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II--EMERSON
1
It has seemed to the writer, that Emerson is greater--his
identity more complete perhaps--in the realms of revelation--
natural disclosure--than in those of poetry, philosophy, or
prophecy. Though a great poet and prophet, he is greater,
possibly, as an invader of the unknown,--America's deepest
explorer of the spiritual immensities,--a seer painting his
discoveries in masses and with any color that may lie at hand--
cosmic, religious, human, even sensuous; a recorder, freely
describing the inevitable struggle in the soul's uprise--
perceiving from this inward source alone, that every "ultimate
fact is only the first of a new series"; a discoverer, whose
heart knows, with Voltaire, "that man seriously reflects when
left alone," and would then discover, if he can, that "wondrous
chain which links the heavens with earth--the world of beings
subject to one law." In his reflections Emerson, unlike Plato, is
not afraid to ride Arion's Dolphin, and to go wherever he is
carried--to Parnassus or to "Musketaquid."
We see him standing on a summit, at the door of the infinite
where many men do not care to climb, peering into the mysteries
of life, contemplating the eternities, hurling back whatever he
discovers there,--now, thunderbolts for us to grasp, if we can,
and translate--now placing quietly, even tenderly, in our hands,
things that we may see without effort--if we won't see them, so
much the worse for us.
We see him,--a mountain-guide, so intensely on the lookout for
the trail of his star, that he has no time to stop and retrace
his footprints, which may often seem indistinct to his followers,
who find it easier and perhaps safer to keep their eyes on the
ground. And there is a chance that this guide could not always
retrace his steps if he tried--and why should he!--he is on the
road, conscious only that, though his star may not lie within
walking distance, he must reach it before his wagon can be
hitched to it--a Prometheus illuminating a privilege of the Gods-
-lighting a fuse that is laid towards men. Emerson reveals the
less not by an analysis of itself, but by bringing men towards
the greater. He does not try to reveal, personally, but leads,
rather, to a field where revelation is a harvest-part, where it
is known by the perceptions of the soul towards the absolute law.
He leads us towards this law, which is a realization of what
experience has suggested and philosophy hoped for. He leads us,
conscious that the aspects of truth, as he sees them, may change
as often as truth remains constant. Revelation perhaps, is but
prophecy intensified--the intensifying of its mason-work as well
as its steeple. Simple prophecy, while concerned with the past,
reveals but the future, while revelation is concerned with all
time. The power in Emerson's prophecy confuses it with--or at
least makes it seem to approach--revelation. It is prophecy with
no time element. Emerson tells, as few bards could, of what will
happen in the past, for his future is eternity and the past is a
part of that. And so like all true prophets, he is always modern,
and will grow modern with the years--for his substance is not
relative but a measure of eternal truths determined rather by a
universalist than by a partialist. He measured, as Michel Angelo
said true artists should, "with the eye and not the hand." But to
attribute modernism to his substance, though not to his
expression, is an anachronism--and as futile as calling today's
sunset modern.
As revelation and prophecy, in their common acceptance are
resolved by man, from the absolute and universal, to the relative
and personal, and as Emerson's tendency is fundamentally the
opposite, it is easier, safer and so apparently clearer, to think
of him as a poet of natural and revealed philosophy. And as such,
a prophet--but not one to be confused with those singing
soothsayers, whose pockets are filled, as are the pockets of
conservative-reaction and radical demagoguery in pulpit, street-
corner, bank and columns, with dogmatic fortune-tellings.
Emerson, as a prophet in these lower heights, was a conservative,
in that he seldom lost his head, and a radical, in that he seldom
cared whether he lost it or not. He was a born radical as are all
true conservatives. He was too much "absorbed by the absolute,"
too much of the universal to be either--though he could be both
at once. To Cotton Mather, he would have been a demagogue, to a
real demagogue he would not be understood, as it was with no self
interest that he laid his hand on reality. The nearer any subject
or an attribute of it, approaches to the perfect truth at its
base, the more does qualification become necessary. Radicalism
must always qualify itself. Emerson clarifies as he qualifies, by
plunging into, rather than "emerging from Carlyle's
soul-confusing labyrinths of speculative radicalism." The
radicalism that we hear much about today, is not Emerson's kind--
but of thinner fiber--it qualifies itself by going to _A_ "root"
and often cutting other roots in the process; it is usually
impotent as dynamite in its cause and sometimes as harmful to the
wholesome progress of all causes; it is qualified by its failure.
But the Radicalism of Emerson plunges to all roots, it becomes
greater than itself--greater than all its formal or informal
doctrines--too advanced and too conservative for any specific
result--too catholic for all the churches--for the nearer it is
to truth, the farther it is from a truth, and the more it is
qualified by its future possibilities.
