Transcendentalism in New England Part 12

The primary thoughts of his philosophy, if such it may be termed, Emerson takes with him wherever he goes. Does he study history, history is the autobiography of the Eternal Mind. The key is in the sentence that begins the Essay on History:

"There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same, and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind, is a party to all that is or can be done, for that is the only and sovereign agent." "This human mind wrote history, and this must read it. The sphinx must solve her own riddle. If the whole of history is in one man, it is all to be explained from individual experience. There is a relation between the hours of our life and the centuries of time. Of the universal mind each individual man is one more incarnation. All its properties consist in him. Each new fact in his private experience flashes a light on what great bodies of men have done, and the crises of his life refer to national crises." In the "Progress of Culture" the same sentiment recurs.

"What is the use of telegraphy? What of newspapers? To know in each social crisis how men feel in Kansas, in California, the wise man waits for no mails, reads no telegrams. He asks his own heart. If they are made as he is, if they breathe the same air, eat of the same wheat, have wives and children, he knows that their joy or resentment rises to the same point as his own. The inviolate soul is in perpetual telegraphic communication with the Source of events, has earlier information, a private despatch, which relieves him of the terror which presses on the rest of the community."

"We are always coming up with the emphatic facts of history in our private experience, and verifying them here. All history becomes subjective; in other words, there is properly no history; only biography. Every mind must know the whole lesson for itself,--must go over the whole ground. What it does not see, what it does not live, it does not know."

In the appreciation of scientific facts the same method avails. Tyndall commends Emerson as "a poet and a profoundly religious man, who is really and entirely undaunted by the discoveries of science, past, present, or prospective." The praise seems to imply some misconception of Emerson's position. Tyndall intimates that Emerson is undaunted where others fear. But this is not so. No man deserves commendation for not dreading precisely what he desires. Emerson, by his principle, is delivered from the alarm of the religious man who has a creed to defend, and from the defiance of the scientific man who has creeds to a.s.sail. To him Nature is but the symbol of spirit; this the scientific men, by their discoveries, are continually proving. The faster they disclose facts, and the more accurately, the more brilliantly do they ill.u.s.trate the lessons of the perfect wisdom. For the scientific _method_ he professes no deep respect; for the scientific _a.s.sumptions_ none whatever. He begins at the opposite end. They start with matter, he starts with mind. They feel their way up, he feels his way down. They observe phenomena, he watches thoughts. They fancy themselves to be gradually pus.h.i.+ng away as illusions the so-called ent.i.ties of the soul; he dwells serenely with those ent.i.ties, rejoicing to see men paying jubilant honor to what they mean to overturn. The facts they bring in, chemical, physiological, biological, Huxley's facts, Helmholtz's, Darwin's, Tyndall's, Spencer's, the ugly facts which the theologians dispute, he accepts with eager hands, and uses to demonstrate the force and harmony of the spiritual laws.

"Science," he says, "was false by being unpoetical. It a.s.sumed to explain a reptile or mollusk, and isolated it,--which is hunting for life in graveyards; reptile or mollusk, or man or angel, only exists in system, in relation. The metaphysician, the poet, only sees each animal form as an inevitable step in the path of the creating mind." "The savans are chatty and vain; but hold them hard to principle and definition, and they become mute and near-sighted.

What is motion? What is beauty? What is matter? What is life? What is force? Push them hard and they will not be loquacious. They will come to Plato, Proclus and Swedenborg. The invisible and imponderable is the sole fact." "The atomic theory is only an interior process _produced_, as geometers say, or the effect of a foregone metaphysical theory. Swedenborg saw gravity to be only an external of the irresistible attractions of affection and faith.

Mountains and oceans we think we understand. Yes, so long as they are contented to be such, and are safe with the geologist; but when they are melted in Promethean alembics and come out men; and then melted again, come out woods, without any abatement, but with an exaltation of power!"

