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VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES
Published and in Preparat ion
Edited by W ILL D . HOWE
ARNOLD
BROWNING
BURNS
CARLYLE
DANTE Alfred M. Brooks
DEFOE
DICKENS
EMERSON
HAWTHORNE
THE BIBLE
IBSEN
STEVENSON
TENNY SON
WH ITMAN
WORDSWORTH
S tuart P. Sherman
William Lyon Phelps
WilliamA llanNeilson
Richard Burton
SamuelMcChord Cro thers
George Edward Woodberry
George Hodges
Archibald HendersonWill D . Howe
Richard A . Rice
RaymondMacdonald Alden
BrandWhitlock
C. T. Winchester
Ralph W aldo Emerso n
HOW TO KNOW HIM
By
Samuel Mcc ho rd Cro thers
d utbor ofTHE G ENTLE EEADER,
TEE PARDONER ’S W ALLET
OLIVER W ENDEL HOLMES AND HIS FELLOW EOARDERSEc ETc .
W I TH P OR TRA I T
INDIANAPOLIS
THE flows-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
INTRODUCTORY
The mind o f Emerson was a searchlight re
vealing not itsel f but the various objects on which
i t successively turned. An intense and narrow
beam o f light would shoot through the darkness
and reveal some obj ect . Then i t would pick up
another Object which would have its brief moment
o f visib ility. The landscape was never revealed
in any one view.
The only way to know Emerson is to j oin him
in his intellectual exercises . In Spite o f his per
sonal aloo fness I know o f no one with whom we
can—
more readily come to a feeling o f intellectual
intimacy . He had no pretens ions and no reserves .
In clear sentences he told us what from time to
time he thought. He made no attempt to connect
these thoughts into a coherent system . Fo r any
one else to attempt to do this would be to misrepresent him.
In the short chapters which follow I have
INTRODUCTORY
treated Emerson as a contemporary rather than
as a writer o f the last generation . His thought
is as pertinent to the twentieth century as to the
n ineteenth . Indeed I think that in many re
spects we may be nearer to him than were those
who first listened to him . The prejudices which
he encountered have largely died away. The prob
lems over which he was med itating remain.
I wish to make grateful acknowledgment to
Houghton Mifflin Company for special permis
sion to make extracts from their authorized and
copyright editions o f Emerson’s works. Also to
Doctor Edward Emerson for the use o f his edi
tion o f his father’s journals . 5 . M . M .
CONTENTS
THE APPROACH To EMERSONA DI SCRIMINATING OPTIMISTTHE OPENER OF DOORSTHE PARISH OF YOUNG MEN
SPENT THE DAY AT ESSE! ! UNCTIONFRIENDSH IP W ITHOUT INTIMACYI HATE TH IS SHALLOW AMERICANISMTHE POET
THOU SHALT NOT PREACHTHE LURE OF THE W ESTELIERSON
’
S ELUSIVE SM ILETHE ! UIET REVOLUTIONISTMEDITATIONS ON POLITICSTHE CANDID FRIEND OF ENGLANDAMONG HIS BOOKSEMERSON’S HISTORIC SENSEPEACE AND WAR
THE FORTUNES OF THE POORTHE CUTTING EDGETERMINUS
WALDO EMERSON
EMERSON
CHAPTER I
THE APPROACH TO EMERSON
“Bu t
, m tic, spare thy vanity,Nor show thy pompous parts,
To vex with odious sub tletyThe cheerer of men s hearts .
O Emerson writes o f the Pers ian poet Saadi
S who “sat in the sun and w ith sm iling l ips
u ttered h is thoughts to whosoever cho se to l isten .
He had nothing to prove,nothing to apologize
for, nothing to lament.
“Denounce who w ill,who w ill deny,
And pile the hills to scale the sky ;Let the ist
,atheist, pantheist,
Define and wrangle how they l ist,Fierce conserver
,fierce destroyer,
But thou, joy-giver and enjoyer.”
We are so used to wrangl ing and defin ing,to
EMERSON
bu ilding systems o f thought, and w ith odious sub~
tlety criticizing other men’s systems
,that we
hardly know how to get along without these in
tellectual exercises . What i s there to say abo ut
a l iterary man or a philosopher who cares for
none O f these th ings ?
To become acquainted w ith Emerson we must
discard any conventional idea o f the l iterary man
or the philosopher. We must not become too
much interested in hi s works . We must be gen
uinely interested in the things he was think ing
about, so as to find joy in comparing notes . Hewas not a man o f letters in the sense o f a maker
o f books, and he was careless abo ut the articu la
tion o f hi s thought,and so he i s the despair o f
those who try to “place” him .
There are those who th ink they can explain a
man o f genius by means o f painstaking investi
gation o f the town he l ived in, the folks he knew,
the books he read, the party to which he belonged,
and the fami ly into wh ich hw as born. A great
deal can be explained in th i s way,in fact all those
things in wh ich he was l ike the thousands o f other
THE APPROACH TO EMERSON 3'
persons who were subjected to sim i lar influences.
But what about his genius, wh ich i s the one thing
in which he differed from those who were about
him ? It happens that it i s this difference which
i s the matter o f vi tal moment.
There are indeed great men whose difference
from their contemporaries is in the quantity o f
the ir endowment rather than in its essential qual
ity . They th ink and feel as does the average
man, they share h is opinions and habits o f
thought, only they have everything in greater
abundance . They are representative o f the time
in wh ich they l ived and we can not th ink o f them
as belonging to any other place or period . Thi s
i s perhaps what we mean by a great man . The
term i s quantitative.
But there are others whose genius i s essentially
timeless . They owe very l ittle to their immedi
ate environment. They might have l ived any
where or at any time, and the substance and man
ner o f their think ing would have been very much
the same . Ralph Waldo Emerson was o f th is
order. In one sense he was a typical American,
4 EMERSON
more than that he was a New Englander, and his
thought was colored by the experience o f the
pass ing day. But it was only colored . The tex
ture was not pecul iar to America . That he was
bo rn at the beginning o f the nineteenth century,
the descendant of a long line o f Puritan preach
ers, that he was educated at Harvard College, and
became for a t ime the minister o f a Un itarian
Church,that he was interested in what was called
the Transcendental Movement, that he traveled
about the country del ivering lyceum lectures, that
he took a worthy part in all sorts o f re form move
ments, and that he lived in Concord to a good Old
age—all these are interesting facts . I f we happen to be interested in Emerson
,we l ike to know
about them . But they do not enable us to know
what manner of man hewas, or what gi ft he may
have for us .
Indeed, i f we take such facts too seriously, we
may Obscure the real Emerson , for he certainly
did not take them very seriously, and was rather
absent-minded in regard to them . It was one o f
his whimsies to profess a great contempt for fo r
6 EMERSON
In deal ing w ith such a person, the biographer
is always more o r less o f an intruder. To Emer
son the inner l i fe was much more impo rtant than
the events and circumstances o f the outer l i fe .
To the inner l i fe as d isclosed by himsel f, we may
go directly. Thus only we know what manner o f
man he was. He was describinghimsel f when he
wrote
There i s an external l i fe,which is educated at
school,taught to read, write, cipher, and trade ;
taught to grasp all the boy can get, urging h im to
put h imsel f forward,to make h imsel f use ful and
agreeable in the world, to ride, run, argue, and
contend, unfold h is talents, shine, conquer; and
possess .“But the inner li fe sits at home, and does not
learn to do things, nor value these feats at all .’Tis a qu iet, w ise perception . It loves truth, be
cause it i s itsel f real ; it loves right, i t knows noth
ing else ; but i t makes no progress ; was as wise
in our first memory of it as now ; is just the same
now in maturity,and hereafter in age, as it was in
THE APPROACH TO EMERSON 7
you th . We have grown to manhood and woman
hood ; we have powers, connection, children, repu
tations, professions : th is makes no account o f
them all . It l ives in the great present ; i t makes
the present great. This —tranquil, well-founded,
wide-seeing soul i s no express-r ider, no attorney,
no magistrate : i t l ies in the sun, and broods on the
world . A person o f thi s tempe r once said to a
man Of much activity;‘I w i ll pardon you that
you do So much, and you me that I do noth ing.
’
And Eurip ides says that ‘Z eus hates busybodies
and those who do too much .
’
All this is .quite foreign to the m ind of the
typical American . It was not characteristic o f
the nineteenth century. It i s no t easy to explain
why Emerson Should have turned up when he d id .
I f, however, i t i s necessary for us to“place”
Emerson, and to classi fy h im, it might be as well
to ignore the accident Of h is birth, and put h im
among those with whom h i s ways Of th inking and
speaking would have been most congenial .
He was a ph ilosopher,not in the modern sense,
8 EMERSON
but in the s impler ancient sense o f a lover o f
W isdom . He belonged in a way w ith the men
who in Athens liked to walk about in the gardens
discoursing about the nature o f the good, the
true, and the beauti ful . Perhaps the Greek dia
lectic might have wearied his more direct mind .
It would have seemed a too roundabout way o f
getting at moral truths .
I rather think that he would have been more
at home with less soph isticated thinkers, let us
say w ith the lovers o f wisdom in the land of Uz,
who gathered around job , in his happ ier days be
fore Satan mingled with hi s affairs . It 18 In the
cool o f the evening, and they gather at the gate,and job discourses on the pleasant mysteries o f
l i fe . And people who had been bearing the heat
and burden of the day, and whose souls were
parched,came for re freshment . In their arid
lives,it was wonderful to meet a man who was
th inking aloud .
“My speech dropped upon them,
and they waited for me as for the rain .
”
Such speech comes in sentences that are easily
remembered . In the land o f Uz people do not
THE APPROACH TO EMERSON 9
get their ideas from books, but from the l ips o f
a man who has the gi ft o f direct address .
In process o f time scribes gather these scattered
sentences into volumes, and we have collections
o f what the Hebrew scholars call Wisdom Litera
ture. SO we have the Proverbs, The Wisdom of
Solomon,and the Wisdom o f the Son of S irach .
They contain the observations and the medita
tions o f men who had found t ime for such things .
They are enjoyed by those ‘
o f kindred temper.
Emerson’s essays belong to this Wisdom Lit
erature . They are gnomic, that i s to say, t l_1,ey ~
consist o f pregnant sentences . The ir arrange
ment i s a matter largely Of acc ident.
Had he l ived in the land of Uz,Emerson would
have uttered these sentences to a l ittle group at
the c ity gate, and trusted to their memories for
the preservation of what was Of value . Being an
American in the n ineteenth centu ry, he jotted
them down in h is note-book when they occurred
to him, and then as opportunity Offered presented
them to groups o f h is fellow-c itizens,gathered on
winter even ings in poorly ventilated halls . All
lo EMERSON
the way from Massachusetts to Iowa he found his
audience, and gave them freely of his best. Then
acting-as h i s own scribe, he gathered the sentences
togeth er into the form familiar to us .
T0 get his general po int o f view,read the ninth
chapter of Proverbs
“Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath
hewn out her seven pillars ; she hath k illed her
beasts ; she hath mingled her wine ; she hath also
furnished her table. She hath sent forth her
maidens : She crieth upon the highest places o f
the city. Come, eat o f my bread, and
drink o f the wine which I have mingled .
”
It i s all very s imple and natural. Wisdom isthe builder. She builds according to her own
plan,and when the house is furn ished, she makes
her feast and sends forth her maidens with the
invitation to her table.
And the thinker, who is he ? He is not the
architect,he did not plan the building. No r i s
he the high priest ordering the sacrifice. He does
THE APPROACH TO EMERSON 1 1
no t take himsel f so solemnly. He is only one O f
the invited guests, who has not lost the sense O f
Wondering curios ity. He can not churl ishly sit
down to the feast w ithout be ing introduced to the
hostess . He wanders about among all the mar
vels,seeking her . For, says the son O f S irach ,
“It i s the ch ief point o f Wisdom to know whose
gi ft i t is .”
In “ the n ineteenth centu ry Ralph Waldo Emer
son l ived a l i fe that was as s imple as that o f the
antique ph ilosophers . He practised an art wh ich
has been thought to be lost—the art o f med ita
tion. The fru it o f h is med itations he Offered to
all those whom i t might concern.
Emerson was.
a man th inking. There i s no
Emersonian system o f ph i losophy,only an Emer
somian way o f looking at things,and that i s per
fectly simple . There i s a legal phrase,“without
prejudice,” wh ich i s used O f parties to a contro
versy, implying that should the negotiations fail,noth ing that has passed shall be taken advantage
o f therea fter. Thus should the defendant offer
without prejudice to pay hal f the claim, the pla in
12 EMERSON
tiff can not consider this offer as an admiss ion o f
h is havmg the right to some payment .
To read the Words of Emerson in the spirit in
which they were written, we must remember to
take what he says without prejudice . Each sen
tence makes its own appeal, and it is for us to
determine whether it rings true or false . But we
must not hold him respons ible for the inferences
which we may draw . He was not uttering
oracles,though the form might sometimes seem
oracular. He aimed to challenge u s rather than
to secure docile acceptance of h is ideas . He did
not attempt at any one time to state the whole
truth . He preferred to state a hal f truth in such
a manner that we should be ready to supply the
other hal f. Instead of avo id ing extreme Opin
ions,he w ished to have them confront each other
in the same mind .
This i s true, that other is true . But our geom
etry cannot span the extreme po ints and reconcile
them. What to do ? By obeying each thought
frankly,by harping, o r i f you w ill, pound ing on
14 EMERSON
He bel ieved that there were certain general prin
ciples which were appl icable to all the various pro
fessions and callings . One who was in M ilton’s
phrase “a skill fu l cons iderer o f human things”
had a. right to express his opinions,for in spite
o f all the modern division o f labor, li fe is still
made up o f a few simple elements .
In the following chapters I have made no at
tempt to harmonize the views o f Emerson . That
would only obscure the sharp outlines o f each
separate view. One who would know Emerson
must not read his word w ith the docil ity O f a
mere disciple . He must rather take it as a game
and match hi s wits against a quick antagonist.
It i s the mental attitude which that unconven
tional s ixteenth-century preacher, Bisho p Hugh
Latimer,sought to inspire in his congregation . In
h is famous Sermon on the Cards, he challenged
his congregation to play a game o f cards, which
in those days was called “Triumph .
”
! uoth Latimer :“Whereas
, ye are wont to cele
brate Christmas in playing at cards, I intend by
God’s grace to deal unto you Christ’s cards . The
THE APPROACH TO EMERSON 15
game we shall play at shall be called the triumph
! trump ! wh ich i f it be well played, he that deal
eth shall win,the players shall likewise win
,and
the standers and lookers on shal l do the same,in
asmuch that there is no man that i s w illing to
play at this Triumph with these cards but that
they shall all be w inners, and no losers . Let
there fore every Christian man and woman play
at these cards, that they may have and obtain the
triumph ; you must mark also that the triumph
must apply to fetch home with him all the other
cards whatsoever suit they be o f. Now then
take ye this first card which must appear and be
shewed to you as followeth .
In some such way Emerson invites us to j oin
in his favorite recreation. It i s the free play o f
thought in which “he that dealeth shall win, the
players ‘shal l l ikewise w in and the standers and
lookers on shall do the same ”:
CHAPTER II
KDISCRIMINATING OPTIMIST
“I am a willow of the wilderness,Loving the wind that bent me .
”
NE o f the most familar terms of reproach
in these days is Victorian .
” It is used by
clever literary persons who have rebelled against
the standards o f their immediate predecessors .
It implies a certain smugness and sel f-satis faction
which i s very irritating to persons who are con
scious o f the cruel realities o f this unfin ished
world. The Victorians are supposed to have been
incorrigible optimists who mistook the Fool ’s
Paradise in which they lived for the final resting
place o f humanity. They were worshipers of the
respectabilities, and were content with the cant o f
l iberal ism as their fathers had been content with
the cant o f Toryism .
Ta day, however, we are taught that it is our
duty lto face the grimmest realities, and no t to
16
A DISCRIMINATING OPTIMIST 17
fl inch when we see someth ing that is ugly and
threatening. We must see how the other hal f
lives, and we must free ourselves from amiable
delus ions.
In turning from the work of our painfully sin
cere real ists to Emerson, the first impress ion is
that we are go ing back to - that d iscredited state
o f mind, the early Victorian For
Emerson faces the existing world with a smiling
face. He takes for granted that there is a friend
liness in its laws, and that the ul timate real ity is
not to be feared . He has a frank pred ilection for
beauty and does not feel it his duty to feed his
imagination on what is ugly and unwholesome .
He is always glad to be al ive, and glad to find so
many other creatures al ive at the same t ime .
Sometimes he has a too debonair way o f making
light o f the evils that are encountered by earnest
people.
But those who look upon the optimism o f
Emerson as a part o f the conventionalism of his
t ime are, I think, superficial in their judgments .
In the first place, he was not a Victorian, but an
18 EMERSON
American, who was not under the spell of the
good queen and her court . NO one was less dis
posed to imitate the literary conventions then
dom inant in England . Ha was no more a Vic
torian than was Abraham Lincoln . There was
noth ing smug in his optimism . He was not an
apologist for the existing state o f things, nor ih
terested in proving that this i s the best o f all
po ss ible worlds . He did not try to make himsel f
agreeable by calling evil good. He recognized the
existence o f an enormous number o f bad and
cruel things. “Nature as we know her is no
saint.
He taught that nature does not coddle us, nor
provide ready-made houses or clothes . She leaves
us to make these th ings for ourselves. And the
process o f experiment is never an easy one. It is
a long and tedious way by which we travel toward
truth. Nature does no t tell us what is good for
us ; to discover this is part o f our experience .
I compared'
notes with one o f my friends who
Expects everything Of the Un iverse and is disap
A DISCRIMINATING OPTIMIST,
19
pointed,and I found that I began at the other
extreme,expecting nothing, and am always full
o f thanks for moderate bless ings .”
SO far from denying or seeking to h ide the
darker and more painfu l aspects o f the world, he
admitted them and placed them where they be
long, at the beginning. They belong to the realm
o f chaos and night.
But the outstand ing fact i s that there has been
a gradual emergence from chaos . The existence
O f man as a reasoning creatu re becomes more
wonderful as we th ink o f the Odds against it. N0
good th ing can be had w ithout effort.
But the real question is,“Is the effort worth
wh ile ? ” You may say that it is not. You do not
know whether o r not you shall succeed,and there
fore you w ill not try.
Emerson declares that the effort i s most glor
iously worth wh ile. It reveal s the joy o f creation .
“A man is a golden impo ss ibil ity . Power keeps
quite another road than the turnpike o f cho ice
and will, namely, the subterranean and invis ible
20 EMERSON
tunnels and channels o f l i fe . Li fe is a series o f
surprises and would not be worth taking and
keeping i f it were not . Nature hates cal
culators, her methods are saltatory and impulsive .
The m ind goes antagonizing on, and never
prospers but by fits. We thrive on casualties .
Every man is an impossibility till he i s
born, everything IS impossible till we see it a
success .”
At this point It would he well to lay down
Emerson’s essay on Experience and do a little
meditating on the words,“the mind goes antago
nizing on.
Here is a philosophy that goes behind the Old
dispute between the Optimist and the pessimist.
The ordinary Optimist tries to prove that there is
no real antagonism between the facts of nature
and the ideals o f the human soul . Everything is
exquisitely fitted to produce happiness . The pessi
mist den ies th is and ins ists on the flagrant opposi
tion between what is and what ought to be . He
22 EMERSON
startl ing array. Hark, what sounds on the n ight
w ind ? the cry o f murder in that friendly house,
see those marks o f stamp ing feet, O f hidden riot .
The wh isper overhead, the detected glance, the
glare o f mal ign ity, ungrounded fears, susp icions,hal f knowledge and m istakes, darken the brow
and chill the heart o f man . And accord ingly it
IS natures no t clear, nor o f quick and steady per
ceptions, but imperfect characters from which
something is h idden that all others see, that suffer
most from these causes . In those persons who
move the profoundest p ity, tragedy seems to con
s ist in temperament, not in events . There are
people who have an appetite for grie f ; pleasure
i s no t strong enough, and they crave pain, Mi
thridatic stomachs which must be fed on po i
soned bread, natures so downed that no prosperity
can soothe their ragged and d ishevelled desola
t ion . They mishear and misbel ieve, they suspect
and dread . They handle every nettle, and tread
on every snake in the meadow .
”
It i s here that Emerson made his stand . It is
not necessary for us to apologize for facts or to
A DISCRIMINATING OPTIMIST 23
attempt to vind icate Eternal Providence . Events
come and we must face them . But the Terror
we must not yield to, th is we can overcome.
There i s a health o f the spirit which may be cul
tivated and wh ich makes us immune to evil in
The optim ism of Emerson was not to be ex
pressed in the phrase,“ looking at the bright s ide
o f things . That is the lazy man’s optimism .