Hence comes the difficulty--the futility of attempting to fasten
on Emerson any particular doctrine, philosophic, or religious
theory. Emerson wrings the neck of any law, that would become
exclusive and arrogant, whether a definite one of metaphysics or
an indefinite one of mechanics. He hacks his way up and down, as
near as he can to the absolute, the oneness of all nature both
human and spiritual, and to God's benevolence. To him the
ultimate of a conception is its vastness, and it is probably
this, rather than the "blind-spots" in his expression that makes
us incline to go with him but half-way; and then stand and build
dogmas. But if we can not follow all the way--if we do not always
clearly perceive the whole picture, we are at least free to
imagine it--he makes us feel that we are free to do so; perhaps
that is the most he asks. For he is but reaching out through and
beyond mankind, trying to see what he can of the infinite and its
immensities--throwing back to us whatever he can--but ever
conscious that he but occasionally catches a glimpse; conscious
that if he would contemplate the greater, he must wrestle with
the lesser, even though it dims an outline; that he must struggle
if he would hurl back anything--even a broken fragment for men to
examine and perchance in it find a germ of some part of truth;
conscious at times, of the futility of his effort and its
message, conscious of its vagueness, but ever hopeful for it, and
confident that its foundation, if not its medium is somewhere
near the eventual and "absolute good" the divine truth underlying
all life. If Emerson must be dubbed an optimist--then an optimist
fighting pessimism, but not wallowing in it; an optimist, who
does not study pessimism by learning to enjoy it, whose
imagination is greater than his curiosity, who seeing the sign-
post to Erebus, is strong enough to go the other way. This
strength of optimism, indeed the strength we find always
underlying his tolerance, his radicalism, his searches,
prophecies, and revelations, is heightened and made efficient by
"imagination-penetrative," a thing concerned not with the
combining but the apprehending of things. A possession, akin to
the power, Ruskin says, all great pictures have, which "depends
on the penetration of the imagination into the true nature of the
thing represented, and on the scorn of the imagination for all
shackles and fetters of mere external fact that stand in the way
of its suggestiveness"--a possession which gives the strength of
distance to his eyes, and the strength of muscle to his soul.
With this he slashes down through the loam--nor would he have us
rest there. If we would dig deep enough only to plant a doctrine,
from one part of him, he would show us the quick-silver in that
furrow. If we would creed his Compensation, there is hardly a
sentence that could not wreck it, or could not show that the idea
is no tenet of a philosophy, but a clear (though perhaps not
clearly hurled on the canvas) illustration of universal justice--
of God's perfect balances; a story of the analogy or better the
identity of polarity and duality in Nature with that in morality.
The essay is no more a doctrine than the law of gravitation is.
If we would stop and attribute too much to genius, he shows us
that "what is best written or done by genius in the world, was no
one man's work, but came by wide social labor, when a thousand
wrought like one, sharing the same impulse." If we would find in
his essay on Montaigne, a biography, we are shown a biography of
scepticism--and in reducing this to relation between "sensation
and the morals" we are shown a true Montaigne--we know the man
better perhaps by this less presentation. If we would stop and
trust heavily on the harvest of originality, he shows us that
this plant--this part of the garden--is but a relative thing. It
is dependent also on the richness that ages have put into the
soil. "Every thinker is retrospective."
Thus is Emerson always beating down through the crust towards the
first fire of life, of death and of eternity. Read where you
will, each sentence seems not to point to the next but to the
undercurrent of all. If you would label his a religion of ethics
or of morals, he shames you at the outset, "for ethics is but a
reflection of a divine personality." All the religions this world
has ever known, have been but the aftermath of the ethics of one
or another holy person; "as soon as character appears be sure
love will"; "the intuition of the moral sentiment is but the
insight of the perfection of the laws of the soul"; but these
laws cannot be catalogued.
If a versatilist, a modern Goethe, for instance, could put all of
Emerson's admonitions into practice, a constant permanence would
result,--an eternal short-circuit--a focus of equal X-rays. Even
the value or success of but one precept is dependent, like that
of a ball-game as much on the batting-eye as on the pitching-arm.
The inactivity of permanence is what Emerson will not permit. He
will not accept repose against the activity of truth. But this
almost constant resolution of every insight towards the absolute
may get a little on one's nerves, if one is at all partial-wise
to the specific; one begins to ask what is the absolute anyway,
and why try to look clear through the eternities and the
unknowable even out of the other end. Emerson's fondness for
flying to definite heights on indefinite wings, and the tendency
to over-resolve, becomes unsatisfying to the impatient, who want
results to come as they walk. Probably this is a reason that it
is occasionally said that Emerson has no vital message for the
rank and file. He has no definite message perhaps for the
literal, but messages are all vital, as much, by reason of his
indefiniteness, as in spite of it.
There is a suggestion of irony in the thought that the power of
his vague but compelling vitality, which ever sweeps us on in
spite of ourselves, might not have been his, if it had not been
for those definite religious doctrines of the old New England
theologians. For almost two centuries, Emerson's mental and
spiritual muscles had been in training for him in the moral and
intellectual contentions, a part of the religious exercise of his
forebears. A kind of higher sensitiveness seems to culminate in
him. It gives him a power of searching for a wider freedom of
soul than theirs. The religion of Puritanism was based to a great
extent, on a search for the unknowable, limited only by the dogma
of its theology--a search for a path, so that the soul could
better be conducted to the next world, while Emerson's
transcendentalism was based on the wider search for the
unknowable, unlimited in any way or by anything except the vast
bounds of innate goodness, as it might be revealed to him in any
phenomena of man, Nature, or God. This distinction, tenuous, in
spite of the definite-sounding words, we like to believe has
something peculiar to Emerson in it. We like to feel that it
superimposes the one that makes all transcendentalism but an
intellectual state, based on the theory of innate ideas, the
reality of thought and the necessity of its freedom. For the
philosophy of the religion, or whatever you will call it, of the
Concord Transcendentalists is at least, more than an intellectual
state--it has even some of the functions of the Puritan church--
it is a spiritual state in which both soul and mind can better
conduct themselves in this world, and also in the next--when the
time comes. The search of the Puritan was rather along the path
of logic, spiritualized, and the transcendentalist of reason,
spiritualized--a difference in a broad sense between objective
and subjective contemplation.
The dislike of inactivity, repose and barter, drives one to the
indefinite subjective. Emerson's lack of interest in permanence
may cause him to present a subjectivity harsher on the outside
than is essential. His very universalism occasionally seems a
limitation. Somewhere here may lie a weakness--real to some,
apparent to others--a weakness in so far as his relation becomes
less vivid--to the many; insofar as he over-disregards the
personal unit in the universal. If Genius is the most indebted,
how much does it owe to those who would, but do not easily ride
with it? If there is a weakness here is it the fault of substance
or only of manner? If of the former, there is organic error
somewhere, and Emerson will become less and less valuable to man.
