Transcendentalism in New England Part 6

"The aim of the Transcendentalists is high. They profess to look not only beyond facts, but, without the aid of facts, to principles. What is this but Plato's doctrine of innate, eternal and immutable ideas on the consideration of which all science is founded? Truly, the human mind advances but too often in a circle.

The New School has abandoned Bacon, only to go back and wander in the groves of the Academy, and to bewilder themselves with the dreams which first arose in the fervid imagination of the Greeks.

Without questioning the desirableness of this end, of considering general truths without any previous examination of particulars, we may well doubt the power of modern philosophers to attain it.

Again, they are busy in the enquiry (to adopt their own phraseology) after the Real and Absolute, as distinguished from the Apparent. Not to repeat the same doubt as to their success, we may at least request them to beware lest they strip the truth of its relation to Humanity, and thus deprive it of its usefulness."

We quote this pa.s.sage not merely to show how inevitably the best intentioned critics of Transcendentalism fell into sarcasm, nor to ill.u.s.trate the species of error into which the "Sensational" philosophy betrayed even candid minds; but to call attention to another point, namely, the general misconception of the practical aims and purposes of the new school. It was a common prejudice that Transcendentalists were visionaries and enthusiasts, who in pursuit of principles neglected duties, and while seeking for The Real and The Absolute forgot the actual and the relative. Macaulay puts the case strongly in his article on Lord Bacon:

"To sum up the whole; we should say that the aim of the Platonic philosophy was to exalt man into a G.o.d. The aim of the Baconian philosophy was to provide man with what he requires while he continues to be man. The aim of the Platonic philosophy was to raise us far above vulgar wants. The aim of the Baconian philosophy was to supply our wants. The former aim was n.o.ble; but the latter was attainable. Plato drew a good bow; but, like Acestes in Virgil, he aimed at the stars; and though there was no want of strength and skill, the shot was thrown away. Bacon fixed his eye on a mark which was placed on the earth, and within bow shot, and hit it in the white. The philosophy of Plato began in words and ended in words--n.o.ble words indeed; words such as were to be expected from the finest of human intellects exercising boundless control over the finest of human languages. The philosophy of Bacon began in observations and ended in arts. The smallest actual good is better than the most magnificent promises of impossibilities. The truth is, that in those very matters for the sake of which they neglected all the vulgar interests of mankind, the ancient philosophers did nothing or worse than nothing--they promised what was impracticable; they despised what was practicable; they filled the world with long words and long beards; and they left it as wicked and as ignorant as they found it."

Subst.i.tute Idealism for Platonism, and Transcendentalists for ancient philosophers, and this expresses the judgment of "sensible men" of the last generation, on Transcendentalism. It was not perceived that the two schools of philosophy aimed at producing the same results, but by different methods; that the "Sensationalist" worked up from beneath by material processes, while the "Idealist" worked downward from above by intellectual ones; that the former tried to push men up by mechanical appliances, and the latter endeavored to draw them up by spiritual attraction; that while the disciples of Bacon operated on man as if he was a complex animal, a creature of nature and of circ.u.mstances, who was borne along with the material progress of the planet, but had no independent power of flight, the disciples of Kant and Fichte a.s.sumed that man was a creative, recreative force, a being who had only to be conscious of the capacities within him to shape circ.u.mstances according to the pattern shown him on the Mount. The charge of shooting at stars is puerile. The only use they would make of stars was to "hitch wagons"

to them. The Transcendentalists of New England were the most strenuous workers of their day, and at the problems which the day flung down before them. The most strenuous, and the most successful workers too.

They achieved more practical benefit for society, in proportion to their numbers and the duration of their existence, than any body of Baconians of whom we ever heard. Men and women are healthier in their bodies, happier in their domestic and social relations, more contented in their estate, more ambitious to enlarge their opportunities, more eager to acquire knowledge, more kind and humane in their sympathies, more reasonable in their expectations, than they would have been if Margaret Fuller and Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker and George Ripley and Bronson Alcott, and the rest of their fellow believers and fellow workers had not lived. It is the fas.h.i.+on of our generation to hold that progress is, and must of necessity be, exceedingly gradual; and that no safe advance is ever made except at snail's pace. But ever and anon the mind of man refutes the notion by starting under the influence of a thought, and leaping over long reaches of s.p.a.ce at a bound.

Transcendentalism gave one of these demonstrations, sufficient to refute the vulgar prejudice. Its brief history may have ill.u.s.trated the truth of Wordsworth's lines,

"That 'tis a thing impossible to frame Conceptions equal to the Soul's desires; And the most difficult of tasks to keep Heights which the Soul is competent to gain."