There is a homelier phrase,
“making the best o f
it.” Let the circumstances be what they may, the
brave man accepts them resolved to make the best
Of them . And the surprise is that when he puts
al l h is strength into the task,the result i s some
thing better than he had planned . Even when
worst has come to worst, the hero turns upon the
hostile powers and finds the Best which he has
worshiped afar now real ized in his own will .
Trembler,do not wh ine and ch ide,
Art thou not also real ?Why shouldst thou stoop to poor excuse ;Tu rn on the accuser roundly, say,‘Here am I , here will I abide
24 EMERSON
Forever to mysel f soothfast .Go thou, sweet Heaven, or at thy pleasurestay !’
Already Heaven with thee its lo t has cast .
The most complete expression o f Emerson’s
discriminating optimism can be found in his essay
on Fate . Here he states the argument o f the
pess imist in the strongest terms . There are forces
at work which bring pain and loss . There ,are
laws which we can not control . There are trag
ed ies which are inev itable . But the good man
confronts the evil fate . Emerson bel ieved that
the resu lt of that conflict was the creation O f a
higher good than had be fore been perceived . The
struggle with Fate produced power.
Thus we trace Fate, in matter, mind, and
morals—in race, in retardations of strata, and in
thought and character as well. It is everywhere
bound or l imitation . But Fate has its lord ; l im i
tation its l imits ; is d ifferent seen from above and
from below ; from w ithin and from without . For,though Fate is immense, SO i s power, which is the
A DISCRIMINATING OPTIMIST 25
other fact in the dual world, immense . I f Fate
follows and limits power, power attends and an
tagonizes Fate . We must respect Fate as natural
history,but there is more than natural history .
For who and what is this criticism that pries into
the matter ? Man is not order o f nature, sack
and sack,belly and members, l ink in a chain, nor
any ignom inious baggage, but a stupendous an
tagonism, a dragging together o f the poles o f
the universe . He betrays his relation to what is
below him—th ick-skulled, small-brained, fishy,quadrumanous—quadruped ill-disguised, hardly
escaped into biped, and has pa id for the new
powers by loss o f some o f the Old ones . But the
l ightning which exp lodes and fashions planets,maker o f planet and suns
,is in h im . On one side,
elemental order, sandstone and granite, rock
ledges, peat-bog, forest, sea and shore ; and, on
the other part,thought, the spiri t wh ich composes
and decomposes nature—here they are, side bys ide, God and devil, mind and matter, king and
consp irator, belt and spasm,riding -peace fully to
gether in the eye and brain o f every man .
26 EMERSON
Nor can he blink the free-will . To hazard
the contrad iction—freedom i s necessary. I f you
please to plant yoursel f on the side o f Fate, and
say, Fate is all ; then we say, a part o f Fate is the
freedom o f man . For ever wells up the impulse
O f choos ing and acting in the soul . Intellect an
nuls Fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free.
And though nothing is more disgusting than the
crowing about liberty by slaves, as -most men are,and the flippant mistaking for freedom O f some
paper preamble l ike a ‘Declaration o f Indepen
dence,’
or the statute right to vote, by those who
have never dared to think or to act, yet it is
wholesome to man to look not at Fate, but the
other way : the practical view 18 the other. His
sound relation to these facts i s to use and com
mand, not to cringe to them.
‘Look not on Na
ture, for her name is fatal ,’ said the oracle. The
too much contemplation o f these limits induces
meanness . They who talk much O f destiny, their
birth-star,etc. , are in a lower dangerous plane,
and invite the evils they fear.
A DISCRIMINATING OPTIMIST 27
I cited the instinctive and hero ic races as
proud bel ievers in Destiny. They conspire w ith
i t ; a loving resignation i s with the event. But
the dogma makes a d ifferent impression, when
it is held by the weak and lazy.
’Tis weak and
vicious people who cast the blame on Fate. The
right use o f Fate i s to bring up our conduct to
the loftiness o f nature. Rude and invincible ex
cept by themselves are the‘elements . SO let man
be . Let him empty h is breast o f h i s w indy con
ceits, and Show his lordsh ip by manners and deeds
on the scale o f nature. Let him hold h is purpose
as with the tug of gravitation . No power, no
persuasion, no bribe, shall make him give up his
po int. A man ought to compare advantageously
with a river,an oak, o r a mountain . He shall
have not less the flow, the expans ion, and the re
sistance of these.’T is the best use o f Fate to teach a fatal cour
age. GO face the fire at sea, or the cholera in
your friend’s house, or the burglar in your own,
o r what danger l ies in the way o f duty, know ing
28 EMERSON
you are guarded by the cherubim o f Destiny . I f
you believe in Fate to your harm, believe it, at
least, for your good .
“For, i f Fate is so prevailing, man also is part
O f it,and can confront Fate with Fate .”
30 EMERSON
helper to all those who would l ive a reasonable
intellectual l i fe. He shows us where to put our
facts and to a certain degree how to use them .
The difficulty comes when new facts are discov
ered which do no t fit into the system,o r when m
the course o f our intellectual development we
come upon a fresh point o f view.
Then the system becomes a blind alley. We
are led into it by a perfectly logical process,but
there i s no logical way out o f it. The m ind goes
round and round and i s consc ious o f the futil ity
O f its own effort. The universe i s narrowed to
the d imensions o f a rigid creed . The system nowshuts out more o f real ity than it explains .
It i s when we become conscious o f the dangers
o f making the universe a blind alley and becom
ing entrapped in rigid forms that ’
we appreciate
the function O f ph ilosophers l ike Will iam james
and Bergson . They are emancipators o f the in
tellect . In the ir keen criticism o f dogm atic sys
tems they show us a way out . Reality, they as
sure us, i s something vaster than any definition
THE OPENER OF DOORS 3 1
Emerson belonged to this little company o f
emancipators,and he went about h is business in
a very s imple and yet effective way. He attacked
the assumption that what i s usually called con
sistency is a virtue. No say ing o f h is i s more
O ften quoted, and more generally m isunderstood :
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin o f l it
tle minds, adored by l ittle statesmen and philo so
ph‘
ers and divines . With consistency a great
soul has noth ing to do. He may as well concern
himsel f with his shadow on the wall. Speak
what you think now in hard words, and to
morrow speak what ‘t o-morrow thinks in hard
words again, though it contradict everything you
said to -day.
”
That may be made to seem l ike a plea for care
less and irresponsible ways o f thinking and speak
ing. What standard are we to have by wh ich
to test our mental‘pro cesses ? I have heard the
words quoted as i f they offered an excuse for in
tellectual lawlessness .
32 EMERSON
We approach Emerson’s serious meaning only
when we emphasize the adjective . It is a foolish
cons istency which is the hobgoblin o f li ttle minds .
The fundamental question is “consistency with
what?” The little mind is thinking not o f reality
but o f its own previous utterances When an
opinion is to be expressed, i t says, This must
be made consistent with what I said yesterday.
Let me see ! What did I say yesterday ?” Then,
with solemn conscientiousness, yesterday’s state
ment is repeated and there is felt the satis faction
which comes with duty done .
But what i f to-day’s fact is really different
from that o fy esterday, and can not be expressed
accurately by the same phrase ? This poss ibility
the little m ind does not entertain . It will not
allow itsel f to be contradicted, and so the process
goes on wh ich St . Paul describes,“they measur
ing themselves by themselves, and comparing
themselves among themselves, are not wise .”
Emerson’s real plea is for cons istency. But
we must be consistent not with a form o f words
THE OPENER OF DOORS 33
which we have adopted, but with a l iving real ity
which we encounter day by day.
What have you seen to-day ? What have you
done ? What new aspect of the universe has be
come clear to you ? What are the facts revealed
in your present consciousness ? These are the
questions that are asked O f a person who is using
h ismind . And his answers are valuable only as
they are s imple and d irect.
In a court o f justice th is simplicity is required .
The witness who is trying to make hi s answers
consistent with one another and with a precon
ceived theory is sure to come to grief . The cross
questioner will discover flaws in the evidence .
The only safe course is to tel l the facts as they oc
curred .
Most o f our intellectual confusion comes from
the attempts to arrange our Opinions accord ing
to an artificial order. The catech ism i s arranged
in advance o f experience. The questions follow
one another in logical order, and each ques
tion has i ts appropriate answer. It is all very
34 EMERSON
satis factory until the answers are sharply chal
lenged . How do we happen to know so much ?
How are we able to answer so gl ibly ?
To Emerson the chie f value o f a catech ism layin the questions, not in the answers . That the
deepest and most persistent questions have no sat
isfactory answers did not depress him . It onlyproved that both the mind that asks and the uni
verse which delays the answer are greater than we
thought . Their meaning can not be expressed in
any form of words . He hears the Sphinx saying
to the Soul
Thou art the unanswered question ;Couldst see thy prop er eye,
Alway it asketh,asketh
And each answer is a il ie.SO take thy quest through nature,It through thousand natures ply ;
Ask on,thou clothed etern ity ;
Time is the false reply.
”
The joy o f the follower o f Tru th and Beauty
is wonderfully expressed in the l ittle poem called“Forerunners .” We are out-o f-doors, and the
THE OPENER OF DOORS 35
air i s bracing, and the d istant hills are alluring.
What does it matter that we do not catch up w ith
our“happy gu ides” ? It is enough that we are
free to follow. Let others s ing of the satisfac
tions of ach ievement. Emerson is satisfied with
a li fe that i s a continual quest.
Long I followed happy gu ides,I could never reach their s ides ;Their step is forth, and, ere the dayBreaks up their leaguer, and away.
Keen my sense,my heart was young,
Right good-wi ll my s inews strung,But no speed o f m ine ava ilsTo hunt upon the ir shining tra ils .On and away, the ir hasting feetMake the morning proud and sweet ;Flowers they strew—I catch the scent ;Or tone of s ilver instrumentLeaves on the w ind melodiou s traceYet I could never see their face.On eastern h ills I see their smokes,M ixed w ith m ist by d istant lochs.I met many travellersWho the road had surely kept ;They saw no t my fine revellers
,
!These had crossed them wh ile they slept.Some had heard their fa ir report
,
In the country o r the court.
36 EMERSON
Fleetest couriers aliveNever yet could once arrive,As they went o r they returned,At the house where these sojourned.
Sometimes their strong speed they slacken,Though they are not overtaken ;In sleep their jubilant troop is near,I tunefu l vo ices overhear ;It may be in wood o r waste
,
At unawares ’ti s come and past.Their near camp my Spirit knowsBy s igns gracious as rainbows .I thenceforward, and long after,Listen for their harp-like laughter,And carry in my heart
,for days,
Peace that hallows rudest ways .”
It i s not merely the poetic imagination which
opens the doors into an enchanted country where
one may wander endlessly. The sober reason has
also an emancipatory power. There are real ities
which l ie beyond the limits which the dogmatist
defines . They may not be logically justified but
they are nevertheless a part of the order of the
universe. When we cease to dogmatize we be
come conscious o f an order more wonderful than
that which we had imagined poss ible . Things
exist side by side which we had supposed to be
38 EMERSON
the laws o f nature may be read in the smallest
fact. The Intellect must have the l ike perfection
in its apprehens ion and in its works .”
Along with Emerson’s insistence on an absolute
freedom In thinking we must remember his em
phasis on the principle of identity which he dis
covers everywhere. The universe, he continually
tells us is not a blind alley, neither is i t a mere
welter o f conflicting forces . It is marvelously
compl icated, but touch it at any point and you will
find it cons istent with itsel f. Could we under
stand one part o f i t we would have the key to all
mysteries .
The universe is represented in every one of
its particles . Everything in nature contains all
the powers o f natu re . Everything is made of one
h idden stuff ; as the naturalist sees one type under
every metamorphosis,and regards a horse as a .
running man,a fish as a swimming man, a bird
as a flying man, a tree as a rooted man . Each
new form repeats not only the main character o f
THE OPENER OF DOORS 39
the type, but part for part all the details, all the
aims,furtherances, h indrances, energies, and
whole system of every other. Every occupation,
trade, art, transact ion, i s a compend of the world
and a correlative O f every other. Each one i s an
enti t ! emblem of human l i fe ; Of its good and ill,its trials
,its enemies
,its course, and its end . And
each one must somehow accommodate the whole
man,and recite all h is destiny.
“The world globes itsel f in a drop o f dew. The
m icroscope cannot find the an imalcule which is
less perfect for be ing l itt le. Eyes, ears, taste,smell, motion, res istance, appetite, and organs o f
reproduction that take hold on eternity—all find
room to cons ist in the small creature. SO do we
put our li fe into every act. The true doctrine o f
omnipresence is,that God reappears w ith all h is
parts in every moss and cobweb. The value o f
the universe contrives to throw itsel f into every
po int . I f the good i s there,so is the evi l ; i f the
affinity, so the repulsion ; i f the force, SO the l im i
tation.
”
CHAPTER IV
THE PARISH OF YOUNG MEN
“My parish is young men inquiring their way.
MERSON’
S parish did not include all
young men . Indeed he was very ill at ease
with the typical “young person .
” And there
are many anecdotes which indicate that the young
person shared the embarrassment . The gregari
ousness of youth with its tumultuous mass move
ments were rather appalling to one o f his tem
perament . Nor was he fitted for the difficult rOle
o f spi ritual adviser.
Emerson’s widely scattered parish was made
Up o f another kind Of young men. They were
young men who were not seek ing to find out his
way,but their own . He encouraged them in it.
That made them h is debtors for l i fe .
These parishioners O f h is could not poss ibly be
gathered into one congregation . They formed no
40
THE PARISH OF YOUNG MEN 41
cult or party. Each was so absorbed in his own
special endeavor that he had little time to make
the acqua intance Of h is fellow parish ioner, bu t
each in the formative period of h is l i fe had re
ceived the stimulus he most needed . He had been
bewildered by the conflict ing counsels of his cl
ders . Each counsellor had said,“Be l ike me .
Then one clear voice had suggested,“Why not be
yoursel f ? ”
The suggestion was so unexpected and yet so
reasonable that it was acted upon. The young
man found h imsel f, which i s the one discovery
America prides itsel f on being the land of the
free . We have had many pol itical emancipators,but the roll o f intellectual emancipators is short .
Having dethroned kings, we live under the fear
o f public Op inion . The aggregate mind tyran nizes
over the individual intellect. There i s a deadly
average wh ich it i s not Considered safe for one
to pass .
To h is parish of young men Emerson was al
ways preach ing that the world is in d ire need o f
42 EMERSON
men w ith fresh insight who are not satisfied with
th ings as they are . The “average man” should
not be content with the average attainment. He
has within him powers which rightly used cou ld
li ft h im far above his present cond ition . He is,and o f right ought to be, a free and independent
soul . A decent respect for the opinion o f the
world demands that he should declare his inde
pendence in unmistakable terms .
What strikes us in the fine genius is that
wh ich belongs o f right to every one. A man
should know h imsel f for a necessary actor. A
l ink was wanting between two craving parts Of
nature, and he was hurled into being as the bridge
over that yawning need, the mediator betwixt two
else unmarriageable facts . H is two parents held
each o f one of the wants, and the union O f for
eign constitutions In him enables him to do gladly
and gracefully what the assembled human race
could not have sufficed to do . He knows his ma
terials he appl ies himsel f to his work ; he can not
read, or th ink, or look, but he unites the h itherto
THE PARISH OF YOUNG MEN 43
separated strands—into a perfect cord . The
thoughts he delights to utter are the reason o f h is
incarnation. Is it for him to account himsel f
cheap and superfluous, or to l inger by the ways ide
for opportunities ? D id he not come into being
because someth ing must be done wh ich he and
no other is and does ? I f only he sees, the world
w i ll be visible enough . He need not study where
to‘
stand, nor to put th ings in favorable l ights ; in
h im is the l ight, from h im all things are illumi
nated to their centre. What patron shall he ask
for employment and reward ? Hereto Was heborn, to deliver the thought Of his heart from the
universe to the un iverse, to do an Offi ce wh ich
nature could not forego, nor he be discharged
from rendering, and then immerge again into
the holy s ilence and eternity out o f which as a
man he arose. God i s rich, and many more men
than one“he harbours in his bosom, biding their
time and the needs and the beauty of all . Is no t
th is the theory Of every man’s genius or facu lty ?
Why then goest thou as some Bo swell o r listening
worshipper to th is saint o r to that ? That is the
44 EMERSON
only lese—maj esty. Here art thou with whom so
long the universe trava iled in labor ; darest thou
think meanly o f thysel f whom the stalwart Fate
brought forth to unite h is ragged s ides, to shoot
the gul f, to reconcile the irreconcilable ?”
As for the chi ll wisdom O f age with its timid
counsels, let the young man defy it. Length o f
days does not bring w isdom unless it is aecom
panied by a power of spiritual rejuvenation, and
then it becomes the wisdom o f perpetual youth
fulness .
Why should we import rags and relies into
the new hour ? Nature abhors the old, and old
age seems the only d isease ; all others run into
th is one . We call it by many names—fever, in
temperance,insan ity, stup idity, and crime ; they
are all forms o f old age ; they are rest, conserv
atism,appropriation, inertia, no t newness, not
the way onward . We grizzle every day. I see
no need o f it . Whilst we converse with what is
above us, we do not grow o ld, but grow young.
Infancy, youth, receptive, aspiring, with religious
46 EMERSON
sly d ig at one o f the foibles o f h is . parishioners .
There i s a quality of bumptiousness wh ich is
often found in early li fe. Emerson treats i t as
a kind o f premature senility.
“Whilst we con
verse with what is above us we do no t grow o ld.
”
Conversely the person who cannot look up religi
ously to something above his present attainments
had aged rap idly. A person may be a dotard while
yet in the twenties . This was a sobering thought
no t unfrequently presented to the parish o f young
men.
CHAPTER V
SPENT THE DAY AT EssEx ! UNCTION
“August 1 6
,1 868. Came home last night from
Vermont with E llen . S topped at Middlebury on the
1 1 th,Tu esday, and read my discourse on Greatness,
and the good work and influ ence of heroic scho lars.
On Wednesday spent the day at Essex ! unction,and traversed the banks and mu ch of the bed of theWinooski river, mu ch admiring the falls, and the
noble moun tain peaks of Mansfield and Camel’
s
Hump !which there appears to be the highest! , andthe view of the Adirondacks across the lake.
”
NE intent on becoming intimate with Em
erson might well po stpone read ing the
Oversoul, t ill he had med itated on the text,“Spent the Day at Essex Junct ion . Perhaps no
junction point in all New England has been the
innocent cause o f more vituperation than Essex
Junct ion . Here, for more than a generation, im
patient people have al ighted and wa ited for trains
which were not arranged for their convenience .
To the commercial traveler, Essex junction rep
47
48 EMERSON
resents a sheer waste o f time. To the summer
tourist it means a postpo nement o f enjoyment.
It is a place on the way to somewhere else.
But to Emerson, Essex junction was not con
ceived o f as a po int o f departure until the hour
came when he must actually depart . This was
not till evening. In the meantime,he was living
in Essex Junction rather than merely passing
through i t. There was no hurry, so that he had
ample time to enjoy the banks o f the Winooski
river and the view of the d istant mountains .
Emerson was on the way to Mount Mansfield,
at which he arrived in due time . The next morn
ing at the Mountain Hotel “a man went through
the house ringing a loud bell and shouting ‘Sun
rise,
’ and everybody dressed in haste and went
down to the piazza Emerson joined the eager
procession and had hi s look w ith the rest o f them .
After many sharp looks at the heavens and
earth,we descended to breakfast. I found in this
company many agreeable people .
In thi s recital you have a gl impse o f his phi
losophy of li fe . Essex Junction, Mount Mans
DAY AT ESSE! !UNCTION 49
field and the troop of fellow-bo arders who
snatched a hasty sunrise on the way to break
fast were not all al ike. In fact, they were qu ite
different . But they were al l equally real . The
contemplation o f them absorbed successive mo
ments of h is conscious l i fe. Each for a l ittle
while occupied the foreground of h is m ind and
became the representative of the cosmos . Each
in its place and In its time was interesting. When
it came to the question wh ich was the most in
teresting, he would let them fight it out among
themselves .
This was the philosophy of the Mountain and
the Squirrel .
I am not so large as you,You are not so small as IAnd not hal f so spry.
”
That talents differ i s the fact on wh ich we must
agree be fore there can be any toleration o r ap
preciation . Most o f us have a bad habit o f tak ing
a personal preference and elevating it into a uni
versal standard o f value. Each new object is
50 EMERSON
we ighed in the balance and found wanting. We
say, th i s is not that, and therefore it is not worth
our attention . The word “d iscrimination” takes
on a hostile mean ing. We are l ikely to say “dis
criminate against .” The word “criticize” has
also a suggestion o f unfriendliness,for it i s con
cerned w ith the pe rception o f d ifferences .
