These were many, but most of them are living and cannot, therefore, be
spoken of. There is an advantage in writing about the dead, for they
cannot protest against the handsome things you say, and they cannot
remonstrate against the unhandsome things. I shall on this account
choose but two, with whom I was very intimate, and who are very near to
my heart. I shall give sketches of John Weiss and Samuel Johnson, and
first of John Weiss.[*]
[*] Reprinted from the _Unitarian Review_ of May, 1888.
This man was a flame of fire. He was genius unalloyed by terrestrial
considerations; a spirit lamp always burning. He had an overflow of
nervous vitality, an excess of spiritual life that could not find vents
enough for its discharge. As his figure comes before me it seems that of
one who is more than half transfigured. His large head; his ample brow;
his great, dark eyes; his "sable-silvered" beard and full moustache; his
gray hair, thick and close on top, with the strange line of black
beneath it, like a fillet of jet; his thin, piping, penetrating, tenuous
voice, that trembled as it conveyed the torrent of thought; the rapid,
sudden manner, suggesting sometimes the lark and sometimes the eagle;
the small but sinewy body; the delicate hands and feet; the sensitive
touch, feeling impalpable vibrations and detecting movements of
intelligence within the folds of organization (they say he could tell
the character of a great writer by holding a sealed letter from his
hand),--all indicated a half-disembodied soul. His spoken addresses and
written discourses confirm the impression.
I first met him at the meetings of the "Hook-and-Ladder,"[*] a
ministerial club of which we both were members. At the house of Thomas
Starr King, in Boston, he read a sermon on the supremacy of the
spiritual element in character, which impressed me as few pulpit
utterances ever did, so fine was it, so subtle, yet so massive in
conviction. Illustrations that he used stay by me now, after the lapse
of more than forty years. I next heard him in New Bedford, at the
installation of Charles Lowe, when, in ill-health and feeble, he gave,
in substance, the discourse on Materialism, afterwards published in the
volume on "Immortal Life." It struck me then as exceedingly able; and it
derived force from the intense earnestness of its delivery, as by one
who could look into the invisible world, and could speak no light word
or consult transient effects. Many years later, I listened, in New York,
to his lectures on Greek ideas, the keenest interpretation of the
ancient myths, the most profound, luminous, sympathetic, I have met
with. He had the faculty of reading between the lines, of apprehending
the hidden meaning, of setting the old stories in the light of universal
ideas, of lighting up allusions. The lecture on Prometheus I remember as
especially radiant and inspiring; but they were all remarkable for
positive suggestions of a very noble kind.
[*] We copy from a private letter the following account of the
origin of this club and of its grotesque name, which has lost, alas!
its significance to the younger generation. "In the year 1844 (I
think it was) a few of us young ministers formed a club, including
Charles Brigham, Edward Hale, John Weiss, with one or two elders, as
Dr. Hedge and, later, O. B. Frothingham, Starr King, W. R. Alger,
William B. Greene, and others. We went long without a name, in spite
of my urgent appeals as Secretary, till one fine day, at George R.
Russell's house in West Roxbury, in an after-dinner frolic, Weiss
turned the garden-engine hose upon a fellow-member and drenched him
from head to foot; upon which escapade it was unanimously agreed to
call ourselves the 'Hook-and-Ladder,' by which name the memory of it
is fondly kept among us to this day. A similar older fraternity had
gone by the name of the 'Railroad Association,' and, in imitation,
when it was proposed to borrow a title from some like line of
industry we, on this sudden whim, chose the fire-department."
His genius was eminently religious. Not, indeed, in any customary
fashion, nor after any usual way. He belonged to the Rationalists, was a
Protestant of an extreme type, an avowed adherent of the most "advanced"
views, a speaker on the Free Religious platform, a writer for the
_Massachusetts Quarterly_, and for the _Radical_. His was a purely
natural, scientific, spiritual faith, unorthodox to the last
degree,--logically, historically, critically, sentimentally so,--so on
principle and with fixed purpose. The accepted theory of religion
excited his indignation, his scorn, his amazement, and his mirth. He
could brook no dogmatic limitations, even of the most liberal sect, but
went on and on, past all barriers, facing all adversaries, confronting
every difficulty, and resting only when there was nothing more to
discover. He had an agonized impatience to know whatever was to be
known, to get at the ultimate data of assurance. Nothing less would
satisfy him. His cup of joy was not full till he could touch the bottom.