Emerson is faithful in applying his principle to social inst.i.tutions and laws. His faith in ideal justice and love never blenches. In every emergency, political, civil, national, he has been true to his regenerating idea; true as a recreator from the inside, rather than as a reformer of the outside world. A profounder, more consistent, more uncompromising radical does not exist; a less heated, ruffled or anxious one cannot be thought of. He scarcely ever suggested measures, rarely joined in public a.s.semblies, did not feel at home among politicians or agitators. But his thought never swerved from the line of perfect rect.i.tude, his sympathies were always human. His heart was in the anti-slavery movement from the beginning. He was abroad in its stormy days, his steadfast bearing and cheerful countenance carrying hope whenever he appeared. His name stood with that of his wife in the list of signers to the call for the first National Woman's Rights Convention, in 1850. The Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society, the American Society of Arts and Sciences have honored themselves by electing him a member; the Alumni of Harvard University joyfully made him an overseer; he was proposed as rector of the University of Glasgow. Such confidence did the great idealist inspire, that he has been even called to the duty of Examiner at West Point Military Academy. His name is spoken in no company with other than respect, and his influence is felt in places where it is not acknowledged, and would be officially disavowed.

Mr. A. B. Alcott, a townsman of Mr. Emerson, and a close acquaintance, in his "Concord Days" says pleasant things of his friend, just and discerning things, as well as pleasant.

"Consider," he says, "how largely our letters have been enriched by his contributions. Consider, too, the change his views have wrought in our methods of thinking; how he has won over the bigot, the unbeliever, at least to tolerance and moderation, if not acknowledgment, by his circ.u.mspection and candor of statement." "A poet, speaking to individuals as few others can speak, and to persons in their privileged moments, he is heard as none others are. 'Tis every thing to have a true believer in the world, dealing with men and matters as if they were divine in idea and real in fact, meeting persons and events at a glance, directly, not at a millionth remove, and so pa.s.sing fair and fresh into life and literature." "His compositions affect us, not as logic linked in syllogisms, but as voluntaries rather, as preludes, in which one is not tied to any design of air, but may vary his key or not at pleasure, as if improvised without any particular scope of argument; each period, paragraph, being a perfect note in itself, however it may chance chime with its accompaniments in the piece, as a waltz of wandering stars, a dance of Hesperus with Orion."

After this, one is surprised to hear Mr. Alcott say, "I know of but one subtraction from the pleasure the reading of his books--shall I say his conversation?--gives me; his pains to be impersonal or discreet, as if he feared any the least intrusion of himself were an offence offered to self-respect, the courtesy due to intercourse and authors.h.i.+p." To others this exquisite reserve, this delicate withdrawal behind his thought, has seemed not only one of Emerson's peculiar charms, but one of his most subtle powers. Personal magnetism is very delightful for the moment. The exhibition of attractive personal traits is interesting in the lecture room; sometimes in the parlor. The public, large or small, enjoy confidences. But in an age of personalities, voluntary and involuntary, the man who keeps his individual affairs in the background, tells nothing of his private history, holds in his own breast his petty concerns and opinions, and lets thoughts flow through him, as light streams through plate gla.s.s, is more than attractive--is n.o.ble, is venerable. To his impersonality in his books and addresses, Emerson owes perhaps a large measure of his extraordinary influence. You may search his volumes in vain for a trace of egotism. In the lecture room, he seems to be so completely under the spell of his idea, so wholly abstracted from his audience, that he is as one who waits for the thoughts to come, and drops them out one by one, in a species of soliloquy or trance. He is a bodiless idea. When he speaks or writes, the power is that of pure mind. The incidental, accidental, occasional, does not intrude. No abatement on the score of personal antipathy needs to be made. The thought is allowed to present and commend itself. Hence, when so many thoughts are forgotten, buried beneath affectation and verbiage, his gain in brilliancy and value as time goes on; and in an age of ephemeral literature his books find new readers, his mind exerts wider sway. That his philosophy can be recommended as a sound rule to live by for ordinary pract.i.tioners may be questioned. It is better as inspiration than as prescription. For maxims it were wiser to go to Bentham, Mill or Bain. The plodders had best keep to the beaten road.

But for them who need an atmosphere for wings, who require the impulse of great motives, the lift of upbearing aspirations--for the imaginative, the pa.s.sionate, the susceptible, who can achieve nothing unless they attempt the impossible--Emerson is the master. A single thrill sent from his heart to ours is worth more to the heart that feels it, than all the schedules of motive the utilitarian can offer.

X.

THE MYSTIC.