Emerson’s habitual po int of v iew was that o f
appreciative d iscrimination . Th is is not that , o f
course not ; it i s quite d ifferent—that is what
makes i t interesting. Even where the tubs look
al ike, it i s pleasant to consider that each stands on
its own bottom .
What is the most impo rtant place in all the
world ? For you it is the place where you actu
ally are at this moment . This is the only po int
from which at th is particular t ime the universe
i s vis ible to you . I f you are truly alive, you do
not need a man with a bell to summon you to the
sunrise. The day has its clear call .
The inevitable morningF inds them who in cellars be
DAY AT ESSE! ! UNCTION 51
And be sure that al l-loving NatureWill sm ile in a factory.
:Yon ridge of purple landscape,Y on sky beneath the walls,Hold all the hidden wondersIn thei r scanty intervals .”
There i s a curious restlessness wh ich is O ften
mistaken for ideal ism . Not finding satis faction
in our real env ironment, we are filled w ith the
desire to be somewhere else . When this restless
ness becomes chronic, there is“that driven feel
ing ” which transforms the pursui t o f happiness
into a hurried fl ight from unh appiness . Even
our hol idays become nerve-destroying tasks, as
with jaded minds we are carried about to the
places where we wait for sensations that do nOt
come. And w ith our“
eyes on our watches, we
know that we must hurry i f we are not to mi ss
the next s ight that we have paid for.
Palestine was no t a touri st country in the days
when the author o f Ecclesiastes wrote o f the va
rious vanities he had seen under the sun ; else he
might have added a lamentation over the futil ityo f an empty m ind going about in search o f cul
52 EMERSON
ture. This is‘
a vanity I have seen . I have seen
a rich, foolish man who came to a city strange
and o ld, and that had a great history. Yet did
he not seek to know what that history was, nor
did he save an hour for quiet med itation on what
he saw. He spent much go ld to come to the
place where the city was, and when he was the re
he worried over the delay in getting away. And
that foolish rich man remembered nothing of the
city except a d inner which was no t so good as he
might have had at home .
Because he found so much to interest him at
home Emerson takes a whimsical pleasure in
speak ing against foreign travel as a means o f cul
ture . But he evidently had in mind the exces
sive value that was in his day put upon Europe
and its traditions .
His disparagement o f travel did not arise from
any incuriosity. He had an eager desire to see all
the world . But he was like a . small boy who, hav
ing learned that the procession is to pass by hi s
own house, takes his position on h is own door
54 EMERSON
hOpe o f finding somewhat greater than he knows .
He who travels to be amused, o r to get somewhat
wh ich he does not carry, travels“
away from him
sel f, and grows Old even in youth among o ld
th ings . In Thebes,in Palmyra
,his will and mind
have become o ld and d ilapidated as they. He
carries ru ins to ruins .“Travell ing is a fool’s paradise . Our first jour
neys discover to us the indifference o f places . At
home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be
intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness . I
pack my trunk, embrace my fr iends, embark on
the sea,and at last wake up in Naples, and there
beside me i s the stern fact, the sad sel f, unrelent
ing, identical, that I fled from . I seek the Vati
can,and the palaces . I affect to be intoxicated
with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxi
cated. My giant goes with me wherever I go .
”
There are times when themedium at a seance ex
cuses hersel f for her inabi lity to put the s itter in
communication with departed sp irits . She does
DAY AT ESSE! ! UNCTION 55
not know what i s the matt er,but the cond itions
are not right.”
Every traveler has experienced a s im ilar d i f
ficu lty. He has spent time and money to go to a
famous spot ; his body has been transported
but not h is soul. There are inh ibitions that pre
vent imaginative communion with the mighty
past.
Emerson preferred to be in Essex Junction
when the spiritual conditions were right rather
than in Rome when h is m ind was not properly
functioning. Essex Junction is a wonderful place
i f one happens to be in the mood for see ing i t.
CHAPTER VI
FRIENDSHIP WITHOUT INTIMACY.
There is a strange face in the Freshman classwhom I shou ld like to know very much . He has a
great deal of character in his features and should
be a fast friend or a bitter enemy. His name is
I shall endeavor to become better ac
quainted with him and wish,if possible, to recall at
a fu ture period the singular sensations which his
presence produced in me.
” —! OURNAL, 1
MERSON was an upper classman, albeit
only seventeen years o f age, when he wrote
thus o f Mart in Gay o f Hingham, afterward a
distingu ished analyt ical chem ist living in Boston.
Emerson’s Son, commenting on this passage, says
that there i s no evidence that hi s father, e ither In
college o r afterward, ever made any advances to
ward further acquaintance . It does not appear
that he ever really knew h im, yet he was always
interested to hear o f him, and was grieved at his
untimely death in 1850 The two men were en
FRIENDSHIP WITHOUT INTIMACY SZ
tirely different in their temperaments and inter
ests, Gay being known by his classmates as“cool
Gay.
This capacity for shy admirations for h is oppo
sites, and for friendly interests in people w ith
whom he would find it difficu lt to keep up a con
versation, was characteristic o f Emerson . He
was sometimes pa infully consciou s o f it as a bar
rier which prevented h im from really “getting at”
people whom he w ished to know . At other times
he defended the att itude that was natural to him,
and so made a vi rtue O f his necessity.
To most persons, Emerson’s essay on Friend
ship is unsatis factory as an expos ition o f the sub
ject , though it i s very reveal ing o f the au thor’s
state O f m ind .
“Friendship,” says Emerson,
“ l ike
the immortality o f the soul , is too good to be be
lieved.
” And his account o f friendship has a fine
aloo fness that befits the love for a disembodied
spiri t rather than a warm attachment to an im
perfect creature o f flesh and blood .
One o f the conditions that Emerson would
make in a treaty o f friendship would be that '
ss EMERSON
neither party should trespass on the personal ity
o f others . It was friendship by “absent treat
Why should we desecrate noble and beauti ful
souls by intruding on them ? Why insist on rash
personal relations with your friend ? Why go to
his house, and know his mother and brother and
sisters ? Why be vis ited by him at your own?
Are these things material to our covenant ? Leave
this touching and clawing. Let him be to me a
spirit .“To my friend I write f a letter
,and from him
I receive a letter. That seems to you l ittle . It
suffices me.“You shall not come nearer to a man by getting
into hi s house. We see the noble afar o ff, Whyshould we intrude ?”
In all this we feel that Emerson was riding his
high horse . I t i s a shy man’s way of comforting
himsel f for something that he unfortunately lacks,‘but which he would give anything to possess . He
FRIENDSHIP WITHOUT INTIMACY 59
was,to use Paul ’s phrase, glorying in h is infirmi
ties . That wh ich he was pra is ing was not friend
ship but subl imated hero-worsh ip, which is quite
a different thing.
In the privacy o f hi s note-books he treats his
infi rmity in quite a d ifferent spirit. He laments
the fact that he was not a good mixer. Like SO
many New Englanders, it was difficult for him to
establ ish personal relations .
At the age Of twenty, when looking forward
to the ministry, he makes thi s sel f-criticism“Every compari son o f mysel f with my mates
that six o r seven, perhaps s ixteen o r seventeen,
years have made has convinced me that there
exists a s ignal defect o f character which neutral
izes in great part the just influence my talents
ought to have.” He expresses i t as the “absence
O f common sympathies .” By thi s he seems to
mean the absence o f the material for “small talk .
”
“Its bitt er fruits are a sore uneasiness in the com
pany O f most men and women,a frigid fear o f
offending and j ealousy o f d isrespect,an inabi lity
to lead and an unwillingness to follow the cur
60 EMERSON
rent conversation . In my frequent humili
ation I am compelled to remember the po or boywho cried ,
‘I told you,father, they,
would find
me ou t . ’ He sums up his youthful confession,“What is called a warm heart, I have it not .
”
l When he was sixty, he was conscious o f thesame l imitation . He jotted down in his note
book : “Barriers o f man impassable. They who”
should be friends cannot pass into each other.
Friends are fictitious, founded on some momen
tary experience. But what we want is consecu
tiveness.
”
A11 this is no t evidence of lack o f a warm heart .
It was rather a lack o f an easy way o f expressing
what he felt. The ch ill was not in h imsel f, but
in the atmosphere that was about him . But there
was evidently a personal experience behind this
generalization about society.
Society, l ike wealth, is good for those who un
derstand i t. It i s a fool ish waste o f time for
those who do not. It seems impossible for any
one to expand in a crowd to his natural dimen
62 EMERSON
h is thought with a certain phlegmatic entertain
ment, and unites h imsel f to it for the time, as a
sailor to a boat, has a better principle o f po ise
and i s not eas ily moved from the perpendicular.”
With the remarkable group o f men who made
Concord famous, Emerson was on terms of fa
miliar friendship . For Bronson Alcott he cher
ished an admiration which seems extravagant .
He loved to walk and talk w ith the shypoet,Ellery Chann ing. Thoreau was for two years an
inmate o f Emerson’s house,and the two men
worked in the garden together. In Boston Emer
son was a member o f the Saturday Club, where
he continually met Longfellow, Holmes, Agassiz
and the rest.
Yet he was not a man to shine in such society.
His mind was contemplative, rather than conver
sational. He d id not care to “hold his own” in
a controversy. Why should he ? “Emersonwas
a good c itizen and a good neighbor with his neigh
bors, always went to town meeting and listened
intently to the strong spirits who ruled the dis
FRIENDSHIP WITHOUT INTIMACY 63
eu ss ions, w ithout tak ing any part in them h im
sel f.”
The most notable o f h is friendships was w ith
Thomas Carlyle . The correspondence bet ween
them continued for many years , and there were
many express ions o f esteem . The friendsh ip was
a real one, but the fact that the broad Atlantic
lay between them was a great aid to the ir good
fellowship. For though the two men liked each
other, they d id not like the same th ings .
Carlyle threatened to vis it America, and we
may be sure that he would not have enjoyed the
vi sit . Emerson’s cheery faith in the common
man seemed to the testy Scotchman a bit o f senti
mental ism . They both believed in hero-worsh ip ,but they d id not worship the same heroes . New
England Transcendental ism did not agree w ith
Carlyle’s temper.
Emerson sent a copy o f the Dial to h i s friend .
Carlyle writes , The Dial No . 1 came duly. O f
course I read it with interest ; it i s the utterance
o f what is youngest in your land,pure, etherial
as the voices o f the morn ing ! And yet—you
64 EMERSON
know me—for‘me it is too etherial,speculative
,
theoretic ; all theory becomes more and more con-n
fessedly inadequate, untrue, unsatis factory, al
most a kind o f mocking to me.”
“Faith ful are the wounds o f a friend. And
these tokens of friendship were seldom absent
from the letters that passed between the two .
Carlyle writes o f the impression Emerson’
s es
says made upon him :
It is a sermon to me as all your del iberate ut
terances are ; a real word which I feel to be such—alas, almost or altogether the one such, in a
world all full o f jargons, hearsays, echoes and
vainnoises wh ich cannot pass with me for words.
Th is is a praise far beyond any ‘literary’ one ;
literary pra ises are not worth repeating in com
parison . For the rest I have to object still !what
you w ill call objecting to the Law o f Nature ! that
we find you a speaker indeed, but as it were a
soliloqm’
zer on the eternal mountain tops only, in
vast solitudes where men and their affairs l ie all
hushed in a dim remoteness ; and only the man
FRIENDSHIP WITHOUT INTIMACY 65
and the stars are visible, whom so fine a fellow
seems he,we could perpetually punch into and say,
‘Why won’t you come and help us then ? We
have terrible need o f one man l ike you down
among us ! It i s cold and vacant up there ; noth
ing paintable but ra inbows and emotions ; come
down and you shall do l i fe p ictures, pass ions,
facts—which transcend all thought, and leave itstuttering and stammering !’ To which he an
swers that he won’t, can’t and doesn’t want to ! as
the cockneys have it! : so I leave h im and say,
‘You Western GymnOSOphist ! Well, we can af
ford one man for that, too .
’
This i s all very well for a friendsh ip carr ied on
by correspondence. Carlyle thinks of himsel f as
a man who is deal ing w ith concrete real ities, while
Emerson is dealing in remote abstractions .
But had they l ived in the same town with
opportun ity to d iscu ss the practical questions o f
pol itics and soc ial wel fare, they wou ld have come
into collision . The fact was that Emerson was as
much interested in concrete real ities as Carlyle,
66 EMERSON
but he came to different conclusions in regard to
them . Carlyle bel ieved in government by strong
men, l ike Frederick the Great and Cromwell .
Democracy was an abomination to him . A states
man l ike Lincoln, who thought o f h imsel f as an
interpreter o f the popular w ill,was al together
outside his sympathy. Liberalism o f the modern
sort seemed to him utter weakness and muddle
headedness .
Emerson, though he pre ferred to write about
principles rather than their immed iate appl ica
tions, was never in doubt as to which s ide he was
on. The principles wh ich he preached were the
ones which were being applied by the democratic
reformers o f his own day. He bel ieved in the
movements at wh ich Carlyle sc’
offed. Answering
his friend’s criticism, he says
“What you say now and heretofore respecting
the remoteness o f my writing and thinking from
real li fe, though I hear substantially the same
criticism made by my countrymen, I do not know
what it means .”
FRIENDSHIP W ITHOUT INTIMACY 67
Indeed, Emerson’s idea o f real li fe difi ered so
pro foundly from Carlyle’s that their m inds sel
dom met. To him the laws o f the universe were
no t only the great realities, but the most intimate
real ities . Every perso n and every action illus
trated them . He believed in the principles o f
democracy wh ich Carlyle scorned. These funda
mental d ifferences would have been accentuated
in dai ly intercourse. The visit o f the Scotchman
to New England never took place, and it was well
that it did not ; for,” says Emerson,
“the h igher
the style we demand of friendship the less easy to
establ ish it in flesh and blood.
”
CHAPTER VII
I HATE THIS SHALLOW AMERICANISM
“I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to
get rich by credits, to get knowledge by raps on
night tables, to learn the economy of mind by phrenology, or skill withou t study, or mastery withou tapprenticeship, or sale of goods through pretendingthey will sell, or power through making believe youare powerful. They think they have go t it, but theyhave go t something else .
”
CONTEMPORARY o f Emerson was Judge
Hal iburton o f Nova Scotia, the creator o f
Sam Slick. Mr. Slick o f Sl ickville, Connecticut,was a typ ical Yankee as seen by neighbors acro ss
the northern border. He was shrewd, enterpris
ing,inquis itive
,good-humo red, and in his way re
ligious. He was an ardent patriot, with his eye on
the main chance . He was good at a barga in, and
still bettera t an argument in defense of h is recti
tude in the transaction . He was no hypoc rite, for
he saw no reason to pretend to be something
68
70 EMERSON
ease, or shall I say the publicness of our opin ion,the absence o f private Op inion. Good nature is
plenti ful but we want justice w ith heart o f steel to
fight down the proud.
” America has not pro
duced a sufficient number of men who wi ll in
stinctively throw themselves“on the s ide o f weak
ness, o f youth, o f hope ; on the l ibe ral , on the
expansive side, never on the defensive, the con
serving, the timorous the lock-and-bolt system .
”
I find no express ion in our State papers or
legislative debate in our lyceums or churches,
espec ially in our newspapers, o f a high national
feel ing, no lo fty counsels that rightfully stir the
blood . I speak of those organs which can be pre
sumed to speak a po pular sense . They recom
mend conventional virtues,whatever wi ll earn
and preserve property ; always the capital ist, the
college,the church, the hosp ital, the theater, the
hotel, the road, the sh ip, the cap ital ist, whatever
goes to secure,adorn, enlarge these is good ; what
ever jeopard izes any o f these is dainnable .
”
SHALLOW AMERICANISM 71
This description o f a famil iar kind o f Ameri
canism in 1844 is eas ily recognizable in 1920.
The shallow reformers are equally fami liar.
Many a reformer pe ri shes 111 the removal o f
rubbish, and that makes the offens iveness o f th is
class . They are partial , they are not equal to the
work they pretend . They lose their way in the
assault on the kingdom o f darkness they expend
all their energy on some acc idental evil,and lose
the ir san ity and power o f benefit. It i s o f little
moment that one or two or twenty errors in our
social system be corrected,but o f much that the
man be in h is senses .”
No foreign critic has ever pointed out more
clearly the faults o f the American temperament .
But shallow Americanism,w ith its boast fulness
and its conventional ity,can not bl ind him to the
ideal America that lies far deeper. It i s yet in the
mak ing.
“We cannot look on the freedom of this coun
72 EMERSON
try, in connection with its youth, w ithout a pre
sentiment that here shall laws and institutions
exist on some scale o f propo rtion to the majesty
o f nature. To men legislating for the area be
twixt the two oceans, betwixt the snows and the
tropics, somewhat o f the grandeur o f nature will
infuse itsel f into the code . A heterogeneous
population crowd ing on all ships from all corners
o f the world to the great gates o f North America,
namely, Boston, New York, and New Orleans,
and thence proceeding inward to the prairie and
the mountains, and quickly contributing the ir
private thought to the public Opinion, their to ll
to the treasury,and the ir vote to the election, i t
cannot be doubted that the legislation o f this
country should become more cathol ic and cos
mopo litan than that o f any other. It seems so
easy for America to inspire and express the most
expansive and humane spirit ; new-born, free,
healthful , strong, the land o f the labourer, o f the
democrat,of the philanthrop ist, of the bel iever,
o f the saint, she should speak for the human race .
It i s the country of the future . Like Washington,
SHALLOW AMERICANISM 73
proverbially ‘the city o f magnificent d istances,’
through all its cities , States, and Territories, it i s
a country o f beginn ings, of proj ects, of des igns,
Gentlemen,there is a subl ime and friendly
Destiny by wh ich the human race is gu ided—the
race never dying,the ind ividual never spared
to results affect ing masses and ages . Men are
narrow and selfish, but the Genius or Destiny i s
not narrow, but beneficent . It i s not discovered
in their calculated and voluntary activity, but in
what be falls, with or w ithout the ir design .
Emerson bel ieved as much as the pol iticians o f
h is day in Mani fest Destiny. But he hoped for
the country a destiny greater than that wh ich the
politicians planned . The commercial progress o f
the day was something to rejoice in as a part o f
a great onward movement. But commerc ialism
was not the end toward which the nation was
moving.
Our part is plainly not to throw ourselves
across the track,to block improvement
,and sit
74 EMERSON0
till we are stone, but to watch the uprise'
o f suc
cessive mornings, and to conspire w ith the work
o f new days . Government has been a foss il ; it
should be a plant. I conceive that the offi ce of
statute law should be to express, and not to 1m
pede the mind of mankind. New thoughts, new
things . Trade was one instrument, but Trade
is also for a time, and must give way to some
thing b roader and better, whose signs are already
dawning in the sky.
”
CHAPTER V III
THE POET
“I am born a po et—of a low class withou t doubt,
bu t a poet . Tha t is my nature and vo cation. Mysinging, to be sure, is very husky and is for the mos t
part in prose . S till I am a po et in the sense of a perceiver and dear lover of the harmonies that are in
the sou l and in ma tter, and specially of the corre
spondence between them .
”
MERSON’
S estimate o f his poetical gi fts
was given in a letter to h is futu re w i fe .
When he so '
c learly po ints out his l imi tations, i t
seems ungracious to agree w ith h is critical judg
ment,but one must do so . He was not a po et
in the sense o f a maker o f m ighty harmonies . He
did not walk like M ilton, with his“s inging robes
”
about h im . But he was a poet in the sense o f
being a perceiver and dear lover o f natural har
monies, and he made us sharers o f his perception .
His s inging vo ice was certainly very husky.
Only a few of his poems stand the test o f‘ be ing
75
76 EMERSON
read aloud with perfec t pleasure . Frequently we
are conscious of a metrical j olt . Not only is the
ear pained by dissonance, but there is a sense that
the poetical inspiration has suddenly given out .
I am inclined to think that Emerson would
have been happier i f he had frankly adopted “free
verse For though he was a poet, he was not a
natural rhymster. In “Merl in” he makes a decla
ration o f independence which would please our
new poets .
Great is the artGreat be the manners, of the bard .
He shall not his brain encumberWith the co i l o f rhythm and number.
And then he weakens his declaration by adding :
But,leaving rule and pale forethought,
He shall aye cl imbFor his rhyme .”
The critic i s tempted to ask, Why not l et the
rhyme go rather than climb for it ? Emerson’
s
rhymes were often most unhappy, and had the
air o f being forced into service.
78 EMERSON
o f sustained verbal melody, he has given an un
usual number o f pe rfect lines .