The heights were gained nevertheless, and kept long enough for a view of the land of promise; and ever since, though the ascent is a dim recollection, and the great forms have come to look like images in dreams, and the mighty voices are but ghostly echoes, men and women have been happy in laboring for the heaven their fathers believed they saw.

VII.

PRACTICAL TENDENCIES.

Mr. Emerson--we find ourselves continually appealing to him as the finest interpreter of the transcendental movement--made a confession which its enemies were quick to seize on and turn to their purpose.

"It is a sign of our times, conspicuous to the coa.r.s.est observer, that many intelligent and religious persons withdraw themselves from the common labors and compet.i.tions of the market and the caucus, and betake themselves to a certain solitary and critical way of living, from which no solid fruit has yet appeared to justify their separation. They hold themselves aloof; they feel the disproportion between themselves and the work offered them, and they prefer to ramble in the country and perish of ennui, to the degradation of such charities and such ambitions as the city can propose to them. They are striking work and crying out for somewhat worthy to do. They are lonely; the spirit of their writing and conversation is lonely; they repel influences; they shun general society; they incline to shut themselves in their chamber in the house; to live in the country rather than in the town; and to find their tasks and amus.e.m.e.nts in solitude. They are not good citizens; not good members of society; unwillingly they bear their part of the public and private burdens; they do not willingly share in the public charities, in the public religious rites, in the enterprises of education, of missions, foreign or domestic, in the abolition of the slave trade, or in the temperance society. They do not even like to vote. The philanthropists inquire whether Transcendentalism does not mean sloth; they had as lief hear that their friend is dead as that he is a Transcendentalist; for then is he paralyzed, and can do nothing for humanity."

This extreme statement must not be taken as either complete or comprehensive. They who read it in the lecture on "The Transcendentalist"

must be careful to notice Mr. Emerson's qualifications, that "this retirement does not proceed from any whim on the part of the separators;" that "this part is chosen both from temperament and from principle; with some unwillingness too, and as a choice of the less of two evils;" "that they are joyous, susceptible, affectionate;" that "they wish a just and even fellows.h.i.+p or none;" that "what they do is done because they are overpowered by the humanities that speak on all sides;" that "what you call your fundamental inst.i.tutions, your great and holy causes, seem to them great abuses, and, when nearly seen, paltry matters." But even this apology does not quite exonerate his friends.

Transcendentalism certainly did produce its share of idle, dreamy, useless people--as "Sensationalism" produced its share of coa.r.s.e, greedy, low-lived and b.e.s.t.i.a.l ones. But its legitimate fruit was earnestness, aspiration and enthusiastic energy.

We must begin with the philosophy of Man. The Transcendentalist claims for all men as a natural endowment what "Evangelical" Christianity ascribes to the few as a special gift of the Spirit. This faith comes to expression continually. The numbers of the "Dial" are alight with it.

"Man is a rudiment and embryon of G.o.d: Eternity shall develop in him the Divine Image."

"The Soul works from centre to periphery, veiling her labors from the ken of the senses."

"The sensible world is spirit in magnitude outspread before the senses for their a.n.a.lysis, but whose synthesis is the soul herself, whose prothesis is G.o.d."

"The time may come, in the endless career of the soul, when the facts of incarnation, birth, death, descent into matter, and ascension from it, shall comprise no part of her history; when she herself shall survey this human life with emotions akin to those of the naturalist on examining the relics of extinct races of beings."

"Of the perception now fast becoming a conscious fact,--that there is one mind, and that also the powers and privileges which lie in any, lie in all; that I, as a man, may claim and appropriate whatever of true or fair or good or strong has anywhere been exhibited; that Moses and Confucius, Montaigne and Leibnitz are not so much individuals as they are parts of man and parts of me, and my intelligence proves them my own,--literature is far the best expression."

Thus Mr. Alcott and Mr. Emerson. Thomas T. Stone,--a modest, retiring, deep and interior man, a child of the spiritual philosophy, which he faithfully lived in and up to, and preached with singular fulness and richness of power--makes his statement thus, in an article ent.i.tled "Man in the Ages," contributed to the third number of the "Dial":

"Man is man, despite of all the lies which would convince him he is not, despite of all the thoughts which would strive to unman him.

There is a spirit in man, an inspiration from the Almighty. What is, is. The eternal is eternal; the temporary must pa.s.s it by, leaving it to stand evermore. There is now, there has been always, power among men to subdue the ages, to dethrone them, to make them mere outgoings and servitors of man. It is needed only that we a.s.sert our prerogative,--that man do with hearty faith affirm: 'I am; in me being is. Ages, ye come and go; appear and disappear; products, not life; vapors from the surface of the soul, not living fountain. Ye are of me, for me, not I of you or for you. Not with you my affinity, but with the Eternal. I am; I live; spirit I have not; spirit am I.'"