But this seems impossible, at least to us. Without considering
his manner or expression here (it forms the general subject of
the second section of this paper), let us ask if Emerson's
substance needs an affinity, a supplement or even a complement or
a gangplank? And if so, of what will it be composed?
Perhaps Emerson could not have risen to his own, if it had not
been for his Unitarian training and association with the
churchmen emancipators. "Christianity is founded on, and supposes
the authority of, reason, and cannot therefore oppose it, without
subverting itself."..."Its office is to discern universal truths,
great and eternal principles...the highest power of the soul."
Thus preached Channing. Who knows but this pulpit aroused the
younger Emerson to the possibilities of intuitive reasoning in
spiritual realms? The influence of men like Channing in his fight
for the dignity of human nature, against the arbitrary
revelations that Calvinism had strapped on the church, and for
the belief in the divine in human reason, doubtless encouraged
Emerson in his unshackled search for the infinite, and gave him
premises which he later took for granted instead of carrying them
around with him. An over-interest, not an under-interest in
Christian ideal aims, may have caused him to feel that the
definite paths were well established and doing their share, and
that for some to reach the same infinite ends, more paths might
be opened--paths which would in themselves, and in a more
transcendent way, partake of the spiritual nature of the land in
quest,--another expression of God's Kingdom in Man. Would you
have the indefinite paths ALWAYS supplemented by the shadow of
the definite one of a first influence?
A characteristic of rebellion, is that its results are often
deepest, when the rebel breaks not from the worst to the
greatest, but from the great to the greater. The youth of the
rebel increases this characteristic. The innate rebellious spirit
in young men is active and buoyant. They could rebel against and
improve the millennium. This excess of enthusiasm at the
inception of a movement, causes loss of perspective; a natural
tendency to undervalue the great in that which is being taken as
a base of departure. A "youthful sedition" of Emerson was his
withdrawal from the communion, perhaps, the most socialistic
doctrine (or rather symbol) of the church--a "commune" above
property or class.
Picking up an essay on religion of a rather remarkable-minded
boy--perhaps with a touch of genius--written when he was still in
college, and so serving as a good illustration in point--we
read--"Every thinking man knows that the church is dead." But
every thinking man knows that the church-part of the church
always has been dead--that part seen by candle-light, not Christ-
light. Enthusiasm is restless and hasn't time to see that if the
church holds itself as nothing but the symbol of the greater
light it is life itself--as a symbol of a symbol it is dead. Many
of the sincerest followers of Christ never heard of Him. It is
the better influence of an institution that arouses in the deep
and earnest souls a feeling of rebellion to make its aims more
certain. It is their very sincerity that causes these seekers for
a freer vision to strike down for more fundamental, universal,
and perfect truths, but with such feverish enthusiasm, that they
appear to overthink themselves--a subconscious way of going
Godward perhaps. The rebel of the twentieth century says: "Let us
discard God, immortality, miracle--but be not untrue to
ourselves." Here he, no doubt, in a sincere and exalted moment,
confuses God with a name. He apparently feels that there is a
separable difference between natural and revealed religion. He
mistakes the powers behind them, to be fundamentally separate. In
the excessive keenness of his search, he forgets that "being true
to ourselves" IS God, that the faintest thought of immortality IS
God, and that God is "miracle." Over-enthusiasm keeps one from
letting a common experience of a day translate what is stirring
the soul. The same inspiring force that arouses the young rebel,
brings later in life a kind of "experience-afterglow," a
realization that the soul cannot discard or limit anything. Would
you have the youthful enthusiasm of rebellion, which Emerson
carried beyond his youth always supplemented by the shadow of
experience?
Perhaps it is not the narrow minded alone that have no interest
in anything, but in its relation to their personality. Is the
Christian Religion, to which Emerson owes embryo-ideals, anything
but the revelation of God in a personality--a revelation so that
the narrow mind could become opened? But the tendency to over-
personalize personality may also have suggested to Emerson the
necessity for more universal, and impersonal paths, though they
be indefinite of outline and vague of ascent. Could you journey,
with equal benefit, if they were less so? Would you have the
universal always supplemented by the shadow of the personal? If
this view is accepted, and we doubt that it can be by the
majority, Emerson's substance could well bear a supplement,
perhaps an affinity. Something that will support that which some
conceive he does not offer. Something that will help answer Alton
Locke's question: "What has Emerson for the working-man?" and
questions of others who look for the gang-plank before the ship
comes in sight. Something that will supply the definite banister
to the infinite, which it is said he keeps invisible. Something
that will point a crossroad from "his personal" to "his nature."
Something that may be in Thoreau or Wordsworth, or in another
poet whose songs "breathe of a new morning of a higher life
though a definite beauty in Nature"--or something that will show
the birth of his ideal and hold out a background of revealed
religion, as a perspective to his transcendent religion--a
counterpoise in his rebellion--which we feel Channing or Dr.
Bushnell, or other saints known and unknown might supply.
If the arc must be completed--if there are those who would have
the great, dim outlines of Emerson fulfilled, it is fortunate
that there are Bushnells, and Wordsworths, to whom they may
appeal--to say nothing of the Vedas, the Bible, or their own
souls. But such possibilities and conceptions, the deeper they
are received, the more they seem to reduce their need. Emerson's
Circle may be a better whole, without its complement. Perhaps his
"unsatiable demand for unity, the need to recognize one nature in
all variety of objects," would have been impaired, if something
should make it simpler for men to find the identity they at first
want in his substance. "Draw if thou canst the mystic line
severing rightly his from thine, which is human, which divine."