In “Voluntaries” we have a succession of com
monplace verses, and then come upon the l ines
that seemed chiseled by some great artist, aus
terely beauti ful and true
So nigh i s grandeur to our dust,So near is God to man,When Duty whispers low,
Thou must,The Youth repl ies, I can .
”
In “Forerunners one would not change a
word . There is a gladness o f adventure.“Each and All,
” “The Problem,
” “Days,are
sources o f endless del ight. In “Two Rivers,”
Emerson expresses melodiously his poetical creed .
He is a pe rceiver and dear lover o f the corre
spondence between the outer and the inner worlds .
The l ittle river that runs through Concord is the
symbol o f the eternities .
“Thy summer voice, Musketaquit,Repeats the mus ic o f the rain,But sweeter rivers puls ing fl itThrough thee, as thou through Concord plain .
THE POET 79
Thou in thy narrow bed art pent,The stream I love unbounded goesThrough flood and sea and fi rmament,Through l ight, through l i fe, it forward flows.
In the longer poems,l ike Monadnock and
“VVoodno tes,
” there i s noth ing consecutive . One
might'
read them as Emerson h imsel f was ac
customed to read, beginn ing at the last page and
tu rning back the leaves in search of a rewarding
sentence . But there is a sparkling atmosphere
and a sense o f the New England woods and h ills .
’Twas one o f the charmed daysWhen the gen ius o f God doth flow,
The w ind may alter twenty ways,A tempest cannot blow.
”
Emerson is the poet of nature, and it is nature
as revealed in New England. We see the “ twi
light parks o f beech and pine,” and the purple
berr ies, the upland pastures, the delicate mosses,the granite ledges
,over which the brooks go tum
b l ing, the mountain lakes“edged w ith sand and
grass,”the
“damp fields known to bird and fox .
80 EMERSON
Nowhere is it far to the primitive granite,yet the
land is not bare . Even on the ledges “the rope
like p ine roo ts crossw ise grown” give a home
l ike invitation . Nature is everywhere friendly,
though there is a trace o f austerity about her
welcome .
But to the po et the outward forms o f nature
are but symbols .
Give me truths,For I am weary o f surfaces,And d ie o f inanition .
”
Flashing through woods and mountains and
sky,he sees truths that strengthen and inspire .
What he seeks to express in his poetry i s
the sweet affluence o f love and song,The l'lCh resu lts o f the d ivine consentsOf man and earth, o f world beloved and lover.
Every poet who has any distinctive quality and
is not merely an imitator o f other poets sees
someth ing which he wants to express . This in
sight is his real contribution . The ski ll with
THE POET 81
which he is able to commun icate what he sees is
The poets o f the most universal appeal are
those who see what everybody else sees, only
more intensely,and who can tell the ir story in
words which every one understands . Robert
Burns,Wh ittier
, james Whitcomb R iley, need no
interpreters . They themselves are interpreting
what we have already experienced .
There are other poets whose endeavor is to
make us see someth ing wh ich, without their help,we might miss , or at least treat as someth ing un
poetical . Brown ing saw a greater complexity in
human conduct and character than we usually rec
Ognize, and he sought to present th is complexity
to the imagination as well as to the reason. Thi s
involved a good deal o f explanation on h is part,
and explanatory remarks’
are always prose . But
the true Browning lover knows what h is poet is
driving at and helps h im out when he gets into
d ifficulties .
Walt Whitman saw the poetry which is in mere
bulk and the subl imity that is in great bare spaces .
82 EMERSON
Let others sing o f the finished products o f art and
nature ; he would celebrate the glory of the im
perfect, the romance o f the raw material . To his
mind a catalogue o f the most ordinary things was
suggestive. It was the stuff poems are made o f.
It was an inventory of the wealth we hold in com
mon . He repeats the names o f American states
and cities as Milton repeated the names o f the
places o ld in story, which in h is imagination stood
fo r all sorts o f vague sublimities. I f we catch
someth ing o f this imaginative enthusiasm for
crude bulk and wide spaces and overflow ing vi
tal ity, then we greet Whitman as a great poet.
Otherwise,we make nothing of h im.
“There are
in the world,
” says Paul,“many kinds o f voices,
and no v01ce 18 W ithout its s ignificance .” But he
adds,i f we do not understand the person who
i s talking, he is a barbarian to us and we are as
barbarians to him .
The poetry o f Emerson has a quality growing“
out o f a pecul iar way o f looking at things . Wh it
man saw th ings in the rough .
“Here is what
moves in magnificent masses, careless o f particu
THE POET 83
lars . Emerson saw the motion o f masses, but
he was not careless o f particulars . His attention
was fixed not upon the mass but on the particles
o f which it was composed.
'
And his quick eye
perceived that these particles had each a motion
o f its own, and that the motion was bewilderingly
Our dull eyes see results but not processes. We
talk o f the qu ickness o f thought, but we are really
very slow-w itt ed creatures and seldom see what
is going on. The th ings which we watch and talk
abo u t are really the things which have already
happened, just as we may be looking at a star by
light, which only tell s us that it was shining some
centuries ago . Our judgment on what we call
current events i s apt to be misleading because it
is not strictly contemporaneous .
The great i llusion is that o f arrested motion .
Th ings seem to us to stand sti ll,which in reality
are wh irl ing about w ith inconce ivable veloc ity .
Our sciences have demonstrated what our senses
can not perceive, and that which staggers our
imagination .
84 EMERSON
The astronomer tells us of the way this earthen
ball on which we live goes hurtling through space .
But even the astronomer does not feel the motion .
The chemist tells us o f the wild dances of the
molecules . We in a dull way perceive the fact o f
growth and decay and attraction and repuls ion,but we do no t perceive them as incessantly hap
pening. When a powder mill is destroyed, we
are startled by the explosion. But o f the multi
tude o f tiny explosions, which result in the open
ing o f a rose, or the scattering o f thistledown,we are unconscious .
Now Emerson was pro foundly stirred bythought o f the explosive power of nature. In
deed his world was always exploding. He at
tempt s to express the sense o f these sudden hap
penings in hi s poetry. He is preeminently the
poet o f swi ft motion.
Hearken ! Hearken'
l
I f thou wouldst know the mystic songChanted when the sphere was young.
Aloft, abroad, the paean swells ;O wise man ! hear’st thou half it tells ?
86 EMERSON
Hearken once more !I w i ll tell thee the mundane lore.Older am I than thy numbers wot
,
Change I may, but I pass not.H itherto all things fast abide
,
And anchored in the tempe st ride.Trenchant T ime behoo ves to hurryAll to yean and all to bury :All the forms are fugitive,But the substances surv ive .
And that calm for which ph ilosophers
always yearned,how shall we attain 1t ? Not by
stand ing still,seeking refuge in some venerable
form,but by fl inging ourselves into the sw i ft cur
rent,and yielding ourselves to the eternal power.
It is poss ible for a man’s thought to keep step
with nature “with triumphant pierc ing sight,
seeing the end toward which all th ings move.
“On h im the light o f star and moonShall fall with purer radiance doWnAll constellations of the skyShed the ir v irtue through his eye,
Him Nature giveth for defenceH is formidable innocence ;The mounting sap
,the shells, the sea,
All spheres,all stones h is helpers be .
THE POE’
I! 87
He shall never be o ld
Nor his fate shall be foretoldHe shall meet the speeding yearWithout wail ing
,w ithout fear.”
The Actual is swi ft, but the Ideal is swi fter.
“Thee gl iding through a sea o f form,
Like the l ightn ing through a storm,
Somewhat not to be possessed,Somewhat not to be caressed
,
No feet so fleet cou ld ever find,No perfect form could ever bind,Thou eternal fugitive
,
Hovering over all that live,! u ick and ski l ful to inspireSweet, extravagant des ire .
”
There are poems o f Emerson which we
make noth ing of unless we have happened to
brood over the sam e problems There i s “ Initial ,Daemonic and Celestial Love . It i s unreadable ,
unless one reads between the lines .
When we ask what it i s al l about ? the answer is
that it i s an attempt to fo llow _ that“ru sh ing
metamorphos is” that we call love. Under one
name we speak of the attraction o f sex which
88 EMERSON
man shares w ith all the animal world,and the
highest and most dis interested affections . Here
is a pass ion in its beginning sensuous and selfish,
capable o f infinite refinement t ill i t becomes
purely spiritual . Between love as a natural im
pulse and love as a religious experience there are
innumerable subtle gradations . Emerson’s lines
suggest the swi ftness o f the transitions .
At first love is unmoral .
He is w i l ful , mutable,Shy
,untamed
,inscru table,
Sw i fter- fashioned than the fairies .
For Cupid goes beh ind all law.
“There are impulses that areRestless
,predatory, basting ;
And they pounce on other eyesAs l ions on their prey.
!
And round their circles i s writPlainer than the day,Underneath
,with in, above,
Love—lov'
e—love—love .”
Out o f these primitive instincts arise the h igher
k inds o f love . They do not develop in logical
90 EMERSON
ch ivalry and romance is at heart selfish . It seeks
i ts own, and scorns all else.
The Dwmons are sel f-seeking,Their fierce and l imitary w illDraws men to their likeness still .
There is a love that “delights tobu ild a road,
but the Daemon ever bu ilds a wall .” That im
pulse which unites i s met by an impulse which
divides. So i t happens that
Ever the Daemonic loveIs the ancestor o f wars .”
But these partial pre ferences and pass ions do
not exhaust the meaning o f love. There is a
celestial love.
But God said,‘I w ill have a purer gi ft,There is smoke in the flame ;
There i s a love that i s one with justice and
truth . It is a passion still, but it is a passion‘
fo r
perfection. It comes with insight o f a‘swifter
kind .
THE POET 91
Thou must mount for loveInto v is ion where all formIn one only form d issolves .
Pray for a beamOut of that sphere,Thee to gu ide and to redeem .
0,what a load of care and toil,
By lying use bestowed,From h is shoulders falls who seesThe true astronomy.
The love o f the one becomes the symbolgood-will to all.
“Not glad, as the low-loving herd,Of sel f in other still pre ferred,But they have heart ily designedThe benefit o f broad mankind .
And they serve men austerely,After their own genius, clearly,Without a false humil ity ;For th is i s Love’s nobil ity
,
No t to scatter bread and gold,Goods and raiment bought and soldBut to hold fast his s imple sense,And speak the speech o f innocence,And with hand , and body, and blood,To make his bosom-counsel good .
For he that feeds men serveth few ;He serves all who dares be true .”
92 EMERSON
In all ‘this Emerson is expressing his philos
Ophy. But he does it not as a formal teacher,but as a poet .
In the “Threnody,” in wh ich he sought com
fort after the death o f a clearly loved chi ld, there
is the same sense o f the qu ick trans itions between
the physical and the spiritual . He summons his
faltering thought to follow his boy into the vast
regions o f the unknown . It is not a void but full
o f possibilities o f li fe .
“When frail Nature can no more,Then the Spirit strikes the hourMy servant Death, with solving rite,Pours finite into infinite.”
The loved form d isappears, but the love goes on
in search o f its obj ect. Change thei r must be, but
change does no t mean destruction o f real values.
Emerson finds strength in the thought that what
is “excellent i s permanent.” And that perma
nence i s not o f form but o f”
force.
Wilt thou freeze love’s tidal flow,
Whose streams through nature c ircl ing go ?
EMERSON
Revere the Maker ; fetch thine eyeUp to h is style, and manners of the sky.
Not of adamant and goldBu ilt he heaven stark and coldNo, but a nest o f bend ing reeds,Flowering grass, and scented weedsOr l ike a traveller’s fleeing tent,Or bow above the tempest bent ;Bu ilt o f tears and sacred flames,And virtue reaching to its aims ;Built o f furtherance and pursuing,Not o f spent deeds , bu t o f doing.
S ilent rushes the sw i ft LordThrough ru ined systems still re stored,Broadsowing, bleak and void to bless,Plants w ith worlds the w ilderness ;Waters with tears o f ancient sorrowApples o f Eden ripe to -morrow .
House and tenant go to ground,Lost in God, in Godhead found.
CHAPTER I!
THE POETRY or SCIENCE
“S cience always goes abreast with the just eleva
tion of the man keeping step with religion and meta
physics ; or the state of science is an index of selfknowledge. S ince everything in Nature answers to
a moral power, if any phenomenon remains bru te
and dark it is because the corresponding faculty inthe o bserver is no t yet active.
”
MERSON’
S idea o f the scientific intelli
gence keeping step with the moral and spir
itual faculties i s an illuminating one. It suggests
to us what happened in the nineteenth century,and gave rise to so much confusion .
The orderly progress o f the human mind was
broken up by the sudden and unprecedented ad
vance o f the physical sciences . In a s ingle gener
ation knowledge advanced w ith great leaps,which
carried i t into regions which had never be fore
been entered . There was a penetrating power in
the scientific method wh ich amazed those who
95
96 EMERSON
used it . The geologi st, the chem ist, the biologist,were da ily enlarging the sphere o f knowledge .
Political economists were claiming the whole
sphere o f morals as their own .
But all this progress was one-sided . Was the
advance o f scientific knowledge only another
name for di senchantment ? Was the bloom o f
the world to be brushed o ff, never more to re
turn ? The poets and the artists and idealistic
moralists were panic-stricken . Those who p1cture
the mood o f the so -called Victorian Age as one
o f smug complacency forget the predominant
feel ing o f its men o f l iterary and artistic gen ius .
Ruskin,Tennyson
,Matthew Arnold agree in la
menting the fact that“knowledge comes but wis
dom l ingers .” A glory had departed from the
world . We are in danger, they thought, o f know
ing too much .
Matthew Arnold voiced this despondent mood
in hi s poem,
“The Future . Man was born in a
boat that floats upon the River o f Time . At the
beginmng it was a clear flowing mountaini
stream,
98'
EMERSON
nature are the materials not only for sc1entific
investigation, but for poetry also . An evolv ing
un iverse is a theme that can never be exhausted .
Emerson had no t the equ ipment o f the man o f
science, but he had“the imagination which sympa
thized with the tendenc ies o f scientific investiga
tion . It seemed to h im that they were confirmae
t ions o f the intu ition o f the poets . That matter
is not dead but thrilling with energy ; that space
13 not empty but is the medium through wh ich
forces operate ; that all things are related ; that
lower forms o f li fe are always reaching out to
ward that which is h igher ; that there is a ten
deney for the organ ism to grow more complex
and therefore more wonderful,—these were discoveries that ought to kindle the po etic imagina
tion .
Emerson did not flatt er h imsel f that he had the
ability to express the new view o f the universe .
The new poetry he bel ieved would be realistic
without losing its charm.
For i t i s dislocation and detachment from the
THE POETRY OF SCIENCE 99
l i fe o f God that makes things ugly. The poet
who reattaches things to nature and the whole
reattach ing even artific ial th ings and v iolations o f
nature to natu re by a deeper insight—d isposes
very easily o f the most d isagreeable facts .”
That to the true poet all things are poetical was
a teach ing that he repeats continually. It was
this bel ief that made him greet Walt Whitman
w ith such effus ion . When in 1855 the “Leaves
o f Grass” appeared, the l iterary world was af
fronted . Whittier, it is sa id, threw h is presenta
tion copy into the fire . Emerson, almost alone in
his recognition of the new note,wrote
,
I give you joy o f your free and brave thought.
I have great joy in it . I find incomparable things,
sa id incomparably well, as they must be . I find
the courage o f treatment wh ich so delights us,and wh ich large perception only can give. I greet
you at the beginn ing of a great career.”
But when Walt, in the exuberance o f joy over
the appreciation, publi shed a new ed ition w ith
100 EMERSON
Emerson’s commendation printed on the cover,
the Concord poet was d ispleased . There were
later interviews, but eachm an became consc ious
o f the lim itat ions o f the other. “I was s immer
ing, s immering, simmering, said Whitman,“and
Emerson brought me to bo il . Emerson ap
proved the ideas wh ich were s immering in the
younger poet’s m ind, but when they actually
bo iled over he was incl ined to get out o f the way .
Th is was not mere fastid iousness . It ind icated a
d ifferent conclus ion drawn from what lawyers
call “agreed facts .” Walt Whitman expresses
the creed o f Emerson in his “Song o f the Uni
versal z”
Come, sa id the Muse ,S ing me a song no poet yet has chanted,S ing me the Un iversal .
In th is broad earth of oursAm id the measureless grossness and the slag
,
Enclosed and safe w ithin its central heartNestles the seed perfection .
“By every li fe a share or more o r less ,None born but: it is born conc ealed orUnconcealed the seed is waiting.
EMERSON
to be the very essence‘
of democracy. He would
take good things in the bulk.
Emerso n also chanted the praise o f the uni
versal, but w ith a somewhat different emphasis .
He was interested in the grossness and the slag
only for the sake of the seed perfec tion that lay
h idden in it. It is the uncaught bird that flies
above the mountain, it is the ray o f perfect l ight
that now and then flashes through the murky
clouds , that must be the theme of poetry. The
poet must follow the guiding thread or'
he is lost
in the labyrinth . There must be d iscrimination.
Nature has something more than fecund ity.
There is an austere rej ection of the lower forms
of l i fe in favor o f the higher. There is a con
tinual refinement going on. To interpret th is s ide
o f nature is the function o f art. In!
this discrim
ination he was in harmony with the scientific atti
The man o f science does no t yield to an idle
curiosity. He selects the objects o f his study and
the method to be used . The laboratory is not
cluttered up with all the objects which a naturalist
THE POETRY OF SCIENCE 103
m ight encounter in h is walks . Only such objects
as are fitted for the purpose are select ed . Should
not the poet exercise the same kind of d iscrimina
Whitman tells us how on Beacon Street m
Boston he walked w ith Emerson for two hours,di scussing the ir agreements and differences .
“Du ring these two hours he was the talker and
I th e l istener. It was an argument,—statement,reconno itering
,review
,attack and pressing home
aga inst all that could be Sa id aga inst my poems,Ch ildren of Adam . Emerson’s statement was
unanswerable,no judge’s charge ever more com
plete or convincing. I could never hear the po ints
be tter put ,—and then I felt down in my soul t heclear and unm istakable conviction to d isobey all,
and pursue my own way.
”
'
As between Emerson and Wh itman as poets,it i s not necessary for us to decide . Both stood
in the presence of nature . Wh itman delighted
in its obvious aspect s, its sheer bulk, i ts prodi
104 EMERSON
gality, its endless variety. Emerson was more
interested in the laws which it i llustrated and
the unseen forces which move it . He was l isten
ing to the“chorus o f the ancient causes .” This
i s what madehis words so precious to the men of
science who in the n ineteenth century were wag
ing a battle against ancient formulas which oh
scured the meaning of the ir researches .
Professor Tyndall,in h is famous address to
the British Association in 1870, took his text
from Emerson,to whom in many other places
he acknowledged h is indebtedness . His theme
was “The Sc ientific Use o f the Imagination,
”
and he began by repeating Emerson’s lines which
I have already quoted, beginning
I f thou wouldst know the mystic songChanted when the sphere was young.
”
Here,he said
,is the poetic expression o f the
spirit of modern sc ience .
In another essay,Pro fessor Tyndall denies the
common notion that advances in science are made
simply by. the patient pushing out o f boundaries
106 EMERSON
The lover o f nature is he whose inward and
outward sense s are still truly adjusted to each
other ; who has retained the spirit o f infancy
even into the era o f manhood . His intercourse
with heaven and earth becomes part o f his daily
food. In the presence o f nature, a w ild del ight
runs through the man, in sp ite o f real sorrows .
Nature says, -he i s my creature, and maugre
all h is imperfect grie fs , he shall be glad with me .
Not the sun o f the summer alone,but every hour
and season yields its tribute o f delight ; for every
hour and change corresponds to and authorizes
a different state of the mind, from breathless
noon to grimmest midnight. Nature i s a setting
that fits equally well a comic o r a mourning piece .
In good health, the a ir is a cordial o f incredible
vi rtue. Crossing a bare common, in snow
puddles,at twilight, under a clouded sky, without
having in my thoughts any occurrence o f special
good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilara
tion . I am glad to the brink o f fear. In the
woods,too
,a man casts o ff h is years, as the snake
hi s slough,and at what period soever o f l i fe, is
THE POETRY OF SCIENCE 107,
always a ch ild . In the woods is perpetual youth.
With in these plantations of God a decorum and
sanctity reign, a perennial festival i s dressed, and
the guest sees not how he should tire o f them in a
thousand years . In the woods we return to
reason and faith . There I feel that nothing can
be fall me in l i fe, —no d isgrace, no calam ity ! leav
ing me my eyes ! , which nature cannot repair.
