said that this probation was what she could not
comprehend. We began at the circumference, and if we fulfilled our
destiny must end by being near the centre. How much better to have begun
there! Why could not God have made it so?
WILLIAM STORY began to say that God must seek the best good of all
his creatures; but Caroline interrupted him by saying that there was
certainly more good at the centre than at the circumference.
WILLIAM WHITE thought all this good, better, and best very puzzling.
MARGARET asked Caroline if she could not see probation to be a good, as
she had herself defined it?
Are we better then, than God? asked CAROLINE.
Not better, replied MARGARET, for we cannot compare dissimilar things.
WILLIAM WHITE asked if any one could be more than good, more than pure.
WILLIAM STORY said perfection had its degrees!
WHITE said, How can you progress after you have reached your goal?
As if any live man ever _did_ reach his goal! said I.
Is there any progress for God? retorted he.
Not any, for that is a contradiction in terms, I said; but surely you
conceive of it for souls in heaven?
MARGARET said something about the Gospel injunction to be perfect even
as our Father in Heaven is perfect. Does not “even as” mean “after the
pattern of”? Does it involve the _nature_, as well as the _degree_?
EMERSON interrupted quickly, “We are not finite.”
Everybody smiled; but the best answer to this is found in the fact, that
we never conceive of ourselves as infinite and at rest,—only as reaching
after the Infinite in our motion.
WHITE said to Caroline Sturgis, “If evil brings knowledge of good, is it
not a gain?”
WILLIAM STORY talked nobly, something to this effect: That good and evil
were related terms. If both did not exist, neither could, antagonism
being the spring of most things in the universe.
MARGARET went back to Cupid, and said that in Raphael’s original studies
Cupid was always a boy,—in his frescos, a youth, almost a man. She spoke
of the difference of expression which he gave to his Venus and his
Psyche, especially in the eye. That of Psyche was deep and thoughtful.
The distinction extended to their attendant Cupids, and was most marked
in the Psyche when she takes the cup of Immortality from her husband.
MARGARET wanted to pass on to Diana, but there were too many clergymen
in the company. Everybody was interested in somebody nearer at hand, and
views of the unchanging Providence were next presented.
MARGARET said God was the background against which all creation was
thrown.
WILLIAM STORY asked if she did not think He was greater than his
creatures?
“Always beyond,” was MARGARET’S reply.
Creation, STORY said, was rather the exponent of a _Love_ which _must
bless_, than of an activity which must act. It was a Paternal power that
_ruled_, not an autocratic power which _fathered_ us.
MARGARET said that the story of Cupid and Psyche was the story of
redemption. It contained the seeds of the doctrine of election,—saving by
grace, and so on!
A good many queer things were said on various points touched by this.
EMERSON said, that to imagine it possible to fall was to _begin_ to fall.
E. P. P. got into a little maze trying to introduce Margaret and R. W.
E. to each other,—a consummation which, however devoutly to be wished,
will never happen!
JAMES CLARKE told her that she was just where Paul was when he said,
“What then? Shall I sin, that Grace may the more abound?”
EMERSON said the woodlands could tell us most about Diana, about whom we
contrived to say very little. The omission of orgies in her worship was
dwelt upon. Her pure and sacred character with the Athenians was compared
to that of the Diana of Ephesus, whose orgies were not unusual, and who
was considered as a bountiful mother rather than as a virgin huntress.
IDA RUSSELL said that _her_ Mythology accused Diana of being the mother
of fifty sons and fifty daughters!
MARGARET laughed, and said that certainly was Diana of Ephesus!
The maddening influence of moonlight was commented upon, as if it were a
fable; but WILLIAM STORY said it was a fact. In tropical regions very sad
consequences resulted from long gazing on the moonlight or sleeping in
it. In one town he had known sixteen persons bewildered in this way.
WILLIAM WHITE said that in a late book of Nichols it was contended that
the moon had some light of her own, because she shows a brazen color even
under eclipse, when the dark side of the earth is toward her. But why may
she not gather stellar light from the whole universe, as the earth seems
to?
SALLIE GARDINER said something to William Story in a low voice. He
laughed, and said he had been thinking of the consequences of his theory.
MARGARET asked what he was talking about.
STORY said it was an application of eclipses to his theory that love
was the motive to creation. If the sun is beneficent truth shorn of its
beams, it would be like the moon, no better than brass!
CAROLINE STURGIS asked why the Mahomedans bore the crescent.
WILLIAM WHITE said because of some change in the moon which occurred at
the time of the Hegira.
WILLIAM STORY said that the worshippers at Mecca carried the crescent
before Mahomet’s time. There is a crescent on the black stone.
Both stories may be true. There is certainly a crescent on the old
Byzantine coin, or besant.
IDA RUSSELL said something about Diana being wedded.
This reminded E. P. P. of Minerva’s marriage, discussed last week. She
said that Charles Wheeler had seen the gem of which she then spoke, and
that Neptune was the favored suitor.