If among the representatives of spiritual philosophy the first place belongs to Mr. Emerson, the second must be a.s.signed to Mr. Amos Bronson Alcott,--older than Mr. Emerson by four years (he was born in 1779), a contemporary in thought, a companion, for years a fellow townsman, and, if that were possible, more purely and exclusively a devotee of spiritual ideas. Mr. Alcott may justly be called a mystic--one of the very small cla.s.s of persons who accept without qualification, and constantly teach the doctrine of the soul's primacy and pre-eminence. He is not a learned man, in the ordinary sense of the term; not a man of versatile mind or various tastes; not a man of general information in worldly or even literary affairs; not a man of extensive commerce with books. Though a reader, and a constant and faithful one, his reading has been limited to books of poetry--chiefly of the meditative and interior sort--and works of spiritual philosophy. Plato, Plotinus, Proclus, Jamblichus, Pythagoras, Boehme, Swedenborg, Fludd, Pordage, Henry More, Law, Crashaw, Selden, are the names oftener than any on his pages and lips. He early made acquaintance with Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress,"

and never ceased to hold it exceedingly precious, at one period making it a rule to read the volume once a year. His books are his friends; his regard for them seems to be personal; he enjoys their society with the feeling that he gives as well as receives. He loves them in part because they love him; consequently, in all his quoting of them, his own mind comes in as introducer and voucher as it were. His indebtedness to them is expressed with the cordiality of an intimate, rather than with the grat.i.tude of a disciple. His own mind is so wakeful and thoughtful, so quick and ready to take the initiative, that it is hard to say in what respect even his favorite and familiar authors have enriched him. What was not originally his own, is so entirely made his own by sympathetic absorption, that the contribution which others have made is not to be distinguished from his native stores. Few men seem less dependent on literature than he.

Mr. Alcott is a thinker, interior, solitary, deeply conversant with the secrets of his own mind, like thinkers of his order, clear, earnest, but not otherwise than monotonous from the reiteration of his primitive ideas. We have called him a mystic. Bearing in mind the derivations of the word--[Greek: myein]--to brood, to meditate, to shut one's self up in the recesses of consciousness, to sink into the depths of one's own being for the purpose of exploring the world which that being contains; of discovering how deep and boundless it is, of meeting in its retreats the form of the Infinite Being who walks there in the evening, and makes his voice audible in the mysterious whispers that breathe over its plains,--it well describes him. He is a philosopher of that school; instead of seeking wisdom by intellectual processes, using induction and deduction, and creeping step by step towards his goal,--he appeals at once to the testimony of consciousness, claims immediate insight, and instead of hazarding a doctrine which he has argued, announces a truth which he has seen; he studies the mystery of being in its inward disclosures, contemplates ultimate laws and fundamental data in his own soul.

While Mr. Emerson's idealism was nourished--so far as it was supplied with nourishment from foreign sources--by the genius of India, Mr.

Alcott's was fed by the speculation of Greece. Kant was not his master, neither was Fichte nor Sch.e.l.ling, but Pythagoras rather; Pythagoras more than Plato, with whom, notwithstanding his great admiration, he is less intimately allied. He talks about Plato, he talks Pythagoras. Of the latter he says:

"Of the great educators of antiquity, I esteem Pythagoras the most eminent and successful; everything of his doctrine and discipline comes commended by its elegance and humanity, and justifies the name he bore of the golden-souled Samian, and founder of Greek culture. He seems to have stood in providential nearness to human sensibility, as if his were a maternal relation as well, and he owned the minds whom he nurtured and educated. The first of philosophers, taking the name for its modesty of pretension, he justified his claim to it in the attainments and services of his followers; his school having given us Socrates, Plato, Pericles, Plutarch, Plotinus, and others of almost equal fame, founders of states and cultures.... He was reverenced by the mult.i.tude as one under the influence of divine inspiration. He abstained from all intoxicating drinks, and from animal food, confining himself to a chaste nutriment; hence his sleep was short and undisturbed; his soul vigilant and pure; his body in state of perfect and invariable health. He was free from the superst.i.tions of his time, and pervaded with a deep sense of duty towards G.o.d, and veneration for his divine attributes and immanency in things. He fixed his mind so intently on the attainment of wisdom, that systems and mysteries inaccessible to others were opened to him by his magic genius and sincerity of purpose. The great principle with which he started, that of being a seeker rather than a possessor of truth, seemed ever to urge him forward with a diligence and activity unprecedented in the history of the past, and perhaps unequalled since. He visited every man who could claim any degree of fame for wisdom or learning; whilst the rules of antiquity and the simplest operations of nature seemed to yield to his researches; and we moderns are using his eyes in many departments of activity into which pure thought enters, being indebted to him for important discoveries alike in science and metaphysics."