Whatever means one would use to personalize Emerson's natural
revelation, whether by a vision or a board walk, the vastness of
his aims and the dignity of his tolerance would doubtless cause
him to accept or at least try to accept, and use "magically as a
part of his fortune." He would modestly say, perhaps, "that the
world is enlarged for him, not by finding new objects, but by
more affinities, and potencies than those he already has." But,
indeed, is not enough manifestation already there? Is not the
asking that it be made more manifest forgetting that "we are not
strong by our power to penetrate, but by our relatedness?" Will
more signs create a greater sympathy? Is not our weak suggestion
needed only for those content with their own hopelessness?
Others may lead others to him, but he finds his problem in making
"gladness hope and fortitude flow from his page," rather than in
arranging that our hearts be there to receive it. The first is
his duty--the last ours!
2
A devotion to an end tends to undervalue the means. A power of
revelation may make one more concerned about his perceptions of
the soul's nature than the way of their disclosure. Emerson is
more interested in what he perceives than in his expression of
it. He is a creator whose intensity is consumed more with the
substance of his creation than with the manner by which he shows
it to others. Like Petrarch he seems more a discoverer of Beauty
than an imparter of it. But these discoveries, these devotions to
aims, these struggles toward the absolute, do not these in
themselves, impart something, if not all, of their own unity and
coherence--which is not received, as such, at first, nor is
foremost in their expression. It must be remembered that "truth"
was what Emerson was after--not strength of outline, or even
beauty except in so far as they might reveal themselves,
naturally, in his explorations towards the infinite. To think
hard and deeply and to say what is thought, regardless of
consequences, may produce a first impression, either of great
translucence, or of great muddiness, but in the latter there may
be hidden possibilities. Some accuse Brahms' orchestration of
being muddy. This may be a good name for a first impression of
it. But if it should seem less so, he might not be saying what he
thought. The mud may be a form of sincerity which demands that
the heart be translated, rather than handed around through the
pit. A clearer scoring might have lowered the thought. Carlyle
told Emerson that some of his paragraphs didn't cohere. Emerson
wrote by sentences or phrases, rather than by logical sequence.
His underlying plan of work seems based on the large unity of a
series of particular aspects of a subject, rather than on the
continuity of its expression. As thoughts surge to his mind, he
fills the heavens with them, crowds them in, if necessary, but
seldom arranges them, along the ground first. Among class-room
excuses for Emerson's imperfect coherence and lack of unity, is
one that remembers that his essays were made from lecture notes.
His habit, often in lecturing, was to compile his ideas as they
came to him on a general subject, in scattered notes, and when on
the platform, to trust to the mood of the occasion, to assemble
them. This seems a specious explanation, though true to fact.
Vagueness, is at times, an indication of nearness to a perfect
truth. The definite glory of Bernard of Cluny's Celestial City,
is more beautiful than true--probably. Orderly reason does not
always have to be a visible part of all great things. Logic may
possibly require that unity means something ascending in self-
evident relation to the parts and to the whole, with no ellipsis
in the ascent. But reason may permit, even demand an ellipsis,
and genius may not need the self-evident part. In fact, these
parts may be the "blind-spots" in the progress of unity. They may
be filled with little but repetition. "Nature loves analogy and
hates repetition." Botany reveals evolution not permanence. An
apparent confusion if lived with long enough may become orderly.
Emerson was not writing for lazy minds, though one of the keenest
of his academic friends said that, he (Emerson) could not explain
many of his own pages. But why should he!--he explained them when
he discovered them--the moment before he spoke or wrote them. A
rare experience of a moment at daybreak, when something in nature
seems to reveal all consciousness, cannot be explained at noon.
Yet it is a part of the day's unity. At evening, nature is
absorbed by another experience. She dislikes to explain as much
as to repeat. It is conceivable, that what is unified form to the
author, or composer, may of necessity be formless to his
audience. A home-run will cause more unity in the grand stand
than in the season's batting average. If a composer once starts
to compromise, his work will begin to drag on HIM. Before the end
is reached, his inspiration has all gone up in sounds pleasing to
his audience, ugly to him--sacrificed for the first acoustic--an
opaque clarity, a picture painted for its hanging. Easy unity,
like easy virtue, is easier to describe, when judged from its
lapses than from its constancy. When the infidel admits God is
great, he means only: "I am lazy--it is easier to talk than
live." Ruskin also says: "Suppose I like the finite curves best,
who shall say I'm right or wrong? No one. It is simply a question
of experience." You may not be able to experience a symphony,
even after twenty performances. Initial coherence today may be
dullness tomorrow probably because formal or outward unity
depends so much on repetition, sequences, antitheses, paragraphs
with inductions and summaries. Macaulay had that kind of unity.
Can you read him today? Emerson rather goes out and shouts: "I'm
thinking of the sun's glory today and I'll let his light shine
through me. I'll say any damn thing that this inspires me with."
Perhaps there are flashes of light, still in cipher, kept there
by unity, the code of which the world has not yet discovered. The
unity of one sentence inspires the unity of the whole--though its
physique is as ragged as the Dolomites.
