Apart from the account of his travels and other personal experiences,
the Journals are mainly made up of discussions of upwards of fifty
subjects of general and fundamental interest, ranging from art to war,
and looked at from many and diverse points of view. Of these subjects
three are dominant, recurring again and again in each volume. These
are nature, literature, and religion. Emerson's main interests
centered in these themes. Using these terms in their broadest sense,
this is true, I think, of all his published books. Emerson was an
idealist, first, last, and all the time, and he was a literary artist,
or aimed to be, first, last, and all the time, and in the same measure
and to the same extent was he a devout religious soul, using the term
religion as he sometimes uses it, as a feeling of the Infinite.
There are one hundred and seventy-six paragraphs, long and short,
given to literature and art, and one hundred and sixty given to
religious subjects, and over thirty given to nature. It is interesting
to note that he devotes more paragraphs to woman than to man; and more
to society than to solitude, though only to express his dislike of the
former and his love for the latter. There are more thoughts about
science than about metaphysics, more about war than about love, more
about poetry than about philosophy, more on beauty than on knowledge,
more on walking than on books. There are three times as many
paragraphs on nature (thirty-three) as on the Bible, all of which is
significant of his attitude of mind.
Emerson was a preacher without a creed, a scholar devoted to
super-literary ends, an essayist occupied with thoughts of God, the
soul, nature, the moral law--always the literary artist looking for
the right word, the right image, but always bending his art to the
service of religious thought. He was one of the most religious souls
of his country and time, or of any country and time, yet was disowned
by all the sects and churches of his time. He made religion too
pervasive, and too inclusive to suit them; the stream at once got out
of its banks and inundated all their old landmarks. In the last
analysis of his thought, his ultimate theme was God, and yet he never
allowed himself to attempt any definite statement about God--refusing
always to discuss God in terms of human personality. When Emerson
wrote "Representative Men" he felt that Jesus was the Representative
Man whom he ought to sketch, "but the task required great
gifts--steadiest insight and perfect temper; else the consciousness of
want of sympathy in the audience would make one petulant and sore in
spite of himself."
There are few great men in history or philosophy or literature or
poetry or divinity whose names do not appear more or less frequently
in the Journals. For instance, in the Journal of 1864 the names or
works of one hundred and seventeen men appear, ranging from Zeno to
Jones Very. And this is a fair average. Of course the names of his
friends and contemporaries appear the most frequently. The name that
recurs the most often is that of his friend and neighbor Thoreau.
There are ninety-seven paragraphs in which the Hermit of Walden is the
main or the secondary figure. He discusses him and criticizes him, and
quotes from him, always showing an abiding interest in, and affection
for, him. Thoreau was in so many ways so characteristically Emersonian
that one wonders what influence it was in the place or time that gave
them both, with their disparity of ages, so nearly the same stamp.
Emerson is by far the more imposing figure, the broader, the wiser,
the more tolerant, the more representative; he stood four-square to
the world in a sense that Thoreau did not. Thoreau presented a pretty
thin edge to the world. If he stood broadside to anything, it was to
nature. He was undoubtedly deeply and permanently influenced by
Emerson both in his mental habits and in his manner of life, yet the
main part of him was original and unadulterated Thoreau. His literary
style is in many respects better than that of Emerson; its logical
texture is better; it has more continuity, more evolution, it is more
flexible and adaptive; it is the medium of a lesser mind, but of a
mind more thoroughly imbued with the influence of the classical
standards of modern literature. I believe "Walden" will last as long
as anything Emerson has written, if not longer. It is the fruit of a
sweeter solitude and detachment from the world than Emerson ever knew,
a private view of nature, and has a fireside and campside quality that
essays fashioned for the lecture platform do not have. Emerson's pages
are more like mosaics, richly inlaid with gems of thought and poetry
and philosophy, while Thoreau's are more like a closely woven,
many-colored textile.
Thoreau's "Maine Woods" I look upon as one of the best books of the
kind in English literature. It has just the right tone and quality,
like Dana's "Two Years Before the Mast"--a tone and quality that
sometimes come to a man when he makes less effort to write than to
see and feel truly. He does not aim to exploit the woods, but to live
with them and possess himself of their spirit. The Cape Cod book also
has a similar merit; it almost leaves a taste of the salt sea spray
upon your lips. Emerson criticizes Thoreau freely, and justly, I
think. As a person he lacked sweetness and winsomeness; as a writer he
was at times given to a meaningless exaggeration.
Henry Thoreau sends me a paper with the old fault of
unlimited contradiction. The trick of his rhetoric is soon
learned: it consists in substituting for the obvious word
and thought its diametrical antagonist. He praises wild
mountains and winter forests for their domestic air; snow
and ice for their warmth; villagers and wood-choppers for
their urbanity, and the wilderness for resembling Rome and
Paris. With the constant inclination to dispraise cities and
civilization, he yet can find no way to know woods and
woodmen except by paralleling them with towns and townsmen.