Samuel D. Robbins, another earnest prophet of the spiritual man, utters the creed again in the way peculiar to himself.

"There is an infinity in the human soul which few have yet believed, and after which few have aspired. There is a lofty power of moral principle in the depths of our nature which is nearly allied to Omnipotence; compared with which the whole force of outward nature is more feeble than an infant's grasp. There is a spiritual insight to which the pure soul reaches, more clear and prophetic, more wide and vast than all telescopic vision can typify. There is a faith in G.o.d, and a clear perception of His will and designs, and providence, and glory, which gives to its possessor a confidence and patience and sweet composure, under every varied and troubling aspect of events, such as no man can realize who has not felt its influences in his own heart. There is a communion with G.o.d, in which the soul feels the presence of the unseen One, in the profound depths of its being, with a vivid distinctness and a holy reverence such as no word can describe.

There is a state of union with G.o.d, I do not say often reached, yet it has been attained in this world, in which all the past and present and future seem reconciled, and eternity is won and enjoyed: and G.o.d and man, earth and heaven, with all their mysteries are apprehended in truth as they lie in the mind of the Infinite."

The poet chimes in with the prophet. We marked for quotation several pa.s.sages from the "Dial," but a few detached stanzas must suffice. C. P.

Cranch opens his lines to the ocean thus:

Tell me, brothers, what are we?

Spirits bathing in the sea of Deity.

Half afloat, and half on land, Wis.h.i.+ng much to leave the strand, Standing, gazing with devotion, Yet afraid to trust the ocean, Such are we.

And thus he closes lines to the Aurora Borealis:

But a better type thou art Of the strivings of the heart, Reaching upwards from the earth To the _Soul_ that gave it birth.

When the noiseless beck of night Summons out the inner light That hath hid its purer ray Through the lapses of the day,-- Then like thee, thou Northern Morn, Instincts which we deemed unborn Gus.h.i.+ng from their hidden source Mount upon their heavenward course, And the spirit seeks to be Filled with G.o.d's eternity.

That a philosophy like this will impel to aspiration need not be said; aspiration is the soul of it. The Transcendentalist was constantly on the wing.

"On all hands men's existence is converted into a preparation for existence. We do not properly live, in these days; but everywhere with patent inventions and complex arrangements are getting ready to live. The end is lost in the means, life is smothered in appliances. We cannot get to ourselves, there are so many external comforts to wade through. Consciousness stops half way. Reflection is dissipated in the circ.u.mstances of our environment. Goodness is exhausted in aids to goodness, and all the vigor and health of the soul is expended in quack contrivances to build it up."... What the age requires is not books, but example, high, heroic example; not words but deeds; not societies but men--men who shall have their root in themselves, and attract and convert the world by the beauty of their fruits. All truth must be living, before it can be adequately known or taught. Men are anterior to systems. Great doctrines are not the origin, but the product of great lives. The Cynic practice must precede the Stoic philosophy, and out of Diogenes's tub came forth in the end the wisdom of Epictetus, the eloquence of Seneca, and the piety of Antonine."...

"The religious man lives for one great object; to perfect himself, to unite himself by purity with G.o.d, to fit himself for heaven by cheris.h.i.+ng within him a heavenly disposition. He has discovered that he has a soul; that his soul is himself; that he changes not with the changing things of life, but receives its discipline from them; that man does not live by bread alone, but that the most real of all things, inasmuch as they are the most enduring, are the things which are not seen; that faith and love and virtue are the sources of his life, and that one realises nothing, except he lay fast hold on them. He extracts a moral lesson, a lesson of endurance or of perseverance for himself, or a new evidence of G.o.d and of his own immortal destiny, from every day's hard task."

That last strain came from the man who for many years has been known as the foremost musical critic of New England, if not of America, John S.

Dwight. Another writes:

"The soul lies buried in a ruined city, struggling to be free and calling for aid. The worldly trafficker in life's caravan hears its cries, and says, it is a prisoned maniac. But one true man stops and with painful toil lifts aside the crumbling fragments; till at last he finds beneath the choking ma.s.s a mangled form of exceeding beauty. Dazzling is the light to eyes long blind; weak are the limbs long prisoned; faint is the breath long pent. But oh! that mantling flush, that liquid eye, that elastic spring of renovated strength. The deliverer is folded to the breast of an angel."