WILLIAM STORY said the Greeks could not wed Neptune to Diana, for the
tides were too low in the Mediterranean!
C. W. HEALEY.
April 10, 1841.
VII.
PLUTO AND TARTARUS.
_April 15, 1841._
MARGARET said very little about Pluto. On the first evening she had
called him the depth of things, and JAMES CLARKE now had a good deal
to say upon the three ideas which she thought pervaded the Greek
mythology,—the source, the depth, and the extent or flow of thought. He
said that this distinction had struck him very forcibly when Margaret
first mentioned it. We speak of widely diffused thought, of aspiring and
profound thought; of sympathetic, exalted, or deep feeling,—and this
seemed to exhaust language. It was through the depths of feeling and
experience that we came to the profound of thought.
E. P. P. said, “There is no genius in happiness.” Not a very intelligible
statement.
MARGARET said, “There is nothing worth knowing that has not some penalty
attached to it. We pay it the more willingly in proportion as we grow
wise. Depth, altitude, diffusion, are the three births of Time. It is
this which makes the German cover the operations of the miner with a
mystic veil. Bostonians laugh at the Germans because they think.”
WHEELER liked what Mr. Clarke said, and added that there was meaning in
the Irish phrase, “_Lower me up_.”
MARGARET said that all the punishments of Tartarus expressed baffled
effort, the penalty least endurable to the active Greek.
MR. MACK thought it singular that in every nation where the belief in
Tartarus had prevailed, an exact locality had always been assigned to it.
WILLIAM WHITE said that, so long as anybody could point out the locality
of the garden of Eden, we had no need to smile at the locality of a
Tartarus or an Elysium.
I do not think these “myths” belong to the same class.
CHARLES WHEELER quoted Champollion to the effect that the Styx was only
a small river flowing between the Temple at Thebes and a neighboring
“place of tombs.” The ferryman was named Charon, and the Egyptian habit
of judging the dead probably gave rise to the rest of the fable.
MARGARET said, “This was very natural.” She asked Mr. Wheeler the meaning
of certain names.
Phlegethon, he answered, meant burning fire; Acheron, anguish.
Why did not somebody say that the lifeless current of the Styx first
tempted Homer to give it to the Infernals? It is in reality a river of
Epeiros.
The Styx, WHEELER said, was a cold unhealthy stream, like that which
caused the death of Alexander. It flowed slowly through Acadia, but was
supposed to take its rise in Hades. Lethe is a river near the Syrtus in
Africa. It disappears in the sand, but rises again. Hence its name.
MR. WHEELER had some difficulty in explaining certain inconsistencies in
the poets.
MR. CLARKE quoted the remark of Achilles (?) concerning Elysium,—that a
day of hard labor on earth was preferable to an eternity of pleasure in
Elysian fields!
MARGARET said that in Elysium, as in Tartarus, souls waited. These
restless Greeks could do nothing. They were cut off from action, which
was their delight. All their punishments seem to consist of frustrated
effort,—the consequence of some presumption. Tantalus was ever thirsty
and ever famished because he had aspired to nectar and ambrosia. Ixion,
who would have scaled the heavens, was condemned to incessant revolution
upon a wheel, which never paused yet never accomplished anything. The
Danaides, who murdered the love which wooed them, were doomed to fill a
broken vessel with water which as constantly escaped. Sisyphus, who had
never labored except for a selfish end, was to roll a stone up hill,
which as constantly rolled down,—fit emblem of all selfish labor. As for
Tityrus, who sought to violate the secrets of Nature, the vulture fed
always upon his entrails.
WHEELER said this did not represent frustrated effort.
MARGARET said, No: this was remorse; but there was an admirable instance
of the former given by Goethe, of a man who wove rope from the sedges
which grew upon the banks of Lethe, for an ass who continually devoured
it. The moral seemed to be that the ass could just as well have eaten
them unwoven. Goethe goes on to say that the Greeks only thought that the
poor man had a prodigal wife, but that the moderns would look deeper and
see more in the fable.
We all weave sedges for asses to eat, thought I.
MARGARET seemed to think that every heart might have an experience which
would correspond to Tartarus. Every hero must visit it at least once.
I suggested Pluto, Persephone, the Fates, the Gorgons, the Furies, and
Cerberus. Pluto was equal to Neptune and Jupiter.
MARGARET continued: Hades was not given to Pluto to mark defective
character, but simply as his kingdom. His wants were all supplied. The
bride Olympus refused him he was permitted to steal from earth while
she gathered flowers. Persephone, seed of all things, must dwell in the
dark; but another legend tells us that if she had been willing to leave
her veil, she might have stolen away. There was a meaning in her being
forbidden to eat in the infernal regions. Fate said, “Do not touch what
you don’t want.” Psyche was forbidden to partake of the regal banquet
Persephone spread. Seeking for Immortality, this soul, like every other,
must be content to eat bitter bread.