Channing declared the piece is excellent: but it makes me
nervous and wretched to read it, with all its merits.
I told Henry Thoreau that his freedom is in the form, but he
does not disclose new matter. I am very familiar with all
his thoughts,--they are my own quite originally drest. But
if the question be, what new ideas has he thrown into
circulation, he has not yet told what that is which he was
created to say. I said to him what I often feel, I only know
three persons who seem to me fully to see this law of
reciprocity or compensation--himself, Alcott, and myself:
and 't is odd that we should all be neighbors, for in the
wide land or the wide earth I do not know another who seems
to have it as deeply and originally as these three
Gothamites.
A remark of Emerson's upon Thoreau calls up the image of John Muir to
me: "If I knew only Thoreau, I should think coöperation of good men
impossible. Must we always talk for victory, and never once for truth,
for comfort, and joy?" Then, after crediting Thoreau with some
admirable gifts,--centrality, penetration, strong understanding,--he
proceeds to say, "all his resources of wit and invention are lost to
me, in every experiment, year after year, that I make to hold
intercourse with his mind. Always some weary captious paradox to fight
you with, and the time and temper wasted."
Emerson met John Muir in the Yosemite in 1871 and was evidently
impressed with him. Somewhere he gives a list of his men which begins
with Carlyle and ends with Muir. Here was another man with more
character than intellect, as Emerson said of Carlyle, and with the
flavor of the wild about him. Muir was not too compliant and
deferential. He belonged to the sayers of No. Contradiction was the
breath of his nostrils. He had the Scottish chariness of bestowing
praise or approval, and could surely give Emerson the sense of being
_met_ which he demanded. Writing was irksome to Muir as it was to
Carlyle, but in monologue, in an attentive company, he shone; not a
great thinker, but a mind strongly characteristic. His philosophy
rarely rose above that of the Sunday school, but his moral fiber was
very strong, and his wit ready and keen. In conversation and in daily
intercourse he was a man not easily put aside. Emerson found him
deeply read in nature lore and with some suggestion about his look and
manner of the wild and rugged solitude in which he lived so much.
Emerson was alive to everything around him; every object touched some
spring in his mind; the church spire, the shadows on the windows at
night, the little girl with her pail of whortleberries, the passing
bee, bird, butterfly, the clouds, the streams, the trees--all found
his mind open to any suggestion they might make. He is intent on the
now and the here. He listens to every newcomer with an expectant air.
He is full of the present. I once saw him at West Point during the
June examinations. How alert and eager he was! The bored and
perfunctory air of his fellow members on the Board of Visitors
contrasted sharply with his active, expectant interest.
V
He lived absolutely in his own day and generation, and no contemporary
writer of real worth escaped his notice. He is never lavish in his
praise, but is for the most part just and discriminating. Walt
Whitman is mentioned only thrice in the Journals, Lowell only twice,
Longfellow once or twice, Matthew Arnold three times, but Jones Very
is quoted and discussed sixteen times. Very was a poet who had no fast
colors; he has quite faded out in our day.
Of Matthew Arnold Emerson says: "I should like to call attention to
the critical superiority of Arnold, his excellent ear for style, and
the singular poverty of his poetry, that in fact he has written but
one poem, 'Thyrsis,' and that on an inspiration borrowed from Milton."
Few good readers, I think, will agree with Emerson about the poverty
of Arnold's poetry. His "Dover Beach" is one of the first-rate poems
in English literature. Emerson has words of praise for Lowell--thinks
the production of such a man "a certificate of good elements in the
soil, climate, and institutions of America," but in 1868 he declares
that his new poems show an advance "in talent rather than in poetic
tone"; that the advance "rather expresses his wish, his ambition, than
the uncontrollable interior impulse which is the authentic mark of a
new poem, and which is unanalysable, and makes the merit of an ode of
Collins, or Gray, or Wordsworth, or Herbert, or Byron." He evidently
thought little of Lowell's severe arraignment of him in a college poem
which he wrote soon after the delivery of the famous "Divinity School
Address." The current of religious feeling in Cambridge set so
strongly against Emerson for several years that Lowell doubtless
merely reflected it. Why did he not try to deflect it, or to check it?
And yet, when Emerson's friends did try to defend him, it was against
his will. He hated to be defended in a newspaper: "As long as all that
is said is against me I feel a certain austere assurance of success,
but as soon as honeyed words of praise are spoken for me I feel as one
that lies unprotected before his enemies."