Intense lights--vague shadows--great pillars in a horizon are
difficult things to nail signboards to. Emerson's outward-inward
qualities make him hard to classify, but easy for some. There are
many who like to say that he--even all the Concord men--are
intellectuals. Perhaps--but intellectuals who wear their brains
nearer the heart than some of their critics. It is as dangerous
to determine a characteristic by manner as by mood. Emerson is a
pure intellectual to those who prefer to take him as literally as
they can. There are reformers, and in "the form" lies their
interest, who prefer to stand on the plain, and then insist they
see from the summit. Indolent legs supply the strength of eye for
their inspiration. The intellect is never a whole. It is where
the soul finds things. It is often the only track to the over-
values. It appears a whole--but never becomes one even in the
stock exchange, or the convent, or the laboratory. In the
cleverest criminal, it is but a way to a low ideal. It can never
discard the other part of its duality--the soul or the void where
the soul ought to be. So why classify a quality always so
relative that it is more an agency than substance; a quality that
disappears when classified. "The life of the All must stream
through us to make the man and the moment great." A sailor with a
precious cargo doesn't analyze the water. Because Emerson had
generations of Calvinistic sermons in his blood, some
cataloguers, would localize or provincialize him, with the
sternness of the old Puritan mind. They make him THAT, hold him
THERE. They lean heavily on what they find of the above influence
in him. They won't follow the rivers in his thought and the play
of his soul. And their cousin cataloguers put him in another
pigeon-hole. They label him "ascetic." They translate his outward
serenity into an impression of severity. But truth keeps one from
being hysterical. Is a demagogue a friend of the people because
he will lie to them to make them cry and raise false hopes? A
search for perfect truths throws out a beauty more spiritual than
sensuous. A sombre dignity of style is often confused by under-
imagination and by surface-sentiment, with austerity. If
Emerson's manner is not always beautiful in accordance with
accepted standards, why not accept a few other standards? He is
an ascetic, in that he refuses to compromise content with manner.
But a real ascetic is an extremist who has but one height. Thus
may come the confusion, of one who says that Emerson carries him
high, but then leaves him always at THAT height--no higher--a
confusion, mistaking a latent exultation for an ascetic reserve.
The rules of Thorough Bass can be applied to his scale of flight
no more than they can to the planetary system. Jadassohn, if
Emerson were literally a composer, could no more analyze his
harmony than a guide-to-Boston could. A microscope might show
that he uses chords of the 9th, 1lth, or the 99th, but a lens far
different tells us they are used with different aims from those
of Debussy. Emerson is definite in that his art is based on
something stronger than the amusing or at its best the beguiling
of a few mortals. If he uses a sensuous chord, it is not for
sensual ears. His harmonies may float, if the wind blows in that
direction, through a voluptuous atmosphere, but he has not
Debussy's fondness for trying to blow a sensuous atmosphere from
his own voluptuous cheeks. And so he is an ascetic! There is a
distance between jowl and soul--and it is not measured by the
fraction of an inch between Concord and Paris. On the other hand,
if one thinks that his harmony contains no dramatic chords,
because no theatrical sound is heard, let him listen to the
finale of "Success," or of "Spiritual Laws," or to some of the
poems, "Brahma" or "Sursum Corda," for example. Of a truth his
Codas often seem to crystallize in a dramatic, though serene and
sustained way, the truths of his subject--they become more active
and intense, but quieter and deeper.
Then there comes along another set of cataloguers. They put him
down as a "classicist," or a romanticist, or an eclectic. Because
a prophet is a child of romanticism--because revelation is
classic, because eclecticism quotes from eclectic Hindu
Philosophy, a more sympathetic cataloguer may say, that Emerson
inspires courage of the quieter kind and delight of the higher
kind.
The same well-bound school teacher who told the boys that Thoreau
was a naturalist because he didn't like to work, puts down
Emerson as a "classic," and Hawthorne as a "romantic." A loud
voice made this doubly TRUE and SURE to be on the examination
paper. But this teacher of "truth AND dogma" apparently forgot
that there is no such thing as "classicism or romanticism." One
has but to go to the various definitions of these to know that.
If you go to a classic definition you know what a true classic
is, and similarly a "true romantic." But if you go to both, you
have an algebraic formula, x = x, a cancellation, an apercu, and
hence satisfying; if you go to all definitions you have another
formula x > x, a destruction, another apercu, and hence
satisfying. Professor Beers goes to the dictionary (you wouldn't
think a college professor would be as reckless as that). And so
he can say that "romantic" is "pertaining to the style of the
Christian and popular literature of the Middle Ages," a Roman
Catholic mode of salvation (not this definition but having a
definition). And so Prof. B. can say that Walter Scott is a
romanticist (and Billy Phelps a classic--sometimes). But for our
part Dick Croker is a classic and job a romanticist. Another
professor, Babbitt by name, links up Romanticism with Rousseau,
and charges against it many of man's troubles. He somehow likes
to mix it up with sin. He throws saucers at it, but in a
scholarly, interesting, sincere, and accurate way. He uncovers a
deformed foot, gives it a name, from which we are allowed to
infer that the covered foot is healthy and named classicism. But
no Christian Scientist can prove that Christ never had a stomach-
ache. The Architecture of Humanism [Footnote: Geoffrey Scott
(Constable & Co.)] tells us that "romanticism consists of...a
poetic sensibility towards the remote, as such." But is Plato a
classic or towards the remote? Is Classicism a poor relation of
time--not of man? Is a thing classic or romantic because it is or
is not passed by that biologic--that indescribable stream-of-
change going on in all life? Let us settle the point for "good,"
and say that a thing is classic if it is thought of in terms of
the past and romantic if thought of in terms of the future--and a
thing thought of in terms of the present is--well, that is
impossible! Hence, we allow ourselves to say, that Emerson is
neither a classic or romantic but both--and both not only at
different times in one essay, but at the same time in one
sentence--in one word. And must we admit it, so is everyone. If
you don't believe it, there must be some true definition you
haven't seen. Chopin shows a few things that Bach forgot--but he
is not eclectic, they say. Brahms shows many things that Bach did
remember, so he is an eclectic, they say. Leoncavallo writes
pretty verses and Palestrina is a priest, and Confucius inspires
Scriabin. A choice is freedom. Natural selection is but one of
Nature's tunes. "All melodious poets shall be hoarse as street
ballads, when once the penetrating keynote of nature and spirit
is sounded--the earth-beat, sea-beat, heart-beat, which make the
tune to which the sun rolls, and the globule of blood and the sap
of the trees."