The duty of self-culture is made primary and is eloquently preached. The piece from which this extract is taken, ent.i.tled "The Art of Life" is anonymous, but supposed to be from Emerson's pen:

"The work of life, so far as the individual is concerned, and that to which the scholar is particularly called, is _Self-Culture_, the perfect unfolding of our individual nature. To this end above all others, the art of which I speak directs our attention and points our endeavor. There is no man, it is presumed, to whom this object is wholly indifferent, who would not willingly possess this too, along with other prizes, provided the attainment of it were compatible with personal ease and worldly good. But the business of self-culture admits of no compromise. Either it must be made a distinct aim or wholly abandoned."

But it is time wasted to speak on this point. It has been objected to Transcendentalism that it made self-culture too important, carrying it to the point of selfishness, sacrificing in its behalf, sympathy, brotherly love, sentiments of patriotism, personal fidelity and honor, and rejoicing in the production of a "mountainous Me" fed at the expense of life's sweetest humanities; and Goethe is straightway cited as the Transcendental apostle of the gospel of heartless indifference. But allowing the charge against Goethe to rest unrefuted, it must be made against him as a man, not as a Transcendentalist; and even were it true of him as a Transcendentalist, it was not true of Kant or Fichte, of Schleiermacher or Herder; of Jean Paul or Novalis; of Coleridge, Carlyle or Wordsworth; and who ever intimated that it was true of Emerson, who has been one of the most industrious teachers of his generation, and one of the most earnest wors.h.i.+ppers of the genius of his native land;--of Margaret Fuller, whose life was a quickening flood of intellectual influence;--of Bronson Alcott, who, every winter for years, has carried his seed corn to the far West, seeking only a receptive furrow for his treasured being;--of Theodore Parker, who sacrificed precious days of study, his soul's pa.s.sion for knowledge, his honorable ambition to achieve a scholar's fame, in order that his country, in her time of trial, might not want what he was able to give;--of Wm. Henry Channing, to whom the thought of humanity is an inspiration, and "sacrifice an all sufficing joy;"--of George Ripley, who offered himself, all that he had and was, that the experiment of an honest friendly society might be fairly tried? By "self-culture" these and the rest of their brotherhood meant the culture of that n.o.bler self which includes heart, and conscience, sympathy and spirituality, not as incidental ingredients, but as essential qualities. Self-hood they never identified with selfishness; nor did they ever confound or a.s.sociate its attainment with the acquisition of place, power, wealth, or eminent repute; the person was more to them than the individual; they sought no reward except for service; and the consciousness of serving faithfully was their best reward.

To Transcendentalism belongs the credit of inaugurating the theory and practice of dietetics which is preached so a.s.siduously now by enlightened physiologists. The people who regarded man as a soul, first taught the wisdom that is now inculcated by people who regard man as a body. The doctrine that human beings live on air and light; that food should be simple and nutritious; that coa.r.s.e meats should be discarded and fiery liquors abolished; that wines should be subst.i.tuted for "spirits," light wines for heavy, and pure water for wines;--has in all ages been taught by mystics and idealists. The ancient master of it was Pythagoras. Their idea was, that as the body was, for the time being, the dwelling-place of the soul, its lodging and home, its prison or its palace, its organ, its instrument, its box of tools, the medium of its activity, it must be kept in perfect condition for these high offices.

They honored the flesh in the n.o.bility of their care of it. No sour ascetics they, but generous feeders on essences and elixirs; no mortifiers of matter, but purifiers and refiners of it; regarding it as too exquisitely mingled and tempered a substance to be tortured and imbruted. The materialist prescribes temperance, continence, sobriety, in order that life may be long, and comfortable, and free from disease.

The idealist prescribes them, in order that life may be intellectual, serene, pacific, beneficent.

The chief mystic of the transcendental band has been the chief prophet of this innocent word. "The New Ideas," wrote Mr. Alcott, "bear direct on all the economies of life. They will revise old methods, and inst.i.tute new cultures. I look with special hope to their effect on the regimen of the land. Our present modes of agriculture exhaust the soil, and must, while life is made thus sensual and secular; the narrow covetousness which prevails in trade, in labor, in exchanges, ends in depraving the land; it breeds disease, decline, in the flesh,--debauches and consumes the heart." "The Soul's Banquet is an art divine. To mould this statue of flesh from chaste materials, kneading it into comeliness and strength, this is Promethean; and this we practise, well or ill, in all our thoughts, acts, desires. I would abstain from the fruits of oppression and blood, and am seeking means of entire independence. This, were I not holden by penury unjustly, would be possible. One miracle we have wrought nevertheless, and shall soon work all of them;--our wine is water,--flesh, bread;--drugs, fruits;--and we defy, meekly, the satyrs all, and Esculapius."