It is evident that the New England sage made the Greek philosopher his model in other respects than the adoption of his philosophical method implied. The rules of personal conduct and behavior, of social intercourse, and civil a.s.sociation, were studiously practised on by the American disciple, who seemed never to forget the dignified and gracious figure whose fame charmed him.

Mr. Alcott's philosophical ideas are not many, but they are profound and significant.

"The Dialectic, or Method of the Mind,"--he says in "Concord Days,"

under the head of Ideal Culture,--"const.i.tutes the basis of all culture. Without a thorough discipline in this, our schools and universities give but a showy and superficial training. The knowledge of mind is the beginning of all knowledge; without this, a theology is baseless, the knowledge of G.o.d impossible. Modern education has not dealt with these deeper questions of life and being. It has the future in which to prove its power of conducting a cultus answering to the discipline of the Greek thinkers, Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle."

"As yet we deal with mind with far less certainty than with matter; the realm of intellect having been less explored than the world of the senses, and both are treated conjecturally rather than absolutely. When we come to perceive that intuition is the primary postulate of all intelligence, most questions now perplexing and obscure will become transparent; the lower imperfect methods then take rank where they belong, and are available. The soul leads the senses; the reason the understanding; imagination the memory; instinct and intuition include and prompt the Personality entire."

"The categories of imagination are the poet's tools; those of the reason, the implements of the naturalist. The dialectic philosopher is master of them both. The tools to those only who can handle them skilfully. All others but gash themselves and their subject at best. Ask not a man of understanding to solve a problem in metaphysics. He has neither wit, weight, nor scales for the task.

But a man of reason or of imagination solves readily the problems of understanding, the moment these are fairly stated. Ideas are solvents of all mysteries, whether in matter or in mind."

"Having drank of immortality all night, the genius enters eagerly upon the day's task, impatient of any impertinences jogging the full gla.s.s.... Sleep and see; wake, and report the nocturnal spectacle. Sleep, like travel, enriches, refreshes, by varying the day's perspective, showing us the night side of the globe we traverse day by day. We make transits too swift for our wakeful senses to follow; pa.s.s from solar to lunar consciousness in a twinkling; lapse from forehead and face to occupy our lower parts, and recover, as far as permitted, the keys of genesis and of the fore worlds. 'All truth,' says Porphyry, 'is latent;' but this the soul sometimes beholds, when she is a little liberated by sleep from the employments of the body, and sometimes she extends her sight, but never perfectly reaches the objects of her vision."

"The good alone dream divinely. Our dreams are characteristic of our waking thoughts and states; we are never out of character; never quite another, even when fancy seeks to metamorphose us entirely. The Person is One in all the manifold phases of the Many, through which we transmigrate, and we find ourself perpetually, because we cannot lose ourself personally in the mazes of the many.

'Tis the one soul in manifold shapes. Ever the old friend of the mirror in other face, old and new, yet one in endless revolution and metamorphosis, suggesting a common relations.h.i.+p of forms at their base, with divergent types as these range wider and farther from their central archetype, including all concrete forms in nature, each returning into other, and departing therefrom in endless revolution."

"What is the bad but lapse from good,--the good blindfolded?"

"One's foes are of his own household. If his house is haunted, it is by himself only. Our choices are our Saviors or Satans."

"The celestial man is composed more largely of light and ether. The demoniac man of fire and vapor. The animal man of embers and dust."

"The sacraments, symbolically considered, are

Baptism, or purification by water; Continence, or chast.i.ty in personal indulgences; Fasting, or temperance in outward delights; Prayer, or aspiring aims; Labor, or prayer in act or pursuits.

These are the regimen of inspiration and thought."