Next to Thoreau, Emerson devotes to Alcott more space in his Journals
than to any other man. It is all telling interpretation, description,
and criticism. Truly, Alcott must have had some extraordinary power to
have made such a lasting impression upon Emerson. When my friend Myron
Benton and I first met Emerson in 1863 at West Point, Emerson spoke of
Alcott very pointedly, and said we should never miss a chance to hear
his conversation, but that when he put pen to paper all his
inspiration left him. His thoughts faded as soon as he tried to set
them down. There must have been some curious illusion about it all on
the part of Emerson, as no fragment of Alcott's wonderful talk worth
preserving has come down to us. The waters of the sea are blue, but
not in the pailful. There must have been something analogous in
Alcott's conversations, some total effect which the details do not
justify, or something in the atmosphere which he created, that gave
certain of his hearers the conviction that they were voyaging with him
through the celestial depths.
It was a curious fact that Alcott "could not recall one word or part
of his own conversation, or of any one's, let the expression be never
so happy." And he seems to have hypnotized Emerson in the same way.
"He made here some majestic utterances, but so inspired me that even I
forgot the words often." "Olympian dreams," Emerson calls his
talk--moonshine, it appears at this distance.
"His discourse soars to a wonderful height," says Emerson, "so
regular, so lucid, so playful, so new and disdainful of all boundaries
of tradition and experience, that the hearers seem no longer to have
bodies or material gravity, but almost they can mount into the air at
pleasure, or leap at one bound out of this poor solar system. I say
this of his speech exclusively, for when he attempts to write, he
loses, in my judgment, all his power, and I derive more pain than
pleasure from the perusal." Some illusion surely that made the effort
to report him like an attempt to capture the rainbow, only to find it
common water.
In 1842 Emerson devotes eight pages in his Journal to an analysis of
Alcott, and very masterly they are. He ends with these sentences:
"This noble genius discredits genius to me. I do not want any more
such persons to exist."
"When Alcott wrote from England that he was bringing home Wright and
Lane, I wrote him a letter which I required him to show them, saying
that they might safely trust his theories, but that they should put no
trust whatever in his statement of facts. When they all arrived
here--he and his victims--I asked them if he showed them the letter;
they answered that he did; so I was clear."
Another neighbor who greatly impressed Emerson, and of whom he has
much to say, was Father Taylor, the sailor preacher of Boston. There
is nothing better in the Journals than the pages devoted to
description and analysis of this remarkable man. To Emerson he
suggested the wealth of Nature. He calls him a "godly poet, the
Shakespear of the sailor and the poor." "I delight in his great
personality, the way and sweep of the man which, like a frigate's way,
takes up for the time the centre of the ocean, paves it with a white
street, and all the lesser craft 'do curtsey to him, do him
reverence.'" A man all emotion, all love, all inspiration, but, like
Alcott, impossible to justify your high estimate of by any quotation.
His power was all personal living power, and could not be transferred
to print. The livid embers of his discourse became dead charcoal when
reported by another, or, as Emerson more happily puts it, "A creature
of instinct, his colors are all opaline and dove's-neck-lustre and can
only be seen at a distance. Examine them, and they disappear." More
exactly they are visible only at a certain angle. Of course this is in
a measure true of all great oratory--it is not so much the words as
the man.
Speaking of Father Taylor in connection with Alcott, Emerson says that
one was the fool of his ideas, and the other of his fancy.
An intellectual child of Emerson's was Ellery Channing, but he seems
to have inherited in an exaggerated form only the faults of his
father. Channing appears to have been a crotchety, disgruntled person,
always aiming at walking on his head instead of on his heels. Emerson
quotes many of his sayings, not one of them worth preserving, all
marked by a kind of violence and disjointedness. They had many walks
together.
Emerson was so fond of paradoxes and extreme statements that both
Channing and Thoreau seem to have vied with each other in uttering
hard or capricious sayings when in his presence. Emerson catches at a
vivid and picturesque statement, if it has even a fraction of truth in
it, like a fly-catcher at a fly.
A fair sample of Channing's philosophy is the following: "He persists
in his bad opinion of orchards and farming, declares that the only
success he ever had with a farmer was that he once paid a cent for a
russet apple; and farming, he thinks, is an attempt to outwit God with
a hoe; that they plant a great many potatoes with much ado, but it is
doubtful if they ever get the seed back." Channing seems to have
dropped such pearls of wisdom as that all along the road in their
walks! Another sample of Channing's philosophy which Emerson thinks
worthy of quoting. They were walking over the fields in November.
Channing complained of the poverty of invention on the part of Nature:
"'Why, they had frozen water last year; why should they do it again?
Therefore it was so easy to be an artist, because _they_ do the same
thing always,' and therefore he only wants time to make him perfect in
the imitation."