An intuitive sense of values, tends to make Emerson use social,
political, and even economic phenomena, as means of expression,
as the accidental notes in his scale--rather than as ends, even
lesser ends. In the realization that they are essential parts of
the greater values, he does not confuse them with each other. He
remains undisturbed except in rare instances, when the lower
parts invade and seek to displace the higher. He was not afraid
to say that "there are laws which should not be too well obeyed."
To him, slavery was not a social or a political or an economic
question, nor even one of morals or of ethics, but one of
universal spiritual freedom only. It mattered little what party,
or what platform, or what law of commerce governed men. Was man
governing himself? Social error and virtue were but relative.
This habit of not being hindered by using, but still going beyond
the great truths of living, to the greater truths of life gave
force to his influence over the materialists. Thus he seems to us
more a regenerator than a reformer--more an interpreter of life's
reflexes than of life's facts, perhaps. Here he appears greater
than Voltaire or Rousseau and helped, perhaps, by the centrality
of his conceptions, he could arouse the deeper spiritual and
moral emotions, without causing his listeners to distort their
physical ones. To prove that mind is over matter, he doesn't
place matter over mind. He is not like the man who, because he
couldn't afford both, gave up metaphysics for an automobile, and
when he ran over a man blamed metaphysics. He would not have us
get over-excited about physical disturbance but have it accepted
as a part of any progress in culture, moral, spiritual or
aesthetic. If a poet retires to the mountain-side, to avoid the
vulgar unculture of men, and their physical disturbance, so that
he may better catch a nobler theme for his symphony, Emerson
tells him that "man's culture can spare nothing, wants all
material, converts all impediments into instruments, all enemies
into power." The latest product of man's culture--the aeroplane,
then sails o'er the mountain and instead of an inspiration--a
spray of tobacco-juice falls on the poet. "Calm yourself, Poet!"
says Emerson, "culture will convert furies into muses and hells
into benefit. This wouldn't have befallen you if it hadn't been
for the latest transcendent product of the genius of culture" (we
won't say what kind), a consummation of the dreams of poets, from
David to Tennyson. Material progress is but a means of
expression. Realize that man's coarseness has its future and will
also be refined in the gradual uprise. Turning the world upside
down may be one of its lesser incidents. It is the cause, seldom
the effect that interests Emerson. He can help the cause--the
effect must help itself. He might have said to those who talk
knowingly about the cause of war--or of the last war, and who
would trace it down through long vistas of cosmic, political,
moral evolution and what not--he might say that the cause of it
was as simple as that of any dogfight--the "hog-mind" of the
minority against the universal mind, the majority. The un-courage
of the former fears to believe in the innate goodness of mankind.
The cause is always the same, the effect different by chance; it
is as easy for a hog, even a stupid one, to step on a box of
matches under a tenement with a thousand souls, as under an empty
bird-house. The many kindly burn up for the few; for the minority
is selfish and the majority generous. The minority has ruled the
world for physical reasons. The physical reasons are being
removed by this "converting culture." Webster will not much
longer have to grope for the mind of his constituency. The
majority--the people--will need no intermediary. Governments will
pass from the representative to the direct. The hog-mind is the
principal thing that is making this transition slow. The biggest
prop to the hog-mind is pride--pride in property and the power
property gives. Ruskin backs this up--"it is at the bottom of all
great mistakes; other passions do occasional good, but whenever
pride puts in its word...it is all over with the artist." The
hog-mind and its handmaidens in disorder, superficial brightness,
fundamental dullness, then cowardice and suspicion--all a part of
the minority (the non-people) the antithesis of everything called
soul, spirit, Christianity, truth, freedom--will give way more
and more to the great primal truths--that there is more good than
evil, that God is on the side of the majority (the people)--that
he is not enthusiastic about the minority (the non-people)--that
he has made men greater than man, that he has made the universal
mind and the over-soul greater and a part of the individual mind
and soul--that he has made the Divine a part of all.
Again, if a picture in economics is before him, Emerson plunges
down to the things that ARE because they are BETTER than they
are. If there is a row, which there usually is, between the ebb
and flood tide, in the material ocean--for example, between the
theory of the present order of competition, and of attractive and
associated labor, he would sympathize with Ricardo, perhaps, that
labor is the measure of value, but "embrace, as do generous
minds, the proposition of labor shared by all." He would go
deeper than political economics, strain out the self-factor from
both theories, and make the measure of each pretty much the same,
so that the natural (the majority) would win, but not to the
disadvantage of the minority (the artificial) because this has
disappeared--it is of the majority. John Stuart Mill's political
economy is losing value because it was written by a mind more "a
banker's" than a "poet's." The poet knows that there is no such
thing as the perpetual law of supply and demand, perhaps not of
demand and supply--or of the wage-fund, or price-level, or
increments earned or unearned; and that the existence of personal
or public property may not prove the existence of God.
Emerson seems to use the great definite interests of humanity to
express the greater, indefinite, spiritual values--to fulfill
what he can in his realms of revelation. Thus, it seems that so
close a relation exists between his content and expression, his
substance and manner, that if he were more definite in the latter
he would lose power in the former,--perhaps some of those
occasional flashes would have been unexpressed--flashes that have
gone down through the world and will flame on through the ages--
flashes that approach as near the Divine as Beethoven in his most
inspired moments--flashes of transcendent beauty, of such
universal import, that they may bring, of a sudden, some intimate
personal experience, and produce the same indescribable effect
that comes in rare instances, to men, from some common sensation.