The following, from the chapter ent.i.tled "Genesis and Lapse," in "Concord Days," extends Mr. Alcott's principle to a deep problem in speculative truth. He quotes Coleridge thus:

"The great maxim in legislation, intellectual or physical, is _subordinate_, not _exclude_. Nature, in her ascent, leaves nothing behind; but at each step subordinates and glorifies,--ma.s.s, crystal, organ, sensation, sentience, reflection."

Then he proceeds:

"Taken in reverse order of descent, spirit puts itself before; at each step protrudes faculty in feature, function, organ, limb, subordinating to glorify also,--person, volition, thought, sensibility, sense, body,--animating thus and rounding creation to soul and sense alike. The naturalist cannot urge too strongly the claims of physical, nor the plea of the idealist be too vigorously pressed for metaphysical studies. One body in one soul. Nature and spirit are inseparable, and are best studied as a unit. Nature ends where spirit begins. The idealist's point of view is the obverse of the naturalist's, and each must accost his side with a first love before use has worn off the bloom, and seduced their vision....

"Whether man be the successor or predecessor of his inferiors in nature, is to be determined by exploring faithfully the realms of matter and of spirit alike, and complementing the former in the latter. Whether surveyed in order, descending or ascending, in genesis or process, from the side of the idealist or of the materialist, the keystone of the arch in either case is an ideal, under-propped by nature or upheld by mind."

"Man, the sum total of animals, transcends all in being a Person, a responsible creature. Man is man, in virtue of being a Person, a self-determining will, held accountable to a spiritual Ideal. To affirm that brute creatures are endowed with freedom and choice, the sense of responsibility, were to exalt them into a spiritual existence and personality; whereas, it is plain enough that they are not above deliberation and choice, but below it, under the sway of Fate, as men are when running counter to reason and conscience.

The will bridges the chasm between man and brute, and frees the fated creature he were else. Solitary, not himself, the victim of appet.i.te, inmate of the den, is man, till freed from individualism, and delivered into his free Personality."

The next extract is from the Chapter on Ideals:

"Enthusiasm is essential to the successful attainment of any high endeavor; without which incentive, one is not sure of his equality to the humblest undertakings even. And he attempts little worth living for, if he expects completing his task in an ordinary lifetime. This translation is for the continuance of his work here begun; but for whose completion, time and opportunity were all too narrow and brief. Himself is the success or failure. Step by step one climbs the pinnacles of excellence; life itself is but the stretch for that mountain of holiness. Opening here with humanity, 'tis the aiming at divinity in ever-ascending circles of aspiration and endeavor. Who ceases to aspire, dies. Our pursuits are our prayers, our ideals our G.o.ds."

In the journals of Theodore Parker, Mr. Alcott is represented as taking an active part in the thinking and talking of the period immediately preceding the establishment of the "Dial," and as expressing audacious opinions; among others, this--which suggests Hegel, though it might have reached Mr. Alcott from a different quarter--that the Almighty progressively unfolds himself towards His own perfection; and this, that the hideous things in nature are reflections of man's animalism; that the world being the product of all men, man is responsible for its evil condition; a doctrine similar to the Augustinian doctrine of the Fall, hinted at also in the Book of Genesis. It was the doctrine of Jacob Boehme, one of Mr. Alcott's seers, that as the inevitable consequence of sin, the operation of the Seven Qualities in Lucifer's dominion became perverted and corrupted. The fiery principle, instead of creating the heavenly glory, produced wrath and torment. The astringent quality, that should give stability and coherence, became hard and stubborn. The sweet was changed to bitter; the bitter to raging fury. This earth--once a province of the heavenly world--was broken up into a chaos of wrath and darkness, roaring with the din of conflicting elements. Eden became a waste; its innocence departed, its friendly creatures began to bite and tear one another, and man became an exile and a bondsman to the elements he once controlled.