Standing on the bare ground, -my head bathed
by the bl ithe air,and upl i fted into infinite space
,
-all mean egotism van ishes . I become a trans
parent eyeball ; I am nothing; I see all ; the cur
rents o f the Un iversal Be ing c irculate through
me ; I am part or particle o f God . The name o f
the nearest friend sounds then foreign and acci
dental ; to be brothers, to be acquaintances ,master or servant is then a trifle and a dis
turbance . I am a lover o f uncontained and im
mortal beauty.
”
CHAPTER !
PIETY
We love the venerable houseOur fathers built to God;
In heaven are kept their grateful vows,Their dust endears the sod.
“Here holy thoughts a light have shed!From many a radiant face,And prayers of humble virtue madeThe perfume of the place .
“And anxious hearts have pondered hereThe mystery of life,
Hnd prayed the e ternal Ligh t to clear
Their doub ts, and aid their strife .
“From humble tenements around
Come up the pensive train,fi nd in the church a blessing foundThat filled their homes again;
“For faith and peace and mighty love
That from the Godhead flow,
Showed them the life of Heaven above
Springs from the life below.
108
1 10 EMERSON
meeting-house was venerable, because o f its asso
ciat ions w ith what was most sacred and enduring
in the l i fe of his own people . Whittier himsel f
has not expressed more tenderly h is apprec iation
o f the personal influences which have bound the
generations together in common worsh ip.
The same note is sounded in the hymn sung at
the completion o f the Concord Monument,April
19,
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,Their flag to Apri l ’s breeze unfurled,Here once the embattled farmers stood,And fired the shot heard round the world.
The foe long since ln s ilence slept ;Alike the conqueror s ilent sleepsAnd T ime the ru ined bridge has sweptDown the dark stream which seaward creeps,
On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone ;That memory may their deed redeem
,
When, l ike our s ires, our sons are gone.
Spirit, that made those heroes dareTo d ie, and leave their children free,B id T ime and Nature gently spareThe shaft we ra ise to them and Thee .
PIETY 1 1 1
In the l ines entitled Grace” there i s a recogni
tion o f the debt wh ich the ind iv idual owes to the
society o f which he is a part, and by which he is
“How much, preventing God how much I oweTo the defences thou hast rnund me set ;Example, cu stom,
fear, occas ion slow,
These scorned bondmen were my parapet.I dare no t peep over th is parapetTo gauge which glance the roaring gul f below,
The depth o f sin to wh ich I had descendedHad not these me against mysel f de fended.
In considering the individualism o f Emerson
we have to take account o f the fact that he never
really broke with the past, nor d id he cons ider it
necessary to do so in order to ach ieve freedom .
He acknowledged h is indebtedness to those who
had gone be fore him . But his reverence for the ir
example led him not to stand perpetually where
they stood ; but rather to go on in the same direc
tion in wh ich they were going.
All who heard Emerson in the pulp it bear wit
ness to the atmosphere o f reverence which per
EMERSON
vaded h is utterances . One who l istened to h im
writes
One day there came into our pulpit the most
gracious o f mortals w ith a face~all benign ity who
gave out the first hymn and made the first prayer
as an angel might have read or prayed . Our
cho ir was a pretty good one, but its best was
coarse and discordant after Emerson’s voice . I
remember the sermon only that i t had an in
definite charm o f s impl icity and wisdom,w ith oc
casional i llustrations from Nature, which were
about the most del icate and dainty th ings o f the
kind I had ever heard . I cou ld understand them ,
i f not the fresh philosophical novelties o f the d is
course.
Emerson was remarkably incurious in regard
to the problems propoun'
ded by formal theolo
gians,but he was a profound bel iever in the re
ligion o f experience . P iety,whether mani fest
toward God or man,was someth ing altogether
natural .
1 14 EMERSON
hopes and themost stable projects o f mortal condition in i ts flood . He bel ieves that he cannot
escape from his goo d . The things that are really
for thee gravi tate to thee . Y ou are running to
seek your friend. Let your feet run, but your
mind need not . I f you do no t find him, will you
no t acquiesce that i t is best t hat you should no t
find him ? for there is a power, which, as it is in
you, is in him also, and could there fore very well
bring you together, i f it were for the best. Y ou
are preparing w ith eagerness to go and render
a service to wh ich your talent and your taste in
v ite you,the love of men and the hope of fame .
Has it not occurred to you that you have no right
to go unless you are equally w ill ing to be pre
vented from going ? O,believe, as thou livest,
that every sound that is spoken over the round
world,which -thou ought to hear, w ill vibrate on
thine ear ! Every proverb, every book, every byword that belongs to thee for a id o r comfort,
shall surely come home through open or winding
passages . Every friend whom no t thy fantastic
will , but the great. and tender heart in thee crav
PIETY 1 15
eth, lock thee in h is embrace . this,
because the heart in thee is the heart o f all ; not
a valve, not a wall, not an intersection
anywhere in nature, but one blood rolls uninter
ruptedly an endles s circulation through all men,
as the water o f the globe is all one sea, and, truly
seen,its tide is one .
CHAPTER XI
THOU SHALT NOT PREACH
‘A new commandment
,
’
said the smilingMuse,‘I
“
give my darling son,Thou shalt not preach .
’
N one sense Emerson was always a preacher.
His main interest was in the moral law and in
the development o f character. When he le ft the
pulp it for the lecture platform he was only chang
ing one congregation for another. In the Uni
tarian m inistry to wh ich he belonged, the sermon
and the e ssay were not always clearly differenti
ated .
But in another sense Emerson obeyed the pro
hibition o f the sm iling muse. He had no genius
for exhortation, nor had he any desire to enforce
his precepts upo n unwilling m inds . He lacked
the fervor o f the true evangel ist, and could no t
cry,“Turn ye ! turn ye ! why will ye die ?” He
1 16
1 18 EMERSON
Ought, that Duty is one thing with Science, with
Beauty and ! oy.
”
“Virtue is vi tiated, said Emerson,by too
much will . He who aims at progress should aim
at an infinite not at a special benefit. The re
forms whose fame now fills the land with Tem
perance, Anti-slavery, Non-Resistance, no Gov
ernment, Equal Labor, fair and generous as each
appears, are poor, bitter things when prosecuted
for themselves as an end. The soul can
be appeased no t by a deed,but by a tendency.
”
The born preacher appeals to the will and seeks
to change its direction. He pleads and threatens .
He is instant in season and out o f season . Only
on a few great occasions d id Emerson adopt that
tone. The greatest truths seemed to him to be
sel f-evidencing. In their presence all m inds were
equal . “The we ight of the universe is pressed
down on the shoulders o f each moral agent to
hold him to his task .
”
“Let us have nothing now but what 18 its own
evidence. There is surely enough for the heart
THOU SHALT NOT PREACH 1 19
in the rel igion itsel f. Le t us not be pestered with
hal f-truths and assertion and snuflle .
“There will be a new church founded on moral
science, at first cold and naked, a babe in a
manger again, the algebra and mathematics o f
eth ical law, the church o f men to come, without
shawms, or psaltery, or sackbut ; but it will have
heaven and earth for its beams and rafters ; sci
ence for symbol and illustration ; it will fast
enough gather beauty, mus ic, p icture, poetry.
Was never stoici sm so st em and exigent as this
shall be . It shall send man home to his central
so l itude, shame these soc ial , supplicating manners,
and make h im know that much o f the t ime he
must have h imsel f to his friend . He shall expect
no cooperation, he shall walk w ith no companion.
[The nameless Thought, the nameless Power, the
super-personal Heart, —he shall repose alone onthat. He needs only hi s own verdict. No good
fame can help, no bad fame can hurt him. The
Laws are his consolers, the goo d Laws themselves
are alive, they know i f we have kept them , they
animate him with the leading o f great duty and
120 EMERSON
ah endless horizon. Honor and fortune exist to
him who always recognizes the neighborhood o f
the great, always feels himsel f in the presence o f
high causes .”
To all th is the preacher m ight answer, You
have le ft out o f your account something which is
very impo rtant in human nature, namely, its
weakness. The ordinary man l ives amid the
wonders o f nature,but he may be very little
affected by them. He needs some strong vo ice to
urge him to open his eyes to what is around him.
I f it i s so with the most obvious s ights, is it not
more so with moral and spiritual beauty ? Is not
the preacher needed as well as the philosopher
and poet ?”
N0 one would be more willing to acknowledge
thi s than Emerson . H is criticism o f Plato would
be equally true o f h imsel f .
“Plato , lover o f l imits, loved the i llimitable,saw the enlargement and nobil ity that came from
truth itsel f and good itsel f, and attempted as i f
onthe part o f the human intellect to do it ade
CHAPTER ! II
THE LURE OF THE WEST
“If I had a pocket full of money I think I should
go down the Ohio and up and down the Mississippiby way of antido te to what small remains ,
of Orientalism ! so endemic in these parts! there may still be
in me—to cast ou t, I mean,the passion forE urope,
by the passion for America; and our reverence forCambridge, which is only a part of our reverence
for L ondon, must be transferred across the Alle
ghany ridge.
”—EMER50N TOMARGARET FULLER.
EW England has always been the home o f
an intense patriotism. {1‘he Splrl t o f
Bunker Hill and Lexington has never been
quenched . Nor can it be said that any part of
the country has sent out more men who have
taken part in an effective way in large national
enterprises.
Yet in the'
days before the Civil '
War, when
Boston became conscious o f itsel f as a l iterary
center, i t was open to the charge o f not hav ing122
THE LURE OF THE WEST 123
yet discovered America. It belonged to a New
England that still looked to Old England for its
models . This, I take it, was always true more o f
the literary circles than o f the mass o f the people,but it was that which determined the admi ration
o f those who asp ired to “culture.” As Daniel in
Babylon prayed with his w indows opened toward
Jeru salem, so the Boston l iterati, when they took
pen in hand, wrote with their study windows
open toward London. As to what was happening
in the great hinterland beyond the Hudson, they
cared little. And the people in the h interland,who were so busy opening up the resources o f
the continent that they hadn’t time to bel iterary
,resented in a good-natured way the Bos
tonian att itude . It had that “certain condescen
s ion” which Lowell resented on the part o f Euro
peans, but from wh ich he and h is friends were not
altogether free when they encountered the repre
sentative men of the West.
I think it is fair to say that Emerson did more
than any one else to redeem the New England
group of authors from the kind of provincial ism
124 EMERSON
which wastheir darl ing sin. He did i t in a two
fold way : first, by attacking their imitation o f
th ings Engl ish , and then by inculcating a hearty
admiration for the America that was growing up
in the West .
In “Engl ish Tra its he pays tribute to the
sturdy virtues o f the English character and the
wealth o f English talent. But he insists on treat
ing England no t as the Mother Country, but as a
different country,—as d ifferent as France or Italy.
He admires it, but it is with a critical detachment.
Hawthorne wrote o f England as The Old Home .
Emerson had very little o f the Old Home idea.
There were ties o f deep friendship, but he recog
nized that the genius o f Britain and the genius o f
America were different. He admired the differ
ences.
The wealth of the source is seen in the pleni
tude o f English nature. What variety o f power
and talent, what facility and plenteousness o f
knighthood, lordship , ladyship, royalty, loyalty ;what a proud chivalry is indicated in ‘Collin’s
126 EMERSON
cond itions o f our own l i fe . In his l ines entitled“Cu lture” he defined the cultivated man as one
who
To hi s native center fast,
Shall into Future fuse the Past,
And the world’s flow ing fates in hi sown mould recast.”
And when he thought o f the world’s flowing
fates, his mind turned westward . There great
things were happen ing. A new civilization was be
ing created . There was nothing condescend ing in
the attitude o f the thinker to these men o f action,who on an unparalleled stage were beginning a
new act.
Against the fastidious critics o f Boston, Emer
son defends the rough and ready men o f the
West, who were already making their influences
felt in pol itics .
As long as our people quote English standards,they dwarf their own propo rt ions . A Western
lawyer o f eminence sa id to me he wished it were
a penal offence to bring an Engl ish lawbook into
court in this country, so pernicious had he found
THE LURE OF THE WEST 127
in hi s expe rience our deference to Engl ish prece
dent. The very
'
word commerce has only an
English meaning and i s p inched to the c p
exigencies o f Engl ish expe rience . The commerce
of rivers, the commerce o f railroads, and who
knows but the commerce o f a ir balloons must
give an American extension to the pond-hole o f
adm i ralty. As long as our people quote Engl ish
standards, they will mi ss the sovereignty o f
power.”
Even be fore the Civil War Emerson dis
cerned clearly the significance o f the Middle West
and the great part it was destined to play in the
development o f civilization . The o ld thirteen
states had a tradition that was essentially British.
The great states which had been established in
the M ississippi valley were in their origin purely
American . There was no colonial background to
their history. Here the pioneer sp irit had de
veloped freely. It was the spirit o f Dan iel Boone
and Davy Crockett and Peter Cartwright.
Emerson rem inds h is fastid ious friends that
there is an explosive energy in young Ameri ca .
1 28 EMERSON
Men o f th is surcharge o f arterial blood can
not l ive on nuts and herb tea and elegies, cannot
read novels and play whist, cannot satis fy all
their wants at the Thursday lecture or the Boston
Athenaeum . They pine for adventure, and must
go to P ikes Peak, had rather d ie o f the hatchet of
a Pawnee than sit all day and every day at a
counting-room desk. They are made for war,fo r the sea, for mining, hunting and clearing,
for hairbreadth adventures , huge risks and ad
venturous l iving. Their friends andgovernors must see that some vent for their ex
plos ive complex ion is provided . The roisterers
who are destined for infamy at home will cover
you with glory and come back heroes and gen
erals. There are Oregons, Cal i fornias and explor
ing exped itions enough appertaining to America
to find them in files tow
gnaw and crocodiles to9?eat
Emerson could not satisfy all his wants in the
Boston Athenaeum or the Satu rday Club. Every
year he escaped from h is neighbors for a lecture
1 30 EMERSON
rains and thaws incessantly and i f we step o ff a
short street we go up to the shoulders perhaps in
mud. My chamber is a cabin, my fellow
boarders are legislators . Two o r three governors
o r ex-governors live in the house . But in the
prairie we are all new men, and must not stand
on trifles.
”
In mid-winter he makes this entry in . his
j ournal : “My chief adventure was the necessity
o f riding in a buggy forty-eight m iles to Grand
Rapids ; then a fter lecture twenty more in return,
and the next morning back to Kalamazoo in timefor the train h ither at twelve.” Th is was at a
time when Kalamazoo was a name strange to
Bostonian ears .
It was not comfortable traveling through bliz
zards to discourse to audiences wh ich gathered
in chilly or stuffy halls, but it was interesting,
“Here is America in the making, America in the
raw. But it does no t want much to go to lecture,
and ’ti s a pity to drive it.”
It is only fa ir to add that Emerson’s apprecia
tion o f the newWest was intellectual rather than
THE LURE OF THE WEST
intimately soc ial . He saw i t in the large, and
treated it in a symbolic way. He saw the significance o f the western man’s boastfulness over
the growth o f the country . He l iked to watch
towns grow. He would have del ighted in the
Chicago man’s remark that when Ch icago turned
to“ culture it would make culture hum . That was
a fter Emerson’s own heart, and it was that spi rit
which he wished to in fuse into h is well-beloved
Boston .
In 1839 he writes, It i s a sort of maxim with
me never to harp on the omnipo tence of l im ita
tions . Least o f all do we need any suggestion
o f checks and measures, as i f New England were
anyth ing else . Our vi rtue runs in a nan
row rill, we have never a freshet. One would
l ike to see Boston and Massachusetts agitated
l ike a wave with some generosity, mad for learn
ing, for music, for ph ilanthropy, for freedom,
for art. We have insight and sensibility enough
i f we had constitu tion enougThe old Puritan cap ital o f Massachusetts has
become a great cosmopolitan c ity,and what were
132 EMERSON
then raw towns o f t he West are to -day makingculture hum , but it i s interesting to read Emer
son’s judgments. He insisted that the rough
work which the pioneers were doing, clearing the
forest, building railroads, laying out cities and
incidentally speculating in corner lots did no t
ind icate that they were materialistic. They were
ideal ists o f an heroic sort . They were big men
domg big things . The amenities would come in
time. The fierce energy with which they did
their work would be turned at length to the finer
arts . He greeted them as the makers o f a new
civilization. The men o f the West knew all this
before . But they were glad to have Mr. Emerson
come out and confirm them in their splendid an
ticipations.
134 EMERSON
enjoy the broader kinds o f humor. He tells ushow he went with l ittle Waldo to the circus and
they enjoyed themselves hugely till the clown
came out to perform his antics . Waldo whis
pered,“The funny man makes me want to go
home . His father adds that he was o f h i s
Opinion . It was a sore trial to h im, there fore,when in his lectures he was sometimes expected
to play the funny man . In preparing them for
the press he, to the d isappo intment o f some of
hi s friends,cut out the enl ivening anecdotes which
hi s more austere taste disapproved .
Play o f wit there was, but it was a game o f
sol itaire. The great w its l ike S idney Sm ith need
antagonists and spectators for their play. Theirs
is the quick give and take, o r the unexpected
word that sets the table in a roar . Emerson,as
we have seen,was strangely deficient in conver
sational aptitude, and had no power o f repartee .
He complains o f the way in which he was put
down by clever talkers . “A snipper snapper eats
me whole.
”
Many o f those who had been attracted by his
EMERSON ’S ELUSIVE SMILE 135
writings were d isappo inted when they came to
him to talk over the subjects which he had sug
gested . They found it hard to get at him . Henry
James,the elder, declares that he knew o f no one
“whose conversation was less remunerative .”
Emerson’s wit was, to use William Penn’s
phrase,
“ the fru it o f so l itude .” It was produced
by coll isions o f thought that took place in h is
own m ind, these happenings having no partien
lar relation to time o r place . They are“the sm il e
o f reason” over the incongru ities developed in
the course o f human reasoning.
It was a part o f Emerson’s ph ilosophy. To
h im the man th inking was l ike a schoolboy with
lexicon and grammar trying to read a Lat in .
class ic. It IS hard work,and the schoolboy
frowns as he bends to the task . The frown indi
cates hi s grim determination,which i s a good
sign . He is mak ing hard work of it,w ill learn
the lesson in t ime . But h is serious demeanor ind i
cates also that he does not yet know the meaning
o f the words he is painfully puzzl ing over. For
they were written in l ighter vein and contain a
136 EMERSON
merry jest. When the meaning flashes forth,the
words are forgotten, and the boy smiles under
standingly.
Emerson’s quick but illusive smile came when
he perceived the meaning o f someth ing wh ich had
seemed to be mean ingless . The riddle o f ex
istence seems to most men the cause o f futile
effort to understand . The sphinx i s a very
solemn character indeed . To Emerson the
mystery was not a cause o f complaint . He sus
pected the sph inx of practical j okes . She was
conceal ing something from us.
I heard a poet answerAloud and cheerfully,
‘Say on,sweet Sphinx ! thy dirges
Are pleasant songs to me .
Deep love l ieth underThese p ictures o f time ;That fade in the l ight o fTheir meaning sublime .
When thus challenged
The old Sph inx bit her th ick l ip,Said
,
‘Who taught thee me to name ?I am thy sp irit, yoke-fellow,
Of thine eye I am eyebeam .
’
138 EMERSON
Listening to the grey-haired crones,Saad i, see ! they rise in statureTo the height of m ighty Nature
,
And the secret stands revealed .
Fraudulent T ime in vain concealed,
The blessed gods in servile masksPl ied for thee thy household tasks .”
And when the performance doe s not come up
to the expectation, the sudden discovery 18 not
always unpleasant.
The essence o f all jokes, o f all comedy seems
to be an honest and well-intentioned hal f-ness, a
non-performance o f what is intended to be per
formed . The balking of the intellect, the frus
trated expectation, the break o f the continuity
in the intellect i s comedy.
”
Emerson was very seldom known to laugh
outright, and indeed rather disliked that explo
sion. But he was exceed ingly sensitive to “breaks
in the continu ity o f the intellect .” His mind was
naturally logical . I f th is be so , that will follow,
he argued . But he was quick-witted to see that
sometimes the thing which he expected did not
EMERSON ’S ELUSIVE SMILE 139
follow. He could not help bu t smile at the con
tradiction to h is logic.
“Th i s i s the rad ical joke o f li fe and then o f
literature . The presence of the ideal o f right
and truth in all act ion makes the yawning delim
quencies o f practice remorseful to the consc ience,tragic to the interest, but droll to the intellect .
”
This intellectual perception is necessary for
our sanity.
