Recollections and Impressions, 1822-1890

XII.

MY TEACHERS

Among Englishmen, I owe the most to James Martineau, at the time of my ordination (1847), a Unitarian clergyman in Liverpool. His lectures in the Unitarian controversy (1839) on "Christianity without Priest and without Ritual," on "The Christian View of Moral Evil," on "The Bible: What It Is and What It is Not"; his articles on "Distinctive Types of Christianity," on "Creeds and Heresies of Early Christianity," on "The Ethics of Christendom," on "The Creed of Christendom," on "St. Paul and His Modern Students," made a profound impression on my mind. One passage in particular, at the close of the essay on "The Ethics of Christendom," still lingers in my memory:

The old antagonism between the world that now is and any other that has been or is to come, has been modified, or has entirely ceased… Here is the spot, now is the time for the most devoted service of God. No strains of heaven will wake man into prayer, if the common music of humanity stirs him not. The saintly company of spirits will throng around him in vain if he finds no angels of duty and affection in his children, neighbors, and friends. If no heavenly voices wander around him in the present, the future will be but the dumb change of the shadow on the dial. In short, higher stages of existence are not the refuge of this, but the complement to it; and it is the proper wisdom of the affections not to escape the one in order to seek the other, but to flow forth in purifying copiousness on both.

Martineau's intellectual fidelity, accurate learning, earnestness of feeling, were exceedingly fascinating.

In this country Ralph Waldo Emerson was the great teacher. He gave an atmosphere rather than a dogma. He was air and light. He is best described, not as a philosopher, a man of letters, a poet, but as a seer. His gift was that of insight. This he tried to render comprehensive, searching, intelligent, accurate, by reading, study, meditation, the acquaintance of distinguished men; but he was never beguiled into thinking that learning, eloquence, wit, constituted his peculiarity. He had a penetrating, eager, questioning look. His head was thrust out as if in quest of knowledge. His gaze was steady and intense. His speech was laconic and to the purpose. His direct manner suggested a wish for closer acquaintance with the mind. His very courtesy, which was invariable and exquisite in its way, had an air of inquiry about it. There was no varnish, no studied grace of motion or demeanor, no manifest desire to please, but a kind of wistfulness as of one who took you at your best and wanted to draw it out. He accosted the soul, and with the winning persuasiveness which befits friendliness on human terms. There was a certain shyness which indicated the modesty which is born of the spirit.

But a commanding doer he certainly was not; that is, he was no man of expedients, of practical resources, of merely executive will. He appreciated this kind of ability, as his lecture on Napoleon shows, but he possessed little of it, his Yankee ingenuity being more confined in its range. The moral courage belonged to him, the earnestness, the faith, but his ethereal qualities lacked driving force. His principles made him interested in every movement of reform, for he had a boundless hope which led him sometimes into extravagant anticipations of truth and benefit. Every sign of life, intellectual, moral, spiritual, caught his eye, and so long as it promised new developments of power his eager sympathy went with it, but when the creative period ceased he turned away. He early enlisted in the anti-slavery cause, not because he had entire confidence in the negro, or specially liked the abolitionists, but because he demanded the utmost liberty for all men in order that substantial advantages might be widely shared; but he was not prominent among the workers of that reform. His name stood foremost in the list of those who claimed the emancipation of woman from social or political disability, not that he was a worker in the woman's-rights phalanx, not that he looked for any immediate benefit from that agitation, or felt any particular interest in the leaders or in the success of that individual crusade, but that he was in favor of the largest opportunity for all human beings, and wished every particle of power to be used. From the first he welcomed the Free Religious Association as giving promise of original light, greater breadth, fresh vigor, new revelations of knowledge in that most ideal, but most deplorably limited, of all spheres; but when in his view that promise was unfulfilled, though his name still stood with those of its vice-presidents, he ceased to take any part in its proceedings or to feel any personal concern in its affairs. There was something theoretical, speculative, in his attitude as a reformer. His philosophy pledged him to the utmost individualism, and this called for the utmost liberty, that each might receive all he could of the divine fulness and be as much as his nature required. Hence his own limited expectation; hence his enthusiasm in behalf of individuals like Walt Whitman, John Brown, Henry Thoreau; hence the light that came into his eyes when he sat in some reform convention where high thoughts were spoken. His word was given, and it was always inspiring, emancipating, uplifting, heard in the valleys from the dizziest heights of vision; but force was not his to give. Such words were more than "half battles," to be sure, so invigorating were they to all the champions of good causes, but they were words still, and seemed to proceed from some upper region of impersonal mind. They expressed convictions, feelings, desires, but there was lack of blood in them. They seemed made of air; there was soul behind them, but not as much body as many wished. In a word, all the ideal elements were present. He was a man who believed, felt, hoped, had vast resources of faith, but was a thinker more than an actor. Thinking is indeed doing, yet not in the same sphere of achievement.