In the early morning of a Memorial Day, a boy is awakened by
martial music--a village band is marching down the street, and as
the strains of Reeves' majestic Seventh Regiment March come
nearer and nearer, he seems of a sudden translated--a moment of
vivid power comes, a consciousness of material nobility, an
exultant something gleaming with the possibilities of this life,
an assurance that nothing is impossible, and that the whole world
lies at his feet. But as the band turns the corner, at the
soldiers' monument, and the march steps of the Grand Army become
fainter and fainter, the boy's vision slowly vanishes--his
"world" becomes less and less probable--but the experience ever
lies within him in its reality. Later in life, the same boy hears
the Sabbath morning bell ringing out from the white steeple at
the "Center," and as it draws him to it, through the autumn
fields of sumac and asters, a Gospel hymn of simple devotion
comes out to him--"There's a wideness in God's mercy"--an instant
suggestion of that Memorial Day morning comes--but the moment is
of deeper import--there is no personal exultation--no intimate
world vision--no magnified personal hope--and in their place a
profound sense of a spiritual truth,--a sin within reach of
forgiveness--and as the hymn voices die away, there lies at his
feet--not the world, but the figure of the Saviour--he sees an
unfathomable courage, an immortality for the lowest, the vastness
in humility, the kindness of the human heart, man's noblest
strength, and he knows that God is nothing--nothing but love!
Whence cometh the wonder of a moment? From sources we know not.
But we do know that from obscurity, and from this higher Orpheus
come measures of sphere melodies [note: Paraphrased from a
passage in Sartor Resartus.] flowing in wild, native tones,
ravaging the souls of men, flowing now with thousand-fold
accompaniments and rich symphonies through all our hearts;
modulating and divinely leading them.
3
What is character? In how far does it sustain the soul or the
soul it? Is it a part of the soul? And then--what is the soul?
Plato knows but cannot tell us. Every new-born man knows, but no
one tells us. "Nature will not be disposed of easily. No power of
genius has ever yet had the smallest success in explaining
existence. The perfect enigma remains." As every blind man sees
the sun, so character may be the part of the soul we, the blind,
can see, and then have the right to imagine that the soul is each
man's share of God, and character the muscle which tries to
reveal its mysteries--a kind of its first visible radiance--the
right to know that it is the voice which is always calling the
pragmatist a fool.
At any rate, it can be said that Emerson's character has much to
do with his power upon us. Men who have known nothing of his
life, have borne witness to this. It is directly at the root of
his substance, and affects his manner only indirectly. It gives
the sincerity to the constant spiritual hopefulness we are always
conscious of, and which carries with it often, even when the
expression is somber, a note of exultation in the victories of
"the innate virtues" of man. And it is this, perhaps, that makes
us feel his courage--not a self-courage, but a sympathetic one--
courageous even to tenderness. It is the open courage of a kind
heart, of not forcing opinions--a thing much needed when the
cowardly, underhanded courage of the fanatic would FORCE opinion.
It is the courage of believing in freedom, per se, rather than of
trying to force everyone to SEE that you believe in it--the
courage of the willingness to be reformed, rather than of
reforming--the courage teaching that sacrifice is bravery, and
force, fear. The courage of righteous indignation, of stammering
eloquence, of spiritual insight, a courage ever contracting or
unfolding a philosophy as it grows--a courage that would make the
impossible possible. Oliver Wendell Holmes says that Emerson
attempted the impossible in the Over-Soul--"an overflow of
spiritual imagination." But he (Emerson) accomplished the
impossible in attempting it, and still leaving it impossible. A
courageous struggle to satisfy, as Thoreau says, "Hunger rather
than the palate"--the hunger of a lifetime sometimes by one meal.
His essay on the Pre-Soul (which he did not write) treats of that
part of the over-soul's influence on unborn ages, and attempts
the impossible only when it stops attempting it.
Like all courageous souls, the higher Emerson soars, the more
lowly he becomes. "Do you think the porter and the cook have no
experiences, no wonders for you? Everyone knows as much as the
Savant." To some, the way to be humble is to admonish the humble,
not learn from them. Carlyle would have Emerson teach by more
definite signs, rather than interpret his revelations, or shall
we say preach? Admitting all the inspiration and help that Sartor
Resartus has given in spite of its vaudeville and tragic stages,
to many young men getting under way in the life of tailor or
king, we believe it can be said (but very broadly said) that
Emerson, either in the first or second series of essays, taken as
a whole, gives, it seems to us, greater inspiration, partly
because his manner is less didactic, less personally suggestive,
perhaps less clearly or obviously human than Carlyle's. How
direct this inspiration is is a matter of personal viewpoint,
temperament, perhaps inheritance. Augustine Birrell says he does
not feel it--and he seems not to even indirectly. Apparently "a
non-sequacious author" can't inspire him, for Emerson seems to
him a "little thin and vague." Is Emerson or the English climate
to blame for this? He, Birrell, says a really great author
dissipates all fears as to his staying power. (Though fears for
our staying-power, not Emerson's, is what we would like
dissipated.) Besides, around a really great author, there are no
fears to dissipate. "A wise author never allows his reader's mind
to be at large," but Emerson is not a wise author. His essay on
Prudence has nothing to do with prudence, for to be wise and
prudent he must put explanation first, and let his substance
dissolve because of it. "How carefully," says Birrell again, "a
really great author like Dr. Newman, or M. Renan, explains to you
what he is going to do, and how he is going to do it." Personally
we like the chance of having a hand in the "explaining." We
prefer to look at flowers, but not through a botany, for it seems
that if we look at them alone, we see a beauty of Nature's
poetry, a direct gift from the Divine, and if we look at botany
alone, we see the beauty of Nature's intellect, a direct gift of
the Divine--if we look at both together, we see nothing.