“We have no deeper interest than our integrity,and that we should be aware by joke and by stroke
o f any li e we enterta in . Bes ides, a perception of
the comi c seems a balance wheel in our meta
physical structure . It appears to be an essential
element in a fine character. Wherever the intel
l ect i s constructive it w ill be found . We feel the
absence o f it as a defect in the noblest and most
oracular soul . The perception o f the comic is a
tie o f sympathy w ith other men, and a protect ion
from those perverse tendencies and gloomy in
saniti es in which fine intellects sometimes lose
140 EMERSON
themselves . A rogue al ive to the ludicrous 18 still
convertible . I f that sense is lost, h is fellow men
can do l ittle for him.
”
The rogue who can laugh at himsel f may be
converted. But the sentimental ist who takes him
sel f too seriously is in an unsalvable condition .
Society is infested by persons who,seeing that
the sentiments please, counterfeit the expression
o f them . These we call sentimentalists—talkerswho mistake the description fo r the thing, saying
for having. They have,they tell us, an intense
love o f nature ; poetry ; O they adore poetry and
roses and the moon, and the cavalry regiment,and the governor ; they
“dear liberty they wo'
r-fi
ship virtue—“dear virtue.” Yes, they adopt
whatever merit is in good repute, and almost
make i t hate ful with their praise . The warmer
their expressions, the colder we feel ; we shiver
with cold . A l ittle experience acquaints us with
the inconvertibility o f the sent imentalist, the soul
that is lost by m imicking sou'
l . Cure the drunk
CHAPTER XIV,
THE ! UIET REVOLUTIONIS'f
Th? Past has baked my loaf, and in the strengthof its bread I break up the old oven.
”
—EMERs0N’
s ! OURNAL .
T is not easy for some people to understand
Emerson’s attitude toward the revolutionary
forces that are all the time threatening the sta
b ility o f societyi One can appreciate the fierce
energy o f the revolutionist who, bel ieving that
the social structure i s altogether bad, seeks to
destroy it . On the other hand, there are those
who look with alarm at every project that involves
rad ical change.
But here was a quiet householder who habit
ually uttered the most revolutionary sentiments
as i f they were the most natural thoughts in the
world . O f course the institutions which we see
around us are not permanent. They are not the
real things with wh ich we have to do . They are
142
THE ! UIET REVOLUTIONIST,143
the results o f what took place yesterday ; they are
yielding to what is taking place to-day. The only
real ity is the force which makes and unmakes
them . Laws, customs, const itutions, churches,are the results o f the revolutionary impulse in
man . They are the tw porary embod iments o f
restless thought. Everything follows thought .
Y ou think o f arm ies, and priesthoods, and courts
o f justice, as necess ities . Yes, they are neces
s ities o f thought. Change the thought and they
change their form . The temple that seems to
have grown out o f the solid earth has in real ity
grown out o f the vague asp irations of the wor
sh ipper. It grew as the tree grows, through a
power o f working from within . It was bu ilt as
the bird builds its nest,through an instinct which
was i rresistible.
Know’
st thou what wove yon wo odbird’
s nestOf leaves , and feathers from her breast ?Or how the fish outbu ilt her shell,Painting w ith morn each annual cell ?Or how the sacred p ine tree addsTo her old leaves new myriads ?
144 EMERSON
Such and so grew these holy piles,Whilst love and terror laid the tiles.Earth proudly wears the Parthenon
,
As the be st gem upon her zone,And morn ing opes w ith haste her lidsTo gaze upon the Pyramids ;O ’er England’s abbeys bends the sky
,
As on its friends, w ith kindred eye ;For out o f Thought’s interior sphereThere wonders rose to upper air.”
One might watch the face of a man in the act
o f thinking. As one thought follows another,
the mobile features change . Nerves and muscles
respond to the impulses from within . The lips
curve now downward, now upward, the cheeks
qu iver, the eyes d ilate and then close, tell-tale
wrinkles appear upon the forehead, the ch in
grows firm and then is relaxed,the pose of the
head is now defiant and again it droops . The
man is lost in thought, and unconsc ious o f how
he appears . To him the thought is all .
Two painters may be watch ing h im. One is a
l iteral ist . To him the pose and features are every
thing. He imagines h imsel f to be a real ist, and
h is ambition i s to po rtray the man as he actually
146 EMERSON
the act o f do ing something, and there is on o ur
part a feeling o f expectancy. The orator’s lips
are mobile,he is about to speak. The soldier’s
hand i s on h is sword, he is about to grasp it
firmly and wield it with all 11 18 m ight . It i s al
ways the suggestion o f something that i s coming
that marks the work o f genius .
Now there are two ways o f look ing at human
institutions, —from w ithout o r from with in . We
may look at laws and customs as i f they were
fixed and final . They are the features o f a giant
carved in stone. We may be idolaters o f the
existing order, worsh ipping the carved image .
Or we may be iconoclasts, ready to give it a
smash ing blow.
But to one who seeks to lo ok at i t all from
w ithin,the institutions represent but the transi
tory glory o f features of the Great Be ing. The
Great Be ing is th ink ing,he is dreaming o f things
to come,he is planning h is dwelling place upon
earth . The thoughts come thick and fast, and
the acts fo llow each after its kind .
Humanity, conceived of as a great composite
THE ! UIET REVOLUTIONIST 147
being, o f wh ich we are parts,is all al ive and
quivering w ith asp iration . I t is never satisfied
with the work o f its own hands, and it never
gives up working. Thousands o f human be ings
are at a given time impelled by one spirit, and co
Ope rate to one end . Their actions are not rational
in the sense that each individual is able to give a
reason,or least the right reason, for what he
does . And yet the process, looked at as a whole,
i s not i rrational . There is some big thought beh ind
it all,o f which all the action is express ive . G ive
us time and we can see the outl ines o f the thought .
Human ity i s th ink ing. It i s storing up
perience . It i s a creative force . Even what we
call matinalistic progress,i s itsel f but the follow
ing o f an idea.
“And what i f Trade sow citiesLike shells along the shore
,
And thatch w ith towns the prairie broadWith railways ironed o’er ?They are but sail ing foam bellsAlong Thought’s causing stream,
And take their shape and sun colorFrom h im that sends the dream .
”
148 EMERSON
The historian tells o f the Roman Empire,Feud
alism, the Crusades, the French Revolution .
These are tremendou s facts . But the facts mean
nothing till we see them as the express ion of suc
cessive states o f m ind . Royalty as an institution
i s incred ible to the horn democrat who is without
imagination, and who does not take the trouble to
ask how the loyal subject feels toward h is
anointed king. And democracy is an empty
name to one who has never felt the thrill o f the
idea that lies behind it.
In looking back from the vantage ground o f
several centuries,it i s poss ible to see how a gener
ation o f men may be obsessed by an idea that
determ ines all their ach ievements . We may see
that idea lose hold upon the mind of the next
generation,and 10 all the mighty works lose all
interest. It is as i f one moment we saw the face
o f the Great Be ing all aquiver with interest. Then
suddenly the l ight fades and he turns away from
the work o f his own hands .
But it i s not so easy to realize that the mighty
works o f our own day owe thei r existence, and
150 EMERSON
Not on crags are hung,But beads are o f a rosaryOn prayer and mus ic strung ;And, credulous, through the gran ite seem
inSeest the smile o f Reason beaming ;
Knowest thou this ?0 p ilgrim,
wandering not amiss !
Already my rocks l ie l ight,And soo n my cone w ill spin .
Older than the mountain is the power from
which it sprang. And that power is only inter
preted by Thought.
“Monadnock is a mountain strong,Tall and good my k ind among ;But well I know, no mountain can,Z ion or Meru, measure with man .
For it is on zodiacs writAdamant is so ft to w itAnd when the greater comes againWith my secret in h is brain
,
I shall pass , as gl ides my shadowDaily over h ill and meadow .
”
When the greater comes again . That was
what Emerson was always murmuring to himsel f.
The greatness that he recognized was the great
ness o f thought.
THE ! UIET REVOLUTIONIST 151
He was there fore always eager to meet men
who were d issatisfied w ith existing th ings and
mak ing plans for betterment. He received them
hospitably, he l istened sympathetically. That
their schemes involved rad ical changes d id not
frighten him . It seemed to be in the order o f
But he always appl ied the same test. It was
not enough that the ir pr0po sal shou ld be for
someth ing d ifferent. It must also be something
greater, and the greater includes the less . When
the greater thought comes , it shall make us under
stand and apprec1ate the good that already exists .
It wi ll make un iversal what is now partial . The“song of Human progress” he expresses in the
song
I wrote the past in charactersOf rock and fire the scroll,The bu ild ing o f the coral sea,The planting of the coal .
“Let war and trade and creeds and songB lend, ripen race on race,The sunburnt world a man shall breedOf all the zones and countless days .
152 EMERSON
No ray is dimmed, no atom worn,My oldest force is good as new,
And the fresh rose on yonder thornGives back the bend ing heavens in dew.
Notice the way in wh ich the v iew o f nature
and the hope s for human nature are blended . Out
of a few ancient elements, nature is continually
making new and amaz ing combinations . Nothing
is destroyed,everything is transformed . The
same conservation o f energy he d iscerns in hu
man ity . The elements of character are old as
the race,but no one can prophesy what new per
fect ion can be obtained from them .
One may see Emerson’s thought best by con
trasting it w ith that o f a poet whose m ind turned
toward the same subject . Wordsworth and
Emerson both loved to personi fy nature, and in
communion w ith nature they found re freshment
o f spirit. But Emerson, who was not accustomed
to use terms of d isparagement, sometimes spoke
more harshly o f Wordsworth than o f any other
modern Engl ish poet .
The fact was that the two men looked at nature
154 EMERSON
Bookworm, leave thy sloth urbane,A greater sp irit bids thee forthThan the gray dreams that thee detain .
Mark how the climbing OreadsBeckon thee to the ir arcades,Youth
,for a moment free as they,
Teach thy feet to feel the groundEre yet arr ives the wintry dayWhen T ime thy feet has bound .
Take the bounty of thy birthTaste the Lordship o f the earth .
’
I heard, and I obeyed,Assured that he who made the claimWell known
,but lov ing not a name
,
Was no t to be gainsaid .
”
Nature does not rebuke our impatience when
we break up o ld forms in order to make better.
She is our accomplice,and consp ires w ith us .
We misrepresent her when we try to imitate
Only in some stroke o f originality do we accept
her challenge. To see only repetition in nature
is not to see at all .
Alas, thine is the bankruptcy,Blessed nature so to see,
THE ! UIET REVOLUTIONIST,155
Behind thee leave thy merchandise,Thy churches and thy charities,And leave thy peacock wit behind .
Enough for thee the primal mindThat flows in streams
,that breathes in w ind .
Leave al l thy pedant lore apart ;God hid the whole world in thy heart.Love shuns the sage, the child it crowns,G ives all to them who all renounce .The rain comes when the w ind calls ,The river knows the way to the sea,
Without a p ilot it runs and falls,B lessing all lands with its charity .
The sea tosses and foams to findIts way up to the cloud and wind .
The shadow s its close to the flying ball,
The date fail s not on the palm tree tall,And thou,—go burn thy worrny pages,Shalt outsee seers and outwit sages .
That which he saw in nature he saw in every
human effort that was free and spontaneous . He
lovedto call it the Neumess . The Newness is that“which reconc iles impo ss ibilities, atones for short
comings, exp iates s ins o r makes them v irtues,buries in obl iv ion the crowded historical past
,
s inks religions,philosophies
,persons to legends,
reverses the score o f opinion of fame, reduces
156 EMERSON
science to opinion, and makes the thought o f the
moment the key to the un iverse and the egg o f
history to come .”
The Divine Newness . Hoe and spade, sword
and pen, pictures, gardens, laws, bibles and prizes,only they were means He sometimes used . So
with astronomy, mus ic, arithmetic, castes, feud
alism—we kiss w ith devotion these hems o f Hisgarment We mistake them for H im, they
crumble in ashes on our l ips .”
To the worshipper o f the Divine Newness, there
was nothing terrible in the vo ices o f eager in
novato rs, for innovation is in the order of nature,and “the good human race outlives them
'
all,and
forever in the heart abides the old sovere ign senti
ment requ iring justice and good-will to all, and
rebu i lds the decayed temples, and w ith new names
chants again the praises o f Eternal Right.”
The idea wh ich now begins to agitate society
has a w ider scope than our daily employments,our households and the institutions o f property.
CHAPTER XV,
MEDITATIONS ON POLITICS
“In dealing with the S tate, we ought to remember
that its institu tions are no t aboriginal, though theyexisted before we were born ; that they are no t su
perior to the citizen, that every one of them was the
act of a single man, every law and usage was a
man’
s expedient to meet a particular case.
”
HAT has been said o f Emerson’s faith
in the “D ivine Newness must be taken
into account when we read his essay on pol itics .
Like the Epistles o f St . Paul, it contains some
things hard to be understood,“wh ich they that are
unlearned and unstable wrest to the ir own destruc
tion .
” I have seen an anarchistic pamphlet which
was made up almost entirely o f quotations from
Emerson .
Indeed, on the face o f it, i t appears to be an
argument not only aga inst pol itical parties , but
against government in general . This is because
doubt is thrown upon what we usually call the
158
fl
MEDITATIONS ON POLITICS 159
foundations o f organ ized society. Emerson did
not bel ieve that government lfad any foundations .
He d id not th ink of it as a building sol idly resting
upon a rock, and where one stone is fitted upon
another. He thought o f the state as a l iving bo dy
perpetually be ing renewed and having a power of
motion . This organism so long as it is healthy
can adapt itsel f to all kinds o f cond itions . The
aim o f pol itics i s not to prevent change, but to
prevent stagnation, which is death .
Be fore read ing Emerson on Pol itics, read
Burke’s wonderfu l tributes to the B ritish Consti
tu tion and d iatribes on the French Revolution .
To Burke the British Constitution was a stately
Engl ish mans ion. It was the home o f ordered
Liberty. Generations have worked upo n thi s
mighty edifice . It was founded by the fathers
the new generations could add to it. But let no
vandal attempt to d islodge one stone. I t must be
preserved in all its original beauty. The institu
t ion once formed became itsel f the obj ect o f pious
sol icitude. I t was not a tool to be used, but a
sacred symbol o f the nation’s li fe.
160 EMERSON
Emerson did not feel that any political institu
tion had such sanctity as that . “To the young
citizen,” he says,
“organized society lies in rigid
repose, men and institutions rooted like oak trees
to the'
center around which all arrange themselves
as best they can . But the o ld statesman knows
that society is fluid ; there are no such roots and
centers, but any particle may suddenly become
the center o f the movement and compel the system
to gyrate around it.”
That kind of government which prevails is
the expression o f what cultivation exists in the
society.
which perm its it . The law is only a
memorandum . We are superstitious and esteem
the statute somewhat . So much l i fe as it has in
the character o f l iving men is its force .”
He then considers the two objects for which
governments ex ist—persons and property.
shows how it is the tendency of the propert ied
classes to get control o f the government and make .
the laws . This is so even in a democracy. The
162 EMERSON
We Americans boast o f our pol itical institu
tions .
But our institutions,though in coincidence
with the sp irit o f the age,have not any exemption
from the practical de fects wh ich have d iscredited
other form s . Every actual state i s corrupt . Goo d
menmust not obey the laws too well . What satire
on government can equal the severity o f censure
conveyed in the word ‘po litic,
’ wh ich for ages has
signified cunning, intimating that the state is. a
trick .
“We l ive in a very low state o f the world and
pay unwill ing tribute to governments founded on
forcef’
The essay ends w ith a glowing p icture of a
society of perfect freedom,in which reliance
would be put on moral forces alone, and“the pri
vate citizen might be reasonable and a good neigh~
bo r without the h int o f a jail o r confiscation .
”
As we come to th is conclusion, we say with a
start,
“This mild-spoken gentleman has been
MEDITATIONS ON POLITICS 163
saying something which sounds very much l ike
What the revolutionary radical s have been preach
ing w ith lamentable result s . He has. brought us
to the edge o f the precipice of ph ilosophic an
archy .
”
Perhaps so , but the mild-mannered gentleman
is not an anarchist,and it has never entered h is
head to jump o ff the precipice. He has come to
look at the v iew and he intends to return home by
way o f the turnpike .
What Emerson has been saying is that pol itical
institutions are not ends in themselves, and that
it i s a superstition to regard them as such . They
are expedients that are always capable of improve
ment. The resort to phys ical coerc ion wou ld not
be necessary in a perfect society. But in the
meantime, what are we to do ? Emerson’s com
mon sense makes answer.
Let not the most conservative and tim id fear
anyth ing from the premature surrender of the
bayonet and the system of force. For accord ing
to the order o f Nature, which is qu ite superior
EMERSON
to our w ill, it stands thus : there w ill always be a
government o f force where men are selfish ; and
when they are pure enough to abjure the code o f
force, they w i ll be w ise enough to see how the
publ ic ends o f the po st-office, of the h ighway, of
commerce,and the exchange o f property
,of mu
seums,l ibraries
,institutions o f art and science
can be answered .
”
Emerson wou ld agree w ith the philosophical
anarchist in saying that a soc iety is poss ible in
wh ich men and women can regulate their affairs
without the consciousness o f any coercive govern
mental force . He would agree also that we ought
to strive after such a free society. But when it
came to the practical question as to how to attain
this ideal, they would part company. The an
archist would say,“Let us abol ish government,
and then we shall have a community of indiv iduals
each one o f whom w i ll be a law unto himsel f.”
Emerson would say,“I can not follow you .
You put the cart be fore the horse. You have
166 EMERSON
has made us emphas ize cooperation . May not
society through wise laws and well-conce ived
institutions d irect its own destinies ?
To which Emerson wou ld answer : Yes,i f
society is composed o f enough w ise and sel f
rel iant ind ividuals . But social progress depends
on individual progress . A man must be able to
stand alone be fore he is able to cooperate to any
advantage .”
H is faith in the d estiny o f America was
founded on the bel ie f that the people were better
than their politics . There was a power there to
be invoked in time o f need . We are as yet only
incompletely organized, but the power is there .
Little by l ittle there w ill be created institutions
that w ill more adequately represent the aspi rations
o f multitudes o f private persons .
When I loo k at the constellations o f c ities
wh ich animate and i llustrate the land,and see
how l ittle the government has to do with their
dai ly li fe , how sel f-helped and sel f-d irected all
families are—knots o f people in purely natural
MEDITATIONS ON POLITICS 167
soc ieties—societies o f trade, of kindred blood ,of habitual hospital ity, house and house, man act
ing on man by weight of opinion, of longer or
better d irected industry, the refining influence o f
women,the invitation which experience and per
manent causes open to youth and labors—when I
see how much each virtuous and gi fted person,whom all men cons ider
,l ives affectionately with
scores o f excellent people who are not known far
from home,and perhaps with great reason reckons
these people h is supe riors in v irtue and in the
symmetry and force o f their qual ities, I see what
cubic values America has,and in these a better
certificate o f c ivilization than great cities or enor
mous wealth .
”
In regard to the definite political issues o f
the time, Emerson’s sympath ies were clearly
expressed . Slavery was always an abomination
to him , but he was slow to identi fy h imsel f w ith
the abo lit ion ists . The ir narrowness and into ler
ance offended hi s sense o f fair play,while their
courage attracted h im . When the issue became
168 EMERSON
one o f the right to free speech,he stood squarely
w ith them . Aga inst the extension of slavery he
protested vigorously. When the C iv il War came,
Emerson threw h imsel f heartily into the s ide o f
the Union . Toward Lincoln h imsel f his attitude
was one of doubt til l the proclamation o f emanci
patiou came . After that there was no one who
d id more to interpret the soul o f Lincoln to the
people .
But in one th ing Emerson d iffered from most
o f the New England idealists . He d id not put his
trust in the respectable classes alone He de
lighted in the crude strength o f the people . His
conception o f American pol itics was that which
Theodore Roosevelt so admirably illustrated in
the generation fo llowing. It was the magn ificent
challenge to the reformer who was virile enough
to meet all men on the ir own ground and over
come them there.
“A timid man,Emerson says, listen ing to
the alarmist in Congress and in the newspapers
and observing the profligacy of party—sectional
170 EMERSON
buffalo-hunter, and authority and majesty o f
manners . The instinct o f the people i s r ight . Men
expect from good Whigs put into offices by the
respectabil ity o f the country,much less skill to
deal w ith Mexico,Spa in, Britain, or w ith our own
malcontent members, ,than from some strong
transgressor, l ike Jefferson, or Jackson, who first
conquers h is own government,and then uses the
same genius to conquer the fore igner . The sen
ators who d issented from Mr . Polk’s Mexican
war were not those who knew better, but those
who,from pol itical po s ition, cou ld afford it ; not
Webster,but Benton and Calhoun .