"It was the doctrine of the Samian Sage, that whatsoever food obstructs divination, is prejudicial to purity and chast.i.ty of mind and body, to temperance, health, sweetness of disposition, suavity of manners, grace of form and dignity of carriage, should be shunned. Especially should those who would apprehend the deepest wisdom, and preserve through life the relish for elegant studies and pursuits, abstain from flesh, cheris.h.i.+ng the justice which animals claim at men's hands, nor slaughtering them for food or profit." "A purer civilization than ours can yet claim to be, is to inspire the genius of mankind with the skill to deal dutifully with soils and souls, exalt agriculture and manculture into a religion of art; the freer interchange of commodities which the current world-wide intercourse promotes, spreads a more various, wholesome, cla.s.sic table, whereby the race shall be refined of traits reminding too plainly of barbarism and the beast." Said Timotheus of Plato, "they who dine with the philosopher have nothing to complain of the next morning." That the doctrine has its warm, glowing side, appears in a characteristic poem in the little volume called "Tablets."

The anchorite's plea was not always as good as his practice. Arguing the point once with a sagacious man of the world, he urged as a reason for abstinence from animal food that one thereby distanced the animal. For the eating of beef encouraged the bovine quality, and the pork diet repeats the trick of Circe, and changes men into swine. But, rejoined the friend, if abstinence from animal food leaves the animal out, does not partaking of vegetable food put the vegetable in? I presume the potato diet will change man into a potato. And what if the potatoes be small! The philosopher's reply is not recorded. But in his case the beast did disappear, and the leek has never become prominent. In his case health, strength, agility, sprightliness, cheerfulness, have been wholly compatible with disuse of animal food. Few men have preserved the best uses of body and mind so long unimpaired. Few have lost so few days; have misused so few; are able to give a good account of so many.

The vegetarian of seventy-six shames many a cannibal of forty.

The Transcendentalist was by nature a reformer. He could not be satisfied with men as they were. His doctrine of the capacities of men, even in its most moderate statement, kindled to enthusiasm his hope of change. However his disgust may have kept him aloof for a time, his sympathy soon brought him back, and his faith sent him to the front of the battle. In beginning his lecture on "Man The Reformer," Mr. Emerson does not dissemble his hope that each person whom he addresses has "felt his own call to cast aside all evil customs, timidities and limitations, and to be in his place a free and helpful man, a reformer, a benefactor, not content to slip through the world like a footman or a spy, escaping by his nimbleness and apologies as many knocks as he can, but a brave and upright man, who must find or cut a straight path to everything excellent in the earth, and not only go honorably himself, but make it easier for all who follow him, to go in honor and with benefit." "The power," he declares, "which is at once spring and regulator in all efforts of reform, is the conviction that there is an infinite worthiness in man, which will appear at the call of worth, and that all particular reforms are the removing of some impediment. Is it not the highest duty that man should be honored in us?" "In the history of the world" the same great teacher remarks, "the doctrine of Reform had never such scope as at the present hour. Lutherans, Herrnhutters, Jesuits, Monks, Quakers, Knox, Wesley, Swedenborg, Bentham, in their accusations of society, all respected something,--church or state, literature or history, domestic usages, the market town, the dinner table, coined money. But now all these and all things else hear the trumpet and must rush to judgment,--Christianity, the laws, commerce, schools, the farm, the laboratory: and not a kingdom, town, statute, rite, calling, man, or woman but is threatened by the new spirit." "Let me feel that I am to be a lover. I am to see to it that the world is the better for me, and to find my reward in the act. Love would put a new face on this weary old world in which we dwell as pagans and enemies too long, and it would warm the heart to see how fast the vain diplomacy of statesmen, the impotence of armies, and navies, and lines of defence, would be superseded by this unarmed child."

The method of reform followed from the principle. It was the method of individual awakening and regeneration, and was to be conducted "through the simplest ministries of family, neighborhood, fraternity, quite wide of a.s.sociations and inst.i.tutions." "The true reformer," it was proclaimed, "initiates his labor in the precincts of private life, and makes it, not a set of measures, not an utterance, not a pledge merely, but a life; and not an impulse of a day, but commensurate with human existence: a tendency towards perfection of being." The Transcendentalist might easily become an enthusiast from excess of faith; but a fanatic, with a tinge of melancholy in his disposition, a drop of malignity in his blood, he could not be. He was less a reformer of human circ.u.mstance than a regenerator of the human spirit, and he was never a destroyer except as destruction accompanied the process of regeneration.