Thus it seems that Carlyle and Birrell would have it that courage
and humility have something to do with "explanation"--and that it
is not "a respect for all"--a faith in the power of "innate
virtue" to perceive by "relativeness rather than penetration"--
that causes Emerson to withhold explanation to a greater degree
than many writers. Carlyle asks for more utility, and Birrell for
more inspiration. But we like to believe that it is the height of
Emerson's character, evidenced especially in his courage and
humility that shades its quality, rather than that its virtue is
less--that it is his height that will make him more and more
valuable and more and more within the reach of all--whether it be
by utility, inspiration, or other needs of the human soul.
Cannot some of the most valuable kinds of utility and inspiration
come from humility in its highest and purest forms? For is not
the truest kind of humility a kind of glorified or transcendent
democracy--the practicing it rather than the talking it--the not-
wanting to level all finite things, but the being willing to be
leveled towards the infinite? Until humility produces that frame
of mind and spirit in the artist can his audience gain the
greatest kind of utility and inspiration, which might be quite
invisible at first? Emerson realizes the value of "the many,"--
that the law of averages has a divine source. He recognizes the
various life-values in reality--not by reason of their closeness
or remoteness, but because he sympathizes with men who live them,
and the majority do. "The private store of reason is not great--
would that there were a public store for man," cries Pascal, but
there is, says Emerson, it is the universal mind, an institution
congenital with the common or over-soul. Pascal is discouraged,
for he lets himself be influenced by surface political and
religious history which shows the struggle of the group, led by
an individual, rather than that of the individual led by himself
--a struggle as much privately caused as privately led. The main-
path of all social progress has been spiritual rather than
intellectual in character, but the many bypaths of individual-
materialism, though never obliterating the highway, have dimmed
its outlines and caused travelers to confuse the colors along the
road. A more natural way of freeing the congestion in the
benefits of material progress will make it less difficult for the
majority to recognize the true relation between the important
spiritual and religious values and the less important
intellectual and economic values. As the action of the intellect
and universal mind becomes more and more identical, the clearer
will the relation of all values become. But for physical reasons,
the group has had to depend upon the individual as leaders, and
the leaders with few exceptions restrained the universal mind--
they trusted to the "private store," but now, thanks to the
lessons of evolution, which Nature has been teaching men since
and before the days of Socrates, the public store of reason is
gradually taking the place of the once-needed leader. From the
Chaldean tablet to the wireless message this public store has
been wonderfully opened. The results of these lessons, the
possibilities they are offering for ever coordinating the mind of
humanity, the culmination of this age-instruction, are seen today
in many ways. Labor Federation, Suffrage Extension, are two
instances that come to mind among the many. In these
manifestations, by reason of tradition, or the bad-habit part of
tradition, the hog-mind of the few (the minority), comes in play.
The possessors of this are called leaders, but even these "thick-
skins" are beginning to see that the MOVEMENT is the leader, and
that they are only clerks. Broadly speaking, the effects
evidenced in the political side of history have so much of the
physical because the causes have been so much of the physical. As
a result the leaders for the most part have been under-average
men, with skins thick, wits slick, and hands quick with under-
values, otherwise they would not have become leaders. But the day
of leaders, as such, is gradually closing--the people are
beginning to lead themselves--the public store of reason is
slowly being opened--the common universal mind and the common
over-soul is slowly but inevitably coming into its own. "Let a
man believe in God, not in names and places and persons. Let the
great soul incarnated in some poor...sad and simple Joan, go out
to service and sweep chimneys and scrub floors...its effulgent
day beams cannot be muffled..." and then "to sweep and scrub will
instantly appear supreme and beautiful actions...and all people
will get brooms and mops." Perhaps, if all of Emerson--his works
and his life--were to be swept away, and nothing of him but the
record of the following incident remained to men--the influence
of his soul would still be great. A working woman after coming
from one of his lectures said: "I love to go to hear Emerson, not
because I understand him, but because he looks as though he
thought everybody was as good as he was." Is it not the courage--
the spiritual hopefulness in his humility that makes this story
possible and true? Is it not this trait in his character that
sets him above all creeds--that gives him inspired belief in the
common mind and soul? Is it not this courageous universalism that
gives conviction to his prophecy and that makes his symphonies of
revelation begin and end with nothing but the strength and beauty
of innate goodness in man, in Nature and in God, the greatest and
most inspiring theme of Concord Transcendental Philosophy, as we
hear it.
And it is from such a world-compelling theme and from such
vantage ground, that Emerson rises to almost perfect freedom of
action, of thought and of soul, in any direction and to any
height. A vantage ground, somewhat vaster than Schelling's
conception of transcendental philosophy--"a philosophy of Nature
become subjective." In Concord it includes the objective and
becomes subjective to nothing but freedom and the absolute law.
It is this underlying courage of the purest humility that gives
Emerson that outward aspect of serenity which is felt to so great
an extent in much of his work, especially in his codas and
perorations. And within this poised strength, we are conscious of
that "original authentic fire" which Emerson missed in Shelley--
we are conscious of something that is not dispassionate,
something that is at times almost turbulent--a kind of furious
calm lying deeply in the conviction of the eventual triumph of
the soul and its union with God!
Let us place the transcendent Emerson where he, himself, places
Milton, in Wordsworth's apostrophe: "Pure as the naked heavens,
majestic, free, so didst thou travel on life's common way in
cheerful Godliness."
The Godliness of spiritual courage and hopefulness--these fathers
of faith rise to a glorified peace in the depth of his greater
perorations. There is an "oracle" at the beginning of the Fifth
Symphony--in those four notes lies one of Beethoven's greatest
messages. We would place its translation above the relentlessness
of fate knocking at the door, above the greater human-message of
destiny, and strive to bring it towards the spiritual message of
Emerson's revelations--even to the "common heart" of Concord--the
Soul of humanity knocking at the door of the Divine mysteries,
radiant in the faith that it will be opened--and the human become
the Divine!
Content of II--EMERSON [Charles Ives' essays: "Essays Before a Sonata"]
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