“These Hoos iers and Suckers are really better
than the sn ivelling oppos ition . The ir wrath i s at
least o f a bold and manly cast . They see, against
the unanimous declarations o f the people,how
much crime the people will bear ; they proceed
from step to step, and they have calculated but
too justly upon their Excellencies, the New Eng
land governors,and upon the ir Honours, the New
England legislators . The messages o f the govern
ors and the resolutions o f the legislatures are a
MEDITATIONS ON POLITICS 171
proverb for express ing a sham v irtuous indignation, wh ich, in the course o f events, i s sure to
be belied .
”
Wisdom i s justified o f her children and Emer
son’s pol itical teachings bore fru it in a man of
t h e next generation,—Theodore Roosevelt .
Roosevelt’s “strenuous l i fe” was a popular ex
pos ition o f the Emersonian doctrine. The strong
man is needed in a democracy. He must under
stand the snarl ing majorities and the obstinate
minorities . He must enjoy the confl ict. He must
play the game . But he must at the same time
have a moral ideal o f hi s own,simple and com
manding. He must be not a statuesque statesman
but a rough and ready ideal ist.
CHAPTER XVI
THE CANDID FRIEND OF ENGLAND
“A wise traveller will naturally choose to visit the
best of ac tual nations, and an American has more
reasons than ano ther to visit Britain.
”
HEN in 1833 Emerson first vis ited Eng
land, h is chie f interest was in a few great
men whose writings had inspired h im w ith a des ire
to see the ir faces . He met Coleridge,Wordsworth
,
Landor and Carlyle ; but he had few opportuni
ties to become acquainted w ith the Engl ish people .
In 1847 he was inv ited to give a course of lec
tures be fore var ious Mechan ics’ Institutes in
d ifferent parts o f England . This v is it gave him
an opportunity to compare the Engl ishman at
home with his own countrymen . The results o f
h is observations were embod ied in a volume en
titled “English Traits .” This book differs from
the other works o f Emerson in that it follows a
172
174 EMERSON
and thei r realistic logic o r coupl ing o f means
to ends have given them the leadersh ip o f the
modern world . Montesquieu said,‘N0 people
have true common sense but those who were born
in England .
’ This common sense is a perception
o f all the conditions o f our earthly existence, o f
laws that can be stated, and o f laws that cannot
be stated,o r that are learned only by practice, in
which allowance fo r friction is made . They are
Impious in their skepticism o f theory,and in
high departments they are cramped and sterile .
But the unconditional surrender to facts, and the
cho ice o f means to reach their ends, are as admir
able as with ants and bees .“The bias o f the nation i s a passion for utility.
They love the lever, the screw and pulley, the
Flanders draught-horse, the waterfall, wmd
mills, tide mills, the sea and the wind to bear
their fre ight-ships . More than the d iamond Koh
i-noor, which gl itters among their crown-j ewels,
they prize that dull pebble wh ich i s wiser than a
man, whose poles turn themselves to the poles o f
the world, and whose axis is parallel to the axis
CANDID FRIEND OF ENGLAND 175
o f the world . Now, their toys are steam and
galvanism . They are heavy at the fine arts,but
adroit at the coarse ; not good in jewelry o r
mosaics, but the best iron-masters, coll iers, wood
combers, and tanners in Europe . They apply
themselves to agriculture,to dra ining, to res isting
encroachment o f sea, w ind, travell ing sands, cold
and wet subsoil ; to fishery, to manufactu re o f
indispensable staples,—salt, plumbago, leather,wool, glass, pottery and brick,—to bees and s ilkworms ; and by their steady combinations they
succeed . A manufacturer s its down to dinner
in a su it o f clothes which was wool on a sheep’s
back at sunrise. You dine w ith a gentleman on
venison, pheasant, qua il, pigeons, poultry, mush
rooms and pineapples, all the growth o f his estate.
They are neat husbands for ordering all the ir
tools perta ining to house and field . All are well
kept . There i s no want and no waste . They
study use and fitness in their building, in the order
o f their dwell ings and in their dress . The French
man invented the ruflle, the Engl ishman added the
shi rt. The Englishman wears a sens ible coat
176 EMERSON
buttoned to the ch in, o f rough but sol id and lasting
texture . I f he i s a lord he dresses a l ittle worse
than a commoner . They have diffused the taste
for plain substantial hats,shoe s and coats through
Europe . They think him the best dressed man ,whose dress i s so fit for his use that you cannot
notice or remember to describe it.
There i s a del ightful chapter on Engl ish man
ners .
The Engl ishman is very petulant and precise
about h is accommodation at inns and on the
roads ; a quiddle about h is toast and h is chop, and
every species o f conven ience, and loud and pun
gent in his express ions o f impatience at any neg
lect. His vivacity betrays itsel f at all points, in
h ismanners, in his respiration and the inarticulate
noises he makes in clearing the throat,—all sig
nificant o f burly strength . He has stamina ; he can
take the initiative in emergencies : He has that
aplomb wh ich results from a good adjustment
o f the moral and physical nature and the obedi
178 EMERSON
island himsel f, safe, tranquil, incommunicable.
In a company o f strangers you would think him
dea f ; hi s eyes never wander from his table and
newspaper. He i s never betrayed into any curi
osity or unbecoming emotion. They have all been
trained in one severe school o f manners, and
never put o ff the harness . He does not give his
hand . He does not let you meet his eye. It i s
almost an aff ront to look a man in the face with
out being introduced . In mixed o r in select com
panies they do not introduce persons ; so that a
presentation i s a circumstance as val id as a con
tract."
Introductions are sacraments . He with
holds h is name. At the hotel he is hardly w i lling
to whispe r it to the clerk at the bo ok-office. I f
he gives you h i s private address on a card, it i s
l ike an avowal o f friendship ; and his bearing on
be ing introduced is cold,even though he i s seek
ing your acquaintance and is studying how he
shall serve you .
”
In regard to America the Englishman was in
those days apt to be condescend ing.
CANDID FRIEND OE ENGLAND 179
“The Engl ish d isl ike the American structure of
soc iety, whi lst yet trade, mi lls, publ ic education
and chart ism are do ing what they can to create
in England the same soc ial condition . America
is the paradise o f the econom ists ; is the favourable
except ion invariably quoted to the rules o f ru in ;but when he speaks d irectly of the Americans,
the islander forgets his ph ilosophy and remembers
his d isparaging anecdotes .”
Emerson’s criticism of the England wh ich he
saw i s o f interest to-day because most Engl ish
men would agree w ith it . It is a penetrating study
o f a period that has now passed away. From the
cons ideration of defects he tu rns to the Wealth
and plen itude o f the Engl ish nature, and the es
sential so undness o f character.
I feel in regard to th is aged England with the
possessions, honours and trophies, and also w ith
the infirmities o f a thousand years gathering
around her, inevi tably comm itted to many o ld
cu stoms which cannot be suddenly changed ;
180 EMERSON
pressed upon by the trans itions o f trade, and new
and all incalculable modes,fabrics
,arts and com
peting populations,—I see her not d ispirited, not
weak but well remembe ring that she has seen dark
days be fore ; indeed w ith a kind of instinct that
she sees rather better in a cloudy day, and that in
the storm of battle and calamity she has a secret
vigor and a pu lse l ike a cannon . I see her in her
old age not decrep it but young and still daring to
bel ieve in her power o f endurance and expansion .
”
182 EMERSON
embarrassed by a row of students conscientiously
tak ing notes and giving docile assent to his
challenging sentences with a keen eye to the marks
that were to be the reward of their attention .
Emerson’s attempts to be d idactic were unl
formly unfortunate. He could not command his
moods for any systematic exposition . He con
fesses that the ways O f the academ ic scholar were
always an astonishment to him . His thoughts
would not “stay put.” In the course O f a year
he managed to get through w ith a respectable
amount O f work, but it came occasionally. When
he knew that he ought to write a lecture, it quick
ened h is wits to write a poem for the Dial,and
when the editor O f the Dial demanded a poem,
it stirred h is mind to a new effort at prose com
position . Having found that thi s method an
swered best for h is own constitution, he became
reconciled to it,but it could not be recommended
by a professor to his students . Neither could his
favorite method O f read ing, beginn ing at the end
O f the book and reading backward,w ith wide
intervals between the acts, be recommended, al
AMONG HIS BOOKS 183
though it has its advantages as a method of test
ing. I f there is a susp ic ion that the apples in a
basket have been “deaconed,” the skeptical buyer
w ill reverse the order in wh ich they appear. The
fruit looks d ifferent bottom s ide up .
But the ch ie f d isability o f Emerson as a formal
teacher Of l iterature takes us back to the consider
ation to wh ich attention was drawn in the first
chapter. His m ind has its real aflinity to the
thinkers o f antiquity,to whom books were not an
Obj ect o f spec ial interest. The pro per study o f
mankind was man and nature. The book was only
the record o f some fellow-student, useful as stim
ulating h is own though t.
It seems meritorious to read ; but from every
thing but h istory o r the works Of the Old com
manding authors I come back with the conviction
that the sl ightest wood thought, the least signifi
cant native emotion o f my own,is more to me .”
Bibl iolatry, in the w ide sense of book worship,had no more uncomprom is ing enemy.
“We are
184 EMERSON
too civ il to books . For a few golden sentences
we w ill turn over and actually read a volume O f
four or five hundred pages .”
One can imagine Emerson’s intonation as he
expressed h is wonder that we would actually read
four or five hundred pages for the sake o f a
golden sentence which m ight be concealed in
them. The great art o f the reader was to pass
qu ickly over the desert place in order to l inger
long in the green oasis .
The colleges, wh ilst they prov ide us with l i
braries, furnish no professor o f books ; and, I
think, no chair is so much wanted . In a l ibrary
we are surrounded by many hundreds o f dear
friends, but they are imprisoned by an enchanter
in these paper and leathern boxes ; and, though
they know us,and have been waiting two, ten, or
twenty centuries for us,—some Of them,
—andare eager to give us a S ign, and unbosom them
selves,it i s the law of the ir l imbo that they must
not speak until spoken to ; and as the enchanter
has dressed them,l ike battal ions Of infantry, in
186 EMERSON
There are books ; and it is practicable to read
them , because they are so few . We look over
w ith a s igh the monumental l ibraries O f Paris, o f
the Vatican and the British Museum . In 1858
the number o f printed books in the Imperial
Library at Paris was estimated at e ight hundred
thousand volumes, with an annual increase O f
twelve thousand volumes ; SO that the number O f
printed books extant tod ay may eas ily exceed a
m ill ion . It i s easy to count the number Of pages
wh ich a d il igent man can read in a day,and the
number o f years wh ich human l i fe in favourable
c ircumstances allOws to reading ; and to demon
strate that,though he should read from dawn till
dark, for s ixty years, he must d ie in the first
alcoves . But nothing can be more deceptive than
th is arithmetic, where none but a natural method
i s really pertinent . I v is it occasionally the Cam
bridge Library, and I can seldom gO there with
out renewing the conviction that the best Oi it all
i s already within the four walls o f my study at
home . The inspection o f the catalogue brings me
continually back to the few standard writers who
AMONG HIS BOOKS 187
are on every private shel f ; and to these it can
afford only the most sl ight and casual add itions .The crowds and centuries Of boo ks are only com
mentary and elucidation, echoe s and weakeners
Of these few great voices O f T ime.”
For the mere book worm he had l ittle respect.
“And yet—and yet—I hes itate to denounceread ing as aught inferior and mean. When vi
s ions o f my books come over me, as I sit writing,when the remembrance O f some poe t comes, I
accept it w ith pure joy, and qu it my thinking as
sad, lumbering work and hasten to my l ittle
heaven.
”
There were not many authors who were ad
miffed to h is l ittle heaven . They were so con
genial to h is own mind that there was no question
O f mine and thine . It d id not matt er what the
subject was so that it was treated in a suggestive
way. The great purpose o f literature is to stimu
late the faculty Of thinking.
188 EMERSON
“Y ou say,
‘Your reading is i rrelevant.’ Yes,
for you, not for me . It makes no difference what
I read . I f it is irrelevant,I read it deeper. I
read it t ill it is pertinent to Nature and the hour
that now passes . A good scholar w ill find Aris
tophanes and Hafiz and Rabelais full OfAmerican
history.
”
Hi s ambition for his own books was that they
m ight be treated in the same fashion .
“I would
have my books read as I read my favorite books,
not w ith explosion and aston ishment, amarvel
and a rocket, but as a friendly and agreeable in
fluence .
”
In his incursions into Book-land he followed
the same method, o r lack o f method. He read
what pleased h im . The best gu ide to such books
he thought was common fame. Certain books had
pleased generations Of readers . This proved that
they were readable .
The best rule Of reading will be a method
from nature, and not a mechanical one o f hours
190 EMERSON
the same th ing by books as by her gases and
plants . There is always a selection in writers,
and then a selection from the selection . All books
that get fairly into the vital air o f the world were
written by the success ful class, by the affirm ing
and advancing class, who utter what tens O f
thousands feel though they cannot say.
”
Emerson’s advice is thatwe should read famous
books, but'
that we should not approach them as
“classics,”but with the same famil iarity with
which we read the da ily newspaper. Plato’s
Socrates was not a d ign ified literary person. We
can know h im just as we know a shrewd Yankee
farmer. He may be to the reader a character
whose oddity delights us .
He was plain as a ! uaker in hab it and speech,affected low phrases and i llustrations frOm cocks
and quails, soup-pans, and sycamore-spoons,
grooms and farriers, and unnamable Offices,
especially i f he talked with any superfine person .
He had a Franklin-l ike wisdom. Thus, he showed
AMONG HIS BOOKS 191
one who was afra id to go on foot to Olympia,
that i t was no more than hi s da ily walk w ithin
doors, i f continuously ext ended would eas ily
reach.
“Plain o ld uncle as he was, with his great ears,—an immense talker,—the rumour ran, that onone or two occasions, in the war with Boeotia, he
had shown a determ ination wh ich had covered the
retreat o f a troupe ; and therewas'
some story that,under cover o f folly, he had, in the c ity govern
ment,when one day he chanced to hold a seat
evinced a courage in oppos ing singly the
popular vo ice, which had well-n igh ru ined h im .
He is very poor, but then he is hardy as a soldier,and can live on a few olives ; usual ly, in the
strictest sense,on bread and water, except when
enterta ined by h is friends . His necessary ex
penses were exceed ingly small, and no one else
could live as he d id . He wore no under garment ;his upper garment was the same for summer and
winter ; and he went barefooted ; and it is said
that, to procure the pleasure, which he loves, o f
talking at his ease all day w ith the most elegant
192 EMERSON
and cultivated young men, he W 111 now and then
return to h is shop and carve statues,good or bad
,
for sale . However that be, it is certain that he
had grown to delight in noth ing else than this
conversation ; and that, under h is hypocritical pre
tense o f knowing nothing, he attacks and brings
down all the fine speakers, all the fine philosophers
o f Athens, whether natives, or strangers from
Asia M inor and the islands . Nobody can refuse
t o talk w ith h im, he is so honest, and really curi
ous to know ; a man who was w illingly confuted
i f he d id not speak the truth, and who w ill ingly
confuted others asserting what was false ; and
not less pleased when confuted than when con
futing ; for he thought not any evil happened to
men o f such magn itude as false Opinion respecting
the just and unjust. A p itiless disputant, who
knows nothing, but the bounds o f whose conquer
ing intelligence no man had ever reached ; whose
temper was imperturbable ; whose dreadful logic
was always leisurely and sportive ; so careless and
ignorant as to disarm the wariest and draw them
194 EMERSON
o f in terms o f mere l iterature . We forget the
techn icalities o f h is art . “He was a full man
who l iked to talk .
Some able and appreciating critics think no
c riticism on Shakespeare valuable that does not
rest purely on the dramatic merit ; that he is
falsely judged as poet and philosopher. I think
as highly as these critics o f his dramatic merit,but still think it secondary. He was a full man
who l iked to talk ; a brain exhaling thoughts and
images, wh ich, seeking vent, found the drama
next at hand . Had he been less we should have
had to cons ider how well he filled h is place, how
good a dramatist he was,—and he is the best in
the world . But it turns out that what he has to
say is o f that weight as to withdraw some atten
tion from the vehicle ; and he is l ike some saint
whose h istory i s to be rendered into all languages,into verse and prose
,into songs and pictures, and
cut up into proverbs,so that the occasion which
gave the saint’s mean ing the form o f a conversa
tion, o r o f a prayer, or o f a code o f laws, is im
AMONG HIS BOOKS 195
material compared with the universality o f its
application . So it fares with the W ise Shakes~
peare and h is book o f l i fe . He wrote the airs for
all ourmodern music ; he wrote the text o fmodern
l i fe ; the text o f manners ; he drew the man o f
England and Europe ; the father o f the man in
America ; he drew the man, and described the
day, and what is done in it ; he read the hearts o f
men and women,the ir probity and their second
thought and w iles ; the w iles o f innocence, and
the trans itions by which v irtues and v ices slide
into their contrar ies ; he could d ivide the mother’s
part from the father’s part in the face o f the
ch ild, or draw the fine demarcations o f freedom
and of fate ; he knew the laws o f repress ion
wh ich make the pol ice o f nature ; and all the
sweets and al l the terrors o f human lot lay in h is
m ind as truly but as so ftly as the landscape l ies
on the eye . And the importance o f this wis~
dom o f l i fe sinks the form, as o f Drama or Ep ic,out o f notice. ’Tis l ike mak ing a question con~
cerning the paper on whi ch a king’ s message is
written .
196 EMERSON
Shakespeare is as much out o f the category
o f eminent authors, as he is out o f the crowd .
”
With this conception o f l iterature Emerson d id
not accept the doctrine o f those real ists who th ink
that the h ighe st praise o f a l iterary work is that
it gives an exact transcript o f actual l ife . We all
are surrounded by actual ity,we do not need to
have some one reproduce for us what we have
every day an opportunity to see for ourselves .
What the man o f genius does is to allow us to
become acquainted with the working o f his own
mind . And the reader must make sure that it is
the kind o f mind that is worth knowing.
198 EMERSON
the records o f long dead Hohenzollerns . One
Hohenzollern would have been enough for Emer
son. He had no taste for antiquarian research .
But to say that a man is without the h istoric
sense is like accusing h im o f a lack o f the sense
o f humor. This latter accusation usually means
l ittle more than there i s a d ifference in the taste
for j okes .
Instead o f saying that Emerson lacked the his
toric sense, i t would be better to inquire as to that
wh ich was characteristic in h is attitude to history .
Only when we sympathize with that can we obtain
any benefit from him .
There are two ways o f lookii‘
ig at h uman his
tory. One may fix his mind on the differences
between one period and another, or he may be
more profoundly interested in the identities which
he recognizes .
In the former case, what is seen is a succession
o f events and personages each having its l ittle
day and passing away forever. Each is d ifferent
from the other, and it is the business o f the his
torian to note those differences . He is the stage
EMERSON’S HISTORIC SENSE 199
manager care ful about the entrances and the exits
o f the actors, and about the way the lights are
arranged for each scene. There are distinctly
marked periods of time, each with its beginning,
middle and end . Thi s is one way o f looking at
h istory.
Another way i s that o f the philosopher who is
interested primari ly not in persons or events, but
in the forces o f which they are the temporary
man i festations . He perceives not so much the
differences as the identities . This was Emerson’s
habitual po int o f view. He d id no t care for the
dead past. So much o f i t as was really dead he
would dec ently bury. But that part o f i t which
was al ive he would incorporate into the l iving
present and treat as o f contemporary interest . It
was here that Emerson’s h istori c sense man i
fested itsel f.
In the volume called Representative Men”
Emerson illustrates his conception o f H istory .
“The search after the great men,” he says,
“ is the
dream o f youth,and the most serious occupation
o f manhood .
”And yet when we have found the
200 EMERSON
great man, we find a person very much l ike our
selves . We agree w ith him, which means that he
expresses thoughts that are very l ike our own.
We are conscious o f the fact that he reveals what
is in us as well as in h im . Plato,Shakespeare
,
Montaigne, Napoleon, were representative men .
There were mill ions o f persons who had the same
qual it ies,but in less degree . The fact that they
have been appreciated proves their kinsh ip to the
multitude.
The gen ius o f humanity is the right po int o f
view in h istory. The qual ities abide ; the men
who exhibit them have no more nor less, and pass
away ; the qual ities remain in another brow . No
experience i s more famil iar. Once you saw
phoen ixes, now they are gone ; the world is not
therefore d isenchanted . The vessels on which
you read sacred emblems turn out to be common
pottery ; but the sense o f the picture is sacred,
and you may still read them , trans ferred to the
walls o f the world . For a time our teachers
serve us personally,as meters or m ilestones o f
202 EMERSON
they were men who best represented the ideals o f
thei r countrymen .
To my m ind Emerson’s most brilliant bit o f
historical criticism is conta ined in his Essay on
Napoleon . Many have been the descriptions o f
the l i fe and character o f the great Cors ican ad
venturer. Emerson makes us see the kind o f man
Napoleon was . “Bonaparte was the idol o f com
mon men because he had in transcendent degree
the qual ities and powers o f common men .