Then it overflowed, and there was glee as of a strong swimmer who is
sure of his tide. His exultation is almost painful, as he welcomes fact
after fact, feeling more and more positive, with each new demonstration
of science, that the advent of certainty was by so much nearer. Evidence
that to most minds seemed fatal to belief was, in his sight,
confirmatory of it, as rendering its need more clear and more imperious.
"We need be afraid of nothing in heaven or earth, whether dreamt of or
not in our philosophy." "The position of theistic naturalism entitles it
not to be afraid of all the scientific facts that can be produced."
"There is dignity in dust that reaches any form, because it eventually
betrays a forming power, and ceases to be dust by sharing it." "It is a
wonder to me that scholars and clergymen are so skittish about
scientific facts." "We owe a debt to the scientific man who can show how
many moral customs result from local and ethnic experiences, and how the
conscience is everywhere capable of inheritance and education. He cannot
bring us too many facts of this description, because we have one fact
too much for him; namely, a latent tendency of conscience to repudiate
inheritance and every experience of utility, to fly in its face with a
forecast of a transcendental utility that supplies the world with its
redeemers, and continually drags it out of the snug and accurate
adjustment of selfishness to which it arrives." There is a great deal to
the same purpose. In fact, Mr. Weiss cannot say enough on this head. He
accepts the doctrine of evolution in its whole length and breadth. "Of
what consequence is it whence the living matter is derived? We are not
appalled at the possibility that organic matter may be made out of
non-living, or, more properly, inorganic matter. We are nerved for such
a result, whether it occur in the laboratory or in nature, by the
conviction that the spiritual functions are no more imperilled by using
matter in any way, than that the Creator hazarded his existence by
originating matter in some way to be used by himself and by us."
"Science does me this inestimable benefit of providing a universe to
support my personal identity, my moral sense, and my feeling that these
two functions of mind cannot be killed. Its denials, no less than its
affirmations, set free all the facts I need to make my body an
expression of mental independence. Hand-in-hand with science I go, by
the steps of development back to the dawn of creation; and, when there,
we review all the forces and their combinations that have helped us to
arrive, and both of us together break into a confession of a force of
forces."
This cordial sympathy with science, this absence of all savor of a
polemical spirit, this hearty welcoming of every fact of anatomy and
chemistry, is very noble and inspiring. It is very wise, too, though the
noble, hearty side was alone attractive to him. He had in view no other,
being a single-minded lover of truth. But, nevertheless, he could not
have adopted a more politic course. For thus he propitiated the
scepticism of the age, struck in with the prevailing current, disarmed
opposition, and erected his own principles on the eminence which
scientific men have raised and which they cannot build too high for his
purposes. He doubles on his pursuers, and fairly flanks his foes. This
throws the labor of refuting him on the idealists, who may not care to
become responsible for his positions, and may demur to conclusions he
arrives at, while they cannot but applaud his general aims, and wish
they could give positive assent to all his specific doctrines. There was
always this discrepancy between his sentiment and his logic; but it came
out most conspicuously in his elaborate arguments.
The burden of his exposition was the existence of an ideal sphere,
quite distinct from visible phenomena; facts of consciousness attesting
personality, a moral law, an intelligent cause, an active conscience, a
living heart; order, beauty, harmony, humanity, self-forgetfulness,
self-denial. As he states it:
I claim, against a strictly logical empirical method, three classes
of facts: first, the authentic facts of the Moral Sense, whenever
it appears as the transcender of the ripest average utility;
second, the facts of the Imagination, as the anticipator of mental
methods by pervading everything with personalty, by imputing life
to objects, or by occasional direct suggestion; third, the facts of
the Harmonic Sense, as the reconciler of discrete and apparently
sundered objects, as the prophet and artist of number and
mathematical ratio, as the unifier of all the contents of the soul
into the acclaim which rises when the law of unity fills the scene.