Emerson recognized the limitations of genius. "Life is a scale of degrees," he says in the lecture on the "Uses of Great Men."

Between rank and rank of our great men are wide intervals. Mankind have in all ages attached themselves to a few persons who, either by the quality of that idea they embodied, or by the largeness of their reception, were entitled to the position of leaders and lawgivers… With each new mind a new secret of nature transpires; nor can the Bible be closed until the last great man is born… We cloy of the honey of each peculiar greatness. Every hero becomes a bore at last… We balance one man with his opposite, and the health of the state depends on the see-saw.

Emerson looks forward to the time when all souls shall lie open to the heavenly influx, and he regards greatness as an earnest of that possibility. What disappointments he must have felt as he was forced to turn away from people who should have been saints and heroes, but were none! What bitter moments he must have known when he stretched out his arms to welcome a goddess and embraced only a cloud! But his expectations continued eager; no feature betrayed evidence that these practical refutations of his theory had effect on his heart.

Whether Emerson's constant belief in the Over-soul, his stubborn theism, his persuasion of an immanent God, was an advantage or a disadvantage to his philosophical view of the universe may be doubted. On the one hand, we cannot question the fact that he owed to it his enthusiastic faith in the substantial unity of creation, his optimism, his assurance of future progress, his confidence in man, his moral earnestness, his elevation of soul, his buoyancy of spirit, his forwardness in all endeavors after reform. On the other hand, it can hardly be denied that it led him to take some things for granted, diverted his mind from the unprejudiced observation of phenomena, prevented his rendering full justice to the scientific method, was the cause of wide aberrations in his estimates of human character, and of a curious onesidedness in his judgments on human condition.

Emerson was always profoundly religious, at heart a supernaturalist. The blood of centuries of pious ancestors was in his veins. His soul was uppermost, not his intellect nor his heart. He was a closet man, a minister at the altar. True, he rejected every form of the religious sentiment, and moved with entire freedom among dogmas however expressed in word or in rite. Every attempt at giving voice to spiritual emotion was disagreeable to him.

Theology had fallen from him like a shroud. He would not venture any definition of the spiritual laws. Doctrine had become faith; prayer was changed into aspiration; the speechless utterance was the only one he cordially listened to. But faith he held fast; aspiration he cherished; the inarticulate language of the eternal was ever in his ears.

Ever and anon would come a burst of conviction. "Oh, my brothers, God exists!" he cries in an ecstasy of emotion. Some years ago Emerson seemed fascinated by the inductive method, so that some of his admirers thought he would become a convert to physical science. But the bent of his nature asserted itself, and he pursued the deductive system as before. His passion for "First Truths," as they were called, was irresistible. He could not abandon the philosophy of intuition, and all his studies – comprehensive, profound, and original as they were, – his insatiable thirst for knowledge, his inordinate appetite for details of fact, incidents, anecdotes, gleanings from literature of every kind, were subservient to this.

Emerson's serenity is often spoken of as evidence of the power of his religious faith. It may allow of this construction, but it may be accounted for on other and different grounds which lie nearer at hand and proceed immediately from more obvious sources. How far may a long ancestral experience in devout meditations, practices, longings, worked into the system and producing a sedate, calm, interior temperament, go in explaining that almost imperturbable tranquillity? The piety of his forefathers was so genuine that it drove him from the church of his adoption, and rendered another calling sacred. Their descendant exhibited the same saintliness which they possessed but in a different fashion. And he was probably saintlier than they were, because he was their child. His brothers had the same characteristic of equanimity by virtue of the same parentage. His brother William, whom I knew intimately in New York, showed in his daily life a similar dignity, and tradition reports the same of Charles. It was the perfect fruitage of centuries of heavenly-minded men, not the peculiarity of an individual soul.