He was “a man of stone and iron, capable o f
sitting on horseback s ixteen o r seventeen hours,
o f go ing many days together without r est o r
food,except by snatches
,and w ith the speed and
spring o f a tiger in action ; a man not embar
rassed by any scruples ; compact, instant, selfish,
prudent,and o f a perception which did not suffer
itsel f to be balked or misled by any pretences o f
others, o r any superstition or any heat o r haste
o f h is own .
“I call Napoleon the agent o r attorney o f the
middle classes o f modern society ; o f the throng
EMERSON ’S HISTORIC SENSE 203
who filled the markets, shops, counting houses ,manu factories, ships o f the modern world, aiming
to be rich . He was the agitator, the destroyer o f
prescription, the internal improver, the l iberal ,the radical
,the inventor o f means, the opener o f
doors and markets,the subverter o f monopoly
and abuse .
Napoleon’s change from the young revolution
ist to the Emperor was noth ing strange . “The
democrat i s the young conservative . The aristo
erat i s the democrat, ripe and gone to seed—because both parties stand on the one ground o f the
supreme value o f property, which one endeavors
to get and the other to keep. Bonaparte may be
said to represent the whole h istory o f this party,
its youth and its age, yes and w ith poetic justice
its fate in h is own.
Turn from the Essay on Napoleon to that on
Power. In the description o f the village tavern
keeper you will recognize a po or relation o f the
great Napoleon . There is the same combination
o f force and unscrupulousness .
204 EMERSON
I knew a burly Bonaface who for many years
kept a publ ic house in one o f our ru ral capitals .
He was a knave whom the town could ill spare .
He was a social vascular creature,grasp ing and
selfish . There is no crime wh ich he d id not or
could not commit . But he made good friends o f
the selectmen , served them w ith h is best chop
when they supped at h is house, and also w ith his
honor the Judge he was very cord ial, grasping
his hand . He introduced all the fiends, male and
female, into the town, and un ited in his person
the functions o f bully, incend iary, swindler, bar
keeper and ‘
burglar. He girdled the trees, and
cut o ff the horses’ tails o f the temperance people
in the night . He led the ‘rummies’ and radicals
in the town meeting. Meanwhile, he was c ivil,fat and easy in his house, and precisely the most
public-spirited citizen . He was active in getting
the roads repaired and planted with shade trees ;he subscribed for the fountains, the gas and the
telegraph, he introduced the new horse rake, the
new scraper, the baby-jumper and what not that
Connecticut sends to the admiring citizens.”
206 EMERSON
How easily these o ld worships o f Moses, o f
Z oroaster, o f Menu, o f Socrates,domesticate
themselves in the mind . I cannot find any ah
tiquity in them . They are mine as much as theirs .“I have seen the first monks and anchorets
without cross ing seas or centuries . More than
once some ind iv idual has appeared to me with
such negligence o f labour and such commanding
contemplation, a haughty beneficiary, begging in
the name o f God, as made good to the nineteenth
century S imeon the Styl ite,the Thebais , and the
first Capuch ins .“The priestcra ft o f the East and West, o f the
Magian,Brahmin
,Druid
,and Inca, i s expounded
in the individual ’s private li fe . The cramping
influence o f a hard formalist on a young child in
repressing his spirits and courage, paralyzing the
understanding, and that without producing indignation
,but only fear and obedience, and even
much sympathy with tyranny, - i s a fam il iar fact
explained to the child when he becomes a man,
only by seeing that the oppressor o f his youth is
himself a child tyrannized over by those names
EMERSON ’S HISTORIC SENSE 207
and words and forms, o f whose influence he was
merely the organ to the‘youth . The fact teaches
him how Belus was worsh ipped, and how the
Pyram ids were built, better than the d iscovery
by Champoll ion o f the names o f all the workmen
and the cost o f every tile . He finds Assyria and
the Mounds o f Cholula at his door, and himsel f
has laid the courses .“Aga in, in that protest which each considerate
person makes against the superstition of his times,
he repeats step for step the part o f o ld re formers ,and in the search after truth finds like them new
perils to vi rtue . He learns again what moral
V igour is needed to supply the girdle of a super
stition. A great l icentiousness treads on the heels
o f a reformation . How many times in the history
o f the world has the Luther o f the day had to
lament the decay o f p iety in h is own household !‘Doctor,
’ sa id his w i fe to Mart in Luther, one day,‘how i s it that, whilst subject to papacy, we prayed
so often and w ith such fervour, whilst now we
pray with the utmost coldness and very seldom ?’
“The advancing man discovers how deep
208 EMERSON
property he has in literature—in all fable as well
as in all h istory. He finds that the poet was no
odd fellow who described strange and imposs ible
situations, but that universal man wrote by his
pen a confess ion true for one and true for all .
His own secret biography he finds in lines wonder
fully intelligible to h im,dotted down before he
was born . One after another he comes up in h is
private adventures w ith every fable o f ZEsop, of
Homer, o f Hafiz, o f Ariosto, of Chaucer, o f
Scott, and verifies them with his own head and
hands .”
"210 EMERSON
o f h is time . He was a bel iever in peace, but it
was the peace o f the strong man armed . It was
peace establ ished and maintained by men who
were not to be coerced . Having demonstrated
that they were able to take care o f themselves
they could lay aside the ir arms and trust to moral
force. His lecture was in pra ise o f the glory o f
peace which he believed in the end would super
sede the meretricious glories o f war.
War educates the senses, calls into action the
will, perfects the phys ical constitution, brings
men into such swi ft and close collision at critical
moments that man measures man . On its own
scale, on the vi rtues it l ives, it endures no counter
feit, but shakes the whole society unti l every atom
falls into the place its specific gravity assigns i t.
What does war, beginning from the lowest races
and reach ing up to man, Sign i fy ? Is it not mani
fest that i t covers a great and beneficent principle
wh ich nature has deeply at heart ? What is that
principle ? It i s sel f help . Nature implants with
l i fe the instinct o f sel f help, perpetual struggle
PEACE AND WAR 21 1
to be, to res ist Opposition, to attain to freedom
and the security of a permanent, sel f-defended
being, and to each creature these obj ects are made
so dear that it ri sks its l i fe continually in the
struggles for these ends .”
But because war has had such uses in the past,does it follow that it must continue indefinitely ?
At a certain stage o f h is progress a man fights
i f he be o f sound mind and body. At a higher
stage he makes no offens ive demonstration, but
he i s alert to repe l injury and o f an unconquerable
heart. At a still higher he comes into the region
o f holiness, passion has passed from him,his war
l ike nature is all converted into an activemedicinal
principle, he sacrifices h imsel f, and accepts with
alacrity wearisome tasks of denial and charity ;but being attacked he bears it and turns the other
cheek, as one engaged throughout his being, no
longer to the service o f the individual but to the
common soul o f man .
”
There are passages in pra ise o f non-resistance
which sound very much l ike the words o f doc
212 EMERSON
trinaire pacifists. But it i s the nOn-resistance o f
the sold ier who with arms in his hand will no t
use them to revenge a private wrong.
The cause o f peace is no t the cause o f
cowardice . I f p eace is sought to be de fended
o r preserved for the safety o f the luxurious and
the timid,i t is a shame and the peace will be base .
War is better and the peace will be broken . I f
peace is to be maintained,it must be by brave men
who have come up to the same height o f the hero ,namely the will to carry their li fe in their hands,and have goneastep beyond the hero and will not
seek another man’s li fe—men who by their intellectual insight or else by their moral education at
tained such perception o f their own intrinsic
worth that they do not think property or their
own body a sufficient good to be saved by such
dereliction o f principle as treating a man like a3,
War is barbarous, peace has poss ibil ities o f
heroic achievement, but are these not circum~
EMERSON
Leading over heroic ground,Walled w ith mortal terror round,To the aim which him allures,And the sweet heaven his deed secures .Peri l around, all else appall ing,Cannon in front and leaden ra in,Him duty through the clarion callingTo the van called not in vain .
“Stainless sold ier on the walls,Knowing this, —and knows no more,Whoso fights, and whoso falls,Uustice triumphs ever more.
”
CHAPTER XX
THE FORTUNES OF'
THE POOR
The whole interest of history lies in the fortunesof the poor .
”
O the present-day reader Emerson is least
satis factory when he touches upon what
we call the problem o f poverty. We have in
mind the condition o f thousands o f persons who
through no fault o f their own are condemned to
live in city slums . They are,we believe, victims
o f social m isadjustment. They can be redeemed
only by social effort .
When we hear Emerson saying that the whole
interest o f h istory lies in the fortunes o f the poor,we expect to hear h im say someth ing bearing
upon our problem . How does he propo se to
abolish poverty ? We are disappo inted. Pov
erty, he tells us, i s not so bad after all . Indeed
it has many advantages . Sometimes he rises into
2 15
EMERSON
a stra in that reminds us of Saint Francis o f
Ass is i .
We can only understand Emerson and Saint
Francis when we define the terms they used .
When Francis sang the praises of my lady Poverty he was not thinking o f the condition o f those
who lived in the h ideous slums o f great cities .
He had in mind the poverty of the Ital ian peas
ants whose fortunes he was glad to share . They
were poor in th i s world’s goods,but rich in sp ir
itual resources . They l ived in the open ai r, they
l istened to the song o f birds, and they were happy
in human compan ionship.
The poverty wh ich Emerson praised was the
poverty o f the well-born New England youth .
It was a li fe without luxury, but w ith endless
opportunity. There was a stimulating of neces
sity acting upon natural ambition . The poor
man’s son could asp ire to any station in society
The way was open to him . I f he had health he
was to be congratulated as one of the children of
good fortune . This was a theme o f wh ich he
never tired .
218 EMERSON
tive advert isement of the arrival of Macready,Booth, o r Kemble, or o f the discourse o f a well
known speaker, with the expense o f the enter
tainment ; the affectionate del ight with which
they greet the return o f each one after the early
separations which school o r bus iness require ; the
fores ight w ith wh ich, during such absences, they
hive the honey wh ich opportunity Offers, for the
ear and imagination of the others ; and the unre
stra ined glee w ith which they disburden them
selves o f their early mental treasures when the
hol idays bring them again together ? What is
the hoop that holds them staunch ? It is the iron
band o f poverty, o f necess ity, o f austerity, wh ich,
excluding them from the sensual enjoyments
wh ich make other boys too early o ld, has d irected
their activity in safe and right channels, and
made them, despite themselves!
, reverers o f the
grand,the beauti ful, and the good. Ah ! short
sighted students o f books, o f Nature, and o f
man ! too happy, could they know the ir advan
tages . They p ine for freedom from that mild
parental yoke ; they sigh for fine clothes , for
FORTUNES OF THE POOR 219
rides, for the theater, and premature freedom and
d issipation, which others possess . Woe to them,
i f the ir w ishes were crowned ! The angels that
dwell w ith them, and are weaving laurels o f l i fe
for their youth ful brows, are Toil, and Want,
and Truth, and Mutual Faith .
”
In the last fi fty years there have been vast
social changes . Even in Am erica we have begun
to feel the pressure o f population on the means O f
subsistence. The young man can not obtain a
farm by the simple device o f going West. And
yet America is still a land o f opportunity. It is
still “a poor man’s country” even though the poor
man has to be more alert than formerly in order
to win success .
It i s still true that inherited wealth is no t nec
essary for the attainment o f the most des irable
things . One may be born poor and yet be a child
o f good fortune.
“In America, the necessity of clearing the for
est, laying out town and street, and building
every house and ham and fence, then church and
220 EMERSON
town-house, exhausted such means”
as the Pil
grims brought, and made the whole populati
on
poor ; and the like necessity is still found in ehch
new settlement in the Territories . These needs
gave the ir character to the public debates in every
village and state . I have been often impressed at
our country town-meetings with the accumulated
vi ril ity, in each village, o f five or six or e ight or
ten men, who speak so well, and so eas ily handle
the affairs o f the town . I often hear the busmess
o f a l ittle town !w ith wh ich I am most familiar!d iscussed with a clearness and thoroughness,
and w ith a generosity, too, that would have sat
isfied me had it been in one o f the larger cap
itals. I am sure each one o f my readers has a
parallel experience . And every one knows that
in every town or c ity is always to be found a cer
tain numbe r of publ ic-sp irited men, who perform,
unpaid,a great amount o f hard work in the inter
est Oi the churches, o f schools, o f public grounds,
works o f taste and refinement . And as in civil
duties,so in social power and duties . Our gentle
men o f the old school , that is, o f the school o f
222 EMERSON
and in the temperance with‘
which he parried all
Offence, and opened the eyes o f the person he
talked with without contradicting him. Yet I‘
said to mysel f, How l ittle this man suspects, with
his sympathy for men and his respect for lettered
and scientific people, that he i s no t likely, in anycompany, to meet a man superior to h imsel f . And
I think this i s a good country, that can bear such
a creature as he is .”
CHAPTER XXI
THE CUTTING EDGE
“I t ! courage! gives the cutting edge to every pro
HE vi rtue which Emerson ins isted upon
as essential was courage. In the ruder
cont-acts o f li fe i t i s common enough, but it i s
needed equally in time o f peace.
“There is a courage o f the cabinet as well as
a courage o f the field, a courage of manners in
private assemblies that enables one man to speak
masterly to a hostile company whilst another man
who can eas ily face a cannon’s mouth does not
open his own .
“There is the courage o f the merchant in deal
ing with h is trade,by wh ich dangerous turns o f
affairs are met and prevailed over. Merchants
recognize as much gallantry, well judged too , in
223
224 EMERSON
the conduct of a w ise and upright man of bus i
ness in d ifficult t imes, as sold iers in a soldier.“There is a courage in the treatment o f every
art by a master in arch itecture, in sculpture, in
painting and in poe try, cheering the mind o f spec
tator or receiver as by true strokes o f genius ,which yet no w ise impl ies the presence o f phys
ical valor in the artist. This is the courage o f
gen ius in every k ind . A certain quantity o f
power belongs to a certain quantity of faculty.
The beauti ful voice in church goes sounding on,
and covers up in its volume, as in a cloak, all the
defects in the choir. The singers I observe all
yield to i t,and so the fair singer indulges her ln
stinct, and dares and dares because she knows she
There could no t be a more perfect i llustration
o f the k ind o f courage which Emerson admired
than the voice o f the s inger directed by a sure
sense o f power. It does not domineer and yet it
dominates .
Emerson felt that ther
A'
merica o f his day
226 EMERSON
hiding his head l ike an ostrich in the flowering
bushes, peeping into microscopes and turning
rhymes, as a boy whistles to keep his courage up .
So is the danger a danger still ; so is the fear
worse . Manl ike let him turn and face it. Let
him look into its eye,and search its nature, in
spect its origin—see the whelping o f this lion
which l ies no great way back ; he will then find in
himsel f a perfect comprehension o f i ts nature and
extent ; he w ill have made his hands meet on the
other side,and can henceforth defy it and pass
on superior. The world is his who can see“
through its pretension . What deafness, what
stone-bl ind custom,what overgrown error you
behold is there only by sufl'
erance,-by your suf
ferance . See it to be a lie and you have already
dealt it a mortal blow .
”
In 1876, in an address at the University o f
Virgin ia, Emerson returns to the same theme .
“The scholar is the right hero . He is brave
because he sees the omnipotence o f that wh ich
inspires him. Is there only one courage and one
THE CUTTING EDGE 227
warfare ? I cannot manage sword and rifle : can
I not there fore be brave ? I thought there were
as many courages as men . Is an armed man the
only hero ? Is a man only the breach o f a gun or
the haft o f a bowie kn i fe ? Men o f thought fai l
in fighting down mal ign ity, because they wear
other armor than the ir own. Let them decline
henceforward fore ign methods and fore ign cour
ages . Let them do that wh ich they can do . Let
them fight by their strengt h and not by their
weakness .“We have many revivals o f rel igion . We have
had once what was called a revival o f Letters . I
wish to see a revival o f the human mind . To see
men’s sense o f duty extend to the cherish ing and
use o f thei r intellectual powers : their rel igion
should go wi th their thought and hallow it.”
In his celebrated address to the Cambridge
Divinity School, Emerson ins isted on a spiritual
courage which makes o f religion an independent
“Let me admon ish you
,first o f all
,to go alone
,
228 EMERSON
to refuse the good models,even those which are
sacred to the imagination of men, and dare to
love God w ithout med iator or veil . Friends
enough you will find who will hold up to your
emulation, Wesleys and Oberl ins, saints and
prophets. Thank God for these good men, but
say,‘I also am a man .
’
“Yoursel f a new-born bard of the Holy Ghost,—c ast behind you all conformity
,and acquaint
men at first hand w ith Deity. Look to i t first
only,that fashion, custom, authority, pleasure
and money are noth ing to you, —are not bandagesover your eyes, that you cannot see, -but live
with the privilege o f the immeasurable mind .
“Let us study the grand strokes o f rectitude ;
a bo ld benevolence, an independence o f friends,
so that not the unjust wishes o f those who love
us shall impair our freedom, but we shall resist
for truth’s sake the freest flow o f kindness, and
appeal to sympathies far in advance ; and what is
the highest form in wh ich we know this beauti ful
element,that i t i s taken for granted, that the
CHAPTER ! ! II
TERMINUS
To take in sailThe god of bounds,Who sets to seas a share,Came to me in his fatal rounds,And said :
‘N0 more !
No farther shoo tThy broad ambitious branches, and thyFancy departs : no more invent ;Contract thy firmament
To compass of a tent .There’s no t enough for this and that,Make thy option which of two ;Economize the failing river,Nat the less revere the Giver,Leave the many and ho ld the few.
Timely wise accept the terms,S often the fall with wary foo ,t'A little while‘S till plan and smile,And
,fault of novel germs,
Mature the unfallen fruit ;Curse
,if thou wilt,thy sires,
Bad husbands of their fires,Who, when they gave thee breath,Failed to bequeath
230
TERMINUS 231
The needful sinew stark as once,
The Baresark marrow to thy bones,Bu t left a legacy of ebbing veins,Inconstant heat and nerveless reins,Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb,Amid the gladiators, halt and numb .
’
“As the bird trims her to the gale,I trim myself to the storm of time,I man the rudder
,reef the sail,
Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime‘Lowly faithfu l, banish fear,Right onward drive unharmed;The port, well worth the cruise, is near,And every wave is charmed.
’
the man of action the approach o f age
is dreaded because it means de feat. The
strong man conscious o f fai ling powers yields to
one stronger than h imsel f because younger.
To Emerson, as a man th inking, the great
weakness o f age was to be found in its lack o f
faith in ideals. He saw old men who accepted
the actual and denied the poss ibil ity o f what they
had not been able to achieve . They praised the
past time and looked askance at the threatening
future . From the timidities o f age which are
o ften mistaken for wisdom, he asked to be de
l ivered, and his prayer was granted .
232 EMERSON
He had lived through a transition period in
thought. Almost all h is contemporaries,includ
ing those who were younger than h imsel f,have
le ft in the ir later utterances a record of disillu
s ion . Carlyle, Ruskin, Matthew Arnold and Ten
nyson were incl ined to s ing d irges over a beauti
ful age o f faith which had van ished before the
advance o f science . James Russell Lowell, w ith
all h is sturdy Americanism yielded to the same
impulse . There was an acknowledgment o f
spiritual de feat. It might be expressed in gallant
language, but the mean ing was none the less
clear.
To Emerson this so-called dis illusion was only
another illus ion . He speaks o f the man “who
during all h is years o f health has planted h imsel f
on the s ide o f progress, but who as soon as he
begins to d ie,checks his forward play, calls in
his troo ps,and becomes conservative . All con
servatives are such from personal de fects . They
can only, l ike inval ids, act on the defensive .
One thing he resolved to do, to"obey the voice
234 EMERSON
l i fe o f the soul in conscious union with the In
finite shal l be for thee the only real existence.
“Teach men that each generation begins the
world afresh, in perfect freedom ; that the pres
ent is no t the prisoner o f the past, but that to-day
holds captive al l the yesterdays, to judge, to ac
cept, to rej ect the ir teachings, as they are shown
by its o‘
wn morn ing sun .
“To thy fellow countrymen thou shalt preach
the gospel o f the New World, that here, here in
America, is the home o f man,that here is the
promise of a new and more excellent social state
than history has recorded .
”
As to death, he had always been unafraid .
When it came at the end o f h is seventy-n inth
year, it found him in the mood that was habitual
to him . He had long ago learned the lesson.
Teach me your mood, 0 patient stars !Who climb each n ight the anc ient sky,Leaving on space no shade, no scars,No trace o f age, no fear to die.
”
THE END
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’
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”
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