Upon these facts, I chiefly sustain myself against the theory
which, when it is consistently explained, derives all possible
mental functions from the impacts of objectivity.
If Mr. Weiss had stopped with this general thesis, he would
probably have carried most Rationalists, certainly the mass of
Transcendentalists, with him. They would have been only too glad to
welcome so clear and brilliant a champion. But he insisted on gathering
up these conceptions into two points of doctrine--God and Immortality.
On these points his arguments become strained, and too subtle for
ordinary minds. Indeed, many will be inclined to suspect his whole
exposition, which would be a misfortune of a very grave character. Mr.
Emerson avoided all definite assertion of personality carried beyond the
limits of individuality in the present state of existence. Mr. Weiss is
more daring, and proclaims a God who arranges creation _as it is_, and
an immortality that drops what to most people constitutes their highly
valued possessions--namely, their "animalities" of various kinds. What
will most men think of a God who "takes his chances," who "in
planet-scenery and animal life is at his play," who puts up in his
divine laboratory "curare and strychnine," and cannot "recognize the
word _disaster_," though he makes the thing? To how many will an
immortality be conceivable that can "belong only to immutable ideas,"
that only "springs from the vital necessity of their own souls," that is
a clinging "to the breast of everlasting law"?
To tell the truth, the arguments themselves for this rather questionable
result of idealism are somewhat unconvincing, not to say fanciful. They
are chiefly of a dogmatic kind, that may be met with counter
affirmations, equally valid. Many of them are stated in a symbolical or
poetical or illustrative manner, the most dangerous of all methods.
Examples of this might be multiplied indefinitely. I had marked several
for confirmation, but they were too long for quotation. One instance of
his mode of reasoning may be given[*]:
It is objected that no thought and feeling have ever yet been
displayed independently of cerebral condition; they must have
brain, either to originate or to announce them. If brain be source
or instrument of human consciousness, what preserves it when the
brain is dead? But there would have been no universe on such terms
as that. What supplied infinite mind with its preliminary _sine qua
non_ of brain matter?
[*] It occurs in "American Religion," p. 149.
But, surely, if this is an argument at all, if it does not beg the very
question in debate--namely, whether there is an infinite mind,--is it
not an argument for atheism? For either the existing universe fully
expresses Deity, in which case Deity is something less than infinite; or
Deity must be conceived as very imperfect, and a progressive, tentative
Divinity is no better than none.
To be sure, he says: "We attribute Personality to the divine Being,
because we cannot otherwise refer to any source the phenomena that show
Will and Intellect." That is to say, we yield to a logical necessity. To
argue that materialism "reeks with immortality" because "the baldest
negation is not merely a verbal contradiction of an affirmation, but a
contribution to its probability,--for it testifies that there was
something previously taken for granted,"--is really a play upon words,
inasmuch as the denial is simply an affirmation of certain facts, and by
no means a categorical declaration involving all the facts at issue. By
claiming none but relative knowledge, the antithesis is removed.
One is conscious of a suspicion that the author's tremendous overflow
of nervous vitality had much to do with the vehemence of his
persuasions. He himself countenances such a suspicion. "I confess," he
declares, "to an all-pervading instinct of personal continuance, coupled
with a latent, haunting feeling that there is a point somewhere in human
existence, as there has been in the past, where animality controls the
fate of men. Where is that point? We recoil from every effort to draw
the line." He had a very strong sense of personality, with its
inevitable reference of persistency. "To us, perhaps," he cries, in a
kind of anguish, "no thought could be so dreadful, no surmise so
harrowing, as that we might slip into nonentity. We impetuously repel
the haunting doubt. We shut the eyes, and cower before the goblin in
abject dread until it is gone. With the beauty-loving and full-blooded
Claudio, we cry,--