There was then a talk about Cerberus and the Gorgons.
MR. CLARKE said that in the New Testament the dog seemed to stand for
popular prejudice. The swine stood for what _could_ not, the dog for what
_would_ not, be convinced.
Yes, MARGARET said, the wolf is a misanthropic dog. He has little dignity.
IDA RUSSELL said Cerberus stood for the temperaments.
Well, MARGARET said, that being so, she liked the Greeks for making no
allowance for the lymphatic. To what, she continued, do we offer the
first sop, as we pass through life? As for the Gorgons, every one, she
thought, would find his own interpretation of them. To her there was no
Gorgon but _apathy_; there is nothing in creation that will so soon turn
a live man into stone. These Gorgons were three women, who used one eye
and one tooth between them,—except Medusa, who was beautiful and perfect.
Her hair had provoked the envy of Minerva, and was changed into serpents.
Margaret had a copy of a gem, which Marion Dwight had made for her, which
showed this.
E. P. P. asked if Perseus did not endeavor to show Medusa her own head.
MARGARET said that might well rouse her!
CHARLES WHEELER explained. Perseus only used a mirror given him by
Minerva to avoid looking at the Gorgon.
CAROLINE STURGIS said that the old woman who keeps house for Helen in the
second part of “Faust” was a Gorgon to her.
This dragged a critical analysis of the “Faust” forward.
MARGARET said the Seeker represents the Spirit of the Age. He never
sinned save by yielding, and yet he was emphatically _saved by grace_.
It was difficult to see what Goethe meant until he got to the Tower of
the Middle Ages. That made all clear.
CHARLES WHEELER said, the reader would a great deal rather that Faust
went to the Devil than not!
MARGARET defended Goethe’s way of exhibiting character, of which Wilhelm
Meister was an instance. Goethe said to himself, What should I do with a
hero in such rascally society? Meister preferred the Brahmal experience.
E. P. P. asked if this moral indifference was well?
MARGARET replied, that it was just as frightful as any other Gorgon. If
we are to have a purely intellectual development, it was well for a man
like Goethe to represent it. To choose fairly between evil and good, the
intellect must regard both with indifference.
Somebody asked how the Gorgon’s head came to be on the Ægis of Minerva?
If Apathy is the Gorgon, surely Wisdom needs it!
Then we began to talk about Theseus in connection with Tartarus. Why
should he sit forever on a stone?
MARGARET thought he represented reform!
MR. MACK said reform checked itself by its own fanaticism.
WHEELER, in this connection, asked after the Greek notion of
accountability.
MARGARET did not think the Greeks had any.
WHEELER assured her to the contrary, and told anecdotes to prove it. He
spoke of the fatal transmission of guilt in one family, generation after
generation.
MARGARET said the Greeks never rejected facts.
IDA RUSSELL spoke of the last King of Athens, Codrus, supposed to have
been punished for the crimes of his ancestors.
WHEELER said that when the Greeks killed some ambassadors, they felt so
sure that Heaven would avenge the sin that they sent two citizens to
expiate it; but Darius, to whom they were sent, refused to release the
Greeks from their impending doom.
MARGARET said the moment such a supposition was started, there were
plenty of facts to sustain it. Orestes is the purified victim of his
family. The old Greeks had made no complete statement of their destiny or
their accountability.
E. P. P. said they had made it in art.
C. W. HEALEY.
April 16, 1841.
VIII.
MERCURY AND ORPHEUS.
_April 22, 1841._
MARGARET said it surprised her that young men did not seek to be
Mercuries. She said that one of the ugliest young men that she knew had
become so enraptured with one of Raphael’s Mercuries, that he confessed
to her that he was never alone without trying to assume its attitude
before the glass. She said she could not help laughing at the image he
suggested, an ugly figure in high-heeled boots and a strait-coat in the
act of flying, commissioned with every grace from Heaven to men! but she
respected the feeling, and thought every sensitive soul must share it.
EMERSON had sent Sophia Peabody several fine engravings. One of these, a
Correggio, represented a woman of Parma as a Madonna. It might give any
woman a similar desire.
William Story, Frank Shaw, Mr. Mack and his friends, Mrs. Ripley, Ida
Russell, and Mrs. S. G. Ward were all missing to-night.
MARGARET said that she was sorry she had allowed our subject to embrace
so much. The Grecian Mercury seemed to mean so little that she had not
thought of the depth and difficulty connected with the Egyptian Hermes.
Among the Greeks, Ceres, Persephone, and Juno represent the productive
faculties, Jupiter and Apollo the divine, and Mercury simply the human
understanding, the God of eloquence and of thieves.
MARIANNE JACKSON thought it strange that he should be at once the God of
persuasion and the Deity of theft!
MARGARET said eloquence was a kind of thieving!
Did the Greeks so consider it? asked MARIANNE.