In 1837 Mr. Alcott--not Mr. Emerson--was the reputed leader of the Transcendentalists, none being more active than he in diffusing the ideas of the Spiritual Philosophy, and none being so uncompromising in his interpretations of them. He was generally present at the meetings of the informal Club which, under different names, held meetings at the private houses of members, from 1836 to 1850. Mr. Ripley had consultations with him in regard to the proposed community which was later established at Brook Farm. When Mr. Garrison founded the American Anti-Slavery Society, Mr. Alcott joined that cause, and was faithful to it till the end. With the movement for the emanc.i.p.ation and elevation of women, he was a sympathizer. He was one of the reformers who met at Chardon Street Chapel, in 1840, to discuss plans of universal reform--Garrison, Edmund Quincy, Henry C. Wright, Theodore Parker, William H. Channing, Christopher Greene, Maria Chapman and Abby Kelly being of the number. In those days he was intimate with Emerson, Ripley, Hedge, Brownson, Clarke, Bartol, Stetson, and well known as a leader in speculative thought. His period of Pythagorean discipline had already begun. In 1835 he put away the use of animal food. Declining to join either the Brook Farm community, or that of Adin Ballou, at Milford, he undertook to do his part towards the solution of the "labor and culture problem," by supporting himself by manual labor in Concord, working during the summer in field and garden, and in winter chopping wood in the village woodlands, all the time keeping his mind intent on high thoughts. To conventional people he was an object of ridicule, not unmingled with contempt, as an improvident visionary. But Dr. Channing held him in admiration.

"Mr. Alcott," he wrote to a friend, "little suspects how my heart goes out to him. One of my dearest ideas and hopes is the union of _labor_ and _culture_. I wish to see labor honored and united with the free development of the intellect and heart. Mr. Alcott, hiring himself out for day labor, and at the same time living in a region of high thought, is perhaps the most interesting object in our commonwealth. I do not care much for Orpheus, in "The Dial," but Orpheus at the plough is after my own heart. There he teaches a grand lesson, more than most of us teach by the pen."

The Orpheus in "The Dial" perplexed others beside Dr. Channing, and amused nearly all he perplexed--all whom he did not exasperate and enrage. The "Orphic Sayings"--Mr. Alcott's contribution to the magazine--attracted the attention of the critics, who made them an excuse for a.s.sailing with ridicule, the entire transcendental party.

"Ident.i.ty halts in diversity." "The poles of things are not integrated."

"Love globes, wisdom orbs, all things." "Love is the Genius of Spirit."

"Alway are the divine Gemini intertwined,"--the very school-boys repeated these dark sayings, with a tone that consigned the "Dial" and its oracles to the insane asylum. Yet the thought was intelligible, and even simple. In ordinary prose it would have sounded like common-place.

It was the mystic phrase, and the perpetual reiteration of absolute principles that made the propositions seem obscure. The extracts from these "Sayings," given in a previous chapter, are remarkable for crystalline clearness of conception, as well as of expression. The writer's aim evidently was to deliver what he had to utter, in language of exact outline, and with the utmost economy of words. A singular sincerity characterized his mind and his life; he formed his beliefs on ideal laws, and based his conduct on them. In conduct and bearing, as in thought, he was a disciple of the philosopher of Samos. Fascinated by his vision of an ideal society, and determined to commence with a scheme of his own, he resolutely began by withdrawing from civil society as const.i.tuted, declined to pay the tax imposed by the authorities, and was lodged in Concord jail, where he would have stayed, had not his friend, Samuel h.o.a.r, father of Judge h.o.a.r, paid the tax for him, against his wish, and procured his immediate release. This was in 1843. The next spring found him inspecting lands suitable for a community. The next summer saw him, with some English friends, domesticated on the "Wyman Farm," at Harvard, a piece of ninety acres, bordering the Nashua river, with an old house on it. "Fruitlands"--for so the community was named--did not justify its name. A single summer and autumn dissipated the hopes planted there, and with them the faith that the world could be refas.h.i.+oned by artificial arrangements of circ.u.mstances.

The surprising thing was, that such a man should ever have fallen into the notion that it could; he was an idealist; his faith was in the soul--not in organization of any sort; he was a regenerator, not a reformer. All the good work he had done was of the regenerative kind, through an awakening of the spiritual powers of individuals. His mission was to educate--to draw out souls, whether of children or adults. Faith in the soul was his inspiration and his guide. He early accepted the office of teacher, made it the calling of his life, and in the exercise of it, kept in mind this faith in the soul as the highest of qualifications. To understand his enthusiasm, it is only necessary to apprehend his idea. In the chapter on Childhood, in "Concord Days," that idea is thus conveyed: