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

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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

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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

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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 .”

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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 ?

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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

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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 ?

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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

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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,

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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.

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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

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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.

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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 .

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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 .

’

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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 .

”

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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.”

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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 .”

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"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~

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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 .

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

BOOKS BY

RALPH WALDO EMERSONFrom the list of HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

His Authorized Publishers

EMERSON’

S ! OURNALS :Edited by Edward W. Emerson and Waldo EmersonForbes. A chrono logical record of Emerson

’

s life from1 820 to 1 876, pub lis in a style uniform with the Ceutenary Edition of his Works. Complete in ten vo lumes,which are so ld either separately or as a set.“N0 more remarkab le history o f the human intellect inits untrammeled development has ever b een written ,

”

said the Literary Digest o f this intimate reco rd Of

Emerson’

s spiritual and intellectual development . All

Emerson’

s nob ility o f thought and felicity o f expression appear at their b est in these vo lumes, while heyond this they have a deep human interest as a freshand living picture o f the man and his period. Fromevery po int o f view the ! ournals rank with th e best o fEmerson

’

s writings, and without them his Works are

incomplet e.

EMERSON’

S WORKS :New Centenary Edition with portraits, biographicalsketch, no tes and index. A lso published in the River

side Po cket Edition. Flexib le leather bindings :

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MISCELLANIESENGLISH TRAITS NATURAL HISTORY OF INTELCONDUCT OF LIFESOCIETY AND SOLITUDEFor information regarding the format and price Of these

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s separate andco llected writings, write to

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