This predisposition to inwardness was favored by the long seclusion of Concord, which kept Emerson aloof from the world and prevented the friction which is so damaging to serenity. He saw those only who respected, loved, honored, and revered him. He came into collision with none. Men of thought, unambitious men, students, farmers, were his fellow-townsmen. Several hours in each day he was alone with his books or his mind. When he visited the city it was for an intellectual or social purpose, as one who had dropped from a star and was soon to vanish. His contact was with men of letters, clergymen, publishers, friends, gentlemen interested in mental pursuits who had left their business in order to disport themselves in the fields of thought. These added to his stores of wisdom, and sent him home replenished rather than drained. The gains of his day were not dissipated either by business occupation or pleasure.

Then, whether from disposition or philosophy we cannot tell, this man avoided everything dark, evil, unwholesome, unpleasant. Sickness of all kinds, complaint, depression, melancholy, was an abomination to him. He turned away from ugly sights and sounds, thus evading conflict. He never argued, never discussed, but said his word as well as he could, and encouraged others to say theirs, in this way hoping to get at the truth. By this course he escaped the usual provocations to ill-temper, and was forced upon an undisturbed equipoise of mind. Nothing helps serenity so much as avoidance of contest, and when one can thoroughly convince himself that there is no rooted evil in the world to be fought against, an even condition of soul is not hard to maintain; optimism is proverbially cheerful, but an optimism that is grounded in principle must be unconquerable by any force that circumstances can bring against it.

It must be remembered that Emerson was not a man of warm temperament, not tropical in color or in heat; more like the morning, cool and breezy, than like the sultry noon-day, or the glowing evening; more like the dewy spring, than the effulgent summer or the fruit-bearing autumn; not a child of the sun, rather suggesting the still, white, imaginative moonlight. There was an air of remoteness about him. His remark to the inn-keeper, – "heat me red-hot," tells the story. Simple habits kept his frame wiry, and a New England nurture saved his mind from luxuriant uncleanness. By nature he was passionless. The beautiful "Threnody" on the death of his boy, reveals the sorrow of a soaring mind rather than the grief of a crushed heart. To command one's self enough for such an effort evinces a rare power of rising above mortal conditions. Such a constitution finds solitude congenial and is calm by force of inclination. Friendship seems an emotion better suited than love to that ethereal soul, which was always radiant but seldom burning, benignant, seldom craving, always gracious in imparting, seldom hungry for receiving. One might walk in his illumination, but one could hardly bask in his heat, or lie on his bosom, or nestle near his heart. They that knew him at home may speak more warmly of him, but thus he appeared to people outside; thus he appeared to many who had admired him as I did and tried to get close to him.

The love of wild, untrimmed nature, the want of interest in cultivated gardens, was part of his theory of the universe as the expression of God; the richer, the less it was interfered with. He would approach as near to the Creator as possible, listening for the divine voice, which was most clearly heard in the wilderness. To the same source must be ascribed his partiality for wild, untrained men, – foresters, hunters, pioneers, trappers, back-woodsmen. He sought everywhere after originality, freshness, power, in individuals and in groups. He hailed a genius, however rough. Unconventionality excited his enthusiasm to such a degree that he could scarcely contain himself, but said the most extravagant things in the ecstasy of his hope. Men of polished outside he did not care for; mechanical men, however successful, politicians, however popular and adroit, were his aversion. Accomplishments, however great, scholarship however finished, he did not respect. He wanted the rough, uncut gem. Genius of whatever description, in whatever class, whatever its order or grade, was his joy. In him the love of truth predominated. He submitted to the inconvenience of imperfect opinion, but respected the highest law of his being. He believed in the eternal laws of mind, in the self-existence of right, in purity, veracity, goodness. He was one of the most honest of men, one of the cleanest, and he did his utmost to bring his life into correspondence with his best thought. That all created things must be imperfect was part of his creed; that this imperfection ran through human character he was as much convinced as any man; and his efforts were unceasing to turn men's eyes towards the beauty "ancient but ever new," which he in his moments of insight beheld. No one lives up to his most exalted faith. No one ever endeavored to do so more sincerely and humbly than Ralph Waldo Emerson.